Citra Solv

The challenge for this month was to use Citra Solv in a project.

Marcia: Silk & Citra Solv
I made 2 long wall hangings this month. The read and black one includes a little bird I transferred on to fabric using Citra Solv, the other uses a piece of shibori indigo fabric I hand dyed. Both use silks that I have been collecting for a while now.

Hope: I did not have access to a carbon printer or copy machine so I tried using Citra Solv with National Geographic magazines. I found that technique described on the internet. The result on fabric was not satisfactory. I had some pale coloring but that was all. Guess I will save it and build more surface design over the plae image.
Earlier this month I took a workshop with Jude Larzelere. This was an interesting, new technique. I made the piece with deep jewel colors and some of my Australian fabric.

Joan: Fractals
I did not do the Citra Solv project but I have been experimenting with a couple of techniques. In the yellow/orange piece, I used a piece of ice dyed fabric and quilted a central design inspired from a Dover art book on the sea. I am trying to decide if the light colored thread shows up as much as I would like.

For the blue piece, I printed a fractal (computer designed by Jared Aiden Wolf) on fabric, quilted it, then printed the same fractal on  silk organza and offset overlayed it on the quilted design. It gives it an eerie effect. I can see a person or soul in it.

Here is a second fractal, also computer designed by Jared,

Melanie: "Old Couture"
I used Citra Solv to transfer images of old dress forms on to hand dyed fabric. I then overlayed a flocked netting reminiscent of an old hat veil. I added some old lace, fabric "strings" and old buttons.

Cathey: T-shirt
I decided to decorate a t-shirt with a Citra Solv image. I made this mistake of washing the t-shirt with my husbands laundry that had been pre-treated with Citra Solv to remove some greasy stains. That caused the image to dissolve a little in the wash so I had to re-do it over the faded image.

Exhibit at the Mansfield General Store

Come see our exhibit at the Mansfield General Store through March 2012:
534 Storrs Road 
Mansfield Center, CT 06250

(860) 450-0597

Kaffe Fassett Challenge

For this month's challenge, we used the NBQA fabric challenge. As part of their April 2012 quilt show, NBQA members were offered a fat quarter of a Kaffe Fassett fabric and use it in a quilt, art quilt or wearable. The requirement is that there is some recognizable fabric on the front of the piece.

Cathey: Kaffe Curves 
My piece was inspired by Louisa Smith. This is my second piece using her strata and curved piecing technique. I actually do not like to do curved piecing so I fuse, then topstitch the strata pieces to the whole cloth focus fabric pieces. I used ribbon along the stitching lines to emphasize the intersections and set off the curved strata sections. I also used some silks and my "ice dyed" fabrics in the piece.

Linda: Flowery Tote Bag
I like making things that are useful. I love the unusual design of this bag with the turned down pocket. It has lots of pockets inside and out.

Joan: Circles & Curves
I used bright colors inspired by the fabric, then placed circles of the focus fabric on the colors that I thought would make them "pop." I heavily quilted the piece with curved quilting, following the curved piecing and used accents of "bubble quilting" in some of the centers. In the blues, I used metallic thread for the quilting.

Melanie: There are many paths through the flowers
I loved the bright colors in the focus fabric and wanted to use some of my coordinating hand dyes, silks, satins, and even velvets. I also wanted to try a variety of piecing patterns in an eclectic assortment. I heavily quilted the piece using a variety of free motion patterns.

Marcia: House or Tent?
I used strip piecing to create strata, then cute and assembled the strata. The result looks sort of like 2 level house with an attic, or maybe a circus tent. I am still trying to decide on the name. I used some of my silks along with the focus fabrics and lots of others from my stash.

Pat: Kaffe Extended
I actually made 2 pieces. I was inspired by something I saw a while back. The idea is to cut a  a piece of the focus fabric, and extend the design into the rest of the piece through the quilting. This first piece is named "Ghost Flowers."

The second piece uses more precisely cut motifs from the fabric and building the design out from those pieces. This piece is "Window Boxes."

