Rabbit on the Run

Being the director of an art workshop venue may seem like a "cushy" job with lots of opportunity to sit in on classes, but the truth of the matter is that most of the time I barely have the time to walk through the classroom once day just to make sure everything is running smoothly. My normal work day starts at 5:30am and ends at 8:30pm, with just enough time to relax with my husband and the pups for an hour or so before I'm out like a light in the evening.

I'm often asked if I get to take any of the classes, but I always say the only way I'll get to take a class is to go somewhere else! So that is what I'm doing in just a couple of weeks. I'm going to the Alegre Retreat at the Gateway Canyons Resort in Grand Junction, Colorado to take a work with Katie Pasquini Masopust.

I have longed for the opportunity to go to Katie's Alegre Retreat from the very beginning, way back when she held it near her home in New Mexico. When she ended that retreat, I kicked myself for missing out on all the fun I had heard about for years. Then when Katie restarted the retreat in Colorado, I was overjoyed. I swore that this time I wouldn't miss the chance to go there at least once. So two years ago when I was planning our 2014 workshops schedule for the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops, I emailed Katie to see if they had the dates yet for their 2014 retreat. We always schedule two or three years in advance, so in order to be able to go to Katie's retreat, I had to block off those weeks in our schedule. Then I had to wait two years!

The wait is finally almost over and I'm raring to go. The workshop Katie is teaching is "Working in a Series," and in fact it is the workshop she just taught for us at HRVAW, so I got a preview of what the class was all about.

The students are suppose to bring one existing art quilt and then develop a series based on that. I have agonized over what I might possibly start with, whether I should just pick a piece that I had already made or make a new one just for the workshop. In the end, I'm sort of doing both. I just finished another rabbit quilt - "Rabbit on the Run" and that will be my starting point. I have no idea where I am going with it, but that, as I learned is the best place to start in this class!



I'm also getting a new appreciation for all of the people who come to our workshops from a distance, having to deal with packing for air travel and/or shipping your supplies ahead of time. This will be the first workshop I've taken that I didn't drive to. I asked a couple of veteran distance flying workshoppers at the last class for packing tips. They said UPS is your friend, but pack the things you don't want to do without for long in your suitcase, because UPS will have your supplies several days on the way there and several days on the way back. They also advised to pack light on clothes, after all, who cares if you wear the same clothes more than once if it allows you to pack more fabric in your suitcase!

Sparse Results

It's been a very busy summer with Hudson River Valley Art Workshops, and so I've had little time to work in my studio on art projects. However, I did finish one little landscape piece.

I had started this with the intention of donating it to the Studio Art Quilt Association auction for this September, but what with one thing or another, I didn't get it started in time to finish it by the deadline. So since I missed the deadline, I didn't have to stay within the 12" x 12" restriction! It is still small but I think the final measurement is somewhere around 12" x 14"

I've also been relaxing with a little needlepoint and recently finished this piece.

It was a painted canvas designed by Brenda Stofft, which I purchased from the NeedleNook of La Jolla in California.

Next needlepoint I do will be of my own design. One of the nice things about doing needlepoint is that you have plenty of time to let your mind wander to think of other creative designs and ideas while your hands are busy with the one you are currently working on.

I've now started work on another large quilted rabbit piece. I don't have a final design in mind at the moment and will just be making a bunch of rabbits in various positions, sizes and colors. Later I'll decide on a composition.

Blueberry Peel Top is Done!

Finally, I have finished work on the Blueberry Peel quilt top.

The top is for a Queen size bed - 96" x 108". The paper-pieced block pattern is from Karen Stone's Indian Orange Peel pattern that I purchased way back in 1993 when I took a class from Karen. (Marvelous class, marvelous teacher!)

This is an illustration of how much fun it is to play with colors! You can take a pattern like Karen's and create something that looks so different just by changing colors and layout.

Every once in a while I keep track of the time it takes to make a particular project and I did it with this quilt top.

This is how long it took to finish the various parts:

• Cut out the paper templates for 296 arcs = 4.35 hours


• Paper-piece the races = 51.8 hours


• Trim the edges of the arcs = 3.5 hours


• Remove paper from the arcs = 9.87 hours


• Remaining cutting and assembly = 20.18 hours

For a total of 89.7 hours! Multiply that by your basic minimum wage and you'll begin to understand why a hand made quilt should never be sold for anything under $1000. This total doesn't even include material costs, quilting services, or binding. I also wasn't absolutely meticulous in starting my timer the minute I started work.

