Ready for Opening Reception

Here are some photos of the exhibit at the Lucile Parker Gallery at William Carey University, ready for the opening reception. Imagine my surprise to see this sign at the traffic light at the intersection for the turn off the highway! It covered the time for the opening reception and the date. Since it would be changed after the opening, I pulled off into the service station across the street to get the picture.

 

We placed large floral works and a twisted tree piece on the right wall, and abstract pieces on the left and back walls. Four smaller pieces were hung on the passageway to the next room (on left side at the top of the ramp).

The ramp and diagonal railing presented some challenges in the hanging process (the eyes play tricks with getting pieces level), but the unusual shape of the wall allowed for interesting placement.

View entering gallery

Left wall

Right wall

Ghost Quilting, Stitch Combos #1 and #2, Color Bars (blue)

Exhibit at the New Lucile Parker Gallery

The reason I've been so absorbed and interested in hanging methods lately is because I have been preparing to hang my fiber art exhibit at the Lucile Parker Gallery at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, MS. The gallery was established in 1990, named for a loved and respected watercolor artist and teacher at the college. It was housed in the building with the Jones Auditorium in the front of the Music Department.

In September 2013 the gallery moved into its new home in a remodeled two-story historic brick building. It is a charming, intimate space with good lighting, ideal for art exhibits, located across the street from the campus main entrance.

Lucile Parker Gallery, 512 Tuscan Avenue

I was invited to exhibit my fiber art in the new gallery from November 12-December 11. The invitation pictures a detail shot from one of my flower pieces. The opening reception will be November 12 from 4:30-6:00 p.m. Regular hours for the gallery are 1:00-4:00 p.m. or by appointment.



My Favorite Hanging Method

     Quilts need a 4" sleeve on the back to hang on the pipe and drape hardware in quilt shows. When displayed in galleries or art shows, a wire is usually required. Attaching sleeves is my least favorite part of the entire process, so I certainly don't want to have to change or add a new sleeve to change where the piece is to be displayed. If one method can accommodate quilt shows, art shows/galleries, and hanging on my wall, so much the better.
     I prefer one hole in the center of the slat and use a divided sleeve that is open in the center. For years I have used a 1/4" thick wooden slat with a hole drilled in the center to go over a nail to hang an art quilt on the wall. If that piece was entered in an art show, I attached eye-hooks to the ends of the slats and attached the wire (twisting like on a picture frame).

     Recently I discovered 2 inch faux wood blinds. They are economical, sturdy, and can be cut shorter or or glued together to add strength and extra length. I bought one 23" x 64" blind and disassembled it, leaving me with lots of neat white, thin slats with two little slit openings. I can run wire through the slits. To secure the knot in the wire, I add some Liquid Nails or E6000.



front, facing the sleeve opening

back, facing back of quilt

     For shorter slats, I can cut these with heavy scissors instead of having to saw the wooden slats. If the 23" slat is not long enough, I overlap and join two slats with Liquid Nails or E6000. An electric drill will drill holes easily for the wire since the slits are covered.


front, two slats glued to get proper length

back, two slats glued, using drilled holes for wire

ready to hang in gallery with slat; remove slat for pipe & drape

My High School Reunion

It was a marvelous, fun-filled, nostalgic weekend. I flew from Mississippi to Corpus Christi, Texas, to attend the 60th reunion of my W B Ray High School class. Since moving away from there 40 years ago, I have only been back twice, the last time in 2004, and I admit I had forgotten how beautiful it is. Palm trees and large houses line Ocean Drive from the downtown area all the way out to the Naval Air Station.



My friend's 8th floor condo has views facing north, east, and south, and weather changes offer variety from day to day and from morning to evening. 

 

 We wore name tags with our names on one side and senior pictures on the other--a great help for recall. Our classmate Bill Glass (former Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns and four-time Pro-Ball star) was our inspirational speaker. He is the author of 12 books and founded Champions for Life, one of the world's largest prison ministries. He stressed the importance of telling our children (spouses or parents or friends) that they are loved.

