My Thoughts About My Fabric Art for 2017

Posted on December 17, 2016December 20, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My micro-business, quilt shows, Sewing Clothing / 6 Comments

I have made some adjustments in my thinking about my fabric art direction over the last few months that will lead to my putting less focus on competition art quilting and more on the adventure of making art as fabulous as I can. You may not see much difference, because I probably will continue to enter some of my work into shows, but the emphasis in my studio and in my mind is more on the art work and less on the show work.

I am very excited about this because I have so many things I want to try to make and I want to share with you, gentle readers, what I learn along the way.

This new direction came about because two quilts of mine that I know are quite show worthy and people would emjoy seeing them, were both rejected from Road to California 2017. That puzzled me (I have several theories about this, but I won’t share them here). They are wonderful quilts and deserved to be in the show. Here they are:

Drawing Nigh, completed 4/17/2016, 39.5 x 44.5 inches. Original design by BJ

Spiral Galaxy No. 3 (Best Interpretation of Theme in PNQE earlier this year)

Yes, I know all the things that are said about this by friends trying to comfort me (I am not upset, by the way. It is a good thing that helped me think I needed to move in new directions)…”make what you love”, “even if they are rejected it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with your quilt”, “they probably had too many in that category”, and so on. I appreciate it. But think about this: It costs money to enter a show, and my desire when I enter is chiefly to share my quilts with people.

If I win something it is icing on the cake, so not to get into a show is really harder for me to take than not placing. I used to clearly understand it if my quilt was rejected, since I was such a junior quilt maker and I could see the problems in the quilts myself. But my recent quilts are flat, square, quilted well, full of impact, individual, good designs, and worthy of sharing.

So I have decided to loosen my focus on shows a bit and look for new ways to share my quilts, sell my quilts, and share what I have learned (books, classes within driving distance, this blog, and so forth). I am having an exhibit of my quilts next spring at G Street Fabrics in Rockville. I still will try to get some quilts in if I think they fit well in a particular show, because that is the best way to share them with more people. But that will not be my focus for making a new quilt. I have so many quilts I want to make…fabric and thread experiments I want to try…digital to fabric experiments…and embellishment and applique adventures I want to go on. Without having to worry about the judges, I will have more freedom (though they will all still be made to show quality). It is so exciting.

I am currently working on my wonderful oldest son Ken’s design he gave me for my birthday in March. This quilt has taken me longer in actual hours than any other quilt so far. I have at last completed the central pictorial theme this week, made all the special border pieces and the text box. I only have to cover a tiny cord for inclusion in the quilt and I will be putting together all the pieces of the top very soon. I already have figured out how I am going to quilt it once I get it to that stage, and with my wonderful new Bernina Q20 (Fritz), I expect that to go well and faster than past quilts. I am hoping to get that into Houston next fall, since it’s always been intended as a show quilt, and if I do, I will hope to attend the show myself.

In addition to the creation of fabric art, I am planning on blogging several series of how-tos like my recent five-parter here, including one with a few months of a step-of-the-month project. I will be teaching some classes at G Street Fabrics in Rockville next year, and will be looking for other nearby possibilities for workshops (I don’t like to fly). I will finally finish writing the three books I already have been working on (Applique for fabric artists, Embellishment and surface design, and Quilting for art quilts) to be published by Fennec Fox Press (my youngest son’s small publishing company).

Sew happy everyone! Join me in this exciting new adventure in 2017!

Laser lights and robots in my studio

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Embroidery, High-Tech Studio, My Studio, Tools / 2 Comments

This week I got a new toy. It’s a Perfect Alignment Laser 2 cross-hair lamp, which I am hoping will help me a lot in my studio especially with aligning embroideries and multi-hoop embroideries as I hoop them for my Bernina 830 LE and squaring up small quilt projects. I already had a laser square, which helps me square up my quilts and which I used just this week to make sure my quilt now named “Drawing Nigh” (the Waiting…2 quilt) was perfectly squared up. I found that the laser square didn’t quite do the job, however, because I have a lot of trapunto on that quilt that interfered with the lights, so I had to go back to rulers. I eventually got that done though it did take me quite an effort. Here is the first full picture of this quilt…Ta da!!!

