Show Announcement: Beyond Tradition

Hi all, I just wanted to pop in to say that I have several pieces in a SAQA New Mexico regional show called Beyond Tradition.  It's being held at the Hubbard Museum of the American West in Ruidoso Downs, NM and runs from April 5-September 1.  If any of you are traveling through southern New Mexico, you might check it out!

I'm privileged to have three pieces hanging in Beyond Tradition: Winter in Lincoln County 2: Sierra Blanca, Winter in Lincoln County 1: The Orchard, and Ring Around the Mole.

Concurrently hanging at the museum are A Walk in the Wild and A Color Runs Through It, so you can also see Seymour the Coelophysis, Taming the Gorgons, and Black and White and Read All Over.

Many thanks to Betty Busby who has worked really hard to make this happen, and also to everyone else who helped including my super Mom who has been the local contact for it.  

Quilt Alliance Interview: Seymour the Coelophysis

I think I mentioned that the Walk in the Wild exhibit that originally hung at the Albuquerque Open Spaces Gallery was shown at IQF Houston this year.  During the show, Betty Busby arranged for all of us who had quilts in the Walk in the Wild and who were at Houston to be interviewed by the Quilt Alliance.  The Quilt Alliance is a group whose goal is to preserve, document, and share the stories behind our quilts.

They did three minute videos with tons of quilters at Houston, not just us, and you can see a bunch of fabulous ones on their YouTube channel.  I talked very excitedly about Seymour the Coelophysis, you can watch it here in case the embedding doesn't work.  You may have to turn up the volume a bit, it was kind of hard for me to hear on my computer.

If you ever find yourself with some spare time, I encourage you to check out the Quilt Alliance channel, you can find so many wonderful videos there.  Thanks so much to them for undertaking this documentation effort and to Betty and the other SAQA New Mexico people for arranging it!

Updates on Seymour

Two pieces of great news you guys!

First,  Seymour is a finalist in the Art Quilt category over at the Bloggers Quilt Festival.  Head to this link to vote for your favorites.  You don't have to have entered a quilt to vote, so definitely go check it out.  There are so many awesome quilts in the running; it's exciting to have been nominated!

Second, Seymour is being exhibited at a SAQA exhibit at the Open Space Visitor Center Gallery in Albuquerque, NM.  The exhibit opens this Saturday and runs through December 30th.  The Albuquerque Journal did a story on it, so click through if you're interested (sorry for having the two random survey questions to see the article).  I'm super excited as it's the first time my work has been in a gallery show.  Any of you that are in Albuquerque should try to stop by and see it if you can,  you can give Seymour a virtual hug from me.

This is the flyer for the show.  In other awesome news, the donkey quilt on the flyer is actually a quilt my mom made that's also in the show.  I love the expression on the donkeys' faces!

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Seymour the Coelophysis

The always awesome Bloggers Quilt Festival is here again!  Head on over to Amy's and check out all the wonderfulness.

Update: My BQF entry number is 175

This time I want to share with you a fun quilt which I recently finished featuring the dinosaur Coelophysis.  Coelophysis is the state dinosaur/fossil of New Mexico, thanks to discovery of a large bed of Coelophysis skeletons at Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, NM.    The quilt is called "S is For… #3: You Cleared My Name".  It's the third in a series of quilts incorporating the serpentine S shape (created in this case by the dinosaur neck and tail).  For a long time, Coelophysis was thought to be cannibalistic, but recent scholarship has shown that he did not eat his own young, and thus his name has been cleared!

The design is original.  My main concept was to have Seymour's skeleton depicted on a background of his current home while the reverse side of the quilt would depict Seymour's body in a more triassic setting.  The background on the front of the quilt is Chimney Rock, a New Mexico landmark.  The quilt is raw edge applique and is made with a variety of types of commercially available fabrics.  It is embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, dryer sheets, polymer clay, foil, and paint sticks.  

