How Is Everyone Doing?

I just wanted to touch base with all of you and let you know that despite being stir crazy Cindy and I are both fine. I have been sewing and was looking forward to a thickened dye class at Praxis but it was canceled at the last minute. Cindy has been working on an altered book filled with great sewing stuff and is having fun doing it.

I know that this group that we have will survive all this virus stuff and will pass the time with lots of creative sewing. I have lots of ideas forming in my head and have been working on a few of them.

I can’t wait to see our Show and Tell when we meet again (Maybe in May if all goes well).  In the mean time keep sewing, painting, creating and staying well.

April Meeting

Our April meeting began our 6th year as a group. Starting this group was a goal for me when I moved from California to Ohio. I have enjoyed every year with all of the wonderful women I have met during that time and look forward to another year of friendship and fun.

We shared our animal mash-ups with each other and as always I am amazed by what everyone comes up with. We also talked about some future challenges for the next few months. As always with our challenges you can join in or not but be sure to see the reveals.

For May we are using a saying or quote as our inspiration. It doesn’t have to be a famous quote; you can even make up one of your own sayings.

For the month of June we are focusing our creativity on Endangered Species. Since the UN published it’s new report this week that there will be 1 Million endangered species due to man’s hand in the next few years it seem to be an important topic.  We are trying to not do

the same ones so here is the list so far:

Sharon Markovic – Pangolin

Merran Phillips – Insects

Betty Deemer – Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Linda Mihalik – Sei Whale

Cindy Grammes – Clouded Leopard

Charlotte Mullen – Mary River Turtle

Janelle Reardon – Red Panda

Gisela Towner – Bornean Oranguta

Joanna Ellis – Panamanian Golden Frog

Shirley Purcell – Green Sea Turtle w/Coral

If you would like to participate email Cindy with your choice.

Before we share our endangered species in June we are going to have a “play time” for about an hour or so. We are going to do a Picasso Head. Bring a 10″ head with eyes fused onto the head. We will be cutting these heads in half and swapping them with someone else at the table to create our Picasso Heads. Bring a base fabric and other already fused fabrics to add to the heads. If you need inspiration check out Google or Pinterest under “kids Picasso Art”. It is time to allow your inner child loose and play.

Our July meeting will be our reveal of the “Quit while you’re a Head” challenge that we started in June.

February Meeting

I felt like I was coming home after not seeing the group since November. It was fun to see everyone and to catch up with what everyone was doing.

Our meeting was a little different this time as we did some playing with glitz and glam fabrics instead of our usual fabrics. Using silks, lames, glitzy and shiny fabrics can be used to create unusual designs. These fabrics are much more fluid than cottons and beg to be pleated, scrunched and manipulated. Their ability to be manipulated and overlaid with yarns and ribbons and other embellishments make the pieces that are created more like haute couture from Paris than a quilting group. But there in lies the fun.

I can’t wait till the next meeting to see how they all turned out. Happy sewing!

January Meeting

I wish Cindy and I could have been at the meeting but we were snowed in at our house. I will tell you that we were ready for the crayon challenge and had lots of stuff for the Glitz and Glam play time. We will bring it to next month’s meeting.

I have been very busy with sewing this month. With my challenges finished I was able to finish my block a week challenge I gave myself last year. I make blocks using machine sewing and mates that were done with hand sewing. Some ended up with both and I am very happy with this project. I have already started with this challenge again this year. I find that it makes me go into the sewing room every day.

I also finished a piece I started in 2017. It contains hand embroidered fish on a machine stitched background. I was going to do some embroidery on the background but chose to hand bead it instead. I am very glad that I finished that one and will bring it for show and tell for the March meeting.

I am looking forward to our meetings this year as it is always a treat to see what all of you have done. We need to think up some challenges for the coming year. I thought we could do an animal mash-up where you take 2 different animals and combine them into one. Any ideas?

Welcoming a New Year

2019. A new year, a new set of challenges. I have to admit that the 2 color crayon challenge due this month has been a challenge to me. I had an idea and executed it but it didn’t turn out quite like I thought it would. So I had to rethink and adapt and in the end I still liked what I did.

I finished my year end by completing my block a week self imposed challenge. I really enjoyed doing this and have already started the challenge again for 2019. I keep thinking of things to do this year to make my sewing journey more challenging.

I read a post from Linda Mathews called “One Word Can Change Your Life”. in it she talks about how a ” word carries no expectations like a resolution does. There is room for mistakes and then get back on track; without a sense of guilt or failure.”

Every year for the last 10 years she has done 3 steps to pick her word for the year. They are:

1. Get clear about you vision. How do you envision the coming year. Do you need to discard old habits and create new ones? What is it that you want to be, do or have? How do you feel? Take time to make a list.
2. Define your vision. Once you know what you want in the year ahead, define the changes or things that will impact you. It’s not enough to make a list of all the things you want without understanding why you want them.
3. Choose your word. Choose a word that captures the essence of how you envision the new year. Make a list of words and then choose one word that feels good to you.

She has used words like Breathe, Focus, Imagine, Create, Possibility, Grow, Acceptance, Soar, Transformation and Expansion as a motivator for the year.

She creates a small quilt that represents her meaning of the word and hangs it in her sewing room. Throughout the year she has a reminder of what she is trying to achieve for the year in her sewing and her life.

I have been trying to think of my word and de-clutter keeps coming up  as I have so many bags of scrap sitting around me. I did use some in my block a week challenge but they seem to be like bunnies and multiply each night. I am going to try this word game and see if it helps me. What about you?

