For Sale, For Show, SOLD!

Since the last post was so WORDY, I thought I'd give you some pictures! The first one is currently getting ready for judging at Machine Quilting Exposition (MQX) - West in Portland, Oregon. It is called "Go Where It Takes You" and is 18"w x 21"h and priced at $280.00. It was created for a challenge requiring us to use the grey/blue oriental fabric and the white background fabric (which actually has a touch of light purple but very subtle).

Next is a little piece I made a while back that has not sold but is definitely worthy. My local gallery, River's Mist, is hanging this months show tomorrow and if she isn't able to fit this piece in, I will likely take it to The Artist's Shop or Art City. Price is $85.00 and the piece is 8"x14". It is called simply, "Abstract Triangles".
This last one is called "Oxygen" because that is what it told me to call it! It has fabric leaves hanging from bead dangles and is one of my favorite little pieces. It is only 8-1/2"w x 25"h but has nice impact because of the light background and great color--and leaves of course! The fabric that inspired the piece was from Selvedge Studio in Missoula, Montana. Not the first time one of their fabrics has inspired something for me! Price is $110.00, but this piece just sold at The Artist's Shop bringing my total number of pieces sold in my solo show there to 8 (as of Saturday)!

Have been busy with show entries, son's birthday, and such, so anxious to get back into the studio so I can show you something new!

By the way, the piece I blogged about recently that I made for the Trout Unlimited fundraising auction sold for a disappointing $100.00. They started bidding at $25 which was rather low in my view as I had valued the piece at $450.00 and if I had put it in a gallery likely would have put a price over $500.00 on it. But, hopefully whoever got the piece will enjoy it and appreciate it. It is a lovely inspired piece. Wish I could have enjoyed it myself a little longer!

Trying To Move On....

After opening two shows this month and with all the cloudy, rainy weather we've been having, I'm having a difficult time getting myself back into the swing of creating. I have two more shows coming up in August and September so I need to create some new works for those. I did just complete a challenge quilt for the Pacific West Quilt Show in Tacoma and tonight I finished my postcard challenge piece for our local Bitterroot Quilt Guild's show next weekend. Now I'm ready to start a new piece. But here I sit on the computer not in my studio!

I sold two small pieces at the opening reception of my show at Art City in Hamilton. Here are pics of the two pieces. They were both small but lovely little works and I will miss them, as I do many of my quilts when they go!

Nature's Palette I:

In The Pines - Detail of Thread-painted branches/needles:

In The Pines - The pine branches on the bottom and right are threadpainted over a stamped image and the one on the left (in the detail above) were created free-hand.

In April the Art City Gallery had a "Recycled Art Show" and in the spirit of recycling our project for the Tarts class was to use plastic shopping bags to create a sort of "fabric". You layer 3-5 layers of plastic bags and fuse them together with your iron between two applique pressing sheets. Then they can be cut up and used however you like and there were quite a number of unique uses. I just used mine as fabric and then chose complimentary fabrics and found items to create three fiber art pieces. The embellishments and most of the fabric are all things that were given to me or found or from past projects.

Refuse II: Rescue

Refuse I: Transformation

Refuse III: Gathering

If I don't get back in my studio to create some new pieces, these may be in one of my next two shows!

Quilt Show in Progress...

We are in the midst of the Bitterroot Quilter's Guild's show and what a wonderful display of quilts it is.  I was really pleased to see how many people entered art quilts in the show this year.  They are having a silent auction and I donated two wall hangings for that:

Hopefully the guild will make some money with the auction since everything is donated. The bidding quite often gets interesting at the end of the show so I'll be keeping an eye on it tomorrow afternoon!

I worked at the show all day today and will be working tomorrow for most of the show and then meeting a friend to walk around and view it a bit. Ribbons for Viewer's Choice and the Challenge quilt winners will be posted so I look forward to seeing who the winners are. There are some wonderful vendors to visit and I already bought some fabric and, of course, some beads! This is always one of the best shows in the area (this year is no exception!) and I'm proud to be part of it.

I have to get the picture of my challenge quilt from my dad so I can post it here for you. Will try to get that up in the next couple of days. They indicated that it one a ribbon but I don't know quite what yet. I don't know exactly how they judged them but I think there are several ribbons being awarded. It was a very fun challenge to participate in. Some of the other pieces are really wonderful and I'll try to get some pictures of them tomorrow to post here with permission!

Have to get some rest now so I'm ready to go for a long shift at the show tomorrow. Come back soon for more pics!

Solo Show at Bank is Up; Camping in a Snowstorm

My mother helped me hang 14 of my quilts at the Rocky Mountain Bank in Stevensville on Wednesday.  They will be on display, and for sale, for the months of April and May.  Then on Thursday I received a notice in the mail that one of my quilts, "Twist of Lime, Pinch of Purple" was accepted into the Denver National Quilt Festival.  It is a juried show which means I had to send in digital images of my entries and knowledgeable jurors determine which entries they will include in the show.  That show will be April 30 through May 3.  This quilt is an innovative piece using a traditional block (log cabin) as a base.  I believe it will make a better statement hanging in this show than the two pieces they accepted last year.   It is much bolder and more colorful.  Now I have to go through the agonizing process of determining how to ship the quilt so it doesn't arrive there with folds and curling corners!

