New Quilt: Invasive Species

There has been a call for entry from national SAQA called Connecting Our Natural Worlds.  The theme was endangered species, which ones live near you, and how can you protect them.  It premieres next fall at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, a place I've always loved.  Then the fall got away from me, and I didn't really think I'd have time to do anything.  However over the Christmas holiday we were out in Tucson and visited the Desert Museum (for the first time since I moved away from Tucson over 14 years ago), and I fell in love with it all over again.  I decided I had to make a quilt for this show, even if I didn't get in.

I started researching endangered species in the area where I live.  Oklahoma is part of the Great Plains, a huge ecosystem the stretches throughout the center of the US and Canada.  There are several endangered species, including species of bat, fish, and freshwater clam, among others, but none that just jumped out as being something I felt compelled to make a quilt about.  I did notice however, that in many cases, they were endangered because of the onslaught of various invasive species that destroy habitat or out-compete native species.  Aquatic invasive species are particularly problematic; water sports including fishing and boating are very popular here and it's so easy to transfer invasive critters from one body of water to another if you're not careful.

It was interesting researching invasive species, trying to find thorough records was more challenging than I thought.  While some species are ones everyone would agree are invasive (I'm looking at you pine beetles,white nose-bat fungus, and nasty giant fire ants) others are things that many people love to use as ground cover or in gardens.  All the same, when they escape, they can cause substantial damage to the surrounding ecosystem!  I chose several different species and designed a simplified Mandala style quilt, similar to these I have done before.

My background fabric was a pale ivory polyester satin, and I made all my animals out of other interesting fabrics, velvet, faux suede, and other shiny fabrics.   Of course I was working on a January 31st deadline, and then both my good sewing machines broke so I had to borrow a sewing machine from my friend Melody (thanks Melody!!!).    Here are a few in process pictures!

Piles of cut out pieces!

I quilted it with 100 weight silk thread, and the shiny surface of the fabric means there's lots of visible texture.

Check back next week to see the finished quilt!

I Like #99

Welcome to another week of I likes!

There were several good things this week to celebrate.

1.  Getting to spend a good amount of time quilting!!  This was really exciting for me.  I spent all of December knitting and then the holidays traveling, so it was wonderful to get back in my studio and quilt.  Of course it was for a January 31st deadline, and of course both my main sewing machines broke, but I borrowed two sewing machines from a friend (thanks Melody!) that were also Janome's so I was able to quilt and use my same feet and bobbins and everything.  Here's a sneak peak of what I've been working on.  It's a quilt about invasive species and their dastardly effects on our native habitats.  More on it to come!

2. Getting a bit caught up on blogging!  I got to blog about two projects I finished late last year, one was a mini-quilt that was a gift for a cousin and one was the knitted shawl I made for Becky for Christmas.  I think they both turned out nice, so check out those posts!

3.  Working with Blue!  We had our first dog training lesson and it went great.  Unfortunately for us, the instructor had a baby earlier this week so we won't have any more lessons for a little while, but we've been practicing.  It's been fun working with him, especially now that we sometimes have a little light in the morning.

4. I don't usually talk about things from work here, but we had a really cool thing this week.  We've been working for over a year to get some modifications done to our microscope to enable us to image the blood vessels inside the living mouse brain and we finally got it done this week.  One of the things my lab studies is how changes in blood vessels contribute to cognitive decline and mobility defects in the elderly, and it's been really important to get this technology in place so we can study how the vessels are changing in real-time.  This picture shows blood vessels in the brain of one of our anesthetized study animals.  This one was a control, but now we can start studying the mice that model human aging.  I'm super excited.

5.  Reusing things I already had!  I didn't used to sit in this part of the living room (it was where Mike usually sat), but over the fall, I sat there quite a bit to knit.  Unfortunately it was really really dark and I kept thinking I needed to buy a floor lamp since there's no room for an end table.  But the area is really congested already and I hated to buy something new, so my sister just suggested I reorganize and put a regular lamp there instead in the built-in.  I did that right after the break (just took out a shelf and moved it to the other bookcase) and it's so much better!  I can't believe it took this many years to think to do that!  I'm not much of a house re-organizer, so this felt like a big yet stupidly simple change.

In the first pic you can kind of get an idea of how it used to be and the second one is the new illuminated version!  Still not super bright, but enough light over the chair to knit!

Hope you're all having a great week!  Click on over to LeeAnna's to see more things to like!