A couple of weeks ago, I taught a landscape class at Sugarloaf, Carrabasset Valley, Maine. There were four people in the class and we had a great day designing and talking about landscapes. For this beginner class, I provide a pattern for the students to follow. It helps them learn the concepts of designing a landscape. Later in the day we talk about how to take their own pictures and use them for a personalized landscape.

Laurel decided she wanted lots of flowers in her landscape.

Michele chose to have stone wall and lupine in the foreground.

Jano played with a variety of  borders to give her piece a different look.

Joyce experimented with a range of blues and greens to get the look she wanted.

None of these pieces have been quilted yet. We spent most of the day designing. They all did a great job and I look forward to seeing the finished pieces.

I have completed four more pieces of the memory quilt commission.

Window box reminiscent of a window box usually seen on cottages in New England.

An oriental inspired piece.

A vase of flowers.

A red/white folk art inspired piece.

All of this work has prompted me to begin to offer Artful Memories, a service where items of clothing from a loved can be used to inspire a treasured piece of art. Contact me directly for more information about the process.

The lesson we explored last month was on lines. We had to select a color palette and then fuse some fabrics using that palette. Afterwards we cut the fabrics into varying width strips and arranged them in a pleasing design.

This actually was fun. I don’t usually work with just lines so it was a challenge to come up with a pleasing design. I added the circles to break it up a bit. The quilting between the lines is circles starting small in the center and radiating out to larger ones.

Title of the piece is “Intersections.” I’ve donated this to the Studio Art Quilts on-line auction which will be held this coming fall. I’ll post about the dates and give the site address as the time gets closer.

I belong to a group of art quilters called Fearless Designers. The group started a couple of years ago studying Fearless Design by Lorraine Torrance. I started with the group, but, as often happens, life got in the way and I wasn’t able to finish the book with them.

We’ve decided to stay together and use another book, Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter, by Katie Pasquini Masopust. We thought this book would help us experiment with more abstract forms of design. We meet once a month for a full day and share the work we’ve done in the chapter being studied that month. The group has learned a lot along the way especially in how to critique our work and offer constructive critiques that will help improve our work.

The piece shown above is my attempt with chapter one. We had to use a geometric shape in different sizes and placed into a pleasing design. Then 3-5 sizes of a second shape were superimposed on the design.

I started with triangles but wanted them a bit curved. The circle was the superimposed on the overall design. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of my first attempt which was the one that the group critiqued. Suffice it to say that the first try was WAY too busy and complicated! Using the suggestions from the group, I simplified and the final piece is shown above. I’m actually happy with this final look. Title is Regatta.

The really nice thing about this group is how supportive they are. We all stay focused and don’t allow ourselves to get too side-tracked on other topics. It helps that one of the women has agreed to be the moderator and she does a wonderful job of keeping us on topic. We’re very conscious of allowing an equal amount of sharing time so no one gets shortchanged just because they’re the last one to share.

Next week I’ll share my second piece and some thoughts about it.

Third and last quilt of the current commission. This one I decided to make a vase of flowers and I did end up using all the mom’s clothes without needing to add other fabrics. This piece has several three dimensional flowers. I even used a lined black eyelet skirt for the back on each piece and leftover pieces for the hanging sleeve. Final touch was personalized label with the woman’s picture on it. When the daughter saw the picture I emailed her, she told me she cried. I got goosebumps when she told me that! I did not know her mother, but almost felt as though she was channeling me. These three pieces went together so smoothly – without a hitch at all.

I’m looking forward to the next three pieces and the challenge they will provide.

While working on the first one, I decided that the second one would utilize the orange paisley pajama bottoms that were in the collection of clothes. The first piece was made entirely of the mom’s clothes, but the second piece I added some hand-dyed fabrics. Completed piece is below.

As I thought about the piece my clients liked and then considered the clothing I had to work with, I decided to do the first piece in a very similar style to the piece they liked. Since there was a red t-shirt with a glitzy center, that became the focal flower. See step one below where I laid out the background using the  blue jeans, khaki pants, the white jeans and some orange capris. I then quilted a design of leaves and vines.

Then came step two – I interfaced the t-shirt and also fused it with Wonder-Under. Center of the flower came from a black t-shirt.

Step three – added a couple more leaves and began the quilting.

Quilting completed and piece is finished.

A woman and her father came to me last summer requesting that I make some small art quilts out of their mother/wife’s clothing. She had passed away the previous year. They looked at my work and decided on a piece that they really liked, Black/White with Orange. We agreed that I would make three pieces, one for the daughter, one for the father and one for the mom’s best friend.

When they dropped off the bag of clothing and that’s when I said to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?”Here’s a picture of the clothes – jeans, khakis, eyelet lace skirts, t-shirts with glitzy designs, and vests with lots of seams. This was going to really be a challenge!

So stay tuned. I will share with you in a series of blog posts how I went about this project and the final results.

Oh, by the way, much to my delight, the clients absolutely loved the final pieces!

So here’s my idea of the perfect thread storage system. It’s a rolling tool chest usually used by carpenters to store their tools. I lined each of the drawers with vellux so the thread doesn’t roll around. Each of the shallow drawers holds decorative thread stored by color. The deeper bottom drawers I use for yarns and other embellishments. The top section with the lift up lid I use for general sewing thread.

This system sure beats having to open all those plastic boxes I used to use or storing on a peg board on the wall. I can roll this right next to me at the sewing machine when needed and then push it out of the way when I’m done.

In June 2010, I went to Katahdin in Maine with several other people from my church. We stayed at a lovely inn for two nights and hiked Katahdin one day. I didn’t make it all the way to the top, but got as far as Chimney Pond. Many in our group who had hiked other mountains said this was a very difficult mountain to climb. There were many huge boulders and tricky paths. But I did it! And was very proud of myself as it was something I’d never done before.

Of course I took lots of pictures which have inspired some new work. This is the first piece at Chimney Pond. Below are the steps to get to a finished piece.

Laying out the fabric to get just the right colors/shading for the sky and mountains.

   Then adding the trees and water.

Stitching begins to add dimension and shading.

            Final piece.

It always thrills me what happens as you go through the process. At first the piece looks very blah, but with the addition of each different piece of fabric and the stitching, it does come to life.