Art Quilt Cards

 Last week, I was showered with cards as a week ago was my birthday, and of course Valentines Day worked its way in there as well.

You've seen Joan Sterr's lovely home-made fiber art cards before.  I haven't seen Joan in a while as she is playing the part of a snowbird....lucky duck.  She sent me this interesting thread stitched card.  She did it all freehand/free motion.

I especially like it because it reminds me of lady in an 18th century gown, with a stomacher (the yellow part) covering the lacings on her bodice....A throwback to my area of historical specialty, Colonial America.  You know....in some ways, the face sort of resembles Joan...This was her Valentines card to me.

 This fun little piece is simply a section of aboriginal print Joan embellished and quilted.  I love the color combos....

 Ruth Treon, one of the Batty Binder Art Quilters (Twisted Stitchers) made this little confetti style postcard.  She and I took Noriko Endo's class together at the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati last year.  She wasn't happy with her piece, and has yet to finish it.  However, she did this little piece as a fun thing using Noriko's technique.  She said that this was more fun and I think you'll agree, it is pretty successful.

I have to admit, this is the orientation I like best...as if the leaves have fallen from the aspens and are now on the forest floor.

However, this is Ruth's intended orientation.  I think because the yellow is such a strong color that the balance is better with it on the bottom...If the forest floor were darker, then I think I'd put it her intended way.....

Either way, I really like it.

I am beginning to have quite a collection of fiber art post cards....no where near rivaling  Del Thomas' collection of 12" x 12" pieces...but who knows?

The Guilty Gardener

Snow crocus

The forlorn vegetable garden

I have been working hard on doing taxes and college financial reporting (which is sort of silly as we don't qualify for the loans).  We've had many warm days...in fact, too many.

This is a snow crocus that was blooming in my garden on January 31, WAY too early.  The same day saw several snowdrops blooming, but evidently I forgot to take pictures of those little white beauties.

I've been a little concerned, not so much for the spring bulbs, but I have tree peonies which are beginning to unfurl their leaves....not good if we get a prolonged cold snap.  I'll probably lose the cherry crop this year as well, I often do if there is a late frost.  I had no crop last year.

I have much to catch up on in the garden. The fall was busy and I wasn't up to par, not that I am now.  I managed to get the front pretty well taken care of, but my back yard gardens are full of things which need cutting down, and leaving them harbors more insects and some fungal and viral diseases.  I'm thinking mostly of the daylilies and iris....I did cut back most of  peonies, another chore which must be done or risk botrytis blight.

I prefer clean up rather than using sprays, although some things I leave in the garden to have winter interest, like my grasses and my sedums.

This horrible mess though was a complete loss....I planted rather half-heartedly last year, but I did put things in my raised beds and just beyond..but I wasn't able to garden in the summer...the chemo just took too much out of me.  The year before was somewhat the same.

The only solace I am able to take is that these over grown weeds are home and shelter to lots of birds.  Mostly sparrows, juncos and finches at this time of year, but this summer wrens found it great too.  Hopefully, I'll be able to clean it up soon and this year I hope to have a decent garden....either that, or I'll put it all back to lawn again.

Some Birthday thoughts

Thank You Troops

Odd how the death of a singer who abused alcohol, illegal drugs and prescriptions gets 24 hour coverage for days after her death, but those who've kept terrorists from attacking & killing civilians on American soil and elsewhere in the world rarely get any coverage.  All of those celebrities coming forward and calling her a "treasure" knew she was slowly killing herself and did nothing to protect someone who they deemed a treasure.  Our Troops and first responders are our real treasures as they do something--keep us from being attacked and killed.  So let's make sure we take care of them.  Thank you troops.

I first saw this on Facebook today, and was really taken by it.  Please know that the above and the photo are not mine.   It is posted by https://www.facebook.com/thankyoutroops  whose "about" section reads:  No more homeless Veterans, no more Veteran suicides, no more wounded Veterans not being able to find help.

I had never seen it before, and only saw it this time when one of my FB friends "liked" it.  

