Seminole Strips

Prickly Piecers, a chapter of the AZ Quilters Guild, runs on a fiscal year. We are at the end of the 2013/2014 year. A new board will take over in July. But before that happens, the members make blocks for a quilt top for the outgoing president as a thank you for their year of service. These blocks are presented to the outgoing president at the June meeting (the final month of service for the outgoing president). This year, our pres-elect chose Seminole strips, rather than a more traditional block. 

I ended up with 2 packages of strips, which allowed me to create 3 strip sets. The fabrics are a white tone-on-tone, a solid black, a mottled rust print with gold flecks, and a turquoise fabric with flecks of gold. (The middle photo shows the white tone-on-tone fabric as blue. It looked white before I re-sized it for uploading to the blog - not sure why this affected the color so much.)

These are the three Seminole strips I pieced. The top strip with the four-patch set on point was fairly easy once I realized I needed to make the white and rust strips narrower than they were originally cut. It's my favorite of the three. The chevrons used more fabric, so the strip ended up being much shorter than the other two. After creating these two strips, I had two strips leftover. I couldn't think of anything else to do with them, except a simple checkerboard!  Thanks, Terry, for coming up with something different for the President's Quilt!  Theresa should have a fun, interesting quilt when she puts everybody's strips together! Thank you, Theresa, for serving as president this year!

Week 16 of 365 Days of Art Challenge

This week has just flown by. Week 16 of the 364 Days of Art Challenge! Wow! Where has the time gone?!

Create Mixed-Media announced the winners today of the Zen Doodle: Oodles of Doodles challenge. I am

Zen Doodles Oodles of Doodles challenge

one of the winners!!! Whoo-hoo!!

I posted last week when I received the email about being one of the winners and which Zentangles were accepted. (See post from Fri, April 18.here.)  I've been busy drawing my step-outs for each Zentangle that was accepted. However, I can't show these just yet.  You'll just have to wait for the book to be published to see my sketches for Week 16! F&W Media is planning a Dec 2014 publish date. Thank you for your understanding and support! (especially my husband - he's been having to cook this week! Lol!)

The editor also asked me to send a few more photos of my Zentangles. I like Traci Bautista's glamour girls and had to try a couple. This is one I sent. The others have been posted already.   

Glamour Girl, 6" x 6" Zentangle-Inspired Art on mixed-media paper
with 0.005, 0.01, 0.05 Sakura black pen and pencil. 

I also quilted some this week. I've been working on a charm square challenge issued by the President's of the Prickly Piecer's quilt guild chapter I belong to. I found a modern quilt pattern that I really like called Shine Through by Zen Chic's Brigitte Heitland. I chose Kaffe Fassett fabrics for the charm pack and a solid red background with a solid purple backing fabric. I plan to also use the purple fabric to add a piping to the binding.  I'm ready to start quilting, but not sure how I want to quilt it yet.

My version of Shine Through, 83" x 64".

Book Club: Mixed-Media Self-Portraits by Cate Coulacos Prato

Deb Prewitt of Blue Twig Studios started a book club in Jan. It meets at her shop on the 4^th Friday of the month, followed by an online discussion with those of us that do not live close enough to go to her shop in Colorado.

Mixed-Media Self-Portraits
by Cate Caulacos Prato.

For February, we started reading Mixed-Media Self-Portraits:Inspiration and Techniques by Cate Caulacos Prato. 

Some of the questions addressed are:  Make a self-portrait? Scrutinize myself? Re-create all my flaws in paint, collage, or fabric? Does the self-portrait have to be me?  Do I have to show my face? My body? Can I reveal myself in some way other than a physical representation? Children do this easily with innocence and pride. They are eager to show us their drawings with smiling faces, or red, angry faces, or fat bodies or thin bodies. They draw what they feel so honestly and without embarrassment. Why is it so hard for us (me)?

Many famous artists drew self-portraits. The ones we’re probably most familiar with are Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, and Rembrandt Van Rijn.  

            Berthe Morisot said “It is important to express oneself…

     provided the feelings are real and taken from your own experience.” 

            Henry David Thoreau said “I should not talk so much about myself if there    

          were anybody else whom I knew so well.”

Self-portraits tell a story. They tell who we are at that moment in time,  what past experiences have shaped us into who we are now, and/or who we would like to become, etc. They can be whimsical; serious; therapeutic.

The main thing I took away from this first chapter is to learn to be myself – accept who I am, where I am, and just be creative – just paint/draw/write/journal…..  Recapture that joy of drawing we had as children. Just do it!

