Minnesota Quilt Show

This week St Cloud, Minnesota is hosting the Minnesota Quilt Show, "Quilting in the Quarry"
I have only entered the show twice before this year, one quilt each of the past two years(pictured above). For some reason I went a little overboard this time. I have four quilts in the show.

The first is with Minnesota Contemporary Quilters. The theme this year was Melange a Trois. I just posted about this quilt recently, it is my Cathedral Quilt.


The next two are with SAQA Minnesota. One is the quilt I made for the rust dye competition, since mine wasn't selected for that exhibit I tried the SAQA exhibit instead. I used a fabric I had shibori dyed, the red circle with the blue and yellow on the outside. I than used an old fashioned popcorn popper, the kind you would use over an open flame. I rusted the center of the dyed fabric. I painted the petals with shiva paintsticks. And, there you have a Moulin Rouge Sunflower. This is one of my favorites.

The second is Grape Harvest and is a combination of photo transfer on fabric and metal, and using metal for the first time on a quilt. I used recycled diet coke cans and Arizona Iced Tea cans. I prefer the diet coke cans as the metal is thinner and easier to manipulate. This was a fun quilt to make.

The final quilt is in the non-judged portion of the Minnesota Quilters Exhibits. This is the first quilt I have completed on my longarm that has given me hope that I might actually be able to call myself a longarm quilter one day. I have new wheels for the back of my machine that have made a huge difference in the amount of control I have. I'm still not very good at sewing straight lines, maybe my next purchase to add to my machine will be the electric channel locks. The thing I like about the Innova is you don't have to be able to afford everything at once. It is easy to add on to the machine. The photo isn't the best since I am not used to taking pictures to show off the quilting. Maybe by the time I figure out how to take good photos, I will be at the point where I will not mind showing the details of my quilting.

Hope you get a chance to go to the show. The quilts are always inspiring.
Have a creative day
Janet

Postmark'd Art Postcards

I finished another piece before it is due!! Am I becoming organized!! Can't be!! This last set of postcards is due to be mailed by May 30th and today is the 27th. Wouldn't that be great if I can make this a habit....

These cards were started a while ago. The background is bleached with a bleach pen to look like a Chinese lattice. It began with a plain brown cotton. I love the color it turned from the bleach.

Some shapes, cut with the Cricut, were added. At the time I thought I liked the starkness of the white against the lattice. After looking at them for a month or two a change was made and I painted them.

The Kanji word means health. I know I have a mix of cultures in this card, but working with what I had available, I thought they mixed well together.

I visited my mom yesterday, which is a 4 hour drive each way. Her birthday was last week so I purchased some books on CD for her to listen to. I also bought one for myself to listen to on the drive. Mine is called The Quilter's Homecoming by Jennifer Chiaverini. I listened to six and a half of the disks while driving. There are nine altogether. I love historical books about the everyday life of women. It is not quite as much about quilting as I expected but it is a good story. I was at the half-price bookstore so it was only $8, which seemed good for a 9 disk story. Most of the books my mom likes are not longer being published so they are easier to find at used book stores. Maybe I can give mine for a raffle prize at Contemporary Quilters once I have heard it all.

Have a Creative Day
Janet

MCQ Challenge "Melange aTrois"

I finished my challenge piece for Minnesota Contemporary Quilters. I was inspired by an impressionist painting by Claude Monet called "Rouen Cathedral". Here is the painting.

I attempted to re-create the painting using bleach discharge.

Since this challenge was "a Trois" I needed two more.

I did some thread painting and added one angelina 'stained glass window' for each as a unifying piece. Than I decided I wanted it to look as though it were a painting. So, I created a mat and frame.

Have a creative day.
Janet

Lot's of fun lately!

I'm still experimenting with what I can do with copper. It really is a lot of fun. I found out I can punch out shapes using my paper punches that I have for scrapbooking. My pictures are still lousy but they give you an idea.

I'm also learning to make shapes with the wire. Now I need to design a few more quilts so I can use these shapes.

I was fortunate to be asked by a friend to join her in the Twin Cities Shop Hop. I've never gone to this before because the shops are so far apart and honestly, I get lost easily. We took two days and went to five shops each day. I had only been to one of the ten shops before so this was a gold mine for me. Now I know how to find (sort of) nine more quilt shops! Each shop has door prizes and there were other prizes given to a lucky few. I can't believe how lucky I was. I won several small prizes and one terrific book. The book is called Fabric Embellishing The basics & beyond by Ruth Chandler, Liz Kettle, Heather Thomas and Lauren Vlcek. I won it at Bear Patch Quilting Co. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to add different techniques to their work. They cover over 50 techniques. I've made a link to Amazon so you can check it out more closely.

I also finally went to see the Foot in the Door exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It is more than a little overwhelming but luckily they have a computer so I could look up my friends to find where there art work was in the exhibit. You can look for mine at this link, click the search button and type 208-04 and it will show you just mine. Or you can press the random button and see lot's of different works. There were some amazing works of art. It happened to be Mother's Day when we went to see the exhibit so they also had a special event for that day. There were different musician's throughout the museum and all of the galleries were free that day.
Have a Creative Day
Janet

Raining again....

I have to admit, I'm getting a little tired of the rain. They are saying it's supposed to be nice on Sunday, I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed. I have lot's of flowers to plant thanks to the local boy scouts who come and sell door to door every year. It will be passed the date of possible frost damage by this weekend so that will be perfect.

The rain stopped for a few minutes yesterday so I played with my Bernz O'Matic again. I did get some rainbow coloring on a couple of pieces of copper. It's a little hard to photograph but here is what I did with my propane torch. I'll try to figure out a better way to photograph this because it really does look better in person.

I finished my little 'Go Native' piece. I decided the bottom half was plain so I added another little design with copper wire and turquoise beads. Metal and turquoise remind me of the southwest. I also used a turquoise binding. I still think there is something missing but I'm not sure what. I'll keep it on my design wall for a little while and see if something comes to me.

Have a creative day!
Janet