Posted in Uncategorized

Vacation in St. Louis

Hello, I’m back home after a spring break trip to St. Louis. While I’ve done a bit of knitting, I am way behind on the 100-day project. My knitting will be detailed on Monday. For now, I’d like to share a bit of what I saw at the St. Louis Museum of Art.

Fortunately for me, the museum has a very liberal policy on photography. And while it is not huge (we easily viewed nearly all of it in a 2-hour span, despite the presence of a 4-year-old in our group) it has a very nice collection. Lots of it is American art. I was able to photograph a handful of works that impressed me. Here are some examples.

In the American gallery, 19th and 20th century paintings:

Loved the depiction of light on the water in this gorgeous oil painting.

Georgia O’Keefe – my perennial favorite painter.

Moving on to sculpture – first, an ancient Chinese stone carving of Buddha

Next, an 800-year-old carving of Christ.

This sculpture was commissioned by the museum and fabricated from local limestone.

And finally, as fiber artist, I couldn’t leave until I had seen some examples from the collection.

I have a lot of free time in the up-coming week and so expect to re-double my efforts to make art. Check this space in a few days for the next installment of 100 days of art inspired by Bill’s photographs.

Posted in quilting, weaving

WIP Wednesday: Creation Quilt

Today I have a progress report on my quilt inspired by a medieval manuscript.

Here is the center of the quilt. It is formed by the four corners of each four-by-four block. Upon first seeing that blank white diamond, I knew that it would work beautifully for a God’s Eye. After practicing on scrap fabric, I wove the centerpiece design into place. The four arms of the weaving are gold satin cording which I couched into place. The weft yarns are a combination of cotton embroidery twist and wool fingering weight yarn leftover from many a sock project.

I think it balances the four creation paintings beautifully.

Here are the quadrants of the piece at this point.

Now I can begin quilting. To start, I will stitch into the seamlines of all pieces. (AKA stich-in-the-ditch.) Next will come the free motion quilting. I have something special in mind for the light color patches which will involve more colorwork.

Stay tuned……..

Posted in embellishing

Embroidery Experiment

Today I have for you two little paintings with a little something extra. After the paint dried, I worked some embroidery stitches into the design

Two Pansies:

Two Pansies with embroidered faces.

Test paper with additional glazes added. Semi-abstract.

Same painting embroidered with fly stitch.

The second painting was extra fun. I used a variegated cotton thread by Sulky. The thread was held double.

What fun stuff are you making today?

Posted in embellishing, hand embroidery, painting

Playing with Fiber Embellishments

Ever since I wove a small tapestry on a hand-made loom, I’ve mused about weaving threads over a water color painting. So today I am playing around with the idea.

I started with this 4 by 6 painting I did last December.

It’s an exercise from Kateri Ewing’s book Watercolor is for Everyone. After drawing two columns of randomly sized rectangles, the artist applies selected colors, reversing the order of application in the second column.

I thought this painting would be a good background for my proposed thread embellishment because of its rectilinear structure. To start, I poked holes at regular intervals along the outside vertical edges. Next I stitched a zigzag pattern across the painting with no. 3 cotton twist thread in a gold color.

Now what, I asked myself. How about creating points along the thread intersections by tying knots? Okay. For this step I chose a dark cool green shade.

To further reinforce the intersections, I painted shapes with a metallic paint.

Not a bad way to spend a quiet afternoon. It was soothing and meditative. It reminded me of those picture stitch cards that I worked as a girl when learning how to sew.

Now I have a brand new perspective on what is possible with paint and thread.

You can learn about Kateri Ewing’s work here:

My Books | Kateri Ewing

Posted in quilting, sewing

Springtime and Sorting

It’s been heart-breakingly beautiful outside over the past several days. The weather forecast for today predicts extreme thunderstorms. So I thought I would memorialize some of the garden’s spring perennials. They are so lovely, and their day in the sun is so short every year. Here are a select few.

Yesterday I finished sewing the last of three quilted buckets. This project is meant to yield a system for organizing and storing fabrics. While my stash is not large, it is somewhat unweildy for its size.

Three buckets holding fat quarter to one yard sized pieces.

That leaves the scraps. After a year of working with fiber, I have a much better idea of how I tend to use fabric in my projects. I particularly like using scraps in little strips to make small art quilts. Consequently I have become very reluctant to throw any of them away. Resulting in this:

Sorted by color family, they are even more beautiful and precious to me. Like the colorful spring growth only more enduring.

So I still don’t have a useable system for keeping this hoard in order, under control, and yet easily accessible. Reluctantly, I will be putting these gems back into the shoeboxes. Suggestions are encouraged. How do you keep your stash sorted?