Botanicals

For the lst week I have been playing in the arena of Botanicals. Next month I have the pleasure of accepting an invitation to have a booth at the Best of Missouri Market at the Shaw Botanical Gardens. When I was doing shows regularly I would have given my eye teeth to get this invite.

I've been trying to develop a new series based on four trees that grow in our region--Post Oak, Southern Magnolia, Osage Orange ( Bois D'arc), and Dogwood. My concept-- should this prove marketable, is to choose four species every year and feature them for the year-- exploring their elements-- leaves, silhouette, wood grain, seed pods, flowers, medicinal, culinary and industrial uses and even unusal history that involves that tree.



The first tree I began with is the Post oak- because we lost our 200 yr old post oak that shaded our entire backyard in 2007. What you see here is a very simple wreath made from block prints created with meat packing trays. I then went back and free motion stitched to highlight the vein structure. I think you can click each image and it'll blow up larger so you can see better. I'm starting with wreaths because they can be something of a smapler for the variosu stamps I am creating.

This next grouping is on black linen. You can see the various elements-- oak leaves, oak acorns, osage orange fruit, dogwood leaf and dogwood berries, magnolia seed pod. It looks very flat, I know. But my plan is to outline stitch to bring out details. The white lines are just chalk to make sure I keep it even-ish.

The same bunch of elements on dyed silk noil. I added some smaller dogwood leaves.

This piece is probably the closest to completion- all the elements are there and I've included more of the dogwood berries.

This one you can see the two tones of the magnolia seed pod.

Where am I going with this? not sure. I'm sure they'll look quite different once I quilt them. But I could sure use some feedback. I don't wish to do boring, trite or cute.

Federal Marbles

Another piece that had been hanging unfinished on the wall for quite some time. Kitty Chrysalis and I were experimenting with marbling about 4 years ago. We came up with enough small pieces to make the 6" circles for this piece. In a time when it seems that all sorts of distortion of the facts are happening in the federal debate over healthcare reform.. perhaps it should be "Federal Lost-its Marbles". The quilting originates on the back where I had printed some large stars and strips of marks that resemble stripes... could have named it stars and stripes, also... but boring and cliche'. I'm just pleased to finally have this piece done as it has been hanging on the design wall for over a year awaiting quilting and finishing.

This piece is mostly silk.

And now for something REALLY different...

This small piece is a playful approach to texture. All the silks are hand dyed. some I used potato dextrin to create and under-texture. Some parts I used copper leaf scraps sprinkled over the base with tuille on top to hold in place. The silver fish were created using my fish stamp made with a glue gun outline then silver leaf was attached using matte medium. Then lots of stitching. The "flies" are beads made from metallic painted tyvek rolled and wrapped using mettalic threads and blasted with a heat gun. I attached them using silver embroidery floss.

Next to color as my favorite aspect of creating art is texture. This is a fun way to capture and create it. I think I'll be playing with this some more. What do you think? Should I spend time on exploring this?

It may seem I am cranking out the work lickety split these days. Well yes and no. This piece hung on the wall for a few weeks while I figured out what to do to complete it. I have a deadline of October 3rd for a high volume art festival where I'll need lots of smaller works. Crank crank crank.

Neon Cha Cha

This is another piece in my series I've decided to call my Serendipity Series. Each piece in the series is made up, primarily, of pieces leftover from previous quilt projects. This time I gathered up all the really bright colored scraps from cutting my 8" blocks and interspered them with solid black homespun. It hung on the wall for several weeks while I tried to figure out the quilting. Once that was decided the piece flew together.

This detail shot shows the variety of stitches as well as the neon colors used in the stitching. Once again I forgot to photograph the back- argh! It has a wonderful floral design printed using stamps that have been repurposed to make flowers. I love the way the bright colors come forward and the cool colors recede.

Severe Clear

I vividly remember hearing a meteorologist in Austin explain about the intense blue sky we were experiencing following a big storm. It is an indication of low humidity and seldom seen in mid summer in the Ozarks. But THIS July has sported several days like that with temps that invite one outside. Another feature of July are Surprise Lillies that seem to pop up from nowhere following a drenching rain, in almost no time at all. The leaves came up with the daffodils and are long gone. Now, too, I see the Rubekias--Black-eyed Susans and the roadside chickory-- that like the specimens here, almost disappear into the landscape.

This happy little piece is another in my Serendipity series to use up scraps from other projects. I couched down a blue yarn onto each piece before assembling the background. The flowers are all hand-dyed silk.

The approximate dimensions are 28" x 40".

Red Rover, Red Rover!

I started this a few months ago utilizing leftover strips from my block building process. I had the columns built and they hung on the wall for a long time. I knew the concept of what I wanted to create. When I saw the the way the rows seems to be tied together with the couched yarn it reminded me of the school yard game. In planning my write up about this piece I decided to go to wikipedia to try to get more info. It seems that after the 70s the game lost its luster, replaced by more updated pursuits and because of its history of being relatively dangerous-- broken arms and "clotheslining" where your neck gets caught in the arms of the receiving team....for those of you who are very young, a clothesline is that outdoor device for drying ones clothes on a wire or cord stretched between 2 poles-- now often against the rules in deed restricted neighborhoods.

Here's a detail shot showing the couched yarn as well as the outlined figures in the quilting.

This is the back. If did the figures on silk organza. I made a stamp from plexiglas plus drawing using my glue gun. Each was cut out and fused to the foundation. Then I freemotion outline stitched from the back using the thicker metallic thread as bobbin work.

Sprung! finished

This is such a happy piece. It stayed on the design wall without being quilted for several weeks. Although I loved the color movement I couldn't seem to resolve the quilting. Then I realised I wanted a fairly realistic depiction of some flowers. I traced some clipart flowers onto tracing paper in a wreath design. Then laid the tracing paper on the quilt top and stitched through the tracing paper to get the detailed outlines. After doing the two inside wreaths I was again stuck and unable to resolve the outer corners nor the in-between sections. So again it hung on the design wall while I finished Sweeping Changes. Finally I had stared at it long enough that it started talking to me again. Another wreath of detailed flowers, this time apple blossoms, daffodils and daylily. Then I wanted to boost the visibility of the flowers I had made so much effort to create. So I got out my paints.

Here you can see the inner circle of daffodils as well as the in-between stitching and the apple blossoms and daylillies of the second wreath.

In addition to the flower detail, you can see where I switched to a metallic thread for the in-between quilting.

This was a sweet little piece to create. Its size is 35" x 35". I'll have it posted on my website shortly. I have entered it in Fiber Focus along with Slipstream Adventure and Freefall. Fiber Focus is a nine state textile exhibition presented by Art St. Louis. The competition is tough. I have only once been able to get my work in.

I was shooting it in my studio this morning. Completely forgot to shoot the back. I'll try to get at least a preview shot tomorrow so you can see the back. I had such fun creating it. I repurposed all sorts of stamps I had, to use them as elements in a big flower bouquet. You'll see..........