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....

Art Quilt Trees: Becky Goodwin

 Here's Becky Goodwin and her tree "blank" for the Round Robin.  Becky's was really neat because everyone reacted to it in the same way.....We saw an acacia tree in Africa....

The background is a brown batik ....

When we were passing these around, the person who started the piece had to leave the room....they were kept in boxes , and we discovered we had to add paper to some of the boxes so you couldn't peep in and see your piece before "the reveal."

Here's Becky and her sister Jo Heffner as Becky looks at her piece for the first time in a year.

This turned out to be one of the best ones.  Linnette Vagedes added the eagle---and her husband and she kept on moving the eagle around the piece before it was positioned here.  She made it so that the wing would flip out and be dimensional.

Loraine Smith added the hut, which also had dimensions....I think...I don't remember who added the one lady with the burden...I think it was Ruth Treon who added the path as well.  Then the second lady was added by someone else...

The stamped giraffe in the background was really neat...as was the dimensional "bush" at the far right (Gwen Brown's addition?)....Jo Heffner made the really cool mask....in a really creative way.  She took a plastic baby spoon and cut the handle off..her husband smoothed it out for her.  She then made paper mache out of shredded paper to make the dimension of the mask. covering it with fabric.  She then painted the face marks on with paint pens as the fine elements of the mask were not noticeable unless you increased the contrast.


I'm really glad that they had the journals which accompanied this because I sure as heck can't remember who did what!
Well done!

A Tree in the Batty Binder's Art Quilt Forest: Jo Heffner

 As I mentioned in my post from earlier this week, the art quilt subgroup (Twisted Stitchers) of the Batty Binder's Quilt Guild in Troy did an exchange this last year.  The process is commonly called a "Round Robin".  Each person in the group made a basic quilt (usually in a traditional guild it is a block), then, they pass off the quilt to the next person who adds something.  After passing through the entire group, the piece returns to the originator to finish it.

In the case of the Batty Binders, each "turn" of the round robin was to be drawn from the theme of the chapters in Jane D'Avila and Elin Waterston's Art Quilt Workbook.

Here, you see Jo Heffner's "blank."  All of the quilts were to have a tree motif.  Jo was quite clever and shows her traditional roots by piecing the sky.  You can see what a great job she did at shifting the colors and texture to give it more interest.  Oh...and all of the quilts were supposed to be around 11" x 14".

Here's what Jo got back.  The first person to add something was Becky Goodwin who added the paper pieced flying geese swath which is just gorgeous in real life.  She used iridescent fabric and I think (if I remember correctly) batik for the points. Susan Pickrell added felted leaves embellished with beads....she got carried away with the felting and I love the whimsical feel the addition gives the piece.  Gwen added the "creative piecing" element with the kite....and I can't remember if she also added the girl or if Ruth Treon added that.  I think...but I can't swear to it, that Linnette Vagedes added the squirrel and the dragonfly....

I'm going to have to rely on the group to chime in and straighten me out....The owner's are lucky as they sent a blank notebook around with their work and as each person worked on it, they added their thoughts and reasons for adding what they did....in addition to exactly what they added and the date.  They also took a picture of what it looked like when they were done with it so that the originator could see it "grow."

I didn't participate, largely because I had only had two courses of chemo therapy under my belt at the time and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to complete it even in the 2 months that everyone had to work on them...I think I made a wise choice because my hands just don't work like they once did and I find it interesting to say the least as I re-learn how to quilt with my hands just not going like they once did.  Practice will make perfect.  In addition, in about June of this year, I began to have vision problems which progressed...