13th Steet Studio

Cover Me

Lately, I've been working on a book for the Kansas City Star's publishing company Pickle Dish. The book is about a Kansas-themed sampler quilt I designed 15 years ago. It seemed like a good match for the upcoming celebration of Kansas's 150th birthday. I've had a lot of fun adding in some of my family history and Kansas history, and telling how the two have intersected. We've been working on the cover this last week... well, the book designer has been working on the cover...I have just been enjoying seeing the results. Here is one of the first versions:

I guess something seemed lacking in this cover, so we have been looking at other versions. Swapping pictures around, adding different backgrounds. Here is my current favorite:

Maybe I like it best because of the meadowlark, though.

Circle of Geese

Progress is slow, so slow...

Here is a quilt top I just finished using mostly Barbara Brackman's Civil War reproduction fabric:

The blocks are paper pieced using Piece by Number's pattern "Colorwheel Geese". I thought it would be interesting to get a secondary pattern going by using red instead of the background color for piece number nine. Interesting, but distracting, I think. Now to quilt it and get a better photo!

Just Do It

I've been struggling with getting started on a new piece. I had meant to just roll right from the vegetable quilts back to bird work, but it has taken more than a couple of days to make any progress. Here is the work in progress:

Taking that first quilting stitch is always a problem. My quilt tops scream out to me to just leave them alone. "Everything is fine", they say. "You will just mess us up with your sloppy machine quilting!" And the first couple of hundred quilting stitches WILL seem like a very bad idea. The fabric will fight me. But eventually, there is a shift. A change in state. Instead of three separate layers, the quilt will begin to feel like one entity. And hopefully, I will be glad that I wrestled the fabric under the machine and I will feel that I made it better with the effort. Here is a very similar piece that inspired the current work. Much better with the quilting!

Australia Journal

I promise to stop talking about QSDS sometime very soon...but in the meantime, here is a "narrative" piece that I started in my class with Wendy Toogood. We were asked to do a piece that told a story. I thought about doing one on New Zealand, but there was just too much I wanted to include. So, I decided to try doing one on our trip to Australia. I drew the outlines of the country freehand, while looking at a map of Australia on my computer screen, so it isn't perfectly accurate. Wendy and I decided that something needed to be added to highlight the "country" part of the map, so I decided to write some ramblings about our experiences in the ocean area of the map. It was fun to remember my favorite parts of the trip! I'm not sure what to do to this map now...and really, it could just stay the way it is. I guess it might be interesting to fold it up the way road maps are folded and just keep it that way.

Birds-positive and negative

This is a study in positive and negative shapes that I started a couple of years ago. Today is the day that it came back to the surface of one of my piles of things to do. So, here we go. I used a simple, hand cut stencil to paint the birds, using inexpensive acrylic paint. Some of the birds were painted using the cut out stencil piece as a resist, and some birds were painted the usual way by filling in the stencil "hole" with paint. The painting was done on a raw edge collage of fabric. The bird eyes were cut out of striped fabric.
After I outlined all of the birds with black machine stitching, I decided to take a picture of the back of the piece. Maybe a thermofax screen with this image would be a good thing to have.... Now to layer it up and quilt.

Even More Birds

Here are two more rarely seen bird varieties... Both of these birds tend to be territorial and judgmental, and their voices are harsh. This is the Bronze Chested Fashion Hawk in its usual red carpet habitat. And this is the Early Morning Grouch Bird.

QSDS Continues

Yet another piece by Wendy Toogood. I think the use of ric-rack is very effective in her work. I need to dig out my collection of that stuff.   And a couple more flower pictures by me...both of which could use some ric-rack!

QSDS Continues

Here is yet another sketch by Wendy Toogood. I love the intense stare that she is able to give to the character on the right with just thread and a few small bits of fabric!
And here are two more sketches by me of thistles.
I used Solvy and some fabric and thread bits, along with a lot of machine stitching, to make the fabric for the flowers.

QSDS Continues

Here is another small piece by my Quilt Surface Design Teacher, Wendy Toogood.
She does these quick fabric and thread sketches about herself and what is on her mind at that moment in time. I didn't ask her about this one specifically, but I'm guessing it had something to do with a trip to the dentist. It looks to have waves of pain and several hands involved around her head, as well as the word "dentist". (My first clue, lol.)
I have been very inspired by these thread drawings! Here are two that I did about Bachelor Button flowers ...one a bit more graphic than the other.

More QSDS

Here is  the next practice piece that I made in Wendy Toogood's class at QSDS using positive and negative shapes that were inspired by leaves. This piece is about 24 by 18 inches.
And here is another bird I did when the class work began to feel like it wasn't going well. This variety of bird is called the Scarlet Leaf Counter. He is quite small...only an inch or so tall. But he is a very accurate counter.

Toogood at QSDS

This week I am taking a class from Wendy Toogood at QSDS. I would describe Wendy's large works as bold and graphic, and I would describe her small works as very detailed and complex. All of her work that she has shown the class has a personal element, and many of the small works are diary-like in their imagery. Here is a photo of one and a half of her small fabric pieces, and fifteen of the many artist trading cards that she has made:

Here are the first class practice pieces that I made exploring a repeating leaf shape, using positive and negative space.

And here is a quick piece I did when the leaves began to feel boring to me....a bit of classroom mis-behaving, I guess. This little bird seemed just a little too proud, so I put him into the Ego Snipe bird species, variety "Emerald".