Cinnamon sticks and pink sunflowers

Here I am with my piece "A walk in the woods" at the Works Gallery in Ohio. I was thrilled to have my quilt hang with so many beautiful pieces.

I had an incredible trip to Ohio where I took a Shibori class at QSDS and saw Quilt National up close and personal. What an experience to see those amazing art quilts. I had quilts in two other shows and had a wonderful time visiting them.

The cinnamon stick piece was inspired by one of the quilts that I saw in my travels. I love the textures and colors that I put together.

Pink Sunflowers is a store sample. I began with a batik and used a Tsukineko fabric marker to highlight some of the sunflowers. Then I beaded the centers. I sure love embellishing with beads.

Mind bender and embellishment

Mind Bender is a Bali Pops quilt that I designed and made a pattern for. It is already hanging at Quiltz if you want to see it in person. I love the colors and all the subtle patterns that appear when you stare at it long enough!


This piece measures 9 x 12 and is mounted on black felt and foam core. I used more of the water soluble paper and fed some drinking straws through it. Since the straws are made of plastic, paint did not want to stick to them so I wrapped them in eyelash yarn and beads. The fabric beads in the lower righthand corner were created by wrapping fabric around a knitting needle, painting it with glue, rolling it in glitter and then wrapping painted tyvek around that. When the tyvek was heated, it melted to the fabric.

The blue background here is brown paper that was scrunched and then painted. Angelina fibers were fused on top. The weird shaped giant beads were created by wrapping a synthetic green and purple fabric the full length of a knitting needle. Then a strip of acryllic felt was wrapped over the fabric and it was hit with a heat gun. The metal wire was wrapped before the fabric was removed from the knitting needle and it allows for the bending in the bead. The beads are glued to the black felt background which is mounted on cardboard.

I am off to QSDS in Ohio tomorrow. I will be taking a class on Shibori and seeing lots of incredible quilts at a number of shows. Can't wait to report back!

Rogue Art Quilters Environmental Challenge

Our latest challenge will be hanging at U.S.Bank in downtown Ashland through the end of July. The challenge was to do an environmental quilt and find a poem to go with it. We all used some soy silk fiber somewhere in the piece and we had a common fabric that comes in 5 different colors. In my quilt it is the blue fabric behind the fish.
My quilt is all about water - rain, oceans, etc. I used a batik from Indonesia as my jumping off point and I spent many hours embellishing with beads and fibers.
Each piece was created individually and then it was sewn together in a collage format.

The soy silk is the lightest fabric with the pearl beading on it.

This is the first time that Tina Somerset has participated in one of our challenges. She created her polar bears by felting wools together. Aren't they cuddly looking?

Suzanne McBride created this quilt after being inspired by a walk in Lithia Park. She did a lot of piecing to create the background before embellishing with yarns.

Shirley Snowden had fun creating lots of 3-dimensional leaves for her tree.

I love the stitching on the tree trunk. You really need to see this one close up.

Rona Barnes created this owl by thread painting. Isn't he wonderful? We watched him come to life over time - many hours of stitching and massive amounts of thread!




His face is so expressive!

Pat Gleitsmann did an incredible ocean quilt featuring this whale. This is another quilt that needs to be seen close up. She has embellished it beautifully with ribbons and fibers and there are fish in her quilting.

Can you see the fish in the upper right hand corner?

Elaine Turcke experimented with raw edges when she created her flower. It is a Fritilleria ( I may be butchering the spelling!)
Her quilt has a real feeling of depth.

Carol Stocking amazed us all with her polar bears. She used fake fur and colored it with pencils. Her Northern Lights are all free hand quilted and this quilt is just gorgeous. You have to see it in person.

There are some other quilts at the show with a nature theme that are also worth seeing. I am just showing the challenge quilts on this blog. Please visit our quilts in person and let us know what you think.