Cultural Red

I'm so excited to have just found out that two of my quilts, The Yucca and the Moth and Do You See What I See, have been accepted into the new SAQA NM show, Cultural Red.  This show will be hanging at the Capitol Rotunda Art Gallery at the NM Capitol building in Santa Fe, NM from April 17-August 17.  If any of you are in or around Santa Fe, I'd encourage you to stop by and see it, it should be a great show.

The cool cochineal bug quilt on the bottom left is my mom Vicki's (so cool).

Do You See What I See

The Yucca and the Moth

Also, I've designed a website for my quilts.  In addition to galleries of quilts, it has a list of upcoming shows.  It was fun to build- I'm not sure I won't still change it around some, but I think it's good enough to be going on with.  Check it out at Shannonconleyartquilts.com or by clicking the website link in my tab.

The Yucca and the Moth: Finished!

I finished my yucca quilt!  Facing, pocket, label and all.  (It's kind of like the lions and tigers and bears, but much more tedious).  You can see more posts on it here and here I really like the way it turned out- it's much more golden in person; so many of the fabrics have sheen and texture and shimmer.  My only regret is how many thread knots/nests are visible on the back.  Enjoy!

Shannon Conley, The Yucca and the Moth, 2014, 52 x 59"

Linking up with Nina-Marie as always, go check out all the fabulous links over there!

Yucca Quilt

I didn't realize how long it had been since I'd posted until I clicked over today.  I've been quilting away on my yucca quilt.  Progress has been almost glacial in pace, and I think part of why I haven't posted is because I feel like progress was so minuscule as to be unnoticeable.

However, the fact is, I've now finished the quilting, so the project is definitely farther along than when I posted last!  I think the last picture I showed was this one of the top assembled but before I'd added the final flower buds.

Part of why progress on this was so slow is because I've been using 12 wt top stitching thread to outline and echo all of the applique pieces.  Some of them are even outlined twice (once on each side of the satin stitching).  Unfortunately, my machine does not like to free-motion with this thread, so I've been pushing the mass of the quilt around and around and around and around under the throat plate.

In addition,  you can't really backtrack with the top stitching thread (it's really obvious and heavy looking) so that adds to the stops and starts.  Finally, on things like the yucca leaves where you might think you could just start once and go back and forth, you can't really because they're only ditched on one side of the leaf (although the echoing is more continuous).  All of this was my own fault in terms of the design, so I'll definitely know better next time.

After finishing all the top stitching thread, I did some more echoing with Ricky Tims Razzle Dazzle. I love this stuff, it has the heavy feel of the top stitching thread (and is sparkly) but works free motion since I put it in the bobbin.


All the background quilting is really simple, just horizontal or vertical swirls depending on the location.  It's quilted much less densely than most of my pieces, a choice I made because of the background fabric.  In the first place I wanted to preserve the rumpled look of the background fabric as much as possible, and in the second place, because of the texture of the background fabric, I felt like detailed quilting would have been really out of place.

The only place I have "interesting" quilting is in a couple of horizontal bars where I've stitched in a repeating yucca moth design.  I wanted to include the yucca moths somewhere; they live inside the flowers and pollinate them, but more appliques felt out of place.  I thought the repeating pattern was kind of fun, almost like echoes of an Egyptian or Arts and Crafts border.

I'm really pleased to be moving forward on this even if it's been frustrating at times.  I've  blocked and squared up, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures when it was on the wall, so these were taken while it was laying on my work table.  I've just got to do the facing, label and pocket (oh if it really were "just"), and then I'll show some final pics and move onto a new project!

New Project and Jane Sassaman Class

Back in April my mom and I went to a five day Empty Spools seminar with Jane Sassaman.  Her class was really fabulous, all about abstracting from nature, and it was wonderful to learn her design approach.  Her graphic abstract floral quilts are really outstanding and seeing them in person was remarkable.  We spent the first day and a half just drawing, sketching, and abstracting from our drawings.  Drawing has never been one of my strengths, so forcing myself through the exercise and acknowledging how much I learned from the process reminds me that it can really be a valuable tool for understanding what I see.

Of course we were all working on our own designs, and the plant/flower I chose was the yucca. Going in I wanted to work with metallics, and I thought the gold/warm feeling of the desert and yuccas would really go well with that idea.  Jane's design process (which we were learning in the class) is much more organic than mine usually is- definitely not a draw-out-the-whole-composition-at-the-beginning approach.  Here are a few in progress shots of what I was working on.

That backing fabric is some sort of soft shimmery polyester looking light brown fabric with wrinkles part of the fabric itself.  I love the texture it has.  Metallic fabric in general is so hard to photograph, I included the shot above because you can really see the glow from the gold lame accent leaves.

I've spent a bunch of time in the last few months auditioning different arrangements, and recently settled on what you see below (which I then stitched down).  The top isn't quite finished, there are a few more flower buds to be added at the tops of each stem.

The funny bubbles in the background are where the fabric isn't quite stuck to the interfacing.  They won't be there after quilting.  One of my biggest struggles with this project was the appliqueing.  I usually use raw edge applique or a sort of appli-piecing combo I learned from Caryl Fallert. Jane appliques all her pieces (some raw edge some turned) with a satin or decorative stitch, and all her work is so perfect!  Lots of my satin stitch really looks terrible- not smooth and even. Alas, I'm not sure I can do anything about it, so it may just have to be a practice-practice-practice or a different-technique-next-time situation.

One of Jane's working guidelines for abstracting from nature is "Twice as big, half as many" which I had a really hard time with, but I did try!

Let me know if you have any thoughts on the overall composition, its something I really struggled with and am not opposed to continuing to work on if anyone has any great suggestions.

Linking up with Nina-Marie as always!