Delphinium Exhibit In the Making

Artistic Expressions is a fiber art group that I belong to. We all come from different artistic backgrounds, but have fiber art as a common thread (pun intended) between us. We meet regularly to share our works, ideas, struggles and experiences. Our meetings are very inspirational to me and I come away from them all fired up to go home and create something!

We are currently preparing an exhibit that will travel around the country beginning later this year. The exhibit is entitled "Delphiniums", and we are all at various stages of completion on our projects. Shown here are three of the works, two in progress and one completed. Deborah Stanley's piece is the first one shown. She is doing a fine job of hiding behind it, but you can see her fingers, so you know it's her. Anyway,  she painted on canvas to create the striated background, and then created beautiful three dimensional flowers using a variety of fabric types. It looks great!

 

The second piece was completed by Linda Friedman, and you can see her holding it here. Linda is ahead of the rest of us, since her piece is completely done! What an over-achiever! Linda painted the leaves on the background and created her dimensional flowers from a variety of lavender and purple fabrics. They come right off the background and make you want to reach out and touch them. For her finishing touch she added a butterfly and caterpillar to her piece. It is gorgeous. 

 

This is my delphinium in progress. I am holding it here. I painted the flowers and pots using Tsukeniko inks and Inktense pencils. I got some good feedback from my fellow Artistic Expressions members and have some changes in mind. Nothing is stitched down yet, and I have a lot of work to do, but it's a good start. I'll be posting more about this as time goes by.

Route 66 Exhibit at Road to California



Patt Blair in front of Route 66 Exhibit

The Route 66 Exhibit will have its first California showing this weekend at the Road to California Quilt Show. Patt Blair and Kelly Gallagher-Abbott are co-curators of this exhibit, and the photo to the left shows Patt standing in front of the exhibit. I believe that she or Kelly made the art quilt she is standing next to. I have a piece in this exhibit and I am looking forward to seeing the entire display. If you are going to the show, please check it out. If you can't make it, you can see the art quilts by clicking on this link:  Route 66 Exhibit .

 

 

 

Fourth @ the Fair by jo griffith

One of the many beautiful art pieces by jo on display at Soft Expressions. It's a great show!

Farm Operation

Since this art quilt is about the impact that day to day activities can have on the groundwater beneath the surface, I wanted to show as many of those activities as I could fit in this piece. Here I show a farming area. Farms have the potential to impact groundwater through pesticides and fertilizers.

I have a truck driving up to a storage building, a wind turbine used to pump groundwater, and a couple of other equipment pieces. I need to fill in some of the embroidered items, but you get the idea. 

Changing the color of the road

In my last post I talked about using tulle to mute the distant neighborhood. This time I am going to show you the improvement in the road color that came from tulle.  The roads were made using a primarily black fabric. I thought this looked a bit harsh next to the other fabrics. It almost looked like a dried lava field instead of a road!

 I was using the orange  tulle to cover the neighborhood and I noticed that it gave the black a nicer dark-brownish appearance. It seemed more road like to me, so, once again, I sewed the same orange tulle on the roads. I am going to embroider some lines down the center of the road to give the appearance of lane dividers, and that should really help make it look road like, I think.  In these photographs you can see the before and after for the road.

 

The Distant Neighborhood



distant neighborhood




 In the lithologic landscape there is a distant neighborhood in the background at the base of the hills. It has houses, trees and shrubs. You can see it depicted above in the photograph. The scale of the features in this area is smaller than the "town", but  I wanted to give this area even more of an appearance of being far away. In the real world, objects at a distance have a muted appearance due to the water moisture in the atmosphere. That is the look I wanted to create in this area of the landscape.

To create the water moisture atmospheric effect I decided to cover the buildings with tulle. I used an orange tulle that muted the colors used for the buildings and trees. The tulle has some shimmery quality in it, which adds a nice effect when you look at the area close up. Below you can see the same area muted by the tulle. 

To add the tulle, I laid a large piece over the buildings and shrubs and stitched around it. Then I clipped the excess tulle away. It was a pretty fast way to get the look I was after.

 

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Features on Lithologic Landscape

cars, trucks, etc.

I have been working away on my lithologic landscape project. There is a lot of detail on this piece and these are some of the them. To make the cars, trucks, fuel pump, trailer, etc. I first drew them on cotton fabric. Then I used Tsukeniko inks to "color" them in.

After the painting stage, I stitched each piece to a piece of wool. The wool gives the piece a little loft on the quilt surface, and adds a contrasting color to help it stand out.

I think they look kind of cute!

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