My July show is up on the art alliance website

 Here’s a screen shot of the advertisement. The title of my show is “Stitched Stories.”

Here’s an AI image of the quilts that I have decided to show. The relative sizes are a bit off, but the quilts look good together. The title shown by AI is not correct.

Thanks for reading. 

Chris

Back at it

I finally got the Halloween quilt back out and have spent sometime quilting some of the pumpkins. After much trial and error I decided to stitch them with a dark maroon thread. 

The quilt is covered in batting fuzz!

My daughter got me a membership in Skillshare for Mother’s Day.  Lots of classes to explore on their website and app. I guess I’ll be expanding my mind some more..

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Taking classes to expand my mind

I have taken plenty of classes that were not quilting classes over the years to have fun and expand my mind. In fact I have one coming up in June that has nothing to do with quilting. It’s one on eco-printing. https://artallianceofcentralpa.org/products/eco-printing-bookbinding

I have never printed with leaves and plants before. I have done normal fabric dyeing as well as rust dyeing. The rust dyeing definitely produces some interesting results. I have used several of the rust dyed fabrics in quilts. 

Rust dying set up

Rust dyed fabrics

Stormy skies rust dyed fabric is my favorite

Fracking quilt made from rust dyed fabrics

Painted rust dyed fabrics to use in a quilt

Rusted toxic barrels quilt using painted rust dyed fabrics

Do you take classes to expand your mind? What kinds of classes do you take?

Thanks for reading.

Chris

One of the great things my mom did for me

 I had a complicated relationship with my mother. I will leave it at that. There was one thing she made me do that I am forever grateful for. She made me go to sewing classes for a week in downtown Pittsburgh at a department store. I certainly did not really learn to sew that week, but it set me on the path to where I am now. I did learn to sew clothing over the years by actually making things. I pretty much made all of my clothing. Of course that was back when patterns were less than $1 and fabric was not that expensive. There were lots of fabric stores including an entire floor devoted to sewing in all of the department stores. Over the years we have seen all of them go away. The big fat books showing patterns from companies like McCalls or Simplicity are now just skinny books. Patterns now cost a fortune. We’ve seen Joann fabrics fold. So things have changed a lot. Now we have cheap disposable clothing to buy so we don’t have to sew clothing anymore. 

I even made my wedding dress and made lots of dresses and costumes for our daughter.

All that clothing making eventually led to quilting and where I am today. I wonder if I ever would have found quilting if my mom had not sent me for sewing classes. 

Did you sew clothing before you started quilting? Do you still make clothing?

Thanks for reading.

Chris