Last Two Pieces Complete

This morning I finished the last two quilts for the show tomorrow at the Baranov Museum.  

Habitat
12" x 35"

 Habitat has a pieced background, constructed with commercial fabrics.  The fish and crabs were printed with hand carved stamps and Daniel Smith Oil based-water soluble printing ink.  I carve 2 crabs so I could show distance in pieces like this.  I cut out the individual fish and crabs and fused them onto the background. The rocks are freezer paper machine applique, then I hand stitched fibers and buttons and beads.  Below you can see the details in the closeup photo.

Habitat Closeup

This quilt has been in the works for a very long time.  I printed the distant mountains and the birds on commercial fabric, then it hung on my wall waiting for inspiration.  I intended to add another border beyond the arch, but I didn't have enough fabric.  Sometimes the best inspiration comes from necessity!

Sunset Over the Mountains
17.5" x 22"

Getting Ready for the Baranov Museum Show

I am busy with last minute details, getting ready for the show at the Baranov Museum, on Friday, August 31st, from 4-7 PM.  I have two more pieces that I need to finish, one needs binding and a hanging sleeve, and one needs just a hanging sleeve.  When I was at the museum yesterday to plan how to hang the quilts, I also took my small quilts to show Sarah for the gift shop.  She took them all, and I found out this morning that they are buying all of them outright-I was happy with consignment!  The following pictures are some of the quilts that will be shown at the Baranov Museum on Friday.  The four that the museum purchased will be on display, as well.  They can be seen here:   http://sallysartquilts.blogspot.com/2012/08/great-news.html

Blue Fish
21" x 16"





 Blue Fish is my first foray into Soy wax batik.  My tool was a puff pastry cutter that had been in my kitchen cupboard for 30 years!  Finally a good use for it.  I then machine quilted and couched various fibers.

Sunshine Spirals
18" x 16"

Hand-dyed fabric, quilted and couched spirals.

Lost in the Forest
15" x 18"

Lost in the Forest is constructed with all hand-dyed fabric.  The baby sparrow was printed with a hand carved linoleum block, with Daniel Smith oil based water soluble printing ink, as are all of my prints.  I was really pleased with the forest quilting.

Fish Kodiak
19.5" x 15"

The borders on Fish Kodiak began as a slash and sew experiment.  I had a piece of fabric that I had previously strip pieced that was left over from a previous project which I cut up and added the darker fabrics, without any plan for it's use.  The fish panel is printed in shibori dyed fabric.  The sea weed is free motion stitched on tulle.  Below you can see a closeup that show the beaded elements more clearly.

Fish Kodiak close-up

Home
32" x 16.5"

Home hung on my design wall for a very long time, in different configurations, until I finally settled on this.  It   is constructed with all hand-dyed fabric, the fish printed with a hand-carved block, and a wine cork stamp.

Home close-up

Red Kelp
20" x 15"

The borders on Red Kelp are another slash and cut experiment.  Again the fish were printed on hand-dyed fabric, foil starfish, and various beads, buttons and thread embellishments.

Red Kelp close-up

Night in the North
18.5 x 10"

Night in the North is the last of my reduction prints, done in a workshop with Liz Mitchell a few years ago.  I chose the green silk border, since that was the fabric the print was on.  Unlike the previous pieces in this series, I decided not to use the printed mountains, preferring appliqued mountains instead.  Mother of Pearl stars.

Polkadot  Sea
18" x 18"

My daughter, Ingrid, saw some sunprinted pillows on Pinterest, that she wanted to try making, so we spent a morning sunprinting in July.  There wasn't alot of room to work, so this is all I did that day, leaving her room to work.  I used Setacolor transparent paint, and a stencil.  I like how the layering in this piece effectively shows perspective.

Spring
15..5" x 18.5"

 Spring is constructed  from all hand-dyed fabric.  The flowers are made from a piece of lace that I got from my friend, Eva, and dyed.  The chickadee was printed with a hand carved linoleum block.  The borders were constructed freeform.

Spring Close-up

The last three quilts are pieces that will be available which I have previously posted.

Dancing Lady
24" x 24"

Not My Grandmother's Doilie
23" x 26"

Three Kings
34.5" x 19.5"

Great News!

The Baranof Museum, in Kodiak, AK, has received a grant from the Rasmusson Foundation to purchase four of my quilts.  They decided to go with a salmon theme and purchased the four following quilts.  There will be a show in conjunction with the Kodiak Art Council's annual Art Walk, on August 31st, from 4-7pm at the museum.  In addition to the four quilts purchased by the museum,  there will be 15 other quilts available to view and purchase.

 Sockeye is the oldest of the quilts, made in 2009. It is 19” x 32” and is constructed from commercial fabrics with some elements fused appliqued after the background was pieced.  Machine quilted on a home sewing machine.  Hand embroidered and beaded with a variety of different beads, fibers and buttons.  In the following close-up photos, you can see all the handstitched embroidery and beaded elements.

 Reeds is 23.75” x 16.5” and constructed from shibori dyed fabric, printed with hand carved stamps using Daniel Smith oil based water soluble ink. Borders pieced from commercial fabric.  Machine quilted on a home machine.