The quilt is actually constructed as two completely separate pieces, each quilted and bound.  The two pieces are designed be laced together (via trim incorporated in the edging) enabling display as a two-sided back-to-front work, or unlaced and displayed side-by-side as a diptych (as shown below).  Each side is a mirror image of the other so that when the two pieces are displayed back-to-back the bones sticking out on the front side (for example in the tail) line up with the body parts (for example the tail) sticking out on the back side.  I quilted it on my old Singer 201.  It was a challenging project as I pretty much made it up as I went along!  I hope you enjoy seeing my dear Seymour (that's what Kenda named him) because I certainly enjoyed making him.  For more posts about him, click here.

S is for...#3: You cleared my name.  Displayed side-by-side, left panel is the front while the right panel is the back when displayed for two-sided hanging.

Quilting Details

 Detail of the bones and body where they stick off the edge of the quilt (taken during construction)

Detail of foreground elements

And one more, sorry, but I love the teeth!  I made them out of polymer clay and sewed them to the quilt at the very end.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Stats:

Title: S is For… #3: You Cleared My Name

Size: Each panel, 24” x 70”, 2012

Special techniques: raw edge applique, beading, handmade teeth composed of polymer clay, surface embellishment with dyed dryer sheets, wool roving etc.  Trim incorporated into faced binding to enable lacing of one side to the other.

Made and Quilted: Shannon Conley

BQF Categories: Art Quilt, Wall Hanging, Home Machine Quilted.

Super thanks to Amy for hosting such a great event!

I'm also linking up at the Off the Wall Friday Art Quilt Linky over at Nina-Marie's!

Here's the label, sorry for the out-of-focus picture!

This is the label text:

Coelophysis bauri, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur, is the state fossil of New Mexico due primarily to discovery of a large number of skeletons near Ghost Ranch, NM.  Coelophysis had long been the poster child for dinosaur cannibalism until work published by Nesbitt et al. in Biology Letters (2006) demonstrated clearly that stomach contents from mature Coelophysis were not juveniles of the same species or even dinosaurs at all, but rather were unrelated early crocodylomorph archosaurs.  In honor of Coelophysis’ “cleared name” I created this original art quilt depicting him, at approxmately full size. He is shown in his modern-day home (in front of Chimney Rock) on one side and in a more Triassic setting on the other side.  The quilt is made of commercially available fabrics of all types and embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, dryer sheets, polymer clay, and paint sticks.

WIP Wednesday: Progress on Something New

For Today's WIP Wednesday I just want to let everyone know that Seymour is finished!!  I posted all about him and final pics on Monday so click on through to see them.  Here are his teeth which I sculpted out of polymer clay and made into beads so I could sew them on.  I'm so thrilled that he's done.

Other finishes this week:

Cathedral window pincushions

Fun Print Pillowcases

Progress this week:

Since I finished Seymour I've started working on my silk screened medallion I first talked about here.  I love making progress on this UFO.  Here's a sneak peak.  So far it's been fun and relaxing except for the part where I hit a pin REALLY bad and now my precious Janome is in the shop hopefully getting fixed.  Luckily I have the Singer which I usually use to quilt on anyway so progress doesn't screech to a halt.

No Progress this Week/UFOs/WIPs:

Dog Quilt
Nativity Quilt (this will be the next big thing I get out)
Memory Quilt for Linda (this has to be pretty high on the list as well)
Crochet Flower Afghan
English Paper Piecing Mini
Thanksgiving Quilt (I'm probably going to try some quilt as you go on this.  Someday. right now it's a medium sized quilt sandwich waiting to be quilted)
Amy Butler Weekender Bag
Sun Printing/Cyanotype Blocks
Anna Butterfly Blocks
Bobbin QuiltingDream Catcher Quilt, Fabric Challenge for MQS (we got the fabric for this at MQS last year)
Secret Projects for Anna

Linking up with Lee as ever!

Seymour is Finished!

