Spice Route Quilts at New England Quilt Museum

We are excited to have our Spice Route quilts on exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts!  We have visited this museum several times and seen some absolutely wonderful exhibits, but never thought we'd have quilts of our own on display here.  What an honor!  Of course, the Along the Spice Route exhibit is more than worthy.

Here is a quote from Pam Weeks of the museum to Paula Golden, exhibit curator, about the exhibit. 
"What fun we had yesterday hanging this lovely exhibit. Thank you for all of your hard work. All of the quilts are in good shape and it looks great."  Pamela Weeks  Binney Family Curator
New England Quilt Museum

Though you've seen them several times before, these are our 2 quilts.

 Elizabeth's China - Black Pepper

Sue's Mustard Seed.  

If you haven't had an opportunity to see this exhibit, be sure to take some time to view the collection at the link above.  They have been traveling since March of 2015 and after the New England Quilt Museum, will move on to the Texas Quilt Museum and the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.  

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sewing and Quilt Expo/Along the Spice Route

We were excited to attend the Sewing and Quilt Expo in Fredericksburg this weekend where our "Along the Spice Route" quilts were being exhibited.  You might remember that Elizabeth saw them in New Hampshire this summer, but this was Sue's first chance to see them on display, and to see the whole group in person as opposed to online photos.  What a treat!  It really is an impressive exhibit.  Kudos to Paula Golden and Ann Reardon for curating it, and inviting us to participate.

The exhibit sign tells the story of the spice route.

Half of the exhibit spanned one wall.

The other half faced it on the opposite wall.  In New Hampshire, they were set in alcoves, so there wasn't the impact of seeing them all at once.

Sue with her quilt, mustard seed.

Elizabeth with her China black pepper quilt.

This quilt by the curators depicts the ancient spice routes and the key shows where the various spices are found.

In additional posts, we'll share some of our favorites.  Hope you enjoy the virtual show!

Along the Spice Road to China - Moving Along

Because I wanted to incorporate the use of thermofax screens in the design, I took some photographs to burn into screens.

 

Several were peppercorns spread on a sheet of paper and one was even those hot spicy varieties of pepper.  Ultimately I did not use those screens.  Instead I picked some images from copyright free graphics and clip art to make screens and also used a stencil of Chinese characters (apparently about the Yellow River).

I knew that I wanted to frame my photo in some way and settled on a collage approach using a mix of commercial and hand dyed cottons, some upholstery samples, and pieces from a hand dyed silk scarf which I cut randomly into squares and rectangles. 

I wanted this background collage to be textured and then printed so decided that I would write out several stories with permanent marker across the fabric to give the base a texture and to record the hidden stories on the quilt. 

I started writing three stories onto larger parts of the fabric but as the collage started to come together I switched to writing on the precut pieces as a time saving measure since by now the deadline was less than 30 days away.  I used several colors of permanent marker and wrote one story about our family trip to China in 2007, one story of my “pretend” traveling spice selling family from many centuries in the past, and then one about the basic research I did on black pepper and its use in China.

These pieces were backed with MistyFuse, arranged and adhered to a batting of cotton/bamboo.  Then they were free motion zigzag stitched around all sides and through the batting.  Meanwhile I was also working on a way to transfer my photo image.  While it looked fairly clear on the computer screen there was pollution hanging in the air that day and everything in the distance seemed hazy.

I tried ironing freezer paper to a good quality muslin and putting it through our printer and was not happy with the results.  Next, I tried a product that gave me a plastic looking image that included splotchy areas.  That was a big “no” also.  After going to the Quilter’s Unlimited quilt show just a few short weeks before the deadline, I found the product that produced the best results from one of the vendors.  

I printed the photo in four sections to fit the space I had allocated for it on the base fabric.  This was also fused and the horizontal and vertical edges that joined the four pieces were stitched together with a narrow zigzag.  On the back went a layer of felt as the backing.

Above, I am auditioning fabrics and determining the best placement for the window element of the collage.

Along the Spice Road to China - Getting Started

This is Elizabeth's story about the creation of her Black Pepper from China quilt:

When first asked to create a piece for this exhibit I was both honored and overwhelmed.  I’ve never done anything like this before and the list of other participants was a bit intimidating.  I choked down the urge to say “mine could never measure up to what these people create” and then I said, “OK, I will participate”.  Over the summer months I thought about what I could do and started collecting fabrics that had the feel that I wanted in representing China. 

I picked China because in 2007 I was fortunate enough to travel there for 10 days with my then 14-year old son and husband.  We stayed for a week in Xian, where the Terra Cotta Army was the highlight, and a long weekend in Beijing where we signed up for a day trip to visit The Great Wall of China. 

The Great Wall of China is certainly remarkable in many ways. 

We visited on a beautiful fall day and it was almost surreal to think about the wall’s history and that I was actually walking in the footsteps of so many other humans.  I even called my mother back in the USA just to let her know that we were talking to each other while I stood on the wall. 

We walked to a spot as far as tourists were allowed to go and encountered a sign saying “Frontier-visitors stops walking”.  The choice of English words seemed humorous to us so I took a photo. When the call for quilts arrived, one of the parameters was that the viewer should be looking as though through a window.  As I studied my photos of China, that photo kept coming up in my group of favorites.  

