A River Runs Through On Display

I finished my quilt, A River Runs Through a few weeks ago - in time for it to be in the "Anything Goes" show at the Ashe County Arts Council gallery. It will be up until March 22, 2019.

Viewing Summer

A hint of Fall 

Both Seasons 

Viewing Fall

I am pretty please with how it worked. One quilt - several different views. I will make on another dimensional quilt in the future as - there are still some construction issues I am not completely satisfied with.

The last few weeks since the quilt was finished have been taken up with being sick (terrible cold), traveling to visit family, and working on farm related projects. The weather is starting to warm up here in the mountains so working in the studio is getting easier. I don't have any major projects planned at the moment - so I think the next few weeks will be used to finish up a lot of long standing UFO's and getting my garden ready for Spring.

I am linking up to Nina-Marie's blog. I would love to take her Open Access challenge - but for now I think I need to focus on finishing things before starting something new.

A River Runs Through - Quilted

I finished quilting the two quilts* that became one. The first is a version of the New River in the summer time with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance.

The second is the same scene but in the fall.

After quite a few hours of quilting - I then had to slice each quilt into 2 1/2" strips - not an easy task as I was terrified my rotary cutter would slip and I would have spent all that time for a true mess.

Luckily it worked! I have sewn the two quilts together and created the mounting device. The quilt is now hanging in the Ashe County Arts Council gallery in the show "Anything Goes!" that runs until March 22, 2019. I tried to take a few photos before I delivered it - but they were rubbish. I will get to the gallery this week and see if I can get better a better shot.

I have been wanting to do a 3 dimensional piece for a while and I am glad I took the risk. It isn't exactly what I had envisioned in my minds eye - but it is pretty close. I am linking to Off the Wall Friday - I think I might have reached a little of what mentally strong women don't do.  

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Fused

The last ten days have been all about fusing. Some fabric I fused in squares and then used them to create the summer palette for my A River Runs Through quilt. I soon found that although I like the look of a wide variety of fabric brings to the quilt - it was just taking too long and I am on a deadline.

 

Luckily for the fall version of the quilt I had several fabrics which have a wide variety of fall colors in just one piece and I was able to use bigger pieces and it moved along much faster.

I still need to add a row of trees as the very bottom of the fall quilt and then on to machine quilting. I had thought that I would slice these two apart and sew them together before I quilted but I am now thinking that I need to be able to see both color pallets and designs to be able to get the quilting right.

That means I will spend the next week quilting and then take a rotary cutter to each and cut them into 2 1/2" strips to sew alternating summer and fall strips. I hope I am brave enough to do that!

Linking to Off the Wall Fridays with Nina Marie Sayre. 

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Working Title: A River Runs Through

I've been working on my quilt for the Ashe County Arts Council exhibit Anything Goes! and made good progress today. The quilt will be three dimensional and will actually be made of two tops pieced together before they are quilted. The general drawing for the piece has been made:

and I started pulling fabrics for the first on the two tops. I plan on using summer colors for one and fall colors for the other.

The quilt is going to be an impressionistic view of the New River that runs through Ashe County.  The New River is thought to be the second oldest river in the world and runs just down the road from our farm.

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Anything Goes

I am starting to work on an three dimensional art quilt* for the Anything Goes exhibit at the Ashe County Arts Council gallery in February. I have made three-dimensional quilts before but have never been completely satisfied with the end results. The last one I made was an epic fail - but made for a good laugh. I was restricted by the hanging requirements of a traditional quilt show and the weight of the piece on the front pulled the piece out of balance.

This time I hope by making a piece for a gallery, I can play with the hanging method as well as the actual piece itself. 

I started making a paper model yesterday and did some rough watercolor pencil work on it today. I am trying to have two different views of the mountains - one in spring and one in the fall. Depending upon where the viewer is standing will dictate the season they see.

Spring

Fall

Front View

I still need to do a full sketch of the mountains and I plan to do a small mock up in fabric to test out the hanging method. I hope by starting now I will have time to do some playing and not just rush to finish a piece for a deadline.

Day 20 of the of the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge. I missed yesterday - but as I have now written more posts this month than in the previous five years - I think the challenge is working. A habit is being developed!

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Road Barn in Snow

One of the pieces I have on display at the Ashe County Arts Council is our old road barn in the snow.  This piece is based on a photo taken in the summer.

The pieces are limited to 12" by 12", so I have had to simplify the quilt and remove things like gates and old wheel rims.

I started with very basic shapes fused on to a semi-solid white background.

Then I added a bit more detail in the snow.  Our county is one of the major producers of Christmas trees and greenery for the country - so I added a few trees and a wreath.

Some simple machine quilting* and a frame from old barn wood made by my husband finished the piece. 

I am linking this post to Off the Wall Friday and is day #6 of the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge.

 *This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Augustus

The second rooster portrait I have on display at the Ashe County Arts Council is Augustus, named for Augustus Fink-Nottle in the Jeeves and Wooster series by P.G. Wodehouse.  He is a d'uccle and has beautiful orange and brown feathers.

He is the smallest of our roosters but has the biggest attitude (and the biggest voice - he loves to crow morning, noon and night.  It is a good thing we live far out in the country!)

His quilt was made using some hand painted shibori fabric I made several years ago and machine quilted in a similar manor to Emerson's quilt.  

I plan on making more quilts using our chickens - each one has a very distinctive personality and I hope I can convey that in fabric*.

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Emerson - A Chicken Story

Back in the spring of this year we added thirteen new members to our menagerie on the farm - a set of bantam chicks. Not ones to do anything in an easy way - we did not get them from the local feed store but instead ordered them through the mail.

