New Quilt-Hondo Valley Iris

 This is a piece I started last fall, intended to be another in my smocked series.  It was made from an old slip that I've had since my college days (now more than 20 years ago).  I don't think I've ever worn it since college, which is a long time to keep something in your closet you don't wear.

Anyway, I first cut it into two pieces and painted it.  I was originally going to use the two pieces as the front/back of the quilt, but the pieces were fairly small for a smocked quilt since the smocking eats up a lot of area so I decided it would be a diptych and both painted pieces would be "fronts." Evidently I didn't take pictures from the painting or quilting steps.  

After quilting, I finished the edges with some purple fuzzy yarn from my stash and then set them aside to finish over the Christmas break at my mom's.  I decided to leave them sort of skirt-shaped; I wasn't sure what that would do to the smocking, but I didn't want to square them up and lose even more fabric.

The first smocking pattern I tried was this lattice pattern, I'd been wanting to try it for a while, but unfortunately, it didn't work well with the small piece of quilted fabric.  I think for small quilts, it really does help for the smocking pattern to have left-right symmetry so that the side pleats hang evenly on both sides.

  I settled for this plainer pattern and I think it worked much better.  

Here's the finished diptych, I like how the irregular shape made the two pieces nest nicely with one another when hanging.  The purple and green color scheme reminded me of the wonderful iris at the Hondo Valley Iris Farm, so that's what it's named!  The Hondo Valley is the very last thing you drive through going home to my parent's in New Mexico.  If you're ever headed to Ruidoso in the spring/early summer, it's definitely worth a stop.

Hondo Valley Iris, c. Shannon Conley, 2024, 20" x 28" x 2"

New Quilt: Hidden Life

 This was one of two clearly 2023 quilts that I never had a chance to blog about.  It was for a call for our art quilt group 4 Common Corners.  The theme was "Hidden Life" and I was super excited by that.  Seemed right up my alley.  Last fall was pretty chaotic and stressful though so I sort of wanted to work from something I already had.  

You may recall the background from the quilt I mdae for the fierce planets call (called "Wild Thing") was this purple stretch velvet.  

And for the final quilt, I cut out a large (~25" diameter) circle where the planet was stitched in.  This was the final fierce planets piece to remind you.

Wild Thing, c. 2023 Shannon Conley

Anyway, I had the pretty quilted purple circle and it felt sort of like a circular field of view inside a microscope, so it seemed like a great thing to use for my hidden life piece.  I've always loved stromatolites and cyanobacteria in general, mostly because I love the idea of tiny little bacteria toiling away for billions of years oxygenating our atmosphere and paving the way for (eventually) us!

Instead of doing stromatolites this time, I picked a different type of cyanobacteria, cylindrospermum.  It's a genus of filamentous cyanobacteria that form these colonial aggregates that look like little worms and can glide and move together in their aqueous environment.  I quilted a bunch of overlapping colorful cylindrospermum onto the quilt using lots of different thread and couched yarn.  

To give the cylindrospermums a little more weight I added some shiva paintstick inside the cells.

The filaments often have a larger bit close to the end that sort of looks like a head.  It's actually called an akinete and is apparently the cell in the cylindrospermum that's the most resistant to cold weather and can overwinter in unfavorable conditions.  I filled some of them with quilting, 

Some of them I filled with roving, and some I filled with very old thread, sliced off a spool and then stitched down around the edge.  They give it a little texture.

I faced it and put fairly stiff plastic tubing inside the facing so it would hold its shape.  It has a slat across the widest part of the back and a vertical slat going top to bottom.  I love the way it turned out, to me it definitely looks like a microscope field with things swimming around waiting to be visualized!  And I love using up a cast off bit of something else.

Cylindrospermum, c. 2023, Shannon Conley, 24" x 24"

2023 Christmas Crafts

 I didn't do as much crafting as I sometimes do for Christmas, but I did have make a few things.  I always really enjoy making small things for my friends and family. 

This year for the Christmas tree ornaments I made, I used all these old wooden spools I've been saving, many of them came from my sister's mother-in-law Mary Alyce (thanks Mary!) It was super fun to pick trims and beads from my stash to accent them.

And, I just have to share this absolutely delightful Christmas ornament my friend Helena sent me all the way from Canada!  She's a knitting and quilting friend, and I love the neon yarn and adorable hanger.

I also finally got around to making a couple of these little origami multi-pocket pouches.  One was for my mom and one for my friend Kristin.  It was pretty hilarious, after my mom opened hers she laughed and told me she'd made a couple of that same pattern for her friends for Christmas.

I also knitted a few washcloths/dishcloths to give as gifts.  They're wonderful to use but wear out, so I figure having a new one now and again isn't a bad thing.  I think I wound up knitting four?  But evidently I only took pictures of one of them.

This was a pre-Christmas (Advent) present for Brett,  I made two little advent calendar drawers for each date.  One had a candy for Brett and one had a tasty dog treat for Cash.

