Esmerelda & Gricelda

I am enjoying the arch swap with my Textile Challenges group very much, even though I am consistently one month late!


For the month of February, I have created an arch for Carol R. Inspiration for her arch comes from her theme ideas of fairies & nature. I decided to create a nighttime fairy flying over a garden of dreams. No larger than a butterfly, she's a wise more-that-mature fairy, as evidenced by her graying locks of wild, independent hair! She scatters seeds of inspiration and creativity wherever she flits and flies. This friendly fairy has been christened Esmerelda and her twin sister, Gricelda, appears on my coordinating BJP. Their names make me smile as they remind me of twin seventh grade girls whom I taught eons ago in Los Fresnos, Texas.

Both Esmerelda and Gricelda wear garments of satin, tulle and glittery sequins. Their wings are from butterflies and their hands hold their magic seeds hidden from view as even fairies are allowed secret, deep pockets for their treasures! They fly across moonlit gardens of blooming lapines scattering their beaded seeds everywhere. The moon and stars (former candy wrappers) provide the glimmering light in the deep velvety dark night.
Now that I have officially introduced Esmerelda, she will finally fly to her new home in Carol R's garden of blossoming wonders, her studio. Gricelda will remain here in Texas to inspire and motivate me as I continue my work on my March arch (it really is started Alis, promise!) and my April arch (for Lyn -- still but a glimmer) and coordinating BJPs.

FYI: Gricelda is my 5th BJP!

Textile Challenges

I am in a Yahoo group called Textile Challenges, run by the amazing Carol Tina Taylor. She comes up with creative ideas, challenging us to try them and share our results. Carol readily accepts ideas from everyone, arranges swaps for select challenges, encourages each of us, and keeps up with this busy pace -- all will teaching full-time and raising a lovely little girl! Carol, you simply amaze me! I want to be like you when I grow up (even if I'm a smidgeon older!) Oh, did I mention, she writes her own blog too.

Anyway, while this post is for you, Carol, and for our amazing group of fiber artists at Textile Challenges, it is also to show my January Arch. Our arch swap is running for the year of 2008. The 13 participants make one arch each month for a designated receiver. At the sign-up for this challenge, we listed preferences for design and color (including a "please not this color" too!). Then Carol set up the master swap list of who is doing whose arch for each month -- a clear and easy to read chart, even if I keep misreading it! (I have my July arch nearly complete when I thought I was working on March! my oops -- yes, this means that I am behind).

My first arch, January, was for our leader herself -- the amazing Carol T!!! My inspiration was to re-create a Gothic window using rich burgundy velveteen (which I learned is not so easy to use for reverse applique!) as the stone framework. The window panes are made of a gold-enhanced batik-like cotton print, framed with a loosely woven golden fabric. The peak of the arch is capped by another gilded print. Beads add a touch of glitter, drama and dimensional detail.

Naturally I am also in another yearlong group, the 2007 Bead Journal Project (BJP) created by Robin Atkins. Members signed up in May 2007 and agreed to make one beaded piece per month, for one full year beginning June 2007. The primary stipulation was to use the same size/shape for each of the journal pieces. I chose the standard 4"x 6" postcard size and to use beads as enhancements -- perhaps eventually working up to a more totally encrusted beaded postcard. I am relatively new to beading, excited to try this challenge and immediately was intimidated by the skills of my fellow BJP participants (including my own friends Linda Teddlie Minton, Nancy Dickey & Sara Sissenwein!). It was no surprise to me when I fell woefully behind. Is it no wonder that I hit a creative block while working on my second piece (finally resolved it in December - whew).

Now today is a new day & I am eagerly working to catch up with my behinder-BJPs ... In fact, I decided to combine my two yearlong projects by making a coordinating BJP for each of my Arches. Naturally I thought of this after I had mailed"Gothic Window" to Carol! Nevertheless, I pulled out my materials and created this piece which I call "Doodling with Beads, Velveteen and Reverse Applique." This is my 4th BJP ... or in other words: "four down, eight more to go." Onward!

I am so confident that I will complete my 2007 BJPs that I've signed up for the 2008 Beaded Journal Project. If you are interested in either the 2007 or 2008 BJP groups, please look at the BJP website. Registration has begun for 2008 (deadline for sign-ups is August 15) with the new year of BJP to begin in September. This is such perfect timing as it allows the entire summer either to rest or to frantically finish my behinders!

DNA gone wild!

I am slowing making progress with my Beaded Journal Project pieces for the first annual Beaded Journal Project.

This is "DNA gone wild!"