Last year, my quilt guild (the Prickly Piecers) did a self-portrait challenge. Approximately 40% of the members participated. One member did a triangular shaped profile with leaves and flowers to for eyes, nose, and mouth and an abundance of flora for her hair. She had been a landscape artist in a previous life and is now an art quilter, so she combined the two. Another did a whimsical green witch – she is 80 years old and figured at her age, she could do what she wanted. A few members took a photo of themselves and used the posterize filter with 4-5 values in Photoshop to create a portrait in fabric. One even won a Judge's Choice Award at a quilt show with his! Another member did several story blocks with each block telling of a milestone in her life, such as birth, childhood, marriage, motherhood, career, and retirement, and now artist. Another member created a map with all the places she has lived in her life that have made her who she is today and added brooches and pins that had meaning from each place she lived.  Another person created a very dark quilt, representing a dark tunnel, to a door in the center that opened to light.  A dragon led a wagon with a book in it along a path through the tunnel heading to the door. She is the dragon (as she loves dragons) and has been in a very dark place the last couple years of her life, but sees the light at the end of the tunnel. The book contained memories of her life that have kept her sane through the dark tunnel. This quilt was the most touching of the quilts.

I painted a wholecloth quilt using a photo from when I was in my 30s (as I feel that age mentally, but I'm actually in my 50's ...physically, some days it's closer to 90ish! LOL!). I drew Zentangles in my multi-colored hair (actually black with a few well-earned gray strands) to stand for my creativity and artistry. I painted a small dragon in the air above my head, as I love dragons and think of them as benevolent, wise creatures. I added a necklace with a dragon pendant, too.  (You can see the whole process on my blog here.)

"Me, Myself, and I" - 16" x 20" whole cloth painted quilt
designed and quilted by Lynnita Knoch

It was hard to get started, but once I did, I enjoyed it immensely. Everyone who participated in the challenge had fun creating their self-portrait. They all said the hard part was getting started. The other hard part was sharing it in front of everyone.

I think doing a self-portrait is definitely worth the time and effort to do. I will continue to create self-portraits (now that I have done one and the earth didn’t stop or fall apart!) periodically to show where I’m at in my life at the time. 

Go make a self-portrait!!

Quilts and Tote Bags for Prickly Piecers Quilt Guild

I belong to the Prickly Piecers Quilt Guild, a chapter of the Arizona Quilters Guild. I helped deliver 24 charity quilts made for children in the hospital to Cardon's Children's Hospital along with fellow member, Cathy Means. We have fun making these quilts for the children using novelty fabric, holiday fabric, and just other bright colored fabrics. Hopefully, these will help comfort the children and their parents.

The old entrance to the children's hospital has cows at the entrance.
Can you tell I went to the wrong entrance to start off?

Talking with staff from Cardon's Children's Hospital. The quilts are sitting on the counter.

Cathy and Lynnita on the left with quilts for the children. The staff
members on the right with more quilts for the children.

Prickly Piecer members also sewed tote bags for the Chandler Police Department's Victim Services. Katie Cain was very appreciate of the 2 dozen tote bags we donated to them.

Katie Cain and Lynnita with the tote bags for Victim Services.

Drawing for Prickly Piecer's Opportunity Quilt

After several outings with the our opportunity quilt, Prickly Piecer's finally held our drawing. We raised almost $1500 with this quilt! The board members met for dinner at Macayo's. After an enjoyable meal, we settled down to business and drew the name for the winner of our opportunity quilt. Andrew Garva won the quilt. He had bought his winning ticket at the Mesa Arts Festival in Dec. He was thrilled to win the quilt, as his sister is a quilter and he understands what goes into making a quilt.

Roberta, Cathy, and I met him in the lobby at Cathy's workplace. He was excited to pick up the quilt. He plans to use it himself. He hadn't decided whether to put the queen size quilt on his bed or to hang it on the wall. He is a proud owner!!

Andrew Garva, the proud owner of his new quilt,
held here with Lynnita Knoch.

Queen-size (94" x 94") Opportunity Quilt

Self-Portrait Challenge - Who Am I?

The quilt guild I belong to, the Prickly Piecers, which is a chapter of the Arizona Quilter's Guild, had a challenge this fall to do a self-portrait quilt.

Make a self portrait? Scrutinize myself in the mirror? Face all my flaws and re-create them in fabric? This is nuts!! Although this quilt is to describe who I am, it does NOT have to be a face or a person. My self portrait can be whimsical or unrealistic.

As children, our first drawings are usually of ourselves. That young child flourishes within us still. This challenge is supposed to help me find it and bring it out for all to see. Can I portray my inner self? What makes me who I am? Am I emotional? - I could make an abstract quilt with various colors and images that describe my emotions (happiness, joy, outgoing, introverted, anger, uncertainty, confidence, etc.).  Animal lover? - I could have images of all the animals I love on my quilt. Grandparent? - I could have images of my grand kids and things I do with the. Hmmmm..... Lots of things to thing about. But I need to keep a sense of humor while making this quilt and have fun with it!!!

