I've been a bit quiet on my blog in 2018. I've spent the last weeks with my nose to the grindstone. The days until my show in Sitges, Spain are passing quickly. I just received photos from the International Patchwork Festival, hosted by the Spanish Patchwork Association, of the space where my work will be exhibited. It has been a while since I had my own solo show and I'm excited to see it all come together. It will be held as the Espai Cultural Pere Stampfli, photos below.
There will be exhibitions all around the town during the four-day Festival. This is what the inside of the space looks like. The works in these photos of a past exhibit look like that of Libby Lehman.
I have measurements of the space now and am happy that my calculations confirm I have more than enough work to fill the space.
In addition to making new work (some photos later in this post), I'm teaching the pattern below for the first time. It is difficult work trying to make the pattern understandable to others. This is always a challenge for someone like me who tends to fly by the seat of her pants and "fudges" a lot. I am also providing kits, so right now I'm dyeing and ironing. When I'm happy with the value steps I will cut all the fabrics. Any fabrics that don't work will go in my travelling "store".
These are the Collage Tree kits soaking in the washing machine after dyeing.
I'm told the registration numbers are very healthy, and that the Collage Tree class is full. One thing I've learned is that the further a quilt instructor is from home, the better her classes fill.
I've been working this week on machine quilting my pieces inspired by Antelope Canyon. I'm sending a list of works to be exhibited to the organization this weekend, so that is my deadline to come up with a name for the series. Yesterday I discovered that I had left my feed dogs up while machine quilting for the last few days. I wondered why it was such a struggle? Some folks like to quilt with the feed dogs up, and that is fine if it works for them. I like to quilt with them down, and am happy the struggle has become easier now that they are down.
I finished building the yellow flower. I took liberties with the colour. You can see the photo below the quilt. I recently found out that this flower is a member of the Rudbekia family, known as either "Gloriosa Daisy" or "Prairie Sun". I really love the name Prairie Sun and would like to use it, but I met the flower on Vancouver Island in the gardens at Royal Roads University. I've set up a production schedule so I can focus on all the tasks I need to complete before we leave for Spain. It is very helpful in letting me focus on one task at a time and not jump around from one to another. This quilt is scheduled to be quilted in the coming week.
There are a lot of variations of this flower. You will see that at this link: https://garden.org/plants/photo/408953/
Last weekend I finished quilting Smoke & Mirrors 2. Now it is hanging on my design wall until it tells me how it wants the edges finished. I hope it makes up its mind soon :-)
I shared my hosta bud quilt in my last blog post. A couple of people wrote to me asking if I had turned my attentions to vegetables. LOL One of the reasons you might not recognize this as a hosta bud is because it is a very small bud and plant. I macro photographed it, and brought it up close and personal. Photo of the bud below, looking more bud-like and less vegetable-like.
And here's the quilt.
Heading back to the studio now. I will report back again as things progress. Enjoy your weekend!
