Felt artist, Bailey Curtis

I showed you the pink felted piece that I brought back from England. It was made by Bailey Curtis. We were able to visit her in her home studio and find out how she makes her wonderful art. Later on, we saw her at the Birmingham quilt show, where she had a booth. The photos show Bailey explaining how she dyes the felt, some landscape photos and a woven piece she made that was inspired by them, and an interior shot of her tiny studio in a former garage behind her house.

Making cute felt creatures!]

I found this incredibly charming book at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and decided to try making some of the little creatures in it. As you can see, I made three of them--a blue monkey, "Liar" (the guy with the yellow head and red body), and a Sprite--actually, my daughter made the Sprite and did a very neat job of it. We have vowed to make all the creatures in the book--they are so cute! The book was originally published in Japanese but the English version came out recently, so you should be able to find it. The author is Aranzi Aronzo, publisher is Vertical. Also, "Craft" magazine, volume 3 (www.craftzine.com) published a cat pattern from the book recently.

Needlework souvenirs from England

These are the best needlework souvenirs I brought home from England. The top piece is a felted work by Bailey Curtis. She felts the wool, then adds machine and hand stitching. The red strawberry pincushion was purchased at the Needlework Guild shop at Hampton Court, and was made by a volunteer as a fundraiser. The patchwork pincushion is made with old cotton fabric and I bought it at Jen Jones shop. If you look closely, you can see that the prints were carefully cut to frame the images. The last photo is a hand knitted and partially felted tea cozy that I found at a tiny shop at Hay on Wye. The red flowers and green leaves were knitted and then felted. It was made by a woman who lives nearby, the shop owner told me that every tea cosy she makes is different.

England watercolor journal

Five pages from the watercolor journal I kept while in England on the Textile Tour. The first is a garden we visited near Abergavenny, Wales. The second is Tintern Abbey, or Abany Tyndyrn as it is known in Welsh. Next is the Old Stocks Hotel in Stow on the Wold, our hotel for several days. I want to live in this town! The next sketch was made inside Jen Jone's shop. And the last page is from Hay on Wye--if I can't live in Stow, I will be happy to settle for Hay. It is known for being a town full of bookshops, and it is, but it also has some excellent antique shops, contemporary crafs, and one of the best tea shops we found in England (The Old Stables Tea Room). Tell them I sent you, the next time you drop in for a spot of tea and some wonderful Lemon Drizzle Cake.

Great lesson in watercolor sketching

Before I post some pages from the watercolor sketchbook that I made on my trip, I will give you this link to check out:

Trumpetvine Travels Sketchblog http://www.trumpetvine.com/sketchblog/2007/09/20/sketching_demo/

It's a great beginning lesson in sketching a scene on the spot. I've been keeping watercolor sketchbooks for about four years now, and really enjoy doing it. My own watercolor paintings are much "tighter", so it's fun to have a looser way to draw and paint.

I first saw Trumpetvine Travels when it was a printed journal, many years ago, and it was one of the main reasons I started painting. So I'm really glad that Martha has an online sketchblog now. Find out more about her at

http://www.trumpetvine.com/sketchblog/about-me/

Basketry with Susie Vaughan in Wales

On August 11, we visited Susie Vaughan at her home in Wales. I don't have a picture of Susie, but the first shot shows her husband Mike standing in front of a lovely carved wood fireplace mantel in their home. The woman on the left is Kathy Brassill, who planned the whole tour. Susie cooked us a wonderful lunch and we ate in her dining room, second picture. The straw figure in the garage building is one of her woven creations--she had more along the driveway, pointing the way to her house. The last shot shows the lawn, which slopes down to a swimming pool and a gorgeous view of the entire valley. We learned how Susie makes baskets and even tried to make a piece of rope using leaves from the garden--it is really easy but does require strong hand muscles, as you have to keep the rope under tension while twisting it.

Art class with Marie Roper, quilter

On August 15, we visited an art quilter, Marie Roper (top picture, in her studio) at her home (third picture) and studio not far from Crickhowell. Her husband Martin drove to meet us and guide us the last bit of the way, as the roads were not well marked. The visit started with warm homebaked scones, clotted cream, jam and butter, and hot tea. Then Marie gave us a tour of her quilt art and watercolor paintings which are hung around the walls of her home and in her studio (bottom two pictures). We ate lunch at the pub next door, then began our art lesson. After a tour of her garden for inspiration and a visit by the neighbor's curious cows, Marie provided gorgeous little paper booklets that were already hand painted, and urged us to try making various types of stamps and also rubbings using oil sticks. This kept us happily busy until tea time, when we had more scones and plain cake. Our booklets are shown in the second photo--mine isn't finished, but I plan to find some poetry about leaves to add (I pasted some leaves from Marie's garden into it.)

