Mid-May Safe at Home

I am working on a lavender/purple ghost quilting piece at the sewing machine. I call it "ghost quilting" because I am stitching in what I think would be in the unknown area outside the center floral fabric. I start with a black foundation, apply a square/rectangle of floral fabric, and thread-paint the flower, imagining what is in the outer black "ghost" area.

A new puzzle is on the table. First I unrolled white paper before emptying out the pieces--voila! Thanks to Linda Ginn for this suggestion to help with visibility. Elizabeth is very possessive of the space and often waits for me there. Rahrah tries out the box, but it is only big enough for sitting--no curling up and sleeping. The puzzle is cat-themed and is going together nicely. Tarbaby isn't interested. He'd rather nap in the empty office chair.

Meanwhile, I've gathered more interesting grasses and enjoy noticing how different they are from place to place. The spiral Lady's Slipper seems to only grow in one yard on my walk, and I hope I don't steal so many that they disappear. 

I had a large dogwood tree blow down during Katrina in 2005. It left some roots at ground level, and lately I am seeing little rows of mushrooms growing from the dead root. Interesting!

Fall is Just a Word

Fall is just a word--not necessarily a weather. Maybe soon, though. After a month without any rain, we had a heavy rain with wind and some broken limbs last night. Lots of pine straw to sweep, rake, or blow.
I have enjoyed rehearsing with The Meistersingers this season. Our first concert is Spirituals in Blue: Music Down In My Soul. It is such a joy to sing beautiful arrangements of some of these familiar tunes.

Quilting has involved working on some Ghost Quilting and Improv pieces as well as having fun with fabric postcards. These can start out as color studies or just the joy of sewing strips of fabric. Elizabeth seemed to love posing on this blue and pink one while I was trying to hand sew the facing on the back.

Elizabeth says, "Does this color look good on me?"

A little postcard fun

The puzzle--okay, I give up. I have never been this close to finishing one and have to admit defeat. It will stay on the table another week until my granddaughter Christy comes to visit. She may see what I am missing.

Elizabeth knows I have given up

Several months ago lightning struck a large pine tree just at the edge of my neighbor's yard. He had it cut down and it seemed even larger once it was in pieces on the ground. I was amazed at the thickness (and the beauty) of the bark.

This tree had been growing quite a few years

The bark was 3" thick with interesting patterns of growth

I'm still fascinated with this little plant in my flowerbed--Fittonia Argyroneura. It is green with white veins, though some of it has pink veins instead of white. It continues to send up green stems with tiny white flowers. Click to enlarge.

Picture a month ago

Picture today showing tiny white flowers

Ghost Quilting Class in Hernando

I presented a program on my path from traditional quilter to fiber artist in Hernando, MS, for Quilting in the Grove guild's combined day and night groups last weekend. It was fun getting to spend time with my friend Cheryl Owens, who had moved to Hernando after many years in Hattiesburg.
I don't get many opportunities to display the counted cross-stitch quilt that was my transition from embroidery and cross-stitch into quilting, so I showed it first. My daughter Linda and I began the squares together in the 1980s but I soon saw that a "real quilter" would need to finish it. So I set out to learn to be that quilter.

Friendship Cross-Stitch by Martha and Linda Ginn

After taking lots of classes, studying lots of books, and making many types of quilts, I began a Baltimore Album style quilt, an experience that would require five years. It was enjoyable and fulfilling and I was able to document my life in the quilt I called This Is My Story, This Is My Song.

This Is My Story, This Is My Song

 Most of the pieces I make now are smaller than bed quilts, and I enjoy the designing process as much as the actual making. I like to encourage quilters to continue to learn new skills and to be proud of their work. We all start more projects than we finish, and I told them that it is okay NOT to finish all of those if they no longer enjoy them. Often we learn something from working on a project and it is time to move on to a more enjoyable challenge. 
After lunch I taught a Ghost Quilting Class to some of the group. They were enthusiastic and eager to try something new. Many had never used the Neocolor II wax pastels, so I suggested they experiment first on extra fabric. We had a short lesson on free-motion quilting, which was also new to some of the quilters. It was exciting to see women draw who said they couldn't and others find that rhythm of speed of the machine with the movement of the hands to get a smooth free-motion stitch. Two of them used unusual background fabrics;  another placed her focus square off-center to allow the ghost flowers to show up more dramatically.

