Esparta Fiber Arts Blog

I have been working (at least in my head) on this piece for some months. I had not had time to work on it until school let out. So finally, it has gotten beyond the tea stained piece of fabric I started out with. This piece is approximately 12″x12″ and is for the SAQA Auction. This raises money for Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) which helps artists who have a fiber art focus. This group is really diverse and provides a lot of support and inspiration for those of us whom are newer in the field.

I did a series of photos of this piece to document my process. Much like “guys in the band” (yes, I am still working on them) this is a similar process… although not on as large a scale and I did not use resist for this piece at all… I just freehand painted and then had at it with the sewing machine. It was a fun piece to do and nice to be able to finish in just a few days.

Information on the auction and the pieces that have already been sent in can be viewed here SAQA website. Here are the photos of this piece… “Dock Ropes #7″.

Dock Ropes # 7 in process

Dock Ropes #7 in process 1

Dock ropes #7 in process 2

Dock Ropes #7 in process 3

Dock ropes #7 full view finished

Dock Ropes #7 back stitch detail

Dock Ropes #7 detail 1

Dock Ropes #7 detail 2

The other piece that I recently finished was for Quilt Art’s  “Quinceañero” challenge. It was a ton of fun and meant to celebrate QuiltArt’s 15th year. I have only been a member for 4 or 5 years now, but I have learned quite a bit from various list members.

My personal piece is called “QA15″. I know it is not the most original title, but it was a ton of fun to create. I have been exploring blobby, cartoony type shapes and trying to get them more dimensional. I used my favorite method of painting with ink onto white fabric, then I used “prismacolor” pencils to add detail and shading. Really fun, but lesson learned. Wow, do you need to spray that stuff with fixative of some form… My arm was pretty grey after shading in… I also evened out the paint job with corresponding colors. I think it came out pretty cool. I need to redo the binding as it is really awful. Someday…

Here are photos of my “QA15″ piece.

QA 15 starting to pencil in

QA 15 in process

QA15 mostly painted penciled

QA15 full

QA15 detail

So I would highly recommend visiting the links to the SAQA site and Quilt Art site as they have such a great group of artists to view and I am really proud to be among them!

have fun,

mathea

Last week, my son stayed home sick from school… I think he was mainly overtired, but he does have ear issues. Anyway, I was in need of a new purse/bag as the handles of my other bag had worn to shreds. So while my son was watching a movie, I drew up the pattern for a new bag. It is based on Lazy Girl Designs “Miranda Bag”. I lost my pattern for the “Miranda” so I came up with this in its place. The quilting is not the world’s greatest, but it is functional. I did draw out the sashiko stitch pattern and stitched while my son learned how to do the stitching on his own piece of fabric. All in all, not a bad bag and it is stuffed with junk already… Picture below.

have fun,

mathea

New Bag

Ok, I really tried hard to finish this piece for IQA Houston, but that did not happen… I was moving right along and it had potential to be finished on time, but rushing probably wouldn’t have given me the better end result. I really enjoy working on Dock Ropes #6, it is colorful, nice texture and really embodies where I live. In fact, I should thank one of the local fishing persons who was picking up their child at school. I saw the truck piled high with used ropes and loved all the bright, yet worn colors all tossed around. I am pretty sure these were heavily used lines and they were being sorted to see what was still useful or what needed to be recycled. (In these parts, many of the used lines get made into door mats.)

So I tried to be creative with the progress photos this time and I created a slide show with them… There is music (“Ushas” by E.S. Posthumus: Makara album) so if you do not like sound, please either turn down or turn off your volume. The pictures end with the current state of finish… as you can see, I have more to go!

I hope to finish in the near future. Thanks for stopping by…

have fun,

mathea

click on link below to see slide show

Dock Ropes #6 progress

I realize that I am dreadful and have neglected this poor blog for far too long… It has been busy around here. I have been working at the schools, teaching skating and eventually getting burned out and a fabulous case of pneumonia. So I have not had the energy to do a ton. I am in the process of working on some smaller things.

I did manage to complete the challenge on Quilt Art for its 15th anniversary. I will not post a picture just yet as it has not been posted by them. Soon, really, I will post it… really, I will.

I also managed to finish my challenge for the Coastal Quilters, one of the local guilds I belong to. I really enjoyed this one. They gave us each a fat quarter of black and white paisley fabric and we needed to make a 9″X12″ landscape orientation quilt using the fabric prominently. I don’t often piece or use fabrics other than white unless I am making a bag or something of a non-quilt nature.

I fussy cut out a few of the paisley/bloom pieces and fused them to white fabric. Then I used Inktense pencils and made some of my squishy cartoon blobs and migrated over to ink painting then onto acrylic with fabric medium. I also used some dry gold dusty paint as well… fun. Then I shaded with Inktense pencils, Prismacolor pencils and Fabrico markers… Stitched the outlines and added a couple of detail stitches and covered the entire thing with gel medium with a glossy finish. I have to say, this was a ton of fun and it is nice to start to get to use art materials again.

I had given up for fear my kid would eat them or some such thing. The best thing is that he is curious and loves to use the paints and mediums. (granted, with really close supervision) He really enjoys art and creating things. I hope it continues!

I am also working on a project called “Dock Ropes #6″ and we will see if I manage to finish it… I need to I entered it into Maine Quilts, so I need to get my act together. I would love to get it done for the IQA: Houston deadline… that remains to be seen.

