A new Challenge!

I recently joined the Boston Modern Quilt Guild which is very exciting for me as I am looking to Reach out in my sewing in a new way!  

Well... this past Friday most of The Creative Conglomeration plus some of our friends went to the BMQG & Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild presentation of Victoria Findlay Wolfe of 15 Minutes of Play blog & book, and Bumble Beans Inc.

Victoria was kind enough to pose with us for a picture!  

Front: Sue, Simone, Marie, Victoria, Patty, Trish, & Ellen
Back: Lisa, Annick, René  

If you ever have a chance to see her in person - DO!  

She gave a wonderful presentation of her quilt history through sharing her beautiful quilts! 

Victoria posted this YouTube taped at the presentation!

Do you hear the energy in her voice? 

Her whole presentation has that same energy!!

We all walked away very inspired by Victoria and Lisa T. issued our group a challenge:

Make a DWR quilt - 1 to 4 blocks - anything goes!  

Due January 23, 2014!!  

I can't wait to get started on this and to see what everyone comes up with!!

Three more CC#7 Pieces

Here is the third installment of CC#7 Closeup and Artist Statements!

"Something"

Lisa

  

This was my challenge and I choose music as my artistic inspiration. Two love songs to be specific, "Something in the Way She Moves" by the Beatles and "Layla" by Eric Clapton - two different songs by two different guys about the same woman they fell in love with. My visual inspiration for this piece were three different pieces of art, one was a black and white quilt that hung in the Houston quilt show, one was a tattoo I found on Pinterest and the third was a painting that hung in the apartment of an old family friend - all had the same pose but are completely different. I used only black and white for my piece, fusing the black outline on to the white fabric and then I used a technique for transferring writing on to fabric I had been wanting to try and Annick showed us how she did her's. Machine pieced and quilted.  

  

(Note: I could not decide which way this quilt should go so here is both views! What do you think??  Beautiful quilt Lisa!!)

"In the beginning, there was TAGGIE"

Lois

 (Note: Again - same quilt with time with two backgrounds... OK not so much a quilt as a beautiful Fiber Piece! Dark background adds richness but Light background shows the detail.)

 This month's challenge, black/white and the color you gave the group in this challenge as assigned by Lisa.  She asked that we be inspired by a form or art, or  a piece of art.  For me, this entire process has been a learning experience full of challenges and pitfalls, learning to get up dust off and move on.  Trying new things, new ideas, new concepts and being willing to deviate from my original design or direction.  We used to do it when we were kids.  We spent days dreaming, playing, and sharing excitement with our friends in the discovery of a treasure.  We've heard, "Stay inside of this box, don't color outside of the lines, and whatever you do don't deviate from following the directions!"  And, while many things in life now require us to do so, we can't forget to think back and remember what that was like, the excitement of experimenting and of letting go.  I'm a quilter yes, but first and foremost I'm an artist and a fiber enthusiast.  With that in mind, I DIDN'T make a quilt. I made a "fiber art piece" and continued on in my creative journey, pushing the limits of what I was comfortable with.  I continued to play with contrast and color but this time, I was inspired by my dear friend Ellen's descriptive of a "taggie."  As quilters we all find sometimes it's helpful to use a scrap of fabric to start a seam.  We're in fact, attempting to rescue it from the hungry throat plate that inevitably, at the most INCONVENIENT time, reaches up and grabs our seam to make a jumbled mess of tangled threads jammed down in the mouth of the machine!  Those tiny pieces of fabric are to me a bit of art all in themselves.  With that in mind I used a paper water soluble stabilizer on the bottom and a gel soluble on the top as I began stitching to join each colorful taggie. Some were of cotton, some of velvet, and some of silks and satins. I placed carefully with color and value in mind.  After stitching I removed the stabilizers and embellished the surface with beads.I found it tricky to hang as there was NO backing and it floated against the backdrop so, I used a tiny scrap of ribbon on the back of each taggie on the top row.  Threaded a painted dowel through my piece and made sure I'd painted it to match the backdrop we'd all used to display our pieces.  I left threads hanging, dangling on all sides.  All in all the experiment to play was as freeing at a day in the park as a child.  Not everything in life has to be tidy, sometimes we need that reminder as adults to enjoy the messy process and maybe just maybe in the end we uncover the beauty in the journey. 