Finally, I had a lot of fun making the clothes for these nativity people.  The wooden people are from our church's Godly Play set, and our priest wanted to use them at the children's service on Christmas Eve.  I think I shared these in an I like post, but I wanted to have them here too.

Then in addition to the one set of nativity people, she wanted to have little swaddled baby Jesuses to hand out to all the children at the service, so at the last knitting night of the year, we glued/tied swaddles on fifty little peg people!

Our friend Shirley didn't want to be in the picture,  we didn't obscure her by accident!

I think that's a wrap on 2023 Christmas Crafts.  Pretty soon I'll start pinning ornament ideas for 2024

I Like #323

 Once again I've missed a few weeks of  I like Posts.  I know they come every week, but Thursday always seems to sneak up on me!  I'm happy to be back, typically the early part of the year tends to be a time I catch up on blogging while things tend to get a little lost toward the later part of the year.  

That may be especially true this year; my studio is currently buried under piles of stuff I have pulled out of my house due to the ongoing construction work.  Maybe that's a good thing for blogging- if I can't sew, maybe I'll get up-to-date on un-blogged projects.  Really my biggest limitation for blogging is that often, after spending so many hours on the computer at work, I don't want to spend more hours on the computer at home!  But here we are and I love our blogging community and the record in the blog so I persist.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season/year end. 

I'll just share some highlights of things I liked during the last couple of weeks.  

I loved getting to go with my mom and dad to an opening of a show Mom had several quilts in at the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City!  That's Mom with one of her pieces.

I loved getting to go the OKC Zoo Safari Lights.  It was such a cool animal holiday display, I actually went twice, once with Brett and once with my parents.  I'd never seen anything like it.

I loved getting to go to NM for Christmas and help decorate my parents' church (the church I grew up in) for Christmas.  It was wonderful to be back in that community.

I took Blue and Spooky with me, and I was so happy Spooky got to have tons of fun rumpusing with my parents' dog Quark.

Loved getting to play so many games!  It was a fairly quiet holiday at my parents' house.  We missed my sister and her family, but even without them, Mom and I played tons of board games and Dad joined in for the ones he likes.

I loved getting to see my Aunts and Uncles and Grandma on Christmas day.  I snapped this picture of our mountain on the way home from Christmas dinner at my Aunt's.

Loved getting to hike in the mountains.  The weather was great the whole time I was there, no snow or rain, just cool and dry.  We had nice hiking and even though Blue and Quark don't get along, we worked with them until they got to the point they could go on a walk together calmly which was great.

Now I'm back in Oklahoma.  The work year has started with a bang, and my house is a giant mess with all the construction, but I'm hoping for a good 2024.

Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

2023 Year in Review

 I like to do these year-in-review posts just for my own peace of mind.  Every year I feel like I haven't been very productive artistically, and while 2023 was less productive than some years, I did accomplish some things.

I finished 7 art quilts, many of which will go to either the two-person show my mom and I are having this spring at Oklahoma City University or will go to the group show I'm participating in at the New Mexico State Capitol (also this spring).

It was another year without a piece in my liturgical series which makes me sad.  Unfortunately those require a lot more planning and time than some of my other work, but I love them and I really hope to get back this series this year.

Lantern 3.  This was actually a 2022 make I detested so much I basically put it in timeout until I could resuscitate it.  I overpainted it in 2023 and like it much better now.

Only You.  This was the first real 2023 finish.  I love the way this came together and the way it collapses for shipping/hanging.

Solar Punk:  I made this one for the SAQA StichPunk call for entry and I'm so pleased it got in.

Seedheads #2:  I made an initial small quilt like this for the annual SAQA benefit auction and enjoyed it so much that I made a bigger one.  It was fun to work the color shifts in the pom poms.

Wild Thing:  This was my entry for the SAQA Fierce Planets call.  Sadly it didn't get in but it will fit really nicely in our upcoming show at OKCU.

Vining:  This is another in my series of smocked quilts.

Cylindrospermum:  This was for a 4 Common Corners theme called "Hidden Life."  I haven't had a chance to do a blog post about it (hopefully coming soon), but it was definitely a 2023 quilt, not a 2024 quilt.

Self-Portrait:  This is also definitely a 2023 quilt, I'd completely forgotten I hadn't blogged about it.  Hopefully a blog post about it will be coming soon too.

I had only a couple of knitting finishes this year,  one pair of socks for my sister and one sweater for me that came out too big.  I still need to go back to it and figure out a way to tighten up the neckline because it's driving me bananas every time I go to put it on.

I did a little bit of bagmaking this year, including a new choir music tote, a new purse/wallet for my mom, and a boxy bag for my nephew Alex.

One of my non-sewing goals was to visit 12 National Park Sites this year, and while I only got to seven (read about them here), I'm hoping for at least 6 more in 2024.

That's a wrap for 2023, and I'm hoping for a positive outlook, good artwork, and kind friends in 2024.