Maps Exhibit at the Long Beach International Quilt Festival

Come see the Quilts on the Wall: Fiber Artists special exhibit "Maps" at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach. It is a wonderful display of fiber art based on 18 different artists' interpretation of the theme: Maps. 

The show runs from August 2nd - 4th and is at the Long Beach Convention Center located at 300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, CA. I will be at the show throughout the weekend. This is the last year Quilts Inc. will have this show in Long Beach, and I will miss it when it is gone.

Maps - El Camino Real

Quilts on the Wall is doing an exhibit called "Maps" for the Quilts Inc. Long Beach International Quilt Festival this year. That show will run August 2, 3 and 4 at the Long Beach Convention Center. I am co-curating the Maps exhibit for a second year. This is a juried exhibit with this years' jurors being Beth Smith and Karen Cunagin from Visions.

"Maps" is a wonderful display of art pieces. I hope you have a chance to see it. I was fortunate enough to have my piece juried in to the show. It is based on the El Camino Real road that runs though the California Missions. I will be talking about the techniques I used to make this piece in future posts. I show it below. I hope I see you at the show.

A Slice of the OC - the Finished Product

And here you see the finished art quilt I call "A Slice of the OC". Once again I will be teaching a class showing how to make this quilt on August 17th at Flying Geese Fabric Store in Tustin. If you are interested in learning some art quilt techniques and having a fun wall hanging to show for your efforts, please sign up!

I like to have uneven edges for my cityscapes. It makes them EDGIER! (Yes - that is a joke, and its also true!). I started uneven edges on my first city scape.  I liked the buildings along the perimeter and couldn't bear to cut half of them off to get a straight edge. One of the artistic thoughts I learned in a class with Ricky Tims was,' If you hear yourself thinking- "I wonder what would happen if I did ..."  - do it!'  So, I  cut along the horizontal and vertical building sides to see how it looked, and thought, "hey that's cool looking". That's where it all started. My husband however doesn't really appreciate the uneven edges. He is an engineer and it conflicts with his sensibilities. Oh well! You have to please yourself with art.

The idea of putting a binding on the uneven edges is too much for me, and the same goes with facing. Hence the couched yarn along the edge.  I have inserted below some close ups of some of this piece. I hope you like it! It was a fun, quick project.



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Sailboats

My last foreground additions are sailboats in the water. I made three different sailboat shapes on freezer paper and used these as patterns to cut the fabrics out. Once again I fused two pieces of fabric together wrong side to wrong side and cut out the boat bottom and sail shapes.  Rick Rack was my mast. I experimented with placement of the boats and once I was satisfied, stitched the pieces down.

Palms, Surfboards, Waterline

 

I am nearly finished with my "Slice of the OC" piece. On this post I show some of the foreground work. The raw edge between the sand and water fabric needed "something" because it looked a little too unfinished with just a straight stitch. I placed a thin piece of rick rack along this edge to finish the water line.

I also thought the sandy foreground was a pale and boring. Clearly I needed something in front of the buildings. What says beach front in Orange County more than palms and surfboards? I made these by fusing two pieces of fabric together, wrong side to wrong side. This gives the piece a little more thickness. When you have two fused fabrics you can leave the edges raw and attach the piece with a few stitches down the middle, or just beads. It stands off the fabric a bit and gives more depth. I learned this in a class with Mary Stori years ago and have used it since for these type of applications.

Above and below you see photos of both the palms and surfboards stitched down with zig zag or straight stitches. They fill up the foreground and cover some of the bland look at the front of the buildings.  I also added some little pieces of lime green rick rack to finish it off.   

Serendipity Show at Soft Expressions

The Serendipity art quilt exchange group I belong to is having a show at Soft Expressions upstairs gallery.  Our postcard and 12" x 12" size pieces will be on display for the next month or so. We have a "Meet the Artists" event tomorrow. The information for the show is below. Several of us "Serendipities" will be there tomorrow. I hope to see you too!

A Slice of the OC - Saddleback Mountain

 
 
 
No Orange County scene can be complete without the Saddleback Mountain range in the background. At least that's what I think! I wanted to add the mountain range in a subtle way, so I decided to use tulle. I chose a tulle color of blue that matched the palette and then doubled it because the single layer of tulle didn't have enough color intensity.
 



Skyline

The first step is to draw in the mountain range line on the sky fabric. I drew it in and then stitched on that line. Next I laid the double layer of tulle over the area that I wanted the mountains to be.  It was pinned in place to prevent it from moving, which tulle likes to do. Then I stitched around the building tops at the sky line, and then stitched on the mountain line. Lastly I trimmed the excess tulle above and below the stitching lines. And there it is, instant mountain range! I love the color of the sky fabric that you can see through the tulle. It gives it a variable appearance like you would expect from mountains.

 

Mountain

 

 

 

Stitching Down the Buildings

The continuing saga of "A Slice of the OC"... When last we met, our project had a background, many buildings, shading and trims. But they were all just laying there, ready to fly away with the wind. Well, we better get them stitched down before that happens.

I like to use my stitching down of the buildings as my quilting stitching as often as I can. It saves so much time! To prevent my buildings from shifting in location,  I used pins, small bits of fusible and fabric glue to keep the buildings in their proper place during this process.  I created my sandwich of my top, batting and backing, and then pinned the three layers in place. Once I had my sandwich I went to the machine.

I used a straight stitch on most of the buildings and just stitched about 1/16" from the edge of the fabric around the buildings. This is raw edge applique, so I didn't want to get closer than that to minimize fraying. On the yellow buildings I couched blue yarn around the edge using a zig zag stitch. For the Ferris wheel I stitched rick rack around the perimeter and used that stitching to secure the wheel. I also stitched the building edge lines using a straight stitch. 

And here are the stitched down buildings!