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!

Air Dry Clay and Freezeout Lake Trip

Some crocuses blooming on my otherwise rather brown and dry perennial hill in the backyard.  I can see them from my sewing room window.

I've got about 4 projects in the works right now and having fun going between them as I'm inspired for each next step. I never used to be able to work on more than one project and it caused a lot of down time because if I didn't know what to do next I didn't do anything. Now I usually can think of something to do for one of the projects and I've even completed a couple this last week!   I'll have some new things to hang in my two month show at the Rocky Mountain Bank in downtown Stevensville.  I'll be hanging that show next Wednesday and am looking forward to seeing how it is received in my home town.

Our project for our textile arts group (TARTS) this month was air dry clay that you can push into rubber molds and make very lightweight molded objects to attached to art quilts. My mold had sun motifs and I molded and then painted three of them to use on a piece. Painting them was very fun as it makes them look like stone. One of them I rubbed on some antique gold Rub'n Buff with my finger and it highlights the raised parts of the motif very nicely. This was a fun, easy project and once I got the hang of getting enough baby powder into the mold to prevent sticking, I really enjoyed working with it. I intend to get some more of the air dry clay which is made by Crayola.   I finished two other small pieces this week each using one of the clay suns.  

I finished another piece last week which has some cutouts, reverse applique (hand work), machine applique, some beading, and some nice quilting.  First picture is some fabrics and fibers I auditioned for the piece.  Did not use any of the fibers.  The second picture is the auditioning of beads for the piece.

I was really happy with how the quilting came out in the center section around the purple leaves (the reverse applique). It reminds me of tooled leather. Hopefully you can see the detail in the picture. 

This weekend we are going to take our trailer up to Freezeout Lake (near Great Falls, Montana) for our yearly outing to see the Snow Geese that migrate through there.  There are about 50,000 of them right now and hopefully the numbers will stay up for the weekend.  They are fascinating to see in such huge numbers and sleeping in the trailer with them flying overhead most of the night is a neat experience.  It is usually cold and windy so we spend most of the daylight hours driving around the area exploring whatever there is to see.  I will be taking my sewing machine in for a yearly checkup to the dealer that is in Carter, Montana.  They are nice enough to do the cleaning/maintenance during the time we are up there camping, usually getting it all done while I do some shopping in their great quilt shop, The Quilted Hen.   I plan to hit the Choteau quilt shop (newly relocated) as well.  

Back in the Swing of Things!

I'm quilting on my brown tree quilt and it is going slowly and somewhat painfully.  I'm not really liking what is happening.  That frustration led me today to start a brand new little piece since I really want to do something that I can get DONE.  I have it almost all piece together but it still needs a little something.  I usually hang them on my design wall and then as I come and go or even just turn away and back again, I sometimes will see what is needed or what is bothering me about it.  Sometimes I fold up pieces of fabrics that I think might add something and pin them up there in some fashion to see if they work.  This is when my stash gets really messy as I'm pulling things out and not always folding them up neatly to put back where they should go!  

A few days ago I had someone in the fabric store ask me what I was planning to make with the fabric I was buying.  I always find this interesting because I rarely have anything in mind when I buy fabric.  I just add it to my stash.  If it is something really lovely I might hang it up on the side of my design wall so I can see if it inspires anything.   When I plan to make something I will usually start with a key fabric and then pull other things out that might go with it.  I like to choose unlikely pairings quite often and really shake it up.  I think that's why some of my pieces have been successful and created lots of interest.  Unusual fabric combinations are fun to challenge yourself with and make them work.  Sometimes I also like to use the organic lines of a scrap or remnant piece as it is to create unusual lines in a piece.  I did that with a piece of scrap suede that I had which was oddly shaped and I just used it as it was as the focal point of a piece.  Easier to do with things like suede, felt, felted wool and fleece which all have edges that don't ravel, but cotton can work too.  I usually stitch my raw edge pieces with a narrow zigzag using clear polyester thread.  