The rules say the quilt must be at least 6" x 6" and no larger than 36" x 36". The quilt must be about me - who I am. I must use at least one new technique in creating this quilt. My label needs to explain how this quilt describes me and what new technique I used. Lastly, the quilt must be quilted, bound, and labeled by our holiday part on Dec 20.

After much thought and searching through photographs, I found a group of glamour portraits I had taken for my husband for our 15th wedding anniversary when I was in my mid-30s. I decided to create in fabric one of these.

Glamour Portrait for our 15th wedding anniversary

I decided to paint my portrait, using watercolor paints and watercolor pencils, on white muslin fabric. I had decided to draw "tangles" in my hair. Tangles are the individual patterns used in Zentangles, which I love to do. If I painted my hair black, then I would need to use white paint for the tangles to show up. This would make me look like I had "salt and pepper" hair. I'm not gray, yet, although my kids have sure put a few gray hairs on my head!! I decided to have fun and use several bright colors for my hair. This would allow the "tangles" to show.

Painted portrait with wild, bright-colored hair.

I used a 0.1 Micron Sakura pen to draw in the "tangles" for my hair. After dividing the hair into flowing sections, I chose several tangles. I used Celtic, Chainging, Echoism,  Featherfall, Finery, Knightsbridge, Linq, Mooka, Mumsy, Onamato, Opus, Organza, and Purk to name just a few.

Beginnings of "tangling".

I continued to add "tangles". I added quilting feathers, Btl Joos, Fescu, Gust, Mehndi designs, Nebel, Pebbles, Rain, and Rick's Paradox, plus a variety of others.

Tangling is finished. 

I quilted the top, outlining the details of the face with 100 wt. Invisafil poly-thread that matched the color of the facial features. I used black Bottom Line thread, a 70 wt. poly-thread, to quilt between each different "tangle" in the hair. I added "wind" to the blue background. Lastly, I added a dragon in the upper-left corner, as I love dragons. I collect dragon statuettes, as well as, read most any fantasy novel that includes dragons. So my self-portrait had to include a dragon.

Quilting is complete. 

The quilt looks finished. I added black, glass beads and a silver dragon pendant for a necklace.  Something is not quite right. The dragon doesn't stand out and the bodice area is drawing in a bit. Therefore, I painted the dragon with Derwent watercolor pencils. I used a green, with a bit of blue and indigo for shading. That helped him stand out! I found some transparent, lacy, light turquoise ribbon to add to the bodice to make it look like I'm wearing a jacket. I quilted the ribbon on with matching thread. Then I added more strands of loose hair at the shoulders to finish the top of the ribbon. Now it looks finished. I bound the quilt using a facing technique and added a label that I printed on fabric. It includes a copy of the photo I used for the self-portrait quilt.

" Me, Myself, and I"
completed self-portrait quilt

My completed quilt is 12" x 16".  I still see myself as being in my mid-30's, even though my body is definitely telling my I must be about 100 years old! The Zentangles on fabric are my new technique and represent the artist in me. The dragon, of course, is about my love of dragons, reading, and fantasy novels.

This was a fun challenge and not as overwhelming as it seemed at first, once I got started. The other members of the guild created wonderful self-portraits, too. A couple put their portraits in Photoshop, using the posterize filter to create 4-5 values. They use 4-5 fabrics in the values shown in Photoshop to create their portraits. They came out great! A couple people made whimsical portraits - one was a funny witch, another showed her eyes, nose and mouth in a triangular shape with floral appliques. How creative and fun! A few people used events in their lives to describe themselves. We had 3 winners for the most whimsical, for the one that described the person the best, and for a judge's choice (the chapter chair chose this one).

  . 

Opportunity Quilt for Prickly Piecers

Prickly Piecer's Opportunity Quilt - 94" x 94"
Judy Niemeyer's Misty Mountain Pond pattern
Quilted by Nancy Walker

I helped coordinate my guild chapter's, Prickly Piecer's, opportunity quilt this year. We use the opportunity quilt to raise money for our charity efforts, which includes making quilts for the children at Cardon's Children's Hospital and tote bags for DPS and CPS to use for children's belongings when necessary.

We chose a Judy Niemeyer pattern,  Misty Mountain Pond quilt. Several members helped with all the paper piecing and putting together the blocks. I assembled the quilt and added piping between the center and spiky outer border and also in the binding. It was a difficult quilt to make, but everyone rose to the challenge and helped out!  Nancy Walker quilted it for us.

We used 32 colors of the rainbow for the flying geese circles and 20 colors of the rainbow for the center stars. We also used these 32 colors in the hand-appliqued cattails and leaves in the four corners.
Five different grays ranged from a dark gray at the center to the lightest gray in the spiked border. The quilt fits a queen-size bed at 94" x 94" in size or can be hung on the wall.

