"Goodbye yellow...."

"Jump, Jive and Wail" has found a new home in Minnesota. I actually got to speak to the new owner last night on the phone and that was so cool! Other than being nice to hear how much she loved it, the best part was what else she said. "That one piece is what drew me in to look at the rest of the exhibit." That really meant a lot to me to know that she was moved to look at the rest of the works by artists on the coast who were truly decimated by Katrina. The pictures I've seen of the exhibit were very powerful, and I can only imagine the impact they made in person. Still, nothing even comes close to seeing the actual damage. No amount of pictures, videos and written descriptions can even approach the reality of the coast. Mary Gray of Minnesota Helpers has done an incredible, back breaking job of getting our work out there, and my gratitude to her for giving me this opportunity is boundless. I can't thank you enough, Mary.

Quilters by Heart's Desire

I did a presentation on embellishing for this guild last night and all I can say is wow! What a great group! Maybe if I had found them first, I wouldn't have such an aversion to organized quilting guilds. Not to say that the original guild I joined is a bad one or anything, just not my cup o' tea, as the saying goes. At show and tell for the members there were mostly (practically all) traditional quilts shown. But the cool thing is, they seem very open to non-traditional work. So many groups seem to only be interested in what they are already doing. That sort of defeats the purpose of a group as far as I'm concerned. And historically, quilting is a group activity with all skill levels and strengths. (A huge nod to Shelly....no WAY could I slog through that, but by watching you, if I ever have to I can.) They had a good assortment of questions, and weren't scared to touch the stuff I passed around. I always like that, since I don't consider anything I do to be off-limits to handling. Why in the world would I intentionally choose to work in a tactile medium and then balk at people responding appropriately to it? I WANT them to touch it. Turn it over. Pick at it to see how it's done. Put their noses up close to get every last detail. Maybe take some idea away with them to use in their own work. The absolute worst response I can think of to my work would be disinterest. My skills in quilting, or binding width or fabric choices may not be to everyone's liking, but that's acceptable as long as I feel like it's interesting. That it draws people in closer for the detail.

I love what I do, and as I said last night I'd be doing it whether anyone ever saw it or not. Maybe that's why it's so easy for me to let go of the negative comments I do receive. I do it for myself, and so far have been fortunate that others receive it fairly well too. As always, my hope is to pass that excitement and curiosity for trying new things and simple passion for what I do along to others.

Beautiful Noise

....it's a beautiful noise, and a sound that I love....

The checkerboard strips are actually woven into the background fabric, hand painted lines and musical notes. Gold screening for the shadows on the notes. The hunt is now on for a metallic/shiny thread the color of the background to finish up the quilting with.

an "important-looking package from a lawyer"

I can't believe how excited I am about this! It's practically the entire front page of the paper, with MY quilt front and center. My fingers are crossed that at least one of the three will sell too. Wish me luck.

Mary says she had inquiries about 4 of the pieces the first day, and Miles Davis was one of them. She's getting the name of the man who is interested in it so I can contact him.

Now if I could just get some of my stuff on exhibit here locally I'd really feel like I was in the big time.

Gulfport

These are pictures of what used to be a hotel in Gulfport, MS. The 'streamers' are jersey knit tubes that would have ultimately become Hanes t-shirts had their lives not been cut short by the storm. They're actually pretty cool looking in real life as they are pretty much EVERYWHERE for about a 2-mile stretch. The port is just down and across the street and it's the main staging area for the shipping containers that come in. There were thousands of them stacked waiting for transport, and when they were tossed around they dumped their contents over several miles. At least this is the fabric and not the tons of raw chicken and fresh bananas that were piled 20 feet deep in yards. A bunch of the shipping containers themselves wound up out in the Gulf and it looked like some sort of surreal Loch Ness monster with just corners of the containers randomly sticking out of the water. I did retrieve several pieces of the jersey to (maybe) use in a storm quilt one day, if I can ever get to that point in my mind. These are the first pictures I've even been able to post. It's just very hard to comprehend the whole situation.

Anyway, about the fabric (YEAH! The important stuff) it was originally navy blue, and still shows some of the original color where the fabric was tightly twisted and didn't get sun or weather damage, with really strange looking striations on the rest of it. The streaks go from a weird grey to almost white, with some pink and very red splotches on it. The yard or so I have was actually cut from the piece hanging on the wall in the picture. About 20 more yards cut from the trees were sent to the MN exhibit for their debris display section. Even after washing and bleaching and sun exposure there were mildew stains that didn't come out so they have a sort of cool looking speckled pattern to them. I also sent great huge chunks of FEMA tarps, and an assortment of other tarps in greens and blues and greys for them to use. I kept small pieces for myself although I have no idea how or when or if they'll ever wind up in anything I do. I didn't mind sending off all my debris stash either. It's not like I can't just gather up more.


