New Quilt: Galaxies, Suns, and the Planets in Their Courses

 The second call this year for our art quilt group 4 Common Corners was "Improv at the Corners".  I was initially struggling with this, I don't really do traditional "improv" but settled into it as an opportunity to explore something I'd been thinking a lot about, namely what to do with the "outer edges" that are left over after cutting shapes out with my digital cutter.  

I make quite a few quilts that use the digital cutter to cut out fusible applique shapes, and I'm always left with all these scraps that are tiny, weirdly shaped, and have fusible on them.  But often they're some of my favorite hand dyed or painted fabrics so I hate to toss them.  The net result is that I have several large baskets of these scraps and I decided to use some in this project.  As with most scrap projects, after doing the whole project you can't even tell that I used up any (based on how many are still left), so maybe this is motivation to do another one (or two or three) of these.

I selected a bright blue shiny background fabric and sketched out only the broadest sort of shapes.  I was inspired by the shapes of nebulae in the night sky, but only very very loosely.  

Here are a couple of in-progress pictures.  Each main element (whether coral or teal) was surrounded by a band of dark navy bits, and then I filled in the background with gold bits.  I wind up with a fair amount of gold because a lot of the precision cutting is for my illuminated manuscript series and I use a lot of gold in that.

A lot of the red and coral bits came from my boxelder bug quilts, so there are a lot of antennae and bug shaped outlines in there.

The blues and corals are from a wider range of projects, but a lot of them are from my original mammal mandala from 2014.  You can see lots of outlines but also a possum and some possum babies that didn't make it into the original quilt.

Here's the finished piece. The gold background all came from my Lord's Prayer quilt, and in a few places in this quilt you can actually make out some words from the Lord's Prayer. 

Galaxies, Suns, and the Planets in their Courses, c. Shannon Conley, 2024, 31x31"

I love the way this turned out.  It was fun and flowed freely, and I'd love to do some more like this.

Living Language Land: Part 2

 Earlier this week I shared about the first quilt I made for our Living Language Land inspired quilt show.  My second piece also used the topography approach and in fact re-used one section of the pattern from my
based on the USGS topo maps of the mountains where I grew up in southern New Mexico.  

The word I picked was Tuuca Orodji

From the Living Language Land website:

• Language: Khwedam
• Region: Northeastern Namibia
• Contributor: ǂGakaci Thaddeus Chedau, Mbo

Rainwater pan

When I think of collecting rainwater, I think of all the little creeks in each canyon of our mountains.  They only run for just a few months out of the year: when the summer monsoons come and in the spring when there is runoff from the snow melt.  I remember having such a good time playing in the creeks on the rare occasions they had water.  The section of topo map I chose features the canyon through which north Eagle Creek flows.

Here are some in-progress pictures as I cut out the pieces on my silhouette and layed them out for painting.

And here is in progress with the layering.  Each layer is separated by a plastic pony bead to give depth.

Here's the finished piece with artist statement below.

North Eagle Creek, 24x12, c. 2024, Shannon Conley

I'm interested in how the processes of layering and then taking away can create dimension and shape. Layer after layer is peeled away to expose what's underneath: organic openings that shift in shape, color, and depth. This piece began with hand painted cloth and a machine quilted base, and then are layered and/or cut away, and anchored with hand stitching. Each layer corresponds to a 160ft topo line from a USGS map of the White Mountain Wilderness in southern New Mexico. This region of New Mexico continues getting drier and drier, with endemic forest fires and water collecting in canyon bottoms for only a few short weeks each spring.

Our goal as show organizers was to have at least two quilts for each word, and at the end of the call for entry period we still had a few words left.  In looking through them, it occurred to me that one of them, Itrofillmongen, would fit fairly well with a small 12x12 quilt I made in 2015 and still had.  

The quilt was made as part of a small series featuring a lady (me actually) looking out a window.  The point of the series was to capture the ambiguity of poster and expression, and let the viewer imagine what was occurring.  That seemed to fit well with 

Itrofillmongen

from the Living Language Land website:

Language: Mapudungun

Region: Lake Budi, Mapuche Territory, Chile

Contributor: Fernando Quilaqueo, Environmental Association Budi Anumka

The tangible and intangible elements of the diversity of life

Centering, 12x12, c. 2015, Shannon Conley

Artist statement: This piece was inspired by the relationship between us, standing alone in the darkness, and the piercing lightness of the world outside.

I'm looking forward to seeing the Living Language Land exhibit all together, I think it's a very interesting idea.

Living Language Land: Part 1

Our SAQA KS/MO/OK region is doing an exhibition inspired by the Living, Language, Land project.  The project is focused on conservation through the lens of endangered and minority languages, and the idea that different languages illustrate different ways of interacting with the land.  One of their goals is to inspire others to bring the 26 words selected from minority and endangered languages to life in their creative practice.  Our SAQA region has invited its members to make one or more small (12x12 or 12x24) art quilts based on these words, not appropriating imagery or symbols from the cultures where the words originate, but reflecting on how these words can relate to our own connections with the land.

