Kristin Shields Quiltmaker

A Visit with Salley Mavor

Sorry for taking so long to finally post this!  I guess I lost my blogging mojo for a bit, but I was also taken down with a bout of vertigo which lasted about a week and then had so many projects I was behind on, it took a while to catch up.  

Anyway, I was so thrilled to be invited to Salley Mavor's studio while we were in Massachusetts in July.  I was excited to be able to see the last days of a very special exhibit at Highfield Hall in Falmouth, MA.  The Fairy Houses of Beebe Woods was such a lovely way to experience this historic mansion.  Chloe and I went for a visit to see the fairy houses and were really enchanted by the whole thing.  Afterwards I sent Salley a message that I was so happy to have seen it and she asked if we would be able to come visit her studio!  Wow, what a treat!

Salley is the author of Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects.  She has also illustrated many children books with her amazing fabric relief pictures.  Be sure to check out Salley's Etsy shop if you would like to see more.  She has a way with felt that is incredibly charming.  Come along with us as we check out the creative space of this fabulous artist!

Salley's studio is in a second floor space over her garage.  It's a large space, filled with creativity and inspiration and many of her older projects.  We spent about an hour, chatting, looking around at her work tables, current projects and her objects of inspiration.  Be sure to click the photos to see the details.

This is a detail of a the fairy house that Salley contributed to the exhibit at Highfield Hall.  That's a milkweed pod swing.

This is one of Salley's creations depicting herself and her husband at their wedding.

The bird display is a family heirloom.  She still has the trolls she played with as a child!

There are many lovely vignettes in her studio.

These are some of the dolls heads she is working on as she prepares to update and expand her Felt Wee Folk book.  The word is the updated edition will be published in 2015.

I hope you enjoyed that glimpse into Salley's studio.  She is just a warm and funloving as you'd imagine from looking at her work.  Thanks for the tour Salley!

Language of Flowers WIP

My latest work in progress is my Language of Flowers quilt, which I haven't worked on since this post way back in March.  The deadline is next Wednesday which means I really have to get going on it.  Today I started building my little city and I'm adding borders tonight.  I will be appliqueing flowers around the border and maybe some other things from the book.  We'll see how much time I have. 

PS-  I still need to hear from Penny G about the drawing.  Penny, if you see this contact me asap.  If I don't hear from her by next Monday, I will pick a second winner.  

The Snow Child Exhibit Opens Today!

This very nice article appeared in the Go! Magazine this morning.  I am so excited to see this exhibit.  If you are local, tonight's reception is from 5-7.  Tomorrow, QuiltWorks is having an open house all day and artists are coming throughout the day for an hour or two to meet anyone who stops by.

Dave and Marilyn are the owners of QuiltWorks.  They are great supporters of the quilting community.  I am so pleased to see two of my quilts with them in this photo!  My Snow Child quilt, called The Spirit of the Wood (being held by Marilyn), and my monochromatic quilt, the pink one on the right, called Not Your Grandma's Hanky.  The March exhibit came down yesterday and the gallery is now filled with about 60 Snow Child artworks.  There are quilts and other types of needlework and fiber art.  It's sure to be a great evening!

Language of Flowers Sneak Peek

I have begun my next book quilt.  This one is based on The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  This one is for my Undercover Quilters Book Club.  This is a story of a girl who grows up in the foster care system and what happens when she ages out on her 18th birthday.  She needs to learn to love again and finds herself through the flowers she has come to know so well.  The book is set in San Francisco and since I said someone needed to make a Golden Gate Bridge quilt, it turned out to be me!  This has some machine piecing, fusible applique (on the bridge), hand applique on the rounded shapes.  There will be flowers and I don't know what all, surrounding all sides of this center.  I believe this is the first quilt that I have made with all my own handdyed fabrics.  More to come on this one, but I've got a few other things to work on first.

Books We Love

My Undercover Quilters Book Club has a monthly theme for what we call 12 x 12's, though they may be any size really.  I have been trying to catch up on these and November's theme was Books I Love.  I had recently taken this photo of the four books we've made into quilts and transferred it to fabric with Transfer Artist Paper.  

One of the reasons for doing these 12 x 12's is to try new things and challenge ourselves.  This is the second time I've used the Transfer Artist Paper and I was hoping to do a better job at it than the first time.  I had trouble lifting the paper though and got a pretty rough transfer.  I went ahead and finished the project though.  I machine quilted the words "Books We Love" and "The Undercover Quilters".

The four books we've created quilts from so far are:

• The Good Good Pig by Sy Montgomery
• On the Divinity of Second Chances by Kaya McLaren
• Love to Water My Soul by Jane Kirkpatrick
• The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I am working on that last one right now.  The book is set in San Francisco, so I've just created my version of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I'm listening to the story as I work which is just great.  I am getting more ideas for this piece as time goes on.  More on that later!

The Spirit of the Wood

My Novel Idea quilt is done!  The Spirit of the Wood was inspired by The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, which was chosen as the Deschutes Public Library Novel Idea Book this year.  This fabulous story was itself inspired by the Russian folktale of The Snow Child or The Snow Maiden.  It is set in Alaska in the 1920's and tells the story of a childless couple who somehow come to know a small girl who survives in the Alaskan winters in the company of a red fox.  Previous posts are here and here.

I read this book during the snowiest part of our winter, just after Christmas, and it was magical.  There are so many passages that are evocative of the time and place, so many opportunities to be creatively inspired.  I took notes and could have made a dozen different quilts.  It was very hard to pare it down to the things I most wanted to have in my quilt.  In fact, if I had the time I have two other ideas I'd love to make into quilts!

