"Bird" Parker

Elvis lives!

This quilt was originally made for the "Why is the Sky Blue" challenge from the quiltart list. I didn't really have anything in mind for it once it was made, and it just sort of languished around for a while, occasionally being dragged out for a presentation or something, including a show and tell in my living room to a friend who came by to pick through some fabric fairy stash I had no need for. That was probably a year or more ago, and I recently got a call from her asking if I still had it. I did, and she asked about the possibility of acquiring it for the Embroiderers Guild of America for their convention next June in Memphis. We worked out the details and they now are the proud owner of the quilt, and it was officially unveiled last week at their regional meeting, to be used? Shown? whatever, for the next year until the actual meeting in June '08. It was well-received enough for the local chapter to be interested in purchasing another one for the silent 'tea cup' auction, and possibly one for their "Chicago national this Labor day." I'm putting all this stuff in quotes because I'm not exactly sure what it all is, I'm just pulling it verbatim from the emails back and forth working out the details. Some other discussion about doing a presentation to their group and possibly a class if they have enough interest. I'm actually pretty excited about the opportunity to work with another group and crazy quilters seem like a good fit for my style of embellishing.

Hardy Orange

We have a volunteer tree/shrub/hedge/bush along one side of the fence in the back yard that has thorns longer than my index finger. We've let it get out of hand the last couple of years, and since it's a fast-growing thing it's gotten about 12' tall. We HAD to get in there and trim it back before it took over the entire right half of the yard. It was already impinging on the grotesquely over-sized nandina the dog uses as a scratching post. It's one of the few plants that are surviving the drought this year so I almost hated to whack it back. Almost.



It's green and springy so we can't burn it (ignoring for a moment the burn ban we've been under for months) and with those thorns it's a major ordeal even considering trimming it to 3' or less pieces so the garbage will pick it up. Even if we trimmed it to size and bundled it, I don't think they get paid enough to actually pick it up once they see the size of the stickers. It looks like something from the walls of Cinderella's castle. Was she the one with the castle fortified with brambles?



Anyway, we got it cut back with a minimum of injury and only a little blood, but we now have a 10' wide, shoulder-high tangle of the stuff just sort of lying there threatening us. No idea how we're going to get rid of it short of buying U-Haul boxes and packing it up so we can put it out for the garbage. Maybe we'll just leave it there until it composts back into the earth. It would be just my luck it would re-seed right there though and then we'd have a million of them to deal with instead of just three. I was considering intentionally planting some along the other fence line though where the really ugly fence is but I'd rather have wisteria. Too bad it's only the scary, dangerous stuff that roots so easily and grows so fast. The hardy orange took root and thrived in way less time than it took the mock orange right next to it to even set blooms.


By the way, in case there was any doubt that Southerners were strange, this plant is commonly called a gumdrop tree, and people actually use it as a centerpiece with gumdrops stuck on the thorns. "Hey honey, it's Little Becky's third birthday! What say we chop off a hunk of that deadly weapon plant in the back and stick bright colored candy on it to camouflage the thorns for the kiddies!"


At least it has too many off-shoots to make a good switch.

For a reasonably good picture of the whole thing, check out http://www.nccpg.com/gloucestershire/plantweek6c.html

RJ and the Bird

Ignoring the crappy photography, I'm very pleased with these 2 pieces. The Robert Johnson is destined (most likely) to be donated to Tougaloo College for their art auction, and Bird will be one of my three for exhibit and sale. Robert Johnson is done with commercial batiks, photo printed fabric and real guitar parts and picks. I also used annealed brass corners on it.

Charlie "Bird" Parker is commercial batik (the black stripe-y looking stuff bottom right) and some of my rust dyed fabric. Photo printed fabric, and commercial prints for the staff. The bird applique is done with a pinwale corduroy so there is a bit of texture to it. I also spent 2 days with a microscopic screw driver, taking the saxophone apart to get the keys and thumb hook. A HUGE thank you to Chris at Morrison Brothers Music for taking the time to locate an old sax for me, along with some very cool cases and spare parts for future use. He also had some really good suggestions for other pieces of instruments I may be able to use.

