Snow in Mount Hermon

The journey this year I end at Israel's most northern point - Mount Hermon. This winter is the rainiest in 20 years, and the amounts of snow we received on Mount Hermon are respected, so we could open the ski season.

With this quilt I close a circle trip around the country, showing that although we have a small country it has a variety of weather conditions.

 

 

 

 

Shoshi Rimer



Piece 1 - the process continues

As I stated in my first post for this year on Jan. 5, my theme for 2013 is Up Close An Personal.  And I found out that these are called MACRO photos. I also posted the first step in my process on this first piece.

Now, I have step 2 completed.  I cut away and reversed appliqued several areas to get the effect I wanted.  The next step is to do some embroidery and then the binding to complete the piece.

I've chosen to do it kind of like a challenge in a GAMES magazine I used to get.  Very up close views of common things and you had to guess what they were.  Some were easy - others were more difficult. So when each piece is finished, I'll post it and then the next day post my photograph that is was taken from. Don't know if you all will enjoy the "game" or not...but it keeps me from getting bored!!

Piece 1 - Step 2

Can you guess it yet???

Alphabet Soup

Alphabet Soup

I love words, the shape of letters and different fonts, so trying to incorporate them into interesting quilt designs is my challenge and theme for our Voyage quilts for this year. Using colours which would not naturally be my first choice is another challenge I have given myself.

To start, I picked out a metre of Frieda Anderson's hand dyed fabric which I had bought some years ago at the Festival of Quilts. It is in shades of ochre, chestnut, ginger with some brighter yellow and ivory and hints of grey-blue and charcoal. Then I picked from my stash a range of fabrics of the same colours, giving myself enough so that I can work with these fabrics all year, bringing unity to the six pieces. At least, that is the idea!!

My friend showed me a photo she had taken in USA of carved wooden letters from a manual printing press, which gave me the idea for this piece. I drew out a life size design first and cut a piece of the inspiration fabric as the base . To that I fused the squares and rectangles and added the letters using different techniques.......fusing, outline machining, hand stitching, painting and beading. You can see me painting in one of the photos.

It is bound using the original fabric, label and a hanging sleeve on the back.

It took me quite a time to complete, but I did enjoy working on it.

Now, on to the next one!!

 Voyage Art 6
Tcherot 2- 'Suspended Animation'

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Kenya is to have a general election in March. The country is still suffering from the repercussions of the post election violence experienced after the last polls. As a result the country is holding it's breath, dreading that the violence could recur. My quilt is a talisman to bring peace, harmony and calm to the forth coming elections.

I have used a frame of bark cloth, sourced from Uganda, 'tied' using brass beads made in Northern Kenya.

The small talisman are made from vegetable dyed cotton sourced from West Africa. They are machine quilted using metallic and rayon threads. The embellishments are bone and brass sourced locally. They are suspended within the frame using embroidery thread.

Snowflakes

top detail

Bottom detail

 Here is the last of my 2012 pieces. I finished it a couple of weeks ago, but just had time to post it.

The fabric is dyed with Tanic Acid/Caustic Soda with 3 dips in different ways, then discharged with lemon juice using some stamps I made in class. The bottom is dyed with indigo, and I love the way the two dyes combine for the violet blend. It reminds me of the winter skyes here in Vancouver.

I embroidered the other snowflakes using various metalic threads I have, and the quilting is done with cotton wadding and backed with more Tannic Acid/Indigo dyed cloth. All in all, I am satisfied with the piece and looking forward to this years challenges.

Finally

Finally I have finished my last piece for 2012. I had trouble deciding exactly what i wanted to do- where have I been, where am I going ..... In the end I sketched a few ideas from photos I had taken on  previous visits to France , and then it struck me, it didn't matter if my piece looked like it might be from a page in a journal or sketch book, as I played around with different ideas. The flowery shapes at the top of the piece are actually printed with a dried half grapefruit, which lead to lovely organic shapes that looked flower like. The Madonna is a Madonna from the Bayeaux Cathedral, and I am rather enamoured of her. It seems she has been moved so she may be form a different period- I like the way she looks straight out  , gazing into the world- I left off the child because I am more interested by her gaze- and then of course is the  ultimate gazing activity- watching people walk by in Rue Mouffetard whilst drinking coffee.So in the end it is neither here nor there, but I am looking forwards out in to the world, making notes as I go.