Granted a less complicated quilt top would probably be completed faster or one that didn't use so many different fabrics. I'll have to time the next quilt I made, just for comparison. (I've got an app for this on my iPhone, so it is more fun than watching a clock!)

For a number of the border layers I used the leftover trimmings from the arc backgrounds. This "scrap" was large enough to cut pieces that were around 1.5" x 2", which I sewed into mini 4-patches or into strips.

It is always fun, and sometimes quite a surprise, to see what my finished quilt looks like when I finally spread out the finished quilt top to take a picture because while I'm working and designing in my tiny studio, my quilt project is generally in a big lumping fabric bunch. The borders and such are designed roughly on paper because my design "wall" is only 4' x 6'.

Next on my project agenda is a 12" x 12" art quilt to donate to the Studio Art Quilt Associates auction that is held every year, usually in the Fall, but I don't have the exact dates yet. I just know the deadline for submission is this month!

More Blueberry Peel Pieces

I'm still working on the Blueberry Peel quilt. The main portion of the top is finished.

This is a shot of a portion of it.

I'm now piecing some more peels for a border treatment. The peels are in white and pale blue patterns and the background will be the darker blues and gray/black.

Finished another knitting project - a bulky yarn shrug. Perfect for keeping warm at the sewing machine when you want your wrists and arms free but still have your shoulders and back warm.

Studio Update - Jan. 10

Obviously all my creativity has been soaked up in my studio and I have none left for creative blog titles.

I'm still working on the paper-piece Indian Orange Peel. I've made it to the stage of piecing and preparing the centers for the blocks.

I'm using a tone-on-tone white fabric paired with a light blue. The four-patch is first pieced in 5" strips and then cut into 5" sections, that are then pieced to create the final 4-patch.

Next the freezer paper templates for the centers are ironed on the four-patch and excess trimmed away. I'm saving the trimmings for potential use in the borders.

This is a example of what the finished block will look like, although these are not yet sewn together.

On the knitting front, the sock block has been broken! All of last year I had this particular yarn on my needles that I just did not like. But the practical side of me just would not let me pitch it out, even though I had no motivation to work on the blinkin' socks. So that one pair of socks took me about a year to complete! Now that they are done, I'm a happy sock knitting fiend once again.

These are the latest off the needles and I already have another patterned pair almost finished.

So let this tale be a lesson to you - sometimes you should just pitch the uninspiring project/materials!

Happy 2012

January and February are always two of favorite months because that is when I have the most time to spend in my studio.

I also use the time to do a bit of reorganizing, as usual. Things seem to pile up in the studio through the year and there comes a time when you just have "clear the decks" to be ready to tackle the projects for the new year. To this end, I ordered a 14-drawer tower that I plan to use for embellishment supplies - beads, ribbons, fancy fibers. I'm waiting for it to arrive.

In the meantime, I'm still working on the paper-pieced quilt. I finished piecing all of the arcs and the next step is the center portion, around which the arcs are attached.

This is the mountain of scraps (at least 12" in height!) produced by this process that I'll be mailing off to a quilter who does scrap pictures. She said the color combination sounded perfect for night skies.

Scrap Storm

I'm currently working on a paper-pieced bed quilt using Karen Stone's pattern Indian Orange Peel. I started this in a class sometime in the early 1990's and am finally getting around to doing something towards finishing it!

Nothing orange about it though - I'm doing it in blues, grays, and blacks (Blueberry Peel??)

As I'm getting into it I'm reminded of the incredible fabric scrap storm created with this method!

I actually love the look of this pile of scraps (which is why I let it pile up in the first place). There is an even bigger pile on the other side of my chair! It has always seem like such a waste to throw it away. So this time I've teamed up with another fiber artist who works with tiny scraps and I'm going to package them all up and send them to her.

I'm also keeping track of the time it takes to do each part of the process, which is fun to do now and then. This is not for the faint of heart or those thinking of going into business selling quilts like this. For example, I've already timed how long it takes to piece 4 of the arcs, which is what each block takes - about 40 minutes - and I'm going to need about 196 just for the main part of the design! I'll post the complete breakdown when I'm done.

Squirrel-ish Dilemma

I want to be happy with this, and I am with most of it, but still it is not quite right.

The dilemma is that to fix what I think needs fixing could require removing most of what I've already done. Gads! Suggestions are welcome.

