The Last Slice on the Dayton Skyline

The Miami Valley Art Quilt Network's rendition of the Dayton Skyline as seen in May

You may recall me writing about the Dayton Landmarks project which the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network under took and exhibited earlier this year.  You can see what I wrote about it here. (There are a total of 4 posts, this is just the first, and they are consecutive commencing June 4, 2012)

Our project was to interpret various Dayton area landmarks in fiber.  To that end, Ronnie Doyal took photographs and we divided the photographs into "slices" then divvied them to all the participating members of the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network.  This is Ronnie's shot of the Dayton Skyline.  Back in May, we were missing slice number 1.  Life had interfered with the person who originally had it, and wasn't able to do it.  So...we showed it without the slice.  I was adamant that we find someone else to take that slice. Some of our members said, just forget it....but then the photograph wouldn't match our renditions.  Not only that, I felt that the absence of that first slice made for a less dynamic and balanced composition. We needed that slice.

Suzanne Kirchner, Slice 1 Dayton Skyline

Suzanne Kirchner, a relatively new member of MVAQN stepped up to the plate and I am just ecstatic over her piece.  Here it is. I love the turquoise building.  I am also thrilled with her fabric choices.  Absolutely unexpected, but perfect touches.  The turquoise blocky print really reads like the windows in the building at the far left of the photograph.  But when we look more closely at the detail, you find even more happy surprises.

Don't you just love that shot of madras type plaid at the far left?  And I love that really "thready print" green just below the spruce tree.











And the pink is just the perfect touch for the building at the right.  Look at the wonderful texture she put in with the thread painting which also gives the shading on the spruce.

I think that Suzanne's piece fits wonderfully with the others which were done prior to hers, and is the absolute perfect completion of this image....and far better than leaving it as the truncated piece which originally showed up there.


I'm participating in Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Fabric Fridays" .  Please check out the other blog participants here.  I'm sure you'll find lots of fund, fiberlicious stuff.

The quilts will be on exhibition at the Dayton Metro Library, 215 East 3rd. Street, Dayton, OH  45402 until December 27, 2012 (Library tele.: 937-463-2665).  additional showings will be at the South Park United Methodist Church, 120 Stonemill (at Brown St.) Jan. 6, 2013 until Feb. 27, 2013 and additionally at the Southminster Presbyterian Church, 7001 Far Hills Ave., Dayton from March through April 2013.

Dayton Landmarks Quilts: #4 Dayton Skyline

Dayton Skyline by Ronnie Doyal

I have dreaded starting this post.  For one thing, it is the largest slice of all the ones we interpreted in fiber.  For another, the person who had the first slice, the one of the far left didn't get it done.  So...it is a little problematic.  In addition, when we hung the quilts at the Schuster, we were at the mercy of the brackets we used to hang them over...there was no fudging to make the quilts be hung close together.  We had to split them into two groups because it would have been too long on one batten...and probably would have required us to use a 2 x 4 in order to support the weight.

So, here are six of the originally planned 7 panels showing the skyline as the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network saw it. When we hang it at the next venues, the two center sections will be closer together.

Kate Burch did the first panel.  I was amused by the fact that so many of the quilters in this group chose to do a pieced background.  Kate's perfectly pieced squares set on point really do give the illusion of a lightly clouded sky from a distance.

When I was looking at the slice photo, I kept on wondering if Kate left us a secret message in script on the trees.


No, it's just shading that she did with her free motion quilting.  I've tried to show you in this closeup below....you still don't see it well.

Ginny Crabtree did this next section. Ginny is one of what I think of as the newer MVAQN members, although I think she joined us about 4 years ago. Ginny has really progressed in her development as an art quilter.

I am particularly taken with Ginny's steeple, and the detail that she used above.




Debra Bentley's section is really fun. I love how she made her sky and the change of shades in the trees. The glass on the building in the foreground is masterful, as is her alignment and handling of the windows in the multi-sided building.
































Sara Lynne Walsh is another newer member of the group, who has moved to the Raleigh/Durham, NC area. Our loss. I love her use of masses....she uses large segments of pieces to evoke the image...and her color choices are always dead on. While I am one to add many fussy details, Sara Lynne communicates her ideas in big blocks. I just love it!  Her choice of batik for the sky is also just perfect.












