Threads of Resistance Links

The Threads of Resistance list of traveling quilts has been posted. (No, Deregulation is not in it.) Here is the link for those who want to “see” the traveling show online.

And a reminder, here is the link for those who want to see all 500+ entries.

And for those lucky enough to live where the show will be and want to see it live, here is a link to the show schedule.

Quilt Shows, Virtual and Local

One quilt, mine, is in both.

I did decide on “Deregulation” as its name. Since it didn’t seem to limit what others saw in it, it seemed safe to be directive in naming.  I still don’t know if it will travel with Threads of Resistance, but they have posted all 550 entries online (here). The page is subdivided into categories, so viewing is manageable; artists’ statements are on a separate page in each category for those who like to read them.

The guild show divided art quilts into abstract and pictorial, which I think is a good idea. “Jo’s Last Quilt,” from the previous post, was also in this category as was Anton Haas’ Six Times Five.

Tony’s statement said he was exploring five-point symmetry. I love the way the long swirls maintain the color pattern in the small swirls.

I got only one photo in the pictorial category:

Vintage Falls, Helene Knott

Those who have been to the Columbia Gorge will recognize Multnomah Falls.

I have a few more photos, but they can wait. I want you to have time to view the Threads of Resistance quilts if you are so inclined.

There will be radio silence while I travel outside of WiFi areas this coming week, so don’t feel neglected if your comments don’t get prompt answers.

Guild Quilt Show

This year’s show has come and gone, and I am behind in downloading photos and writing about them.  I’ll start with quilts with stories, and I’ll admit that I enjoyed each of these more for their stories. That observation seems relevant after the earlier discussion of artist statements.

First a miniature:

Mouse Song, Rosemary Hampton-Kelly

First note that the squares in the background are 1/4 inch. The story is that scientists have discovered male mice sing a very complex song at a pitch humans cannot hear.

Two quilt stories dealt with death–I’ll show the statements in their own words.

Jo’s Last Quilt

I should have taken a close up showing the needle, but thought of it too late.  The bright colors and varied-sized cross blocks are irresistible and caught my attention before I read the statement. It is hard to like it more when I’d already liked it a lot. But the statement adds an important dimension.

And this one

Can’t You Hear My Heart Beat? Kathie Kerler

I heard people talking about the story before I saw the quilt. Of course, I recognized the quilt easily from the story, and yes, the statement added an important dimension. Without it, I think I’d have seen only a call to exercise.

Then there is this childhood memory

Kimono Sampler Yuki Sugiyama

This is her childhood kimono, worn on special occasions.

I did get a detail photo of this one.

I hope you enjoyed this taste of the Northwest Quilters’ Festival of Quilts. I have a few more photos for another post.

Linking with Needle and Thread Thursday, link in sidebar.

Quilt Guild Members Sales

Every couple years my local guild, Northwest Quilt Guild, replaces a speaker program with a chance for members to sell quilt related items. It is all very informal: just bring stuff and look around and interact and maybe buy.

I went intending to resist and mostly did. I walked by several tables of books. I had recently weeded my own book collection so wasn’t very tempted. I walked by fabric, tables with lots and tables with little.

Before walking by, I paused a little longer at tables of antiques. One had 25+ quilt tops, mostly hand pieced. I teasingly asked the seller, if she had made them all. She pointed to an 1890s top and said, “I don’t think so!” Lucky for her, others were not as resistant as I was. I did walk by.  Another antique table had really old baby garments, all tucked and laced. If I could have thought of a quilty use, I’d have been more tempted. But I walked by.  Several tables had antique doilies that I enjoyed looking at. However, my quilting isn’t up to the standards needed to turn them into quilts, so again I walked by.

But I couldn’t walk by baggies filled with 2-inch squares. Someone apparently had been managing scraps but decided she wasn’t going to ever get them all sewn up. (Sound familiar?) I picked up one baggie for $1.00. The last of the big spenders . . .

While precuts like charm and mini-charm packs don’t speak to me, bona fide scrap squares that are precut do. I haven’t counted, but I’m guessing ~100. I did sort them by value, and I think there is enough variety to use them with each other, no background fabric needed. I haven’t decided on their destination: 4-patch blocks? 9-patch blocks? A checkerboard doll quilt? I am leaning to the latter.

I’ll start by making pairs as leaders and enders and see where it leads.

Meanwhile, I’ll link up with Needle and Thread Thursday and maybe later with Oh Scrap!–links in the side bar.

The Threads of Resistance Piece Finished and Entered

I finished this one first –you know the old ploy, do an easy finish first to get your energy going.  And small meant it would finish quickly. It took a while to get a photograph, and in the process I learned how to change the number of pixels. I also learned I could find the number of pixels via iPhoto, and when I did, I barely had enough. So no change was necessary.

21 x 22

You might notice a change from the previous “finished” top. It measured less than the required minimum of 20 inches in each direction. So the partial border on the right side. In some ways it completes the look, so it is an error that helped the design.  Perhaps it also helps the theme by stopping the flight of the last piece of the prohibition sign.

After reading Elizabeth Barton’s post about artist statements, I ponder how much I should say about what I was trying: in her thinking, if it has to be said, I didn’t accomplish it. I’m not sure how I feel about this.  As a viewer, I know I’ve had my interest in a piece expanded by an artist’s statement (both in quilt art and paint art). Maybe that just means I am an unsophisticated viewer.

Caution aside. The Threads of Resistance call was for pieces expressing anger at an action of #45 or sadness about a loss caused by his actions. I chose to express anger at deregulation and all the harm it would do to the environment. (I’m curious–to what extent do you see anger or not?) In addition, when looking at it, I kept seeing hints of the traditional block, Moon over the Mountain. And I thought that too fits if you think of the loss caused by mountain top removal for cheaper, easier mining of coal–a precursor to today’s more intense deregulation. All we have left of some of those mountains is a trace, if that. I did not put the idea there; I saw it there.