My next moment in the studio is not until next Saturday, so I'll be mulling this over all week.

Hear the Music

I finally decided what to do with the rabbit figure I created last December. The rabbit has been on my design wall all year just waiting for inspiration to strike.

I was cleaning up my studio and came upon stack of leftover cut-outs from making guitar ties. I spread them out on my cutting table trying to decide if there was some way to reassemble them into a "fabric" sheet that I could use again, when out of the corner of my eye the rabbit beckoned. I lay the rabbit on top of the scraps and noticed that the colors were very complementary for the rabbit and when reassembled in a random fashion were scrambled enough to become an almost neutral background.

Well, that was that. I call this piece "Hear the Music."

I'm currently working on squirrel piece. The squirrel and tree were created by the same technique as the rabbit.

Right now I'm working on what other elements I'll add, such as the grass. Nothing is stitched to the background yet, so this is very much a work in progress.

I'm also playing with the idea of adding some sort of flowering tree/shrub blossom in the upper left corner, just to contain the eye within the composition.

Crazy Neckties - A New Batch

Finally completed another two batches of Crazy Ties. One set has a Fall/Halloween theme. Here's a couple of examples:

Then the other set is music/guitar themed:

Above is the one that was quilted with Aurifil 12 wt thread, that I was mentioning in a previous post.

The guitar ties are being held for David Taylor, one of Australia's top watercolor artists, who is coming to teach a workshop for us in September. He has been asking me to make these for a couple of years. He bought another one several years ago and likes to wear it to award ceremonies, but needs another for a change. Once he picks the one he wants, the others will be available for sale.

I'm still debating whether or not is is worth it to go the etsy route with my ties or just continue selling them at our inn, the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn, gift shop. Because each one is unique, I'd have to have to separate inventories - one for etsy and one for the inn. Hmmm. Will have to contemplate that a while longer.

Falling In Love Again - with Aurifil

It's always wonderful to rediscover a material that you already have in your studio. I'm talking about 12 wt Cotton Aurifil thread.

I've been making Crazy Ties to restock my supply for our inn gift shop (and a special request from one of our art instructors). This particular type of Crazy Tie is quilted and it is always fun to play with specialty threads on these - metallics, holographic, neon, and heavy weight threads.

The quilting can be used to either blend in with the fabrics or to stand out as the main focal point of the tie.

With the 12wt Aurifil thread it TRANSFORMS the fabric! I love the look and the feel of the transformed fabric. Call me crazy, but I love to pet this fabric and feel the texture and heft of the thread.

Here is another view where you can really see the difference in the look of the fabric with and without the Aurifil quilting. With the Aurifil, the quilting takes center stage.

This is a quilting treatment with regular 50wt Mettler polyester thread. You can see how the fabric remains the focal point instead of the quilting, which is the a supporting player.

But now I feel the desire to round out my selection of Aurifil 12 wt! I especially like the variegated colors.

Mosaics with Fabric Tiles

I've always loved mosaics, probably because they are sort like puzzles and you put them together with lots of tiny pieces. Don't know why I like working with tiny pieces, but I do!

Having finished my first goal of 2011 with the completion of the 5 traditional quilts for our inn guest rooms, I now have some time to get back to some art quilting!

As often happens when you are in that "in-between-projects" state, I'd walk into my studio with my mind spinning with hundreds of ideas, but not sure which one to start with, and would instead immediately consider some sort of procrastination project like cleaning or organizing my studio. Yikes!

So the best thing to do to avoid something as horrid as organizing my studio, is to jump right in with a small project that can be started right away and is quickly finished for that satisfying feeling of getting something done.

I decided to do a mosaic pear.

The pieces are about half an inch and are backed with Misty Fuse. I have used Steam-a-Seam II for the mosaics I've previous made, but as I had none handy, I reached for what was handy - the Misty Fuse. It was quite nice to use. After selecting the fabric I was going to use, I cut small sections, about 6" x 6", of each and fused the MF to the backs. I could then cut a batch of fabric tiles from these pieces as needed.

All the tiles are stitched/quilted with varigated rayon thread from Mettler or Sulky.

While finishing it, I was thinking that I'd have to find another image to work with for my next piece, but already I can see different ways of working with the same image - playing with different colors, different angles, different backgrounds.

I created this piece specifically to fit the frame. I have a couple boxes of these frames leftover from when I sold my work at art and craft festivals in California.