Donna's first time to free-motion quilt

Dee used a large print for her background and will add more color

Judy used a stripe and drew in large flowers before stitching

Mary Jo extended her sunflower, offsetting the block

Pam used crayons and stitches--success!

Jo Ann's stitches show nicely on this muted background 

Hernando is a small town about 20-30 miles south of Memphis; I thought the DeSoto County Administration Building was beautiful and unusual, so I had Cheryl stop so I could photograph it. The courthouse is in the middle of the town square, and this building is on a corner facing it. All in all, a lovely town.

Free-Form Quiltmaking, a.k.a. Color Bars

Our state quilt association, Mississippi Quilt Association, holds a Workshop Gathering each June, and it is often  my pleasure to teach at this event. We always meet in a central location, while the spring and fall gatherings move about the state. This year I taught "Free-Form Quiltmaking," or what I call "Color Bars," relying on popular techniques employed by such teachers as Rayna Gillman and Dianne S. Hire. I feel a little ambiguous saying I "taught" the students, but suffice it to say I helped them discover their own creativity and gave them permission to play and experiment. Here are a couple of pieces I made last year using these improvisational techniques:

Color Bars #2--Black by Martha Ginn

High Rise by Martha Ginn

 Isabel Adams was so eager for the class that she sewed up lots of strips beforehand. We pinned these units to a display wall and discussed ways to arrange them.

Martha demonstrating the "wallpaper cut" to Isabel Adams, Missy Lee, Carla Formel

Working without a pattern or specific size pieces was a stretch for some, but they quickly discovered the joy of combining colors, sizes, and shapes to come up with interesting designs.

by Missy Lee

by Myra Cook

Georgianne Brooks, Angela Jones, Missy Lee

Nancy Losure designing on the floor

Another of Isabel Adams' exercises

At the end of the day, all the groups come together for Show and Tell from their classes; it was impressive to see the variety of creations.

The class showing their exercises

Next month I will travel to Hernando, MS, to present a program and Ghost Quilting workshop for their combined day and night groups, as the houseguest of my dear friend and former Hattiesburg resident Cheryl Owens, pictured below with Teresa Pino and Sharon Arnold.

Cheryl Owens, Teresa Pino (yes, the room was cold!), Sharon Arnold

 Good resources for these techniques can be found in Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts, A Stress-Free Journey to Original Design, by Rayna Gillman, C and T Publishing, 2011; and Quilters Playtime: Games with Fabrics, by Dianne S. Hire, AQS, 2004.

Ghost Quilting Program for Rankin County Quilters

I enjoyed presenting a program on Ghost Quilting to the Rankin County Quilt group in Brandon, MS, a couple of weeks ago. The first piece shown here uses a rectangle of the green/red/cream poppy fabric being carried out into the cream inner border fabric with Caran d'Ache crayons and stitches.

Poppy

 Large fruits or vegetables work well and offer colorful options for thread painting. The framed parrot piece is sort of a novelty in that I used the same parrot fabric for the backing, except I had the right side facing the batting rather than facing the back. I carefully matched several places (remember how to line up pieces for Stack-N-Whack?)  so that after I quilted most of the center area, I turned it over and quilted from the back, bobbin drawing fashion. This allowed me to more accurately stitch the small birds than had I tried to do them free-hand. Sorry for the flash on the glass, but this also helps show that framing the piece is a good solution to showing the wrong-side-out fabric on the back!

