Hanging out in Baltimore

I'm in Baltimore for work and decided to spend the weekend with quilt friends. Amy was so kind to let me stay with her and her family. She even put a nice brunch together with some guild friends. It was so nice.

We went to Savage Mill and I was able to go to Queen's Ink and the Treasure Trove antique linen store there. I could have spent a fortune there. We also stopped at Seminole Sampler, one of the best quilt shops in the country.

I had a great time. I hope to come back for the West River Retreat in November.

And can you believe these are back in season already?

Art Quilt Workbook homework for Chapter 2

Using the practices in the book, this was the quilt I made. My theme is Pomegranates. After all, it's the year of the Pomegranate for me. It uses some of the principles and elements of art. My scanner cut off the borders, which are only a half inch. Also, this is not quilted yet, but I did "pillowcase" bind it.

Pick a Pear

I don't know why I picked "pears" for this month's theme. After the "Incident", the pears I stamped out of foil have been on my mind. This is one of my class samples from my foiling class.

There's pears everywhere. In fact, two Art Quilt books I am studying from currently have pear projects in them. I also recently did a pear watercolor, so it's not quite as obsessive as I have been with the Pomegrantes, but Pears could be a whole subject to themselves...

I am not sure why, but I have been lackluster in blog-land this week. I apologize to my readers for not posting very much, but I hope this will change. I am rolling out the big project at work this week, and it's taking my mental energy. I am also working on some super secret stuff, and hope I can reveal that in due time.

I was a "winner" this week too. I went to a spring/summer fashon show put on by my salon, and was the winner of a gift basket full of Redken products! My New Year's resolutions were to "use it up" and I haven't bought new hair or face products since the beginning of the year since I already own so much that I never use! Now I have even more. I was pretty excited to be the winner though!

Recycling from IQA Chicago

My weekly quilt this week is firmly on the theme of "recycled" for April. As I described on my earlier post about the show, and the "Surviving the Runway" luncheon, I took some of the scraps on the table to use in this week's quilt. I think this makes a perfect memento of the event, and our win for our table team.

Used here are tissue paper, a bingo card, a paper doily, gesso, pink paint to take down the bingo card color, ink from a stamp pad in the prize pack I won, and Wright's hem tape used on our model, that was origianlly grey but I dyed with pomegranate juice. Too bad this is not 5x5 inches (my weekly quilts are 6x6) or I would enter it into Quilting Art's current reader challenge!

For real this time...

I have been travelling for work, so I apologize for being away from my blog. I was in Orlando at MegaCon, a really neat comic book convention, in which I met a bunch of cool creators and artists, and tried to sell the heck out of the program my company wrote.

This is the paper quilt entry I submitted to Quilting Arts/Cloth Paper Scissors for their "true colors" challenge. It was not accepted for either the magazine or the show in Chicago. I was a bit disappointed, because I used a paper technique I learned from Patricia "Pokey" Bolton herself at last year's show, but in the end, I know what is wrong with the piece. It will go proudly on my wall and be entered into other shows. More pomegranates.

Next up, this month's theme. After checking my schedule for this show in Orlando, I knew I would not have much time at all for myself. So I picked the easiest of themes, with the help of those who voted on my poll. I chose "words", but not just any words... hip hop words.

If you need help defining these lovely words, I would suggest http://www.urbandictionary.com/. However, this site is not child or work friendly, so be warned! (NSFW) My sister works with 6th graders, who have added to her vocabulary, and now mine. I am surprised that 6th graders know what "crunk" is, but I'm apparently out of touch with the younger set.

As for how they were done... I used a technique I learned from Ann Lullie called "The Escape Hatch", where after stitching all around turn right side out using a cut hole in the backing which you then fuse closed. This made great finished edge pieces for me to quilt using hand stitching. The "bling" quilt is done using what I call "rice" embroidery, and "crunk" is done using good old French knots. The words themselves were designed with Microsoft Publisher's word art tool, and fussy cut and fused.