"An afternoon with Leah Day"
Marie

For this final CC piece for this challenge I has given Black and White plus Cobalt to work with then asked to be inspired by an artist or a piece of art.  

For my artist I chose Leah Day.  In case you haven't heard, Leah Day has a wonderful blog called freemotionquilting.blogspot.com and through this block she has brought over 365 free motion designs to life in her video classroom that invites all to try free-motion quilting for themselves.  

In my piece I appliqued plain black circles onto a piece of neutral white/gray fabric, I then incorporated seven of Leah's designs:17 - Matrix, 22 - Double Pebble, 52 - Spider Web, 81 - Lollipop Chain, 141 - Swirling Water, 130 - Graphic Flower,197 - Funky Party Flower - one in each circle.  My next step was to couch around each of the circles with cobalt fibers.  I finished the quilting with echos of the entire design.   For the edging on this quilt I couched multiple fibers to the edge then added a cobalt fiber to the inner edge to complete the piece.


We hope you have enjoyed this Challenge series and will be posting pictures of individual groups.  
 Thanks for following our blog.
Marie, Lois, Lisa, Patty, Ellen, Annick, & René
  
 

 

 

 

 

Long awaited Close Ups of CC#7

Here is the second installment of CC#7 Closeup and Artist Statements!

"Two Trees in the Foreground"

 Ellen

As soon as the challenge to work mostly in black and white was explained, I knew that I would find my inspiration in an Ansell Adams photograph.  From the beginning of the Creative Conglomeration, I have been drawn to landscape scenes that seem to peer into a grove of trees.  In this project, I did a "crazy quilt" piecing of many different black with white prints to suggest different shafts of light coming into the forest, choosing a trapezoidal shape of solid black to echo the general shape of the larger tree.  The white trunks were pieced in after slashing the initial background.  I defined the trunks and main branches of the two featured trees by thread-painting their outlines and painting in the trunks.  The suggestion of leaves was also painted.  Since we were asked to add a small amount of "our" color to the black and white, I added orange hand embroidery to suggest autumn color in the remaining canopies, in the air and on the ground.

"Tonia's Muse" 

Patty

The challenge was to use black and white and the color we chose in the challenge we put out to the group, taking inspiration from an artist we admire. That was yellow for me. My inspiration was fused glass artists, my friend Tonia in particular. I used tulle over the background and quilted it very closely to simulate the opalescent qualities off pearlized white glass. The black and yellow stripes represent the layering off colors used in fusing. I envision this "glass" being slumped to make a free form bowl.

 More to come!

Long awaited Close Ups of CC#7

Here is the first of three posting of the 

Close Up Pictures from our 7th Reveal with Artist Statements.

 

“Frankly It’s Mine”

René

This challenge was to be a “Black & White” challenge and was to be inspired by either an artist or artwork.  You could also only add the color of the challenge that you yourself handed out earlier in our challenge year.   That was purple for me, so that is why my piece is black, white and purple.  I’ve always loved many of the windows created by Frank Lloyd Wright so I decided to try and create a window of my own.  If you look closely you can see the “chevron” parts of the window that Frank Lloyd Wright is so well known for.  Each piece of fabric in my window was painstakingly cut out by hand and then fused down onto a muslin background.  Then the “leaded” black strips were also cut and fused on top” of the intersections of the colored pieces.  I machine quilted each of the “leaded strips” then to give the piece a bit of dimension.  The name of my piece you ask???  I call it “Frankly Mine”.

"Musiques sans Frontières"

Annick

Guidelines: The piece must be black and white with one of the colors from your challenge (ie. Annick could use red or blue).
The piece must be inspired by a specific piece of art or by an artist - it doesn't have to be a painting, it could be a sculpture or even a piece of music that inspires you -- art is all around us!

My last piece had to represent Central and North America.  Music was going to be my art representation.  I love the blues.  I was brainstorming out loud with my husband when he suggested Chess Records and a chess board.  Perfect!!  My quilt is built like a chess board in black and white, and the LP represents the record label.  Finally, my hint of red is a map representing Central America, the USA and Canada. My world map is now complete.

What a fantastic journey with my girlfriends, and with my own self - full of inspiring surprises!

The balance of CC#7 pieces 

will be posted over the next few days.  

Thanks for stopping by!