Scout and the guitar bits

First things first, Boo Radley is a she, not a he, so her name is now Scout. That'll show me about trying to sex a kitten when they're so young.

And I hit the motherlode at the music store. I went in for a dozen 35 cent picks for the Robert Johnson piece and came out with 10 assorted tuning keys and 3 ....ummmm......decorative metal things with the keys still attached, whatever those are called. The guy I was dealing with was VERY interested in what I was doing with broken guitar pieces and took a lot of time going through his boxes of repair parts looking for other stuff I might be able to use. He also had some good ideas of how to use pieces of a guitar and told me which parts of it were veneer and which weren't. I love the look of the keys and the key sets (for lack of a better name for it) and I think they'll definitely find a home on some of my work. Big thanks to Stephen (of Kokojazzman fame) for suggesting the keys.

Robert and the art cloth

Of which I only have pics of Robert so far. I sort of went off on a tangent with him after I got back from Vicksburg and had all my fabrics laid out together (translation: dumped into a pile on top of another pile on the table) and saw the blue and brown batiks playing so nicely together. I printed off the picture of Robert Johnson, after changing it to a sepia sort of color instead of the original gray/black tones. The lighter blue strip at the bottom will have tortoiseshell guitar picks and if I can buy some unattached tuning pegs they will wind up at the edge of the picture. A coil of rusty guitar strings (which reminds me I need to get out there and put the acid on them so they'll rust today) below the pic, then some quilting. I'm also considering "roughing up" the seam between the blue and brown by overlapping and lacing or something, instead of having the sharp line. We'll see. I have the patterns printed off for the next one, a Charlie "Bird" Parker piece, and the fabrics chosen and dyed for it. It's lying on the ironing board as we speak as I re-dye some rust stuff a bit darker to use with it.

The art cloth came out pretty well. A couple of pieces I absolutely love, a couple that I'm already using as wiping rags when I'm working on others. I really like the look of the shaving cream dyed pieces when they get done, but I'm obviously doing something wrong with the setting process since I'm losing most of the color once they're washed. The yard of gelatin plate printed fabric is going to be very hard to turn loose of, but maybe I'll get a couple more pieces made and will have a choice of which one to donate. This session of gelatin dying went much better than the last, and I'm actually happy with the result. I'll try to get a pic of that up sometime today. I'm also liking the effect of simply sprinkling dry Rit dye on the pieces as I'm doing something else to them. I need to add some salt filler to the shakers of dye though to control the amount a little better. A really pretty piece of rust dyed stuff with teal Rit dye will wind up in the Bird Parker piece. I also played with rust dying some colored fabric. I'll report back on that experiment once they dry and set and get washed. So far I like the effect though. They have more of an orange color too, since I dyed them in the rusty wheelbarrow.

The pain of art

Boo Radley and I have been playing together. A lot. And as a result, my arms and legs look like I've been flogged with barbed wire (which reminds me......) from where his little pointed cat fingers snag me a thousand times a day. So, I'm wide awake at 5:00 am and looking for something to do. My bright idea is to get started on some art cloth stuff, so off I go to my stash for some fabric appropriate for rust dying and gelatin printing and rubbing plates and shaving cream dying and other fun stuff. Pour the vinegar into the bowl and stick it in the microwave. Start cutting the fabric to size. The microwave dings. Add the salt to the vinegar. Load everything up and haul it out to the work table on the deck. So far, so good. Stick the fabric in the bowl to prep it for dying. DAMN! Open wounds and salt/vinegar at the crack of dawn is NOT a good idea. Too late to do anything about it now though so I just keep muddling through until I can get inside and rinse my arms. Of course I also now have pretty little hand prints across the seat of my pajama pants from where I snatched my hands out of the vinegar in reflex to the pain. The fabric is now cooking in the rusty pan, wrapped around various rusty objects.

Cross your fingers that I get some good pieces that were worth, literally, salt in the wound.

Meet Boo Radley

This is my new kitten, who already thinks he needs to help at every opportunity.