Sad proof that I am not, in fact, perfect.

For the final pomegranate for this month's theme, I wanted to do something that was based on a block I found in the interweb that is quite old. This quilt was auctioned by Four Corner Quilt Gallery, and for a while, i guess you can see more of this quilt here.
I adapted this antique pattern into the this weekly quilt. This has all of the Jennifer Sampou swirls fabrics in it, of which, I discovered, I have quite a bit of. In fact, the background fabric is the background of my ever-unfinished Baltimore Album Quilt. (Yes, I have 11 blocks and 1/4th of the center completed, which I took Mimi Dietrich's Baltimore album class in the year 2000, which is when most of them were finished) Now the antique quilt this pattern was adapted from had little hearts under neat the leaves of the stem, because the pomegranate is also known as the "love apple". Now I wish I would have added them.
Now, here is the first attempt at this... and I did spend time hand appliqueing this block. When it was done, it was just... wrong. So I will leave it for now, and get to quilting it for some other reason some day.

Under the weather

I have been sick all week long. I went bowling last weekend with my sister and her friends, and have come to the conclusion that bowling alleys are havens of disease. The weather has been all over the place too, which doesn't help. Rain, snow, freezing cold, then rain again.

I have been trying to come up with a bit abstract take on the pomegranate for this week's theme. I think this works. I love this one.

I have a plan for next week's as well.

DH got me the most beautiful bouquet of roses for Valentine's Day. I'll post pictures of it soon.

I also completed some ATCs for a trade. My favorite trading site went under this past week. We are all rallying to a new site that is still under development, but it is sad to see the site go. I'll post the ATCs tomorrow, as I'm too tired out to scan them tonight.

Know when to walk away...know when to run

I stopped work on the Town and Country entry today. It was hard to do. Not for the sense of any "failure" or anything, but I knew what the judging would say was wrong with it, and in order to fix it I would need more time. In essence, I was not happy to continue pushing the entry out if it was not going to be my best work.

However, I will have other entries for other shows ready to enter, so all is not lost. it was the largest of all the projects. When complete, it will be beautiful.

In the meantime, I finished another "pomegranate" quilt. The edges are not that wonky, it just smooshed when the scanner lid pressed the beads.

Not only did I make that and bead it and have fun with the texture of the flesh this weekend, but I finished my ATC for the CYBER FYBER exhibit for Susan Lenz's show. I am very happy with the card, and hope she likes it as much as I enjoyed making it.

My sister and I "got our craft on" by making our sweetheart's Valentines today. Thank you Martha Stewart for your lovely inspiration (honey, don't click the link). DSister has been doing some awesome embroidery, she totally rocks.

Tsukineko Inks Workshop

Yesterday, I took a class on Tsukineko Inks taught by Judy Coates Perez. She is a great teacher, and I enjoyed the class very much. It was held at the College of DuPage campus in their arts center, which was a great space to take a class. This was the ink project I worked on during class. I love how it turned out, even though I did not have very many colors of ink. Guess I have something to spend more money on. Judy was so nice, and her work is utterly amazing. I wish I had one smidge of talent as she has for artwork. Her samples were cool, and I don't know why I was suprised that her works are wholecloth. Duh! Her daughter, Nina, was there, and she's got amazing talent too!

As I made this pomegranate, I thought back to my ideas from December, when I bought a pomegranate for a series of quilts. That made the decision on February's theme for my weekly quilts pretty easy. I changed my mind from "heart" or "recycled" to "pomegranates" pretty quickly! I have 2 ideas for the weeklies, and I am sure I can come up with one more. I also wondered how I would outline, as the inks have the tendency to run a little bit, since they are not "paints". When I got it home, it was obvious to outline the project with black thread. It was still cool unlined, so I took pictures of it beforehand.

Can I name-drop for a second? Also in my class were Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson, and I am sure there were other professionals in the class, but I didn't realize... It was pretty cool. One day maybe I can quilt full time, but for now, the role I have in the comic book industry is a pretty neat job to have.