SNaP - SAQA Regional Group

Studio Art Quilt Associates is a national group that promotes the art quilt, and has regional groups throughout the country that usually encompass neighboring states.  The regional groups, in turn, have "pods", narrowing down the geography so that members can meet in person.  The Northern Virginia pod, known as "SNaP", meets on the 4th Saturday of the month.  Some meetings feature a member as the "spotlight", others might involve a field trip to a museum.  The July meeting last Saturday featured Lisa Ellis as the spotlight speaker.   Lisa is an art quilter who teaches on the national level, and is also past president of the national SAQA group, as well as director of Sacred Threads, a biennial quilt exhibition with themes of spirituality, healing, joy, peace, inspiration and grief.  She shared a series of quilts she has been working on based on the cathedral window.

Lisa was inspired by some traditional cathedral window quilts made by her grandmother to explore this technique and develop a machine method for creating the traditionally hand sewn windows. 

"Radiance" was made using this method; it debuted at Houston International Quilt Festival in 2016.

"Midnight Blooms" was also shown at IQF in 2016.

"Windows for Yvonne" was made for an exhibit honoring Yvonne Porcella, founder of SAQA, who passed away a few years ago.  This one was made in colors favored by Yvonne and also using her trademark checkerboard fabric.  You can see more of Lisa's quilts on her website; she did share 2 quilts from this series that will appear in Houston this year.

In addition to the spotlight speaker, we also revealed some challenge quilts based on the theme "maker's mark".  The idea was to make a 12" square quilt based on how you make your mark on fabric, whether that be through dyeing/printing your fabric, a particular style you have developed, machine and/or hand stitching, or any other interpretation of mark making.  Seven participants shared their challenge quilts.

Most involved hand stitching as part of the mark making process.  Other techniques include screen printing, leaf pounding, crazy quilting, digitized stitching, embroidery. In the picture above, can you guess which one is Sue's?  If you are a follower of this blog and our thermofax screen business, it shouldn't be too hard!

This one didn't fit in the group photo.  It includes some pieces from a leaf pounding workshop prior to the June meeting.  The next group challenge is due at the end of September and is to be inspired by Gustav Klimt, an Austrian painter of the Vienna Secession movement who was greatly influenced by Japanese art.  Hmmm...time to put the thinking cap on.

To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia

Over the weekend Sue spent some time museum hopping in DC; one of the exhibits she saw was called "To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia" at the Sackler Gallery. 

The exhibit features ikat wall hangings and robes made in nineteenth-century Uzbekistan as well as ikat-inspired clothing by Oscar de la Renta.  Ikat designs involve a very complex dyeing technique sometimes called "binding clouds".  The items in the exhibit were overwhelmingly red; other colors included yellow, green and blue, as well as areas left white.  The process involves binding warp threads to create a resist, and multiple dye baths of dyeing and over dyeing to create the complex patterns.

The piece above is an extremely rare 22 foot long strip of velvet, probably produced in Bakhara between 1860 and 1910.

The cloth was created in strips which were sewn together to make hangings to decorate interiors.  Joining the strips would create new designs, and sometimes they were purposely not aligned.

The ikat strips were also used to make robes.  These boldly patterned coats signaled a person's rank in Central Asia. In the display above, the items with arms extended are the Asian items; those with arms down were designed by de la Renta between 1997 and 2013.

If you are in the Washington, DC area, the exhibit runs through July 29, so there's still time to see it.  You can find more information on the Smithsonian's website here.

Small Projects

Last week Sue used some studio time to make a few small projects that have been on the back burner.  First was a zipper pouch that she bought a kit for in June at the Quilters Unlimited quilt show.  The vendor was Bucklebee by Me (bucklebeebags.com) and the pouch is called the Skipjack Zipper Pouch for Washable Paper.

Washable paper (which appears to be the same as Kraft-tex, if you are familiar with that product) is a hybrid-textile product that looks and feels like leather.  The paper is wet and scrunched to give it the crinkled look.  Allow it to air dry before cutting the pieces.

These are the cut pieces.  Sue used a piece of hand dyed/screen printed fabric for the contrast trim and lining.

This is the beginning step of joining the outside bag pieces to the zipper.  The bag is fully lined with the fabric.  This was a fairly quick project. There was a little confusion with some of the directions but overall it seems to be constructed as intended.  The paper is rather stiff when it comes to turning the bag right side out, especially the corners. It helped to wet the bottom edge to soften it in order to get the corners pushed out.

Another thing Sue's had on the project list for a while is to make something using cork fabric.  As a first project, she decided to make this simple wallet which is a free downloadable pattern at Sallie Tomato.

It turns out the cork is very easy to work with and is actually very soft.  This is also an easy project, which took a bit more than 2 hours including cutting out the pattern and fabric.  The inside has 2 slip pockets, 6 card slots, and an ID pocket.   There is no storage for coins, however.

Sue will likely be teaching a class using cork for this project at Artistic Artifacts  in the near future - stay tuned for more information!

Studio Work

Wow, hard to believe it's been a month since our last post.  Time to catch up!  Elizabeth is off traveling in Asia, so this post is from Sue about what's been going on in the studio for the last month or so - late spring/early summer.  April was a really busy month for me, so May and June were intentionally slower as far as projects go, plus during both of those months I spent time in PA with my mother.  Is it really almost mid-July already?

One thing I did was to finally finish my spiral quilt from Susan Carlson's class at the QU show 2 years ago.  This is done with Susan's fabric collage method; all the pieces are held in place with glue, then covered with tulle and quilted to hold it all in place.  All the handwork, including binding, label, and sleeve is now done, so there's one quilt I can put in next year's show! 

In June I took a second class on quilting with rulers; it was actually day 2 of the class I first took in February.  I went with the intention of getting more practice with the rulers I already had, but of course we were able to try other rulers and I ended up buying more - no surprise there.  I took along a quilt top I had found in my studio clean up earlier this year in the hope that I might use it to practice on.  I found that I liked the overall design that could be done with the apple core ruler and started quilting in class, finishing up the binding last week.  I'm not sure what this pattern is called - its a piece that's been around for a good 10 years or more!

Here's a close up of the apple core quilting pattern.

June was also the month when spring postcards were due for my swap group.  Our theme this time was "perchance to dream".  Since I recently found out that I will have a quilt on exhibit at Houston this year, I decided to highlight that as my dream come true.  Here are the 6 postcards I made - a city skyline with the word "Houston" screen printed on top.  Elizabeth and I will be making our first trip to Houston this year!

I have also been trying to finish a quilt top called Paint Chips that I started in Karla Alexander's class at VCQ's Celebration retreat in April.  I got all the rows together in May, and finally finished adding the borders yesterday. Now to find some backing and work on the quilting.

And last but not least, my regional SAQA group issued a challenge due the end of July to make a 12" piece that illustrates "making your mark".  I'm working on mine, starting with thermofax printed fabrics and adding hand stitching - mark making in progress.  Here is a sneak peak.

It helps to catalog here what I've been working on.  Sometimes it doesn't seem like much, but then I look back and see I've done more than I thought.  Now to get back to some other started projects!  And maybe some new ones too!