One very cold and snowy day in March, we got a call from the post office to come and collect our new babies.  I named this little guy Emerson from one of my favorite book series the Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters.  He had the lightest coloring so was easy to identify from all the others. 

Of course I took a chance that he would turn out to be a rooster as it is very difficult to tell little boy chicks from little girl chicks.

Chickens grow up very fast and by mid summer he was looking more like a boy.  He is a cochin and sports very beautiful feathers on his toes.

This is what he looks like now that he is all grown up:

Since he will never be a chicken dinner, he had to become a quilt!

He was appliqued 

and then machine quilted on my domestic machine.

I recently was award a grant* to purchase thread and rulers to use on my domestic machine,  It was really wonderful to be able to go to this basket of thread to get just the right color to make Emerson come to life.  

He is currently on display at the Ashe County Arts Council gallery  as part of the Tree Fest show. I am linking this post to Off the Wall Friday by Nina-Marie.

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

At Long Last

In December 2014, I designed a small wall quilt featuring a Christmas tree made from prairie points and a partial Dresden plate for its tree skirt.  I planned on writing up the design as a pattern but then - we sold our house and bought an old farm (and farmhouse) and now have four alpacas, two donkeys, thirteen chickens, and one very spoiled rabbit - so it has taken me a while to finish it.

But it is done!!

I taught the pattern to my local guild - thank you ladies for helping do the final edit! Here are a few of the quilts they showed off at our last meeting.

I also made one during the class, this time leaving off the ribbon garland and using buttons as the  embellishment. 

The pattern is now available on our farm's etsy store as a PDF download.

Next up a little something with these two handsome boys:

I am linking this post to Nina Marie Sayre's blog and Confessionsofabricaddict 

O Tannenbaum

I always think of O Tannenbam instead of O Christmas Tree, having spent time in Germany when I was very young (my memories are vague and probably more of what I have been told than what I really remember).

Last year we skipped a tree as we were in the middle of some repair work in our living room and it did not seem very Christmas like.  This year we have a tree and my husband even set up my son's large train set around the base:

In addition to the Bonnie Hunger mystery quilt I have been working on, I  made a small wall quilt using continuous prairie points this year as an exchange gift for a Christmas party and I am joining the link up party Bonnie is holding on her site today:

 Hope everyone has a joyous Christmas!

An update - I have finally written a pattern for this quilt and it is available on our farm's etsy store!

Summer - At Least in My Studio

Charleston is once again thawing out of an ice storm - twice in two weeks is just too weird.  Although I grew up in Colorado, I have lived in the South for nearly 30 years so I think my blood has thinned.  I don't really like cold weather anymore!

For two days I sweated as the lights flickered (I have way too much sewing machine work to do to be without power) but we were lucky and had light and heat the entire time.  Friends nearby weren't as fortunate.

I worked on Bloom as the icy rain fell.  In my last post I estimated about 2 hours to finish the flower - was I way off.  It took nearly 2 hours just to pull the threads from all the stops and starts!  I probably have closer to 3 days of stitching.

Once again I struggled with the marking of the background of the quilt.  Finding a marking pen that I can see and that will come out easily is becoming like a Holy Grail search.  Any ideas?

I still need to put on the facing, sleeve and label and need to decide if any of the centers need beading but I am pretty satisfied.


Once again I am linking to Nina~Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday to show my progress.

Be Still

At last months NC Quilt Symposium I worked on a second painted piece in my class by Hollis Chatelain based upon a photo I took last fall in the NC mountains.

We spent several hiking days in the Blowing Rock area and I took tons of photos. This is one of my favorites.  I call it Be Still because you can only catch these moments if you are still and look for the little things along the trail.

I was ran out of time in the class and had to bring dye home to finish the background - and it wasn't quite the same color blue so it has a bit of a mottled effect.

I added some watercolor pencil work in the thistle.

After that I did a bit of thread sketching both on the thistle and the butterfly.

Then I layered it for quilting using wool batting.  I did an non-square edge treatment to help get rid of some of the blue that just didn't work and started quilting.

I learned lots in the class and I think this is the first class in a long time in which I came home and actually finished the projects started in class!  Can't wait to do some more dye painting.

An Old Plant and a New Quilt

When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in Florida in a magical place - on a lake, in the middle of an orange grove and with lots of places to explore.  My grandfather was a builder and every time they ran out of room - he would build another building.  There was a main house, two cottages, a barn and a bomb shelter built during the height of the cold war.  At the entrance to the main house was a court yard growing all sorts of plants that a Colorado girl like me had only seen inside at home.  Grandmother grew enormous Crotons and Dieffanbacias as well as others that I don't know the names of.

Years ago (more that 30!)  we potted up a few of the Crotons and the Dieffanbacias and I still have some.  They have suffered some through the years - with moves and dry climates - and there was at least once when my Croton was nothing but a stick. Everyone said it was a lost cause but with a little TLC it recovered and now is beautiful.  I think being able to live on the screened in porch in the SC humidity for six months of the year has really helped it flourish.

In May, I attended the NC Quilt Symposium and took a class with Hollis Chatelain.  I have been wanted to take a class from her for ever.  It was wonderful.  We needed to bring a few drawings to use for our painting and I decided that Grandma's Croton was one of them.

When I returned home and rinsed out the extra dye this is what the piece looked like:

I like uneven edges so created a couple of shadow leaves in the background and did an envelope finish.  I used wool batting for the first time and am in love.  I really like how it quilted and how it does not have a memory like cotton.

Next, I quilted the shadow leaves:

Then I quilted the main leaves using a red thread and a variegated yellow/orange.

I was very please how the pieced turned out and now have a croton that will survive even if the plant does not.

I am linking up to Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday.  Next week I hope to get back on my Marsh quilt after a long hiatus.