Pam Geisel IS one to add fussy details, and to do it with superb precision. She usually incorporates traditional piecing in her backgrounds, but she adds elements which are perfectly aligned.















Joan Sterr always does interesting work. She, like Kate Burch, made her sky from squares set on point, but Joan uses pieces with more pattern and value changes than Kate did.






Below is a detail showing the ribbon she used for the metal bits and the prints for her trees and sky.

I hope to get the last segment done before we hang the show at our additional venues.  Tomorrow will be the last slice quilt from the current works.

Dayton Landmark Art Quilts: Mendelson's

Nestled in the north end of Dayton, just opposite 5th/3rd field, home to the Dayton Dragons, a farm team for the Cincinnati Reds, stands Mendelson's Liquidation Outlet.  Old industrial buildings fascinate me and I loved Ronnie Doyal's shot of Mendelson's....although there were a lot of people who complained that we picked it as a "Dayton Landmark."  When we thought of the project, it was things which were recognizably Dayton, not that it was a point of pride, a long time standing institution or whatever...and since you see the name emblazoned on the building when you drive past, or when you are at the ball park...well, it fits the bill, not matter how much people complained about it.
I felt that the shot offered lots of interesting tidbits for people to try.....but of course, I lusted after the water tower.


Chris Landis got the first slice.  I loved how she handled this.  Chris is a consummate quilter and has a machine quilting business, Feather Creek Quilting.  For her segment, she took the sky and interwove pieces.

you can see her quilting and what I mean a bit better here in this detail. I also loved the way she handled the trees.















Carroll Schleppi drew the next segment and had some really lovely graphic elements to play with.  Carroll chose a batik with an overprint of a metallic...sort of lightening bolt fabric. It is fairly subtle until you see it up close.

 The next segment belongs to Liz Schneiders.  The really cool thing about Liz' piece is that she bought all the fabric for her piece at Mendelson's!  Work clothes, etc. On the back side of it, she included labels and price tags for her purchases, and made a pocket to hold a card about Mendelson's in it.  Pretty cool!












Here's the front.  I love how she made the smoke rising out of the stack, even though in the original photo  it wasn't present.  That graphic smoke broke up the sky and gave it a lot more interest.  I love the shading and the lines made by the stacks and the windows.

The lucky bum who landed the water tower was Sue DeSantis.  Her tower is extremely faithful to the original photograph.  I love the contrast of the back ground of the sky to all the other artist's skys....and I especially like how it references traditional quilting.  Like Chris, Sue also does custom quilting on her long arm and like Chris' work, her quilting is to die for!  We are so lucky to have so many talented people in our group.

I apologize that this is taking me longer, but I have been having a very tough time with this round of chemo and find that I am often just too tired to sit down and right...in some cases, I've sat struggling with the photos and my stupid very old computer trying to get the posts up, but fail when my eyes are just too weary!  The quilts will continue at the Schuster Center through June 24th.  I can't wait until we can actually put them up WITH the photographs which inspired them.  So far, you are the first people seeing them together, so you should feel very special indeed.

Winter Gift Exchange from Miami Valley Art Quilt Network

It's been kind of a busy weekend....although I don't think my husband quite understands what I do all day even though he's been home with me for the week.

Yesterday was the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network's winter gathering.  We used to hold a holiday party in December until we realized that life was just too busy then and we decided to hold it on our regular meeting day in January.

As part of our tradition, we make small quilts to exchange.  They can be post card sized, like Ann Diller's snowflake card here, or much larger, but most are usually no bigger than about 10" x 15".

I really think that Ann did a cute thing with her "Stamp" and signature.  We never know who is going to end up with our handiwork as we usually use some distribution game.  I didn't make one this year because I have been working on some pieces for the Studio Art Quilt Associates OH Regional show, plus spending A WHALE OF A LOT of time working on the exercises for Elizabeth Barton's "Inspired to Design" class on Quilt University.  Once again, I'm frustrated as I am not able to draw as I once did...maddening.

I've also been freezing to death....even though our winter has been warmer than usual and today was in the lower 40s.  I think that the numbness in my feet makes them feel really cold.