I've felt this way for a long time....I don't feel that we are doing enough to take care of our veterans.  I feel that the Veteran's Hospitals are woefully not up to the task of taking care of our own, especially after hearing what friends go through as they try to guide their WWII and Korean or Vietnam Vet parents through the morass.  I felt this way when I was getting treatment at the Hospital of St. Raphael's and saw a homeless vet every day with his sign near the hospital. I feel this way now as I see younger and younger vets struggling with what they have seen and done in the mid-east.  

I cringe that we mark the passing of someone who has thrown away their lives which usually aren't filled with the horror and struggle of  our vets.  I think too of all the help that my nurses give me and the work that hospice nurses do.....and I think that it is sad that we focus so much on the entertainers of the world.

I don't care what country they serve. I do care about the sacrifices they make.

Today is my birthday.  I know what it means to be thankful for another day and another year.  I greet each year and candle with joy, every grey hair, every creaking bone...because at least I can wake up and feel and so many can't.  People with great promise who didn't throw their lives away.  

So, in honor of my birthday, I'll make a contribution to somewhere, whether it is to a veteran's service group, or to an aid group for famine or natural disaster (yes, Haiti and many others are still working on rebuilding and trying to put their lives back together)....but it seems to me that that is something I can do. I hope you consider celebrating your special days in some similar fashion.  

The Last Tree in the Batty Binder Forest Linette Vagades

Linette Vagedes is a special needs teacher in an elementary school and loves to mess around with art quilting...She is often frustrated, however, at trying to get what is in her mind's eye, onto the fabric, something which stymies most of us from time to time.

Here's her little "blank" tree.

I'm a little amused by this...it seems to have a split personality...a tree in the late autumn just as the frost and snow begins to come.  You might think that the addition on the side of the piecing is a bit odd...but the exercise that the person who added it was trying to work with was creating piecing.

I really can't remember who did what here.....I do know, however, that Susan Pickrell was responsible for the fairy and for the spiderweb in the tree....

I love the texture and depth that the additions to the base gave the tree. I think that the trunk may have had some paint added as well.

I'm sorry my picture didn't show it better, but there are whispers of silver thread through it very nicely stitched close together to suggest the wind.  I think Becky Goodwin was responsible for that, but it may have been Jo Heffner.

Here's the whole crew with their pieces....I'm not sure if the group really accomplished what they wanted to do with this project, but I can say they had a whole heck of a lot of fun doing it.

More Trees in the Batty Binder's Arboretum from the Chief Forester

 This is Susan Pickrell.  She is an amazing person.  I'm sure that your local quilt group has someone like Susan....but then on the other hand, maybe not.  Susan loves to learn new things.  If it has anything to do with fiber, she does it.  She knits, crochets, quilts, does wonders with her embroidery machine, and a couple of years ago I let her know about a really inexpensive felting machine, and gosh if she didn't get that too.  But that's not all.  Although Susan's kids are all grown, she still works, and is extremely active in her church and belongs to a dulcimer group and plays quite a bit.  On top of that...well, she just always manages to do really nice things for people AND finish projects...

Here's the tree blank that Susan passed around....She made a ton of them trying to figure out what she was going to do, and she used some of them to do mock ups to practice on before she used the technique on the exchange quilt. I thought this blank was interesting because of her choice of fabrics.  The stripes really gave some cool texture to the tree.

 Here's what she got back.  Gwen added the brown square at the bottom....it's a tea bag.. Gwen works as waitstaff at a restaurant and gets us their commercial sized tea bags to play with.  Linette wrote "peace" over the top because when she thinks of peace, she thinks of Susan...not just because Susan is a Quaker, but because although she is very energetic, Susan exudes peace.  Linnette also added the red deer which is actually a hang tag made of thick cardboard from one of her husband's shirts.  Truth be told...I don't remember who added the other things.

Susan was really surprised when she got hers back.







But as in the Ginsu knife commercials, "Wait! There's More!!!!"

 This is a larger piece that Susan was playing with.  The leaves ont he tree were felted ones she made from when she was working them out.  She said that making them was a little addictive.  She also included a fairy as practice for the fairy she used on someone else's quilt (I think Linette's).











This tree is one which because of the background with the lightning bolts (a halloween fabric) and the close value of the tree, it looks more like a ghost tree.  She practiced some fancy silver thread stitching and put on a silver spiderweb cut from another halloween specialty fabric she got on clearance.