Drawing Nigh, completed 4/17/2016, 39.5 x 44.5 inches. Original design by BJ

Sew today I’ve been doing some stitch-outs in my embroidery module of little animals for my Hoffman Challenge quilt. That quilt is a happy whimsical forest path with big funny flowers, butterflies all over the place, and big trees. I thought it needs some animals peaking out here and there and running or walking along the path. The embroidery module, of course, is a robot.

All of this got me to thinking how much fun it is to use these high tech toys to achieve the looks I want and to wish for a robot that would straighten and clean my house so I could live in a cleaner home. At least, I could live in a cleaner home without having to stop playing in my studio with all my toys in order to clean it up. I was looking at an IROBOT vacuum cleaner ad the other day. The problem is, it doesn’t do the straightening first, which is my biggest problem. Once it’s straight I can vacuum it without too much effort. LOL

Sew happy everyone! Have fun in your studio this week. Learn to use your high tech assistants you have…computer drawing and design programs, laser tools, and especially the wonderful things your machine can help you do if only you just knew how to use it. 🙂

Thread Colors Make Magic

Posted on April 9, 2016April 13, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal, Techniques, Threads / 2 Comments

Some of the sky colors after quilting.

I finally finished quilting “Waiting…2”, and I blocked it, though I still need to do a little thread clipping and binding.

During the quilting of the sky, which has been the most difficult part of this whole quilt, the thread colors became very important. The overall magic of the sky grew substantially different in coloring before and after the quilting, but to my chagrin I did not take a before picture. I did not understand how much difference it would make other than just a good quilting. I fell into a pattern of sculpting clouds and using thread colors to bring the sky to life. I already had added some painted colors to the sky, which I used for my guide to thread colors as I worked. The different thread colors really helped me realize the vision I had in my head for this sky, almost a thread painting. In the end, I surprised myself when I realized I had used over 30 thread colors of thread, including metallic silver and monopoly, for this quilt!!! I was as surprised that I had this many good threads in all these colors as that I had used that many on the quilting. What a happy thing that I have collected these over the past four or five years and kept them carefully, replacing colors as I used them up and adding a color set here and there.

Most of the threads I used on the quilt are Superior Threads…Rainbow, King Tut, and Magnifico solids, with Bottom Line for the bobbin. I also have a couple of Isacord solids in there somewhere. I used gray bobbin thread (except for the monopoly) which goes well with the back, and I made sure the tension was as right as I could get it and I can’t see any gray on the top or any colors on the back where they should not be. This enabled me to easily change the color frequently. I did have a couple of incidents where I needed to take out some stitching because I forgot to change settings for the different types of threads. This is where a little notebook really comes in handy. I make notes about each type of thread (not each color).

I took almost all day yesterday to get the quilt blocked and marked square (I haven’t yet cut it square, because I put the binding on using the marking before I do that). I got it all squared up according to my laser square and various other square ruler aids. Then I measured all the sides and it was 5/8″ longer on one side than the other and equally wide across top to bottom. Arghh!!! I ended up erasing all the marks and starting over (twice) until I got it right. It’s a mystery…LOL. Judges really don’t like it if it isn’t square and neither do I. I can only think that the considerable bit of trapunto I placed under the cliffs had an effect on the square “measurers”. It seems the original marks were a little bit off on both the top line and the bottom line. Anyway, it’s marked square now, lined up to the water horizon line, and I even took out a different color marker to make the final marks clear. Hooray! ready to bind.

Sew Happy Everyone! Have a wonderful weekend and rest of the week. Try a little quilting with color varieties and see what you think.

