June theme at Sketchbook Challenge

... is "Pathways" ! As this month is early summer over here in my part of the world, this calls at last me to the outside. Lucky coincidence - I've two weeks off work later in this month, and I plan to spent parts of it outside with my sketchbook. So hopefully, I'll have a quilt to show afterwards ;-)) What about you?

For more information about how Leslie Tucker Jenison introduces the theme, just follow this link!

5th Journal Quilt

After I did some sketches in my sketchbook with "stippling-alike" lines, I thought - what about drawing like this on fabric? And so I did that. My cheap pen did bleed a bit, but not too bad. Some of the shapes (that's different to classic stippling - it's all about drawing connected shapes) were filled out in the next step. Today I quilted it - I would have liked to do some quilting that fits the Sketchbook Challenge theme "Spilling over", but nothing came to my mind that I liked. Oh well - so be it. I had the idea of adding some red to the piece, so using red thread for the quilting was a logical step. As I like the simple and clean look of grid quilting, I did that - and varied the width a bit. Last step was a red binding, done with 2 rows of satin stitching. And here it is - my 5th Journal Quilt!

March Journal Quilt

"Parrotpalooza"

12.5" by 14"

Acrylic Inks on cotton, cotton threads and wool batt

This is my take on "spilling over."  The parrots are spilling over the sides.  I was going to have them all sticking out, but I couldn't bear to cut away anymore of the background.  I did this mainly as an exercise in using these acrylic inks.  And no, there wasn't any ink spilled.

For the gory details about the inks, click here for my guest post on "...And Then We Set It on Fire.   For the rest of the windy explanation, click here for my personal blog "A Creative K."

4. Journal Quilt!

After I used my first "carte blanche", it was about time I did my 4. Journal Quilt. I still was fascinated by the theme "opposites" - so I used it. Is there a stronger contrast as the one between white and black? To me, no - so I wanted to play with that. And I became more and more intrigued by handstitching on the surface - just a sample for this is the work by Lisa Call. Last not least, I wanted to explore the contrast of straight line and curved lines.
So; I set to work: ironed a piece of white linen of about 7", backed it with a piece of thing batting and picked a fairly thick silk sewing thread (guess it's supposed to be used for buttonholes?). Than I settled in front of a nice movie and started stitching - by hand ... and I liked it!  First, I tried to do straight lines across without marking. Not a good idea ;-)) So I unstitched my first few stitches and wondered how I could mark my line? The pojagi class I took some weeks ago came to my mind, and I tried pulling my needle along a ruler across the fabric with a little pressure. It worked ... I should have used it for ALL of my straight lines ;-)) I did 7 straight lines on one half of my piece. For the second half, I wanted a contrasting way of lines. Hmmmm ... how about circles? Yes. I started with a circle - and made it bigger as I had first thought. And I made up my mind - just one circle is enough.
I am very pleased with my 4. Journal Quilt - I will for sure explore hand-stitching further. Oh my, many more possibilities ;-))

Grandmother's Flower Garden

I prize lots of things but nothing really seemed to punch my get-up-and-make-a-journal-quilt-about-it! That is until I started putting the binding on a bright batik quilt, one so full of color, that I named it "Grandmother's Flower Garden."  This quilt began bringing back so many highly prized memories I have of my grandmother's flower garden.....and that's when I had it.....my ah ha moment....an idea for my highly prized journal quilt. 

Her garden was always a simple one with zinnias and marigolds and canna lilies - oh, just all those old time flowers that re-seed year after year and flourish in the heat of the South. 

So, I found one of my thread sketched fabric cards, printed it on fabric and surrounded this pretty lady in her smart hat with imaginary flowers.  There you have it, my highly prized journal quilt. 

It's a wee one at 7 1/2" x 9".

                                                    Marty



Highly Prized - Grandmother's Flower Garden - a journal quilt



First Journal Quilt

"Repeat Eyes Her Dinner"

8 x 12 inches

This is my first journal quilt and my personal challenge was to use some of my shibori-dyed fabric.  I used the stuff with the little circles because they look like moons and geckos are nocturnal.  

The long-winded explanation is on my blog here.

Hi everyone!

I realized today that although I joined our little group shortly after Chris formed the blog; I didn't actually ever introduce myself.  So, hello!  I'm Kit Lang.

I have a process blog "Kit Lang Fiber Art". I make both contemporary quilts for practical use and textile art pieces, which I'll talk about here, now.

I made my first art quilt kind of by accident.  I was interested in all the talk about art quilting but had not thought to explore that area myself.  Nevertheless, out of curiousity I had purchased a copy of Quilting Arts Magazine and in it, there was an article about Naomi Wanjiku and her string quilts.  After reading the article, I dreamt that I made an art quilt borrowing from her techniques, and so the next morning, I went ahead and made it!  It wasn't very good , but I was even more inspired to work in the medium. Winter Moon, above, was my second attempt at the medium and I was very pleased.

