Revelation-New Liturgical Quilt

I recently finished (just in time for an exhibition of my liturgical quilts), one of the final pieces for the original series.  I have one more left to fully complete the original series, but I really wanted to get this one done, at least, before the exhibition.  It's for the Holy Eucharist (Communion) and I actually started it at my mom's last Christmas (December 2025).  While I was at her house, I cut all the letters for the border and the focus biblical text.

The yellow border says "The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. Amen The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation"

While I was at her house, I also cut out all the letters for the bible verse, Revelation 22:1-2.  I didn't have the background fabric there, so I just carefully put all the letters in a big flat box and took them home with me.

Once I got home, I dyed some of the gorgeous silk charmeuse from Georgia (thanks Georgia!).

I wasn't sure exactly what color I wanted to use for the background so I dyed a couple.  One is a dark blue-purple, and the other is a more pink black cherry purple.   In the end I decided on the one on the right, and I'll use the one on the left for a future piece.  I backed it with fusible interfacing just to stabilize the (very) shifty silk.

Here it is after I put on the yellow text border.  The next step was the Revelation text and illuminated initials.

I got this far fairly efficiently, that picture just above was from the beginning of February, and then it took me the next eight months to finish it.  Come back later this week for more in-progress pictures. 

New Confession-Finished

 Earlier this week I shared my new Confession quilt, unfortunately its edges were so ruffly I knew I couldn't leave them like that.  

A lot of the problem was the couched yarn edges which had pretty permanently stretched out the edges.  I cut off all the edges and decided I didn't want to struggle with getting the curves even or taking the chance of things stretching out again.  So I decided to make it octagonal and cut the edges down nice and straight.  I stitched grosgrain ribbon along the edges on the back side to prevent the edges from stretching.  I think that really helped,  it was a suggestion from my friend Diana Fox who uses twill tapeon the back of all her edges.  I think it's beneficial, especially for all these things I make with weird fabric.  I wound up putting a traditional binding on this one after stabilizing the edges and I think it came out ok.

Confession 2, c. 2026, Shannon Conley, 52x36

It hangs much nicer now and I'm so glad it's out of time out!

New Quilt-Confession-2

 

Back in 2017 I made this piece below as part of my liturgical series. It features our prayer of confession.  I sold it to the Episcopal Cathedral in Sacramento, California. It was an exciting sale but I've regretted selling it ever since, mostly because I want to have the whole series together.  Almost as soon as I sold it, I knew I'd need to make another one.

I didn't get around to it until last year, and of course I couldn't remember exactly how I'd done it.  I remember I'd written out the confession on plastic and used cyanotype to print it on fabric, so I started that way again.  I printed out the words full-size in the cross shape and put it under a piece of glass.  I wanted it to be in my handwriting, so I used the paper words as a guide for where to place the words.

Unfortunately, after trying to do the cyanotyping, I could barely see the words.  Finally I decided to go back to my blog posts from way back then and realized that I'd had this same trouble before; the glass was thick enough that the sunlight could sort of come it an angle under the writing on the top of the glass.

For the second time, I wrote the words on a piece of thin tablecloth vinyl and put that under the glass and tried the printing again.

That time it worked much better, and the edges of the vinyl actually printed as well which went along with the theme.

I didn't have any more of the turquoise fabric, but I had a lovely large piece of this pruple and brown wool.  It was a wonderful thick wool with a fairly open weave.  It was actually some sort of poncho, no idea where it came from, but it had a lovely soft drape and a nice curved edge so I decided to use it for the background.  I finished the edge of the floating prayer for the center and then floated it inside the wool piece.  I quilted some pieces of the baptismal vows in the background, and then finished the edges with couched yarn.  The edge was way too thick to turn for a facing. 

Unfortunately, the wool was really soft and stretchy and the curved edges got really stretched out and ruffly.  I liked the yarn, but there was no amount of pressing or anything I could do to get it to lay flat.  I was so hacked I just hung it up on the wall in time out and ignored it for a year.  Now that I'm about to exhibit all the quilts though, I decided it was time to fix it for good.  Come back on Wednesday to see how I rescued it.

Recent Bag Making

 I love bag making, but the plain truth is that I don't really need anymore bags.  But earlier this spring I was at an elementary school science event with a friend where we were helping kids make shrinky-dink cells (these two are photoreceptors and microglia), and it occurred to me that they would make good zipper pulls!  So with that measliest of justification, I decided I'd make little pouches for all my friends in 4 Common Corners for our upcoming retreat and make custom shrinky dink zipper pulls for each one with our logo and everyone's name.

They're just simple lined pouches, good for random supplies or notions, and they're all different sizes.  My other goal was to use up all the cute sample blocks or test things I had lying around in the studio to make something fun and useable!

Microglia!

Photoreceptor!

I loved this turquoise codouroy.  It was fun to pick out corresponding scraps of bright colors for the insides.

These were leftover sample prints from two different printmaking exercises,  the one in the back was a block print carved in meat-packing foam, and the front one was a silk screen made from fusible vinyl.  Both from many years ago, I'm so glad to have used them for something fun!

These three are made from quilt blocks where I was trying trapunto and bobbin quilting with the Ricky Tims Razzle Dazzle.  I never knew what to do with them, so fun pouches it is!

This one is another more recent printmaking sample.  I have no idea where that blotchy yellow sample came from, but I printed a star from the carved block I used for the Kyrie Eleison quilt recently.  The star is cut in half directly along the zipper, so the other half of the star is on the other side.

