New Quilt: Agua Fria Reimagined

 Last week I blogged about a new topography quilt I designed encompassing the neighborhood where I grew up.  These topo quilts are made based on USGS topographical map, with each layer cut out based on a topo line and then built up on the quilt surface in layers.  One challenge with this is that there's always the "leftover" bits from the cutout. This picture shows the leftover piece after I removed the piece I needed for the quilt I blogged about last week.

The very first quilt I did using this technique was just a small sample, and I actually made two quilts, one which was the inverse of the other.  That way I didn't waste all the little cut out bits. 

It worked fine for that first quilt because it was just an abstract/geometric shape, but for the quilt based on actual topo maps it didn't really seem logical to use the cut out bits since they didn't really correspond to anything?  The leftover bits sort of correspond to something like the air that is inside a deep canyon or something.  The inverse of land? However it takes a lot of work to design and paint and cut all the layers for these projects and I couldn't bear the thought of throwing them away.  So this time, I carefully kept all the ones from the Canyon Road quilt and made them into a new quilt.

It's not nearly as thick as the prior one for several reasons.  First, much of the thickness of the prior quilt came from the fact that on the top sections, many of the layers cover the whole thing (so there was no "extra" to use here).  Secondly, I didn't have enough of my beloved wooden discs to separate the layers, so I used much thinner plastic buttons to separate the layers.

Another difference is that I didn't mount the cut panels onto a quilted background, they just hang freely.  The sections are connected with tulle which is barely visible unles you get right up close.  For example in the picture below, you can see the pale pink tulle connecting the two sections.

Here's the final piece,  I named it Agua Fria Reimagined.  Agua Fria is the name of the neighborhood I grew up in, and of course reimagined because this isn't actually the topography of Agua Fria, more like the inverse of the topography?  Or inspired by the topography?  I was very happy not to waste all the wonderful cut layers.

Agua Fria Reimagined, C. 2026 Shannon Conley, 38"x24"

212 Canyon Road: Finished

 Earlier in the week I shared the process for building another one of my topography inspired quilts.  Today I wanted to come back and share the finished work.  I talked about painting and cutting all the individual layers.  I mounted them onto a quilted and painted base quilt just like I did ten years ago when working on another quilt like this.

Here's the finished quilt.  It's called 212 Canyon Road,  that was the house I grew up in and the map covers the neighborhood and its surroundings.    The elevations range from 6280-7560 ft.

It had a LOT of layers, on the top section there are 18.  It sticks out from the wall a full 5 inches and even with my ingenious wooden buttons (I talked about in the prior post) the top layers were a bit saggy.  I wound up putting wire (from a hangar) inside the top layers to help prevent sagging.  It's been hanging on my wall now for several months (this was another fall 2025 finish) and is holding up great!

Here when it's sitting on my work table you can see how much thicker the top section is compared to the middle and bottom.  The mountain goes up fairly steeply in that area.

212 Canyon Road, c. 2025 Shannon Conley, 41x29x5

The artist statement reads: This is part of a series made using USGS maps, this piece depicts the topography of the neighborhood where I grew up. Unfortunately, when my parents sold the house 25 years ago, the person that bought it never lived there and it has sat abandoned since then.

I'm really pleased with how it came out, the little wooden buttons separating the layers really worked out better than the last way I did the layers.  I really like the outcome of these quilts but they are tedious to make, so we'll see how long it is before I design another one.

New Quilt: 212 Canyon Road

 For a long time I've been wanting to make another topography quilt made based on the USGS topo maps.  The last one was in 2016, and featured the area encompassing a favorite hiking area in my childhood mountains.  

I decided this time to pick another area from my childhood, this time encompassing the neighborhood I grew up in.  Last time I used a synthetic non-woven (remay), but I'm in a using what I have era now, and I had a ton of this lightweight silk from Georgia (thanks Georgia!) so I decided to see if I could use that.  It's pretty thin, but so was the remay.  In this case I painted it and coated it with a layer of GAC400 fabric stiffener and that worked pretty well.

As usual, I painted with my small pots of latex paint.  I wanted a different color scheme than last time and I had a lot of these sandy pinks and blues, largely because both my sister and I have painted our house interiors recently and there were a lot of rejected shades that have now made their way into my stash.  I did a lot of color mixing to have a nice color transistion from the blue to the pinky-sand.  The painting took up the whole studio and made a big mess but I managed not to damage anything. 

