Tag Archives: Quilts

Happy Birthday Harry!

19 Sunday May 2013

Posted by in Art work, Art World, Artists, Celebrations, Design, Drawings, Modern Life, Quilting, Sculpture, Sky

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We started Sunday at the beach…

Beach house rhoadie

but quickly jumped in the car, and headed home to get ready for Harry’s 84th birthday party.  LUCKILY I can sew in the car (…and no, I wasn’t driving…) I’m still working on the spring quilt…trying to finish before summer gets here!

Q 1Q 2

The sky was so beautiful today….

sky 1sky 2sky 3

sky 4skysky 6

We arrived home and I rushed off to a uke jam, while R fixed asparagus to take up to Harry’s party (oh…and we got rear-ended on the way home…)…we then jumped back into the only-slightly-damaged car with our offering in the “catering wrap” (hi Randy…)

catering wrap

and headed north.  After hugging and eating there was singing to the birthday guy…

bierthday guy

and a tour of the new studio finds…Mardy recently found some crates in the garage that she thought were empty, but in fact they were full of these lovely wood sculptures Harry made in the 1970′s…

studio 1

s 1s 2s3

Harry is deeply into Alzheimer’s now, but the reassuring thing to me is that although he can’t remember us (though he doesn’t mind a hug), he is STILL making and arranging things…things he finds around or outside…and these are poignant and beautiful.Alzheimer's 1

Alzheimer's 2

The studio remains full of energy and life, Harry’s life.

studio 2

Painting

…and here’s an idea I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to use…Thanks Harry, and Happy Happy Birthday.  XXOO

drawing

Dye Day

07 Tuesday May 2013

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Irene M. gave me an old quilt that was sort of beyond repair.  I had the idea of cutting the good bits up, over-dying the squares and using them as foundation for some “quilting”…read embroidery.  I made the mistake of washing the quilt first, which got rid of about half of the squares from disintegration…but enough were left to do something interesting with, I thought.

Q squares 1Qsqaures 2Q squares 3

Kellie is an experienced natural dye user and agreed to not only “help” me out, but to do the dyeing at her house where she has all the right stuff.  We used 4 color baths…onion skins…

onion skins

coffee grounds…

onion:coffee

black walnut…

black walnut

and cochineal (insect parts…)

cochineal

…guess you can probably guess my fave…

cochineal bath

I also dyed some unbleached muslin which had to first go into an alum soak in order to retain the color…

alum soak

…and not only did Kellie show me creative kindness…she also made a great lunch!…

lunch

and eventually I rinsed all my squares and fabric, packed them up and headed home…

off home

My THANKS to Kellie for her instruction, extreme generosity and a day of just plain fun.

Now to do something with these things, so I’m sitting on the porch this morning thinking about it…

porch

Wisteria’s in bloom….

wisteria

hmmmmm…..????

bag

The Spring Quilt

02 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Art work, Bonnie Hull, Design, Quilting, Uncategorized

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This winter I was “confined” and had a lot of time to read, to sew and…to surf the internet.  Somewhere along the way I ran across the work of Japanese illustrator Siota Mako …

Mako 1

and the idea for the spring quilt was born…here are a few more of the inspirational flowers of Mako’s that I really liked and saw immediately as applique…

Mako 4Mako 5Mako 6

Mako 7Mako 8

with lots of really fun quilting added.  I’m not really much of a “sewer”…it surprises me that I came to enjoy quilting at all, as I resisted sewing my entire life until a few years ago.  I do it so as to have a surface to quilt…to draw with thread really.  But I started making my own wacky spring blocks…Mako-inspired….

Q1

The blocks were all different widths so I added color strips or prints (like the “Piece of Cake” wedding quilt of last year…)…a piece Cynthia gave me, bits from other quilts of my own, a piece of the backing of a quilt L.A. made for us, some fabric that reminds me of Sujata, a bit of Mary’s hand-dyed (got to watch out for THAT one), some vintage fabric from the guys in Butte…everything but the kitchen sink, basically…and then…should there be spaces between the rows???  Colors????

Q2

Nope…last night I sewed all the blocks together…

Q3

but today I decided on a neutral border to kind of corral the wacky energy of the thing (though after Sally described “borders as modern conceits” I’ve been less interested in using them…but…)…and maybe a lavender binding eventually…

Q bindiing

Q4

I think it will work.  Tomorrow I’ll got get something for the back and then the fun begins…!  This should keep me busy for a couple of months of car trips, HG TV, sitting outside at the beach…and quilting away like a fiend.