One More for Tradition

I've reached my goal of 5 new traditional quilts for our inn guest rooms! The final one is a Full sized quilt and it is a scrappy Ohio Star pattern.

The quilts still need to be quilted but, since I'm not doing that part, I can now get on to other projects! I have a full month before the workshop season begins and I plan to take advantage of every available minute that I can get in my studio.

The Beauty of Simplicity

Last year while browsing through some quilt magazine I saw an ad for a book about "modern" quilts. On the cover it featured a quilt with a simple design of stripes composed of gradient colors of blue interspersed with stripes of white. First of all, blue is my favorite color, so that is what caught my eye in the first place, but I was further entranced with the elegant simplicity of the design and the knock-out contrast that the white fabric provided for the blues.

So being the normal red-blooded quilter, I said "wow, I've got to make one of those."

I used EQ7 to create the block (a narrow 12" x 3" block made of of six 2" x 3" pieces of fabric) and then design the layout and size.

The blue blocks were all strip-pieced (2.5" x 40" strips sewn together and then cut into the blocks).

Here is the resulting Queen size quilt.

This picture really doesn't it do it justice because of the lighting and the angle, but I'll get a better picture when it is totally quilted and finished.

But I loved the result so much, I immediately continued the process and made a matching Twin size quilt. (We have 5 guest rooms at the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn that have 2 beds - a Queen and a Twin, so this will be a good set for one of these rooms.)

Pinwheel King Quilt

It's been a while since I've blogged, but I've been busy doing blog-worthly work so that I'd have something to blog about!

I finished the top for the second King Quilt. It is a scrappy pinwheel pattern. Using white fabrics for contrast really made those bright fabrics "pop."

This will go off to be quilted by Eileen Keane on Monday and she'll be bringing back the first King Quilt ready for binding and putting on a guest room bed at our inn, Greenville Arms 1889 Inn.

It has been a snowy winter with some impressive icicles forming on buildings all around town. Here is a shot of the ones outside my studio window.

They were quite beautiful when the sun shone through them.

In between quilts, of course, I'm knitting. Here are my latest pair of socks. These are the first lace patterned socks that I've made. They are knit in Summer Sox by Classic Elite - 100% cotton.

More Strip Blocks for a Queen

I finished another quilt top towards my goal of 5 done this winter. I have just one more to go.

Sigh, what I wouldn't give for a longarm machine. I currently send all bed quilts out to someone else to do, but would love to be able to do them myself. Not because these other longarmers don't do a great job, just because I'm a do-it-myself kind of person! Well, I can dream.

Today I'll start the final quilt top.

In between, quilting and WORK, I've been knitting, of course. We recently took a trip over to Webs, in Northampton, MA. THE best yarn store I know of. I gave my husband a certificate for a knitted sweater for his birthday, so we had to pick up some yarn for that and I also stocked up on sock yarn - my favorite thing to knit when my brain is too tired to think of anything else.

This is the yarn for the sweater.

and a couple of the sock yarns.

All of the yarn came from the extensive discount yarn room/warehouse at Webs. This is the best feature for the budget-minded knitter who still wants top quality yarns.

Studio Report

The rabbit and squirrel are pinned to my design wall and patiently waiting for their moment to arrive. (Looks like they are watching that field for Spring growth!)



My studio it too small to have too many projects active at one time, so they will have to wait until Christmas crafting is finished and then I have to resume work on the 5 bed quilts that are my top priority to finish this winter (3 down, 2 to go).

So a quick look around my studio shows the Christmas minis that I'm working on. I'm sending these instead of paper cards.



I debated whether or not to send these as postcards through the mail, but then decided that I'd attach a cord to the tops to turn them into Christmas decorations/ornaments. I figured that by attaching a way to hang them to start with, it wouldn't be left to the recipient to figure out what to do with it or how to hand it up. To attach the metallic cord I inserted tiny grommets in each upper corner and threaded the cord through them.

What's fun about creating these little minis is trying out different threads. For the most part I work with Superior's Bottom Line in the bobbin. On the top I also used their metallic thread, their Highlights thread (loved the punch of that neon color), and their glitter thread (always a favorite way to add the hint of sparkle).



My other favorite for the satin stitch around the edges, besides Superior's Highlight, was Mettler's rayon thread - for its smooth, shiny finish. However, I also tried Curicini Tre Stelle's 12 wt cotton thread (see mini below) and was mightily impressed with the wonderful dense, smooth coverage it produced. Very nice and no problems with tension adjustment. (I use a lot of metallics and heavy weight threads when quilting, so I always automatically reduce the upper tension on my Bernina to around 1 or 2 and use a 90/14 needle.)