Summer Storm

This is my final post for the 2012 blog.  As I mentioned in my earlier e-mail to the group, I was sure that I had made all six entries for 2012, only to find as I was cataloging my photographs that I had only made five pieces.  "Summer Storm" is entry number six.  It was inspired by our summer "monsoon" storms in Arizona that usually bring lots of drama and little rain.  The clouds are hand felted with wool roving.  I used commercially dyed fabrics for the mountains and sky.  The first two photographs are detail views and the third photograph is the full piece.  Now I can move on to my 2013 series.

Croatian Textiles

Last summer we had a fabulous trip to Croatia. We visited the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb where there are hundreds of examples of Croatian National Costume on show. I made a study of the patterns and designs and have put them together to make this piece. I have used a block print that i made myself and a thermofax screen that i designed. The fabric is mainly hand dyed wool with stitch using Wonderfil Spagetti thread. I loved using little bits of left over ric rac braid, cowrie shells etc. I havent decided yet whether to make all my 6 pieces based on studies of Ethnic textiles or just based on my travels. The new CQ challenge that is also based on working in a series has made me have to have a rethink! I have a busy few months coming up so i wanted to get ahead!

Winter tree

Don't know whether it is a Blogger or an IE problem, but I managed to upload the picture of my Winter Sunrise using Chrome.

First tree

The theme I will use for this year is trees. And my first quilt is completed :-). As background I used a piece of snow dyed fabric, not in one piece, but in strips. Here is a picture of the background fabric:

I prefer to do my quilting before I do the applique. Maybe a bit unusual, but much easier with the quilting :-). Sorry but I forgot to take a picture at this stage.
The final stage was adding the tree. For this I used a commercial black fabric, fused it, cut out the shape of the tree and ironed it onto the top. Additional quilting was added. Just like my previous quilt I did a facing to avoid a very visible binding and this is how the final results looks like:



Title of this quilt is Winter Sunrise.
Blogger is having issues at the moment. I had a lot of trouble uploading the pictures and I do not know whether you can see them. When I edit the post I can see both pictures, but when I just view the blog I only see the first one. Not only on this blog, but also on my personal blog.

New beginnings

Well....2013 is up and running....as am I!

I made a decision as to my theme for this coming year's series.  Over the past several years, I have a taken ton of photos for inspiration in texture.  I think they are called Micro shots.  Very up close and personal shots of a small portion of a larger item.  In fact, that is the title of my theme for this year...Up Close and Personal.

Just started on the first piece.....here's a sneak peek!!

Oh and don't forget to drop by my blog to leave a comment on Week Three in the Celebrate Snow Giveaway.  There is a cool set of Winter Blues and still time to sign up before I contact the Random Number Generator tomorrow night!

A Burning Passion - Kelly

And at last my final piece -- this one had a long journey but I'm very happy with the results.

A Burning Passion - This is my last VoyageArt piece for 2012 where the theme was to be Who Am I?  After such an amazing year, I seem to have discovered that art is definitely my Burning Passion.  So what better way to complete my self-disclosure?  It also is a great catapult into 2013 because I will be concentrating MUCH more of my time on my art this coming year.

Fabrics in this piece are my hand-dyed ruching and pole shibori and a few other hand-dyed fabrics from my stash.

This is not the greatest photo but I will have a much better one after my next photo session.  Gotta say....I LOVE having professional photographed art.  The difference is amazing! You can read all about my first session on my art blog....  www.kellyartist.blogspot.com   What a fun day that was!!

A Burning Passion - Kelly