Joan's "Abstract Landscape" juries in to the Slater Museum Show!

Group member, Joan Johnson's "Abstract Landscape" was juried into the Slater Memorial Museum Annual Artists Exhibition. See the show in person in the Converse Gallery February 26 - March 30, 2012.
Congratulations Joan!

Article in the CT Reminder Newspaper January 2012

Group views the quilt as an art form

By Melanie Savage - Staff Writer
Willimantic - posted Tue., Jan. 17, 2012

When you think of quilting, do you think art? The collection currently on display at the Willimantic Food Co-op is designed to suggest that a quilt can be much more than simply a blanket used to keep one warm at night. The café corner at the Co-op features the work of a different group or artist every month. This month’s featured group is the Quiet Corner Art Quilt Group.

“I think we were on the waiting list for a year before our turn came up,” said group member Joan Johnson.

“We do art quilts,” said member Melanie Johnston. “These are not necessarily quilts that are designed to be put on a bed.” Most of the quilts in the display are rather small, but that’s not always the case. “Just like any other piece of art, they can vary in size,” said Johnston.

Subjects featured in the quilts run the gamut from chickens to abstract landscapes. The group meets monthly, and “There’s an inspiration word or theme every month,” said Johnston. The small black and white cat, for example, was inspired by an “Animals” theme. “That’s my cat,” said Johnson.

The peace sign was inspired by the “Found Objects” theme. It features a tiny, ceramic lamb that Johnston found while her home was undergoing renovations. It also has a story behind it, as do many of the Quiet Corner quilts.

“I was a selectman in Hampton,” said Johnston. A resident who was unhappy with a decision she’d made threw some nails onto her driveway. Johnston incorporated the nails into the fringe of her quilt. The lamb and the nails together inspired the quilt's title: “War and Peace.” The fabrics in the quilt are all hand-dyed, as are most of the fabrics that Johnston uses.

“It’s funny, when we bring them in, they’re all so different,” said Johnson, noting that each group member has her own area of artistic focus. Johnson likes to use photographs printed onto fabric. Another group member likes to embellish with beads and other baubles.

“I’m a technique junkie,” said member Cathey LaBonte. LaBonte has experimented with techniques such as melted wax and fabric paints. “Rogue media is kind of a benchmark of art quilting,” said LaBonte. “Meaning the use of stuff you ordinarily wouldn’t think of using with fabric.” Two of the quilts at the Co-op, for example, feature wine bottle labels. “They’re stitched right onto the fabric,” said Johnson.

What draws the women to quilting? “It’s all about texture,” said Johnston.

“The texture, the colors, everything,” said Johnson. “I just really love it.”

LaBonte, who has dabbled in other art forms, said that art quilting has really engaged her. “I like it because you can combine everything,” she said. “Paint, beads, stitching - you can combine all different kinds of media.”

The work of the Quiet Corner Art Quilt Group can be seen at the Willimantic Food Co-op throughout the month of January. For more information or to see photographs of the quilts, go to http://qcartquilts.blogspot.com/.

Artistic Inspiration

For this month's challenge, we made pieces inspired by a favorite artist.

Kandinsky's Circles: Melanie
I love abstract art and Kandinsky's circle color studies really appealed to me and seemed to lend themselves to a quilted project. I used fabric paint to paint the circles and background on pfd fabric. After heat setting the paint, I quilted the circle rings using the appopriate color thread for each color.

Escher: Pat Ferguson
Last spring, I attended an Escher exhibit and really fell in love with the way he uses dimension and perspective. I try to incorporate these techniques in my zentangles and zen quilting. I hope you can see it in my sketchbook pages and in the design I used on this wooden snowflake.

Kandinsky: Joan
I also chose Kandinsky. I almost did the circles but decided instead on this gradient color study.  I used some of my hand dyed indigo shibori fabric, some other hand dyes and a variety of  additional fabrics I had in my stash. If you study the painting, part of it looks a little muted. I used white tulle to simulate that muted effect. Here are pictures of the original, my piece in progress and my piece with the tulle overlay.

