She Blinded Me With Science

Sheila Rae chose our theme for this month. "She Blinded Me With Science" is a "one hit wonder" song by British musician Thomas Dolby released in 1982. Those of us of a certain age remember it well. 

Sheila Rae: "Bubble Chamber"
A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. I love science and quantum mechanics. This piece is my interpretation of a bubble chamber. In the bubble chamber you never know what you are going to get and everything is connected.
This piece started with a large, old crazy quilt given to me. I added lots of hand stitching and a layer of pink tulle. Then the real fun began with the addition of all kinds of embellishment from sea horses to an old bubble wand. Lots to look at and hold the viewer's attention.

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Cathey: I actually made 2 pieces. This first piece is "Sunflower Trio"

The greenery in this piece is made from a heavy upholstery piece. The flower petals are cut free hand. As usual, I quilted the *!? out of it!

My second piece is a large leaf. I used various batiks and other fabrics for the main leaf areas and puff paint un-puffed but glitzed with pearl-ex for the veins. 

Melanie: "Macrobiotic"
This is a piece of my hand marbled fabric. It looked so organic and cellular that I thought it was perfect for a scientific challenge. I enhanced the hand marbling with fabric foil and a little Shiva Paintstick.

Joan and Marcia ran out of time and were unable to complete their pieces. 
Hope and Pat are away. Summer!

Sacred

Our inspiration word for July was "sacred."

Marcia - I did not finish my piece. I was a bit frustrated in the beginning. I wanted to do a piece based on my church. I started by trying to take a photo but the church is tall and I could not get the entire building including the steeple unless I was quite far away. Then I had hills and angles to cope with. Finally I got the best pictures I could and used them to make applique shapes. I think I did the steeple about 6 times over before I was happy with it. I want to do some more work on the granite steps. Stay tuned for a picture of the finished piece.

Joan- I have always been drawn to vintage religious medals; especially if they include the madonna. I love the image of this French madonna and child. I printed the image of the medal on to fabric and appliqued it into the middle of this piece of fabric I have had for a long time. The fabric has Latin text on it and seemed to fit with the image.  It still need to be quilted.

Melanie - This piece combines several sacred symbols. The background was created with soywax batik on linen. The resulting luminous colors are reminiscent of a stained glass window.

The tree is an interpretation of the “tree of life,” a common motif in various world theologies, mythologies, and philosophies. It alludes to the interconnection of all life on our planet. The term “tree of life,” is also used as a synonym for sacred tree.

In this piece, the tree of life is created with yarn “couched” on to the fabric with a small zig zag stitch.

The Spiral, is the oldest symbol known to be used in spiritual practices.It reflects the universal pattern of growth and evolution. It represents the goddess, the womb, fertility and life force energy.

The roots and branches of the tree in this piece terminate in spirals. The background quilting also incorporates spirals.

This is a scared geometry symbol for the center of the Flower of Life, a sacred blueprint of all creation. The pattern appears in most early religious traditions in the Middle East. The overlapping circles represent the omniscience of Creation honoring the infinite connections of all life circles. The Seed of Life also represents acceptance for all beings, all cultures, all beliefs and resonates tolerance and infinite energy for all beings.

In this piece, the “Flower of Life” is overlayed in gold on the “Tree of Life” enhancing the sacred symbolism.

Cathey - This piece uses Tibetan prayer flags to represent sacred. The background is collage pieced to represent the Himalayan Mountains. I used several different fabric types for the background including poly with burned edges. I sprayed "radiant rain" on the mountain top snows. The prayer flags are loose on the piece and provide dimension.

Hope - I had a piece of fabric that I batiked with soy wax and dye. It had some beautiful light areas that reminded me of a stained glass window. There is also a line through the piece that suggests a cross. I added an "arch" in the finishing to enhance the stained glass window effect.

Sheila - This piece is "Krishna." In it  I used hand painted silk, sari silk waste and lots of beading and stitching, As always, everything was done by hand. The backing is peacock fabric because peacocks are sacred Krishna symbols.

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Here are some additional pieces of mine.

 

Solar Sister Exhibit Opening in Geneva

Melanie and Joan created a quilt that was accepted for the "Solar Sister" project sponsored by Quilt for Change. 

Solar Sister: Empowering Women through Clean Energy.”  “Solar Sister” will go on display at the United Nation’s European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the Palais des Nations, starting Thursday, June 27, and running through most of July.

CLICK HERE TO SEE A VIDEO OF THE GENEVA OPENING

Quilt for Change raises awareness on global issues that affect women and empowers North American quilters to become agents for social change. Working with the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva and partner organizations we create themed quilt challenge exhibitions which are displayed at the United Nations and tour major quilt festivals in the United States. The exhibitions are a forum for fiber artists not only from the U.S. and Canada but also around the world.  