“Waiting…” 2: Finally Moving Along

Posted on March 19, 2016March 19, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Design Work, Quilt Journal, Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Have you ever had a quilt that struggled with you to the point you nearly abandoned it? Well, that was the second in my “Waiting…” series, but I picked it up and did some substantial fixing, and now I am at the point of coming close to finishing the top and I love it at this point.

First of all, I pieced a storm at sea section to become part of the ocean. The piecing was challenging, but enjoyable and I liked the way it came out. Here are the first two blocks of that section.

When I put it together with the fabric piece had for the rest of the ocean, and added the sky, the whole background piece seemed disjointed and the colors simply didn’t play well. So I took the ocean off the sky and overdyed the ocean (both pieces joined together) with a more sea-like color and they blended beautifully together. The only negative result is that, even though I hand dyed it, the pieced storm-at-sea blocks’ seams tended to fray together, so I no longer had the nice flat open pressed seams I started with. But really, by the time I spent several hours re-flattening and spray starching the sea, it looks wonderful.

But the sky…oh the sky. It was just too dull and gray and lifeless. I wanted a sky with an obviously approaching storm at sunset, just as the clipper ship can be seen on the horizon. This is to add the drama to the story…can the ship make it into port safely, and will the family be reunited and get into shelter before the storm hits?

I had tried painting that sky three times already, and I didn’t like any of them. So I took the one I liked the best and added clouds, lightening, sunset colors, and yes, I think it now has the drama (and color) I was hoping to add. So I put the sky and the ocean back together.

Here is a quick pic of the ocean after I dyed it and got it back together with the sky.

Then I added the cliffs to the left of the picture and it began to look right. I just put in a lighthouse on the top of the farthest away visible cliff, added the rocky steps and the stone platform in the nearest stony area for the woman and her daughter to stand on and surrounded it with stones as it would be. It has made all the difference. I now finally like the quilt top.

But I was not happy with the original clipper ship I had chosen to use. I am using a Dover high-definition painted ship and I have the collection. They are much more beautiful than I could have made from scratch, and I don’t mind using commercially printed fabrics, so why should I mind using a fabric I print myself from a collection of great nautical paintings. Using this still requires considerable advanced techniques in applique, thread work, and quilting.

The ship I decided not to use.

The ship I’m using.

So I hunted through the collection and found another one, which I printed out about five different sizes, and finally got it about right. I like this one. It has life, the sails are billowing and are a better color. I’m slightly leaning it on the quilt to add to the look of speed. I printed it out both on the EQ regular cotton fabric and the EQ lawn. I am appliqueing the whole ship down from the cotton fabric, and have added wool batting to the back of the front sails and will applique those in place to give it a bit of 3D billowing sales. I am also adding a layer of wool batting behind the ship and trapuntoing it all in place. Then I will stitch the rigging. That will probably take me a couple of days to applique and another stretch of time to do the quilting and stitch the rigging. Here is my machine stitching around the stones and stone steps up to the platform where the woman and her daughter will stand.

Then there will be the stirring up of the sea with some Angelina fibers and some thread work. That will be fun.

Sew happy everyone! Wishing you all a wonderful National Quilting weekend, and a happy Palm Sunday on the morrow.

Progress on Several Projects

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Books, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 4 Comments

I have three projects currently underway and I’m having fun trying to clear my work flow of these three projects in order to attack two intense show quilt projects I’m also really looking forward to making. My current projects include:

Hoffman Challenge 2016…I’m currently constructing the top. It’s a happy little quilt, just a little bit fantasy-like and I’m currently placing and stitching down all the appliques. I am planning on adding lots of bead work to this quilt, so a good part of the work will be after the sandwich is quilted and done by hand in the evenings.

The background was constructed using applipiece/piecelique technique.

Stitching the appliques down. I will also add some machine embroidered animals to this fanciful forest.