Here's the final color range.  There's a different color for each elevation.  Like the prior piece, this one has three seections.  The size of the sections is limited by the cutting bed of my Brother Scan n Cut (12x24).  This time I'm doing a vertical orientation.  A lot of the colors have three layers apiece since that elevation occurs om each of the three sections.  Overall this one goes from 6280 to 7560 feet elevation, with each layer corresponding to 80 vertical fee.

I cut out all the layers with my new-to-me Brother scan n cut which I love.  I used my Silhouette for years but it finally just wore out and I'm very pleased with this new cutter.  I think it's a little like getting a new car-  even if you don't get a really fancy one, over the course of ten years or so the technology gets better.

When I did this kind of quilt before, I first tried using peltex to separate the layers but by the time all the layers piled up it was impossible to stitch through.  Then I tried using pony beads, and those worked but because they each had only one hole the whole stack sort of tipped over by the end.

This time I decided to precision cut button-like wooden discs to separate the layers.  The benefit of this was that they could have two holes that would perfectly line up and be flat (unlike actual random buttons) which would make the stack stand up better. It also meant I could pre-cut holes in the fabric (with the digital cutter) that were precisely spaced for the discs (you can see those in the picture above)  helping both with the sewing and the alignment.

I cut them on the laser cutter at the public library and at first had trouble getting the settings right (at first the cuts were too shallow and then they were too deep and my wood caught fire).  Luckily there wasn't any permanent damage and since then I've met with a librarian to learn a little more about the settings.

There you can see a pile of the little button discs cut out and ready to incorporate in the layers.

One other benefit of having all the buttons and holes in the fabric line up was that I could build the layers and sew them using thread, last time I had to use flower wire and that was a disaster. 

Come back later in the week to see the final piece!

  

Topography finished!

I finished the hand stitching on my new piece with all the layers.  Last week I showed the mountain cut-out bits stitched to the yellow, and after I finished those, I started working on the canyon or frame bits.  As you can see in the second picture, I again started with a machine quilted sandwich (backing/batting/front) with holes cut out of it in some places.

I then started to line up my frame layers.  It was a bit tricky to line up the base ones because the sandwich had shrunk a bit with the quilting and the holes had been cut out to align with the other layers without any shrinking, but I was able to get it lined up well enough.  For the mountain panel, I stitched each one (that is each mountain and each layer down separately), but for the frames, it was trickier.  In the first place, they needed to be secured down in at least 20 different spots.  But I couldn't just sew one spot and then another because much like tightening down one screw all the way before starting the others, that just pulled all the layers out of whack.  So I did all but the top layer at once, and stitched half the spots at the same time.

I put my base quilt on a flat portable design board (a ceiling tile covered in flannel) and layered all the frames except the top one in the correct position.  Then I threaded about 10-15 needles and starting from spots in the middle I inserted the little pieces of peltex between each layer (to give it depth).  Then I jabbed a needle through all the layers into the design board.  I repeated this for the other needles until I had needles jabbed through all the layers and distributed fairly evenly across the quilt.  I had to do multiple needles at once because with only one or two needles, every time I moved the piece (for example to get underneath to pull the needle through) all the layers shifted.  After jabbing the 10-15 needles in, the layers were pretty well anchored.  I was able to flip the whole thing over and pull through all the needles to the back.  I stitched through a couple of times using this approach.  I did a second set of needles/stitches after the first set since there were still more spots that needed to be anchored.  There's only peltex where there are stitches, so between the anchoring sites the fabric undulates and floats.  I sewed on the top layer last to hide the knots from the original anchoring stitches.  I used two stitches forming a cross shape, and these stitches varied widely in size from one anchor point to another.  It was startling how hard it was to make precise stitches through all those layers.

Of course the whole thing was so thick and stiff that I broke many many needles and had to use my clamps and thimbles to get the needles through, but I got it finished.   All the little purple knots in the picture above are the first round of anchor points and you can see several threads going for the second round of anchor points.

And here it is after I'd stitched on the top layer.

The next step was to finish the edges of the two panels, so I trimmed them down and faced them along the shape of the frame.  This went fine, but the more I looked at the panels together, the more it felt like the yellow base on the bottom mountain piece was overwhelming.  It drew the eye and distracted from the depth.  So I carefully removed the facing strips (they were made with scraps of the yellow painted fabric and I didn't have very much of it), cut down the panel, and re-faced.

Unfortunately, I think I cut it down too much, and now the yellow base panel looked even weirder to me.  I tried all different ways and orientations I could think of to arrange these two panels in a way that didn't feel forced, but had no luck.  I even experimented in photoshop with the idea of cutting the yellow panel in half and displaying it on either side of the other one, but nothing looked right.  In retrospect, maybe I should have considered painting the yellow base a different color rather than cutting it down, but oh well, live and learn.