You guys-  I feel like there should be a party!  Pardon the melodrama but I feel like I've poured all my creativity and time and energy into Seymour and now he's complete and finished and wonderful.  I've never worked so long and so focused on something so personal.  I've had quilts that have taken longer, but mostly because they've languished as UFOs for years in closets.  I checked; my first post on Seymour was April 10th; since then I've focused almost entirely (with only a few small-project breaks) on him.  One of the most startling thing about this project was how challenging each step was.  Rather than taking forever because I needed a million blocks or something, almost ever step required something different; figuring out how to accomplish what I wanted, how to optimize some technique I'd never tried before, or how to tackle something with my particular resources.  There was a TON of make-it-up-as-you-go-along, and I dare say many experienced quilt artists would have known exactly what to do.

In any case, here he is.  For those of you who've been following since the beginning, thanks for sticking around.  And for anyone just clicking through for the first time, I've been posting about Seymour fairly regularly, so for more info just click on his tag in my sidebar.  The final quilt is designed to be laced together to display back to back or unlaced to be displayed as a diptych.

Here's my artist statement:

S is For… #3: You Cleared My Name
24” x 70”, 2012
Shannon Conley

Coelophysis bauri, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur, is the state fossil of New Mexico due primarily to discovery of a large number of skeletons near Ghost Ranch, NM.  Coelophysis had long been the poster child for dinosaur cannibalism until work published by Nesbitt et al. in Biology Letters (2006) demonstrated clearly that stomach contents from mature Coelophysis were not juveniles of the same species or even dinosaurs at all, but rather were unrelated early crocodylomorph archosaurs.  In honor of Coelophysis’ “cleared name” I created this original art quilt depicting him, at approxmately full size. He is shown in his modern-day home (in front of Chimney Rock) on one side and in a more Triassic setting on the other side.  The quilt is made of commercially available fabrics of all types and embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, dryer sheets, polymer clay, and paint sticks.

Here's a close up of the label and the eye and teeth which I haven't shown before.  The label shows a map of New Mexico with the Zia sun symbol over the area where the Coelophysis remains were discovered.  The teeth are polymer clay; I made them as beads and then sewed them to the quilt.

Thanks to everybody in blogland for all your encouragment!  I'm linking up everywhere this week since so many kind people from lots of different places have supported me.

WIP Wednesday: Where I Am

Usually I do WIP Wednesday posts that just talk about whatever work in progress I'm currently focused on.  This week however, since Seymour is getting really close to being finished, I thought I'd do a legit WIP Wednesday post.   I hope it can serve as a reference as I go forward towards the end of the year.

I've been following Leah Day's progress on her UFOs and I'm really excited to start tackling some of mine.  For so long I feel like I've been working on Seymour, and as I was cleaning up my studio yesterday I kept finding UFOs/WIPs that I'd completely forgotten about!  Sadly, I did not find my favorite small scissors which were what I was actually looking for.  Over the next few months I'd like to make good progress on some of the larger UFOs, with a few smaller ones thrown in.  So without further ado:

Finishes this Week:

Baby quilt for Casey Ahlden
Funny felt thing (more on these early next week)

Progress this Week:

Tons of small details on Seymour; here's a picture of his newly made eye, I'm especially pleased with how his eyelids turned out.  In person they're so smooth and curvy!  There are still many small things that have to be done and one large thing (the teeth) before he's ready to be officially finished.  My target for this is next Monday.

