Exhibition Struggles

, , ,
 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

/12 Comments/by

Salsa Complete!

, , , ,
Read more
/12 Comments/by

True Triangles – Video Tutorial

, ,
Working on sample of True Triangles
I’ve had some wonderful comments on my Salsa blocks, as well as a few questions on how I did certain aspects, including my background of my most recent block, Chili Pepper.  Today, I’m going to go over the triangles freemotion quilting design.

 

Practice and notes from my sketchbook – True Triangles

I started working out this triangle design in my sketchbook, because I wanted a way to have triangles, but not a bunch of connecting lines or other angles.

More notes from my sketchbook

The main trick with this design is to make your first triangle and then backtrack (or “travel stitch” as Leah Day of the Freemotion Quilting Project calls it) to the middle of one of the sides of your triangle, where you start the first corner of your next triangle.

Difficulty: Beginner- The main difficulty with this design is in getting your sides of your triangles straight and in carefully backtracking, so your stitches stay on the line of the original triangle’s line.

OK, I’m still working out the bugs on how to do a nice job on videography for my tutorials, so bear with me.  I cut down time on this video by speeding it up a bit during part of the sewing, but I need a bit more practice on my hand position while videoing and also adding audio to the part which has increased speed.

Click Here if the Video isn’t Showing Above

True Triangles used in the background of my Chili Pepper block

If you haven’t linked up yet, make sure to visit Design Wall Weekend!  Or just stop by to find some other great blogs!

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Design Wall Weekend #1 Tutorial: Adding Your
Link to a Blog Party		 Design Wall Weekends

I’

/6 Comments/by

How to Use Your Design Wall

Years back, I never used a design wall.  I might sketch out a design on graph paper or in my sketchbook, but then I pretty much just went with it and constructed as close to what I’d drawn as I could.  It certainly is possible to get a good result from that… but it’s kind of hit or miss.  It’s much more effective to use a design wall.

Your design wall can simply be a piece of batting that you pin up on a wall anywhere you have some space to step back from it (preferably at least 8-12 feet or 3-4 meters) and be able to look at your design as it progresses.

 

First try- lower left seems a bit heavy with the
dark backgrounds

The change for me came when I started taking a Design series – classes for quilters that taught you the basic fundamentals of design.  Our teacher always said “Make visual decisions Visually.”  In other words, you have to actually look at something to see if it’s going to work, rather than just thinking it will work.

Tonight it was time to put my Salsa blocks all together.  So, up they went on the design wall.  I arranged them, then stepped back and took a look (and a picture).

I then rearranged them several times, each time checking to see how I liked the arrangement.

I like having the two red backgrounds on opposite corners

Looking through a reducing glass or at a photograph can also help you get a sense of how well the design will work from afar.

After determining the placement of the blocks, I then had to decide which fabic I was going to use for the sashing.  To do this, I pinned different pieces of fabric up and put the blocks on top, stepped back and looked at the overall effect.

The green fabric to the right is bold and seemed like a good prospect, but when I tried out the black with red/yellow/orange batik, I think I found a winner!

Salsa blocks with sashing complete

Next step will adding batting/backing and freemotion quilting of the sashing.

 

You Might Also Be Interested In:
 

One of the best places to learn FreeMotion Quilting: Leah Day’s FreeMotion Quilting Project

/11 Comments/by

Red Hot Chili Peppers!

, , ,
“Chili Pepper” by Christina Fairley Erickson
Freehand machine embroidery with decorative stitching and freemotion quilting

Make sure to check out the start of my Design Wall Weekends Blog Link Party coming Saturday April 6!

Well, I finally finished up my final 5 x 7″ block for the Salsa Quilt.  I had some fun with this and will be posting a couple of tutorials later this week for both how to do unusual lettering and a new freemotion quilting design.  I also will work on documenting my process for installing new fonts onto your computer, so you can play around with different lettering styles like this “Taco Modern” font I use in each of my salsa blocks.

I’ve been super busy this last week catching up after being gone for 5 days in the “Experimental Hand Stitch class.”  I’ve been working on continuing to complete my hand-stitch samples, which are quite relaxing to do.  I’ve also started cutting and piecing a new practice quilt, which I’m doing along with Leah Day’s Craftsy class.  Although I’m pretty comfortable with freemotion machine quilting, the more you practice, the better you get.  The one thing I haven’t completely decided upon is whether I’m going to do all the fillers which Leah suggests in her class, or whether I’ll pick and choose those which I want to do.  I’m not 100% thrilled with every design she’s picked, so I may just substitute some of my own, or others I’ve learned from Leah’s blog.

One thing that’s going to be a little different in the future is that I will be hosting a “Design Wall Weekend” blog linking party.  This will be open to quilters, fiber artists, mixed media artists, and book/art journalists who have blogs to help increase exposure to all sorts of great ideas.

Now, it’s on to do the sashing and binding for this quilt.  Not to mention, I will need to get going on a new 5 x 7 Challenge piece for next week!  So check back for tutorials later this week and I hope you will have some fun quilting this week.