Then there are ideas I neither put there nor saw there. As one comment on the finished top suggested: it actually shows freedom. In that case the mood would not be anger but exuberance. (Once again, what feeling does it make you feel, if any?) And I am reminded of grad school discussions of Paradise Lost: Is Satan the hero regardless of Milton’s intent?

And there is the problem of titles. In an abstract piece, do I want to direct/limit  interpretations by the suggestiveness of my titles?  As a viewer, I resent titles like “Untitled” or “Red dots on green squares.” Yet doesn’t anything more specific start to direct the viewer to see in a certain way (or to realize what is missing if the artist failed)? Is an appropriate title “Deregulation” or “In the Eye of the Beholder” or “Red on Blue”? to what extent is a title a limitation? An expansion?

These are not rhetorical questions: I invite discussion.
The quilting:

This detail photo captures most of the quilting variation: micro stippling in the inner circle reminiscent of the old atomic bomb shelter symbol’s triangles, miniature prohibition signs tossed around, and then more generic wavy lines and straight lines.  The mottled aqua, not shown here, is quilted with a moderate sized meander.

I recently read that there were 500 entries, and they don’t yet know how many their venues can hold since the list of venues is not complete. So my chances of getting into the show are barely better than to get a quilt into QuiltCon. But as the director of Quilt National said, “Every quilt in the show was entered.”

I’ve seen one other quilt entered, my friend Mary’s at Zippy Quilts. Do have a look at her quite different approach to the theme. I am hoping for a photo gallery on the Artists’ Circle’s Threads of Resistance blog.

I plan to link with Nina Marie’s Off the Wall Friday (button in sidebar).

Quilt History

“Finished” top

Preliminary sketches made

The call for entries (now concluded)

5/14/17 ETA link to see all the entries

City Squares Finished

A guild quilt show coming up does help UFOs become finished pieces! This one has been in ‘to be quilted’ limbo for quite a while. One reason was that I couldn’t decide how to quilt it. Usually I have a focus to emphasize or some lines that get me started, but there was nothing like that on this one. As the deadline drew near I went with my default, meandering.

I did consider an angled meander instead of curves. I always ponder whether to echo or contrast. I thought curves contrasting to the straight lines of the piecing and print would work. And it is the easier of the two, for me. Sorry, no quilt holder available; maybe a better photo at the show.

~50 x 70

I haven’t actually measured the finished piece yet; 50 X 70 is the target size.

This quilt was also inspired by Sherri Lynn Wood’s Improv Handbook for Modern quilters; it is Score #1, Floating Squares. Sherri makes two suggestions for edges: cut them straight (as I did for Mint Swirl in the previous post) and follow the curves that form naturally. I tried the latter on this quilt. To deal with the curves I made bias binding. It worked pretty well.  I had most problem with the down curves.

This is the worst curve, and I’m hoping it doesn’t show much after being washed. Possibly a single layer binding would have helped (I always make double layer). But  a gentler curve would have helped more. Next time I won’t be so stingy about losing fabric as I create the edge.  I did feel that I had to do the binding the traditional way, machine stitching on to the front and hand sewing the back. I’d not factored that into my time allowance, so cancelled another outing in order to work on it.

The finished quilt doesn’t look much like the picture in my head.  I knew this when I had it laid out and was assembling it, but didn’t know what to do about it. It came to me while quilting. The background needed to have been closer to the background color of the print fabric; then the line between the print and the piecing wouldn’t have been so sharp and the two would have blended better. Also instead of the three areas of color I had planned with most of the red in the middle, maybe I should have used pieces to actually extend the partial city groupings in the print wherever they occurred. The quilt is okay this way, just not the look  I had aimed for.

So my three pieces for the show are finished, but I still have hanging sleeves and labels to go.  I’ll have no trouble meeting a new challenge. Annie’s Ruby Slipperz has a challenge to sew 30 minutes every day, 6 out of 7 for the month of May. (It is early May, you can join in. Information here and here.) At the end she will do a drawing from those comments on the appropriate posts of hers–once a week, I think. Commenting is more important than actually sewing every day for the drawing. This challenge might keep me sewing after these three are labeled and delivered.  Often after a push to deadlines, I take a break. This time I’ll try not to.

Quilt history in reverse order:

Finished top (way back in July)

Assembling the top

Early assembly and arranging and rearranging

Starting the arrangement

An abandoned plan

Skyline, the quilt that made the scraps

I still have a long, narrow piece of the Utopia fabric. And a couple ideas.

 

Mint Swirl, Bound and Entered

Most everyone voted for a red binding earlier; I agreed. So red it is. Riley Blake confetti cotton red. Luckily I’d bought a couple reds and a darker teal when I was RB shopping.

Since today is the final day for submitting to the Modern Quilt Guild’s Riley Blake challenge (#mqgfabricchallenge), it is a good thing the weather, my quilt holder’s schedule, and my schedule cooperated for the photo. (The binding has been stitched for about a week.) I lost a little width and length because the sides were more irregular than I’d realized when measuring earlier. After trimming to the smallest on each side, I ended with a quilt 49 x 68. Close enough to the 50 x 70 goal.

49 x 68

Does it look like the quilt is defying gravity?  I was in such a hurry to catch the sunlight just right that I neglected to have the top on top, so yes, the photo is rotated.

Back story begins here 

Just in case you don’t read back to the beginning, I’ll repeat my design source.  I was following Sherri Lynn Wood’s Score #9, Get Your Curve On from her Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters.