Spirit Doll Party

Today our Thursday bee group had a "Spirit" party to reveal the finished spirit dolls. This included each of us contributing to a buffet of yummy things for lunch. The only spirits to drink were teas. Our dolls pinned to a display board was the center piece at the end of the buffet table
At some point I turned them around to take photos of their backsides.
Eight of us participated in this round robin of dressing and decorating individually made dolls from a pattern I had designed. One of them and her owner, Sandy, were unable to be there.

After lunch each of us presented our doll for discussion by the group. The thing that amazed me was that the completed spirit dolls reflected qualities of their owners. That shouldn't be surprising about those of us who have been long time members, but there were a couple of participants who are pretty new to the group. Each of these beauties speaks pretty loudly about their mistress.

Patty's doll

Tone's doll
Melissa's Doll
Judy's Doll
Deb's Doll
Louise's Doll

Nellie's Doll

I don't have red hair, but I've always wished I did. Tone who gave my doll the dyed cheese cloth locks did not know that about me.

Each of these dolls embody the creative spirit of all who have contributed to them. Mine needs one more contribution ... a name. Any ideas? If your suggested name is selected, it will be rewarded with a gift from my creativity.

Spirit Dolls In the Prairie Flowers

This past week my spirit doll returned home after making the rounds of SMQ Guild's Thursday bee members participating in this project.
So I've been working on her a bit. I stitched her hands together so she can hold the acorn gift that Susan Lenz gave me when I met her in South Carolina last January.

She gained breasts and a derriere made in the "yo yo" technique ... the gathered side placed up and decorated with wood beads for her top while they're placed down to give her a smooth bottom. I also lengthened her tutu skirt by dropping it down and suspending it with lengths of yarn from her waist. A layer of leaves cut from the piece I made for this quilt is sewn to her wings.
The other spirit doll with lovely hair is the last one passed to me. One of my additions was to lengthen her tutu by stitching silk flower petals to the hem. While I was at it, silk blossoms with silk ribbon centers were added for decoration.
She, too, gained a yo-yo derriere. Her skirt is parted to give you a better view.
I couldn't resist posing them in front of the two latest prairie flower mini quilts.

All the spirit dolls will be brought to bee next Thursday. Come back then to see pictures taken of all these beauties at the "spirit" party.

Secret Windows

This quilt, "Secret Windows", spotlighted the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild Show at the 1998 Dogwood Arts Festival.
It was begun from a collection of scraps back in 1994 when I was a new quilter. A classmate in a one week workshop with Nancy Halpern was throwing out scraps of material that were larger than the fabric samples I had brought to work with. After I had made a fuss about finding them in the trash barrel, she consented to save those scraps if I found a bag in which to collect them. During the week after I got home, I sewed every scrap into "crazy quilt" squares. Originally, I had set them together to be a child's quilt that would be donated to the Ronald McDonald House
My husband and friends protested it being given away. So, through the next few years I'd occasionally make more crazy quilt squares from my own scraps. It grew into a full-size quilt that ended up being a Christmas present for our younger son and his wife.

It still looks good all these years later as you can see in a photo taken this summer.
I like to piece the backs of quilts.
The hand quilting is more easily viewed from the backside.
The crazy quilt squares set on point are quilted with satin-stitches using two strands of variegated floss. There was no way I was going to hand-quilt a running stitch across all those seams.
The portraits were cut from a shirt sewn by my mother-in-law for my husband with fabric featuring artists from the Expressionist period. It was a great shirt for the 1970's ... worn with chains at the open collar plus a wide belt with a big buckle and platform shoes. Woo Hoo! Let's do the Hustle.
This is the first quilt in which Elvis made an appearance.
I still have some of the home decorator fabric that was cut apart for the triangles around the crazy quilt squares. The printed squares are two and half inches.
Maybe I'll make another window quilt with crazy quilted blocks from the many bags of scraps collected in the ten years since this quilt was begun.

In Rememberance of September 11th

The Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild members made this quilt in 2004. It honors the victims of that infamous day, September 11th of 2001, as well as the new found spirit of courage and unity of the American people that resulted from this tragedy.
It was created in conjunction with an exhibition of September 11th quilts at the Knoxville Art Museum (those quilts were part of the collection that was gathered immediately after 9/ll and exhibited at the Houston show by Karey Bresenhan and can be viewed in this book).

The individual blocks for this quilt were made and donated by guild members. The quilt was designed and hand-quilted in the museum gallery over several Sundays during the exhibition by SMQ members. When members were not quilting at the big frame, they were docents for the exhibition.

Following are close-up photos.
The writing around the center block reads, "The legacy of September 11, 2001 is one of strength, compassion, determination, resolve, and a new spirit. We honor the victims in NYC, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC."

The upper left corner blocks...
the top center blocks ...
the upper right corner blocks ...
the blocks on the right side ...
the lower right corner blocks ...
the bottom center blocks ...
the lower left corner blocks ...
the blocks on the left side ...

The center block is my contribution. To read how the lettering was stitched go here. To view the 9/11 quilt, "Out of the Rubble" I created go here.

Spirit Doll Update

The spirit dolls have changed hands three times.
These first two pictures are from Patty. She's in charge of the exchange.
My contribution to each is a pair of breasts since I didn't include any when I designed the pattern*.
They are made "yo-yo" style, stuffed with a circle cut from batting, and have nipple decorations to conceal the hole and stitching where the fabric is drawn up.
This one was given "Bee" wings and button buttocks by one of the participants before I got her.
What are the chances of my finding a fabric in my stash that matched the dolls body so well that she looks bare breasted?
We Thursday Bee ladies are having fun!

*click on the word "pattern" to be taken to the introductory post for the Spirit Doll. There are two links at the end of that post ... one for printing out the pattern and the other for printing out assembly instructions.