We went camping last weekend to Freezout Lake and had a great time except for having to stay an additional (and very chilly) night because of a snow storm.  There were probably 100,000 snow geese and more people than we have ever encountered in the nine years we have been going up there.  We explored the area as is our usual activity for this trip, seeing such sites as Benton Lake Refuge, some Indian teepee rings, and of course the camels next to the highway in Fairfield (two humpers).  We had a wide range of weather conditions and it was more wintery than any other year has been, but we were able to enjoy ourselves and it was a good trip.  My son who is six had a great time and just loves camping in the trailer.  Luckily for him he climbs into his sleeping bag and turns on his personal body furnace and stays warm all night---even without socks!  I had two pairs of socks on and was still cold all night.  

Today I started working on a challenge piece that I need to finish for the Bitterroot Quilt Guild show in June.  It is to be a monochromatic piece and each of the participants was given a piece of fabric that we have to use in the piece.  Luckily the color of my fabric has inspired an idea and I'm hoping it will turn out interesting.  The quilts have to be rather small (maximum of 144 sq. inches) so that will be a challenge for me.  No pics of this one as it is supposed to be anonymous.

My son entered a watercolor painting in the Montana Junior Duck Stamp competition so we went to the award ceremony yesterday at the Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge here in Stevensville.  I was impressed with the whole event, although much of it was outside in their amphitheatre and it was very cold.  They treated the kids really well and I think all had a great time.  They got very nice prizes and ribbons.  Michael received an honorable mention which is what all the kids who didn't get 1st, 2nd or 3rd get.  He was at the bottom of the age range so he has years to get better.  We were very proud of his effort and the quality of work he does. If we can just get him to keep working at it and practicing I think he will be very competitive down the road.  I asked him if he likes painting and he said he really likes his lesson with his grandpa every week, but he doesn't like practicing at home.  I guess we'll have to work on making that more fun and not a chore!  His prizes from the contest included some new painting supplies, so maybe that will help motivate him--this week anyways!

I have discovered a magazine that I had never heard of before (it is only a couple of years old) which focuses on home machine quilting and is very good.  It has been coming out quarterly but I understand that now they will be combining it with their longarm quilting magazine and publishing it every other month (I think they have shared articles in the past anyways).  The magazine is called Machine Quilting Unlimited and I think it has some of the best articles about quilting that I have seen.  It is not on any of our newsstands around here, but the website is www.mqumag.com.  I ordered all of the back issues and have thoroughly enjoyed them.  Very informative, in-depth articles with lots of good pictures.  If you do your own quilting it is definitely a worthwhile read.  As one who does all my own quilting on a Pfaff machine, I highly recommend it.

By the way, at the bottom of this page I always have a photo of one of my quilts and I change it every once in a while, so scroll down and take a look!

Stamping Project

After a week of lost time being sick and feeling rather uncreative, I am back at it and enthusiastically working on several pieces. I just finished a small piece for my TARTS (Textile Arts) group using stamping. They gave us sticky back strips of insulation that I cut up and stuck to a piece of cardboard. They also gave us a piece of moldable foam that you can heat with a heat gun and then press onto a textured object (rubber stamp, metal object, etc.) to make a negative image stamp. I molded the foam on a fatigue mat that has about 1" holes in it, then on some rocks on my back patio area, and on a piece of plastic mesh. The rock stamp was rather interesting and organic enough to be very useful. I used brown, rust, and cranberry PRObrite pearl textile paints. I had just gotten a couple of new rubber stamps so I printed a few things with those directly on the fabric as well (pine needles and multi-squares). They will both be very useful for future projects.  I was at first reluctant to cover up a nice piece of hand-dye, but the stamping was very fun and after I gave up on the bright red they gave us in our project kit, I had a lot of fun using my own paints to do the stamping. I did use the bright red on the project I completed and it worked well there, but that and the red mesh stamping was enough of that color for me!

Plastic Mesh:

Fatigue Mat:

Loose rocks in backyard patio area:



Commercial stamps:


The group of women that I get together with every Tuesday morning decided to take a small road trip to Missoula last Friday to see my fiber art exhibit at The Whooping Crones Gallery and I went with them. There were 9 of us and we had a great time. The gallery wasn't open when we got to Missoula so we stopped at a fabric shop called Selvedge Studio which has great unique fabrics and I bought a couple of pieces. Then we went to the gallery and everyone got a chance to see my quilts hanging with the nice lighting and all in one place. We went to lunch then hit a quilt shop on our way out of town where I bought a few more pieces of fabric, but I got small pieces so I kept it very reasonable on this trip! All in all it was a very nice day and I enjoyed the company of my friends immensely. They are a great group of women and I appreciate that they include me in the group and encourage my efforts in this rather offbeat method of quilting that I do!








