Park Center Exhibit

A few of my quilted pieces are on display at The Park Center in Hayward WI until the end of December.

http://www.theparkcenter.com/

What do you do with Scraps?

What do you do with scraps from making journal books? The scraps are thin, so you make them into little treasure slices for art greeting cards. I've attached the scraps to double sided fusible.

Sliced them in approximately 2 inch chunks.

Fused them to the front face of cards made from card stock.

Pair with a nice envelope.

Share your art with a friend.

First Friday Artist Reception

Friday the 2nd of September my fiber art pieces were on display at a local gallery that I'm a co-op member of. I was fortunate to be able to share the art that I love to make. The audience was on the small side but they were very interested in my process. Thank you Art Market 63 for hosting my event.

I have examples of my fiber art for sale at this location.

Art Market 63
Hiway 63 North
Cable WI

Pipers First Quilt to go to a Quilt Show

Miss Pipers quilt "Piper's First Panto" is going to the Machine Quilters Expo in Springfield. This is going to be her first quilt to travel to a show. Today is also her first day back to school, 3rd grade, after summer vacation. The MQX show is a great show to see quilting friends, take classes at, enjoy the beautiful quilts, and experience a lovely city.

Piper is rather pumped over the idea of sending the quilt, but for her world, she's more excited about gifting it to her friend. Sending it is vague but the gifting is real for her. She is 8 and most of her day revolves around what she can do that is fun.

This is a good experience for her and a motivator for me to keep her on a project when she is visiting me. I try to be a good grandmother.

Quilting with Miss Piper

After a little conversation with my granddaughter Piper about her learning to quilt on my smaller longarm quilting machine, she was excited to try it. There happened to be a quilt show I like to enter coming up and they have a category for kids. I love this show, how it is run, the educational opportunities, and the people that run it.

Piper had her first chance on the longarm for quilting in July for our local quilt show, making a small wallhanging she constructed and quilted while sitting on my larger machine. By the expression on her face while quilting, I knew she loved it.

She and I decided her next quilting experience would be a pantograph on a quilt top I made last fall that is colorful and fun. She would have to follow a red dot laser on a simple paper pattern design. I felt it would give her more confidence in the machine and control deciding how to move, learning to control her speed and doing the best job she could.

She nailed it.

I want to say Piper just turned 8 the end of June this summer. She is a tall girl, but still a little girl with a short attention span, and prefers to play Minecraft, and watch SpongeBob. Pink is a fashion mainstay for her.

My main goal was to be patient with her, have the quilting sessions broken up into short time frames, and keep it fun but serious. On the serious side, I set up one row wrong for her and after she quilted the entire row, I realized I had to tear it out and have her redo it. This showed her 5 minutes of her quilting took me 30 minutes to tear out the goof.

Today Piper colored her custom label for her quilt. At the beginning of this project she declared the quilt would be given to one of her girlfriends for Christmas. Piper is a sweet girl with a huge heart of kindness.

Our next plan is for her to continue learning pantograph control by working on a Quilt of Valor next. She already knew I made them and has accompanied me when I've dropped them off at the local Veterans Office. It will be her turn to gift it to the office and enjoy the feeling of doing a good thing for a veteran.

2016 Black and White Challenge

Today is the unveiling of my Black and White challenge for the Art Beat Gallery. This is made using a white whole cloth quilted sandwich that I made in the past for a fabric painting class I taught a couple of friends. I quilted a medley of designs that I thought would paint nicely for them. I had 8 little sandwiches left over at the end of the class and they've been floating around my studio in a box in a cupboard. It was waiting for the right moment to be used. Zentangle has been a growing trend and that is what I focused on for this. I colored and drew in the quilted motifs using a Identi Pen in black that has a brush end and a fine tip end on the same pen.

After filling in the designs and letting it cure over night, I stitched the edge with a tight zig zag using a thin cord inside the stitching to give it a finished raised edge. I went over it 4 times and touched up any stray threads with a black magic marker.

After painting the canvas I glued the little quilt onto the canvas using Loctite GO2 Glue. It's currently my favorite for attaching fabric to canvases.

Place the canvas upside down and put some heavy books on it to let it dry flat.

I used a stencil and black paint for the lettering, and added a couple of black crystals.

Lastly will be attaching a hanger and sealing up the back with brown paper tomorrow.

Of course....then I will sign it.