I Like #291

 Welcome to another week of things to like!

It was a fairly low-key week, I had to work most of the weekend, but we had a Mardi Gras dinner at church on Saturday night, so I made a quick 5-minute Mardi Gras headband to be a little more celebratory!  Occasions like this make me ever grateful for an art-and-craft room that's well-stocked with a pretty extensive (and random) collection of stuff.

Here are some pictures of the dogs being snuggly!

I did get up posts this week for my latest 3D piece and first 2023 finish.  I started it in 2022, but it took most of January to finish it up.  I'm pleased with how it turned out, and if you want to read more about it, click here, here, and here.

Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

Only You: Finished

Earlier this week I talked about auditioning various 3D forms for my latest art quilt.  I finally settled on this intersecting fan pattern.   One of my goals for this piece was to have it collapsible so it wouldn't have to ship oversize  (more on how that happens is below).  That meant that the whole thing had to be able to maintain its shape without the help of fabric stiffener.  One way I did that was to stitch a straight stitchin monofilament along the edge of every single fold.  This helps the pleats and folds hold their shape a little bit.

Originally the piece was inspired by sunset colors but upon finishing, it reminds me more of forest fire colors, an ever increasing problem in the mountain west.  I decided to name it "Only You" after Smokey Bear's motto, "Only you can prevent wildfires".  BTW Smokey Bear is pretty much the most awesome mascot ever.

Only You, c. 2023 Shannon Conley, 59" x 42" x 4"

I spent two weekends working out how to hang/support it from the back so that you couldn't see the frame but so that it wouldn't flop or require fabric stiffener.  I wound up with thiss assembly of seven partial yardsticks that bolt together and then are held onto the quilt via a combination of loops and velcro.   It hangs from a picture wire suspended between two of the yard sticks.

Excitingly, the whole thing easily disassembles and collapses down into this small compact area, which will be a great boon for shipping.  I wrote pretty detailed instructions for re-assembly, so I hope whoever winds up having to put it together on the other end (at shows for example) will not have too much trouble.  In the meanwhile it's just hanging in my living room to make sure that no unanticipated things occur (with regard to hanging) over the next few months.  So far it's been just fine for the last few weeks.

I'm pleased with how this turned out, especially the hanging and collapsing.  That was a big puzzle and I was so happy to solve it!  A fun challenge!  

 

Only You: Auditioning Forms

 Last Friday I shared the first steps for my newest piece and talked about painting and quilting the fabric.  I got it pleasted and pinned to my design wall (I do soooo love the quilting texture) and then it pretty much sat there for all of Advent and Christmas while I was busy with holiday stuff.  But then after our 12th Night feast was over, I was back at it, auditioning sculptural forms.

I quickly realized that my vague idea of doing something sculptural related to onion quilting patterns wouldn't work, so I started playing with other ideas.

I liked this round shape, but it was prety small for such a giant piece of fabric (about 40 inches square).

I decided to cut the piece in half lengthwise (to give two pieces about 11 feet long by 22 inches) to give a little more flexibility.  I played around with some sort of weird layered things but nothing was feeling quite right.

I was amused by this heart form but couldn't think of a good way to stabilize it properly.

I liked this idea of two sort of intersecting fan shapes so decided to work in this general direction.

I decided I wanted some more fold geometry, so I added these roof-like folds at the end of each pleat.

Come back on Wednesday to see the final piece!

New Quilt: Only You

Last fall I started a new fairly large art quilt.  My goal was to create a 3D piece using a form I hadn't tried before.  I wasn't sure what that was going to be exactly, but in my brain I was thinking about a 3D interpretation of an onion quilting pattern.  I knew I'd need a big piece of fabric, so I pulled out this 8 yard cut I found in one of my Georgia boxes (thanks Georgia!).  It was some sort of synthetic, I can't remember exactly what color it started out, but fairly pale, and with a tiny amount of texture.  I folded it in half to paint like I normally do, but even so it was too big to fit on my worktable so I painted it all scrunched up.  I was going for late sunset-into-night colors.

My trusty studio helpers were along for the ride as usual.

 

After the paint dried, I quilted it.  I used the ceiling mounted clamp system I rigged up last year; it was especially useful for this piece because the piece was so large and heavy.