I am doing the base quilting for my textile arts group challenge piece and then I will be attaching the various elements to it and finishing with possibly some embroidery or beading. I only have a few more weeks to complete it so I'll have to see what I can get done. It will be in the 2nd annual TARTS fiber art show, An Affair of the heART, in Hamilton, Montana over the Valentine's Day weekend, and they will be voted on for prizes. I'm not sure mine is going to be worthy of a prize, but it will be interesting nonetheless. I have figured out how to use all of the elements they gave us without making it look to cluttered I think.

I finally pieced together a backing for the brown tree piece I was working on numerous posts ago, and I am ready to layer it and get to the quilting. I think as soon as I get the challenge piece together that will be my next effort. I think it will be a fun one to quilt, although as usual I probably won't know what to quilt on it until I choose a thread, put it under the needle and give it a go!

Deadlines to Meet

I have been trying to meet several deadlines lately and it seems to be a much more difficult way for me to work than if I am just inspired to do something. I did throw in one project that was just an inspired piece and I have completed a portion of it. I did a small 4"x6" piece completely with handwork, and I will be mounting it on a stretched canvas if I can figure out how to do that so it looks good---a new style for me. I had picked up a couple of inexpensive canvases with this in mind and this piece seemed to call for that type of finish.

I just finished making two 5"x5" pieces at the request of a guild member who is doing the program for our guild meeting this month on using recycled/repurposed materials in quilting. I used scraps, buttons from my days of sewing clothes, objects found in nature, old silk threads that I had received from a friend when her mother died, and a piece of jewelry. It was fun to challenge myself to not use anything new. I even pieced together batting scraps!

The piece I am working on for our textile arts (TARTs) group challenge has gone through somewhat of a metamorphosis since it was just not getting anywhere. I changed the background fabric, trimmed up some of the pieces I had planned to overlay onto it, and did some painting on some of the objects. I am having a hard time working in all of the 25 items we were given without having it appear busy and chaotic. It is definitely better now and when I walk into my workroom it catches my eye and definitely has some potential now. Before I just plain didn't like it. I went with a much bolder background which definitely kicks up the interest level of the piece. My goal is to try to use all but one item on the front of the quilt. There are a couple of items that are making this difficult, but if I can just get myself to use smaller amounts of things and cut things up it will all work out. When you only have one of something it makes you a little bit nervous to whack into them!

I also need to work on my project for my next textile arts monthly meeting which is next week. We are to use a stamping technique this time and I have done some of the stamping and chosen some fabrics to create a piece, but so far nothing has come together for me. I think this will be a small one since I have so much going on right now. I'm thinking of using a juvenile cowboy print I have with the same red as the paint I used to stamp, so it might be of a bit different style then what I have been creating recently. My design wall is just not big enough to hold all these simultaneous projects. Of course if I got all of the extraneous "stuff" off it and out from in front of it maybe I could use more of it!

Looking forward to stopping into the gallery this week and seeing if there has been any interest in my pieces this past week.  

Pink Challenge Piece and Gallery Reception

As I sit at the computer the sky above is blue and the sun is shining in the window. After several days of snow it is really nice to see and feel the sun.

I'm working on a challenge piece for a fiber art show in February. It has a lot of pink in it and that is not one of my frequently used colors so thus begins the "challenge". We received a bag of stuff and are required to use everything in the bag in some way. I'm trying to be somewhat imaginative in how I use things and not make a piece that is too busy or too crowded with stuff. I think the key is to not add too much other stuff and try to repeat things in different parts of the quilt. That gives some balance to the piece instead of just having one of each thing scattered all over. There are some rather unique objects in the bag such as poker chips, cupcake liners with hearts on them, a piece of screen, paperclips, and a tea bag. You can use the pieces in any way you want. That leaves it open for using an item to stamp paint onto the fabric or paint over it or cut it up or cover it with fabric or…. whatever! I am enjoying the process and hopefully I can come up with something that will be up to snuff with what I know will be a group of beautiful, creative pieces from the other participants. Can't show any pictures, as I want to keep it under cover!

Had my gallery opening last night and I think it went very well. There was a steady stream of people coming and going for most of the three hours. After 7:30 it dropped off completely so we left a little early. I was pleased to see quite a few people that my mom and I had invited, and they seemed to enjoy the show. I had a great time answering questions and talking about my work. Of course the compliments are a great ego boost and a good motivator for me! Hopefully the gallery will continue to have traffic from the many people that I have notified about the show. The goal is ultimately to sell my work, but just having people come and see it who would not usually see it is really a fulfilling thing. The pieces look great in the gallery and the owner did a wonderful job of hanging them so they are featured very nicely. There are fourteen pieces. I feel so fortunate to have this opportunity to show my work.