New Year's News

Well, I have survived through the holidays and I sold a few ornaments for some spare change (but not much else)! Now I am hoping for some success in this new year in selling a few pieces and maybe getting something published. I am planning to submit some articles to see if there is any interest in publishing my writing but first I need to get images to go with them. Most of the magazines seem to want images illustrating your discussion up front so that is what is currently holding me up. Hopefully I can work on that in between upcoming deadlines.

Our yearly TART's show of fiber art will be February 11-13 at the Hamilton City Hall (old Bedford Building) at Bedford and South 2nd streets in Hamilton, Montana. I will have some pieces in the show and am currently working on a piece for their challenge. Hopefully I will have some new work that no one has seen yet. This has always been a pretty good venue and I usually sell a piece or two so I'm hopeful!

There has not been much success in getting people to sign up for the classes at Patchwork Quilts and I think I will try to come up with a condensed class that will be more inexpensive for people. Maybe just a one day class on a Saturday. I'm planning to work on that this week . Since I have all the plans outlined for the three session class I'm sure I can work up a shorter class fairly easily. I certainly understand why people don't want to spend the money I'm asking for, so I'll just have to adjust my plans and see if I can't offer what they want. That is really the goal, isn't it?

I have mentioned that my piece, "Blackberries and Dandelions" is in the Art Quilts XV show in Chandler, Arizona. I was interviewed by a reporter from the Phoenix newspaper (Arizona Republic) about my piece. The article was about the new space that the Vision Gallery is occupying and they mentioned several other artists in the show who are from Arizona and the names and prices of their work. She went into a little more detail about my work and my background. The reporter incorrectly stated that I created the batik fabrics in the piece, but they are commercial fabrics. I did dye one of the fabrics in the piece and she misunderstood what I said about that. Unfortunately they did not publish a picture of the quilt as she had hoped and they didn't give my website address, but it was nice publicity to be mentioned prominently in the article. The reporter told me that my piece was her favorite in the show which was very flattering since there are almost 100 pieces and many much more seasoned artists than I. Hopefully the article will send some more people to the show--and someone will buy something. I heard that only one piece has sold so far. I believe the exhibit is supposed to be taken down on January 18.

I am currently working on a small piece to send to Studio Art Quilt Associates for their Traveling Trunk Show. The pieces are supposed to give people an idea of the great variety of techniques and styles being used in art quilts and hopefully my piece portrays what I am doing. I have finished the piece and need to write up a description of the work and techniques used so I can send it off. The pieces are sent out to lots of places all over the country for interested people/groups to look at and be inspired by. We had some of them come here locally last year and enjoyed the variety and quality of the work very much. I regretted that I hadn't submitted anything for that grouping, so I'm making to sure to get one in this year! I'll put a picture up soon...

Friday evening I attended the opening of the Missoula Art Museum's auction exhibition at which one of my pieces, "In A Heartbeat" is displayed. It is in the silent auction which will take place the same evening as the live auction in February. It was a wonderful exhibition of art from many local artists (and others) and I enjoyed the great variety and quality of the work. I do hope that there is interest in my piece as I would be somewhat embarrassed for them to have to give it back to me! There was only one other fiber art piece and it was quite different from mine (by Nancy Erickson) and I don't believe it was a recent work. This was a juried submission process so we had to send images of some pieces to be considered and I was honored to be included.

I have been somewhat disappointed in the lack of comments on my blog and wanted to ask if there are any problems people are having doing that, or if you just don't have anything to say. Please e-mail me at heidi@heidizielinski.com if you experience any problems with commenting. I'm curious as to how other bloggers get people to make comments and get feedback for what they are sharing. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

It's a "NO" from Quilt National

Before I get to my rejected Quilt National quilt, I have some other news. My quilt, "Blackberries and Dandelions" will soon be shipped off to the Art Quilts XV: Needleplay exhibition in Chandler, Arizona (near Phoenix) for a show that will be up from November into January. This is my first gallery art quilt show and I'm very excited about it. Sure wish I could be there to see it. Also, I had one piece, "From Winter We Emerge" at the Innovations 2010 show in Tacoma, Washington and it won Judge's Choice and a Peer Award there. Then this past week I had a phone call telling me that my quilt, "Red Sky", won third place in the Fiber Art category at AQS Des Moines!! That is my biggest award yet and has a nice cash award attached to it. Maybe I'll finally get that digital camera I've been hoping for!

"Jewel Of The Forest"

Now on to the Quilt National story!

This year I finally had a piece that I felt might be worthy of Quilt National so I submitted an entry. Unfortunately it did not make the cut, so now I can share it with you. This was a truly inspired piece and it created itself as it was made. I didn't know what I was going to do with the tree trunk when I made it. The piece evolved around it.

The fabrics on the left and right sides of the piece are my rusted Osnaburg which was wrapped around a large rusty chain. I painted the fabric that the tree trunk is on with fabric paint. The remaining fabrics are commercially made, including a hand-made marbled fabric (not by me).

The tree is made of molding paste that has been colored with PearlEx powder and then put onto the fabric with a palette knife. It was then painted to give it some highlights and shading.

I knew that something needed to be added to make the trunk more interesting and I spotted some coated wires about the right gauge. They were each less than 8" long and I had maybe a dozen of them. I found a wonderful multi-colored rayon flat ribbon in my stash and started winding lengths of it around to cover the wire and then left about 4" dangling at the end. When I held these up to the quilt the dangling ends just hung limply and it appeared that I needed to do something more. Of course then I thought of using beads and collected some that went with the piece and started stringing them in random "pattern" between loops of the ribbon (see pics). It worked wonderfully and the weight of the beads was perfect for the strenth of the wire. I securely stitched the ends of each wire to the top of the trunk so they would extend out from the wall and curve gracefully, draping like willow branches. They bounce ever so slightly when you walk by or if there is air movement in the room.

Enjoy the pictures. The quilt is now for sale: $1400.00. Be sure to let me know if you are interested!! ;o)

Trunk Show and Thread Program

This week I had my first trunk show for a small group of quilters (about 35) in the nearby city of Missoula, Montana. I showed just over 30 of my early and current art quilts and talked a little bit about the techniques and development of them. My mother graciously assisted me by holding up the quilts and walking them around the semi-circle so everyone could see the quilting and embellishment on them. It appeared that they really enjoyed them and they had some great questions for me. I felt very good about the experience and would look forward to doing it for other groups in the future.

Tonight I will be half of the program for our local quilt group talking to them about using threads and other fibers to enhance and embellish quilts. I'm certainly no thread expert, but I have tried many things and experimented so hopefully I have some hints and tips that might be useful to other quilters. The other half of the program is a woman who does a lot of beading. I have only recently started beading on my quilts so don't feel qualified yet to give advice in that area, but I'm looking forward to seeing what she has to say and show! I'm planning to show a few of my quilts that illustrate how I have used various threads and other ways of using fibers such as couching, thread painting, hand embroidery, and sashiko stitching.

With these two activities so close together I haven't been very creative in my studio this past week. I get very distracted by having to be prepared for something and just seem to get blocked creatively. I'm hoping once tonight is a thing of the past I will be able to return to my brown tree quilt and maybe even get it layered and start quilting. I'm still thinking some cutouts might be in the plan…

My husband came home last night from hunting out of town with two mule deer does and a buck in the truck so today we are cutting and wrapping venison for the freezer. I have a short break here while he trims and cuts some steaks for me to wrap, but I'm sure he'll be calling me at any moment to get back to work!