I decided that it would be my window and the focus of my quilt. Even though I had a photo of a spice shop, it did not seem to have the historic feel I was seeking.   

I had several choices to make about the spice I picked which was pepper.  I could go with the hot spicy varieties or black pepper.  After some research about the use of pepper in China, I discovered that the spicy ones were not used in the cuisine in the area of The Great Wall.  Thus, I chose black pepper which was traded by spice merchants all across Asia.  I envisioned my family as spice traders walking, by foot or with a donkey and cart along the well-worn path, stopping at villages to barter our black pepper in exchange for all the supplies one would need on a long journey.

Mustard Seed (part 4)

In part 2 I mentioned that I highlighted the text in the parable of the mustard seed. Here's a close-up that shows the brown fabric marker I added to create a shadow and contrast to make it easier to read.  

And now for the quilting.  First was a zigzag around the stones to serve as the foundation and provide emphasis.

Then I stitched the village houses to look like stones, a free motion feather stitch on the mustard field, and wavy lines in the sky.

 The remainder of the surface was covered with small circles - and lots of thread!

So that's it, the story of the mustard seed quilt and how it all came together.  Hope you enjoyed my story!

Mustard Seed (part 2)

After creating all the pieces, it was time to put them together.  The left panel was seamed to the linen foundation, and then the wall pieces were fused to the linen, slightly overlapping the seam.  While some of the following pictures may look the same at first glance, you may want to click on them for a larger view of the subtle changes.

Then I filled in the scene through the window.  I guess I should have taken more pictures of that part of the process.  If you can see the pile in the bottom left corner, and the small dark pieces scattered near the bottom of the quilt top, those are pieces I was "auditioning" for the village.  I played with some different fabrics to come up with the final selections that seemed to work best.  The construction of the village is a variation of a technique developed and taught by Karen Eckmeier in her Happy Villages quilts.  Beyond the village is the field of mustard plants.  This was done with a photo transfer onto "Extravorganza", which is a sheet of organza fabric adhered to paper so it can be fed though an ink jet printer.  The sky is a piece of hand dyed fabric.  All the elements seen through the window are fused in place prior to stitching.

In this next step, I added a layer of paint.  I used bubble wrap as a "stamp" by brushing the paint on the bubbles and then stamping it onto the fabric. I did this over the whole piece to better unify and blend the color contrasts.  I think it was a silver or grey paint.

Next came a layer of screen printing on the left panel in gold printing ink.  There are 3 different varieties of mustard: Brassica nigra (black mustard), B. juncea (brown mustard) and Sinapis alba (white mustard).  So I made a screen of these botanical plant names and printed it down about 3/4 of the length of the piece; I was saving the bottom 1/4 for something else.

The bottom section is also screen printed, with the text of the parable of the mustard seed, also in the gold paint.  In another post I'll show what I did later to enhance this section of text.  You can also better see the circles from the bubble wrap printing and the texture it adds to the piece.
 

Mustard Seed (part 1)

The concept for the Spice Route Exhibit was presented in 2013 by Paula Golden and Ann Reardon and we had 10 months to complete our quilts.  Each participant chose a spice and one of 2 countries where it is produced, and then set about designing their quilt within size parameters.  In addition we were asked to incorporate this concept in our design:

"To add a unifying element to the exhibit, we are asking each artist to  design their piece as though they were looking through a window or an arch. Imagine if you were transported back in time and had just traveled along the Spice Route to the marketplace in Tanzania.  After the dusty ride– or so I would imagine – you had just taken a rest and were looking out the window of your room at the inn.  Consider the architectural elements from your selected spice’s country.  Interpretation of your selected spice can be a rendering of the botanical image of the plant, its flower or your visual interpretation of the spice’s flavor, history and color.  Consider the use of fabrics or fabric motifs from the spice country."

So I (Sue) selected mustard seed from Western Asia.  This encompasses a number of countries and I decided to focus on the area of Israel and Palestine.  Taking the guidelines into consideration, I wanted to incorporate both the window concept and botanical image of the plant, and tie them together with textural imagery and reference to the parable of the mustard seed.  After some research both online and in books, I started drawing my concept full size.  Following the rule of thirds, I allotted 2/3 of the width to the window and 1/3 to the panel on the left.

After drawing it out, I numbered all the parts of the window.  These were planned to be cut from a variety of fabrics so each would need to be a separate pattern piece.  I was using a piece of linen as the foundation on the right, and a dyed piece of the same linen for the panel on the left.

I knew I wanted to incorporate screen printing, which is how I made the image of the mustard plant.  I printed my image to try out the size proportions.

After sorting through a variety of neutral batiks, I decided which pieces to use where. Next I traced the drawn pattern onto freezer paper to make patterns for each piece.  The shiny side of the freezer paper adheres to the fabric when ironed, so that made it easy to get the pieces the right size and shape.

Once all the pieces were cut out, the next step was to apply Misty Fuse to the back of each so it could be fused to the linen foundation.

Keeping them all numbered was important to putting the puzzle together!  Follow along with the next steps in the process in the next post!