At any rate, that's why I decided to share the two "cold pieces" with you today.  This one is Sue DeSantis' Snowflake.  I'm sorry these are a little blurry...something seems ot be happening to my little Sony Cyber-shot....but it is odd that the quilt is a little blurry, but on both of them, the piano bench is in great focus.

Don't forget, if you want a chance to win the copy of Art Quilt Master's Volume 2, go to my blog post for Jan. 18 and leave a comment before 11:00 pm EST Wednesday, Jan. 25th.  One comment to a person please....

And I thought this was Supposed to be Easy.....

Carillon, left side by Lisa Broberg Quintana, right side by  Sue DeSantis

Last week Thursday, Sue DeSantis, Carroll Schleppi and I went to David Lorenz' studio to take the photographs of the "slice" quilts we did for the Dayton Landmarks Project with the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network.  Ronnie Doyal took photographs of places in and around Dayton which are familiar landmarks.  We divided the photographs giving each quilter a portion of the photograph to interpret in cloth.

Most of them are finished.  Since we are waiting for three segments to be done, we decided that we would shoot them as individual slices and then Ronnie showed me how to merge them using Photoshop.  I have Photoshop Elements(PSE)  7 loaded on my computer, and had purchased PSE 9 in June but hadn't loaded it because I thought that this computer (c. 2003) was going to die at any minute.....it still might...  I had Barbara Brundage's "Missing Manual" for PSE9 so I thought I was in pretty good shape.

Not.

For one thing, I spent hours trying to get PSE9 to load, chatted on line with Adobe techs, and finally called to find out why it wouldn't load.  According to the telephone guy, PSE9 has some incompatibility issues with PSE9.  So....back to figuring out layers, magic extraction tools, making a blank document and joining the segments....  I decided that I would do Sue DeSantis and my piece on the Carillon in Dayton as it only had 2 segments.  Sue had completed hers first, and I did mine second.  

Well....I don't like the job I did with PSE7....and I certainly don't like the 18 hours of time it took me to make the join...but I'm hoping that the next segment might work better...You'll notice that I matched the tops OK, but the bottom overlaps and I can't seem the grab that part and move it over..there's only so much that that little hand tool will do for me!

There's nothing so painful as banging ones head up against a desk trying to figure out the method while hearing all the other things I need to do snickering in the background.  Harumph.

Carillon, photograph which the above was based on, by Ronnie Doyal

You can find information on Carillon Park in Dayton  here.http://www.daytonhistory.org/

A Slice of Dayton

Dayton Art Institute photographed by Ronnie Doyal

Dayton Art Institute in fabric. My slice.

On of the several projects I've been working on in the last few weeks has been a "slice" of the Dayton Art Institute. 

Last year, the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network decided to do a series of quilts based on familiar Dayton landmarks.  Ronnie Doyal, one of our members who is a professional photographer in addition to being a quilter, took photographs and Lori Gravley, Mindy Marik and I chose the shots.  We then sliced them up and handed the slices out to our members to interpret in fabric.  Mindy, Lori and I did the Dayton Art Institute to show as an example.  Lori got the left portion, I got the middle, and Mindy got the right portion.

While I had a good start on mine and had the majority of mine completed (or so I thought) by November of last year, my chemo and Meg's graduation got in the way.  At the July meeting, we had set the final date for getting them in as October, but at the August meeting it was changed to September.  Gulp.  I was taking Pamela Allen's online class "Think Like an Artist," had to finish quilting the borders and bind my daughter's quilt as well as get her ready to start college on Aug. 31, as well as have the Power Suit challenge done and sent.  

I madly went to work on the slice...and I'm amazed at how much time I put into it in even though I thought I was well on my way.  I finally finished quilting it tonight (although I am not terribly happy with the job...my numbness in my hands means I don't have the fine control I usually do...and my upper tension disks were catching the thread and causing it to break at the needle...something I've had trouble with before, even though this time I cleaned the disks twice....

The part of the reflective stainless steel sculpture in my section IS reflective fabric...while it looks yellow in my shot, it is actually reflecting the ceiling light.  I used a metallic jersey fabric for it.  The body of the building is rust dyed fabric.  I can see that I need to work on the lettering some more as the photo of the slice shows how faint it is....when you see it in real life and up close I thought it looked stronger.   This is a prime example of how the camera is your friend in seeing flaws in your art.