The second quilt in my “Waiting…” series (name to be determined) is finally moving along. I had a very hard time with the sky and the sea. The woman and her daughter appliques were really hard to get right. They still require a lot of details that will be added with stitching. I also have to make the clipper ship applique, which will probably take me a lot of time. But it’s finally looking like it is going to become a quilt. I had my doubts when I didn’t like the sky (I repainted it), didn’t like the sea (I over-dyed both the pieced section and the non-pieced section together to bring them together), and I didn’t like the planned clipper ship design (I found a new one in Dover that has lots of motion). I still have many rocks to add, and the more I look at it the more I think it needs a border…not very wide. Long ways to go on this one.

It’s a start…long ways to go, but it seems to finally be cooperating. This pic is not square on to the quilt, I see…a little at an angle. 😀

And I’m working on my applique book, trying to draw up all the patterns. This is a book showing several techniques of machine applique and the project related to it is a soft fabric book with applique samplers in it…ending with both an art project and a reference aid to the sewist for the future. I got a package of 10 inch precuts to see if I can make the whole book using one layer cake and some white fabric for the pages.

Sew I have been having lots of fun in my studio, but it is getting a bit messy. I am trying to clean it using a little bit of work at that every day, but I seem to be taking one step forward and two backwards…LOL.

Sew happy everyone! Go have some fun in your studio and don’t worry about the mess. Oh, and I haven’t forgotten the step of the month project…I am afraid though that it will have to wait a few more months before I can get to that one.

The Waiting… Series of Quilts and Other News

Posted on February 20, 2016March 5, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Design Work, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, selling quilts, Uncategorized / 4 Comments

Waiting…

I just sold Waiting… yesterday. It has been hanging in G Street Fabrics Bernina section for about a month now, along with a couple of my other quilts I have decided to sell. I love this quilt. It took me over a year to make (off and on…probably about six months full time). I sent it through several national shows, and used it a bit for my show and tell trunk shows, but the judges thought the borders were too wide and so forth. I actually agree with them now, but I will tell you that feedback to me personally from people who have seen it was the most positive of any quilt I have made before or since. Several people–even men–have actually wept over the quilt, as did the buyer.

The one-on-one responses have been so strong that I decided to make a whole series of quilts based on the heart-tugging circumstance of women (and some children) waiting at home for their men to return from war or other dangerous and totally necessary jobs down through history. The women faced difficult and sometimes dangerous lives while their husbands were gone, and many kept the home going, raised their children, and fed their families while their husbands went and came back from their important jobs. Or they did not come back! Currently, I am working on the second in the series. This will be very similar to the one above, except the borders are different, or non -existent, and the woman is a little better dressed and has her daughter with her. The ship is going to be better also, I hope, and there will be a distant light house. I have been working hard to get the sky and sea fabrics right, and I think I have finally done that, so I am constructing the top and trying to come up with a name.

It is hard for me to sell my quilts. I put a lot of myself into them. But it is also an honor when someone loves one so much that they buy it. I am so happy it is going to a couple who love it and told me personally they are planning to cherish it and pass it down to their family. I need the money, I need the space in my home for more quilts, and I need to sell more quilts for these reasons.

Day before yesterday I took down my online shop where I had my quilts for sale because it was getting no response and I had originally been told that they were going to have downloadable product capabilities by the end of last year. They have changed that apparently. So yesterday while I was investigating different ways to sell my quilts and downloadables I got the call from G Street. I’ll leave the other two quilts at G Street for a little longer and then maybe make some changes. They are beautiful, but don’t have the same emotional tug, so we’ll see what happens. They are:

Quiet Celebration, Second Place winner in Hoffman Challenge 2011 in its category and also shown in Ireland, and

The Storyteller, Hoffman Challenge 2013

Sew happy, everyone! Go make yourself some art for your walls. By the way, I haven’t forgotten the idea of a quilt work-along that I advanced some weeks back. I’m working on the pattern now. Also, I am working on samples for my first book.