Tickets for this quilt are $1 each or 6 tickets for $5. We will be selling opportunities until our drawing after the AQG (Arizona Quilter's Guild) Spring Meeting, April 13, 2013. Our first showing of this quilt was at the AQG Fall Meeting, Oct 6, 2012. It was well received.

Detail of the needle-turned appliqued cattails and leaves
in the four corners of the quilt. Also details the piping
between the center design and the spiked border.

Detail of the piping and spiky border, as well as the piping binding.

Detail of the stars and flying geese center design. 

Timeless Treasure and AQG Challenge

The Arizona Quilter's Guild (AQG) and Timeless Treasure Fabric Company issued a challenge to the AQG members. Timeless Treasure donated four batik fabrics to each participant to create a 24" x 24" quilt. Only these four batik fabrics could be used for the front and back of the quilt. Then the quilt was to be embellished as much as possible.  We were given 60 days to complete the quilt. 

The four batik fabrics were a yellow polka dots, a yellow with blue pumpkin seed design, a green vine print, and a blue floral print.  What in the world do I do with these? All four fabric were similar in value, so to me, they just seemed to have no life when put together. I searched and searched for inspiration. Finally, I found a peacock design in a copyright-free book by Dover Publications. 

I used raw-edge applique to create the peacock and fused the fabrics to a piece of white muslin. I painted some of the fabrics with Claudia Helmuth's textile paints to create a greater range of values in the fabrics. To add more depth and color, I added a polka-dotted tulle for embellishment to the tail feathers of the peacock. I then layered the quilt sandwich with Timtex for the batting, as I wanted to cut out the fabric around the legs. Therefore, I needed a very stiff batting to keep the quilt from collapsing when it was hung. After free-motion quilting the quilt,  I cut out the fabric around the legs. I finished the quilt with facing around the cut-out areas and decided to cut around the tail feathers to keep the design, rather than squaring up the quilt. It measures 24" at its maximum height and 24" at its maximum width. 

After finishing the quilting,  I further embellished the peacock with beads (from seed beads to cylinders to bi-cones to ovals to nuggets), hot-fix crystals, sequins, wirelace, and yarns. I wasn't sure I was going to finish everything in time. It was a fun quilt to make, pushing my creativity to the max!  I hand-delivered my quilt, "O' Peacock", to the AQG office the morning of the final day to enter a quilt. Whew! Just made it!

The winners were announced in Spring 2012. Quilts were displayed at AZ Quilters Guild Annual Spring Show in 2012. I was surprised to learn I was the Grand Prized Winner!!! What an honor!!! 

O'Peacock: 24" x 24" cotton, tulle, textile paints, beads,
crystals, sequins, wirelace and yarn.

Paint Chip Challenge

I am a member of the Prickly Piecers quilt guild, a chapter of the Arizona Quilters Guild (AQG). Our program chair issued a paint chip challenge to the members of the Prickly Piecers. We were to find paint chips that started with our initials. For example, if your initials are ABC - then you needed to find paint colors that started with the letter A, the letter B, and the letter C (i.e. Asparagus, Blue, and Cream).  You could only use one color for each initial and add one other color, so four colors total for your quilt.

My initials are LKK. I found many colors for L. But K!!  I could only find 5 paint chips from all the brands of paint in 3 different stores that started with the letter K!! I have 2 K's!! What a dilemma! I finally settled on a sage (Khaki Sage), a purple (Kalamata Olive), and an pinkish shade (Lovelace).  I found a mottled sage fabric, a dark purple floral fabric, and a polka-dotted batik pinkish fabric that matched the colors of my paint chips well.  The polka-dotted batik was the only fabric that matched my "Lovelace" paint chip - after searching about half a dozen local quilt stores for something a "Lovelace" shade!! For my one other fabric that we could add, I found a beautiful stripe that included all three of these shades.

I found a portrait image from a copyright-free Art Nouveau book from Dover Publishers. I love Art Nouveau designs and I enjoy drawing and painting portraits, so I thought this image would make a beautiful quilt. Also, it was a circular design, which I thought would be unique. The sage color would work for the background pieces, the edges of the hair clips, and the whites of the eyes. The dark purple shade would make great tresses of the hair, the eye brows, and the pupils of the eyes. That left the polka-dotted pinkish shade for the flesh of the neck and face. Did she have measles or chickenpox? How was I going to make this fabric work. I ended up cutting around the polka-dots (to avoid measles or chickenpox) and created a mod-podge of the "Lovelace" fabric to create the face and neck.
The striped fabric with all the colors was used to delineate the hair tresses, and for the binding. The quilt is raw-edge appliqued and I free-motion quilted it. I embellished the hair clips with beads, spangles, and feathers from my pet chicken.

I won first place for our guild's paint chip challenge! I entered this quilt "Mystic Woman" in the Annual AQG Spring Quilt Show of 2012, where I won first place in the Small Quilt, Applique Category. I was delighted when I found out.