Knitting Updates- Purple Poncho and Rainbow Sweater

 I've had very little time for quilting the last few months, it requires being home and having enough mental fortitude to be creative, but I have done a fair amount of knitting.  

After finishing my dinosaur cardigan, I decided to cast on another sweater using the same top-down sweater book.  I'm still in a stash-yarn phase, so I pulled out some rainbow bamboo pop yarn I inherited from Trish and added some leftover green from some socks and a little bit of teal.  The rainbow was busy enough I just wanted a little pattern up top so I used the DNA from the science doodle pack.  

I wanted a short sleeve slouchy fit shirt, so I added a bunch of increases going down the body to have a loose comfy fit.  The pattern was for full-length sleeves, and for some reason I was paranoid that the sleeves were going to angle up weirdly on the outer part of the arm so I added a bunch of short rows to that part of the sleeves. I made it as long as I had yarn since it was a yarn using up project and did a 3 stitch I-cord bind off which I really like for sweaters.

In the end there was no need for the sleeve short rows and now it looks like the sleeves have funny little tabs on the outside edges, but that's ok.  It's super comfy and light weight for summer, and I love the bright colors. 

I also recently finished this purple poncho made from some wonderful Mothy & the Squid hand-dye I picked up on a trip to Scotland a few years ago.  I had originally intended to make it for me, but I received a purple poncho from a friend not too long ago, so I decided to knit it for my sister who loves purple.  It's super light-weight and lacy, so a great overlay layer for air conditioned rooms.

Definitely one size fits most,  you can see it below on me and on my sister.  The pattern is the Irish Sea Shawl on Ravelry and it was a quick, one skein knit. I really like the over-the-head shawl style,  so often my other shawls fall off, so I might knit another one of these for me in a different color.

I hope you have all been able to do some fun fiber activities lately!

New Art Quilt: High Desert Monsoon

 Last fall, my mom visited me in Oklahoma City and brought with her this amazing book "The Art of the Fold" by Heidi Kyle.  It focuses on methods for making innovative origami books, boxes, and other structures.  My mom got interested because she's been doing a lot of block carving and wanted a way to fold some of her print pages into books.  But of course I've been interested in adapting origami techniques into art quilts for years so I immediatley ordered a copy.  

While she was here I experimented by making this one-piece, three-chambered box out of a piece of quilted batik/tie-dye. It went really well (I can't believe the repeating patterns in the batik lined up in the three chambers so well, that was completely unintentional.  It now sits in my studio gathering miscellaneous things that need to be put away.

When my copy came, I was intrigued by a five-chambered single piece structure and decided to implement it using various scraps of hand-dyed/printed silk I've made and collected over the years. Here you can the shape of the piece flat; each section is the same length, but narrows in width.

When it's assembled you can pull through tightly to generate very small openings, or loosely to create stacked structures.

I'd originally thought to just display the piece as shown above but it was quite small and just felt unresolved.  I loved the rainbow of southwestern colors, so decided to add some of the fluffy acrylic yarn I have in my stash (thanks Georgia!!)

It's so delightful to pet the yarn and run your fingers through it.

High Desert Monsoon, c. 2026 Shannon Conley, 49"x37"x3" 

It's called "High Desert Monsoon" and it makes me think of the smell and colors and sky after the glory of a summer rainstorm in the mountains of New Mexico where I grew up.

It's currently on display (along with several other pieces of my work) through December 21st 2026 in the Capitol Rotunda Gallery at the New Mexico State Capitol.  If you happen to be in Santa Fe, stop by and see the show, it has fabulous mixed-media work by about a dozen artists.

Finished: Kyrie Eleison

Earlier this week I shared about carving and printing the central tesselating blocks and word blocks that go around the edge for my newest liturgical quilt, and today I'm back to share the final piece.

Lord Have Mercy, c. 2026 Shannon Conley, 43"x38"

The gold diamonds were printed separately and appliqued to the rest of the quilt.  I tried to give a little additional color variation to the main tesselating pattern by using different colors of blue, turquoise, and purple thread.

Here are some closeups of the words spiraling around the outer edge "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison"

Unusually, I struggled a lot with my silk quilting thread,  I'm afraid some of it has gotten quite old, and has been sitting in my sun-filled studio on a wall-mounted thread rack for several years.  I had a ton of breakage with this quilt, so it was much less fun to quilt than usual and the back is terrible.  But it's done now and I've put all my silk thread in a dark box for storage.

The artist statement reads: Part of my ongoing series of liturgical quilts, this piece features a tesselating, interlocking pattern in the center, made using hand carved block prints, and reflecting the interconnectedness of all life on earth. The Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy) swirls around the outer edge in an ever continuing plea for mercy, compassion, and forgiveness as we, as individuals and societies, continue to fail each other and fail our planet.

 

New Art Quilt: Kyrie Eleison

As many of you know, I've been working on a series of liturgical inspired quilts for a long time (over 10 years) and am nearing the end of the series.  To be honest, I say that, but probably there will be a phase 2 if I had to guess, I love making them, and I have more in my brain to come I think.

Anyway, I started this is one over Thanksgiving last year at my mom's.  She's been doing a bunch of truly amazing block printing and block carving, and I wanted to try some myself, especially with the idea to make some tesselating patterna.  However when I got to her house, I realized I could just start with this block I'd already carved back over a decade  ago in a Jean Wells Keenan workshop.  It started out rectangular, but I cut off the corners to make a 60 degree diamond and then used the little cut-off bits to fill in the small 60 degree triangle.

This is the pattern the diamond block made.

 

I decided to print on one of my pieces of shiny white polyester (thanks Georgia!)  The printing colors gradient shifted from blue in the middle to purple around the outer edge.  My printing is not lined up well, that's definitely something that takes tons of practice.

The outer diamonds are going to be filled with the words "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie Eleison" rotating around, so I carved those word blocks, and then printed them when I was back in New Mexico over Christmas.

Come back later this week to see the finished piece, and in the meantime, please enjoy this fantastic hand embroidered sheep my mom made many years ago.  Every time I walk down the hallway I want to scratch his nose!!

I love getting to do so many fun artistic explorations when I'm at my mom's!

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.