Breaking Traditions Art Quilt Exhibit, Home 2009

Breaking Traditions is an art quilt exhibit hung at the American Sewing Expo in Novi, Michigan each year in the fall. The 2009 theme is Home. Breaking Traditions is teaming up with Bernie Berlin's A Place to Bark. Bernie's organization works to find forever homes for abused and orphaned dogs. This year's exhibit will benefit her organization while showcasing art quilts depicting the many definitions of the word Home.

Here are my two pieces for the exhibit:

Sweet Home Chicago

Winter Sunrise
For more information about the exhibit and to view the online galleries from past years, please visit the website at:

http://www.fibraartysta.com/breakingtraditionsmain.htm

For information about A Place to Bark, please visit:

http://aplacetobark.blogspot.com/

Hearts for Anna Fundraiser

This is my piece for Hearts for Anna, an online fundraiser, August 12 – 16. All funds raised will go to Anna Millea an artist who is fighting breast cancer – again. Anna has been denied insurance, having been deemed uninsurable due to her “pre-existing condition.”

For more information go to: https://www.artfulhome.com/heartsforanna
I tried a new technique for this piece that I had read about in a friend's Quilting Arts magazine. You start with a layered pre washed piece of muslin or white cotton fabric and stitch your design with cotton white thread. I included InnerFuse to give the piece some stiffness. It is 5" x 7". Use acrylic paint to paint in the spaces created by the stitching, leaving the area around the stitching unpainted. I made 2, on the first I mixed a little Golden GAC 900 into the paint. For the second one, I didn’t. There was no difference between the 2.

Once painted and dried, use fine sandpaper to sand over the paint.

It will look slightly faded.

Sanding helps make it absorbent for the next step.

Make a wash using Burnt Umber mixed 1 part paint with 1 part water.

Brush over piece and quickly wipe off with a rag.

The wash fills in the white stitched spaces and creates an antique look to the whole piece.It is important to use cotton thread because it absorbs the paint. I used a thin flat brush and found it easy to not paint over the stitched areas.

For the second one I used gold metallic thread because I wanted to see how it would look knowing it would not absorb the paint in the wash. I didn't like the end result, the gold stood out too much and distracted from the whole piece. You can see the gold thread in the above picture.

To add some extra flare to the piece I went over it with Shiva Paintstiks.

I was happy with the added depth the paintstiks gave the piece.

I finished the edges with a satin stitch and painted the sides with the Burnt Umber paint.

You can check out the link below to find out more information about the event here:

https://www.artfulhome.com/heartsforanna

The sale will be August 12 – 16

Winter Sunrise

This is a project I starter over winter break in December.

It was inspired by the beauty of the sun rising over the park across the street from my school.

One morning as I pulled in I was just so taken by the beauty of the bright orange sun and the colors on the clouds against the silhouette of the trees.

It finally got finished last week.

I used Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watersoluble wax pastels to do the background.

Trees are appliqued with Wonder Under and the twigs and branches are thread painted.

I am quite please with the way it came out, even though those cold mornings seem so far away now that spring is here.

Blending Art and Tradition, Genesee Valley Quilt Club

Here it is completed, I am very happy with the way it turned out.
This is for the Genesee Valley Quilt Club 2009 Challenge. For this challenge you were given a fat quarter of fabric, which is the fabric piece in the hands above. I painted it with Lumiere by Jaguard to add sparkle and free motion quilted it to accent the heart shape.
I then made the hands using InnerFuse and batting. I will paint in some shadows to add depth and they will come out from the border. It is my first three dimensional piece.

This is the picture the piece is based on, my hands handing over the tradition of quilting to my 4-year-old niece, Maya. The background represents traditional quilting and the piece in the hands represents art quilting, which is my chosen form of expression using fabric as paint.

Urban Decay

Here is the completed piece.

This is what I have so far. I am using Caran D'Ache neocolor watersoluble crayons.

Once it is finished I will thread paint it to accent the details.

Cropped image for piece.
Original picture.

Fragments: Urban Decay Challenge

The challenge is to help tell a piece of the Urban Decay story by documenting Urban
Decay with a photograph, then taking a portion of that photograph and creating a quilted
abbreviated image of that section in cloth, fiber and embellishments, reclaimed or new.

Collage Mania Preview

This week's Collage Mania preview features my heavily quilted art quilt.
It's subject matter is both personal and universal:

http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/blog/

Collage Mania is May 5 - 7 with 100% of the proceeds being donated directlyto the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.
Deadline for jpeg submission is April 1, but Virginia urges you to please send yourjpegs to Karen(at)KarenStiehlOsborn.com as soon as you are able. We don'twant Karen to be forced to spend the entire month of April processing jpegs.EARLY IS GOOD!
We won't be able to grant any extensions this year, so perhaps just pretendthe deadline is March 15 :)
All the details for submission are here:
http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/CollageManiaCall08.html

Winter Break 08 Experimental

An experimental piece for Salvaged Threads.

Check out, salvagedthreads.blogspot.com for more information.

Winter Break 08-Silver Bird

Another thread painting on black silk. The silk is such a pleasure to work with. I found a bunch of it in the basement, stuff I had left over from college costume days.

Winter Break 08 Obama Close Up

This was a misprint when working on my Obama Equals Hope, but I liked the composition so I made a small quilt from the image.

Winter Break 08-Hands

Here are some pieces I worked on over my Winter Break from school.

What a delight to have no where to go and nothing to do but make my art and experiment.
This one is done with variegated thread on silk.