 The River is 24.5” x 34”. The fish panels are made from shibori dyed fabric, printed with hand carved stamps using Daniel Smith oil based water soluble ink.The remainder of the quilt is constructed with commercial fabrics.  Machine quilted on a home sewing machine.

 Streamside is 34.75” x 13.5”.  The fish panels are made from shibori dyed fabric, printed with hand carved stamps using Daniel Smith oil based water soluble ink. The remainder of quilt is constructed with commercial fabrics.  Machine quilted on a home sewing machine.

Kristin's Peace Flags

Last summer I posted these pictures of flags that Kristin and I printed.  They hung in her yard all winter.

This is what they look like now.  Not too bad.  But it looks like they have done their work.  Interesting how the red and fuchia have faded to nearly the same color.

New Work, May 2012

This is a post about what I have completed since the first of the year.  I usually have several pieces going at any moment, and I tend to wait until I have a few pieces to quilt before I switch the machine over.  Even if I practice before I start on a quilt, I find that my stitching gets better if I do several in succession. My intent was to enter them in the Crab Festival Art Show, but here I sit with no way to deliver them, or pick them up on Sunday, so they will wait for another day to be shown in public, but I will show them here. I broke my ankle a month ago, and although I expected to be on the mend by now, that is not the case, and I am still not able to drive.

Crab
14" x 12 1/2"

This quilt actually came after the one that follows.  I ended up with more of the border squares after I had tried out some different layouts, and I had one more of the crab prints from a print session last Fall.  The quilting on this one is very simple, but I like it.

The King
20" x 15"

This is the first of these King Crab quilts that I started.  I tried a few different settings for the border squares before I finally settled on this.  I wanted to have room for quilting on the border.  You can see the quilting in the close-up picture that follows.

Three Kings
34 1/2" x 19 1/2"

I wish that I had used a heavier thread.  This was done with trilobal polyester variegated thread, which I love.  I am trying to be more bold with my machine quilting.  This light weight thread is great for texture, but I would have liked to have seen a bolder line here. I just ordered a set of Sulky Blendables-30 wt.  It was spendy, but now I know I have all the colors.  I have a problem remembering what I have when I order thread!

Three Kings closeup

There are two red quilts in this batch of work.  I was just having too much fun with the rich reds, and I probably overcut as I often do when i am working on a strip piece.  The idea was to put cross strips in as I built the strip pieced fabric.

Reeds
23 3/4" x 16 1/2"

Reeds-fish closeup

Reeds-border closeup

I am still stuck in the red zone with this next piece but it is the accent fabric.  On this piece the goal  was to build the stripped fabric around the prints-very improvisationally.  There were a few times that the plan shifted-to get it all sewn together.

The River
24 1/2 x 34"

This last quilt is probably my favorite in this grouping.  This piece started with two fairly large pieces of stripped fabric.  I then cut panels from each, offsetting the strips in opposite directions to get the zigzag effect in the background.  This piece hung on my wall, with freezer paper depicting the circles for a long time.  The fish were not tightly packed enough on the original piece of fabric, so I added some fish. You can see before and after in this post: http://sallysartquilts.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html.

Streamside
34 3/4 x 13 1/2

It took me a long time to get the color of the ink correct that day.  For some reason, I thought that I had used more blue ink, so I had to do alot of printing to use up all the ink I had out!  I was pleased with the addition of more fish.  

Streamside closeup

I faced both of the red quilts, rather than applying borders as I normally do.  It is a good option that I have never before utilized.  Sometimes you want that extra bit of color that the binding can provide, but as these pieces show, sometimes you don't. 

Streamside back

All of these quilts started with prints that I did from my own handcarved stamps on fabric that I dyed.  I love handdyed fabric, but I also love the combinations you can achieve from commercial prints-texture, texture, texture!

Repurposed tablecloths

I had these three tablecloths that were destined to be disposed of when we start packing up our house sometime soon.  I had dye left in the refrigerator from dying the fabric for Kristin's wedding flags, so I decided to dye these tableclothes and see if there was anything worth keeping.  This one I really like alot, and the light colored areas were a surprise although I did suspect that part wasn't cotton. 

Closeup

napkins

 This one turned out wild and crazy but I like it.  If I decide it is too much for the table I have some ideas for cutting it up and using it in quilts.

 I was going for a gradation on this one-dark in the center to light on the edges, but it wasn't working so I did some rubber band binding and overdyed in Cerulean blue.  It is still green in the center, but the edges blend better than they did after the first dye bath.

I did the quilting on this piece today.  I used heavier thread than I normally quilt with and am happy with the results.  You can see a closeup of the stitching below.  The water was stitched with Signature variegated quilting thread-40 wt, I believe. The red section was stitched with Sulky Blendables, 30 wt. Unfortunately, I don't have many spools of heavier thread, but I have lots of trilobal polyester!  Oh joy, another thing I need to collect!

   

So, now I am down to one more piece that needs quilting.  Although it has not been a joyride fracturing my ankle, I would never have gotten these 6 pieces quilted.  Bindings, labels and sleeves and they are done.  Oh yeah-naming the, too. I don't enjoy naming my quilts!