The Images art exhibit starts today

 I had to drop off my Pittsburgh art piece yesterday and the exhibit opens today. When I dropped it off the woman that accepted it made quite a fuss over it. That made me feel good.

Pittsburgh in the Snow 2: Cathedral

Here’s a link to the 51 pieces in the exhibit.   https://arts-festival.com/images-exhibition-gallery/ 

There’s a lot of nice artwork in the exhibit. I’m so happy I was able to get in with such stiff competition.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Love, hate, and avoidance

 

This has been a week where I’ve been avoiding working on my Boston quilt. At this point all I have left to add to the quilt top are the long brownstones on the left side of the quilt. Yesterday I finally lined up the pieces for these 2 brownstones on top of the pattern as you can see in this photo. You can also see my abstract “Light in Darkness” and a smidge of the quilt of my parents house. 

The brownstones are longer than my cutting table which is 60 inches long. That certainly doesn’t make it any easier. 

I’ve spent time this week thinking about how I want to tackle this section. I think I will iron all the pieces together as a unit and then iron it to the quilt top. The debate in my mind is whether I should hang the rest of the quilt back up on the design wall or just use the last 2 photos I took of the quilt and the pattern to position the brownstones. Well maybe I’ll get the pieces fused together today. 

The last 2 photos are below.

One minute I love this quilt and the next I hate it. It’s been going on too long. It’s coming up on 2 years since I started it.  This is certainly not the longest I’ve ever worked on a quilt. A few come to mind. A hand quilted double wedding ring, the isle of Skye quilt. They both took longer than 2 years, but I was working at the time. What can possibly be my excuse now? Do you ever have a love/hate relationship with a quilt?

On a different note I received the official email saying my Pittsburgh piece got into the Images fine art show. Here’s what it said:

Hello Christine,

10116.503462.1915045 Pittsburgh in the Snow 2: Cathedral, price: NFS 

Congratulations! Your piece listed above has been selected by our juror James Farrah for Images 2023, the juried fine art exhibition of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. James selected 51 works from the 374 submitted for inclusion in this prestigious show. 

Images 2023 will hang in Schlow Centre Region Library from July 1 to July 31. The library is right in the heart of what becomes the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts from July 12 to July 16. 

The acceptance rate was even less than last year. I’m so happy to have been juried in. 51/374 is only 1/7 or 14 % acceptance. That’s incredible to be in that group.

Linking to Nina-Marie. https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading. 

Chris

A necessary distraction

I made a new cover for my big board ironing board today. The old one was the one that came with the board. It was plain off white cotton canvas fabric and was a real mess from years of use. I’ve washed it which I think was actually a mistake. I washed it in cold water and air dried as instructed, but it shrunk anyways and never fit the board after that. From trying to force it onto the board the elastic gave out. So I ordered some beautiful cotton canvas from Joann’s to make a replacement. Instead of elastic I used cotton cording in the casing for a drawstring.  I had to have my husband help to pull it nice and tight and tie the cord.

This one is on the board until I replace it. 

I received the ballots of the people that voted for my recycle piece. I was surprised that I won the popular vote with only 6 votes. Apparently there were only 39 total votes which make 6 votes about 15%. I was told the rest of the votes were scattered. There were only 19 entries in the show.  So I guess either the show was not well attended or most people don’t vote.

Dad Built Pittsburgh

The best part of getting the ballots was reading the comments. Here are the comments…..

“Amazing Story!”

“The loving image of the artist’s sewing/embroidery. The velum drawing made by their dad-as precise and skillful as the draftsman, and so tender.”

“Genius!!! (It’s my wife)”

“Well crafted, simple/ effective interpretation.”

So those are nice comments. It certainly points out how important the story behind my piece was. It could be why I won.

Thanks for reading. Linking to Nina-Marie https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Chris

Last building standing

All the buildings are off of the Boston collage quilt except one. I’ve left the row of brownstones till last. They could have been a quilt all by themselves with some tweaks. That certainly would have been an easier quilt! But why do easy when hard is so much fun??

Here’s the entire Boston quilt and the last set of brownstones. They have been moved to the left so I could take off the skyscrapers behind them. I’m getting close to the stage when I have to put all the buildings back in their places. That means putting the puzzle back together. I need to add to the background sky fabric so it’s large enough to cover the entire quilt top. It really doesn’t matter what fabric I use since it won’t show because it will be underneath the buildings. 

