Unfinished Business

Our challenge for October was to finish a project that has been on the back burner for a while.

Shelia Rae:
I have several things to show because I missed a couple of meetings and re-made a couple of pieces.

Complementary Colors
This is my piece for the complementary colors challenge. I chose orange and blue. It includes many hand sewn embellishments.

Bird is the Word
This incorporates the music and paper challenges. The singing birds are hand stamped. Much of the content for this piece was inspired by my son.

Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House
This is another one inspired by music, "Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House...."
The centerpiece is a painted silk scarf. I added stamped letters, Angelina fiber around the fireplace, and lots of embellishments and hand stitching. The entire piece is covered with yellow tulle.

I Want My Planet Back
Another song. This one sung by the Techno Brothers. It actually glows in the dark. I added rings and hand stitching around the glow-in-the-dark stars. I spray painted the buttons before adding them. It even incorporates a little "string theory."

Dreaming of a Pink Marble Bathroom
This was an older piece that I tore apart and re-made with better workmanship. I started with some orphan blocks made by an unknown woman. I used stamps, pink spray paint and markers to transform it.

I am from Texas where there are many tornadoes. A friend of mine lost her newly purchased home in one of them. It is a tribute to her spirit and optimism that she re-built and when finished told us that she now had the pink marble bathroom she had always dreamed of.

RonJon's Funeral
This is another re-do. It commemorates my brother's funeral. He was a biker and his Harley "brothers" turned out in force for his funeral. The peppermint schnapps bottles along the bottom are a nod to the ones that were tossed back then thrown into his casket as they filed by.

I started with an angel panel, then over-dyed the blue CD fabric. I used glue to attach the CD (Stevie Ray Vaughn, "Double Trouble,"), Harley eagle, bullets, earrings and the Harley Bell. I added some pink glitter over the top then covered it all in organza to help hold it all together.

Pat
This first piece is a Zentangle snowflake I made for the SAQA tree at the New Britain Museum of American Art.

This is my unfinished piece. I started it many years ago in a class with Katie Pasquini Masopust. She is known for "Fractured Landscapes" using value differences to add light in interesting ways. I am glad it is finally finished!

Cathey
I decided to re-interpret an older piece (the first one) of thread painted leaves. The second picture is my new leaves piece made with a Gelli print on ice dyed fabric. I used copper and gold metallic paints over leaf masks.

Hope
This is a fabric collage based on a photo. I started it a couple of years ago in a Pam Mostek class and have been working on it intermittently ever since. I think it is finally coming along.

I also finished a wedding quilt I have been trying to complete for my friends moving from Costa Rica to Colorado. I used colors that reminded me of Colorado.

This is an experimental piece of fabric. I started with black fabric and used Jacquard discharge paste through leaf stencils. Once the color was removed, I ice dyed that fabric. It created a beautiful almost batik effect.

Marcia
This a piece of flowered fabric I had and really liked. I decided to showcase the gloxinia by using heavy beading and stitching embellishment. I framed it and it was on exhibit at a gardening show.

My newly finished piece started life as a watercolor quilt. The technique using tiny squares in a gradation of color to achieve a watercolor effect. I decided it would make a great background for added embellishment. I added yo yo's, ribbon, lace, button and other embellishments to add more interest.

Melanie
Quiet Time I & II
This is a pair of Gelli prints I had for a while. I used heavy quilting to highlight the patterns, bound the pieces in silk and mounted them on painted canvas.

Joan
I started with a piece of fabric I clamped, discharged, and over-dyed in an Elin Noble class. I loved the orange "moons." I added a lot of linear lines stitched with a variety of threads.

Empty Spaces Project

3 of our members - Shelia Rae, Joan & Melanie - are exhibiting at the Empty Spaces Project Gallery in Putnam, CT for the month of October.

Music!

Our challenge this month was to create something inspired by music.

Joan: Blackbird - I listen to Pandora a lot and have been listening to "Blackbird" by the Beatles. I love that song! Recently I was out walking on the Mansfield airport walking path and a beautiful red-winged blackbird landed on one of the fence posts. I was able to get a great photo which I printed on fabric, stitched and framed. I included some of the words to the song on the back of the frame.