The fox was the very first thing I wanted to have here and it was a bit of a challenge to try to get an approximation of the colors and the eyes.  Faces are always a challenge for me, but in the folk art tradition, eyes do not have to be symmetrical and perfect.  In this quilt, the Spirit of the Wood may be the fox, the owl, or even the trees.  I needed a title that wasn't just "The Snow Child" and spent a 1/2 hour browsing the pages to find something that would fit.  How perfect is this name given that embroidered "S"!  

While there were many different animals mentioned in the book (I made a list of over 30), I didn't notice owls.  However, this one just begged to be included and adds the touch of color I wanted up there by the moon.

The "S" could signify snow child, snow, snowflakes, snow angels, stars, swan feathers, spirit or even Shields.  I think it looks a bit like a cloud in the sky.  

Subtle elements I included are the snow angels and swan feathers, both important to the story.  In addition to the wonderful plot of this book, there are many references to hand sewing and embroidery.  I tried to emulate Mabel's hand stitched snowflakes.

The book title is couched to the bottom of the panel with some of my hand spun yarn and embroidery floss.

The panel itself is made from a vintage table runner that already had the crocheted edging.  I cut it in half and dyed it in indigo last summer, before I knew about the book project.  I love reusing vintage textiles this way.  In fact, the "S" fabric is an indigo dyed vintage hanky, the snow is made from two different vintage (and well used) kitchen linen towels.  The edging at the top is an indigo overdyed linen table cloth.  It's the only part that was machine sewed because I was running out of time and my fingers were too sore to contemplate hand sewing it down.  The trees and fox were hand dyed by me (except the trunks which are a commercial batik).

I hope you enjoyed this mini tour of The Spirit of the Wood.  This piece will hang in the QuiltWorks gallery for the whole month of April.  The reception is Friday, April 5, 5-7 pm and there will be 50-60 quilts in this Snow Child exhibit.  I've seen many of them and it's going to be amazing!  We hope the author will have a chance to see the quilts when she comes for her lectures the first weekend of May.

The Snow Child Applique

Things are coming along with my Snow Child piece, though not quite as fast as I would like.  I have most of the applique done, but haven't been able to work on it very much this week due to other obligations and a nagging neck pain.  This pain is exacerbated by looking down as I always do when I'm hand sewing.  I am seeing a chiropracter tomorrow and hope for some relief soon.  

I have lots of ideas for embellishing this piece.  We are leaving on Saturday for a vacation somewhere warm and wonderful and I thought I might bring this for something to do on the airplane.  I have done a mixture of turned and raw edge applique. I'm also taking advantage of the edgings that some of the vintage linens came with.  I love working with these old linens.  They are so soft and pliable, so interesting to look at and it feels great to breathe new life into an old kitchen towel!

I've used harem cloth as a base layer and this will end up being the "batting" for this piece.  This is a technique I learned from Jude Hill.  It's lovely and light to work with, but really adds a nice bit of dimension to the stitching. It's also tames some of the squirrely linens and silk I like to use.  

I just sent in my entry form to participate in the Around the Block Fiber Arts Stroll on July 7.  I plan to demonstrate using vintage linens in small textile art pieces.  I did a demo on slow cloth last year and this will be somewhat similar, but I plan to have a lot of my newer pieces made with vintage linens. 

I will be back here in two weeks, unless I do a mini post while on the beach.  Aloha!

Studio: April 2012

I decided yesterday it was high time to clean up the studio (just in case anyone comes knocking).  I also had an idea to create a space by the window where I could do hand work.  It means that the iron and board is put away and I'm sure that won't last forever, but I like this layout a lot.

I think I'm going to like this space, at least until the sun gets too intense.  I do have a shade in the window though, so we'll see.

I was also pleased last week to get the second design wall finally up!  Now, I hope I can really get to work.

Lots of stuff going on here.  The coyote piece is the next quilt for my book club, based on Love to Water My Soul by Jane Kirkpatrick.  

Autumn in New York

My latest slow cloth is finished with a couple of weeks to spare.  Autumn in New York is inspired by Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, as part of the QuiltWorks Novel Idea book club.  This cloth is completely hand stitched with silk applique on a hand dyed indigo vintage linen napkin.  There's a lot of hand stitched embellishment that you can see better in the detail photos below.  I backed the whole thing with a single piece of medium weight grey shot cotton and turned the edges under the edge of the napkin to hand sew down.  The edges peek out and allowed me to square up the napkin.  It's about 22" x 22".  This quilt will be hanging in the QuiltWorks gallery for the month of April along with 35-40 others.  I can't wait to see the whole exhibit.  The few that I've seen so far are really wonderful.

The only building I wanted to be recognizable is the Empire State Building.  To make things easier I decided to stitch the topmost part as you see above.  Lots of little split backstitches make that up.  All of these techniques were learned from Jude Hill.  Please check out her website for all sorts of wonderful online video classes.

Meanwhile I've already started on a couple of other projects, my Undercover Quilter book club project has a great start and my Small Wonder Challenge project is looking really good.  More on those later.  I'm still trying to figure out what book to use as inspiration for my guild Children's Literature challenge.  There are so many wonderful books to choose from!  We are heading out for a little spring break in a few days, I can't wait!

Some Progress and a Huge Thank You!

Autumn in New York is coming along nicely, though it takes a surprising amount of time to embroider those tree trunks!  More photos when I get a bit more done.

The Huge Thank You is for my most amazing friend and blogger extraordinaire, Sarah, who wrote a marvelous post about my gallery show.  Check it out if you are interested!