Closed Quilt Shop and Badger's Hall

This is not exactly in the order we saw stuff in England, but who cares? Okay, on Aug 10, we drove to Chipping Camden because it is a charming old town and has a quilt shop. Well, it used to have a quilt shop. Now it has a sign (second photo) that says the shop closed forever after all the fabric was damaged in the recent floods (the shop was below street level). SAD. So we had to console ourselves by having a wonderful tea at a shop just across the street, called Badger's Hall (third photo).There are cute badgers and pictures of badgers everywhere--the top picture is one of them. The day before, we visited a lovely shop in Cheltenham Spa, where Katherine Chinn sells old textiles like samplers and lots of ribbons. Katherine's great grandfather started the shop, he was an upholsterer. The last three shots are pictures of the inside of the shop.

Finally, some pictures from England!

It took awhile, but I finally went through my photos from England. These first three are from our visit to Jen Jones, who collects and sells antique quilts and blankets. Her tiny shop is in Wales, next to her house. She's pointing to some of the antique quilts she keeps in her home because they are so special. The inside of the shop is tiny and crammed with quilts, wool woven blankets, and other special things. I bought only a pincushion made with old fabric, but one of the women in our group did buy an antique quilt from Jen--I'll post a picture of it later. We also had tea in Jen's kitchen!

A bunch of English links

Haven't dealt with my vacation photos yet, but I did just go through some wonderful needlework sites--these are places I saw at the big quilting show in Birmingham, England, which was the last day of my vacation.

Great stuff for machine embroidery:
http://www.stef-francis.co.uk

Yarns for dyeing:
http://www.texereyarns.co.uk

Stuffed toy kits (I love the hedgehogs!):
http://www.candlehousecrafts.co.uk

More stuff for embroidery:
http://www.winifredcottage.co.uk

I also still need to look up these wonderful people:
Fay Maxwell (her book is called "Crewel and Unusual")
Maggie Grey's "Workshops on the Web"
Quiltwow, a new Internet magazine
Bob Adams art quilts
Jo Buss art quilts

I saw (in person!) several famous quilters: Jennie Rayment, who did a funny talk at the Houston quilt show last November; Janet Bolton who does primitive applique and has a new book out, "Janet Bolton's Textile Pictures" which I ordered at the Birmingham show (the publisher is Quiltmania); Kaffe Fasset--he was helping a woman pick out fabrics for a quilt. She actually rejected one of his choices!; and Jane Greenoff, who has been designing cross stitch forever and also sells some unique little pincushions and things. I got a magnetic snail to hold my pins, very cute. And of course Bailey Curtis, who was one of the artists we met on the Textile Artists tour. I bought two of her books, "Inspiration to Stitch" and "Inspiration Plus." Very--uh--inspirational (these are not pattern books, but show you how various textile artists work on ideas).

There is so much to tell you about this trip, but I will spread it out in easily digestible chunks, and photos are coming soon, I promise. For now, check out some of those links...

Asilomar projects finished

I'll be gone for a little while on vacation--so I'll leave you with this lovely sunset shot taken at Asilomar when I attended the Stitches Camp there in April. The other pictures are zippered purses that I made there using my class samples. I brought feltable wool (noro) and made my samples from that, so later on I could felt them and make these purses. Talk about planning ahead! Sometimes I amaze myself. There are two purses, not four. But since each side is different, I photographed both sides. These are very handy for carrying knitting accessories like scissors, etc.

Margie's Basket

My friend Margie (click on her blog link in my "Friends who Blog" list, lower right) made this lovely felted basket for me last year. It is knitted in some ingenious slip-stitch pattern so it looks like it is woven, but it's not. Then she threw it in the washing machine and felted it. Isn't it cute?

Afghans for Afghans

This weekend, I made a baby hat and socks to donate to Afghans for Afghans (www.afghansforafghans.org). This organization is based in San Francisco and sends wool hand knitted items to Afghanistan, mostly for children. I found the two patterns via links on their site. The hat pattern is on a site called Fiona's Friends (http://www.needlebeetle.com/fionasfriends/free/lphat.html). It calls for Lambs Pride worsted weight yarn, but I used some Jo Sharp wool from my stash. The sock pattern is from http://www.knittinghelp.com/knitting/free_patterns/sock-pattern,php. It calls for North Country Cotton, but I used the same wool yarn as the cap.

