My January at the hair salon was busy with bridal shows. As far as quilting, I have been working on a foundation pieced quilt sized 53 x 53 and it was very complicated in the piecing and the machine quilting I chose was plentiful. I have finished it and am blocking it as I blog and will do some minimal embellishments on it. As soon as it is finished I can post the photo of it. Then Last Monday I had the chance to visit a friend who winters in Winter Haven FL. She has been asking me for a few years now and I took her up on her offer. Granted this has been an easy winter in Upper Michigan but a chance to wear summer clothes, flip flops and enjoy the 70-80 degree weather was not to be passed up!! I found that Winter Haven had a quilt shop called Heart Felt and it was the biggest quilt shop I have ever seen outside of Mill House Quilts in Waunakee WI. Visual overload and very hard to choose fabric that I could still carry on the plane home. I was inspired to make one of my mermaid quilts for my friend Jan, who invited me, in the colors she was decorating her FL home-beiges, tans, light blues and peachy pink. I will make the fused applique in a tan color dark enough to see it but light enough to stay with the color scheme. I found some fabrics for this quilt and some sea shell beads for embellishments.
This large doll called "Grandma" greets people as they enter the store. The owner told the story of how the former owner made the doll and the new owner had her in storage for a while. The shop carries a line of purse and tote patterns called Easy Peasy and the pattern designer made a pattern for a walker holder. She asked if she could bling the walker for a trade show and that's how "Grandma" has been ever since. Very colorful, eye catching and funny!So I managed to hit 3 quilt shops in the area, visit a botanical garden, enjoy the Florida sun and eat some great regional food.
This quilt began with the picture in the second photo from a quilt book from 30 yrs. ago. I bought the book before I was a quilter and have always been fascinated with the mandala design but never attempted it. I was planning to do the Hoffman Challenge and drew up the design (third photo) using a 6" block and after cutting it all out and designing the blocks I actually read the Hoffman Challenge rules and discovered it was too big. "What did we learn from this experience??" READ THE RULES and READ THE RULES AGAIN!! So I made the Hoffman Challenge in the size that fit the rules and then decided to make this quilt anyway because I really wanted to and was up for the challenge of the mandala blocks. The challenge fabric is the cabbage rose floral.
There was no pattern in the book-just the little bit that you see in the photo. I drew it out on graph paper and decided to foundation piece the blocks. I drew the pattern and colored in the areas to the color scheme of purples, pinks and greens. (Photo Three) Some of the blocks were very complicated and to reduce the block size smaller than 6" would have been too crazy for me. This was fun but time consuming and I stopped and did other small projects in between to calm myself. Once the top was completed the hard part was over.
I chose to quilt with a combination of straight and circular lines. The pieced top was very angular so I felt it needed some softness from the curved lines. 
Photo Four is an example of the quilting.
I have some fun purple flower beads left over from the REAL Hoffman Challenge and used them in this quilt (photo five.) I also used a few pink tiny rhinestones as accents. The finished quilt is 53 x 53. I plan to enter it in a few upcoming regional quilt shows. THe REAL Hoffman Challenge is due in July 2012 and I will wait until closer to July to display because I do not want anyone to copy my design.
These two quilts began with the bright version on the left. It is a smaller replica of a mermaid quilt I made last summer for myself. Is basically the same minus a bottom row of blocks and I eliminated the lighthouse and plants. I call it "Lake Michigan Mermaid." My intention was to enter it in an exhibit in Milwaukee this spring but I don't think they are doing the exhibit in 2012 so I will try to sell it at a vendor show this summer, The brown muted mermaid is a gift to my friend Jan who invited me to her Florida home recently and I call this quilt "Winter Haven Mermaid" since the area is abundant in lakes. Would the alligators eat a mermaid??!! I was inspired by Jan's decorating using soft blues, yellows and the sand/tan tones. I used a medium brown to do the raw edged fused applique keeping in mind to have enough contrast to be able to see it but not too dark to veer away from the soft muted tones.
This is the close up of Miss Lake Michigan and ever though I am using the same technique her face looks different from the first mermaid quilt I did and she looks like Lacey Schwimmer from Dancing With The Stars!! I enbellished with rhinestones, beads, buttons, Sculpy Clay fish buttons, fabric paint, glitter and nail polish.
Miss Winter Haven has embellishments of sea shells, since Jan had lots of shells as part of her Florida decor, a small amount of glitter from nail polish, fabric paint and rhinestones. I didn't go crazy with the bling because it seemed more calm/serene without it.
