Tag: Other Artists

Random Photos and Bits of News

Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors have merged with or been bought by Interweave Press. Apparently, I am the last to know. I read a brief blurb in QNM of all places, then Nina directed me to the blog entry over at the Quilting Arts Blog. I hope Interweave Press doesn’t ruin QA and CPS like they did to Piecework.

In the meantime, Pamelala is busy creating some gorgeous stuff. She posted a ton of pictures of postcards to her website. It is great to see a bunch of her work all together. Then, as an added bonus, she has put together a little online demo showing how her postcards (and, I assume, her quilts) evolve. You can actually see them come to life.

The Best Quilts of 2006 According to Me

I went to the following quilt shows this year:

APNQ, Seattle, August 2006
EBHQ, Oakland, March 2006
PIQF, Santa Clara, October 2006
San Mateo County Fair, San Mateo, August 2006

Not enough, obviously, but they provided plenty of fabulous inspiration. People are still really pushing their machines to the limit.

St. JCN suggested that I put up pictures of the quilts I liked best from these shows and I think it is a good idea.

Rules:
1. My opinion is the only one that counts on this blog. You are welcome to post your opinion in the comments.
2. I did not visit every quilt show in the world, so these are the best quilts that I saw.
3. I did not take pictures of quilts that were not interesting to me, so these are the best of the quilts that I photographed.
4. If one of these is your quilt, I will be THRILLED to post your name, and, possibly, a link to your site or blog (at my discretion).
5. I probably would have picked different quilts if I had chosen them right after I saw the shows. As it is, I am at the whim of colors from a camera and the computer.
6. Subject to change at any time.

APNQ

Piece O'Cake pattern
Piece O’Cake pattern

Yes, this is made from a Piece O’Cake pattern. I don’t care, I love the pattern and the rendition this quiltmaker created is wonderful.

Piece O' Cake pattern detail
Piece O’ Cake pattern detail

Here is a detail of the border, which I also love, because it reminds me of Mary Engelbreit designs. Don’t you just love the dot flowers? Great use of fabrics as well.

Best use of puffy paint I have EVER seen. The fabrics are fantastic and used well also (look at this quilt with your head tilted to the left)

Candy Wrappers
Candy Wrappers

I like this one, because it is different. I could do without the brown, but I love the blocks. The person who made this made an effort and made a quilt that is different.

Pineapple
Pineapple

I am a sucker for Pineapples and this is an excellent use of the Pineapple pattern. It looks like some of the silks that I have.

Special Exhibit quilt
Special Exhibit quilt

This was part of the Beverly Dunivent special exhibit. I bought this pattern (reprinted by her) a few years ago after seeing it (and her) on Simply Quilts. I love this quilt. I don’t know if I will ever make it, but I love it. (look at this quilt with your head tilted to the left)

EBHQ

One thing I like about the EBHQ show is the way the members use clean lines and simple shapes in their piecing patterns wih interesting fabrics to make engaging quilts. It was very hard to choose the ‘best.’

Mary Mashuta Baskets
Mary Mashuta Baskets

I love basket quilts. I am pretty sure this quilt is by Mary Mashuta and she is a genius with stripes. the quilt does have that sweet look she uses so often. I guess it is the soft/pastelly colors.

This reminds me of IT3: Spiky Stars.

I think of Christmas applies when I see this. I like the scarlet used with the lime/icky green. I also like the fact that the quiltmaker added some oranges and pinks into the quilt to add interest. I would like to see how this color scheme worked with different patterns.

The blocks are very sharp. I also like the use of color. It reminds me of Colorblocks 2.

Fun and cheerful. May be a Freddy Moran or it may just be by someone who took her class or read her book. This is a fun link as well to Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran quilts.

Whimisical and I like the shapes of the various flowers. Great use of color and fabric.

Excellent repetition.


Icky colors, but fantastic quilting. See the detail below.

I like the individual blocks more than the overall quilt, but I do like the color scheme, because it is restful.

The blocks just suck me right in.

The triangles come across as really interesting shapes here. Reminds me of earthquakes as well.

PIQF
Each basket had a different flower in it. I believe that this one was done completely by hand. The attention to detail was wonderful.

An old Piece O’ cake pattern that I love. The signs on the houses and buildings were done in Spanish.

Fantastic water effect.

Wonderful colors and details.

I love Mariner’s compasses.

I also saw this at the San Mateo County Fair. I love the use of black and white.

Wonderful star pattern.

Matador Garment
Matador Garment

I am not one much for garments, but this piece is wonderfully funny. I am really glad it won a prize. So often, judges have no sense of humor.