Carroll Schleppi's Current work at Benkin Gallery

Carroll Schleppi is one of my colleagues from the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network. Carroll retired not too long ago from the mathematics department of the University of Dayton. One of the more interesting things she told me was that when she was applying to college, she expressed an interest in engineering. The only problem was that at that time, women didn't go into engineering. Instead, they directed her to the more acceptable venue for female minds....mathematics.

Carroll has really opened up her quilting in the last couple of years. I like this monochromatic study in triangle and circles. I think this came out of one of the explorations from Jane Davila and Elin Waterston's Art Quilt Workbook. Carroll named this "Outer Space c. 1930" playing up the modernistic feeling of the triangle/circle combination.


The texture in it is just wonderful. The metallic fabric really adds a sparkle as does the silver cording.


About a year and a half ago, a number of us were exploring rust dyeing. Lori Gravely (Laughing Girl Quilts) led session for MVAQN. This piece Carroll made using her rust-dyed fabric. Carrol uses a lot of bits and pieces salvaged from other things. "Rust and Leather" uses leather strips from a leather skirt she cut up. I can't imagine sewing this as suede has a habit of sticking to your presser foot.


Carroll has been working a lot with texture lately. "Black 101" is intriguing

because it is all black, but you are drawn into the various areas because of the change in texture and the reflective quality. This piece, and "Rust and Leather" are both about 20" x 20"





"Brown Locks" plays with Japanese fabrics and other pieces. I don't know much about this one because I haven't been at the recent meetings.






Carroll has a cache of Hawaiian shirt prints she got from a Hawaiian shirt factory. They are all cutting floor scraps. I think she is getting to the end of them, but it has been really fun to see what she's been doing with them. You can see one of her larger pieces showing the floral prints in my previous post. It's in the "blue room."

Another piece also made from the Hawaiian prints is her "Geckos at Sunset." My overall of this piece didn't turn out well. It hangs in the "blue room" as well, next to Pam Geisel's palm tree at sunset.


I did get a decent shot of the geckos though.


The last piece is from The Art Quilt Workbook sessions. Carroll chose "beans" as her theme and this is "Falling Limas."

Friend's work at NQA

It's always fun to see someone's work you know at a big show. Two of my fellow quilters from the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network had pieces in the NQA show. Kate Burch did this thread painted and machine embroidered piece called "Colonial Algae (Various Species of Hydrodictyaceae). Kate thread painted over an inkjet printed image of the algae. Her comment is "Pond scum, like people, often reveal their inner beauty upon closer inspection."




Kate has been doing a lot of work with digitizing and doing machine embroidery.














Joan Sterr did this piece called "Tree-ology" as part of the NQA batik challenge.

Challenges

Today I shipped my Great Blue Heron off to the Quilting Natural Florida II show in the Florida Natural History Museum in Gainesville. It will be on display there February 6 through April 25, 2010.

At left is my 11.5" x 11.5" quilt entitled "Rocky." I did this for the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network's challenge with the theme "chocolate. " Rocky is my brother's chocolate lab and here he is snorking along the banks of Cut Bank Creek.


Here's the original photo. I was standing on the bank about 10 feet above Rocky. I had to take some artistic license as you can see that the only indication that it is a creek is the riffles in the water in the center of the photo. Since the water is so clear, you can't really tell if you didn't know. In fact, my friends were commenting on that....Chris said that she thought the water should be at the bottom because otherwise the rocks were falling on Rocky's head. It wouldn't hurt him as they are painted Tyvek.

The water in the quilt itself is various layers of different sheers. You can actually see the bottom fabric in through the water. The grasses are different specialty yarns and two fringed trims.



This is a detail of a quilt I did for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. Information on how I actually did it is here. The challenge guidelines were to do a still life with a plant using packaging as an inspiration and color scheme.

The plant is a money plant, also called honesty (Lunaria annua) and the packaging was taken from a perfume offered in Anthropologie.




Here's the overall.

Another piece I did for the FFFC is this one. I meant it to be fun and funky.... It is a quilted rendition of cellular junction (a connection between cells, usually skin cells.).

