Critters at the SMQ'ers Show

Here are photos of quilts that feature critters in the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild Show."Fourteen Rabbit Carrot" by Sheila Rauen of Knoxville, Tennessee awarded Judge's Choice Ribbon. Sheila has two other award winning quilts with critters but I haven't yet taken photos of them."Jitterbugs" by Patty Ashworth of Oak Ridge, Tennessee awarded an Honorable Mention in the Large Art Category.
"The Congregation" by Marlene Brown Woodfield of La Porte, Indiana awarded 2nd Place in the Pictorial Category."On Thin Ice" by Pat Jennings of Berea, Kentucky awarded 3rd Place in the Pictorial Category.
"Black White and Wild" by Christine Bryden of Mosheim, Tennessee awarded 1st Place in the Pictorial Category
AND the Excellence in Machine Workmanship Ribbon.
Christine painted the zebra's faces. The black and white fabrics are pieced together.
There are 18 different animals or insects machine quilted over the surface. I had the pleasure of meeting Christine last evening at the award ceremony. I love meeting the maker of a quilt/art and hearing the story of the creation of a piece. In this case, it was interesting to hear about her concern of the quilted images being too strong ... a distraction from the zebras. It's amazing how difficult it can be to really see a piece while you're so involved in its creation. Been there, done that! There's more than one meaning to "perspective".

Post Script: This zebra piece won the Viewer's Choice Award ribbon.

Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild Show Opening

The show opened today with the award ceremony this evening. There are 145 wonderful quilts in a great display space at Pellissippi State College on Hardin Valley Road. I'd like to present the Best In Show quilts.
"Fairy Dust" by Kelora Goethe, one of our guild members won Best of Show Bed Quilt. Some of you may have seen this quilt at Paducah.
It is completely hand- done. She even crocheted the embellishments. It is lovely, sophisticated sweetness."We're All the Same - Just Different" by Pat Kumicich of Naples Florida won Best In Show Wall Quilt.
It is machine pieced and hand-quilted. The shading with long straight quilting stitches is amazing on this piece
And then, I thought you may like to see me with my quilts.
The making of "Silk Roses" is written about here.
"Moon Dance" is written about here.
And "Across the River" is here. I'll be presenting more of the marvelous quilts in this show in the next few postings.

PS: All six of my postcards in the small quilt sale sold immediately.

SMQ Guild Show Special Award Ribbons

This year I'm in charge of award ribbons. That involves ordering the 1st, 2n, and 3rd place ribbons as well as the honorable mention ones AND making twelve ribbons for the special awards.
It was fun interpreting the award for the design of the top part and finding an appropriate font for the awards description.

I printed the written part on computer transfer material for white tee shirts. It was ironed onto rip-stop nylon. The transfer requires high heat for about 5 minutes. Parchment paper for baking was used to protect the fabric. I then bonded another layer of rip-stop nylon to the printed layer to give it body. All the materials were over sized so that where the ribbons were cut the edges were sealed.

The top quilted part is gathered onto a CD disc by gathering up a running stitch around the outside edge. Another disc is covered with batting and fabric then blind-stitched to the front one. The tops of the hanging ribbons are secured and encased between the two. A cardboard with a hanger purchased from the trophy shop is glued to the back.

I designed and quilted all but one. The day that I was fretting about what to do for the "Excellence In Hand Workmanship" ribbon, my friend, Patty Ashworth, had received a blue ribbon from the Hoffman Challenge contest for her hand quilting. I asked her to make the top part for our shows award. She designed and beautifully stitched a sunflower medallion.

I thought the "Viewer's Choice" ribbon should be readily seen by the voters at the show. So, I designed a combination display/vote box that sets on the hostess table. I used black and white fabrics for the box so that any colored ribbon in the future will look good displayed on it.

Now, I'm off to pin all the ribbons on the winning quilts with the help of my friend, Judy. The show opens tomorrow morning at 10:00am.

Moon Dance

This is my final entry in this year's SMQ Guild show. It was awarded 1st Place in the "Wall Hanging/Mixed Techniques and Quilted" category. It also received the Surface Embellishment Award.

Moon Dance - 38"x 42"

The background was constructed several years ago. It's made up of four small sections using Ricky Tims "Harmonic Convergence" technique. I posted about my Shiva Oil Paint Stick rubbing techniques on it here last fall when I began to work on it for this show.

Initially, this was my plan for the center. My friend, Judy, had given me several pieces of African fabrics. One of them had a marvelous single warriors head printed with metallic gold. I had in mind for him to wear the macrame neck piece I had created back in the 70's. It's made with trade beads I had purchased in Morocco.However, it ended up as his headdress in reference to east African tribes who used zebra manes for that purpose.I sculpted the warriors face with layers of of batting. The nose, lips, and hair in the middle are machine quilted on the first layer placed down the center. His eyes and facial contours plus the rest of the hair are quilted on the second layer. When this quilted piece was appliqued to the quilt it became even more sculpted.

It's embellished with beads and buttons and African themed doodads I've been collecting over the years. Antique black glass beads are scattered like stars over the dark fabric areas of the background. There are hand-made ceramic buttons layered with beads to create shields.
Yarn was couched over the seams of the pieced background. Long ends were left with the intention of burying them in the batting. I liked the look of them hanging loose on the surface and ended up adding even more, plus gold metallic ones as well using the same thread that I machine-quilted the background.A heavy gold metallic yarn is couched to the outside edge of the binding as well as outlining the warrior's neck piece. I wanted to soften that outside edge since this piece is about moonlight as well as to give strength and to define the shape of his neck piece.