You Might Also Be Interested in:

And the Winner Is… A Slice of Lime Peppers and Avocado

Check out these other great blogs:

Freshly Pieced

Freemotion by the River

Quilt Story

/10 Comments/by

Waiting- the Fiber Funster’s Challenge

,
Waiting by Charo Lopez

My small art-quilt group, the Fiber Funsters, met yesterday with our every-other month challenge.  We take turns choosing a theme.  This time, Charo picked “Waiting” for us to interpret.  Charo’s piece, left, features her cat gazing out the window at little birds and bugs made from beads, buttons, and embroidery.  The pillow her kitty sits on is puffy and with little braid and tassels.

Allison Chang’s “Waiting” (work in progress)

Allison started with white fabric and she wrote “Waiting” in Chinese characters across it.  She then fused shapes in a metallic gold, red, green, and black.  The squares and plaids contrasted with the circles, spirals, and dramatic red diagonal slashes made for active composition.  She also has put three half spheres of beaded wool felted roving.

Carolyn Hitter posed for several photos for her quilt

Carolyn started with having her husband, Jim, take some photos of her contemplating something from behind.  Using a method she learned in Leni Levenson Wiener’s “Photo-Inspired Art Quilts: From Composition to Finished Piece“, Carolyn took the photos and applied a Cutout Filter in Adobe Photoshop Elements.  She then chose the photo she liked the best (on the far left) and traced the shapes (below.)  The background of Carolyn’s quilt is made from a fuzzy interfacing… just like on a design wall!  Her title says it all: “Waiting for Inspiration”

“Waiting for Inspiration” by Carolyn Hitter

Any of us who are mothers can relate to the sense of waiting that goes along with pregnancy.  Waiting to get pregnant, to find out whether you’ll have a son or a daughter, to make sure they’re healthy, and finally for the wonderous day when you meet your child.  Lise’s humourous spin on these aspects of pregnancy is whimsical with the pink (for girls) and blue (for boys) background that the pollywog shaped sperm are swimming through.  
“Waiting” by Lise Vandandaigue
Similarly, Debbie has a beautiful pair of thread-painted birds waiting over their nest filled with three eggs.  The background has a very delicate soft changes of color with light blue and lavender squares pieced by fusing.  

My piece is still a work-in-progress.  After missing a flight out of Paris one year, I had to wait for 9 hours for the next flight.  Pretty tough when you’re by yourself and already time-lagged.  Of course, it’s nothing compared to those who have been stuck in an airport for days due to whether or other problems… my heart always goes out to them.  I’m adding freemotion quilting for shading will continue for background 
“Waiting” by Christina Fairley Erickson (work in progress)

 You Might Also Be Interested in:

Fiber Funster’s Group 
Reveal- Celebration		 “Opening” – The
Fiber Funsters		 The Fiber Funsters 
Group Challenge

Here’s some other great blogs to check out:

Leah Day’s FreeMotion Quilting Project

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Nina Marie Sayre’s Art Quilt Blog

Never to Hot to Stitch

/10 Comments/by

And the Winner is…

, , ,
“Corn” by Christina Fairley Erickson
Machine Freehand Embroidery, decorative stitching, freemotion quilting

Red!  Thanks for all the comments, encouragement and opinions on the background for my corn piece.  The little ends of the corn husk were challenging to applique down, but you can see a bit of the organza husk standing up in the picture.  What you can’t really tell from the photo is how much the trapunto stands out.  The two longer corn rows have 5 extra layers of batting, making them stand about 3/4″ up from the backing. I cut each of the batting layers a little smaller than the last, so it really has a rounded look.  The lower ear of corn has less trapunto (3 layers), since it is behind the others.


I’m now working on my last piece, chili peppers.  I started with the green stems, then went on to the darker shadowed portions of the chili.

The difficult part of these is that they are so thin, it will be difficult to convey a 3-D effect or to trapunto them.  So I tried to sew both in the long/horizontal direction and also around the width of each chili, to convey the roundness of each.

One of the main things when doing thread painting is to keep on layering your colors to add more dimension and gradation.  If you just fill in one color butted up to the next, it will look flat and like a paint-by-number painting.  Blending the colors is very important.  Also, look for the unexpected colors.  In this chili, I found a small place where the shadow had just a touch of lavender… it adds a lot to the finished piece to have those little bits that your eye might not originally catch.

Finished “Chili” thread painting
Now I just need to do the background and then I’ll be on to putting all 9 of my Salsa blocks together!
You Might Also Be Interested in:

Corn – Red or Orange- 
You Vote!		 Piquant Progress Fitting My Challenge 
with Showing

Please check out these other great blogs:

FreeMotion by the River by Connie Kresin

Quilt Story

/5 Comments/by

Corn– Red or Orange- You Vote!

, ,

Well, I’m down to needed to pick out the background and do the freemotion quilting on my latest Salsa block- Corn.  I’m not sure about the background color, however.  Do you prefer the red or the orange?

This may have been the most difficult of my salsa pieces to date.  Trying to get individual kernels of corn was tricky.  I also wanted to have the husk seem more realistic, which I may work on a bit more.