It is my third completed BJP piece, thus it must be August. As you can probably surmise, I've chosen the postcard size of 4" x 6" for all of my pieces this year.

This BJP piece uses an early attempt at making a beaded bracelet, an effort that I abandoned once I realized I could achieve my bracelet vision easiest by starting anew with different beads on the baseline strand. Since I couldn't toss this out, I thought, hmmm, perhaps I'll use it for a BJP piece ....and lo, all these months later, I finally did!

Early on I knew that I would use the beading in my BJPs as enhancements and embellishments to other designs. I readily claim to be just-a-beginner in the beading world and am truly not confident to try a heavily beaded design ... yet!

Questions: Am I "cheating" by creating a piece from a "foiled attempt" for another beaded project?
Or am I being creative by using the "not-ever-gonna-be-a-bracelet" and giving it a purpose in life as my third BJP?

My 1st Online class

I am taking my first online fiber art class and am totally enjoying it!
It is a Journal Making class being taught by Sue Bleiweiss (to find out more about this class, click here).

For our first lesson, Sue gave wonderfully clear directions with step-by-step guidelines and numerous helpful photos. She included creative ways to add embellishments and alterations to the journal, encouraging everyone to take her ideas and run, enhancing the individuality of everyone's completed journals. Perhaps the best part is the sharing done by all the students in the class. For as someone finishes a journal (or two or three), they post photos of it for all to see and admire.

I have made one journal so far (and still plan to add more decorative touches to it). Here is a photo of its front.


I used batik fabrics for my cover and lining; drawing paper and cardstock for my pages and dividers; and a cotton print for the inside pocket. I embellished the outside using two eyelash fibers in different colorways and a decorative meandering stitch. The flap is the only edge finished by zigzag stitching, as the other edges were completed by folding the cover fabric to the inside before fusing the lining into place.


When my sons saw this journal, they both claimed it for their own! Much to their dismay, I told them it was mine -- but quickly promised to make one for each of them in fabrics they select. Since our second project features a journal with replaceable pages, I plan to delay making my boys' journals until after they've seen this next one!

Be sure to look at Sue Bleiweiss's website (click here) for further information on how to take this fun class -- as well as to see what else she is teaching.

Key #1

Sometime ago my Beyond the Borders group tossed around ideas for a new group challenge. One of my favorites was to use a common theme such as "Key". I like it since it presents many possibilities: house keys, car keys, a piano key, the answer key ... but the idea I had was to use an old key (formerly a lost key -- or is it the lock that is lost?).

I had experimented with gelatin mono-printing and joined Robin Atkin's Beaded Journal Project about that same time, so I used all three variables and created this:
I began this piece in July of 2007 using one of my mono-prints as its base. I captured the key onto the fabric using only beading-stitches (similar to stitching on a cabochon), then added more beading beyond that. Next came the two laser-cut hearts and I hit a bit of a stall and couldn't quite figure out how to finish the piece. Then in December of 2007, my BTB group held a fiber swap (in lieu of a gift exchange) and one of the pieces I received that day became the perfect final touch with its swirling tangle of a funky fiber. Thank you Mary Ann Littlejohn - it's one of your fibers!

This piece honors the 20th wedding anniversary that I celebrated with my dear husband Ronnie last July 26, 2007 (now you know the secret of the "26"). I have named it "Key to My Heart."

Note: it represents the 2nd of my Beaded Journal pieces, the one for the month of July, of course. I'm currently rather behind with my BJP pieces - but have finished a few, have several others in progress and am slowly, steadily catching up.

Big Foot -- the story

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago... well, actually it was April 2007, I went on my first quilting retreat with my Beyond the Borders art quilt friends. We stayed at a B&B, "The Belle at Round Top." (This was prior to owning a digital camera so here is their website for the curious. It is a beautiful B&B and we were honored to be the first quilting retreat there.)
http://www.belleofroundtop.com/content.aspx

Having finished my first project early in the evening, far too early to stop sewing for the day, I started on the next piece in my cottage series. I planned to stray from my original "Happily Ever After" by zooming in on a-still-undecided-object in the picture. I began by building a hillside using rotary-cut fabric slivers, remnants from an earlier project in shades of green and brown. The last thing I added that night was an appliqued tree trunk. Imagine the quilt below with simply the sky, the hill and the light brown tree.


That morning before settling down to work again, everyone wandered by the communal design wall to comment on each other's progress. "What a great foot!" someone said. Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were looking at my tree! Wow, my tree did have the same profile as a bare foot! I quickly thought of the best name for my work-in-progress -- "Big Foot, the Tree"! I did not mind at all that my tree looked like a foot, instead I was quite happy as now I had both a great title for this quilt and an idea for the next piece of the series. Naturally the second quilt became "Big Foot, the Foot".


