Last Quilt of 2018

"Afternoon Tea" (c)Pat Dolan - gift to granddaughter for Christmas

Now that I have two new shoulders to use in sewing and two new knees so I can go downstairs and back up again from my sewing studio, I've been at my sewing machine. This is a wall hanging that I made for our youngest granddaughter's new apartment. Alyssa is a great tea lover, she collects tea pots, tea cups, and various tea varieties as well as serves as hostess for regular tea parties for her friends. So this quilt was designed just with her in mind!

The tea pot resembles my maternal grandmother's tea pot. The cup and saucer were as close as I could come to an antique cup and saucer (I used Prisma-colored pencils to shade the cup and saucer). The lace doily is from my collection of laces - my paternal grandmother made many lace doilies in her lifetime. The napkin is actually a handkerchief from my mother's belongings. It is embroidered with a "G" for her married name of Gangl. I believe that either she or her mother did the embroidery, as both were adept.

The bluebirds are symbols of happiness in many traditions and I feed them and photograph them regularly, so they are part of the ensemble. I printed the photos on silk, then fused them to the quilt top and did machine embroidery to make them stand out from the background.

Since Alyssa has been an organic farmer and is very much a farmer at heart, as well as a nature lover in all ways, the background of lush leaves provides a relaxing atmosphere for a tea party. For the table I used rusted fabric that I did many years ago back when we were still in New Jersey. I love the rusted fabrics and still have a nice collection of them, but they are somewhat difficult to quilt and worse for embroidery! Machine needles need replacing often as then dull quickly from the rust. But it makes a perfect table top for this quilt!

I did the "pillowcase" method for backing to eliminate binding - I'm not very good at corners of the bindings and find the pillowcase a great solution! Here is the back of the quilt - hopefully you can see the machine embroidering and quilting in it. Click on the image for a better look!

And Now I'm Doing Textile Art!

Watercolor Painting on Fabric! And MORE!

My creative drive has taken on a whole new life - and it's an odd time of year to suddenly want to be alone in the studio with music and a ton of art supplies! Thankfully, just before this latest creative splurge of energy, I finished all the shopping, wrapping and mailing of Christmas gifts to various family members!

I began by drawing a series of very simple birds, making cardboard templates, and tracing them onto fabric. Next, I painted the birds - having paper towels under the fabric to absorb the excess paint - don't want watercolor permanently adhering to my art table, if I can prevent it! Then, downstairs to the sewing room where I ironed each bird to make the watercolor paint permanent. And finally, I drew on each with black thread on my sewing machine, leaving the threads dangling - I rather like that, for some reason!

Then it was time to select fabrics to compliment each bird. These two fabrics were donated to me from fellow fiber artist, MaryLou Pepe. She gave me a whole bag of natural fibers for these upcoming projects! Thank you, MaryLou!!!

Below, I'm testing several fabrics for these two little Tufted Titmice.

Here are a few of the others I'm working on.

These two little lace-winged birds are made with Angelina Fibers - I have to be super careful not to iron them or they will melt!!!

I'm not so sure about the composition below - the birds need more embroidery to make them pop out of the background of trees. It's a work in progress.

Last, but not least - and also incomplete...

Some of the artists who have inspired me are: Emma Siedle-Collins, Cas Holmes, Debbie Irving, and Tara Badcock. Look them up, if you are also interested in this type of free-form embroidery/quilting/artistry!

Recovering Beautifully!

These past two weeks plus a few days has been a relatively quiet time for me - unless you count Facebook and the news. I've spent a great deal of time resting, as might be expected, some time in therapy as prescribed, but a nice amount of time perusing through some watercolor books that I purchased used prior to the surgery - so I'd have some inspiration to return to watercolor ASAP!

I bought three of the SPLASH series of watercolor books and went through each one taking down notes that I want to instill in my subconscious as well as consciousness. One thing that kept being stressed in many different ways is the act of disciplining oneself to DO ART. I used to be fairly disciplined - especially prior to semi-annual exhibits in which I participated for 15 or so years in upstate Pennsylvania.

When we moved to New Jersey, back in 1990, I was immediately faced with the fact that my watercolors were primarily country themed, appropriate to upstate PA. Not so appropriate to the NJ suburbs between NYC and Philly! Seascapes were popular there, of course, as well as many different styles of modern art. So I chose to go modern in a different media - fiber art. Thus the next 15+ years were spent working with fiber art creating wall pieces for home, office, business. Mind you, fiber art really does not sell all that well yet it takes much more time, effort, equipment, and fabric/yarn/threads/batting/backing and so much more to create.