 This quilt use used gauze (cheese cloth) for the tree limbs.  The back ground is a Cheetah Girl's print (also from clearance which had some neat sayings on it).

This piece she practiced her shadow work, and included a deep shadow on the side of the tree.

Here you can see it over all.  She's not really done with these, they were just play pieces.  She did these as well as worked on everyone else's quilts, decorated their boxes, made little booklets and cards to put in as well as making cases for some of the cameras which were included in the boxes.  Oh, and decorated the journals and tucked in extra pieces, bits and bobs she found that she thought others could use in their work.

Art Quilt Forest: Ruth Treon's Tree

 I have been madly trying to get three quilts done to submit to the Studio Art Quilt Associations Ohio regional show...and quite frankly, have been too tuckered out to write! As I just got two of them pinned to the carpet and blocked, I'm going to take a little break and post this. :)

One of the things I think which was difficult for our little art Quilt group is to figure out how much or how little to make our blanks.  
Compare Ruth Treon's branches which flow off the space, with Gwen's (Here on Feb. 1)which were well.....truncated!

Ruth also packed her quilt bits in a shoe box to pass around.

 Remember, the originator didn't get to see these until the reveal.  Here you see Ruth's surprise as Loraine looks on.

As I mentioned, Susan Pickrell decided that the boxes needed embellishment....and she really had a heyday with Ruth's box.  The cover was covered with some trapunto quilting.  Inside, Susan made a yarn cover (I don't know if she knitted it or crocheted it) for her camera and stuck in some other interesting things in case someone wanted to use them on Ruth's work.

 Here's Ruth's finished piece.  Susan did the first thing which was to work with a word (the assignment from the Art Quilt Workbook which was applied on her turn).  Her word was "shadow."  Susan wrote "shadow" repeatedly on her sewing machine over net stabilized with water soluble stabilizer. This became the tree's shadow.

I think, but I'm not sure, that Linnette Vagedes added the pieced quilt...Becky Goodwin added the angelina frost which I think turned out great, Gwen Brown the painted area in the sky, and Jo Heffner made the rabbit and the rabbit footprints.

Here you can see more closely the really cool bird that Loraine Smith added...it has a real feather tail, and it is really tiny.  The over all size of this piece is about 14" tall.....so the bird is about 1/2" long.

More Trees

Gwen Brown is another of our art quilt group.  Gwen made this rather simple tree.....and what people did with it was far from simple.

Ruth Treon added the sunset behind the tree by using water soluable pastels.  Linnette I think added the little tiny purple hexagons...Gwen's favorite color is purple and she has been working on Grandmother's flower gardens...The yoyos? I think Susan Pickrell added these....I think people were just having great fun adding lots and lots of stuff to her simple tree and giving it texture.

Loraine Smith is a very talented quilter in our group. Loraine is fond of bright colors and batiks.  Her "blank" was perfect for her...the tropical scene is Loraine through and through....

Here is Loraine looking at the outside of her box...Susan Pickrell (I think) found an advertisement for Goldfish crackers which showed the crackers arranged in a rainbow ..and colored similarly.









Loraine's finished piece turned out well....The little green dangly thingies on the palm tree Becky Goodwin added.  On a recent trip to Hawaii, Becky noticed incredible seed pods hanging from palm trees.  Becky recreated these with beaded bits.  Linette added the white and gold swirly thing over the round thing...in real life it is a dove with the words "Peace" written across it.  She made it out of "Shrinky Dink" which made us all laugh as we were all of an age to have played with the original rendition of "Shrinky Dink", a plastic which you colored then melted in the oven....I think Gwen made her the umbrella, and Jo Heffner added the metalic foiled sun (the round thingy on the right).  I can't remember who added the white....I think it was Linette, and it's real sand, held on with glue.  Ruth Treon creatively pieced the swirl in the water....and Susan Pickrell added the large jellyfish which drops off the edge.  Susan made it as a pin so it could be removed when it came time to quilt it.  I think Susan's favorite thing is to add texture.  The jellyfish is a great addition especially because it trails off the  edge.

  
This will really be fun to see quilted.  Loraine is an exceptionally prolific quilter, and her work is very very good.  I ribbed her pretty hard tonight at our meeting because she showed so many great pieces in show and tell and she's always finishing up something and sending it on as gifts for her grand children....