Silk Roses

This is the second of my three entries in the SMQ Guild Show. It is awarded 2nd Place in the "Pieced Wall Hanging" category.

Silk Roses - 28"x 45"

I had hand-painted the center panel of silk 5-6 years ago. I didn't have roses in mind when it was painted. The more I looked at it, the more obviously they were there. Four years ago I pieced the top and began the hand-quilting. A dark brown Japanese silk twist thread and a larger than usual stitch was used. To increase the size of the center panel I strip-pieced home decorator fabrics. I chose ones that created a diffused sparkle ... kind of like a dewy, sunshining morn ... around the panel of roses.

The backing for this piece is fabric printed with a subtle leaf pattern. I quilted around some of those leaves from the back in the side panels using the same silk thread and size stitch as for the roses.What was I thinking? There was NO CONTRAST between the stitch and the front surface fabric pattern, nor between their colors. To make the leaves visible other than the pouf of fabric that resulted from the quilting, I wrapped the quilt stitches with a fine metallic cord (see "Whipped Quilting Stitch" post). That helped, but it was not the solution. I lightly colored the leaves with a metallic gold oil stick pastel and set it into the fabric with heat (using that tiny iron seen in the previous post). I doubt I could have found, or created up front, fabric that worked more perfectly than my problem-solving solutions.
I ended up machine stipple quilting a tiny loop pattern between the leaves in these panels as well as between the roses in the center. I don't recall seeing a combination of hand-quilted motifs surrounded by machine stippling. Surely, I'm not the first person do this.

The bottom panel is a dark brown chintz fabric. The background is shiny while the rose and leaf pattern is a matte texture . I hand-quilted one of the roses with the same silk thread used in the top parts of the quilt. It just did not work here. I repeated with a finer black thread. That didn't work either. Machine quilting around every flower and leaf with black cotton/poly sewing thread was perfect. The density of this quilting led me to stippling around the roses and leaves in the top of the quilt.
All that machine work distorted the dark gold leaf strips down each side of the center panel. I had previously decided to couch yarn at their edges to carry the dark brown from the bottom up into the top. That couched yarn also served to disguise the wavey edges of those strips.

I can hardly comprehend that this quilt took so long to complete. It is one of the most elegant pieces I've ever created.

SMQ Small Quilt Sale

The members of the Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild make and donate small pieces to sell at the quilt show every year. The six flower postcards I posted about here are my donations.

Another donation is a combined creation with my friend, Jane. It's title has something to do about a tree and flames ... I don't recall it's final name ... "Flaming Sunset" would be appropriate.

18"x 20"

It began with an exchange of single elements each of us had made. She gave me the tree she had machine embroidered in a Dottie Moore workshop. She hadn't realized a stabilizer under her base fabric was necessary, so she ended up with a wonderful tree on a very gathered background that she didn't know what to do with. For 3 weeks I studied the piece on my design wall trying to think of a way to utilize that textured background. I'm kicking myself for not taking a photo of it before I started.
Well, I couldn't come up with a way to work with the wrinkled fabric, so I cut it away in wedges leaving some of it around the tree branches and trunk. Many cut away pieces were layered on the fabric piece that looked like a glowing sunset. I found a piece of home decorator fabric for the foreground. I decided to move the tree right of center and to turn the sunset fabrics "wrong side" to the front. Now I saw a lake with the reflected sunset sky beyond the hill that the green area formed. To accentuate the perspective of looking out over the plains from the top of a hill I put boulders in the foreground. Then the fun began of finding bits and pieces to define the areas of the composition.
After the collage in my "ortwork" technique was layered under tulle and machine quilted, I highlighted and blended various areas with oil stick pastels. The pastels are heat set into the fabrics. I use my tiny iron at the design wall. It's set on medium-low heat so the tulle won't melt (I've done that and it's pain to patch). I wear a mask to keep from breathing the dust created when the pastels are applied to the surface. I don't know how effective it is against the fumes from heating them, but I think it helps to keep me from breathing them since I'm working at nose level.

detail

I gave it back to Jane with the batting and backing extended beyond the edges of my contribution. She added the borders and finished it off.

The heads of the committees for putting together this wonderful quilt show have first chance at purchasing these quilts. Jane donated AND bought this one. Later I'll post about the other piece in this exchange between her and me.

27th Smoky Mountain Quilt Guild Show

This year our quilt show is taking place with the Foothills Craft Guild rather than being a venue of the Dogwood Arts Festival. It begins next Friday and I invite any of you who live within driving distance to come see many fabulous quilts as well as wonderful crafts made by juried crafts men and women.

This is one of my three entries in the quilt show. It began in a workshop taught by Dottie Moore which is posted here.

Across the River - 24"x 24"

detail - 6"x 6"

There is much machine stitching to keep all the tiny bits of fabric in place as well as machine quilting. I also added a bit of paint and oil pastel work to high-light and blend elements.

The striped border fabric was purchased at a world village shop in Michigan. It's a cotton damask that was hand-dyed by a man in Africa. I cannot imagine a more perfect combination with my sun-printed piece and vignette scene.

I'll be at the show for a period of time each day. If you've read this and see me there, I'd very much like to meet you. I'll post about my other two entries later in the week.