So when it came time to retire, we both leaned towards returning to Pennsylvania to a quieter life-style, country living, less stressful driving, plus the benefit of being near one of our children as we age. We now live in central PA near Penn State University so we have the best of two worlds - country living but wonderful educational and arts events that match well enough to city living for our tastes.

With my shoulder deteriorating rapidly, it was also a time when I had to give up drawing with the sewing machine on fabric - a beloved pass time and an integral part of my fiber art creations. If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I've also been doing bird portraits in acrylics on canvas - a fun thing for a niche market, to be sure. But my love of the transparent watercolor media remains part of my essence. I've only dabbled in it during the past 2-3 years or so, instead focusing primarily on the bird portraits, since they are popular in this area.

It remains to be seen where I will go with all of this - suffice it to say that I want to work in watercolor but my fears get in the way. I've been disappointed with my efforts so far, partly because I know how well I USED to paint and I also know what I'd LIKE to paint. And my recent efforts do not match either of those expectations.

So it is that self-discipline must be my driving force if I truly want to paint in watercolor. Yes, the new paints, brushes, papers, and techniques now used in watercolor are quite different from what I'm accustomed to. But that is also exciting with all the new possibilities. I certainly do NOT want to paint the same old way I did back in the 1980's. They were nice enough - realistic and precise, but totally lacking much in the way of my feeling for the subject matter. They were fairly accurate representations of what I was seeing, but they did not reflect anything profound about of my love of nature, animals, birds, etc. Anyone can paint pretty pictures if they practice long enough. I want to paint beautiful images that combine what I see with my spirit's connection to what I am painting. I have done a few pieces - mostly back in the 1980's - that were moving in this direction. I have a sense of where I will be going when I begin painting again more seriously.

Meanwhile, I'm reading other watercolor books, filling my mind with something other than politics - something to nurture my soul, my art, my personal life. We all need to nurture ourselves to move forward in our own lives, particularly now in a time of challenges, division, and even crisis. Some of us will opening resist. Others will balance out the movers and doers with the arts and contemplative spirituality. And some of us will do both.

Off to more reading, thinking, writing, planning, and so much more...

Upcoming Art Exhibit!!!

Our local newspaper, the Centre Daily Times (in Centre County, Pennsylvania) today published an article about our Fiber Unlimited's upcoming art exhibit at Foxdale Village in State College, PA. Unfortunately, the link will not post here.

It's a fairly good article, although it fails to mention the names of all seven of our members. So here we all are:

Polly Miller; Tina Aumiller; MaryLou Pepe; Pat Dolan; Irmgard Lee; Nancy Silverman; and Janet Lindsay.

So this week we all are busy with our preparations - hanging will be on Thursday and an open house sponsored by Foxdale Village is next Sunday, August 21 from 3:30-5:00pm. See here for details.

Stay tuned for updates!

Featured in INSPIRATIONAL Digital Magazine!

I am honored to have been among numerous excellent fiber artists who have been featured on John Hopper's Textile Blog during the past 8 years. John wanted to celebrate those 8 years of textile blogging and link them to his Inspirational digital magazine. In this quote, John writes about this linking:

After some thought, I came up with the idea of using the next issue of Inspirational as a portfolio of all the contemporary artists that I have featured over the eight years of The Textile Blog, featuring work that they are producing now, and getting them to say a little something about where their perspective as an artist is currently. In a way it is perhaps a fitting celebration of what The Textile Blog has become, a vehicle in which to feature and highlight the work of contemporary creativity.

So, I have contacted all of the artists that have been featured on The Textile Blog, from way back in 2009, to a month or so ago in 2016. Bit of a daunting task, contacting and recontacting fifty artists from all corners of the planet, but I have done it and I am heartened by the enthusiasm and generous support from all those corners of the planet, aren't creative individuals the best!

Below is the beginning of my contribution to this effort. It was an honor to be featured several years ago on his blog, and another honor to be included in this follow-up survey of what the featured artists are presently doing and why they are doing it. Four of my current pieces are included along with my written reply to his question, to be found on pages 50-53 of the magazine.

Forty five fiber artists have thus far responded to his request, including: Deb Lacativa, Cathy Kleeman, Carol Taylor, Gerrie Congdon, Ellin Larimer, Wen Redmond, Dominie Nash, Diane Savon, Rayna Gillman, and Karen Stiehl Osborn, to name a few.


I hope you find this magazine insightful and, of course, "inspirational!" You will find it available here.