A Ribbon at MQX Helps Focus My Style

Posted on September 28, 2014September 29, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design Work, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, quilt shows / 4 Comments

Canterbury Silk a MQX with Best Surface Design ribbon

Canterbury Silk at MQX with Best Surface Design ribbon

Well glory be! I won a ribbon! 🙂 Best Surface Design at MQX Midwest.

If you recall several blogposts back I was discussing how I might focus my style a little more clearly in Sky Horse, Houston, and Focus…. I got some wonderful feedback from some of you out there mostly along the lines of “do what your heart tells you”. Now I wholeheartedly agree with this. I also have a list of about fifty or more quilts I have thought of and almost any one of them would please my quilter’s heart to make. Indeed, I think of a new quilt almost every day, but have stopped adding to the list unless it is extremely compelling. Sew I think some focus might be in order.

The ribbon was so unexpected. Now of course I never really expect a ribbon when I enter a show. I hope for one, but I never really expect one. I enter shows so my friends and others can see my quilts. A ribbon is icing on the cake. But what I mean about unexpected here is what it is for…Surface Design.

I had never really thought about my work in surface design, but now that I look at my body of work, a great deal of it is centered around surface design. I hadn’t even put that together until I won this ribbon. The main exception to this is my line drawing quilts…Perspective in Threads and Dad’s House Plan.

Now, however, I see how well this fits. I love to add unusual appliques, thread painting, embellishments, and paints to the surfaces of my quilts to make my idea in my head come alive. This term “surface design” pulls together three of my four styles I identified in my previous post…story landscapes with Deep Space quilts and Canterbury Silk. What a surprise. So my two focus choices for the next year are…Surface Design and Line Drawings.

Thanks to all of you who gave me your feedback on my previous post about this. I really appreciated them more than you may realize. I have been struggling with this for some reason.

Sew happy everyone!

I Like Machine Applique

Posted on September 16, 2014September 17, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Techniques

Appliques from Canterbury Silk at the beginning of the quilting process. These are fused, stitched raw edge applique with narrow single blanket stitch.

I have noticed lately quite a few statements by sewists and quilters about how they really dislike doing, are afraid of, or simply won’t do applique. I have a little arthritis in these aging hands and find machine applique much more user friendly for this situation than by hand, but it is one of my favorite parts of making a quilt. I use several applique methods and use each for different purposes. I decided to share a few of my favorite applique points.

1. For very complex edge appliques I always use fused raw edge machine stitched applique. I decide what look I want to determine if I use a satin stitch, a single blanket stitch, or a double blanket stitch. I almost always use a really narrow stitch, but once, when I made seaweeds, I used a wider double blanket stitch and it looks really cool.

Thread painted coral and seaweed with wider double blanket stitched edge.

For the printed appliques I digitally paint of faces and small appliques, I sometimes use a very small straight stitch with 10o wt silk very very close to the edge. It depends on what I want to accomplish.

The Storyteller–This quilt relies heavily on appliques. Even the tree trunk, which is embroidered, was embroidered on a separate piece of fabric, cut out, and turned edge machine stitched. You just cannot see it was machine stitched down. The sun is turned edge also. All the other appliques are fused and edge stitched.

2. For very smooth edged, larger appliques, I usually use a double layer of freezer paper template pressed to the wrong side, and do a turned edge by painting starch on the edge, turning it, and ironing just a small bit of the edge at first to make a smooth edge, and then ironing the whole turned edge down. Once that’s all starched and heat set, I remove the freezer paper and iron it all flat. I then stitch it down with 100 wt silk using a very narrow applique stitch. It virtually disappears and closely approximates hand turned applique.

3. Occasionally, I have done a reverse applique. It’s not hard at all and has a unique look.

4. And finally, there is the painted “applique”. I will either paint it on the quilt and then quilt or quilt and then paint. This is good for when you want to shade the applique or make it have a particularly unique look. Although I use fabric paints that are washable after heat setting, I do not consider these quilts very washable. They are blockable, but I would not wash these frequently.

Sew try some appliques on your next project. If you don’t like one method…try another. Teach someone to quilt, yourself, your son, your daughter, your BFF, your cat, your dog.

An Interview Concerning Kitsunes, Wulvers, and Golden Dragons

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My Family

David A. Tatum

For more than the past six years, one of my chief concerns has been to try to help my youngest son David launch his chosen career as a novelist. You’ve no idea how much this means to me. He’s wanted to be an author all of his life. He made up his first story when he was about three. His dad, my dear late husband Marvin, was a book collector and librarian, and had a collection of books on standing stones. David made up a story about the enormous men who put the standing stones into place. He grew up surrounded by books with parents who encouraged reading.

David, who has his degree in history, has a marvelous and interesting writing style based on sound research and filled with interesting characters. Even though he has elves, dwarves, and dragons in his first book, In Treachery Forged, they are totally fascinating with characteristics unlike those you might expect. His woman protagonist was blinded as a young girl and has learned to handle life with efficiency and forthrightness.

