July 22nd, 2009
Next came Jackie Robinson who is widely regarded as the African American baseball player who first really made it in the major leagues. Using a black and white photograph, reference information about the colors of the Brooklyn Dodgers uniforms and such, I created an image of him sliding into a base…. I decided not to try to simulate the cloud of dust! Here is the tracing/sketch from the photo, with shadow lines:
And the fused figure:
Then the panel with Robinson pinned to it, sliding into base from the upper left corner….
Next post: Obama!
Posted in Art, art quilting, Inspiration, Techniques | 2 Comments »
July 20th, 2009
To return to my progress on Be Inspired, the next figure I tackled was a teacher. In our selection process, we realized that some professions inspire: doctors, nurses, teachers. Since this is for a school, of course we had to include teachers (and on the first panel, please!) as inspiring figures for kids. Using a photograph of a classroom, I modified it to have the whiteboards in use in the middle school, wood floors (in the old 5th/6th grade wing of the building), and look sorta like a Camden-Rockport Middle School classroom. On the blackboard, I will quilt “I touch the future, I teach” which is attributed to the late teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, but I expect is a phrase that has been around a while.
This section took forever to complete…there were so many little pieces, and during the quilting so many thread-color-changes, that it took a full day to just do the fusing/collaging in fabric. Here is the initial sketch/tracing:
And with the classroom pinned onto the quilt:
Posted in Art, art quilting, Inspiration, Techniques | 6 Comments »
July 17th, 2009
Woohooo….. a while back my contact at Janome America (I am VERY fortunate to have a loaner Janome 6600 from them, thank you Janome-America for your support!) called to ask if she could interview me about thread. It turns out she moonlights writing for The Quilter magazine….
I had thought I would be one of several people quoted in a longer article, as she had also spoken with Bob Purcell, co-owner with wife Heather, of Superior Threads (which also happen to be some of my favorite threads…I must, literally, have several hundred spools!). Well… it ended up being a 2-page profile!
In the magazine’s machine quilting section are an interview with longarm master quilter Renae Haddadin, the profile of me, an article (I’m guessing this one is also by my contact) on “choosing the Perfect Thread: a Machine Quilter’s Product Guide” and one by Morna Golletz of the Professional Quilter Magazine on a machine quilting career.
Thanks A. for calling, asking me, and turning it into a whole article (and bless you for mentioning the book up front!)!
Posted in art quilting, Machine Quilting, My Book, Professional quilting, Published! | 9 Comments »
July 15th, 2009
Because Martin Luther King was the clear leader for the middle school students in terms of inspiration, I decided to do something different and feature TWO views. This also helps with the “what to do with the legs” thing…. what attracts us as humans is the face (and perhaps the upper body/torso)…. we want to see the features and expression on the faces. A bunch of complete body shapes on a quilt would either look like a drawing class sketchbook page or a display of Barbie dolls. By focusing on the faces and gestures for some of the figures, I can draw the viewer in.
As well, some photos and images become iconic. The “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963 is one of t hose images…who doesn’t instantly recognize King, his arm extended toward the mass of humanity crowding every open space on the Mall in Washington between the Lincoln Memorial, the location of the podium from which he spoke, to the Washington Monument in the distance. So I added this view:
Years ago, I remember seeing a quilt of a baseball player with the stands in the distance. The quilter (this was in the early 80s when prints were very “calico” and floral) had used a few small sprigged prints, with the size of the flowers/dots decreasing as you got higher up in the stands. Remembering that, I used three different floral prints for the crowd, with the smallest dots ones near the base of the Wash. Monument, the larger ones in the front. Then, because it looked like a field of flowers, I took flesh-toned paints to paint dots onto the print to represent the faces.
Here is how the piece looks so far…..two people down, four to go….
Posted in Art, art quilting, Exhibiting | 4 Comments »
July 13th, 2009
The second figure I tackled for Be Inspired (see original post dated July 11th) is Martin Luther King. In polling of the four grades (5 through 8 ) King handily topped the list of inspiring figures from history, so he became the central figure on the first (of a projected three) “Americas” panels.
When dyeing the fabric for the earth/sea and sky backgrounds, I also did 2 1/2 yards of fabric in skin tones. The patchy look on King’s face will smooth out once quilting in shades of browns and reds and some black is applied. nyway, I’m thrilled that this actually LOOKS like King!
Here’s a picture of the full panel with Sacajawea and MLK:
Now back to tracing, transferring, cutting, fusing and making people. I do wonder WHAT possessed me to volunteer to do a quilt with 39 or more people………. (reminder to self: next time smack self upside head and run the other way!). Of course, the fact that things are working out has me happily amazed….
Posted in Art, art quilting, Exhibiting, Inspiration, Machine applique | 11 Comments »
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