While I was working on this and another for the microscopy challenge one of my co-quilters in the local Batty Binder's guild said "Is this supposed to be fun?" The answer for me is yes.

I do challenges because I think they make me go outside of what I usually do, or think about things in a different way. They also give me deadlines without which I am afraid I would produce very little in deed.

In fact, I joined the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge to see if I could get over my tendency to over think things.....So far, it isn't working well, except for the microscopy one...But, I'll just start whacking away at them and get it so it is very quick.

So...this is fun for me.

What isn't fun is another challenge I had to face today. Just as I was sitting down to write this, I got a call from my teenaged daughter. "Mom, I sort of rear ended a guy." I told her to sit tight and I'd be right there.

When I got there, there was already a police officer there. I was a little mystified though as I looked at the rear of the silver van she hit with our silver van.

I always carry a camera with me, usually for quilting notes, but in this case I'm glad I do...much better than a cell phone camera in my mind.







Can you see the damage? The blue marks are the transfers from our license plate to the bumper of the car she hit. There weren't really scratches, just the color transfer. He said that he thought she was on the cell phone until he realized that she had to get it out of her purse and turn it on to call me (talking on the cellphone while driving is a big no-no to me).

It's really too bad. While the guy said he wasn't hurt to the officer in the beginning at the end, he said he was going to drive over to the hospital and get checked out because he had a headache. However, he refused to be checked out on the spot or to be driven over. Of course, alarm bells are ringing all over the place for me.

She will have to go to court and will probably love her license for a while as she's almost 17 and hasn't had her license for a year yet. I am going to make her pay for the traffic ticket and any increase in the insurance. The Police officer was apologetic that he had to turn it in as he was sort of mystified at the damage as well.

I count is as a good learning experience for my daughter as I have gotten after her for not slowing down before she needs to. She tends to rely on her brakes too much. I'm grateful that she wasn't hurt...and that the guy didn't appear to be hurt (although he did show me his broken fingernail which broke on the coffee cup he was holding). Still....this is a challenge I'd rather not do.

Fear, Quilting "green" and introducing a new Art Quilter

Since it is Halloween night...well, theoretically it is Halloween night, but since it's after midnight, it's really All Saint's Day.... but I thought it might be fun to talk a little about fear and quilting.

Not too long ago, someone on the Artquilt message board posted about fear and quilting...thinking that you and what you produce just isn't good enough. This creates blocks and also in most cases prevents others from enjoying your work.

I was surprised at the number of really well recognized quilters who acknowledged this feeling of insecurity. I think that we all have moments, but we need to take that blind leap and just try.

These pieces are by Joan Sterr. Joan has been a member of the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network for just over a year, if I remember correctly. When speaking to her a little while ago, she said that she felt that she wasn't as experienced or "as good" as some of the other quilters in the group.

Now mind you, I quilt with some very good art quilters. Sometimes the work is so breath taking you really do feel that there is never anyway you could live up the their work. But...why should you? You're you. You should be quilting in your style and finding your own path.

The other aspect is that we will never be as good today as we will be tomorrow. I have always felt that the day that I didn't learn something new or better my ability in some area was the day that I would be six feet under pushing up daisies.


These two charming pieces are what I call Joan's "green quilts." Joan made these using raspberries to dye (or rather stain) the fabric. In addition, she used some black dyes and some more of the stain with commercially available stamps of Queen Anne's Lace.

She was quite clever in using fancy paper clips with beads for the little flowers ont he bottom....or maybe they are from the scrapbooking section of JoAnn Fabric's, but I swear I've seen similar ones to these at Staples.

In addition to using the natural berry stain, Joan worked on these while at a camp. She used her Singer Featherweight hooked up to a solar panel to provide the electricity, so she was green in the sewing of the piece as well...although I recognize that she could have been just as green by stitching by hand or using a treadle sewing machine.

I find Joan's work here charming. Tomorrow, I'll show you another piece which is just exquisite.

Please share what you think about Joan's pieces in the comment section and I'll pass them on to her. She needs to know that others think her pieces are wonderful...not just the crazy old goose.










I like the simplicity of this piece and I wish you could see the quilting better. She used a tight echo quilting but didn't do the whole piece, just the areas right around the flowers.








Here's a close up showing the stain and the bead and thread work she used on it.