Both quilts start the same, with a clear blue sky, a rolling green hillside, and a mottled brown fabric for the big foot. But at that point they differ -- one features a distant view of a dark cottage with smoke swirling up from its chimney and an overhanging branch in the foreground, while the other features a flower garden partially trampled by an intruding foot.

I envisioned more quilts in this series -- an elegant Big Foot in a stiletto high heel with a sleek polished toenail peeking out, a sporty Big Foot in a tattered tennis shoe topped with a stinky rumpled sweatsock, etc., etc., etc. These quilts live in my dreams at this point (although I plan to make them one day ...).

Let's look back, for a moment, at how I tried to differentiate between the two Big Feet. To make the tree trunk look more tree-ish, I added mottled brown veins running up and down the trunk and clumps of grass growing closely around its base ...



To make the other look more foot-ish, I stitched the hairiest leg I could imagine adding a yellowed, scurvy-looking toenail on the toe.


This foot has flattened the flower garden, and yet one blossom remains pristine and untouched by the invading stomper.

One can only wonder if the big foot has crushed these flowers accidentally or not. What do you think?

Here it is ...

For my first blog ever....

I thought I would share "Hearts A'Flutter", a fiber art piece I created to fulfill the first two challenges with the Textile Challenges group:
1) Cut-back Applique in which layers of fabrics are cut-away to reveal further depths underneath, and
2) Altering the Surface using any technique to alter the fabric's surface (pleating, painting, beading, etc.).

I used a diversity of fabrics and threads: cotton, velour, rayon, tulle ultra-suede, artificial flower petals, vinyl (that looks like leather), eyelash yarn, Sulky rayon threads, cotton threads, ending with a sprinkle of sequins and beads.

While I would love to say that I finished this piece because I was eager to share it with my new friends in Textile Challenges, the truth is that I worked hard to get it ready for the first group show of Beyond the Borders, my local art quilt group. The show, held in February 2007 at the Copper Shade Tree Gallery in Round Top, Texas was so hugely successful for both the gallery and my BTB group that Gerald and Debbie Tobola, the gallery owners, invited us back for a second show this year, again held in February.

This time I submitted a few journal quilts, all variations of my first journal quilt "Happily Ever After" (inspired by a Sulky presentation to our Daytime Guild in May 2006 and not in this year's show). This piece reminds me of my small cottage home -- except this quilted home is in the open, rolling countryside while I live in the heart of Houston, surrounded by many homes & fences.

"Feeling Blue" is my first mono-chromatic quilt -- but if you look closely, you will see I couldn't resist putting in a field of bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas. Just like "Happily Ever After", this quilt has four rolling hills, two trees and the cozy cottage -- all of which are fused and machine appliqued.

When I began this journal series, my idea was to play with color within a single pattern, to examine how color choices impact the feel of a finished piece.

"Calico Cottage," the third quilt in this series, features vintage calicos from my fabric collection dating back to 1970s and earlier (leftover strips (1.5" wide) from an early strip quilt made for my sister Gretchen -- more on that another day). I affectionately call this one my wonky piece. In using the old pre-cut strips of calico, I had to piece backgrounds from which I freehand cut the sky and each hillside (the foreground is the only solid piece of fabric). The rooftop is pleated, the tree-tops are semi-ruched, and both tree trunks are pieced from two semi-coordinating strips. I also played with placement of color -- blue hillsides and ground, green tree-bark, and of course the tiny, white calico cottage!

I must showcase my Beyond the Borders art quilt group too. Here are a few of us at the close of our Opening Night at the Copper Shade Tree, February 1, 2008 -- our second gallery show!


In front: Gerald Tobola, Linda Minton, and myself, Cathy Winter.
Behind us are: Connie Fahrion, Debbie Tobola, Barbara Jensen, Susan King, Liz Broussard and Nancy Dickey.
Not pictured but also featured BTB artists that night are Mary Ann Littlejohn, Jo Sweet and Rex Watson.
We are in the front room of the gallery. Look closely at the walls behind us to spy art work by Connie, Susan, Mary Ann.....

This is an amazing group of fiber artists that I am thrilled to call my friends. I always look forward to seeing them at our regular meetings.


I cannot close until I include this link to the Copper Shade Tree so that you can see the Best little art gallery in Texas!!! (at least in my humble opinion)

http://www.coppershadetree.com//index.php