Jannet Traylor Smith, Claire Smith Hook, Jeanette Hill Gordon

Joy Humphries, Martha Weeks Ginn, Jeanette Hill Gordon

I enjoyed some great Tex-Mex food, had delicious shrimp salad on Padre Island, and saw how much the city had grown.

 

Perhaps the highlight of my visit was getting to visit with my former employer, Marshall Boykin III. I went to work for his law firm as a naive young mother with good secretarial skills. He was an intelligent, honorable man who became my mentor and friend.

Color Bars

I'm still enjoying making free-form quilts. Here are three I've finished recently.


Color Bars - Yellow
30.5 x 29

Color Bars - Purple
16.5 x 10

 

Color Bars - Red/Black
36.5 x 22

 

Naps Are Recommended

Don't you love to read advice from an expert that agrees with your own philosophy? Robert Genn, who writes The Twice-Weekly Letter, caught my attention with this title this week, "Take a Nap." He reports that Sara Mednick, a sleep researcher at UC, Riverside, sees the value of sleep, especially short sleep. Mednick thinks humans have a biological need for an afernoon nap, as promoted in her book, Take a Nap! Change Your Life. She has researched the relationship between napping and performance. Genn states, "In sleep our minds become highly active. . . .Sleep also enhances performance, learning and memory. According to Mednick, after sleep, people are 33 percent more likely to be creative."
No matter how absorbed I am in my current art project, I realize that my concentration suffers and my enjoyment lags in the early afternoon. It has nothing to do with a large or small lunch. Inviting the cat to get on my lap for some petting is delightful, bringing on a short nap for both of us. After years of working when this was not an option, I am reminded of how blessed I am to be at home and able to enjoy this respite.

Sometimes Bigboy is ready for some lap time (nap time) before I am and he waits patiently on the arm of the recliner. 

Love Those Scraps--Part 2

Wild Scraps 1, Log Cabin Style
46" x 60"

Back on August 1 I posted pictures of the two scrap quilts I was working on. These are both quilted and bound now and I took them to guild meetings to get someone to hold them for photographing. They were so much fun to make--starting with a square or rectangle (from 4"-8") and adding strips. Wild Scraps 1 has strips on all four sides; Wild Scraps 2 has strips on only two sides, like an Offset Log Cabin. It's hard to decide which way I like best--just whatever gives the most exciting mix of colors and textures.
WS 1 seems slightly more orderly and predictable, while WS 2 is more chaotic. In WS 2 I did not always orient the starting square in the same place in the finished block--in other words, some are in the lower right (SE) corner, some in the upper left (NW) and so forth, which seems to blur the lines of the individual blocks and rows of blocks. I definitely plan on continuing with this free-form style of quiltmaking.

Wild Scraps 2, Offset Log Cabin Style
61" x 64"

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!

Program for Chinese Group

It was my privilege to speak to a group of international students last week. One of the outreach efforts of my church, University Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, is a weekly meeting with students or spouses to help them with our culture, language, and our practice, led by my friend Virginia Butler. I had spoken to the same group a year ago,

and when they learned about my China trip in March of this year they wanted to hear about my experiences there. I gave a PowerPoint presentation about the quilt exhibit "The Sum of Many Parts" in Dalian and Beijing as well as describing the talks I gave at several schools. They were excited when I told them that the above picture was a part of each of my programs!
I also showed several pieces of my fiber art and explained the techniques and stories behind them.

 

Using scraps and strips



Telling how I used bobbin drawing to quilt sunflowers from the back

Scraps and Strips

I'm still in my scrap mode. After making two small quilts with large squares (6"-7") surrounded by large strips (1"-3"), I have been playing with small strips. Rayna Gillman's book Create Your Own Free Form Quilts calls working with strips "therapy sewing." She joins strips randomly and then slices and inserts and rejoins to come up with unexpected results. Here is the result of some of my therapy sewing. These strip sets don't have a plan yet; they are just addictive to stitch!

I liked three of the pieces enough to layer and quilt and finish them. The yellow/green piece has a traditional binding; the blue one and the sunflower (long) piece are finished with rat-tail cording.

The long skinny piece is backed with sunflower fabric; this gave an opportunity to quilt from the back to make the sunflower design show up on the strips on the front. Click to enlarge to show the stitches.