He's very vocal and demanding about getting attention too. But he's also a sweet kitten who loves to be petted and held more than any cat we've ever had. He sleeps in my lap while I'm working at the machine (at least he sleeps when he's not "helping" guide the fabric through the machine) and he apparently loves the sound of the Janome since he promptly climbs up and sticks his head through the harp to sleep. That position should be interesting the first time I try to quilt a big piece.

He's "helping" me iron that quilt top, by the way. Since this is a quilt blog, I guess I should mention the actual quilt and not just the quilt kitty. It uses about 75 of the almost 200 music print fabrics I have and is a sort of non-measured ....ummmmm....strip pieced sort of thing. I basically just cut a bunch of strips and started sewing them together then cut them up into triangles and sewed them back together randomly. Absolutely no thought to pattern or design, other than making sure I didn't get the same pieces together most of the time. I added the inner and outer border to stabilize all the bias edges and even then, added interfacing to make SURE it stayed square. So far so good on that. It's probably due to all the help I got from Boo.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Ah yes, nothing like a lazy Sunday afternoon. Two middle-aged women with hatchets and crow bars, an abandoned piano, high-humidity 90 degree weather, a pick up truck and a plan. What could be any more entertaining than that? It look us under an hour to dismantle the whole thing and get the pieces parts hauled out to the street. I now have a relatively unlimited supply of piano guts to do with as I please. An interesting note (at least to me) is that the hammers of pianos have different colored felt. The one I already had has red, the one I got yesterday has green, and Dorinda's has grey. I have a whole bunch of keys and the whole strip of the part where the hammers and other stuff connect. If I can talk the boys into doing it, I may try to send them back out there to get the big metal piece the piano wires connect to. I would make a VERY cool rust dying form. That part of it (I think she called it the sound board) was too heavy for us to lift into the back of the truck, but maybe if the boys unscrew it from the wood part the 2 of them can get it home.

We also did some gelatin plate printing yesterday and that was pretty cool. We were just playing, so I don't really have anything that I'm willing to show, but at least I got some ideas for the situations where it might be the appropriate technique for a particular effect. It did strike me as very project-specific though. One more weapon in my war chest to be used as needed. I also got the deck cleaned off and replaced the weird shaped piece of tarp covered plywood with a great solid wood exterior door to use as a work surface. If the rain holds off today (that's a joke, y'all....we're crying for rain) I'm going to try to get a couple of coats of polyurethane on it "just in case" the thick painted surface needs some extra help. I can already tell it's going to be a huge improvement. I can actually get to the cabinets it sits on, it's perfectly flat and level, the top is white so I can see what I'm doing, and it doesn't have an irregular shape. I also raised it about 3" higher than it was and my back didn't bother me at all, even after an hour or so of standing there working. My daughter came out on the deck and asked why I had plastic lizards and snakes and spare body parts lying around. After I told her what we'd used them for her comment was "Oh, so it was arts and crafts day at the B house this morning. You should run your own summer camp." I think I'm going to invite Mike Rowe to come paint and dye and discharge with me for his Dirty Jobs show. Or maybe I'll invite him over to just stand there and let me look at him.

MQA June gathering

The MQA (Mississippi Quilt Ass'n) June gathering was this weekend and it came off without a hitch. I was one of the speakers Friday night (I took my timer this time so I knew when to shut up too!) and my talk and quilts seemed to be very well-received. Lots of interest and questions after the program and a bunch of people took pictures of me and the quilts. That surprised me. I've done several of those talks and I don't remember anyone doing that before. As I expected, "Sing" made a big hit and I intentionally saved it for last during my talk. Surprisingly, I think the second crowd favorite was the "Simplicity" quilt with all the sewing supplies on it, and it wasn't just because the women are quilters. Most everyone commented on having a lot of the old things at home themselves, and how much they loved them without using them, but couldn't bring themselves to throw out. I could see the gears clicking in their heads by the time some of them got through asking questions and checking out the assembly techniques.