After much uncertainty and frustration (since I really had wanted this piece to have both the innies- and the outies-) I decided to chalk the mountain piece up to a learning experience and let the frame piece stand on its own. 

Mike took some final pictures for me and I was able to enter it in the show I was hoping for.  I doubt it will get in, but you never know unless you try!

Topography, c. 2015 Shannon Conley, 12 x 18 x 1.5

It's really quite small, only about 12 x 18.  The current artist statement reads "The flexibility of cloth and stitch lends itself well to creating motion and texture, and 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. My art quilts begin with hand painted cloth and a machine quilted base, and then are layered and/or cut away, and anchored with hand stitching."

I definitely learned a bunch working through this process and already have some ideas for how to change it for the next time around.  I hope you've all had a creative week!  

I'm linking up with Nina Marie as always!

Starting a new project: Topography

I've been thinking for a while about the idea of depth and dimension in quilting.  At their most basic, quilts have depth from the multiple layers (front and back), from the batting, and from the texture given by quilting stitches.  In addition, I've been incorporating the idea of "taking away" or cutwork as another way to increase dimension in a lot of my recent pieces.  I'd been wondering if the opposite could also work-  that is, adding additional layers to increase dimension and depth.

Inspired by the 3D renderings and micrographs of viruses and bacteriophages (like these) and the concentric ring type design of a topo map, I built a multi-layered file in illustrator in which each layer could serve as a cutting template for my silhouette.

Because each layer would have cutouts, it was important for me to use some sort of non-fraying fabric.  Normally I would just seal fraying edges with my woodburner, but I really wanted this to have exact and precise edges so that each layer would line up, so a non-woven fabric was essential.  I also wanted something I could get fairly cheaply.  After looking around for a while, I settled on a non-woven from my local awesome upholstery supply store.  The owner called it remay, but it doesn't have quite the same consistency as other fabrics I've seen called that.  It's basically the stuff used to cover the bottoms of upholstered chairs or the tops of box springs.  I got ten yards of it in white, and then painted it.

I used the latex paint left over from this project so the dark grey-blue-purple color scheme may feel familiar.  I also decided to include a pop of yellow and used up some old acrylic pain I inherited from my grandmother.  I painted each piece of the remay, and set them to dry on some recycled plastic.  I mostly just didn't want to waste the plastic, but leftover stuff on the plastic from previous projects gave some of my pieces fun and unexpected texture!

There were ten layers in my file and my goal was to make two panels, one with cutouts piled up like mountains, and one with the frames from the cutouts piled up to make canyons.  I started by cutting out each layer and keeping both the frame and the insert pieces.  Here you can see a few of the different frames with the holes being different sizes in each layer.

After cutting all the pieces out, I had to decide how to stack them up.  I started by quilting a base for each panel using extra painted pieces and then started laying out my cutouts.  I started with the "mountain" piece.  I wanted to have a lot of depth in the piece, and when I just piled up all the pieces, they still looked pretty flat, so I decided to put a small piece of heavy duty peltex between each layer.  I had to stitch them all by hand since the layers quickly got way too fat to fit under my sewing machine.  It was quite a challenge to figure out how to keep the pieces straight and lined up correctly.  Even more challenging was physically stitching through everything.  Stitching through a quilt sandwich is fairly easy.  Stitching through a quilt sandwich plus a layer of fabric and a layer of peltex is also fairly easy, but by the time I had ten layers of peltex and ten additional layers of fabric, I could barely get the needle through.  It was definitely a project for multiple thimbles and many many broken needles.

In the bottom picture you can see many of the "mountains" only have a few of their layers stitched down.  Each layer had to be stitched down separately because the top layers are so small that if I'd just stitched through the center (to get all the layers at once) the bigger bottom layers would shift around too much and not stay in the right place.

I got them all finished (yay mountains!), and now I'm working on stitching the other panel, the "canyons" which is a whole different kettle of fish with it's own set of challenges.  I'm trying to finish this for an entry due very very soon, so hopefully I'll have another update next week.

When you look up close you can see the texture in the fabric- it's almost like paper towels, but it feels much sturdier, not like paper at all.  In person it's kind of fun to look at since not all the "mountains" have the same number of layers, so some are shorter than others.   It's been fun working on this and definitely a learning experience!!

Linking up as always with Nina-Marie.