So that is it for now… Pics below of the “Trip #437″ challenge piece… some from late process through finish.

have fun,

mathea

One of my skating students is an artist, who knew? Actually, I did know. She is a very talented and lucky kid and I am fortunate to have her as a friend.

Rose paints, sculpts and is a very creative person. I hope that she continues to grow and develop as an artist, because I think she has a ton of potential. She is lucky because we live in an area that really supports the arts and encourages youth artists. Rose was able to participate in Julia’s Gallery and have an exhibition with other teen artists. I am really proud of her.

Julia’s Gallery is an extension of the Farnsworth Museum here in Rockland. This particular gallery runs programs and exhibitions for and of young artists. They create some amazing things.

I have a photo of Rose and her work taken on opening night. I did not put any other photos up as I do not have permissionn from the other artists. I will encourage anyone who gets to this neck of the woods to check out the show. It is pretty cool.

Please encourage the arts in schools and in local programs.

have fun,

mathea

Rose and her piece at Julia's Gallery 2009

I posted a non- finished pic of the “Mildred” piece… So here is a finished version and I found one of the original comics… I scanned a frame into the computer… someday I will find the time to scan them all in…

have fun,

mathea

This is a little off my usual topic of whatever I am working on. Yet, the other day, I was asked what I listen to when I quilt or do I quilt in silence… Well, the answer is that I do listen to music as a rule of thumb. That includes writing blog posts, working on various and sundry other projects, and driving… I listen to a lot of different varieties of music. 

Since I am also a skating coach, it behooves me to listen to a wide variety of music. I love classical, but I find that it tends to have major swells and power shifts in tempo and tone. It tends to throw my sewing off as I will move the quilt to the tempo I am listening to.

So “My Beach Boys” was largely quilted listening to Thievery Corporation and the Rippingtons. TC is a electronic sort of bossa nova, reggae type of music and it is very paced. It works really well. I settle into the groove and move the quilt, the newest album is “radio retaliation” and it is an enjoyable listen. My other favorite is “Sounds fro the Thievery Hi-Fi” it is not as critically acclaimed as “Richest Man In Babylon” but I like the tempos better. The Rippingtons is a jazz group. While I like their music the tempo is a bit quick and I will work to smaller, quicker movement patterns while listening to this type of music. I let iTunes just roll through the albums for this group. ( I know the music well enough to anticipate what song, sound, or tempo is coming next.) This tends to work well for me.

I will also let the iTunes sit on random and some odd choices will come up. I tend to not do this as much when I quilt (I do not have good stitch length consistency.) because I will move to whatever is playing… Not so good when something like Daft Punk comes up (great for running, not for quilting)

Right now, the iTunes is on random and “Kashmir: Bond” is playing. This tune is one that I am considering for the synchro team at MRC. While I sit here and type or do some sort of web work or illustration, I really like a variety of music to play. There is something about art and music… they do go hand in hand for me. It can shift the mood, motivate, or totally make you crazy.

here is a preliminary sketch of what one of my next projects is… I am starting work on “guys in the band” but they are no fun to photograph at this point… The one of my parent’s barn roof is more interesting at this point. So here is a pic of that… (pastels again)

have fun,

mathea

barn roof top sketched out

A couple of weeks ago, a reporter for the Bangor Daily News called me and interviewed me about my recent acceptance to Quilt National. Today is when the article ran. There are two of us from Maine. Gabriella d’Italia does beautiful work and I am pleased to be in such amazing company as I am a rank amateur. I aspire to be a pro someday… 

The article itself is very nice. It is well written and accurate. I have to say it is an ego boost. It is nice to have your work appreciated. As the Quilt National has a strict non-publish rule, they could not run the pictures of the actual pieces so they ran some pictures of pieces that are somewhat similar. They chose to run my “mini rooftops” piece that I made for Collage Mania 2009. Collage Mania takes place in May and raises money for the American Cancer Society and is a cause very near and dear to me. So I am glad that little piece got some extra publicity.

I did get more work done on the boys, but I did not get round to photographing it today… Maybe tomorrow. It is supposed to be a rotten snowy day… we will see.

Have fun,

mathea

I have not had a ton of time to work on the art stuff. Today, I do have some time in between baking cookies and doing the general household chores. I will work on two of my Christmas quilts that are for gifts… I will not put photos up until after the holiday. (you never know)

But an odd thing happened to me today. I am a relatively unknown quantity in the world of quilting as I have only been at it about 2 1/2 to 3 years now, (I started in April/May of 2006) and this year I decided I would enter a couple of shows outside of Maine quilts. I entered Tactile Architecture (it shows in Houston and other venues) and Quilt National (a bi-annual exhibit with an art quilt focus). I got into both. It was really shocking as I am so new, I know that I committed huge quilting sins!!! (Trust me stitch size regularity is not in my past, present, or future.) It never occurred to me that they might be a big deal (ok, I now know) but it was a big enough deal to have a reporter from the newspaper call me. That was weird and slightly uncomfortable. The woman who interviewed me was incredibly pleasant and very kind. It will be interesting to see what comes of it. Who knew? 

This year I have set the same sort of goal. I would like to have quilts to enter a couple of shows and participate in my guild challenges. As I have limited time to work, I usually will not accomplish many quilts. But I do enjoy the process of making them. 

Anyway, time to stop procrastinating.

Have fun,

mathea