I like the way the stars overlap and contain little surprises in the center. I would love to see this done in brights and black.

Ronda K. Beyer, It Ain’t Easy Being Green: Love the colors; the quilting was fantastic. It won one of the prizes.

I love the wheel patterns. Again, kind of muddy colors, however.

San Mateo County Fair

The San Mateo County Fair’s quilts seem to be populated in large part by the Peninsula Quilters Guild. The piecing, in large part, is wonderful and there are a lot of quilts that display excellent piecing skills as well as a good use of color.


This is probably my favorite quilt of the year. The pattern is simple, yet complex. It really is a good use of dotted prints. The variety of fabrics and the way it is not easy to tell how the pattern was put together makes for a quilt. I couldn’t stop looking at.

Detail of the above.


Again, nice repetition.

Red Shoe Rambling Rambles on About Creativity

DebR over at RSR didn’t really ramble when she talked about creativity today. She really put together a classic post that should go into the BLOG OF CLASSIC POSTS. She explains her modus operandi in the creativity department and shows a great way of looking at creativity, which makes creativity accessible. Be creative and the art will come. RSR makes a good point about observing patterns and having them come together at some point through work on your own or by chance so that you have enough information to create. I think her discussion also shows that you can’t just sit down and create something. You have to gather the materials in one way or another. They may be ideas in your head, they may be mag pics in a folder or images in a folder on your desktop. At some point there is enough so you can get to work. I like this process as well, because it means that genius takes work and what I am doing is right.

Nice work, RSR!

Magical Secrets of Creativity

Kathan Brown is a printmaker and author of a book called Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively. She is also the founder of Crown Point Press. At the de Young, they had an exhibit of Crown Point Press prints. On the legends I noticed some of the magical secrets, which made some sense or were interesting to think about so I started to write them down. I stopped when I found a brochure. The Magical Secrets are listed at www.magical-secrets.com.

Seeing these ‘secrets’ made me think that creativity is a lifetime experience and that you have to work at your creative work.

I like the idea of Magical Secrets of Creativity. It makes me wonder if people have their own ideas about creativity and where people’s ideas intersect. I want to think about Brown’s ideas and see if they work for me.

Stephanie Metz Open Studios this Weekend

Stephanie Metz makes really interesting felted wool statues. She is having an opening this weekend.

My favorite piece of hers is Meditation. I think it is unbelievably beautiful. Unfortunately she sold it before I could buy it. Oh well; it wasn’t meant to be.

Here is a notice about the opening from Stephanie herself.
__________________________________________________

This coming weekend I will be participating in Silicon Valley Open Studios, a Bay-Area wide program in which artists invite the public in to see their creative process, their works-in-progress, and recent artwork.

Once again this year I will be showing my work at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto along with nine other artists—a group location right in downtown Palo Alto, with ample parking across the street. I will be on site and available to chat and demonstrate wool felting from 11am till 5pm on Saturday and Sunday, May 6th and 7th.

Along with a selection of paintings, prints, and drawings that will be available for sale, I am also pleased to offer a first look at a still-in-progress new body of work: a series of felted wool teddy bear skulls based on a variety of ‘breeds’ of teddy bears.

For a preview of my work and links to the other artists at this location, please visit my web site: www.StephanieMetz.com.

For more information and a directory of artists and locations participating in Open Studios, please see http://svos.org/

The Pacific Art League is located at 668 Ramona Street, Palo Alto, 94301; their phone number is 650-321-3891, and their website is www.pacificartleague.org.

Kay Khan’s work

by Kay Khan
by Kay Khan

I first saw Kay Khan’s work about a year ago. I can’t remember what led me to it, but I was enamored with the shapes and fascinated with the fact that she used fabric to create three dimensional objects. Vessels and bowls seem very feminine to me.

You can see more of Kay Khan’s work at the following URLs:
http://hibberdmcgrath.com/khan.html
http://www.thirteenmoonsgallery.com/sagemoon/artistPages/KK.html

I have been thinking of fabric bowls lately, but also of vases and other types of vessels. Recently I was informed that the Marin Needle Arts Guild will be having a Craft Fair in the autumn to raise money for the guild (they will not be hosting a show this year and need to raise money to keep their programs going. You can find out more by contacting them directly at the URL above). Perhaps making a fabric bowl or vessel would be a good donation? We’ll see how the time until autumn shakes out.

In the meantime, I am admiring and being inspired by Ms. Khan’s work.

No Need for Geranium Dishsoap Today!!!