In a few weeks I'll be getting my quilts ready to exhibit at the local bank, Rocky Mountain Bank, on Main Street in Stevensville.  They will be there for all of April and May.  I am still debating about how many and what quilts to take there, but I'm leaning towards mostly smaller pieces.  Hopefully I will have a few new pieces for those who have already seen what I had in the gallery in January and in the textile arts show in Hamilton in February.   I think everything will be for sale and I hope to have some lower priced pieces that might sell better in this economy than my larger pieces.  

I'm watching the Celtic Women on PBS and getting quite distracted as I try to type this!  I particularly like the Irish and Celtic songs as opposed to when they sing American tunes.  Although I have to say that "You Raise Me Up" is good no matter who sings it.  

The piece I am working on is calling me to move along with it, so I will go be creative and get back to you....

New Venues for my Quilts

(Sunrise at my house)

I have been getting works ready for our 2nd annual fiber art show and sale, "An Affair of the heART" which will be held over the Valentine's Day weekend and is sponsored by In Good Company. I finished up my challenge piece and it is not really my usual style or colorway, but it is interesting. I don't think it will win any awards but I think people will enjoy looking at it. I also finished a last minute piece that I had put on my entry form as "Untitled" with a guess for the size and price. I'm done with it except for a label and it is bigger than I guessed, and I need to change the price (up). I still haven't come up with a name, but I think it does deserve one.

This piece was inspired by a fabric panel I recently purchased and I think it illustrates how a commercial panel can be used to make an original design art piece. I also incorporated a digital photo that I manipulated, printed on silk, then painted the edges to blend with the piece. I had great fun picking out numerous fabrics from my stash that had potential for use in the piece, but ended up cutting it back quite a bit. That is always one of my favorite parts of the process and it is so fun to find unusual things in your stash that really perk a piece up or that work really well to compliment each other. I added chunky stone and horn beads to the piece and it is heavily quilted. I orginally had pulled out a bunch of yarns and fibers I had that went well with the piece and was going to couch or do some embroidery on the piece, but the beads seemed to complete it and I made that always difficult decision to stop embellishing!
Here is detail of it but I'm going to reserve a full picture until I have decided whether it is worthy of entering in a larger competition/show.


My show at the Whooping Crones Gallery is now done and I have retrieved all but two of my pieces. Those two pieces sold and ironically they were titled "Winter Blues" and "Spring Thaw" (what's with the weather theme?). I was ready for both of those pieces to sell as they had done their time. "Winter Blues" was in shows in Denver and in Seattle, and "Spring Thaw was in the Beaded Pony bead competition last spring and then in the Missoula Quilt show last summer. I'm fond of both of them but very comfortable with the prices I sold them for and in finally letting them go.

The next adventure for Fiber Into Art will be hanging some pieces in the Rocky Mountain Bank lobby in Stevensville for the months of April and May. I have started some smaller pieces and will be making a few more to hang in that exhibit. I'm thinking the smaller pieces might display and sell there better than some of my larger ones. Before that exhibit happens, I am hoping to hear from the Missoula Art Museum in regards to my entry for their Triennial exhibition of Montana artists. They are supposed to notify in March and I am really hoping I might have the opportunity to hang a piece of my work in the museum. That would be exciting, but realistically I am probably too much of a novice to be competitive. Then there is the Bitterroot Quilt Guild's show in June I think, and I have another challenge piece to get done for that. That one has been kicking around in my creative processes for a while now and should be ready to come out onto the design wall in the very near future!

After all that I have no other gigs established. I do hope to get up to Big Fork to show my work to a couple of galleries and probably another gallery or two in Missoula. Hopefully I will get my website up and running in the next month or two before bear hunting starts (my husband the computer whiz is helping me and will be unavailable after that!). Some artists seem to be successful in selling their work through their websites, so you never know. At the very least it gets you out there for people to be able to see what you do and know who you are. At its best it will attract buyers and galleries who want your stuff!

I guess I better get to bed now. I tend to do all this computer stuff late at night when I'm too tired to be creative or do any accurate sewing. Watching TV, checking my e-mail, reading the Quiltart and SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) list postings, and occasionally writing my blog posts are about all I can handle as I start to get tired. Pondering what to do next…..maybe I can finally get that brown tree quilt layered for quilting????

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.