Congratulations, Helena!

Yesterday, Helena's donation to the SAQA auction sold for $350 to a buyer from Tennessee. Of the 100 or so 12-inch-square quilts in her group, only a few had sold at that point. We had a deal that if unsold, I was going to bid on her piece, and she was going to bid on mine, just to save face. Someone beat me to it!

If you'd like to follow the auction action, go to www.saqa.com, click on the auction, and scroll down page 2b to see Helena's beautiful piece, Spontaneous Combustion 2.

Congratulations Venetta

Congratulations to Venetta for her winning quilt in the Cherrywood Challenge Quilts for ovarian cancer.I enjoyed seeing all the quilts online which were a very impressive collection. Will this quilt go on display somewhere now Venetta?

And mine

Many of us live near the water and Linda's use of the marbled fabric that we made was perfect.  Here's where I live and the scarf I now proudly possess.  Thanks Linda.  

Leaving, Part 2

Here's a photo taken at our dinner on Sunday, to mark Linda's moving back to the U.K. Aren't we all a jolly bunch? With Linda front and centre, we six are wearing the curly scarves she made for each of us. We are also holding the mini-quilts she gave us. Here is a picture of mine.



At first, we all admired them as little abstract compositions, remarking that she had used fabric painted, stamped, dyed or marbled in our monthly get-togethers, and finished them with an amazing variety and density of machine quilting. We noted the titles, "Heading Home".

Finally, the penny dropped. We saw that Linda had used Google maps to produce six different aerial images of our homes and neighbourhoods complete with roads and railroads, with a little square to represent our actual houses. What a perfect melding of Linda's talent as an art quilter with the Forey background in aeronautics!

Linda, we will miss you more than words can say. Thank you for sharing your warmth and talent with us, and making our little group so lively and so inspirational.

Leaving

My time in Canada is fast coming to an end - I have less than 2 weeks left. Last night I was honoured to be entertained to dinner by the other members of our Text'Art group, and given the small quiltlets you can see here. Each is just 4 inches square, and they are an exquisite set of jewels! I'm not sure the photo does them justice.

I've also just finished my last pieces of work here in Canada - 2 small 5 x 7 inch pieces for the

Wildcard challenge. They will be sold to help raise money for Le Nichor Wild Bird Rehabilitation Centre.

Time to cast your vote...

Just a reminder to cast your vote for your favorite or favorites Cherrywood Challenge Quilts for the MD Anderson Ovarian Cancer Quilt Project. You can "like"on Facebook the quilts you vote for. Of the 20 quilts in the competition, there are two from our group...Hilary and myself amongst an outstanding group of talented art quilters! To vote, go to Ovarian Cancer Quilt Project Facebook and then to the Cherrywood Challenge Quilts and vote/"like" away. There will be top three winners recognized and all for awareness and education for Ovarian and Uterine Cancers. The top winners will also be featured in the MD Anderson booth at International Quilt Festival in November! They are all spectacular and we hope you enjoy seeing them all.

Playtime with Phil

As promised, now that I have almost fought my way out of the long grass of 'to-dos' after the Festival of Quilts, here are some of the things we got up in the short 4 days we had together.  It was a wonderful mad experience dashing from one thing to the next and without the proper time to follow through on some aspects - but what fun!

Two of the prepared boards

 First, preparing the collagraph boards.  These two contain corrugated cardboard, sequin waste, string, tissue paper, masking tape, grasses, scrim and rice.  Below are the results a couple of days later.  The print on the right has a dash of extra colour added.

Individual print offs

Below is a print with two of mine and one of Phil's boards.  I will have this framed.

My favourite

Then we tried a bit of spray discharge.  I love the work of Clare Plug in New Zealand.

http://clareplug.vc.net.nz/artist/clarplug/Artworks/

We used Domestos household bleach which I thinned a bit (mine in the cupbard was the gel version), put in a spray bottle and then used to spray on black fabric: one piece pole wrapped and the other a scrap that Phil had tied on the back shibori style.  I think we retied the fabric for a second spraying because the first try was too open.  The success does depend largely on the quality of spray bottle - this one was inclined to splutter large drops along with the misty spray but maybe that is what some people might like.  We also sprayed from one angle to try and highlight the folds.  We have shared the two pieces.

Pole wrapped - this had marbles trapped between string at odd intervals

Piece on the left is done. The 3D effect is wonderful - that is a flat piece of fabric!  The piece on the right is ready to go with those self-cover buttons tied inside.

After this we had a session with my old, very out of date kit of blueprint fabrics (1993?).  The top two are with lace laid over and the bottom left has buttons and the bottom right feathers. Had this been a fresh kit the results would have been much, much crisper with more white/blue contrast.  I had previously made one with a freezer paper stencil with cut out letters ironed in position.  Interestingly the letters were printed out as solid black letters in a Word document and the black ink has increased the resistance to the sunlight.

Blueprint fabric squares

Lastly we tried a bit of foiling using 606 spray fusitive.  This is a sister to 505, the basting spray, and is the glue without the paper.  It worked with the usual foils that are around but it also worked with gold leaf - the kind I'm told you can buy in Chinese food shops.  It didn't work with faux gold leaf that I bought in the local craft shop as it is a sheet and tears rather than disintegrates - if you know what I mean.

Various experiments with 606 and foiling

I wish we had had more time to fine tune this, but it definitely has potential both used through a stencil and as a blast/puff for a misty effect.

Well, that's it folks - hope you enjoyed what we got up to and are inspired to try one or two of these techniques.  Blue print packs can still be bought (Dharma have them) but if you are brave the formula is available on line and you can prepare your own fabric (any colour) or clothing, etc.

Hilary

Congrats to Helena

Congrats to Helena who has two quilts in the O Canada exhibition at Houston.  Well done, Helena.

http://tinyurl.com/3s388dk

Helena's quilts are in the bottom row of the little thumbnails, 3rd an 4th from the lef.

Hilary

Cyanotype shadow

I thought you might like to see the image left on the carrying paper showing the ink that bled through the Lutrador. I love the spidery effect and will use this image at some point in the future. And yes the tall lanky girl with the plaits is me!

Message from Scotland

Helena has e-mailed me from Scotland. She is unable to post or comment on our blog, but she wants to let everyone know how much she loved seeing all the Fragments pieces. She sends her congratulations to everyone.

Butterfly Effect - Fragments

Apologies to all - I had every good intention of posting my Fragments piece yesterday sometime. I only arrived back from the UK yesterday morning and then all the wheels fell off and was unable to put up my piece. Anyway here it is now. I decided to make this into a bit of a fairy story incorporating the Butterfly effect / Chaos Theory for a bit of fun!

"Once upon a time there was a beautiful golden butterfly that lived in the Amazon Jungle. It's wings were covered with the most wonderful colours. One day it flapped it's wings and all the colours flew off into the Universe creating Chaos (Chaos Theory)"