My husband, Randy Erickson, and Christina Fairley Erickson

My dear friends, I’ve decided to take a break for a little while from blogging. After working hard last week in my new class, then getting the “Salsa!” exhibition installed at the Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery, I’ve looked around at my priorities and have realized that I need to spend more time with my family and with making my own artwork, rather than being on the computer so much. I’ve loved sharing with you and will be continuing to read (and comment) on my favorite blogs. Thanks for all the support and encouragement you’ve provided for me.

Warmly,

Christina Fairley Erickson

Photo of a gerber daisy I took today.

Today’s been very exciting for me… I’m spending my birthday realizing a goal of mine- to be in the ongoing, long-term coursework at the Gail Harker Center for the Creative Arts.  I started in “Studies in Design, Experimental Machine and Hand Stitch Level 200” yesterday.

We mainly have been working on color theory and dyeing the last two days.  The photo above is a great example of color.  You probably know and can see how the complementary colors of blue and orange make this photo extremely vibrant.  But the photo also works well because it has red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow, and yellow green.  The spectrum of the color wheel from yellow-green through to red-orange are all included, which are analogous colors.  Also, the blue, red-orange, and yellow-orange combine to make a split-complementary theme.  Now, if the colors were all in the same proportionate amount, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective.  but the dashes of yellow-green and red-orange really help the photo POP!

A few of my embroidery threads and yarns that I’m hand-dyeing.  The dye is wet on the thread here and will look different once it has been rinsed out.

 

Beyond playing with dyes on paper and practicing color schemes, we started hand-dying our thread today.  I played around with variegating between colors, from dark to light in one color, and with using a split-complementary color scheme on the thread.
Some of my notes and a color study of creating neutrals from
complementary colors (Red-Orange and Blue-Green)

Tomorrow we will get started on dyeing our fabric and hopefully get to stitching.  I have three more wonderful days of this session… then it’s home and off to set up the Tieton, WA “Salsa!” exhibition, which will be opening Memorial Day weekend.  I’m pretty confident that I’ll be freemotion quilting as soon as I get through my show opening!

 

From my sketchbook- Creating shades by adding black to a pure color (orange) and mixing a triad of
Yellow-Green, Yellow-Orange, and Violet

 

 

As a special supporter (or “Stashfest Friend”) of the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum, I was honored to attend a tea this afternoon.  A lovely group of supporters, board members, and quilt aficionados enjoyed getting to know each other a little bit and were the first to see a new collection of antique quilts that the museum recently acquired. Here are a few which I thought you might enjoy!

This pattern called “pickle jar” is pretty intricate and the colors are so vibrant.  Hard to believe that this incredible quilt dates back to 1910!
 
This 1932 “bluework” quilt is exquisite.  The patterns were so different from anything I’ve seen from that era. The part I was most surprised with was how the quilter used a dense field of French Knots to create the filling/dark shading of the cross.
 

Here is part of the area filled with French Knots.

Here’s a close-up of some of the incredible embroidered blocks.

 

This log cabin block quilt from 1865 is particularly unique because it’s a two-sided quilt… quite unusual for that time period.

This incredible piece has feathered triangles and appliquéd flowers and leaves as a large wide border. It’s in pristine condition… for a quilt that will be celebrating two centuries in a few decades.  It was made in the 1840s.

Here’s another piece from the 1840’s.  What makes this quilt special is that it is a very early example for broderie perce. This technique is done by cutting out a part of a printed fabric and appliquéing it onto a background, such as the center piece you see here.  The fabric was also used to make the large diamond shape border around the quilt.
 
The full 1840 broderie perce quilt.
 

This cherry quilt from the 1890’s is Mennonite.

 

A wonderful and unique example of redwork embroidery from the 1890’s.

Hope you enjoy this step back in history.  It’s amazing to see what was done so many years ago… how women expressed their artistic selves, even when it wasn’t considered art.
I’m staying up on Whidbey Island for the rest of the week, while I attend my first session of the Level Two series in hand and machine stitch and design at the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts.  I’ll do my best to keep up with what all I’m working on this week,
 This is being a tough month.  It’s not like I didn’t expect it… but here I am in the midst of it and I’m feeling a little in overwhelm.
First, as most of you know, I’m share the head of exhibitions for the Contemporary QuiltArt Association and we have our “Salsa!” exhibit opening Memorial day weekend.  Our jury met on April 28 at my home… you’d think that once the pieces were picked out, it should be smooth sailing, right?  Wrong.

One of the wonderful things about the venue we’re going to be in, the Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery, is that they’re going to print a catalog of the exhibit. So, as soon as I know the juror selections, I needed to get the photos of accepted pieces to their printer, which meant I had to download 114 photos (a full and detail shot of each piece) from the place where the artists had submitted them.  However, I soon found out that not every artist had sent high-resolution photos.  This meant I had to contact those artists who had sent low-res photos and help them get high resolution ones to me.  I even ended up taking photos for one artist!

Once the photos were sent over, I had to start working on compiling all the information for the catalog… artist’s statements, sizes of artwork, materials and techniques used, photographer, price of piece, year completed, as well as artist and title of the piece.  We have 57 pieces in the show, so that’s quite a bit of info to put together.

On Saturday, we pick up the pieces at our CQA meeting.  We’re working on figuring out a way to best hang the works… the gallery has a wire hanging system.  At this point, we’re planning on using a heavy-duty fishing line to attach the quilts and art cloth from the wire.  However, we will need to tie the fishing line onto all the hanging sticks and haven’t fully worked out how we will adjust the length of the fishing line to make sure each piece is at the right level and even.  My husband and I have even gone to a couple hardware stores to try and see if there was some sort of hardware that we could put the line through and pull it and it would catch and not slip.  At this point, it looks like we’re going to just be adjusting it by hand and tying it off.

On the 20th, we head over to Tieton (about a 2 and a half hour drive) to hang the show.  I’m not sure how long it will take considering the tying aspect.  Then our Opening will be on Saturday the 25th, so another long drive that day (I may stay overnight for that one since it goes from 12-5 and there is an artist celebratory dinner afterwards!)

Oh, did I forget to mention that my two-year long program at the Gail Harker Center for the Creative Arts starts this month too?  I will be going up to La Conner from May 14-19 for my first class. We’ll be meeting approximately every three months and have a good deal of homework in between each session.  However, as you can see from the photos here, Gail’s student’s create some amazing fiber artwork!

All this said, I’ve decided to back off of my initial goal this year to create a 5 x 7 piece each week.  I’m a little disappointed, but I am working on my artwork daily, so I suppose that’s the real goal.  Since I’ll be staying up at our cabin on Whidbey Island next week while I go to classes in La Conner, I plan to bring my freemotion quilting sampler quilt that I’m working on for Leah Day’s Craftsy class to work on in the evening.  Having six days away from my husband and kids to just work on my art will be a real vacation!

Anna’s hummingbird from my sketchbook – Acryllic paint, watercolor pencil, silver ink