Next, I decided to try a more abstract piece, which I called The Paths To My Bliss, because when it was done, I thought it looked like a slide of my brain, while I was making.

However, I didn't feel inspired to create in this way again, so I went back to exploring that original form of expression.

This is Passage, a piece in which I talk about the sense of loss I have, having been cut off from my ancestors, historical homeland and history by the slave trade.

I continued to work in this way, refining my technique, and eventually produced another piece, Once, I Was A Child

I had been wondering whether the strong backgrounds in my work were too strong - whether they overpowered the content and obscured the message, and so in this piece I decided to make the background recede.  Although this is one of my favourite pieces, I decided that muting the textural backdrop muted the piece - somehow muted the power of the story - and so I returned to working with the the highly textural background, but worked on ways of making the foreground more dominant with both weight of fabrics and the use of theads in the quilting.

In my most recent piece in this method for instance,

called In Love and Hope, I used purple and black threads in the crooks of the branches and black and blackish green in the dark shadows; lighter browns, wine and loden greens in the trunks, and blues and browns on the tops of the branches where they'd be stroked by the starlight.  I also added a little metallic accent on the topmost branches of the trees.

As Frauke mentioned in the previous post, she and I are going to working on a sketchbook/journal quilt challenge - and I'm going to be using that opportunity to explore different methods and ways of creating art.

In my first quilt in that series for example, I hand painted the fabric background, hand stitched (which I never do!) and, as you can see, ventured into very different territory.

This little journal quilt above, is as yet unnamed - for now, I'm calling it 3CS JQ 1/52 (3Creative Studios, Journal Quilt 1 of 52). 

This is a much "quieter" way of expressing myself, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it - I think my voice is more forthright: but this particular challenge for me, is about pushing myself, learning as much as I can, and trusting myself as maker/artist, even if that means I venture into territory in which I'm not paticularly comfortable.  After all, though I say this piece isn't speaking in my voice - well, whose voice is it, if it isn't mine?  It must be, therefore, another aspect of myself which wants to speak - and if I'm uncomfortable doing so, doesn't art sometimes come from that place of discomfort?

Which is why, as we go forward in the challenge, I'm really looking forward to your input, your questions, your ideas - even your (gentle) criticism.  I'll never grow if all I hear is my own voice!

As I work on this project, I'll continue to work on my other pieces. I'm working on a tree series ( I have each of the pieces made in my head), but they are large - the current one is 38 x 52, and so will take a long time to complete, both individually, and as the complete series.  "Trees" are definitely something that rates highly on my "highly prized" list.

And, too, I'll continue to work on my quilts for practical use - although I predict the production of those quilts will slow down somewhat as I become absorbed in my art projects!

I'm looking forward to getting your feedback on the journal quilt /sketchbook challenge series, and I hope you'll join us!

Kit Lang

Something similar to a Challenge - anyone interested?

With permission of Chris (THANK YOU!!), Kit from Diva Quilts and Frauke from Quilthexle's World would like to invite you to an informal, low-pressure challenge.

I am taking part in the Sketchbook Challenge ( http://sketchbookchallenge.blogspot.com ) and Kit found the announcement of a Journal Quilt Challenge: http://3creativestudios.com/blog/2010/12/30/want-to-do-2011-journal-quilts/.

She came up with the idea of participating in both challenges by using the themes of the Sketchbook Challenge as themes for the Journal Quilts. I loved the idea and immediately decided - I wanna do that, too !! So we started talking about it and came up with something in the line of a public, private, low-pressure challenge on The ArtQuilt Blog. We would love to have discussions about our work - and doing so on TheArtQuiltBlog seems appropriate. We would post about our Journal Quilts on The ArtQuilt Blog and encourage questions and remarks. We're looking for some actual, critical feed back - and who could do that better than other Art Quilters?

Everyone who might like to join us is absolutely welcome! The more, the merier ;-))

We're going to be posting our quilts bi-weekly, in the size we like best.  Kit is doing her Journal Quilts in 10 x 10 squares and I  plan to do mine 6" square and bi-weekly. Whatever you would like to do - is perfect! I'm hoping to get 24 6" Journal Quilts done - but I will be ok when I'll have 20 at the end of the year (read: yes, I give myself permission to skip one or the other Journal Quilt ...). Every post related to our Journal Quilts should be tagged with "Journal Quilt" so we'll all know when critical feedback/questions about the work is desired. 

 

 OK, fellow Art Quilters - anyone want to join us doing Journal Quilts? Having fun doing so? And learning as we go? The join us!