Studio Art Quilters Association is having an exhibit titled "I'm Not Crazy" which explores mental health issues. I think the title is offensive but whatever. It is the perspective or someone with mental illness, a caretaker or friend or family member of someone with mental illness. I have a very close friend who is Bipolar and is medicated to have balance in her life. This quilt is my interpretation of being bipolar-one minute she is happy, hyper bouncing off the wall and the next sad, depressed and angered. I used muted sad, dull colors to represent being depressed and, of course, the frustrated facial expression. I used bright colored fabrics with lots of chaos for the manic side's clothing, make up and jewelry. Her hair is out of control and her facial expression shouts "manic." I used lots of desciptive words on both sides of the personality in a subtle way in the background. I purposely went subtle because in society we don't want to talk about mental health issues and they are subtle and quiet in our discussions. I found there is a two sided smiley face which symbolizes Bipolar Disorder and I added it to the quilt in the lower center of the quilt.
This photo is a closeup of the depressed personality.
And this is a photo of the manic personality. She's kind of "out there!" Her expression deminds me of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!!
Cloeup of the Bipolar symbol and a few of the background words.I embellished the manic side with hand made Sculpey clay beads, a beaded earring, rhinestones for pierced earrings, orange lame' in the hair to symbolize being wired, and some fabric paint. The intent was for excess and chaos in hair, make up, clothing and jewelry. The depressed side has a necklace made to buttons made from leather (pretty cool from a quilt show!), a few beads for the necklace and a rhinestone for the nose piercing. Both have a little fabric paint for details.
Well I am having a month of rejections!! I applied for an article in Quilting Arts Magazine and was rejected earlier in June. My piece for the "I'm Not Crazy" for SAQA was not selected. They had 128 entries and only chose 20. I'm very bummed about this one because this subject is very personal to me and I put alot of emotion into that piece. Then I entered the Quilting Arts Magazine's Reader Challenge on Signature Color and there were over 150 entries and only 15 were chosen. I had a blast on this little 8" x 8" project including the beading around the binding. This will be a cute addition to my studio and it makes me smile. I'm just a bit unsure if I want to participate in these things for a while. It seems abstract art is trendy at the moment and representational art is on the back burner. I still love to made art and will continue.
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I may have posted this quilt before when I made it for my local quilt groups 2010 quilt show challenge but it has been chosen for inclusion in the Fabrications III: Art Quilts of the U.P. at the Bonifas Art Center in Escanaba, MI. The exhibit runs from March 29-April 36, 2012 with an artists reception on Thursday April 12 from 7-9EST. This exhibit is every other year and this is the third time the Bonifas has done it-in 2010 my Tina quilt was entered and I won second place!!
The second photo is a close up of the face area.
I have not been in my studio much because it is summer and my garden is calling me and I am doing an art fair in my hometown on July 29th and prepping for that. But at my July quilt guild meeting a member asked if I would make two of my fabric postcards for her friend (and my neighbor) who will be 95 yrs. old in August. Now that's a landmark!!This woman is a petite little spitfire-always happy, an art appreciator and she wears her white hair in a bob with the trademark black headband!! She has suppored the local art community and I enoy visiting with her when I see her. My quilt guild friend wanted 1 card for the birthday girl and one to keep for herself.
Many of you may be aware of a new 24" quilt block named Swoon by Camille Roskelley. Her business name is Thimble Blossoms and she has a fabric line from Moda Fabrics called Vintage Modern-both the fabric line and the Swoon pattern is very popular locally at the quilt store I work at and my local quilt group. I discovered Camille's blog and she had made a scrappy Swoon bvlock which gave me the idea to use the color wheel colors in a scrappy Swoon because if sounded fun and I have some color theory teaching and thought it would be a good visual tool. It is an easy block-squares, flying geese and half square triangles (no Thangles just a line drawn diagonally through squares, sew and cut apart.) I did a minimal of stitch-in-the-ditch quilting and some radiating lines in the dark background. It killed me but no embellishments were added to keep it simple. Fun and easy!!
So then I decided to make the same quilt block using "tints" of each color. I used the same color placement just tinted the color. I learned that I rarely use peach (light orange) because there was little of it in my stash. I used grey in the background since black with white added is gray. I quilted the piece with all curved and round lines. Not a grey fan but it is a teaching tool.
After the tint block I made a "shade" block in which all the colors have black added to them to darker them. I found out I had no burgandy in my stash and had to purchase some for this quilt. I think it represents a primitive/country/old fashioned look in quilts which is not my thing. But the finished quilt is nice even though one wouldn't use all dark colors in a quilt because there would be no contrast and the design lines and motifs would not show up much. I quilted this quilt in a combination of curved and straight lines and prefer oodles of quilting and like this quilt the best because of it. I hope it is useful to me when I teach color theory. I love embellishments and my rhinestone supply is calling me out "glue me on to those new quilts!!"