 

Moving to the Abstract…Quilts

11 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by in Art work, Design, Quilting

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Grids, abstracted images, hidden narratives…all part of the 2D work I make, AND…it’s just dawning on me…part of why I like quilting.  Quilts can be quite abstract, they ARE grids, and they certainly contain hidden narratives…on several levels if you are using “repurposed” fabric.

I’ve written here about the quilt I made for baby Hendrica that has gone missing in the postal system somewhere.  Today I was sending some images to Cynthia in an e-conversation about abstraction etc.  Since I have all the photos so nicely loaded in narrative form, I thought I might share the story further afield.

Quite a few years ago I bought a “double wedding ring” quilt top at Goodwill for about $1.89…it was hand pieced but not sewn together very well and had many “issues” (stains, certain “blown” fabric pieces, etc.).  It was folded on the shelf for years until 2010 when I decided to make a summer project of it down at Project Space…I set up my machine, tacked the quilt top on the wall, and started in…

wedding ring top

the idea was to cut this top up and reassemble it in an abstract way (and of course eliminating the frays and stains, etc.)

paula detail in the making

Paula original and done

the wedding ring got small and smaller and the new quilt got bigger and bigger until I finished it up and hand quilted it…giving it eventually to baby Violet…

Paula

In the summer of 2012 at Project Space I had three projects going and one was to take the fragments of the wedding ring…add some new pink and red…further abstract the patterning…it went like this:

project space 1

project space 2

and when quilted looked like this…

Hendrica 1

This quilt was full of good karma and sunshine so when baby Hendrica was coming very very early I embroidered her name on it and sent it off to NYC

name

but alas, it got lost by the post office…they found the empty box in Seattle on the floor.  It’s narrative goes on someplace, but I guess I won’t know the end of the story…I think I have about 7 small wedding ring pieces left in the sewing room so guess I know what the summer project might be this year????  Moving ever more deeply into abstraction…?

Julie Green at Corvallis Art Center

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by in Art work

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This is a little bit silly, but the recent New York Times article on Julie Green’s terrific show at the Corvallis Art Center reminded us we’d better get down there.  We set off in the fog this morning…

fpg 3

and took the back road…

fog 1

and after a little lunch, arrived at the Corvallis Art Center (700 Madison St.) to see “The Last Supper”…500 plates painted by Julie Green, each plate representing an executed U.S. prisoner’s last meal.  Green’s meditation on food, death, humanity, allows the weight of all the plates–all the deaths—to slowly overwhelm the viewer in a way most art exhibits don’t these days…combining thinking and looking.  We are there alone in the gallery with each meal, each death, and there is no escaping.

plates 1

plates 3

they are little still lives, beautifully painted atop thrift store plates…

plate 1

“fried shrimp, garden salad, chocolate cake, grilled salmon (one of 2 executions that day in Arkansas…9-8-99)”

plate 2

“Fried crappie, 2 large onions, large green salad with blue cheese or Roquefort dressing, hush puppies, butter milk…Arkansas, 4-19-95″

words birthday cake

Pizza and a chocolate birthday cake shared with his family and friends…Indiana, 5-5-2007…

and then the ones with just words…

words 1

words 2

ate nothing

the show is in Corvallis until February 16th (T-Sat, 12-5) and then travels to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Eugene.  Well worth the very small effort to get there.  Julie Green was supported by The Ford Family Foundation, The Oregon Arts Commission, and the Corvallis Art Center.

Take-A-Breath Day

02 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Design, Quilting

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I admit to kind of liking it when something shows up in the NYTimes or a magazine as being a must have item…and it’s an item that’s been kicking around my own kitchen for at least three years (though I take no credit for design sense…it was a gift)…

cutting board

(in case you missed it, it’s called the “Cutting Rings” board by Anthony Joseph,  available from MOMA for $25.00).  We love it.