Unfortunately, I didn't have any 12 wt Aurifil on hand in colors that would work for the minis, so can't compare it for the satin stitch, but I have always liked it when I want a highly visible quilting stitch and so used it on several of the minis for that purpose.

The rest of my studio is still a mess with all of the hat boxes and hats that I haven't had time to deal with and with various parts of the bed quilts in process, not to mention the pile of yarn balls that were the result of my undoing a knitted coat I had made. (The two you see are just some of the 10+ that are piled on the floor.)



So that you have it, the current state of my studio.

More Animals Assembled

Ok, so that's not a scintillating post title. All of my creativity must drained into the squirrels.

The next animal I create during the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops retreat is a squirrel. Technically a Gray Squirrel, but all of the Gray Squirrels around here are two-tone. It's fun watching them outside of my office window. Occasionally I'll see one outside the window of my third floor studio. They are always shocked to see a human that far above the ground! LOL.





It is a fun process to create animal figures. The tricky part is getting the right expression and maintaining the animal-ness while using commercial prints. I like the commercial prints for the little "surprizes" you see - like the flowers on the belly of the squirrel.

The next step will be to come up with a scene to put these critters in.

Fused Animal Figures

I'm getting a little break from my regular duties as innkeeper and art workshop director, to join in the fun in the studio during our December retreat. I am giving some informal lessons on how I create the rabbits for my rabbit series. I use two different techniques and was going to show both, but everyone is having such fun with the fused method (which is faster. LOL) that we have gone from rabbits to squirrels!

These are two of the finished rabbits. The one on the right is mine and the one on the left is by Leonie Lister of Australia.



I'm supplying the fabric, so Leonie and I are working on tables opposite of each other and selecting from the same stash, but you can see what a difference it makes with how the values are used and where they are placed on the figure.

These rabbits will eventually be put in a composition with other similarly made elements, but because Leonie, just loves squirrels, we all decided to jump to that.

This is the start of my squirrel - the freezer paper templates.



If I had made the squirrel the same scale as the rabbit, I could have put them in the same composition, but I decided to go for the mondo-sized squirrel. Watch out for your nuts!

Is Lint Really the Issue

I finished using all five bobbins worth of Aurifil 50 wt thread and took the standard shots of the bobbin case and throat plate area.





Yeah, there was lint. Pretty much similar to the lint build up seen with the Curicini Tre Stelle thread. So I have decided that I better do another test with less expensive brand of thread I had been using, to see if there was really going to be that much difference.

So here is a pic after one bobbin of use.



Hmmm. Not a whole lot of difference between this and the Italian threads.

But then I was thinking . . . is lint really that big of deal or is it just the red herring of thread attributes? I mean so what if there is some lint -- after all what do you expect with cotton? Is the presence of lint going to make that much difference in the quality of the stitch or use of the machine? Yes, you do have to clean the lint out of the machine for the best continued performance, but that's just a part of maintenance.

So let's forget about the lint! Let's focus instead on the more important qualities of the thread - the appearance of the stitch, the way it is handled by the machine, and range of colors!

I thought that the Italians were pretty close in this comparison. The stitches were beautiful and the thread ran smoothly through the machine. I'll give the slight nod to Aurifil, though, on the stitch appearance -- the thread really did seem to just melt and become one with the fabric.

However, the difference between the Italians and the cheaper thread was quite marked. I could feel the ridge of the cheaper thread stitches on the surface of the fabric and the louder noise of the machine running with the cheaper thread was definitely noticeable. With the Italians, the machine just purred.

The end result -- I'm giving up using the cheaper thread! Yes, I am definitely on a limited budget but since I'm not using up billions of yards of thread per year, I feel that a thread that can make my sewing machine purr is worth it!

Both of the Italian thread companies offer an array of thread weights and materials, which I'll be comparing as I come to a project that can use them. I'm especially interested in trying the heavy weight cotton threads, as well as the wool and silk threads because those are the threads that a meant to be seen on the surface of the work.

So here's a toast to the Italians! They are as smooth and sweet as a Sauterne!



I'm still working on piecing quilt tops, so if I notice any other aspect of note about these threads, I'll be sure to mention it.

The next top is a Queen size and it will use a simple 3.5" x 12" block design that will appear as stripes of blues alternating with white. These are my blues.