His delightful second novel, The Kitsune Stratagem, does not have elves, dwarves, and dragons, but rather its female lead is a young kitsune (a human-fox shape shifting person with remarkable characteristics). It is an exciting story with palace intrigue, fascinating characters, such as wulvers and bunyips, placed in a very interesting world.

This week, he was featured in a blog interview that talks about his writing. You can find it here. And should you want to read one of these delightful novels you can find all the links to print versions and ebooks here

He has arranged it so if you buy the print version, you can have the kindle ebook version for free.

Sky Horse, Houston, and Focus for Future Quilts

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, quilt shows / 10 Comments

Sky Horse. A deep space quilt inspired by NASA photos of the Horsehead Nebula

The judges have finished judging and the notifications have gone out, and Sky Horse did not win a ribbon. Sew I thought I would go ahead and share the finished pictures with you. The problem has always been getting a good photo of the quilt because of the way it reflects the light. But the one above is the best I could get after getting a special lens and all. Here’s the detail:

I have no idea how well it traveled. I did my best in packing it to travel without developing serious folds or breaking of the Angelina Fibers applique (if you can call it that). I have had good success in the traveling of my first deep space quilt Stellar Nursery. It’s tougher than you might think once it gets the black veiling sewn on and the all-over quilting.

Stellar Nursery, inspired by NASA photos of “Mountains of Creation”. My first deep space quilt.

I am very happy to have Sky Horse in Quilt Fest in Houston. It’s a true honor just to get in that show. Of course, I’m a little disappointed not to get a ribbon, but the quilts that go there are incredible and I also think I did not capture the Horsehead Nebula as well as I wanted to. I may try again some day.

Over the past few months I have had several discussions with two well-known quilters who both suggested to me that I pick one or two styles and make lots of quilts in those styles reaching constantly for improvement with each new quilt. I think on the whole that they are right. But I will confess that this is difficult for me because I love so many kinds of art style quilts.

The first is 1. deep space quilts as seen above and just for reference here are several from my other styles,

2. Story landscape quilts: They tell a story on some kind of landscape:

Waiting…

The Storyteller

Then I have the 3. line drawings/blue print quilts:

Dad’s House Plan–a memory quilt for my Dad. This quilt was juried into AQS Chattanooga and will be there this week.

Perspective in Threads – This quilt was recently juried in to Houston’s Tactile Architecture special exhibit and will be in the Houston show and traveling for a year thereafter.

And then there is my newest style, which one might call 4. Innovative. This quilt is meant to be the first of a series of silk quilts focused on ancient illuminated manuscripts and other old European and American artwork.

Canterbury Silk. This quilt has been juried in to MQX Midwest and will be debuted there this year.

Sew in principle, I agree with my quilting friends…4 styles is a lot to build a reputation on, and one needs to focus on a style or two and make many of those quilts. It’s much like the decision I had to make many years ago to reduce my multiple crafts down to focus on fabric arts. But I have not yet decided. They are all fun. What do you think?

Happy Progress

Posted on September 7, 2014September 7, 2014 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design Work, Quilt Journal, Sewing Clothing / 2 Comments

Small evening clutch I purchased in Vienna Austria

Hooray! I have completed my fashion sewing project and everything fits pretty well. I still have to make a special belt to go with my dressy outfit, but that’s a small project I will do one day for a fun break. I made three vests, two slacks, one blouse, and did a bunch of repair on existing items. I also found two beautiful evening bags I had forgotten about, so I didn’t have to make one of those. I repaired three really nice everyday/tote bags I had made some time ago, and they are better than new. If I have time before I go to Houston, I might make one more pair of slacks and another bag, but it is not a necessity.

Silk clutch from Japan designed to wear with Kimonos. I got this in Kanazawa, Japan many years ago, but it is still in good shape.

My childcare responsibilities for my grandson have moved to after school only, which gives me a good part of the day and weekends to work on my quilting now. Sew I have been busy planning out my next phase of quilting projects. One is a small special request quilt that is due in the beginning of January and so I have to get going on that right away. I finally managed to work out a design for that quilt after many hours, and I’m ready to start that one. I will save the progress pictures and show them to you after its debut.

I haven’t decided on my other project yet. I usually like to work on two over a space of time. I’ll try to figure one out that I can share with you as I make it.

For the most part, I work without deadlines on my quilts. That is, I have determined there are enough excellent quilt shows across the year that whenever I finish a quilt there will be a show I can debut it in. However, there are a couple of shows that I particularly like to use for debuts of my show quilts. These have very early deadlines..months and months before the show. That’s what inspired my Quilting Show List I keep more or less up to date on my Website so I can keep track of all of this. It is not all inclusive, but it does include most of the shows I find of interest to me. I probably miss a few here and there that should be on this list.

It’s always kind of exciting when I get to this point…all my previous projects done and time to start new projects. I even have my studio in pretty good shape…just needs a small amount of pickup and vacuuming.

Sew happy everyone. Teach someone to appreciate the beauty of quilts…your father, yourself, your daughter, your son, your dog (who may be asleep on one right now).