My First Solo Show

Do you all feel abandoned ??  Well it is my fault if you do, as I have been very absent from Blogland, all summer.  I have been working at a frenzied pace to create a body of work for my first solo show.  The show opened last Friday night at Artful Dimensions Gallery in Fredericksburg, VA.I am going to post a bunch of pictures of the pieces in my show and try to keep the words to a minimum.  Of course if you have any questions please do let me know!! I hope that everyone has had a wonderful summer! I for one am really looking forward to our wonderful Virginia fall season!

 So now On With The Show!!

I made little scrap quilt legend surrounds for each of the large wall pieces and the  collage necklaces.  I wanted the titles to stand out and be something very different from the usual gallery tagging system. Here you can see Hydrangea- done with my sun prints and hand dyed fabrics.  Free motion machine embroidery followed by some subtle beading finished off this piece.

The piece on the left is titled Purple Ferns and is also done with my own sun prints and hand dyes.

The top piece in this picture is titled Cape Sunset and it was done using my embellishing machine and then wet felted.  I used merino roving and silk waste and then added 5 tiny little shells and some free motion embroidery to bump up the texture and add a bit more interest.  I backed the piece with a glorious bit of deep purple silk velvet.

The piece at the bottom is titled Tide Pool I and is a quilted piece that was mounted on wood bricks and embellished with beads stones , lace, embroidery and found objects.  This piece can be wall mounted or sit on a table top as I affixed chunky rubber feet to the bottom of the wood tray.  When siting horizontally one gets a completely different view of the details that are not visible when it hangs on a wall.  Kind of like two pieces of quilt sculpture in one!

The top piece is titled Poppy Fields (SOLD) and was needle felted with many different fibers and textiles, then free motion embroidered and beaded.  All along the bottom of the piece I added drizzle stitch grass to add a very realistic look to the piece. I mounted (stitched) the piece on a lovely soft green linen fabric. ( This was the first piece to sell on Friday night!! :)
The lower piece is called Energy.  I created it using my Embellisher and then did some wet felting as well, combining wool roving, silk fabrics and silk roving.  I further embellished the piece with hand stitching and bead work.  This piece is put together in the same fashion as Tide Pool I, each mini quilt mounted on wood blocks of different sizes and thicknesses.  It can also sit horizontally on a table top or shelf .

Tide Pool II was supposed to be part of Tide Pool I but as a result of all of the beading ,found objects and stitching, it crowded the other pieces too much . It became a piece all on it's own.  A friend at the gallery titled it the "Butter Dish" as it reminded her of her mother's fifties style butter dish.  I had to admit that the shape was similar and in my mind it will always have a nickname of the Butter Dish.!  I mounted it on a smooth piece of found driftwood and affixed the same rubber feet to the bottom.

Detail shot of "the butter dish"

 I created some of the sea life for my Tide Pool pieces using recycled glass beads from Africa that my brother sent to me , and some seed beads.  I stitched the seed beads thru the large holes in the glass beads and into a very small square of ultra suede.  then I was able to stitch the ultra suede wherever I needed to put it on the quilted sculpture.

more detail shots of portions of the Tide Pool sculptures

I created two purses for the show in very different styles and using very different methods but always using very Happy colors! the shoulder bag above is fully lined with two pockets, hand made cording that was braided and then stitched to some hand dyed cotton.  the straps are held on with covered buttons that have felted and beaded tops. The collage felting was done with silk fabrics, wool roving , silk waste and vintage hand dyed doilies that i dyed myself.  It is embellished with hand stitch and beading.

This purse is call the Colors of Happy Purse(SOLD)and is a stitched collage of my sun prints and hand dyes.  I added hand made fabric paper beads that are resin coated and hand made cording that was then braided.  Again the strap is attached to the purse with covered buttons.  It is lined with several sun prints and has two pockets inside.

This collage necklace is titled Jubilation. The chain is various styles of copper links and the majority of the beads are fabric embellished with seed beads as well as fabric paper with resin coating.  The heart at the bottom is a resin  collage piece with a rhinestone and the leaf shaped piece is a resin coated piece of my sun printed fabric.

These are my Sun Print Spinner quilts. Each segment is double sided, hand stitched with metallic thread or beaded with glittery beads.  The intent is for the thread and beads to sparkle as they catch the light as the quilts spin.

Smiling Faces is a woven quilt that is heavily embellished with hand stitch and beads.  I painted the focal image of the pansies using water color pencils.

Solar Flair is a mixed media quilt combining my sun prints , fabric paper including a lace layer , lots of hand stitch and beading.  I also added free motion stitching and machine quilting to various parts of the piece.

