Kristin Shields Quiltmaker

Fiber Arts Stroll!

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show Fiber Arts Stroll.  I will be there to demonstrate watercolor techniques on fabric, which is how I did the fabric postcard above.  I'll be in front of Melvin's Fir Street Market from 12-4pm.  

I'll also have for sale many of the items I sell in my Etsy store, including hand dyed fabric Inspiration Packs, greeting cards and small art pieces.  Hope to see you there!

SOQS Michael Miller Challenge Fabric Postcards

The Wish Upon a Card fabric postcards were due yesterday for consideration for framing and for the Michael Miller Challenge. I spent all day finishing these, but got them delivered just in time.  The challenge fabric was available in two colorways, but I went for my comfort zone and chose the brightest areas of the print.  I paired the challenge print with hand dyes, except for the green print above. The balloons and the bird are created with needleturn applique. The beach houses are with fusible (when I really had to finish it fast!).  I think the beach houses are my favorite, though the bird is a close second.

These are created with crinoline as a foundation, then layered with regular batting and backing.  The crinoline provides a bit more stability than just the batting.  As I said before, I keep trying methods to get the best feel for a postcard. This seems like a good solution for something that's not so stiff.

Love in Bloom

My Language of Flowers quilt top is finished and I'm getting ready to start quilting.  Unfortunately, I had a set back last week when I woke up on Friday, got out of bed and was hit with a wave of vertigo.  It was just awful, so debilitating.  I managed to get somewhat stabilized on Friday, but spent the weekend doing some hand sewing and other art projects outside.  Actually, it was a nice alternative to the busy weekend I could have had.

The city started to come to life, the flowers are all in place. In fact, a hummingbird visited me today as I was doing some last minute embroidery.  Guess I must be doing something right!

On Monday I ice dyed a 2 yard length of fabric to use for the backing and binding.  Now, I'm working on cleaning the studio enough to get to the sewing machine to start quilting.  Seriously, a month of dumping things in here has left it quite a disaster.  Tomorrow is the quilt reveal at our Undercover Quilters meeting and I will show it here as soon as I can.  I also have photos from the special studio I got to visit.  More on that soon!

**PS**  I never heard from Penny G., so we chose another winner- Mathea!  Mathea, I have sent an email, please contact me to give me your info.  

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.  

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.

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.

Fabrications Exhibit

Here's some exciting news that I just realized I never mentioned.  I have my first acceptance to a juried art exhibit!  Autumn in New York is my Novel Idea quilt from last year.  It is inspired by Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.  This small slow cloth piece was a joy to make and I'm so pleased it has another venue for showing! 

From the Fabrications website:

The second Annual “Fabrications – the Art of Quilting” exhibit will open with a First Friday reception on March 1 from 5 – 8 pm.  Join us at Franklin Crossing, on the corner of Franklin & Bond in downtown Bend for the opening or stop by any day to view the juried show of art and contemporary quilts. 

Fabrications is the only juried exhibit of art and contemporary quilts in Central Oregon.  Quilts were submitted from Oregon, Washington, California and Arizona for consideration.  Jurors selected quilts that represent original design, excellent composition, and unique surface and finishing techniques.

I am so thrilled to have this quilt included.  If you are local I'd love to see you at the reception tonight at 5pm!

AAQI for January

This is an oldie, but a goodie, called Dandy Lion.  I decided to send it in to AAQI this month to get my last Quilt-A-Month club check.  That would be 2 years of making a quilt every month, except for a few where I bought one.  I am proud to say that my little quilts have made nearly $1500 for the AAQI!  

However, just the other day I got early news that the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative will be shutting down at the end of 2013.  This is because they hope to reach the 1 million dollar mark by the end of the year!  That is amazing.  Can you imagine all the little quilts you need to sell to make that much money!  Over 13,000 so far.  So, anyway, I just can't see quitting the QAMC when they are so close to the end, so I will continue right up until July.  For all the details about this year's deadlines see the AAQI blog post:  Sprint to the Finish.  

If you have not made an AAQI quilt yet, there's no time like the present!  Get in your studio and get to work making a little gem.  The last day to register quilts will be August 1, 2013.  While you are on the website, check out the hundreds of quilts for sale right now.  It's truly an amazing grass roots effort and Ami Simms and her dedicated volunteer team deserve all the credit for making it all happen.  

Dye Series Part 8- The Last, Indigo

You knew indigo would show up sooner or later, didn't you?  That's a pile of stuff that was dipped in the vat without any shibori techniques (plus a little sample of something overdyed in walnut).  I decided I needed to use the itajime shapes on indigo and thought this is probably the best use for them.  There is no need to let the shapes stay clamped on unless you are going to re-dip the pieces.  So, I made moon after moon, and some of Jude's butterflies.  I over dyed commercial cloth and dyed over thrift store linen.  All around, a very good time!

The orange is a thrift store shirt overdyed with indigo.  Makes nice spooky sorts of moons.

I did a lot of quarter moons too.

What fun.  Indigo is always an experiment for me, but now that I've got all these shapes, they'll start showing up in some slow cloth pieces over time.

I hope you enjoyed the Dye Series.  Maybe you noticed the page in the header.  You can click there to see all the posts in one spot and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

My October has been terribly busy with a full week Rosalie Dace workshop last week, a guild workshop on Tuesday, community quilts day on Wednesday, and today is homecoming.  My son has been chosen as a Homecoming Duke so it's a busy weekend.  Next week what may be my last days of class with Gwen Marston since she will be retiring next year.  Meanwhile I've got hundreds of photos from activities this summer that I wanted to post.  Don't worry, I won't go overboard with that.  This blog has really been in the background these last few months, but I hope to get back to more regular posting in a few weeks.  

I hope you are having a wonderful autumn.  It's my favorite time of year and leaves are starting to turn.  We are set to get our first real rain of the season this weekend.  Hopefully, that will keep down the dust and smoke that have gotten a little out hand this year.  See you soon!

Dye Series Part 6- A Rainbow and some Thread

After doing all the other dyeing, I still had plenty of dye left over, so I decided to make a rainbow, but these are mixed colors in each cup.  One fat quarter of Kona Cotton and one fat eighth of linen in each cup.  I mixed various yellows, or reds, or oranges, etc, until I got a color I liked.  

I also did some thread dyeing.  This is DMC embroidery floss.  Red and green are my favorites for pops of color.

When washed and dryed I always have a challenging mangle of thread to sort out.  I still haven't gotten to these, but they are ready to use!  On the left is some thread that I dyed in  my walnut pot.  I didn't let them sit for long, so they are pretty light brown.  I still have a couple more tricks up my sleeve, so I'll be back soon.