It saddens me to think that the coast has dropped off the media's radar when there is so much left to do. These pictures were taken 3 weeks ago, and this is directly across Beach Blvd from the water.

More Minnesota news

I forgot to add the third quilt that went to the show in MN. This is the one that was originally designed for the Ricky Tims competition but wasn't accepted. As I told my friend when I got the skinny letter, I'd rather have it out of my house and for sale than hanging in a gallery for people to look at and then coming back home anyway.

The official title of this one is "Orphans of the Motherland"

Pictures of the quilts also made it into 2 different Minneapolis papers on the same day.

http://www.mnsun.com/articles/2006/08/03/news/aw03mnhelpers.txt

The Star Tribune also had an article with a picture but it's not on-line.

These two are small art quilts. The lake piece was sold a couple of months ago, and the Chicago jazz piece is in a private collection. The lake is hand-painted raw silk and silk charmeuse, drapery and upholstery trims and fringes, real sand and seashells, lace, buttons and beading. The jazz piece is hand-painted organza over commercial prints with crystal beading on the skyscrapers.

off to Minnesota

Two of my quilts are anyway. The big yellow one is "Jump, Jive and Wail" and the Miles Davis is "Don't Play What's There"

They' re going to a Katrina show at the Hennepin County building in Minneapolis for a month. The exhibit was arranged by the group Minnesota Helpers for Mississippi artists. I'm thrilled to death to have the 2 pieces in the show too!

Storage of the useful kind

I found this great retail store fixture at the Good Samaritan re-sale shop the other day for $65. It has 8 shallow drawers and 2 deep ones, a center cabinet with 8...count 'em, EIGHT!...3-prong plugs inside the cabinet. It also has 2 pull out trays at different heights. The best thing about the piece is that it is totally covered in formica, including white formica drawer linings, and the drawers are all on industrial drawer slides. Of course, to make room for it in the work room I had to go on a cleaning binge. We hauled a pick-up truck bed (about a foot higher than the bed of the truck) down to Good Sam to donate, and hauled this monster back. I FINALLY can make use of all the light from the windows without having them half blocked. It was hard at first to decide what fabric stayed and what went, but the longer I was at it, the easier it became. Then I responded to a post on the free-cycle from a woman looking for fabric and she came over and hauled a bunch of it off too. Then Rissa http://prettyimpressivestuff.com/blog/ came and took a ton of old lace and trim and ribbon and scraps of the nice fabric. Slowly but surely I'm getting some of this stuff out of here. I still have to pack and mail a bunch of smaller pkgs to people on the Habiliments list, but that will come. I even managed to sort and repack my own fabric in big plastic bins that sit nicely on the shelving unit, and small plastic baskets that store nicely on the bookshelves. I managed to keep my 8x3 work surface/cutting table too. The room is fairly small so some things are in 2 layers, but easily moved. At least everything has a specific place now, and that place is NOT the floor!

Free-association

the next generation

My youngest daughter and her first completed quilt. I was floored that an almost-17 year old would actually CHOOSE to spend 3 days of her summer vacation taking a quilting class with her mother.

Savannah Sunset

This one (rather, a CD with pictures of this one) is now winging its way to CO for the Ricky Tims challenge "Au Naturale." Of course there is a backstory to it...My friend has been working on hers for weeks and kept after me about entering one also. Finally, Tuesday morning I got after it (to be RECEIVED by the following Monday, of course. Nothing like working under a deadline.) I have absolutely no idea where the design came from, or how I managed to put it together and complete it by yesterday evening, but here it is. I used some of my rust dyed stuff, some thread painting (the tree trunk) and window screen for the tree leaves. I'm actually pretty proud of it and pleased with the free motion quilting on it. It's 38x46 and uses commercial prints and rust dyes. An additional challenge I put on myself was to use nothing but stash fabrics too. I did finally break down and buy one piece (60% off) for a false backing yesterday though. I was NOT happy with the very heavy quilting showing on the solid color backing I had originally used, but it was that 'stash only' thing.

We're back.