No Progress this Week/UFOs/WIPs:

Dog Quilt
Nativity Quilt (this will be the next big thing I get out)
Memory Quilt for Linda (this has to be pretty high on the list as well)
Crochet Flower Afghan
English Paper Piecing Mini
Thanksgiving Quilt (I'm probably going to try some quilt as you go on this.  Someday. right now it's a medium sized quilt sandwich waiting to be quilted)
Amy Butler Weekender Bag
Sun Printing/Cyanotype Blocks
Anna Butterfly Blocks
Silk Screening (I have the blocks I silk screened with mom over Christmas maybe?  I'd completely forgotten about them).
Bobbin Quilting

Things I'd Really Like to Make But am Trying to Resist Starting:

Cathedral Window Pinchushion
Dream Catcher Quilt, Fabric Challenge for MQS (we got the fabric for this at MQS last year)
Secret Projects for Anna
Embroidered Clock for the Studio
Boxy Bag (this has been on my wish list for a long time)
Sunglasses Case/Frame Purse
Crochet Something with the Beautiful Yarn I Brought from Germany
Snowflake Christmas table runner
Crewel Sampler  (I'm just craving this)
Shooting Star Block


Sadly, there are also a bunch of utility things I need to do and I know that any minute holiday sewing is going to start cropping up!  I just have to tell myself, one thing at a time.

Adding Texture in the Foreground

Seymour is almost completely finished; just a few final touches and I'm declaring him done!  I've been working on the foreground the last couple of days and thought I'd share a few things I've added to the quilt since they use a couple of different techniques to add some texture.

Barrel Cacti

This is the easiest one of all; for the cactus I sketched out the size of barrel cacti I wanted (interestingly in pencil sketches they look almost indistinguishable from stem-less pumpkins), then cut them out of green fusible-backed fabric.  I drew the ribs with my white erasable marking pencil, and then shaded each alternating rib with my trusty beige Shiva paintstick.  I fused the cacti down and thread painted/FMQed the rest.  I used 4 different thread colors on the big cactus and two on the little cactus to try to give a semblance of dimension.

Sagebrush Bush

For the trunk/woody part of my sagebrush, I used fusible-backed brown fabrics and some jute/twine I had leftover from a macrame project.  I left some of the twine pieces intact, and separated others into fibers.  Before proceeding with the bushy part, I FMQed down the stems/twine.  I wanted to try using wool roving for the leafy portion of my bush since I like its fuzzy feel.  I'd never worked with roving before; I think it's mostly used for felting.  I picked up a couple of hand-dyed sample packs at MQS this year and was anxious to try it.  It feels and looks like a slightly denser cotton ball material; I just pulled off bits of different colors and spread them out over the surface of the quilt.  The next part was a bit of a disaster.  I first tried just quilting down the fibers but they kept getting all wrapped up and tangled in my foot.  Then I tried covering a section with parchment paper and quilting over it; that made the quilting go easily but it was impossible to get the paper off without pulling up all the fibers.  I actually had to rip out all that quilting.  I finally wound up covering most of the bush with small pieces of tulle.  They didn't quilt down particularly flat, but the bumpy bits combined with the places where the roving isn't covered give very nice bushy texture.  Anyone else have experience trying to quilt down roving?

Fern

The stems of the fern are made out of ribbon and the leaves of the fern are made out of used dryer sheets.  My mom got that tip in a class from the wonderful Betty Busby, and I've been anxious to try it out ever since then.  I dyed the ferns using acrylic craft paint, basically just mushing them up in my hand with paint (it turned my hands green- use rubber gloves if you have some) and then spreading them out to dry.  I shook a little green glitter on a couple of them.  After they were dry I ironed them, cut out my fern shapes, and tacked them to the quilt with a bit of gluestick.  I quilted down the middle of the ribbon stem and each leaf.   Finally, I snipped along both sides of each leaf and then kind of rumpled them so they'd stand out a bit from the quilt.

Grass and Pebbles

The "grass" is just a few randomly fused down green or brown pieces which have been quilted over.  I think they add visual interest though since the rest of the pieces are primarily horizontal.  The "pebbles" are a few random quartz beads I sewed down.  I originally grabbed them thinking they'd make nice teeth but decided to use them for some more texture in the foreground instead.

Final pics coming soon!

One Thing, One Week link up

Just a quick phone update to say even though I was out of town over the weekend I made my goal for Amy's "One thing, One Week" challenge.