Nylon organza pieces painted with Dye-na-Flow

I started thinking about the husk and how to make it seem like it could be peeled away.  I decided to use a painted nylon organza, which you could get layers of sheer that would build color.  I used Jacquard Dye-na-Flow to paint it, mixing a variety of greens and yellows.

Nylon organza hanging to dry

When you paint the nylon organza, do it on a thin plastic sheet and wait until it is just starting to dry (it will be semi-sticky to the plastic.)  Then, peel it up and hang it to dry with clothes-pins or paperclips to a line.  If you leave it on the plastic, much of the paint will stay on the plastic and the surface of the organza gets a shiny odd texture to it.

After painting my organza, it was time to get going with the thread painting.  Starting with a photo I’d printed on fabric, I began with the very lightest color first.  Much of these pieces were sewn in little circles, to imitate the shape of the corn kernels.  At some places it was more appropriate to make little scallops, to add highlighting or shadowing to the kernels.

I then layered on color after color of a range from pale beige through sunshine yellow to a dark mustard.  In between the rows, oranges predominated to add shadowing… even a touch of a pinkish-orange.

At the end, I added more of the sunshine and lighter colors again, to build up layers and make the kernels a little more dimensional, with the highlights sticking out.

Corn with thread-painting over all, including husk


After the corn itself was complete, I thread-painted the husk.  I’m not completely sure about my process here or whether I need to do more (or even take away some of what I did.  After the thread painting, I laid some of the organza which I had painted on top and stitched it down.  I didn’t stitch it entirely over the husk areas, as I wanted some of the pieces to be able to fold back and move in a breeze, like a real husk would do.  After sewing it down, I cut around the edge of my sewing.

Completed corn with the organza husk

So, what do you think?  Red or Orange for the background?

By the way, as many of you know, I’m a big fan of Leah Day’s FreeMotion Quilting project.  If you’re looking to gain skill in freemotion quilting, Leah has just come out with a new class on Craftsy.  If you go to her blog, you can click a link and get the class for half price!  ($19.99 rather than 39.99.)

You Might Also Be Interested in:

A Slice of Lime Peppers and Avocado Cilantro – Si!

Make sure to check out these other great blogs!

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Great post on stenciling and thermofax on Nina Marie Sayre’s Art Quilts

/34 Comments/by

Progress on 2013 Goals

, ,

It’s hard to believe that we’re almost at the middle of March… almost 1/4 of the year is done!  However, with that in mind today, I thought I should review and see how I’m doing on My Goals for the year.

“Best Friends” by Christina Fairley Erickson
Commercial and artist hand-painted cottons, machine applique, machine free-motion quilting
My first goal is to work on finding and defining my artistic voice.  I’ve outlined several steps to help myself with this.  First, is to work with Gail Harker, of the Gail Harker Center for the Creative Arts.  You might recall some of my previous posts about the fantastic exhibit, Complex Threads, which featured the work of students of Gail.  I’m set for this part of my goal, starting next week when I’ll be taking her Experimental Hand Stitch 101 course. This course will complete my 100 level series classes, and I’ll be continuing on the path starting in May with Studies in Design and Experimental Hand and Machine Stitch 201 which will meet approximately every 3 months through the end of 2014.  
“Best Friends” detail by Christina Fairley Erickson
Next, I decided to kick up my production to help with defining my artistic voice.  To do this, I’ve been making my weekly 5 x 7 Challenge piece.  So far, I’m keeping up with this (one week I didn’t finish, but then did two in another week.)  I also wanted to do my small art quilt group’s challenge every other month.  I’ve only got a couple weeks to go to finish this and I’m not sure that I’m going to make this one.  The theme of the current Fiber Funster Challenge is “Waiting.”  while I have designed a piece, I haven’t even started it in production.  Maybe I can get it going this weekend.
Finally, I planned to document my progress in my blog, which I’ve been doing.  This also has helped me with my second major goal, which is to ramp up my pictorial quilts.  I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress through the weekly production of 5 x 7 pieces, both with my technical skills and composition.  I do still need to start working on a plan for creating a body of work.  
My third goal has to do with studio organization.  Here I have made some progress, but not enough to be proud of… I am at least working in my studio almost daily, rather than my studio being such a disaster area that I end up pulling my work out into other areas of the house!
My next goals, opening an Etsy shop and working towards a solo show in 2015 are still in the thought process, although I have looked through Etsy and think I can stay on track to open by mid 2013.  Beyond that, I’m on track for completing my piece for the Salsa show (entry due in mid-April).  I haven’t yet decided upon my second medium-to-large sized piece to create, although I may go back to my roots and make another horse-themed quilt.  I won a first place (and cash prize!) at an equine art-show two years ago and just received the call for entry for this coming summer. Alternatively, I may shoot for finishing one of my works in progress, such as my Waterfall quilt or Cathedral Visions.  
I’m scratching the final goal, completing a driftwood art sculpture in time to enter in the May show.  Although I love the driftwood art, I’m not having the time to do it as well as my main love, fiber.  
Well, I’m in a bit of overwhelm now, with all that I need to do.  Guess it’s time to get back to sewing!
/3 Comments/by