SAQA Benefit Auction Will Begin Soon!

The annual Studio Art Quilters Association (SAQA) fundraising auction runs from September 9th through 28th. It is a great opportunity to purchase fiber art pieces.  I have donated the art quilt shown below, "Nature's Energy Drink II" to this auction. I hope you will check it out and consider purchasing your own fiber art piece! To get auction details click on the link below.

SAQA Auction

Nature's Energy Drink II

Anthem Story will be at the AQS Grand Rapids Show

I made this quilt for a Flying Geese Quilters Guild challenge last year based on the theme "History Lesson - An Event in American History". My quilt was one of eight selected to represent the guild in the American Quilter's Society national competition called the "Ultimate Guild Challenge". Our eight quilts have been juried in as semi-finalists and will be shown at the Grand Rapids, Michigan AQS show.  The show is August 16 - 18.  I'm honored to have had my quilt selected and shown.

Learn to Make "A Slice of the OC"

If you are interested in learning art quilting techniques, sign up for my class where I teach you to make this quilt that I call "A Slice of the OC". It is based on landmarks in Orange County, California. I will be teaching the class at Flying Geese Fabrics in Tustin, California on August 17, from 10am - 4pm,. It is a pretty fast project that you will start in the class and finish at home. The store has a kit that you can purchase that includes the top fabrics and trims. You will need to provide the backing, batting and some other supplies. The class cost is $40, and I don't know right now what the kit cost will be.

The Flying Geese Fabric Store is located at 307 El Camino Real, Tustin, CA.

Their phone number is: 714-544-9349.

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.



Thanks for visiting my blog!

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.