My goal was to get all Seymour's bones sewn down and I'm happy to say I made it!






Thanks for the fun challenge!

Dry Bones!

You guys saw on Wednesday Seymour's body on the back side of his quilt and since then I've been working on his front.  I traced all the bones onto my ivory fabric, stained them with dilute brown india ink, fused them to thick double sided fusible interfacing, and cut them out in large chunks (like foot, or torso).

Since the two quilts may be displayed side by side not just back to back I wanted to make sure that the location of the whole body lined up with the whole skeleton.  I started by hanging the two quilts back to back with the bone side facing out.  Obviously where the body sticks off the side it's easy to see where the bones should go (e.g. for the neck and tail curve).  However, to line up the middle section I pinned through from the back along the edge of the body, legs, tail, and head so I could make sure all the bones fit within those parameters.  Then I pinned up each bone section so make sure everything was fitting correctly.

Next, I cut out each individual bone, pinned it in its proper place, and finally fused them all down.  I'm currently working on sewing them down which is going about as well as you'd expect (read, not well).  I really love the look of the skeleton though with all those bones!!

After finishing the bones, the final step is to work on the foreground of the quilts.  I think the bone side needs some foreground elements so Seymour's skeleton doesn't appear to be floating.  I'm going to do some sage brush and barrel cactus.  However, I'm of two minds about the back side.  I was originally going to put some fun ferns in the foreground, but now I'm not sure where they'd go where they wouldn't be blocking the lake or tree roots  (here's a picture so you'll remember).  What I really don't want is for Seymour to appear to be floating or just stuck on the front.  So what do you guys think?

Important question:  do I need foreground elements on the back (dark body side) and if so where do you think they should be?

More from Seymour

Hey everybody!  For anyone keeping track I'm now just a week and a half out from the deadline to finish Seymour.  Unfortunately, I'm going out of town this weekend so time is even shorter.  Luckily, even though my family was all here over the Labor Day weekend, I was able to get quite a bit done on Seymour.  It was actually even more fun working on him than usual;  I've been working on him so long that I'm past the "excited" stage and on to the "slog through please please please won't this quilt ever be done" stage, but my sister an my mom think he's really cool so I was re-invigorated.  They actually helped me out quite a bit and definitely kept me company while I worked.  

This is the "back" side. Even though the front needs to be finished first (for pictures), in order for the bones to be lined up properly, Seymour's body had to be attached to the back first.  I used heavy duty black interfacing and covered it with fabric coated in fusible.  The fabrics I used aren't quilting cottons; they're designed as synthetic leather/snakeskin/halloween costume sparkly type fabrics.  They were pretty light weight and even though they're synthetic they fused fairly well to the interfacing, I just had to use parchment paper between the fabric and the iron.  I actually think they feel more skin-like and leather-like after having been fused to the interfacing since that gives so much body.

After getting the body covered in fabric but before attaching it to the quilt, I quilted some scales onto it.  Unfortunately it was hard to quilt on as my hopping foot wasn't crazy about the relatively sticky fabric, but I think it came out ok.  After quilting it, I sewed it to the surface of the quilt which turned out to be the hardest part of the whole thing.  I couldn't get the dinosaur to fuse or glue to the quilt so I had to pin (through All Those Layers) and then manhandling the thing through the sewing machine was nuts!  Luckily, there were only a few really thick parts (at the edge especially where it's already been bound).

He still needs an eye and probably some teeth, but the next step is the bones!  I love the way he blends into the quilt; this side was supposed to be low contrast and I can't wait to add a bright beady eye that will hopefully jump out at you!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced!

The Arrival of Seymour

Or rather, finally a plan for his arrival.  All this time, Seymour's just been floating in the back of my mind, but now that his romping fields (er... desert and jungle) are ready, it's time for him to come forward.