Pat: The Sound of the Sea - I do not read or play music but to me, the ocean is music. I made some "silk paper" from silk waste and other fibers. I then mounted it onto a piece of Mickey Lawlor skye dye fabric, added lace for sea foam and a few other embellishments before quilting it all. If you look closely, you can see that I quilted in the words, "The sound of the sea soothes my soul."

Hope: Feel the Music - This piece represents how music makes me feel. When I am listening to music I love, it makes me really happy and I feel that joy with my whole body. The background is a piece of digitally printed fabric I purchased at a recent quilt show. I made the figure from some music fabric that I overdyed orange. The green is raw edge applique. I printed the motifs with a thermofax screen. Other embellishments are stars from Angelina film and fusible thread with foil.

Marcia - Music is not my favorite thing, especially when it is too loud, but for the sake of art I proceeded. I had been wanting to make something with black, white and red so I got my fabric out and got started. Some of the fabric has teapots and sewing machines. Those things sing to me! There is lots of music motif fabric in here too. And then I got to do my favorite thing - embellish with buttons, beads and ribbons! I even found musical beads. The group thought the black and white was inspired by piano keys.

Melanie: Gray Guitar - Music plays a large role in my life. In my house there are more musical instruments than I care to count. One of my favorite fiber art subjects is the guitar. This one was made from a piece of ice dyed fabric with the background discharged then whitewashed around the guitar shape.

Memorial Day Exhibit

The Quiet Corner Art Quilt Group had a show at the Hampton Community Center on Memorial Day 2014!
We had great attendance and made a few new converts to quilts as art.

Opposites Attract

For May, we decided to use the most recent Quilting Art Reader Challenge, "Opposites Attract." The challenge was to make a 9 X 9 inch quilt using mostly complementary colors and the notion of opposites attract.

Melanie - Giraffe Love
I made a Gelli plate print for the background, then painted giraffe over it. I used complimentary colors but reversed them on each giraffe. I think the giraffes here, while opposite in coloring, are clearly attracted to one another. :)

Marcia - Opposites

For my complementary colors, I chose violet and yellow. I used a variety of fabrics and buttons in those colors, then used patterning and stitch to build in several "opposites" eg long & short; plus & minus; horizontal & vertical; straight & curved; dark & light, large & small.

Hope - Painted Fish
I selected orange and blue for my colors and raided my stash for a variety of interesting fabrics in those colors. I thought the marbled fabric worked well for water. His gills are actually dimensional ie not stitched down completely. They move in the wind resembling the movement of fish gills breathing under water.

Shelia Rae - Go Outside and Play

I chose the opposites of playing inside on the computer vs playing outdoors. It is a little difficult to see all the components in this picture but there are computer chips windows and words representing outdoors and indoors. Not sure I got the complementary colors correct but they worked for me. 

I also made a piece called "In an Octopus' Garden." It is pink monochromatic. I used manic panic to dye a lot of the embellishments. There is tulle to hold some of the pieces down and if you look closely you can see little surprises inside the holes in the shells. 

I also brought a piece that I remade after deciding that I could do a better job with the finishing. Here is the revised "Whatever Happened to Mary."

I missed the last couple of meetings but did make the projects. My "Pat Ferguson fun fabric" challenge piece can be seen in the April blog entry and my "Green Paper" piece has been added to March.

Joan

I did not make a piece for the challenge topic but brought some things I have been working on. 

This piece is from a photo I took. I created the silhouette of the bird from black fabric, appliqued it to a circle of hand dyed yellow and used a textured black fabric for the background. 

Pat 

I did not make a quilt for the challenge but I brought 3 other pieces.

First is a new zentangle. This one is on a tan colored tile using both black and white markers.

Next is the piece that toured with the Connecticut SAQA exhibit, Local Color. My theme was the Last Green Valley. It is difficult to photograph as it is quite long. Each piece small zentangle quilt represents the forest floor. Those mini quilts are mounted on a long quilt that was quilted in green to represent forest. You can see the quilting better in the close-up shot.

I also made a "10 minute" table runner. This was a fun and really quick project. The center section looks pieced but is actually patterned fabric.