Black Friday at the Studio

Delightful and productive afternoon of work and companionship at the studio today. Enjoyed spending time with a friend and then working on my quilt. Here a shot of where the piece stands as of this evening. For an enlargement.....click on the image.

Anyone recognize how I was influenced by FAMU and FSU colors?

New work in process

It's tentatively called "Demarcation" and it may seem like I haven't done much since, but believe me I've done a lot since November 3rd.

Latest Work in Process

These are a few pics I took of my latest piece called "Demarcation".

I am trying out re-visit some of the techniques I've used in earlier work. This is a flip and sew method....I think I want to create a more patchwork like surface.....at least for now.

I've started the process of sew down some of the fabric -- by machine and by hand:

These first pics are the maps I created as a starting point:

Compositional Conversations

Late last week I it was my turn to contribute to a project I wrote about a few months ago. Compositional Conversational is a group project spearheaded by Terry Jarrard-Dimond a fellow artist.

The participating artists include:

Rebecca Howdeshell, Beth Carney, Shelley Baird, Gayle Vickery Pritchard , Judi Hurwitt, Leslie Bixel, Fulvia Luciano, Marcia DeCamp, Marina Kamenskaya, Paula Swett, Valerie Goodwin, Kathy Loomis, Leslie Riley, and Terry Jarrard-Dimond.

I have to admit that this was very difficult.......I had never really been worked on a design created by several artists. However I gave it my best shot. Perhaps you'll want to check out our work at:

http://studio24-7.blogspot.com/

Here are some of my studies:

Been on Haitus -- but have a new idea

The line that marks the railroad tracks represents
the cultural, economic and historical divisions in my city.

It's there, but we take it for granted.......but to me this demarcation draws the line between:

Haves vs. Have nots
North vs. South
Majority vs. Minority
White vs. Black
Towns vs. Gowns
“Right Side” vs. “Wrong Side”
Powerful vs. Powerless
Growth vs. Atrophy

Here is a quick sketch I did for this new piece. The dark curvy line is the railroad track. I'll post more as I go along.....

Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me a Map!

This is the title of the 2 day workshop I taught for the East Bay Heritage Quilters in Berkeley, CA a few weeks ago.

I had such a good time with the ladies. In addition, I got to do the touristy things, like see the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, ride the cable cars, etc....... Everyone was so helpful and friendly.

During the course of the 2 day workshop, I introduced my students to techniques on making 2 kinds of fabric maps. One was of an imagined place. The other was of a real place -- the Japanese Tea Garden. Here are a few images.

This was the Japanese Tea Garden -- I made this as a sample for the class.

Unique Design idea for a support rod

My DH and I came up with a neat way of hanging the triptych. Since it was so wide (about 93"), made up of 3 pieces and I wanted to maintain a gap between each -- we decided to use threaded rods and bolts.



Each rod was a little longer than each panel. Each end rod was finished off with a cap nut. The connection devise to attach the end rods to the middle rod consisted of a 1" long coupling nut. Everything was spray painted black. Because of the length of the assembled rod and the weight of the triptych 4 support points are necessary when hanging the quilt from the wall.

All the parts were purchased at Home Depot.

After the rod was complete we tested our little designed by hanging the quilt from it over a few days.

Here are a few pics of the rods -- before painting.