    

 

Love Those Scraps

I've been working with scraps lately and having a great time. Unlike a friend of mine who says "I don't like scraps--too much like eating leftovers," I really love scraps (well, actually I like leftovers, too). Most quilters who promote the use of scraps say to put them in a box or sack and just reach in and take whatever you come up with. Afraid I'm not that relaxed about the process--I like to pick and choose what I sew to what, so I suppose I'd say I like Controlled Scraps.

Scrap Quilt 1, Log Cabin

 Both of these quilts start with a square or rectangle about 6"-8". I chose mostly strong primary colors in busy prints and then added strips to enlarge to about 12"-13". In Scrap Quilt 1, I added strips to all four sides; in Scrap Quilt 2 I only added strips to two sides and varied the orientation of the square (upper right, lower left, etc.), with the guideline being what was the most colorful and interesting layout. All squares are not the same size, so the actual blocks are somewhat disguised. The rows had to be the same size to fit together. Scrap Quilt 2 has a striped border; Quilt 1 has no border.

Scrap Quilt 2, Offset Log Cabin

The cat didn't realize I was only spreading the top to take the picture, but he knew where the center was.

Outstanding Quilters Reception

Pictured at the Reception honoring 2013 Outstanding Quilters chosen for the exhibit at the Mississippi Forestry and Agricultural Museum are eight of the ten honorees. Also shown are chairpersons of the Legacy Project, who are the organizers of these exhibits (far left) Joan Alliston and (far right) Georgia Polk.

Ten honorees were selected for 2013. They are (left to right)

Julia Beth Crapps, Morton
Marjorie Williams, Columbus
Willie Mae Davis, Utica
Becky Jefcoat, Flora
Carol Vickers, Decatur
Yvonne EvansNewton
Ann Fox, Brandon
Martha Ginn, Hattiesburg
Mary Alice Harvey Box, Starkville (deceased)
Ella Lucas, Hattiesburg (not pictured)

The exhibit will remain in the museum through October.

2013 MQA Outstanding Quilters

The Mississippi Quilt Association was founded in 1991 to enhance the art of quilting in Mississippi and established the MS Quilt Legacy Committee in 2005. The purpose is to execute the search and documentation process and record the works of outstanding Mississippi quilters over the age of 65.

MQA accepts nominations for Outstanding Quilters, and these nominees are asked to display two of their quilts at the Mississippi Forestry and Agricultural Museum in Jackson from June through October.
I have two quilts on display during this year's exhibit: "This Is My Story, This Is My Song" and "Finding My Way." The quilts are hung from the ceiling throughout the historical exhibit of items which represent Mississippi's cultural history. It is an honor to have my quilts hanging in this rich historical setting.

This Is My Story, This Is My Song

Finding My Way (detail)



Quick Draw for Kids

Usually nothing about quilting or creating art is quick! When my local art association (South Mississippi Art Association) in Hattiesburg announced plans for a Quick Draw at Brewsky's to benefit South Mississippi Children's Center, it sounded like a fun activity.

     The plan was this: artists would bring their supplies (in my case, sewing machine, table, threads, etc.)—and set up at the venue, where they would have one hour to create their piece, and 15 minutes to frame it. Then the pieces would all be sold through a live auction. A very loud and lively band was playing while patrons were enjoying hors d’oeuvres and drinks and circulating among the artists to watch the pieces take shape.

     Being the only one of the 25 participating artists with a sewing machine makes my station a must-see, so this is quite fun! This is the fourth year I have participated, and I have done landscapes, ghost quilting, and this year did thread-painting on a large floral print, adding polyester and rayon threads to enhance the design. I had lightly adhered the print to a stabilizer with a glue-stick on the edges. The fabric I chose had two major flowers in orange and pink, so my thread choices were fairly limited to shades of these plus a green stem. My frame was 11x14 with a white mat, and I knew batting would make it too thick to pop into the frame. That meant the stabilizer was essential for keeping the work flat.

The band, Bobby Walters, Sherry Kuespert, Scottie Whigham, me in background

Fitting the mat over the thread-painting

    

     There were many positive comments, even this one: “I love your work, and can you fix my favorite pair of jeans?”

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.