 

May Meeting Reveal

Our May meeting was the reveal of our Telephone challenge. For anyone that doesn’t know what a telephone challenge is let me explain.  It is akin to the child’s game of telephone where one person says something to the next person and they repeat what they heard to the next and so on, until it gets to the last person who says what they heard and everyone laughs at how distorted the original words were changed by each person.

One person creates a quilt based upon an idea or photo. I was that person which also made me the keeper of the quilts. I was the only one to see all of the quilts. The second person saw only my quilt and did their interpretation of that quilt. They returned mine to me and passed theirs to the next person who made a quilt based on the second quilt. The second quilt then came to me and the process continued until all the participants completed their quilts. Passing these quilts was done without others in the group seeing any of the quilts.  So now for the reveal.

I began with a composite of 2 photos of Chippewa Lake amusement park after the elements had gotten the better of the rides. I called it: Childhood memories…Forgotten in Time

Sharon went next and only worked from my piece. She saw the ferris wheel as a clock and remembered all the time she spent on her Gramma’s porch swing

Sharon M. kept said Sharon’s quilt made her think of feeling serene and so her quilt was her serenity of sitting in a comfy chair with a good book and her kitty.

Bev found the serenity in Sharon’s quilt and recalled sitting at Lake Erie with her cat watching the sailboats at sunset.

Jean found Bev’s water calming and restful and thought of where she felt that way at home, so she created a whimsical house that made her feel energetic, happy and creative.

Shirley saw home and it made her think of her ancestral home in Scotland. She went on the web and found a picture of the home and recreated it in her quilt. She called it Fortitude

Cindy saw the fortitude and thought of a fortress which reminded her of growing up Lutheran and the church. She created her stone church complete with a graveyard.

FAVA SHOW

The FAVA (Firelands Association for the Visual Arts) present the 18th annual “The Artist as Quiltmaker” show. The show opens on May 18th and runs through July 28th. The gallery is located in downtown Oberlin, Ohio. It’s address is 39 S. Main St., phone is 440-774-7158, and the hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11- 5, Sundays 1- 5. They are closed on Mondays.

This has always been one of two Art quilt shows in Ohio. We are fortunate to have good Art quilt shows in our State and even better that they are each bi-annual shows running in opposite years. If you haven’t been to this show it’s a good  time to set your calendars for a short drive to Oberlin. There are plenty of places to eat and shop for the artist in all of us. So take some time to be inspired and have fun.

5 YEARS!

Our April meeting started our fifth year as an art quilt group and during that time things have changed from time to time but our goal still remains the same. Inspire, Motivate, Teach, and Create together as a collective of like minded artists. We have traded bags of fabric and challenged each other to work out their comfort zone to create a work for someone else. We have picked a random word and made a piece that was inspired by that word. We have done thickened dye painting, fabric painting, bleach discharge, 20 minute round robins, followed a Jane Davila workbook, laughed, cried, and in general become a group who love and respect each other as artists and friends.

We have some interesting things coming up in the next year and have been again asked to hang a small display of our work at the Quilters Legacy of Lakewood quilt show in October. We did that 2 years ago and were receive quite well by people coming through the show.

Our next few months are set with May being “Inspiration”. Bring a book or article to share with the group that relates to art quilting. We will also be debuting our “Telephone” challenge in which 7 of our artists worked from a quilt piece done by another member. That person passed their quilt to the next person and they made theirs based on that quilt. Only the person who did the first piece has seen all 7 quilts and how the original design has change from each artist.

June is a challenge celebrating our 5 year anniversary. The gem for 5 years is Tuquoise or Sapphire. So pick your gem stone and create a piece that incorporates that color.

July is “Finish Something”. We do this challenge a couple of times a year for people to pull out those UFO’s and rework, or just finish them. We will also be having a Play Date that includes Thread dying, Ice dying, Bleach discharge and rust dying.

August is a “Jukebox” challenge where each person uses a song they like as inspiration for a quilt.

We always welcome visitors and new members to our group so if any of this sounds interesting to you, Please come and stay awhile.

October Meeting

Well our September meeting was quite fun to see the beautiful art pieces from the Ohio Studio Art Quit Association or SAQA. We all enjoyed looking at the pieces and choosing our favorite. We discussed why we each chose the piece we liked the best and our comments showed a little of our own personal styles. If you missed the pieces they will be on display at the Mutton Hill Quilt Show in Akron next weekend and also at the IX center in April for the Quilting Expo.

Also at the IX center will be a show called “Threads of Resistance” which I saw in Lowell, MA while on vacation. It is a political commentary on the things that happened during the last election and in politics in general. It could be called quite controversial but to me it spoke volumes about our current events and the movers and shakers who have forever changed our political climate.

Our next meeting will be on the 24th of October at the North Olmsted Library at 7 pm. Our challenge for the month is “HallowChrisGiving” which combines all of the upcoming holidays. You can combine them all in a piece or pick your favorite and have some fun. See you at the next meeting.

 

September Meeting

Our September meeting is a special opportunity to see the Ohio SAQA trunk show. We will be able to examine each piece and talk about the differences of the pieces. Since we have this opportunity we will not be doing a challenge for the month. If you have show and tell we will welcome anything you bring.

Last month’s challenge of “Just Do it” turned out to be a popular challenge for people to finish some unfinished pieces.  Hope to see everyone at the meeting.