I taught a beading and embellishment class all day Saturday and that was a ton of fun. I had a really good group of students, and we got a lot accomplished. I intentionally made the supplies list sort of vague so people would show up with a variety of fabrics and embellishments. It apparently worked too, since we had everything from a huge printed panel to a journal sized micro print. We looked at every piece and discussed scale and proportion of each. I think we solved every problem too, including the cute micro print. She just added a big applique of the same tiny motif and it was off to the races for her. Strangely enough, she was the only student who left class to buy more fabric this time. We had every type of fabric imaginable, from bright novelty prints to pastel watercolor fabric to a beautiful, rich looking blue and brown upholstery fabric. It was fun for me to see how the fabric choices "matched" the personalities of the women I knew. The enhancements we ultimately used ran the gamut from basic beading, with some fancy stitches thrown in, all the way through couched yarns and fibers to fabric paint and gel pens and dimensional overlays and bead encrusting to embroidery. I would LOVE to see all of the finished pieces. I did have 2 students from other classes stop by during the day to ask me for suggestions on their own work. I had to giggle at how they looked almost furtive about asking though. Maybe one day embellishment will be a universally accepted addition to a quilt. And in my own defense, "embellishment" doesn't always mean "stick more crap on it" either. Both suggestions I gave were very minor. One was simply a change in thread color, the other was to add a grand total of about a dozen color-coordinated seed beads. Embellishment isn't always about more-is-better, sometimes it's just about enhancing an existing element.

I'm hoping everyone left the class with a better idea of what can be done, when it's called for on their quilt, and that they are a little more open to considering the possibilities. I'm not advocating that everyone always embellish. I'm just hoping people who are very traditional will begin to see it as another tool in their arsenal of techniques. We have DEFINITELY come a long way in the last five years with that. They let us read our instructor critiques before we left yesterday and the one I liked best was the comment from a woman who said she was totally out of her box with embellishment when she signed up for the class, but left at the end of the day comfortable with going home and doing it on her own. I also got an email from a student last night who said she'd dragged out her beads after she got home, even before she unpacked her suitcase! THAT is the kind of motivation that keeps me coming back. I got so excited about the progress they made during the day, and how enthusiastic they were about doing more of it that I challenged them to a Bag O' Stuff round (limited to a quart bag and 25 people though) and I already had 4 signed up by 6:00 last night. I'll probably be a raving lunatic before we finish it up at the end of the summer, but I'm really looking forward to it. The cut-off for signing up is next Sunday, so if any of my 4 regular readers are interested, leave me a comment and I'll put you on the list.

Sing While You're Working

I have finally found the right fabric for the quilt design I've had in my head ever since I got the piano pieces, and it was a gift from a friend.
The instant I saw it, I knew it was what I had been waiting for too. The quilt was very well-received at the guild meeting show and tell this morning (the same guild that turned their noses up at my work 5 years ago) so I was happy. I can't say it's all their fault though. They have made strides in being more accepting of non-traditional work, but my work has also improved and been refined over the last 5 years. At any rate, I re-upped my membership today for the first time in several years. I also had 3 people approach me about the price of it before I got out of the parking lot. Friends admire your work, true friends hop out of a car in the middle of the street and help you bust up a piano with a tire iron. Finished size is 20x22, unless you count the hammers that it hangs by, which makes it 22x22. Commercial cottons, rust dyed keyboard and stripe print, pages torn from a children's song book and piano keys and internal pieces. The titles of the 2 songs are "Sing While You're Working" and "Something Happy", both of which I thought were appropriate. The paper is stabilized on fusible interfacing and coated with polymer medium. The piano pieces are sealed with a spray varnish. The binding is a very narrow gold and ecru stripe.

A GRADUATE!

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=D0&Dato=20070524&Kategori=CLASS02&Lopenr=705240801&Ref=PH

Click to the second picture. 3 of the 5 of those girls started kindergarten together. The other 2 came in 7th grade.

UPDATE: She received 5 awards at graduation. Recognition for 85 service hours this year. (I think they're required to do 40.) She was a member of the athlete scholar softball team, which means the entire team had a 3.0 or better GPA. She was recognized as a stellar star student for her grades Junior and Senior year, and second honors for this past semester. She also won a national Danforth "I Dare You" award for "recognition for personal integrity, balanced living and motivation for leadership." She was apparently nominated for that one by the Principal.