Felt Collage Pillows 

Beaded Tapestry Earrings

Meadow Lace(SOLD) is the last art quilt that I created for this show. I combined a rust dyed and screen printed vintage doily with a lace sun print and lots of hand stitched Queen Anne's Lace covered with literally 100's of french knots.

Well that's a wrap for this show, at least 75% of it.  Remember if you want to see close ups click on each picture for a larger view.

Now I am working on my next show which is due to be hung in mid October at a local branch of the area library.  The England Run Library is brand new and is a glorious ,certified Green building. It is  a real treat to be invited to show my work there.  I have several more large wall pieces to create between now and then to fill the space.   So back to the sun prints and hand dyes with a few beads thrown in, of course!!!!  

Coral Cacophony Complete!!!

I have finished my Ocean tapestry textile Collage piece and I am calling it Coral Cacophony.  I want to thank all of you who visited and left such supportive comments and wonderful suggestions for names for this piece.  You comments make me happier than you will ever know!! Thank you SOOO much!

To frame the piece I first mounted it by stitching, to a piece of 140lb watercolor paper that I had painted about 14 times with various colors of blues, from turquoise to cobalt, Diazanine purple, Paynes gray and black paints.  Then I drilled thru the back of the shadow box frame and wired the paper and tapestry to the back of the frame to hold all securely in place.  this piece is now hanging at Artful Dimensions 3d Gallery where I have my Studio ( you can read more about that here).

Now for some detail shots and a bit of explanation about how I did what I did.  ( Remember to see larger pictures just click on the picture!!)
Here you can see that I created two red jelly fish and the tentacles of a third that has swum off the piece. These were made from red silk gauze and stuffed with raw silk fibers and red silk threads. The one closest to the viewer was stitched to the very top layer and the next one was stitched under a layer of deep blue tulle and the tentacles of the third were stitched under two layers of the netting.  This gives the effect of distance away from the viewer and it all works amazingly well, at first I was skeptical.

You can see the layers of singed organza and the hand stitched feather stitches to create sea weeds and sea fans and a small teal and lime green fish, just above the dyed pink linen sea fan.   ( By holding the edge of a cut organza shape next to the flame of a tea light candle , the organza melts and causes the fabric to curl and pucker and it becomes sea weed before you eyes! Such fun and so effective!!!) This piece really is all about the various layers!!

This is the very bottom , middle section of the piece and you can see the ocean tumbled rocks, from Nauset Beach on Cape Cod in Massachusetts,stitched into envelopes of hand dyed and natural vintage lace bits.  I must admit to thinking that I was a bit nuts as I sat one night selecting stones to stitch into lace!!!  But I am really very pleased with the results and with the weight that the reef is given by the bulk and textures of the stitched stones!! The lace also gives one a place to stitch more bits, see the pearl sitting on top of the white stone stitched into the green and blue lace? 
 I made several components out ot polymer clay to add to the rocks and crevasses of the piece.  on the rock to the far right you can see a polymer clay starfish and up near the top of the picture and to the left you can see a tiny pink and orange anemone. 
 There is also a chunk of cobalt blue sea glass, many many beads and ribbons, vintage buttons and many found shells collected from various beach walks.

The bright pink brain coral was made from a large piece of hand dyed silk velvet that I tucked and stitched into place and then added many beads and bits and shell pieces.  You can also see three orange tube worms that I created from orange cording with beaded lavender tentacles.  I had a good deal of fun making those particular components!

This is a very tight shot so i can show you the orange sponges that I created by stitching bits of yellow plastic vegetable bag into cone shapes and then stitching some orange silk inside the yellow mesh cones.  Just below the sponges is a polymer clay coral formation and next to that a purple star fish sitting on a lace wrapped stone.  At the right, on top of the lace wrapped stone is a tiny purple and orange polymer clay anemone.

 I stitched in many different tiny shells that I have always collected.  To the left of the blue lace covered white rock is a small pair of Siamese twin oyster shells that were found with a ready made hole and and at the far left edge of the picture you can see a bit of wampum (quahog clam shell that has been tumbled in the waves- it is purple and white, in color, it also had a ready made hole!)

The final size of the unframed Coral Cacophony is approximately 10 inches deep by 14 inches wide and it weighs about 4 pounds,  No doubt due to the four rocks and multiple  encrusted bits added to the piece!


I must thank the amazing textile artist Judith Baker Montano for writing her wonderful book Fiberart Montage!  If you are at all interested in textile collage, this is a MUST HAVE book.  Ms. Montano made me believe that I could even begin to attempt to create my own ocean piece by describing and showing how a master achieves her beautiful work.  You can look at the book in detail here.
Again , thank you all for stopping by and for helping me find my way thru this piece!! Now I am off to start working on another similar project as I am going through "encrusting withdrawal" and we cannot have that!!!!