"Our Biosphere Reserve"

This is the result of my "playing" with all those scraps.

Our Biosphere Reserve - 40"x 31"

The Smoky Mountains National Park is designated as an International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations in observance of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2009. This international recognition represents the Smokies' importance to the planet. The purpose of this United Nations' program is to recognize and encourage preservation of the world's great cultural and biological areas.

This art piece features my interpretation of the view from "Morton's Overlook". In the spirit of conserving our biosphere's resources this quilt is made from recycled or repurposed materials. The picture part is composed of fabric scrap bits and pieces from previous projects, both mine and other peoples. The foundation structure features an old blanket as the batting and upholstery fabric leftover from a friends project is the backing.

It took concentrated effort to meet the deadline of presenting it at the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild meeting last night. This was one of twenty-one quilts competing for inclusion in the SMQ Guild's entry for the Ultimate Guild Challenge in the AQS summer show. The theme chosen by our guild for its entry was "Go Green", which was open to interpretation by each participating member. Leah Marcum-Estes, director of the Oak Ridge Art Center, was invited to be the juror to select the eight quilts for this entry. We certainly presented her with a challenge to choose only eight from so many wonderful quilts. I'm pleased my quilt was one of those selected to represent the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild.

The SMQ Guild has won awards in three previous AQS Ultimate Guild Challenges. To see the quilts for the year we won the Grand Champion Award ($5000) go here. To see my quilt contributions for the other two award winning years go here and here.

Dynamic Creating

"A way to minimize the tyranny is to see your art in a state of adjustment and creative development, rather than trying to fulfill some preconceived vision. I call it 'dynamic painting' and it's quite magical. It could be called "dynamic writing" or even 'dynamic living'."

That is a quote from a Robert Genn's newsletter. It came earlier this week just before I conducted a day-long workshop on Thursday sharing my method of creating art quilts from scraps. I hadn't realized there was a name for how I work. I think of it as having a dialog with the piece, or even just playing. At any rate, sharing the way I create was my primary goal.

I was pleased how each participant "got" the dynamic way of creating ... choosing one scrap from the pile in the middle of the table that caught their eye and building a piece around it ... they all played like 6-year olds. No one seemed to notice the cold, rainy, dreary day outside.
I hadn't taught a workshop in so long, there was trepidation about getting into the "flow". However, that interaction with students and responding to situations as they come up was still there without missing any steps in my lesson plan ... whew! The one decision I was a bit worried about was that instead of my demonstrating on my own machine, I walked several students through the featured process on their machines with the others looking on. It worked! The machine owner could ask questions or verbalize during my instruction which helped her and everyone else to really "get it" ... another whew!
In the photo above Martha is going through the steps to determine settings and adjustments for using Bottom Line thread on a prewound disposable bobbin. I suspect there are a few converts to this product available from Superior Threads. BL thread is a fine thread which requires a change in the bobbin case tension ... something many consider to be a NO-NO. Also, bobbin cases vary in depth which means that one or both cardboard sides may have to be discarded so the bobbin rotates freely in the case. Go here (Superior's education site) to learn more about bobbin tension adjustments and prewound bobbins.

Also, introduced was the use of Superiors Polyester monofilament invisible thread as the top thread in machine quilting. It's soft and heat resistant and comes in Clear and Smoke. I use it when I don't want an obvious quilting thread or color to be a design element in a quilt. Often, just a quilting pattern works best with complex and detailed small compositions. The main trick for working with monofilament is lowering the top tension to "0" ... or nearly so. Also, the thread is straight wound onto the spool as opposed to a criss-cross wind, thus it's meant to feed off the spool on an upright spindle. Care must be taken that the thread doesn't reel off the spool too fast or freely.

Here's a series of photos from beginning to end for Carol's piece, one of the ladies who had never dreamed of working this way.
She had brought big scraps of that jungle print. She did a good job of snipping it into bits and rearranging it all.Carol played with a lot of different blues for the sky and created her own wind blown garden.Another feature of this workshop was learning my tricks to couch yarn as an edge finish as well as a surface decoration. The instruction sheet was taken from the tutorial I posted here.

Here's Patty happily sharing her creation at the end of the day.
I'm grateful to Patty for taking and sharing these photos PLUS those in this album I've posted on Picasa. Go there to see the progression of many pieces created dynamically by those twenty quilters as well as classroom scenes thoughout the day.

PS: To read good thoughts and reasons for using Bottom Line thread for machine quilting go to Kathy Yorks blog and scroll down to her post for November 22, 2009.

Flowers On A Wrought Iron Fence

At the end of March the round robin blocks for Jane were due. Her theme was "fences". I made trellised flowers on a wrought iron fence for her.
Yarns, threads, and silk flowers are collaged over a background fabric with a wrought iron pattern. Black tulle topped it off. When I finished the quilting I saw that the leaves had gotten lost. So ... I got out my oil stick pastels and touched them up with bright yellow-greens. I also added shades of pink, green and gold to the flower petals and orange to their centers.

Pastels added

Round Robin Quilts

Between making valentines I added my bit to these two round robbin quilts. They are two of the Thursday Bee's (of Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild) contributions to the small quilt sale that will be part of our quilt show in mid-May.
I wish I had remembered to take photos before I got going with fusing down the fussy cut critters and flowers.
These are from the same print I cut critters for my grandchildren's valentines ... and what prompted me to get this task done. I've passed it onto Gloria along with four fussy cut butterflies that may be applied further out.

I remembered to photograph this one before I couched the confetti-like yarn in the center of the sashings.
I can't wait to see what more gets added to this one by Tone.
Both of these had been worked on by two bee members before I got them. Pat had pieced all the blocks and Patty had assembled them into the two basic quilts.