All that and sweet too!

My baby!

Aidan (on the right) and her bestest buddy Amanda after the Baccalaurate Mass Tuesday night. They're practicing their "I'm a high school graduate" smiles.

Aidan

(on the left) and Leslie, the recipient of the ballet shoes quilt.

The Dancer

This will be a graduation gift for a girl I've been sewing for ever since she's been old enough for her own costumes practically. She sings! She dances! She acts! And she's very good at all of them. She's off to college this fall to study drama and we'll see her name in lights on Broadway one day. She's also just a sweet kid, and very easy to work with. I've known her mother since high school, and her brother and my son are very close friends (hence the bajillion miles on the cars going from Hattiesburg to Memphis) and my son works for her dad during the summer. Her mom bought the batik Mardi Gras mask quilt for Leslie's birthday last year, but it's hanging on the wall at their house so I don't think she's going to take it off to school with her. This one is just for her, to be USED and it won't even have a sleeve! The background behind the shoes has small black musical notes and the middle border has sheet music and purple, blue and orange roses. The outside border has white, blue and purple on the pink. The narrow frames are blue and purple. The shoes and the outside border are both polished cotton. I'll get on the quilting tomorrow and get a close up shot after I finish it. And yes, those ARE mitered corners on the last border. I was sort of proud about them coming out right the very first time I sewed them together too. Didn't have to frog a single stitch!
Finished size will be about 52x68.

Progress of a sort

The top is done and half the quilting is completed. I should finish it up today and get it bound so it can go in the washer this afternoon and be delivered tomorrow. This one went VERY fast piecing it and quilting it. Funny how some just get in the groove and zip right along, while others are a struggle at every step. I bought the cross fabric a while back just because I knew it would be useful at some point. It's perfect for this project since it's a gift for the principal at the Catholic school my kids all graduated from (the youngest graduates next Wed.) and it just seemed appropriate for him, especially considering his favorite colors are blue and brown and the school colors are blue and gold. The shot of the quilted top is only the top half that I've finished quilting already. The whole thing is actually 60"x75" finished size. For the first time in a long time I had trouble deciding on the quilting thread and pattern. I tried several different threads and was happy with none of them. Sort of by default, I tried the invisible thread and was actually very pleased with the effect. After several stops and starts on the quilting pattern I reverted to the free motion meander too as the best choice for the look I was after. The meander is a bit bigger than I normally do, but I wanted the specific look of it after it comes out of the washer for this one. I was careful to only stitch around the crosses rather than through them, so they'll have a bit of puff to them after washing. I really like this piecing pattern and I'll have to remember to write down the dimensions for the pieces and how I put it together so I can use it again. There are several novelty theme fabrics in my stash I've accumulated for specific people and this would be a good pattern to use for those.

I'm back!

Whew, tons of stuff to catch up on (not the least of which is sleep!) but I'll eventually get to it all. My doc has me on a bunch of new meds and I happened to catch some sort of epikazootie about the time I started taking them and it took us a few days to realize it wasn't the meds making me sick. Several wasted prescriptions trying different stuff and different dosages before I got over whatever it was and back on the original meds. Good timing has never been one of my strong points.

My youngest daughter, my baby, graduates this month so it's been a whirl of things to do for and with her. She had her senior luncheon a couple of weeks ago and it went off really well. Most of the other girls seemed to opt for slumber parties and pizza this year but mine went straight for the high tea thing. She even specifically requested the girls wear dresses. She had her hand in every decision, from the invitations and place cards to a trip to the wholesale florist to pick out her flowers. I think she did a beautiful job too. The other girls really seemed to enjoy it and the weather was perfect for an outside tea party. It was held in my parent's backyard with the lake as a backdrop. I can't believe these are the same little girls that were in kindergarten with her yesterday!

