Sunday, December 16, 2012

Eternal rest grant unto them, and let perpetual light shine upon them...



Charlotte Bacon

Daniel Barden

Rachel Davino

Olivia Engel

Josephine Gay

Ana Marquez-Greene

Dylan Hockley

Dawn Hochsprung

Madeline Hsu

Catherine Hubbard

Chase Kowalski

Nancy Lanza

Jesse Lewis

James Mattioli

Grace McDonnell

Anne Marie Murphy

Emilie Parker

Jack Pinto

Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi

Jessica Rekos

Avielle Richman

Lauren Rousseau

Mary Sherlach

Victoria Soto

Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

Monday, November 19, 2012

Jennie Rayment - My favorite teacher from whom I've yet to take a class...


Jennie is flat out awesome! A total crazy lady, with a sense of humor that never stops, and creativity and talent that will knock your socks off. This year at PIQF, I was blown away every time I peeked into her classroom (which was right next to mine), and saw what her students were doing. My friends Dale and Lani took one of her classes, and I loved what they created. Miss Jennie captivated me as she emcee'd this year's Show & Tell event and had us all laughing until we were in pain, then late Sunday afternoon I wound up having a fun conversation with her as the festival was just about to close, and we were both headed out, dog-tired, and grateful for the chance to sit down for a few minutes.

What this woman can do with a piece of fabric, as she rolls, folds, nips, tucks, fiddles and twiddles it into a piece of art, is almost unbelievable. I could look at it for hours trying to figure out how she achieved a certain look, then realize I really don't care HOW she achieved it, only that she DID achieve it. She won't be back to teach again at PIQF until 2014, but I'll be first in line to sign up for her classes then! I WANT to add this element to my quilts! Here's a portion of her exhibit in this year's show...




"Totally Tucked", with two detail pictures...



"All Squared Up" - features eight different techniques, each block made from square or rectangular pieces of fabric...



"Tweaked and Twiddled" - a 24-section pieced square with inserted triangles flattened to form petal shapes, is surrounded by tucked and twiddled fans...


"Out of Africa" - created using African fabrics that have been manipulated into Origami hexagons, tucked-up bands, and a petal pattern with multiple Origami twists in the border...



"Embellished Tucks" - the edges of tucks can be embellished with yarn zig-zagged to the edges, or by doing a satin stitch along the edges.

More embellished tucks...


"Magnolia Dusk" - uses weaving, Origami, tucked designs, and the innovative 'Fancy Fandango' and 'Floral Fantasies' designs to create an ingenious piece of fabric manipulation...



"Melange"...


"Foldy Rolly Fireworks" - all of the designs are named after fireworks...




Impressive, eh?? It just about wore me out looking at and thinking about all of the work that went into creating these quilts. But then, she has SO many more and, in addition, she's written a boatload of books! So I'm thinking this process can't be all that difficult, or she'd never have been able to crank out so much work, plus teaching... and lecturing... and traveling all over the planet... right??? Well, I'll get my chance to find out come October 2014!

Friday, November 16, 2012

A Rant...

It's time for me to stop doing my slow burn and get back to blogging, no matter how frustrating the process may be. My computer is moribund... dying a slow death because its hard disk is almost at capacity, and performing any kind of task - e-mail, web-crawling, photo manipulation, Google searches, FaceBook, and, especially blogging, takes For. Frigging. Ever. My husband, the former Mr. Whiz-Bang Apple Guru, purchased a new iBook Pro over a year ago, and, in theory, after setting it up for himself, was to give me his current machine, reconfigured for my needs. Alas, for reasons that render me nearly homicidal, and which I have no desire to dump on my dear readers, this has never transpired. The new machine still sits in its box, and the FMWBAG is still using the machine I was supposed to get, and I'm still stumbling along using this pathetic, tired, overworked, filled to capacity, irritating, INFURIATING PIECE OF SHIT.

By not blogging, I'm saving myself a ton of frustration in dealing with a cranky computer, but, in the meantime, am amassing an equal tonnage of frustration by not being able to keep my blog updated. So, as of right now, I will, once again, stuff my irritation and begin working on my next post... no matter how long it takes. It may be several days before it appears, but I just wanted to give notice that it WILL appear, and this blog will be back in action in a day or two.

End of rant.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

More from PIQF...

Here's another round of quilts... from Traditional to Ultra-Contemporary... all of them Fabuloso!! Note... you can click on any photo for a larger view, and some of them are very worth seeing in an enlarged format because of their immense detail. Enjoy!

"African Safari", by Mary O. E. Fury... (One of my favorites because it reminds me of the work of my favorite quilt artist, Nancy Crow.)

Detail...

"Baskets of Stars", by Sue Glass...

"Wild Child", by Jan Hutchison...

Detail... These detail pictures are not the true colors in the quilt. I purposely amplified the color to better display the mind-blowing amount of detail in the long-arm machine quilting... truly awesome!


"Mi Amor", by Margarete Heinisch... 

More awesome quilting detail... this one all done by hand...


"AHA" Epiphany", by Gail Sena...

"Baltimore Revisited", by Beverly Schizvoni...

"Succotash In Blue", by Ann E. Rauen...

"Dresden Flower Garden", by Nicole Pullman...

"California Missions", by Patricia Pardoen...  (Loved this quilt! The missions have been very dear to my heart since I was a very young child... their mystery and romance of the Old West, and all that stuff!)

Detail - Santa Barbara Mission...

Detail - San Francisco Mission...

"New Directions" by Vivienne Moore...

"Circles: A Study In the Round", by Pat Nelson...

"Green Cheese", by Joan Dyer...

Detail...

White Glove Lady, California Style...

Still more to come... y'all come back, now!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Janice Gunner - Shibori Work

Janice Gunner was my teacher for three days at PIQF this year. She was a terrific teacher, and I had a marvelous time working with her. One of her specialties, which she unfortunately didn't get to teach this time around, is Shibori. She creates her own hand-dyed indigo Shibori fabrics using stitched and wrapped resist techniques, and then uses them in exceptional wall quilts, sometimes by themselves; sometimes combined with vintage Japanese kimono fabrics.

She is the author of this book...


...and I hope, one day, to be able to explore some of the exciting techniques presented herein. A long-standing dream of mine is to turn one of our garages into a wet studio for the purpose of doing fabric dying and painting, and Shibori is definitely on my bucket list of techniques I want to learn.

One of the special exhibits at this year's show was a collection of Janice's Shibori pieces, and I'm going to devote an entire post to showing you her wonderful work.


African Odyssey II

Sea Study V

Detail of Quilting
    
Heat Wave (One Day In May!)

Detail of Quilting

Japan Studies  I - IV




The following four quilts are part of Janice's "Interactive" series. The backgrounds have been printed with conventional screen printing inks, which were then over printed with thermo-chromic (heat-sensitive) pigments that either intensify or disappear when heated. In your typical quilt show, touching the quilts is a sin punishable by severe reprimands from indignant "White Glove Ladies" (who are the only ones who can "legally" touch the quilts). With these particular quilts, though, viewers were, in fact, INVITED to touch the quilts, by resting their hands on certain areas of the quilts for 30 seconds and watch the results... It was quite amazing, and amusing!

Hot Spots

Blue Bamboo

X Marks the Spot

Poppies I

More quilts and One-Quilter exhibits coming soon...!