I picked up my recycle piece this week. It’s good to get it back. When I picked it up the person from the art alliance said it was one of her favorite pieces in the show. She thought it was clever. That was nice feedback. I guess I'm clever!! 

 

I’m already thinking about next year’s recycling piece even though I won’t start making it until January. Plenty of time to plan. And boy am I a planner. I am not the person that can start a quilt without planning. Of course those plans can and do change along the way, but I like to have some idea of where I'm going before I start. I am definitely not the person that can do the improv type of quilt. That's just not me. I've decided that I need to just stick with what I can do. I think that is why I don't do well in classes that make me create on the spot. That makes me very uncomfortable. Are you a planner?

Recycle piece. "Dad Built Pittsburgh" 10 in by 10 in

I received a birthday gift from my daughter yesterday. It’s a really cute wool pin cushion. The wool is in a mug shaped like a sheep. I’m still debating about getting the new sewing machine. Not 100% sure if I should change even though it’s a way better machine and there are plenty of things about my current machine that make me crazy.

 

Thanks for reading.

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Chris

Was 2022 a busy or slow year?

Or maybe somewhere in the middle….

Thinking back I don’t think I got a lot done this year so I thought that I’d actually look at what I did and see if that is true.

I made my girlfriend a wool table runner which was all hand stitched.

I made my sister a duck.

I finished my 2 Pittsburgh in the snow pieces and framed them.

I finished the design stage of my Boston Collage quilt.

I made 6 ornaments for my daughter and two dinosaur ornaments for my girlfriend.

I taught a class on making an art quilt from a photo and taught my girlfriend how to do that. She made a quilt of Falling Water. She framed it. The first photo is terrible so I also posted one while she was quilting it.

I hemmed 3 of 5 pairs of pants for my MIL and repaired jeans for my husband. So maybe I did accomplish a lot this year. 

Thanks for reading.  Linking to Nina-Marie. https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Chris

Happy New Year….

Design phase done. Time to move on.

 I think I have come to the end of the design process for the Boston collage quilt. Next week I will start taking off one building at a time, verify that all the windows, etc are in the correct place, iron the pieces down and then zigzag them in place. I usually iron all the pieces for an entire quilt in place and then stitch everything down, but I'm worried with such a large piece that things will start to fall off. I have never done it this way before. I will back each building with parchment and then stitch the windows in place. After this step I will put all the "puzzle" pieces back in place and then stitch the buildings to the background fabric. I might have to use more fusible or Roxanne's glue baste and pins to do this. 

Another thing I noticed as I was finishing up the orange highlights is that the windows in the large red purple brownstone on the left were not correct. They are not straight up an down. The bottom window sash is offset from the top one. I have corrected that in one building, but need to do it for the others. I know that it's not really that important, but I feel I must do it to match reality more.

 

Here's a close up of one of the windows I corrected.

I finally ordered frames and mats for the 2 Pittsburgh in the snow pieces. Not sure where I am going to hang these yet. A lot of walls in the house are already covered with quilts. The fiber work is not covered by glass in these 2 pieces. I wanted all those French knots to show.

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

To mat or not to mat?

 Now that I am nearing the end of the 2 Pittsburgh in the snow pieces I am starting to think about how to frame them. 

With just a black frame?

With a double mat. White top mat, black bottom mat with white core showing?

With a white bottom mat and blue gray top mat?

With a silver top mat and white bottom mat?

With a white bottom mat and a textured black top mat?

I keep going back and forth on this one. Certainly better to see this in person that trying to guess what it really looks like from an online framing site. I guess I should not even think about framing until I design and make the 3rd piece in the series.

What do you think?

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Some progress on second Pittsburgh piece

I've been stitching some French knots in the cathedral piece. So far I've only done some 6 strand knots. Still a long way to go. I still have to do more 6 strand knots as well as 3 strand and 2 strand knots. I'm not sure how well you can see the knots in these photos. They are splattered all over the piece.

Maybe I need to finish these pieces so winter will finally be over in central Pennsylvania! It could be that the lack of spring weather this year is all my fault.

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Inner dialogue while making a quilt

I often have a conversation with myself inside my head and sometimes even out loud as I work on a quilt. The conversation goes from positive to negative to positive to negative to positive…..well you get the idea. Here’s a bit of those conversations.

I love planning a quilt. What am I going to work on? I love thinking about it. Thinking about it is so much easier than doing it!

This is exciting. I’ve picked a fantastic idea.

This quilt is going to be great….really great.

This is going to be the best quilt ever. I might even win a prize for it. Finally!