What is an art quilt?

If you take a look at the art quilts that I post in this blog and on my web site (www.salume.org), then you are familiar with at least a couple types of art quilts. And you already know more about art quilts than most other people.

But if you'd like to know more, then you can also read up on the history of art quilting. This article was written by Robert Shaw, who has also written one of the most complete books about this topic:

http://www.saqa.com/news/history_Shaw.aspx

The Studio Arts Quilt Association is dedicated to expanding awareness about art quilts around the world. You can learn about the organization's origins here:

SAQA history:
http://www.saqa.com/aboutus//history.aspx

Butterfly Bricks and Mystery Stole

Okay, the Butterfly Bricks quilt is a shot I took in Houston, Texas last November when I went to the big quilt show there. I took a bus tour to a grand estate that was owned by Ima Hogg. The gardens are probably lovely in the summer but they don't have many flowers in November. There is a small flower bed in the shape of a butterfly, with the sections outlined in brick--this is a small portion of it. I quickly made the quilt, but then realized the gray tones were a bit boring. So recently, I overpainted the bricks with irridescent watercolor paint in an orange tint. I think it helps...it is just very slightly shiny.

The other picture is my Mystery Stole, I just finished Clue 3 today! I am using an overdyed perle cotton thread. The stole starts with a point, so I can assume it will end with a point--but until all the clues are published, who knows???

Myself, a few years ago

This photo was taken many years ago by my first husband, who was an excellent photographer. He had a way of printing the pictures that made all the shadow areas go completely black--I was not actually posing in a dark room. Yes, that's me! This piece is being framed right now, it is quite small--the entire quilt is only about 16 inches by 20 inches. I did something new--I covered the pieced photos with a layer of hand dyed silk mesh fabric that I bought at the SFQG quilt show in Feb. just for this quilt. The silk has some variations of color (mostly red) that you can see in this picture--the photos underneath are more evenly black.

Flowers in the urinals, oh my!

At the San Francisco Flower Show earlier this year, I walked into the bathroom and found bright pots of chrysanthemums in the urinals! Yes, they had turned the bathroom from a Men's room into a Ladies because there were so many women at the show. I had never seen such a lovely sight.

Fabric Books

These are a few fabric books I made. The largest was also the first--I cut a failed watercolor painting into strips, then wove those together with fabric and sewed it all on the machine. For the inside pages, I fused various bits and pieces of fabric together, and fastened it with a fimo clay button that I purchased a couple of years ago.

The two smallest books are made with spin art. I saved a few of the pieces my kids made when they were younger.

My vest designs

In Ginger Luter's class, we did some design sketches for modular knits. These are the vest patterns I came up with very quickly. I forgot to bring along some colored pencils, so I had to do all of these with a ballpoint pen! But I think that is almost better--I focused on the designs instead of what colors to use.

Asilomar Knitting Retreat

Here I am with Ginger Luters, who taught the class on Modular Knitting that I took at Asilomar last weekend. I am wearing the triangle scarf that I made in class, using Noro Silk Garden Lite yarn. It seems a bit scratchier than normal Silk Garden yarn, but the colors are great and it's a good weight for a skinny scarf. I had a great time at the retreat--we went into Carmel one afternoon, and the weather was quite nice, although I was surprised that I was able to wear my heavy cotton patchwork knitted sweater every day, because the wind was quite chilly right off the ocean.

Garden Railroad Quilt Show

A friend of mine, Anabeth Dollins, sent this picture of her quilt show in a garden railroad. She gave me permission to post it here. Isn't it the cutest thing you ever saw? She also has a web site at anabeth.dollins.org/grr.html where you can see more garden railroads.

Here's what she says about the quilts: "The mini quilts are no larger than 3.5" by 3.5" -- most made from cheater cloth. The two Amish style quilts are real pieced quilts. All of the quilts are hand-quilted."

Adorable.

still knitting like crazy

Okay, so I have not done anything in the realm of painting or quilting, but I have been knitting! The socks here are the Victorian Lace pattern, available only to members of the Six Sock Knitalong on yahoo groups. I used Cherry Tree Hill supersock yarn that I bought on a recent trip to Virginia. I also attended the SAQA annual meeting in Athens, Ohio and got to see Quilt National in person at last, a long-cherished dream. I bought a small quilt there and had a great time. On the plane flight home, there were at least three knitters busily stitching away--two of us were making socks, the other was making something lacey.