I took a day off (phew) from stamina building today (resuming tomorrow) and did some sewing.  Carolyn went to Australia for the eclipse before Christmas and sent me a few small pieces of “dream-time” fabric…

scraps

which I spent the day trying to make into a “piece of cloth”…

square

lots of squares

the fabric grows

 

Stamina-building, Day 4

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Art work, Art World, Quilting, Sky, Trees, Uncategorized

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blue sky

That’s really what this week is about…starting to walk, and building stamina…but in the most fun possible way.  Today’s “work” began with a sunny-day breakfast with some artist friends, including Violet, who got right to work with crayons…

violet

and then getting the quilt (for the soon-to-arrive Seattle baby) safely into his grandmother’s hands…

quilt

After lunch we took off to visit the Mary Lou Zeek Gallery and had the total fun of using the new “ARTBLOX” machine…

art bloxart blox 2

you trade your $10 for a quarter painted red…

red q

…pop it into the machine, and out flies a block, painted by a local artist…total fun.    MY block was painted by MLZ herself…

MLZ

block

…and we will come back…you guys, get down to the gallery and try it…the money goes to local artists in need!  Think global, act local.

Then on for a little sleuthing.  The city says there will be a new cell tower installed in our neighborhood.  I asked Joan (who always knows) where it would be, and she told me adding “It will look like a pine tree.”  What?  Gloria said to check out the one behind McMenamin’s/Thompsons Brew Pub (3575 Liberty Rd. S if you want a drive-by), so today we did…see it?

cell 1

cell 2cell 3

cell 4cell 5

…from the sublime to the ridiculous?

Notes From the Sewing Room Floor

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Art work, Quilting

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Well…not the REAL sewing room.  The real sewing room is upstairs, and I can’t get there right now…so in the spirit of making do, I moved my machine, ironing board and piles of stuff down to the main floor.  (Note: the person I live with is very tolerant…)

I set up shop in “the back room” off the kitchen, where we often eat and read the paper, and where my computer is…now all heaped with stuff…and you can’t get to the cookbooks (what a relief!)

sewing spot 1sewing spot 2ewing spot 3

and here’s some of what is going on…projects…

project V of G

Project..

including Anne’s quilt.  When I was at the Lost Coast Culture Machine in the fall I started a muslin and thrift-store-fabric quilt (my 1/3 is on the left below.)  Anne decided to work on it and I agreed to quilt it for her when she finished…it arrived yesterday…

Project Anne

Anne detail 1Anne detail 2Anne detail 3

and then my own try at a “modern” quilt (now about half quilted)

me 1 me 2 me 3

and then things arrive…an old old quilt from Texas…a gift from Irene, a nine patch, almost totally gone but the fabrics are so beautiful…Irene 1

Irene 2  Irene 3Irene 4

a thrift store find…

rug

and then…the BONUS card…fruitcake #2 arrived from Ellen (which was very lucky as we’ve devoured fruitcake #1 because of it’s little-known medicinal qualities…)

fruitcake #2

The Wedding Quilt

27 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in Art work, Christmas, Design, Quilting, Uncategorized, Wedding

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When she heard Zach and Ashton were getting married,  my sister in law LeeAnn immediatelsuggested we make a quilt…because she’s a quilter.  She suggested she make half the blocks and I make half the blocks, and she chose a Becky Goldsmith applique pattern.  Each block could vary between 9 and 11 inches wide, and would be 14 inches tall.  We chose a loose range of colors for the backgrounds (blue-green), and leaves (green).  Since she lives in Seattle, I’d make my blocks, send them to her, and she would put the top together.  She then brought the top to me.  Because we were doing this long distance, we took photos of our progress to send back and forth…hence I have lots of photos of this project (when I usually am lucky to have one photo of a quilt at all!!).  I thought I might finish the quilt before the wedding last August, but it was a bigger and more time consuming project than I had imagined.  Since I believe in the karma of hand-quilting, I didn’t want to quilt into the finished piece any days of anguish or frantic work.  It had to be quilted in calm, as much as possible.  I finished the quilt just before Christmas and the gift was given.  (They liked it!)  Since I have all these photos I thought it mike make a nice story here.  Here are my first few blocks…

wedding quilt beginning

and LeeAnn’s…

LeeAnn's squares

once we saw each others’ blocks…(her plaid and print backgrounds, my red and orange leaves) we through caution to the winds and just went for it.

Wedding quilt 2

Then she took all the blocks and evened the rows with varied widths of orange and red strips…

WQ coming together

I put it together…

pin basting

and then I started quilting…every which way…different colors…little messages…

Leaves love Bam

I even made a quilting proto-type…

quilting prototype  Z&A

Just the quilt

wedding quilt with A

They liked it!

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