I can picture how it will turn out in my head.

Crap.

This is not going as well as I wanted it to.

I can’t figure out what fabric to use. Stressing out.

Relax I’ll figure it out. Do I need to buy some fabric? Maybe the perfect fabric is out there just waiting for me. 

Maybe I  should just make due with what I have. Let’s go through the fabric stash again.

I’ll figure it out.

Let’s walk away.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I figured it out.

Ok I’m good now.

Things are not straight. How could I have missed that? Should I take the piece out and do it again?

Nope it is what it is. Keep going.

Why didn’t I look at the photo closer. The details are not right. How could I have missed that?

I do this every time. I don’t pay enough attention to the photo. Why do I do that? You think I would learn.

Too late.

I wish I could start over and do things differently.

I would do things very differently. 

Live and learn. 

Maybe this quilt is not going to be that great. 

It’s time to start the quilting.  

Did I choose the right thread? Now I’m not sure. Should I rip it out?

I hate to rip out quilting. I absolutely hate it. Maybe I should rip it out.

Should I have quilted it differently?

Let’s walk away for a while.

Am I doing this right? Not sure.

OK let’s just go with it. To rip is too painful.

Neck hurts, let’s take a break.

Quilting is done. No turning back now. 

Now onto the hand stitching.

French knots…are they too big?

Rip them out and start over. 

Still too big.

Rip them out again. I’m good at that. I’ve had lots of practice.

Starting to stress out.

Am I doing this right? Why do I always have doubts??

Let’s go smaller and different sizes.

Better now.

Keep going.

Not sure this is looking good.

Oh well let’s just finish.

Done. I wish I knew how it was going to turn out so I could have planned better.

I hate this quilt right now, but I’ll get over it. Eventually I will like it.

This happens every time.

So what would I have done differently in the Pittsburgh pieces?

We stitched in a lot of the features of the buildings. I would have used fabric to create those features. 

We did value studies and picked one. The ones I picked did not really fit the idea of a snow storm. The buildings in the distance should be fainter and features like windows would have been closer in value to the buildings. The painting of snow helped create this effect, but adding that effect with fabric as well would have made me happier. The pieces came out well, but I wish I could have known what I know now when I started. I was taking a class and followed the rules of the class. I think I’m done with classes for a while.

New photos of the streetcar piece. There are about 2000 French knots in it  

Linking to Nina-Marie.  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Do you have conversations with yourself. What are yours like?

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Figuring out why you want to create a piece

When we started the Natalya Khorover class last fall called "Sense of Space" we had to figure out what we were going to work on. Isn't that one of the exciting parts of the creative process? I find it really exciting narrowing down what of the many ideas floating around in my head I will actually do. Before the class I was searching Pittsburgh buildings online and I saw a photo of some Pittsburgh buildings in the snow and that is what clicked in my mind as my inspiration. I grew up in Pittsburgh and it is a city that I love. So why not do Pittsburgh in the snow? I do love a challenge!! Once I created a piece with a forest in the fog. See this post. 

Natalya made us gather photos of buildings that were interesting to us to use in our collages. During our first class she went over our photos and made us talk about them. Then we had to write what she calls a mind map of why we are creating these pieces.

Here is my mind map for the Pittsburgh in the snow pieces. I don't think I've ever posted it. It certainly is a way to solidify why you want to work on certain pieces. Maybe it is a good thing to really think about that before starting new work. Have you ever done a mind map or anything like that?

My Pittsburgh mind map

In addition to the photos Natalya also made us look at paintings of the city we were working on to get inspiration for the colors we were going to use. I did find lots of photos paintings of Pittsburgh in the snow and chose the blue grays and whites that I finally picked to work with.

I grew up riding street cars. We called them that, but most people call them trolleys. So I have fond memories of riding them just about everywhere as you can see from the mind map and why I incorporated one. The line we were on was the Library line and you can see that stitched on the front of the street car. Actually it was the Shannon Library line, but the label at the top of the street car was not big enough for all of that! I'm sure when I was freezing waiting for one in the snow that was late I was not very fond of them. The street cars used to ride on rails and were attached to overhead electrical lines in the city. They don't do that now. They built a subway system to take them underground once they reach the city. They also don't look like that any more. They are much more streamlined and modern looking now. I decided to create one that was from my childhood rather than current ones. After all my inspiration was from growing up there.