For a very brief time I had (? or borrowed?) a needle felting machine and I remember making this big piece of needle felted fabric covered with bright pink, gold, and brown silks and other weird fabrics.  I was just trying to see what would felt and what wouldn't and it made the most random (but colorful) and textural piece of fabric.  Once again, thrilled to use it for something!!

And here they are all together!  It satisfied my bag making itch and used up some of the bits and bobs that have been in the studio for years.

In an unrelated spate of bagmaking, my sister and I also recently made these three project tote bags while at my mom's for my Grandma's 98th birthday.  Becky wanted a new project bag, and I can never turn down the opportunity to make bags, so I joined in.  

We decided to use some of my mom's early test quilts/samples for the project and wound up making one for each of us.  The quilts were mostly things my mom made in early workshops or technique tests rather than "good" art quilts, but she had sentimental attachments to them and didn't want to throw them away, so bag making was a fun way to transform them.  We wound up with enough bound edge to make the handles, and enough body of the quilts to make one external side and the large external pocket.  

I think they turned out way more fun than if we'd just used stash fabric.  The quilted outer layer adds some body and a bunch of fun color and pattern to them.

I thought it was such a fun thing to do with the old quilts I've set aside some of mine for when the bag making bug hits again.  

Unfortunately, we managed to bend the shaft of my mom's main sewing machine while sewing over a bunch of quilted layers which permanently ruined it.  I felt really terrible, but mom was super sweet about it. Becky and I offered to help chip in for a new one, but right now she's sewing on one of my dad's rescued singers, and seems to like that ok.  It was a sad end to a fun project though.

Here's hoping you have some fun bag-making (without sewing machine damage) in your future!

Small SAQA Donation Quilts

 Earlier this year I made a couple of very small quilts for a couple of SAQA calls.  One was for the annual spotlight auction, a SAQA fundraiser associated with the annual conference.  I have a wonderful collection of spotlight auction quilts hanging in my office at work and I look forward to picking up a couple more every year.

This year I was experimenting more the the three-dimensional string idea I'd played around with in some wood and string sculptures a few years ago.  I love string art, and I for some reason have one million small grommets, so this seemed like a good opportunity to experiment with them together.  I have no idea where all the grommets came from, but I had a hard time getting them set evenly and I had a hard time getting them to go all the way through the quilt sandwich.  So I finished and donated the piece, but I have to figure out some other way to use up all the other million grommets.

Spring Fling, c. Shannon Conley 2026, 6"x8"


Much more fun was this piece I made for the SAQA New Mexico Trunk show call.  I didn't want to do a 3D thing because that makes it hard on the organizers/shippers who have to get the trunk show from one place to the next, so I decided to do another one of my "initial" quilts.  Since it was for the New Mexico show I decided on a NM-themed design.  It's also quite small, something like 7x10.

O Fair New Mexico, c. 2026, Shannon Conley, 7x10

Here it was during quilting,  you can sort of see the water soluble stabilizer that is over the open areas.  I use that during quilting and then soak it to leave open areas. You can see it a little better in the bigger view below.  I've used a couple of different kinds of the water soluble stabilizer,  this kind is very clear and dissolves a way pretty quickly.  It's a little plasticky and slightly flimsier to sew through, but you can see what's underneath it.  I've also used a kind that's white, looks more like a regular lightweight interfacing.  I find it easier to sew/pin/work with (the hand is more fabric like) but it doesn't dissolve quite as quickly.  Both work fine and this is what's in my stash at the moment!

A yucca is always an easy default for NM-themed things.  They're so beautiful.  We actually recently came back from a trip to Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks and saw the chaparral yuccas in bloom there.  They were enormous and gorgeous. 8-10 feet tall and just huge huge blooms. 

And I love my little roadrunner!  We saw a couple roadrunners at big bend down in Texas earlier this year which was super fun.  This one is mostly made out of necktie scraps leftover from the test tube/bee eye project.  

I really have fun making things, they scratch my itch for illuminated letters and symbolism while still being small. I hope folks that see the trunk show enjoy looking at it!

Ommatidia Finished

I shared earlier this week the process that went into making my giant bee head quilt and today I'm back to share the final piece.

The outside is covered wtih foss shape and it was really great to scuplt with.  It was fun to stretch and heat and staple and pad until I got it to a shape I liked.  It's hard to tell but the eye sockets have some depth along the outer edges and the whole thing is taut and stiff.  I love the eyebrows that sort of got unexpectedly incorporated as I was dealing with excess fossshape.

Ommatidia, c. Shannon Conley, 2025, 32x32x14

I really love the way it turned out, in particular the rainbow of colors in the eyes (the ommatidia) against the white of the main face.

I love the color movement in the test tubes across the surface of each eye.

Here you can see the ridges around the eye socket and the eyebrow a bit better.

One challenge is that the proboscis sticks down below the internal structure which means it can't sit flat upright on a table.  It has to either sit upside down (on top of its head) or flat on its back.  It turns out to be 26 pounds which is quite heavy, but I got a french cleat and it hangs fine from that. 

For a while after I hung it up with the french cleat I wasn't 100% sure whether it would stay on the wall so I moved a big soft dog bed under it.  At first I kept the dogs off (lest a large bee sculpture fall on them) but after a while it seemed stable so Blue joined the picture. 

The piece is currently on display (along with several others of mine) in a mixed media exhibition at the Capitol Rotunda Gallery at the New Mexico State Capitol.  The lighting techs for the show did the most amazing job I've ever seen- somehow they managed to light the bee head so that the shadows it casts look like wings and body.  I could never have expected something so awesome.  If you happen to be in the Santa Fe area (through December 21, 2026), stop by the capitol and see the show. 

We've all been joking that the bee is silently judging everyone who walks by.