MQA Gathering--China Trip, Ghost Quilting, and Back Basting Applique

     Mississippi Quilt Association has a Workshop Gathering in the Jackson area every June. This year's meeting was held at Christ United Methodist Church on Old Canton Road. During the Friday night meeting I presented a PowerPoint presentation on my recent trip to China for the Dalian opening of the exhibit The Sum of Many Parts: 25 Quiltmakers in 21st-Century America. I showed about 100 pictures of the exhibit, the lectures, Chinese buildings and architecture, and the happy faces of the Chinese people who welcomed me so warmly. Hosted by the Embassy of the United States in Beijing, the meetings were a successful interaction of our cultures.

 

     I enjoyed teaching a class on the Ghost Quilting technique and introducing the students to Neocolor II crayons as they learned free-motion quilting to extend the center design out into the border. Everyone took to the method quickly and got most of their square colored and stitched, ready to finish at home.

     Ollie Jean Lane taught "back-basting applique," a technique introduced by Jeana Kimball, which most quilters in Hattiesburg have adopted as their favorite method for applique. She showed a recently completed quilt top by Ella Lucas as an example of the outstanding results achieved with  this method.

Ella Lucas and her quilt top

Ollie Jean Lane with Ella's quilt top

The students were interested in the neat look of the back. It is possible to get the pieces exactly where they need to be with no slipping or shifting.

From the back

The next Gathering will be in Corinth, MS, October 4-5, 2013. Jean Tincher from Bay St. Louis was in charge of the meeting as she began her year as MQA president. She had assistance from all the Jackson area guilds, and door prizes were furnished by members from all over the state. The presence of four vendors was a treat for many quilters who do not have a local quilt shop.

Report on China Trip at MQA Gathering

 

In the Beijing Airport

   It will be a pleasure to give a PowerPoint presentation about my trip to China at our state-wide MQA workshop gathering in Jackson this weekend. From the 500 pictures that Linda and I took, I have organized them into a slide show to share the quilt exhibit, scenes from Dalian and Beijing, and amazing sights we saw. I've entitled it The Sum of Many Parts: 25 Quiltmakers in 21st-Century America--Martha's Adventure.

     The weather in March was still quite cold (30s-40s) and many buildings had no heat. The students and others kept coats on all the time and we rather enjoyed the temperature. Many buildings had steps or stairways with no guardrails, making us realize how much we enjoy the benefits of handicap accessible laws.
     I will have to be my own tech person and manage the laptop and projector without Linda. Here's hoping she has taught me sufficiently!

Apartment buildings as far as the eye could see

     My Saturday class will be on Ghost Quilting, and I think the students will enjoy learning to use the Neocolor II crayons to extend their focus fabric out into the borders before free-motion quilting.

Ghost Quilting Article in AQS Magazine

When I first posted blog entries in July and August of 2011 about what I call "ghost quilting," Iris Frank, a freelance writer from California, contacted me about collaborating with her on an article for American Quilter, the magazine of American Quilter's Society. Of course I was excited and thrilled at the opportunity to appear in this prestigious publication and we began working on the article. I made a similar project to the one she had seen, taking step photos along the way and writing cutlines for each. We tweaked and edited over several months and I sent work to Paducah for photography. What a happy trip I made to my mailbox this week when the January 2013 issue arrived at the end of November! Imagine my surprise when I saw the top line on the magazine cover: "Ghost Quilting--A Scare-Free Technique."

American Quilter January 2013

     When I first began doing these, I referred to them as "expanded flowers" or "extended pictures" or a similar uninteresting-sounding name. In that earlier blog, I said: "I call it Ghost Quilting. I start with a square or rectangle of printed fabric as the focus, then I add borders all around and imagine what is out off the edge of the focus fabric and complete the motifs with only stitching or with Neocolor II water soluble wax pastels (by Caran d'Ache, available at art supply stores) plus stitching. The focus fabric can be fused onto the center of a larger piece or borders can be sewn onto the center."
     To purchase a copy of the magazine from AQS, call 800-626-5420 now, or watch for it in mid-December at quilt, book, craft, and fabric stores.
     It is really an easy and fascinating technique. I have shown this to friends and many of us now look at each piece of fabric in the light of "I wonder how this would work with ghost quilting."