No pictures and no art this time. We spent a week on the coast working with the greatest couple whose house was flooded in the storm. They've been living in a dinky little FEMA trailer in their driveway for the last 10 months, and yet they have a better attitude than people who were back in their house in a matter of weeks. We spent ONE day working with a woman and her brother who did nothing but stand around and complain about what we were doing and how we were doing it. The 4 days we spent with Jackie and Lynn were MUCH more pleasant. Since the rest of the group was from MO and IL, we took some down-time in the evenings and I think the trip up to Three Rivers was probably the most relaxing time I've spent in years. We did the sight-seeing trip up and down the coast and through the worst parts of the Bay and the Pass, all the way over to Waveland. You'll have to go look up pictures of that on your own since I seem to be incapable of describing it, and I still can't bring myself to even get the pictures off my camera yet. One day I hope to be numb? immune? enough to think about it without crying. My youngest daughter was with us and she has trouble dealing with it all too. I still haven't taken her out to the Kiln to show her my grandmother's house yet. Our solution was just to work so hard during the day we wore ourselves out and didn't have time to think about anything. My uncle did a shrimp boil for us in the driveway one night, and the feeling of family and history and memories was SO strong. I can't begin to remember how many times in the last 40 years we have sat right there eating shrimp and laughing and telling stories. I'm very grateful I could share that with my friends. My biggest regret is that they didn't see the coast as it was before.

This and That

No pictures today (because I'm an idiot) even though I had 9 pieces hanging this weekend at the MQA meeting. I taught a 3 hour fabric postcard class on Saturday morning and was a nervous wreck about doing it, so getting pictures of my quilts was the last thing on my mind. I had an absolute blast teaching the class and hope the students felt the same. It's gratifying to watch someone take that first step from very traditional to free-form, anything-goes sort of work. I think that's what quilt guilds should be about anyway. Sharing the skills and knowledge of traditional, while exposing the members to new techniques. It gives you a choice for your work. I don't do traditional pieced work, although I know how, but those who do have my admiration and without them sharing their talents, who knows what I'd be doing now. But I do love having the CHOICE of traditional or art quilting.
And the BESTEST thing that happened this weekend was that I had half a dozen or more people ask about "the pattern for the mask quilt." The first time someone approached me with the question she literally got a blank look and a "Pattern? What do you mean?" in reply. It honestly didn't register with me what she was asking since I don't use patterns (I did trace the mask, so I guess that's a pattern) and it wasn't pieced and 'patterns' to my mind imply following directions or using a lay-out for the pieces. I was a little better prepared for the next time someone asked about it though.
All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, and I loved meeting everyone and looking at the quilts. There are some incredibly talented members.

Even MORE rust-dying

Since blogger wants to be horsey today the pictures are out of order, but from the top they are: A close-up of the fabric just sort of wadded on top of the metal, then a full shot of the same piece. The striped looking one is the fabric laid flat so that it nestles down into the ridges and grooves and the last photo is a close-up of that piece.
A strange thing I noticed with these pieces is that one side has the beautiful yellow-gold on it and the opposite side has a really dark brown-black in the same spot. Great potential for 2 different looks depending on which side I use.
I started with 2 sheets of corrougated metal roofing ($7 each) and a gallon of hydrochloric acid ($3.50) Strip the zinc galvanized coating with the acid, wash, sprinkle with salt(3/$1) and watch it rust. The fabric is soaked with vinegar then laid directly on the metal, covered with the second sheet and left to rust overnight or a few days or until you get back to check on it, and VOILA! Art cloth!
The color of the top picture is the closest to the real color.

Mystical Ignorance

This one is going to be in the special exhibit arranged by the president of the Mississippi Quilter's Assn in June. Metallic bridal fabrics, lame', beads, marbles, jewelry pieces, beaded fringe, ribbon and bobbin work. The blue and teal pieces are Dupioni silk fused to tyvek and ruched. Very small stippling in gold metallic thread for the quilting and lots of free-hanging threads and fibers.

She just wants to help!

Play what's not there.

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there." Miles Davis

A rust dyed rayon background, Dupioni silk for the quote strip, silk tussah for the big black rectangle, black, burgundy and buttercream musical note cotton prints around the portrait, and painted fiberglass window screen for the horn. The face is printed on bleached muslin. The writing is gold metallic paint pen. Black cotton binding. 34x40

The quilting is copper metallic Mettler and the quilting pattern on the background is a sort of modified woodgrain looking pattern.

Miles Davis

More rust dying

Branching out and trying actual shapes rather than just the randomness of "rusty stuff" and the metal filings. I'm liking the effect and will play with the wrought iron fence pieces I cadged off the neighbor once I get a little better at doing it.