I initially picked two words to make quilts on.  I decided do use the layered topography approach I originally explored back about 8 years ago, largely because I had signed up to teach that technique on Quilting Arts TV this summer.  That was a great trip, perhaps at some point I'll get a post up on that, but the two Living Language Land quilts were both illustrations for that segment.

My first word was Maloka.  

From the Living Language Land website:

• Language: Murui (Uitoto)
• Region: Amazon region, Colombia
• Contributor: Emperatriz López of the Murui Muina people

Ancestral longhouse

I decided to do an abstracted piece inspired by the shape and form of long houses, with geometric layers building up.  Layers like this have felt like "home" to me in quilting for a long time now.  

This was my quilted background.

These are some of the layered pieces after cutting and during painting.

And here are all the original layered pieces.  I decided the bright greents and yellows were too bright, so in the end, I just went with the under layers.

This is the final piece,  it actually wound up feeling more like a banner than a house, but that resonates with me too, think about family symbols and things like that.

Homecoming, 24x12, c.2024, Shannon Conley

The artist statement on the piece says:

Meditating on the idea of a traditional long house I kept coming back to the plain simple shapes used as little kids to draw houses. Houses turn out to be much more complex than that, but home doesn't have to be. My hope is that we can foster societies where home is a safe and loving place for everyone.

2024 SAQA Benefit Auction

 The 2024 SAQA Benefit Auction starts tomorrow.  It's a super great opportunity to pick up really wonderful small art pieces while benefitting a great organization.  I encourage all of you to click over and borwse through the available artworks and find out more on how to bid.  The auction runs from September 13 to October 6 and you can find out more information here:  https://www.saqa.com/auction

These are just a few of the pieces available in the auction this year.

I actually started mine last year.  It uses a free-motion openwork technique where you quilt over open spaces that are temporarily filled  by water soluble stabilizer.  After finishing, you soak the piece in water, the stabilizer dissolves, and you're left with a lovely openwork effect.  I've used this many times over the years, including in my VLA quilt, my SAQA donation quilt in 2018, and Listen Louder than you Sing among others.

Q is for...., 12x12, c. Shannon Conley, 2024

This is my mom's donation for the auction this year,  it uses her handcarved fossil blocks.

Miscellaneous Crafty Projects 2024

 As I try to catch up on quilts, I've realized there are a bunch of small crafty projects from this year I also haven't shared, so today is a roundup of those.  

Up first are a pair of book covers, the first is out of my favorite star wars fabric for one of my work notebooks.  I added some fun purple sequin trim that's been in my stash forever and that I had no idea what I was ever going to do with.

A little more sophisticated is this pieced leather book cover I made for my mom.  She and my dad had a catastrophic fire early this summer in which they lost their camper and big truck.  It was really really awful, and among many other things, my mom lost her national geographic US National Park Sites book.  She'd been collecting the National Park Passport stamps in that book for many many years.  My sister and I bought her a new book and then called all the National Parks after looking up the dates of my parents' travels and asked them to send us a replacement passport cancellation stamp.  We wound up collecting over 90 different NPS sites.  The book is a large hardcover and I made a cover for it out of some leftover leather scraps I had in my stash.  The fun trim on the front is because I had to sort of piece/applique the leather scraps together because I didn't have enough big pieces left.  The inner flaps are my favorite yellow hippo fabric I got years ago to make a wallet for mom.  

Last year I made a boxy bag for my nephew Alex and more recently I also made one for my niece Anna.  I like the boxy bags, they're pretty capacious and they go together easily.  The one I made from Anna used some super fun agate fabric I ordered from spoonflower and a really cool zipper with fun woven trim as the zipper tape.  I have no idea where it came from but it was great for this kind of project where the zipper could be really visible.

My nephew Alex turned 11 this summer, and he's always been a guinea pig lover.  He doesn't have any pet guinea pigs anymore, but he and my niece and brother-in-law volunteer as often as they can at a local guinea pig rescue.  I decided to make Alex a guinea pig throw pillow as part of his birhtday present.  I used the free-motion couching technique,  another technique I illustrated for Quilting Arts TV.  The whole surface of the pillow is covered with yarn.  I think it turned out cute.

I haven't accomplished very much knitting this year, but I did manage to finish one pair of ankle socks.  I like these socks for summer especially when the regular tall handknit socks are just too warm.  I like the color-  I wear a lot of turquoise and purple so these fit into the wardrobe rotation fairly well.

Finally, the most recent crafty project was this small embroidery I made for my friend Tamas who got married this summer.  I was super excited to get to attend his wedding while I was in Hungary just a few weeks ago.  The design is loosely inspired by their wedding invitation.  I really like the colors, but the letters could definitely have been better.  I guess it turned out ok.