The sketch of the street car piece

My street car

How do you decide what you are going to create? Do you just pick something or do you really analyze why that piece is inspiring you? We do spend a lot of time working on a piece so maybe thinking about why we are doing it is a good idea. What do you think?

I did do more French knots this week, but don't have any photos to show. I had SI joint injections on Monday and the right side hurts more than before the injection there. Go figure!

Thanks for all the comments on my last blog and thanks for reading. I think next week I will talk about the ups and downs of where my brain and attitude are while creating a piece. It's certainly an emotional journey from beginning to end....at least for me.

Linking to Nina-Marie. She has an interesting blog about Michael James today. Go check it out or look him up.

Chris

Minimal progress

 I did finally do some French knot stitching. I was waiting a couple of weeks for more embroidery floss to arrive. Nothing is fast these days. I have about half of the streetcar piece done. Also I’m finding it a little bit hard to get motivated to work on it. I go full out on pieces and then burn out a little and find it hard to sustain my effort. Am I the only one with this problem?

The knots are different sizes made from 6 strands, 3 strands, and 2 strands. If you zoom in you can see that. I love the way the knots cause some shadows.

Linking to Nina-Marie. 

https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Hand stitching going on

I finished the gift for my girlfriend which I will post next week after she receives it. So I was able to finally start hand stitching the streetcar Pittsburgh piece. I added the electric line that the trolley connects to as well as some gold windows that would have been lit up and some French knots for snow. In that small section there are 40 French knots so I guess this piece will have hundreds of them! I am using an embroidery thread by Weeks Dye Works. Interestingly enough it is a variegated thread called Icicle. The skein only has 5 yards so I need to buy more!

How do you think it’s looking?

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Too late now!

 I finally spattered and sponged the snow after doing several more trials. Sent the photos off to Natalya to see what she thought. Now to start with the French knots and some other hand stitching. Linking to Nina-Marie. http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/ 

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Fear

What do you do when fear paralyzes you? My Pittsburgh pieces are ready to paint the snow, but I am extremely afraid of messing it up. It has been a lot of work up to this point and I'm afraid of ruining these pieces. I have tried several samples painting the snow. This one was my most successful one. It is painted with Setacolor white. It is sponge painted. The painted snow is heavier at the top since that's where the falling snow would appear the most dense. Natalya liked this one because it is the look that I'm going for. She just said that the sponge I use for the individual flakes should be a bit smaller. 

I've also tied using a splatter brush, then painting individual larger flakes, and then sponge painting. She also like this. The splatter makes smaller, fainter, and more distant flakes. The individual painted flakes are larger and closer. The sponge painting creates the increased density at the top.

So now I realize that I don't have enough paint to do the painting so I had to order some. Or is this just an excuse? Thoughts on snow painting?

Linking to Nina-Marie. 

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading. 

Pittsburgh in the snow

I've made some progress with the thread painting on the cathedral Pittsburgh piece. I've done some stitching on the streetcar piece. After the thread painting comes adding the white paint for snow and then hand stitching and more painting. 

We are having snow and ice this morning. We are so tired of it. Even our kitty is tired if it.

Linking to Nina-Marie. 

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Finally back to working on the Pittsburgh in the snow pieces!!!!!

After making Santa’s, an ornament, and a duck as well as starting another secret project I’m finally back to working on the Pittsburgh pieces. It’s a good thing since our class on how to embellish these pieces started last Tuesday. 

I’ve done a lot of preliminary stitching outlining building features. I’m still not done with the streetcar in that piece.

 This weeks lesson was on thread painting so I’ve had to practice free motion stitching. I used to do that on my old machine. I have not done that on my current machine. I have a foot that I used on my old machine that floated for FMQ rather than bounced. I tried to use it and it does not fit on my new machine. The mechanism for the even feed foot blocks it from fitting. Here’s my practice piece with a different king tut thread than the one I’m using. The spool that I’m using is getting low and I did not want to use it up practicing. The stitches on the right were made after the ones on the left so I was getting better as I practiced.

 In the class we were told to sketch on our original image to see how we would stitch to highlight features and shadows. Here’s what I’m thinking for the cathedral.

I tied that out on my iPad just to play around. The stitching does bring it to life.

 I also played around with my iPad with trying to make it look like it’s snowing. Should be interesting to see how I can achieve this look!

 

So it’s going to be a busy few days as I try to get brave enough to thread paint on my actual pieces. Wish me luck. I’m always afraid I will ruin a piece it the stitching doesn’t go well.

Linking toNina-Marie. 

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Chris