I also can't believe how tall she is! Or how grown up and beautiful. She starts college this fall (on scholarship, to boot) and even though she's staying close she'll be living in the dorm. [This would normally be the place to insert a comment about how strange it's going to feel with her out of the house, but since she's never home anyway we probably won't notice any difference.] She's off to Myrtle Beach a few days after graduation for a week and a half, back home for a few days and then off to Maryland for 2 weeks. When she gets back from there she'll be looking for a job.

The week after her senior luncheon was the prom. They all looked so elegant and beautiful.

These are her two best friends and the reason she's going to Maryland. The red head is from there and all 3 girls are driving up for a visit.

WOOOO HOOOO!

My DH walked in last night with a bag of Krystals and 2 special treats for me, as if the Krystals weren't enough. He had 1 gig of memory for my computer, and a check for tuition to Sonji Hunt's http://sonjisays.blogspot.com/ week-long class at the Tougaloo Art Colony this July!! You wouldn't believe how excited I am about this. My oldest daughter has attended for 3 years but this is the first time I've had a chance to go myself. I've followed, and admired, Sonji's work for several years now and the opportunity to actually take a whole class from her is unbelievable. I have until the middle of July to get my machine tuned up and start gathering fabrics and supplies. There are a lot of quilt artists out there doing fabric painting and surface design, but none quite like Sonji. I love the additional texture she incorporates with the grommets and heavy stitching and her famous bundles. Visual texture and depth is good, but I really look forward to the physical texture lessons. It goes so far beyond my weak attempts with the Mardi Gras beads and embellishments and beading and just plain 'stuff' I tend to use. She also has that fantastic graphic color sense that I strive so hard for. Maybe a week with her will improve my ratio of "getting it right" on my own work.

And my computer is FLYING now with the added memory. Maybe I can actually get patterns to print out in less than 94 hours now.

Gettin' it in gear

"Quarter Note" is going to the art show with me Friday if I get it finished in time. I feel like I will once I can decide on a quilting pattern for it. It's anchored now in the ditch on the vertical seams but I need to do something else with it too. Not sure what, but at least I have this much of it done. That's progress at any rate.

"Good Wishes" is also going. I have no doubt it will be finished since there's very little left to do on it. The print at the top is the backing and I intentionally left it showing in the pic because the pins at the bottom right sort of show the placement of one of the groups of flowers on the back. My intention is to do some bobbin work with the gold thread to outline the cluster of flowers so they show on the front. The backing fabric won't actually be visible from the front unless I decide to use it for the binding though.

The round piece is a felt tree skirt I got at Dollar Tree back around Christmas and then forgot about. I added some foiling, painting, stenciling and thread work to the original felt in several different golds and stamped the small black symbols. I'll have to get better pictures of the details in a close-up shot and get them posted once I'm through with it. The gold mesh is quilted in flowing, wavy vertical lines with the gold thread. Not sure yet what sort of quilting I'll do inside the circle or on the black, but I'm sure I'll have some flash of inspiration soon enough.

Happy Easter!

This is my contribution to Easter food this year. Eggs dyed with silk ties. There were some really cool silk boxers I could have used, but it would have felt too much like that commercial about colon polyps where the guy eats the lima bean.

I've been thinking through the assembly on a new design and that's taken up all my time and energy for the last couple of days. I finally decided on the construction, although I'm SURE there's an easier way to do it. Or maybe not. It's a pieced background with a big applique over it, except that there are 'blank' spots in the applique that are only stitched lines across some of the background pieces. Hard to describe and even harder to figure out technically. I finally wound up basting the background pieces together, stitching the outline for the applique on the whole thing, then taking it apart so I can do the applique on the pieces that have it and the outline stitches on the pieces that have that. Then I'll sew all the background pieces back together. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the background pieces off-set at the seams so the outlines and applique don't line up. I just finished a very simple 4-patch for a friend so I think my Muse is punishing me.

So I lied

about getting pictures posted yesterday. These 6 hour days at the school working on costumes is more than I'm used to. The play opens day after tomorrow though, so today and tomorrow and then I'm done and I promise to get pictures up then. I may even break down and post an in-progress of an Egyptian thing I'm playing with.