Solar Sister highlights the terrific work of Rhode Island-based non-profit Solar Sister, which started out working in Uganda and now is in five other countries in Africa (Rwanda, South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria).  Solar Sister provides the funding and a business-in-a-box model to outfit Solar Sister Entrepreneurs to sell solar-based products in their communities.  Solar Sisters re-pay their micro-loans and re-stock their inventories using the proceeds of sales to their friends and neighbors, and Solar Sister reinvests the original funds (obtained through donations and grants from individuals, companies and foundations) in new Entrepreneurs in order to grow a network of empowered small businesswomen.  The products sold are all solar-based and designed to provide light and power to improve daily life and productivity.  Using Solar Sister products, a family can now cook meals in a more efficient and cleaner way, cutting down on indoor air pollution and associated health problems; children can study at night and achieve more at school; mothers can limit the time they spend away from home seeking firewood or walking to a facility with electricity so that they can work; and families can be in phone contact with neighbors, family and the outside world.

Passages

For May, the group decided to do a project based on the Quilting Arts reader challenge, "Passages." Here are our results.

Melanie: Since this project was around the anniversary of the Titanic sinking, that was on my mind. I call this first piece "Passage Interrupted." I used walnut ink, scrunched the fabric and let it try to create a distressed parchment look, then printed the pass on to the fabric with my printer. I stitched it to allow the edges to curl up adding to the distressed look. The ocean is made of silk pole shibori. The whitecaps are French knots and white beads.

I did a second piece because I could not get "Secret Passages"out of my mind. I washed some blue and yellow transparent fabric paint over a scrap piece of fabric with some markings on it. I then screened on 3 images of a stone entrance. I quilted a figure into each entryway and added some ravens in flight. A little hand stitching for texture finished it off. 

Hope:  I wanted to make a piece to represent my recent "passage" into retirement. I thought of me on my bicycle riding free. The first piece I made was of the rider cycling through a town. I was not totally happy with it because it seemed too stiff. I made a second piece using a piece of earth oxide dyed fabric for the background. This piece leaves more to the imagination and I am much happier with it. The group pointed out that the rider in the second piece is going downhill. An unconscious metaphor for the sense of freedom I felt with the second piece. So here is my bicycle "series."

Cathey: I took a fairly literal approach to this project and made a doorway. By now everyone knows how I love working with lots of different media. I made an urn using puff paint. I glazed and painted it and sewed it on to the background. The urn is filled with flowers made from a product called "flower soft." Glue, stitching and solvy helped me get the flower soft onto the fabric. The door is made from scrapbooking paper. The stone archway of the door was quilted first, then painted. I added some Golden Pumice Gel to the paint and painted the stones. It really gave them a great texture.  I quilted the background fabric in large rectangles to make it look like blocks of marble. 

Joan: For the first weeks of the challenge, I kept thinking about how I could represent my mom's passing. I could not get it right in my head so I looked up "passage" in the dictionary for a little inspiration. One definition talked about stages. That made me think of cicadas. They have been in the news because this is their year! I used a piece of fabric that I had experimented with. It has paint, bubbles and sunprinting on it. Perfect. I sketched a cicada on the fabric, them enhanced it with markers. I used some crayons to darken the upper body and make the wing stand out. I heard someone say that their cycle is "Sing, Fly, Mate and Die" and had to incorporate that phrase.

Marcia: I had a hard time with this one. I finally decided on the passage of night into day. The 9 dark pieces on the left  represent 9 hours of night. The right side of the piece has 15 pieces of lighter fabric representing 15 hours of daylight. This was the split at the time I made the piece. The fabrics are silk, sari silk waste, velvet, leather, hand dyed cotton and other commercial. I embellished with hand stitching, beads and buttons.  I especially like the little spring rabbit button in the lower right corner.

Sheila Rae: I made this piece from a quilt block symbolizing "safe passage" on the underground railroad. Since that was a story of blacks and slavery, I used African fabrics. The background is a yellow hand dye. All the stitching was done by hand and some of the thread used is fly tying thread. I embellished the piece with shells, hand embroidery and buttons. 

Fire and/or Ice

FIRE and/or ICE was our topic for April.

Pat: Campfire
This campfire has logs made from leather and flames made from silk, sparkly sequin fabric and thread. Some escaped embers float above the fire. They were made from tiny pieces of the sequin fabric. The blue background and the blue "ice cubes" under the fire represent ice.

 

I also brought a more traditional piece I made a while back. It is call "Rings of Fire." The double wedding rings are made of scraps from classes I taught. Colors are perfect for fire and ice and the quilting has a flame motif.

Cathey: I used a lot of sari silk waste in my piece. I love that stuff cause it is silk and in this piece, I love the texture it gives the flames. I also used a new fun spray "Tattered Angels" to spray on a glimmer gold background.

 

I also brought a piece from our "time" challenge. I finished Life is Framed by Time with added text and mounted it on a clipboard.

 

 

Joan: I found yet another fun, free app on my ipad. Actually I found two. One lets you paint flames with your finger, the other lets you create snowflakes on a background. I used the snowflake app to create the background of my piece and did some fussy cutting of a painted pole shibori fabric to create the flames.



I also brought a couple of other pieces I recently finished. This one was created from some cotton and organza fabrics I marbled. The organza is overlayed on the cotton. For added interest, I cut away some sections of the organza.