Sorry, but here's Spooky helping again.  He's not very good at quilting though.

You can see in this post-quilting close up the really cool pooling paint and vertical line patterns that came from the wrinkles in the fabric while painting.  I love the extra texture they give the surface.  As usual, I quilted in every color of the rainbow.

Here you can see the final piece all quilted.  After squaring up it was eleven feet long by 44" tall. 

I finished the edges by couching this delightful dark purple fuzzy yarn that some other friends destashed to me, it was such a pretty color and texture but there wasn't enough to knit with so I was glad to use it for this.  It was a lot of edge, especially on my regular sewing machine.

After finishing the edges, it was time to start the sculpting process.  I started by pleating, and will leave you with this until next time!

I Like #290

 Welcome to another week of things to like!

It's been cold and rainy here this week, and while I really don't like the mud, I never want to complain about the moisture.  Definitely some things to like though!

Brett and I went for a short hike on Saturday morning with Spooky and Cash and it was lovely as usual.

The pups have been super snuggly this week, even though it means dirt in the bed, I just wash the sheets more often!

I got to spend some time this weekend working on a piece to enter into the show "Fierce Planets."  It's a SAQA call in partnership with some planetary sciences folks at John's Hopkins.  I still ahve a ways to go, but I'm enjoying working on it!

And of course this week was valentine's day and while I never do anything in particular for the holiday I do like making crafty cards for my family.  I made loveable pom pom monsters this year.

I also finally got around to blogging about an art quilt from last year that I hated but finally figured out how to rescue.  You can read about it here and here. 

I hope you're all having a good week!!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more things to like!

Lantern 3: Finished

 Over the weekend I shared about this art quilt I made last year.  I really hated the colors, they felt really gross to me.  I struggled with what to do with the piece. I thought about cutting it up and using it in something entirely new, but I really liked the shape and the texture from the couching, it was just the colors I hated (Easter candy barf).  I thought about spray painting it black, or spray painting it neon pink, but I worried that I wouldn't be able to get into all the nooks and crannies in the smocked folds.

Finally I just decided to try painting over the pink.  The pink is what was really bothering me.  I know that's a shocker to everyone who knows me, but pink with brown and yellow was just bad.  I got out my orange pain and just tried my best to cover up the pink without looking like I had just slathered orange paint everywhere.  I picked orange since I thought orange/brown/yellow (with again the weird pops of turquoise-no idea what I was thinking originally), would pull it back into the colors of the southwest, the rocks, the cliffs, the mountains, the dry high desert, and the sky.  I think the orange also goes better with the burnt maroon and brown yarn that's couched on the surface.

 Up close there's now a lot of fun color variation and while I don't think it will ever be a favorite piece, I at least like it enough to share it with the world!

Lantern 3, c. Shannon Conley, 2023, 30" x 13" x 5"

So a few lessons learned here.  First, sometimes it just takes a few months of something ugly hanging on the wall before you settle on a way to fix it.  And second, even if there's a pressing show deadline, if you hate the starting fabric, you'll probably hate what you make with it!!

Have you ever had pieces you really didn't like?  What did you do with them?

New Quilt: Lantern 3

 

Last year I started a new smocked art quilt, and spoiler alert, I hated it so much that after I finished it I didn't even want to blog about it.  But recently I made some changes to it to bring it back into my good graces, so I figured it was time to share.

I started, as usual, with painting fabric.  To be honest, I have no idea what prompted me to initially pick the yellow/pink/brown color scheme (with pops of turquoise?) but I did.  

Unfortunately, the paint didn't set well (my fault for washing it out before ironing) and then for some strange reason I painted on more brown and some purple?  I was in a time crunch for a show entry, so I just proceeded.  I quilted it, and then in an effort to make it more earthy, I couched a bunch of brown an orange yarn down in the quilting.  I smocked it using a tighter smocking pattern than usual and then mounted it on a piece of sono-tube to give it the semicylindrical lantern shape.

I love the shape and the smocking pattern, and I even love the extra oomph that comes from the couched yarn, but the colors were just gross.  Washed out, and pale, but also feeling like Easter candy barf?

I really struggled with what to do with this piece, come back Tuesday to see what I landed on.