The sun out and the sky is blue. It is still long-sleeve cool, but the sun being out makes all the difference in my mood. This is the second day! Is the rain gone? I don’t think so, but perhaps we will get a few days of spring before the descent into fogbound summer. Whatever the weather drama, I am determined to be grateful for the sun we get and appreciate it while it is here. If it rains tomorrow, so what? It is sunny now! YAY!

I look out for eyes wherever I go for Pamelala. This one was found in the Starbuck’s right in my neighborhood!. I don’t why I never saw it before. I go to that Starbuck’s at least twice a month. I saw it and then had it on my to do list for, what seemed like, months to go back and photograph the eye. I finally did yesterday. It is a nice eye and I like the way it is in the teapot.

This is the arrangement that I laid out, serendipitiously, before the three additional blocks were added. I was thinking that I would need to do something more interesting than a 4×4 or 5×5 square arrangment. This layout just put itself up on the wall. I would fill in the blanks needed to make the thing square with blank blocks. I refuse to make a weird shaped quilt to give to someone. I don’t think I will need this arrangement now as SLB is taking some of the blank leftover blocks down to SoCal to have other people decorate at another shower. We’ll see how they end up before I decide.

Another Little Exercise in Color/Pattern Arrangement

I got these squares from Hancock’s of Paducah. They are the fabrics which comprise Moda’s Poetry Collection by April Cornell. Again, I liked the fabrics, but they are the kind of fabrics that might just sit in my palette if I bought any yardage. Thus, the squares provided a good solution for me to work with the fabrics on a limited basis.

I have been having fun rearranging them. There is a wide variety, but the patterns on the fabric are the same. There are just different colorways. As a result it has been challenging. I don’t want all the same colors together, nor do I want all the same patterns next to each other. I would like the various patterns and colors spaced evenly and pleasingly over the piece. If I am not there yet, I am close.

Another challenge is that there are a couple of prints that stand out if they are near each other, like the dots (of which I did buy yardage). These patterns demand to be far from each other. If not, they scream “what moron put us so close together?” and they produce a lot of grumbling. There are also motifs which are different, but very similar in scale. This means that, from far away, I am looking at two fabrics in four colorways that look the same. I don’t think I can avoid having some of them together and my only option is to make sure that the colorways next to each other provide as much contrast as possible within the limits of the fabric group.

One reason, I like doing this sort of work is that it is easy. I don’t have to cut or press until I sew. I can arrange and rearrange forever with very little physical energy, yet there are some rules. Granted they are self-imposed, but all puzzles have rules. Also, it seems like it is good for my brain. I feel as though my brain is working when I am rearranging.

Once this one is sewed together, I will have three squares pieces. I haven’t the foggiest of what I will do with them. I still think table runners are in my future, but we will see. If nothing else, they will be good machine quilting practice.

BTW, Pamelala has a blog. It doesn’t look like she updates it very often, but the art she has up there is great! Her assemblage art is fantastic. She isn’t doing it anymore, so grab a piece while you can, especially since she is becoming famous for her quilts now.

Quilt Wisdom from Brazillian Musician

I was listening to Morning Edition this morning (April 7, 2006) and heard a bit of the last segment with Seu Jorge, a Brazillian musician. He said [paraphrased] that Bob Dylan could write a very simple song that was sophisticated in its simplicity.

When I heard this I realized that this is a goal that I strive to achieve in my quiltmaking. This comment coalesced some of my thinking about my quiltmaking. In making blocks to form a quilt design, I strive for a look that is sophisticated in its simplicity. It is not that simple, however, because you have to taking the fabrics, the thread, the quilting all into account. With fabric, and I realized this with the Thoughts on Dots squares, you have to think about the “weight” of the look of the fabric. Does the fabric look or feel heavy or light, sherbety or cake-like?

I would love to hear what this means to you. Please make a comment in the comments field or e-mail me via Artquiltmaker.com.

More on Judy Martin’s Scraps

In my post called “Happy Geranium Block Dots,” I paraphrased Judy Martin’s theory on making quilts with scraps. Here is the actual quote:

“When you make a quilt from 35 identical blocks cut from the same four fabrics, you’re done with the creative part after the first block. The next 34 blocks are just pushing a needle. When you make a scrap quilt, you get to savor the creative parts and prolong the artistic decision making. Throughout the process of cutting and piecing, you are making creative choices.”

I love that phrase ‘pushing a needle.’ It makes me think about thte quilt work that I do, huh?

Anyway, I like to make quilts with different blocks and I think that Judy Martin explains why with her description of scrap quilts above. The reason for enjoying scrap quilts is the same for sampler quilts.

I think it is worthwhile to read some of the text of quilt books. I am certainly guilty of buying books and then only looking at the pictures. If you read the books, you come up with some gems sometimes.