Sadler: Cathey
My artist was Sean Sadler. His piece, "Magic I" grabbed me because it had my favorite fall color palette. I changed some of the colors and bumped up the saturation. I started with a yellow silk base and used a wide variety of fabrics including organza, painted wonder under, ribbon, cottons and added foil and pearl-ex. I used misty fuse to tack down the fabrics. I did not quilt it *yet* because I was worried that it might detract from the sheer qualities of some of the fabrics. I am still thinking about this. Below is Sadler's original and my fabric interpretation.

Impressionism: Marcia
My love the impressionistic style. I used Claude Monet's art work as inspiration to create the apple tree near water. I used "snippets" from some old scraps I saved and my hand dyed indigo shibori. Chenile yarn was used for the tree trunk and more yarns for the haystacks. I put a layer of tulle over the entire piece to secure all the smaller pieces and add to the impressionistic feel.

I also brought along a zen quilt I recently completed. I stared it in one of Pat's classes. I added some red beads to contrast with the black & white. Can you see my initial  "K" in the piece?

Jackson Pollock: Linda
When I think of Jackson Pollock, I think random, bold color! I had a lot of fabrics with bold colors and prints ala Pollock and wanted to try a new technique, "jelly roll race." In this technique, you sew strips end to end then connect and seam till you end up with an interesting pattern. I like to make things that are useful so I made a black and white one into a pad pouch and embroidered it with my initials. I am still deciding what to do with my colorful Jackson Pollack piece.

Silk

This month's theme is "SILK." We all love the luminous quality of silk and the iridescence of silks that are woven with 2 colors.

Silken Landscape: Melanie
I printed miniature landscapes on silk organza and placed them on pieces of colored silk. These were then placed on a collaged background of hand-dyed and purchased silk pieces in colors of the fields and greenery. I used Shiva Paint sticks to create copper and gold swirls on the pale green silk. The quilting was done with silk thread. Sections are quilted differently, inspired by the silk behind the quilting.

Landscape: Joan
Lately I have been enjoying making landscape inspired collages. Working with silk made this one even more fun than usual. I used satin stitching in a varying width across the top section to add texture. The second layer is from a decadent fabric I purchased at MOOD in NYC. The 3rd layer is upholstery fabric - the "wrong" side, and the bottom layer, an iridescent silk. I have been buying frames when I see them on sale and decided to try some of my art quilts in art frames.

Contemplating Klee: Joan

In this piece, I printed a photo on silk of a painting by Paul Klee. My printer is not quite working correctly so the right side of the piece is actually printed on paper that I applied to the fabric with Textile Medium. I think it added a nice variation on texture and color. The lines are quilted in black, then echo quilted again in yellow, emulating the yellow surrounding the black lines in the actual painting. I used another frame - this time a clear plexiglass, to display this piece.

Silk Encaustic Collage: Mary
I was inspired by the Lines & Curves quilt Cathey was working on last month. I stated with creamy colored silk. I spread some aluminum foil on a warming tray, rubbed it with some crayons and let the crayon wax melt on the foil. I then used the melty, waxy foil as a monoprint and pressed the fabric into it. To remove the wax, I ironed the fabric between layers of printer paper till the wax came off on to the paper, leaving only color behind. I decided I liked the back side of the resulting fabric best and worked on that side to finish the piece. I made French seamed pleats, top stitched them and then couched some sparkly yarn across horizontally. I decided to call this technique "Encaustic Textile Monoprinting."

Tree Skirt: Cathey
In keeping with the season I decided to make a tree skirt for my miniature "snow & ice" themed tree. I started with white silk, used glue and foil to create the silvery snowflakes, then put some Ricky Times "Razzle Dazzle" thread in my bobbin and stitched around the edge. I finished up with beading to set off the sparkly thread.

Pussy Willow Silk Collage: Marcia
I did not have a chance to finish this piece yet but my idea was to use some of may favorite silk remnants in a collaged composition. I think the pattern on the larger piece on the right looks like pussy willows. I especially like the frayed edges. The texture and color of silk when it frays is luscious.