 



This last piece is a landscape made with Earth Oxide painted fabric, silk, synthetic and upholstery fabrics. The bottom 2 sections are upholstery fabric. I used both sides of the fabric then added gold and copper Shiva paintstick highlights to unify them. The Earth Oxides give a soft, earthy color to fabric that is difficult to achieve with other types of paint or dye.

 

 

Hope: Firedancers

When we chose the inspiration for this month, I immediately thought of "fire dancers." I used some of my hand dyed parfait fabric for the background and some ice dyed fabric for the binding. I quilted in flames so the silhouettes are dancing in fire.

 

Last week I was inspired by the new issue of Quilting Arts to try a couple of the techniques in the article on the cup of cappuccino. I created a composition from newspapers and a teacup. I tried painting with tsukineko inks but found it difficult to control the level of color and texture so added water colored pencil and  water soluable crayons to the mix to get closer to what I wanted. I bought some metallic colored pencils but was disappointed that the result did not seem much different from other colored pencils.  I also tried the technique with colored newspaper and gel medium transfer but that did not work for me at all so I abandoned that all together. So.... mixed reviews but always fun to try something new.

 

 

 

Melanie: Forest Fire
I love to create batiked fabric from soy wax mixed with procion mx dyes. The result often looks like a forest of trees. In this piece the batik fabric is used for the background; silk and sari silk pieces make the flames. The entire piece was then covered with red tulle.

Marica: I used silk and a lot of beading to create my fire. I love how the raw edges and threads left uncut create texture and errant threads of flame. There is blue at the base of the fire because the hottest fire burns blue.

 



Sheila Rae: Demerol Dreams 
My dad was a cop. When I was young, he sometimes took me with him on calls. When I was three, he took me to the site of a church on fire. I never forgot that powerful image and I often dream of it - especially if I take pain pills. The center of the piece is a church. The flames were created from fussy cut flame fabric. Religious icons and other ephemera are hand stitched on to the church. I found some birds, painted them black and sewed them into the flames. I seem to remember birds on the scene that night. In the lower left corner is a car representing me waiting for my father in the car, watching the fire.

I was asked to bring a piece I created a while back. It is called "A Tear in the Fabric of Space." I stated with a large piece of wool and asked a friend to literally shoot it full of holes. When I got it back, I washed it. This felted the wool, creating lots of texture around the holes. I then placed the wool over very shiny fabric and sparkly organza. This fabric along with the many beads and sequins represent space and stars.

 

Painted Mandala Challenge

At our February meeting, Pat Ferguson had us create some painted, folded mandalas. We then decided to take inspiration from these for our March challenge. Here are a couple of examples of the painted mandalas:



Sheila Rae: I created a mandala design from vintage pineapple and 9 patch quilt blocks I found at a vintage shop. I embellished the piece with old bone café curtain rings in varying sizes and lots of hand stitching. The title of the piece is "Test Pattern." Anyone around and watching TV in the
50's & 60's will understand the title.

 

Sheila Rae also brought 2 other pieces for show & tell. This first one uses ephemera and images from Cathology and the Virgin Mary. It also celebrates the hand work of women who came before. It may be hard to appreciate from the picture, the incredible amount of handwork including stitching and beading that Sheila has put into this piece. It is something that should be examined in person. Our group spent a good 20-30 minutes taking it all in.

 

 

 

 

After we made Earth Oxide cloth, Sheila took a piece home. She thought it looked like an animal skin so she "mounted" it using African inspired fabric and embellishments. Once again, the hand work on this piece is impressive!

 

Cathey: Since we were to be inspired by painted mandalas, I painted a mandala. Or at least a quarter of one. I used fabric paint and several stamps, both hand made by me and commercial. It is not yet quilted but will be soon.

 

 



Pat: I did not make a quilted piece this month but I plan to decoupage my painted mandalas on to a new sketchbook journal.

 

Joan: I loved the fabric we made a few weeks ago using Earth Oxides. The resulting colors are muted and earthy and fit well into my landscape esthetic. In this piece I created a stitched labyrinth. There is a subtle line of light in the fabric. I positioned the labyrinth so that the entrance is highlighted by this light path. I added bits of Angelina fiber to the surrounding area to simulate mica in the rock formations. Using a long stitch length and variegated thread, I quilted along the lines and texture created by the Earth Oxides on the fabric.

 

Marcia: I was inspired by the colors in one of the painted mandalas. I used several fabrics I got on freecycle. The colors, textures and fabric weights were very diverse and fun to work with. I stitched them into a long shape and embellished with beads, trims etc.

 

Melanie: A couple of weeks ago I took a class with Cindy Needham on quilting with antique linens. I have been collecting linens for a while and decided to start small and experiment with a doily. It was round so I decided it fit the theme for the month. For the first time ever, I did a lot of microquilting to set off the design - trapunto like. Now that was crazy! Once it was quilted, I added some color with colored pencils. Not what I usually like to do for my art quilts but sort of sweet and a nice change.