When last we left off I'd decided to incorporate trim in the facing of the quilts so that the two sides could be laced together.  In contrast to the test block, I didn't want black trim for the actual pieces, I think it's just too dark.  I got some cream colored trim at JoAnns and tried dyeing half of it with brown ink to darken it up a bit for the back side.  It worked a little, but not very much.  There's obviously more that goes into dying (especially something like a synthetic trim) than soaking it in diluted brown ink!

Anyway, I used the same procedure as I did on the test blocks; glue down trim (with washable glue stick which I put on everything), sew down trim, sew on facing, then flip facing and iron iron iron. Finally, I hand sewed the edge of the facing on the back.  I just finished that part this morning (hooray).

In my original drawings, Seymour took up almost the entirety of the quilt.  But when I was at the Denver Museum of Natural History I was able to view an actual Coelophysis skeleton and it was smaller than I'd thought.  In addition, I really don't like the idea of covering up all my background.  Finally, I don't want the quilts to look like the dinosaur is just stuck on top.

I decided to audition (via photoshop) three different sizes of dinosaur for each side.  The first is the original size I'd planned to do it, the second two are smaller.  I'm currently leaning toward the smallest.  What do you guys think?

Large

Medium

Small

Test Block for Seymour

I'm not really sure how much I've shared about my recent thought process for Seymour, so I'm going to back up a ways.  Sorry if it sounds redundant!  My original plan for this quilt was that the front would be the desert side with Seymour's skeleton and the back would be the jungle side with Seymour's body.  From the beginning, the practical aspects of this were daunting:  How was I going to get it quilted so both sides looked right?  How was I going to bind it (I wanted a faced binding) so that it was truly reversible?  How was I ever going to get it lined up right, especially if I decided to overlay the raw-edge applique with tulle?  I finally decided just to start and figured I'd work out the details when I came to the proverbial bridge.

After assembling both backgrounds though, in addition to still having no idea how I'd solve the above problem, I was really in love with both sides and the thought of one side being permanently against a wall made me really gloomy.  I decided the best thing to do, which would have the added benefit of solving all the above dilemmas, was to make two completely separate quilts.  The only remaining problem, therefore, would be how to make them hang as one front-back piece in the show for which I'm making them (where they're supposed to be a front-back thing).

I decided to try to find a way to finish the edges that would enable the quilts to be laced together, back sides together, for display as one piece or unlaced for display as a diptych.  Before trying something rash on my big pieces, I thought I'd make a test block to try it out.  This also enabled me to decide whether I needed tulle over the raw-edge applique.  I wasn't crazy about the idea of tulle, every time I held tulle up over the quilts it blunted the colors in a way I didn't like.  However, I wasn't sure how the edges of the fused pieces would do without something over them.   I therefore made two test blocks, about 11 x 14ish, in the same way I made the backgrounds, namely fusing together random bits of fabric.  I then draped tulle over half of each side and quilted them each separately (with separate batting and backing).  I went to JoAnns and picked up three different types of trim to try and glued sections of each to the quilt top.  I then sewed over the trim so I'd catch it consistently in the same place. Next I pinned on the facing and sewed around again, this time from the back, so that I could sew exactly on top of the same stitches as were used to hold down the trim.  After flipping and ironing, the trim stuck out nicely from the edge on both sides.  Hooray for something working as I'd imagined it would.  Then all that was left was lacing the two sides together.

Various test trims glued down.

Test trims stitched down.

Both sides laced together after facing; from either side it looks just like a normal quilt with a special edge.

Both sides laced together, observe black cord laced through the trim.

I liked the results enough to go for it on the big quilts (although not with black or silver trim), which is what I'm working on now.  Incidentally, I decided I didn't need the tulle, the test blocks quilted just fine with the raw edges.  Since I've now quilted the actual quilts, I can say I don't regret that decision although there were a few loose edges.  Some of them I sewed down with the quilting, and some of them I fused back down where I could.  There are a pieces that are a bit frayed, but I've just concluded that's a consequence of doing raw edge applique.

Linking up with Lee over at Works in Progress Wednesday.