Painted Peltex Pod Form

Stitched painted Peltex, embossed aluminum and wool felt.

I was curious what the surface of Peltex would look like painted. This is the non fusible kind.
I painted one side green and the other side purple, orange and metallic gold with textile paints.The surface came out slightly porous looking, not smooth and flat like painting lutradur or fabric, it has an interesting texture.

I cut shapes out of the Petex for the center of the pod and stitched free motion designs into it. The stitching does not stand out too much on the textured surface.

I cut outside leaves from fabric I had painted a while ago and fused it to wool felt, quilting leaf designs and finishing the edges with a satin stitch. I cut strips of aluminum and stitched it on the leaves and embossed it with free hand drawn designs. The metal helps the leaves hold a curved shape

I stitched some furry novelty yarn to the tops edges of the peltex and then satin stitched the sides leaving the top open.

Kind of reminds me of Little Shop of Horrors in this photo.

I fused a base to the leaves and stitched the leaf edges together through the lower sides of the center pod connecting the whole thing together.

SOFA Chicago

On Thursday I got a call from my friend Trish Williams who invited me to go with her to the preview night at SOFA. (Sculpture Objects & Functional Art) Wow, what an offer: great company, fantastic art, free wine and appetizers... how could I refuse? I love going to the SOFA show, there is so much incredibly inspiring art in so many different mediums. Here are just a few of my favorite artists:

Steffen Dam- This artist makes these incredible scientific looking specimens in glass, often looking like botanical or sea creature forms. This collection looked like jars of jelly fish, I LOVE jellies!

Barbara lee-Smith- beautiful quilt-like imagery which I think is painted and fused lutradur with stitching. Breathtakingly beautiful landscapes.Karen Halt - these are small dresses made from muslin with graphite drawings on them. The finished dresses are coated in beeswax making them hold their shape. Ms Halt often has paintings accompanying these dress forms with imagery that relates to the garment usually including animals like monkeys, birds and squirrels.
Geoffrey Gorman (left) an artist that makes animal sculptures capturing life like movement from driftwood, canvas and found objects. Woodrow Nash (right) makes beautiful life size African figures from clay with beautiful patinas and designs.
J Paul Fennell (left)- exquisitely carved wood forms. Dennis Lee Mitchell (right)- incredibly realistic tree and bark sculpture made from welded clay.
On Sunday I went back for a second viewing with my son, who I knew would appreciate many of the sculptural forms in the show and a live glass blowing demonstration. I am so glad I went a second time because I saw pieces I had missed on thursday night when it was more crowded.

Surviving the Runway

The highlight of Make it U has got to be Pokeys version of Project Runway that happens saturday at 5 pm. This is an event not to be missed. This time the theme was music of the 80's. Pokey handed out old albums to participants to use as the major component in a wearable item.
Dancing is a large part of project runway, everyone here is doing the Electric Slide.
Tonya Littman, Kathy York and Jamie Fingal at work. In order to get supplies to make your project you need to work for it, this includes, you guessed it, dancing.

I made the mistake of telling Kathy all she needed was some gel for her bangs to get into the true 80's fashion of mall bangs. She looked me in the eye, looked down at her plate of paint and dipped her fingers in GEL MEDIUM and put it in her hair! Dedication!
Turn up the volume for this.

Robbi Eklow who was standing next to me mentioned the movie "Something about Mary" and we all lost it.
Co-judge Robbi Eklow and Lesley Riley standing in for Tim Gunn.
One last wardrobe check.
Working the runway: Deb Boschert , Jamie Fingal and Kathy York.
Honorable Mention, 3rd place, 2nd place and the winner.

Make it University Houston

I started my day on saturday with another workshop in Make it U. These ornaments were the perfect size project to do in a one hour workshop. Here's a couple of really cute ornaments that came out of day two.
Kristin and I took many pictures of each other over the course of festival and here is Jan manning the Fiber on a Whim booth. They played the part of adoring fans hooting and hollering whenever Pokey introduced me for a workshop. How can you not love people who make you feel so special.Frances' second day in Open Studios showed her colorful bags of beads and doodads that she stitches on her heavily embellished pieces. Those are whole bags full of single colors of fun stuff Frances picks up on her travels.

More quilt show fun: Halloween

How cool to start my friday by meeting mixed media artist Katie Kendricks. Not only a wonderful artist but obviously an incredible teacher when you see the student work coming out of her classes. Katie was just finishing up her time in open studios when I came to setup for my session.
My next thrill was meeting Rice Freeman-Zachery author of the book Living the Creative Life. Rice is writing another book on creativity and I am so honored to be amongst the wonderful artists she has chosen to include in her book.
The lovely and glamorous witches Leslie and Jamie posed for a Halloween picture.
Here's Frances Holliday Alford working across from me on her wreaths.
A little glimpse of the wall in the open studios area; Frances' piece is right below the colors sign, my sister Deb Silva's is below Frances' and one of mine in on the right, the other one on the far left of the same row with the three flowers.After I finished Open Studios I taught my workshop on stitched felted wool ornaments. This is Make it University with the Quilting Arts booth in the background
and the other side of the workshop area, with Fiber on a Whim in the background.It was wonderful meeting blog visitor, Martha from Austin, beautiful ornament!
Everyone made wonderful ornaments, I wish I had better pictures of many of them, unfortunately my camera often focused on the background.

Look how cute Jane Davila, Barb Delaney from Quilting Arts and Pokey Bolton were.
Friday night at the Quilt Art reception we realized many of us also love apples.
Me, Robbi Eklow, Lesley Riley, Pokey

Yahoo!

We are going to wake up to a new tomorrow and take our country back. Peace.

IQF Day 2

After wandering the show floor a bit we wandered over to the sea of vendors making our way to the Quilting Arts booth. This is located next to the Make it University class area which is surrounded by all the arty mixed media fun vendors in the show.

I asked Barb from QA if they had brought my felted ornaments for the booth, since they were displaying many of the projects from the gifts issue. Well, they ended up being left behind in Stow, this meant I had no samples for my workshops. Luckily, I had extra felted balls and felt, so I passed out supplies to all my talented friends. First stop the lovely Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson.

Not having my ornaments turned into a blessing in disguise, because I ended up with a great assortment of fresh ideas and beautiful ornaments to inspire my students.

Ornaments in progress, Laura and Frieda used Laura's colorful hand dyed threads, gorgeous!

A typical dinner at IQF usually consists of no less than 8 people at the table. right to left Deborah Sylvester, Carol Sinnreich, Maggie Weiss, Rachel, Leslie, Jamie and Frances.

After dinner we usually put on our jammies and meet in the sitting area outside our hotel rooms. Jamie models her heavy metal apron covered with snaps zippers, washers and safety pins.
We attracted the attention of a passing Bernina Fashion show winner and her family, while we stitched and made too much noise for a thursday night.
Rachel and I seriously stitching ornaments.
Rachel models one of Frances' wreaths from the Quilting Arts Gifts issue.

International Quilt Festival

What a trip, Houston was a blast! I have to warn you I do not have any quilt pictures, I barely saw the show. I know there are lots of people who have taken pictures and have posted them in their flicker accounts, so if I come across a good showing I will post a link. OK, I found one here. I have photos of some of the fun happenings in the Quilting Arts/Cloth Paper Scissors area to come.

Quilt Festival is more than just a quilt show. I have gone 12 years in a row and there is nothing better than seeing those friends who have become so dear over the years that I see each October/November. This is like an annual reunion of soul sisters.

We began our trip around the exhibits Wednesday night, trying to find each others quilts hanging in the show and catching up on what has been happening in the last year.














Including a knee surgery and hip replacement for two friends, which led to a moment to rest on the show floor, with lots of laughter and photos followed by a fabulous dinner at the restaurant at the Hilton, then wine, snacks and stitching in the lounge area on our floor of the hotel until the wee hours.


Me, Frances Holliday Alford, Leslie Jenison, Rachel Perris, Jamie Fingal