WIP Wednesday: Mice and Other Mammals

So many things have happened lately, both on the life front and on the sewing front, that blogging has had to take a bit of a backseat.   In addition, many of the things I've been working on aren't to a stage that involves good pictures.

Weekend before last I was lucky enough to get to make a quick trip to St. Louis to see Quilt National and meet up with my quilty electron microscopist friend Barb who lives there.  We had a lovely lunch and really enjoyed seeing the show.  Only about 10% of quilts entered get in, but my goal is to throw my hat (er quilt) in the ring for the next time which will be 2015, so ideas for that project are percolating in my brain.

Also fun, last night I got the catalog for the SAQA Text Messages show in the mail.  It was so exciting to see my quilt there in the book in living color.  The show is opening at IQF in Houston, and I can't wait to see it in person.  Based on the catalog, there are some really fabulous quilts in it.

In not quite so exciting news- we're currently struggling with a mouse invasion in our house.  I work with mice in my day job so they don't bother or frighten me, but it's really startling to see one scurry across the bathroom floor out of the corner of your eye as you brush your teeth, and I do not want them eating through my walls or wiring.  I'd tried to catch it for a while with no success, and when I realized it wasn't a lone mouse (is it ever?) I went ahead and got some traps.  As of this morning we've caught 8 (most in the garage); hopefully there aren't too many more.

On the sewing front, after a couple of weeks I've finished sewing my Halloween costume for this year.  My mom and I are going to a Halloween party at IQF, so we decided to dress up together.  She doesn't usually dress up, but found a Grumpy dwarf costume in the closet she made 25 years ago (ouch!) to trick or treat with us.  My sister and I, in turns, wore a much beloved Snow White costume (you can see my sister wearing it here), and my mom suggested I go as Snow White again this year.  I'll share pictures of us both dressed up when I have them.

Now for the good stuff- I've finally started to get to work on my next two art quilts.  The first is what I'm mentally calling my mammal mandala.  It features at least one mammal from each of the orders represented in Oklahoma.  So far I'm just in the design phase, but here's what I have so far.  It's going to be about 60" square made with a variety of construction techniques.  As usual I'm going with the "figure out what you want to make first and then come up with a way to actually make it" approach.  Incidentally the colors in the design have no relationship to the colors I'll use in the quilt, they were just what I happened to select when making my vectors in illustrator.

The second quilt I'm working on is based on an electron micrograph of some photoreceptors taken for our lab by the aforementioned Barb, and is a slightly smaller project.  I'll share more about it next week.

So what are you designing lately?  Any Halloween costume sewing going on? Can you tell what the mammals are?

Sierra Blanca: Last quilt of the summer

Some of you may remember my mountain quilt, based on one of my pictures of our home mountain, Sierra Blanca (in southern New Mexico).  I'd started it in the wonderful Gloria Loughman class and had it mostly finished since the spring, but wasn't sure if it needed something else.  I hemmed and hawed, but without much progress.  At one point I thought I should thread paint some trees in the foreground. I tried that but they looked terrible (let me tell you, ripping those out was not fun).  In any case, after several months of looking at it on my design wall, I decided I love it just the way it is.  My eye is instantly drawn to the white mountain peak and it makes me crave home!  I can't wait till Thanksgiving when Mike and I will travel there.

Winter in Lincoln County #2: Sierra Blanca, c. Shannon Conley, 2013, 32 x 21

And here was my original inspiration picture.

Winter is coming (hopefully)!

Church Altar Cloths

Back before Easter (ouch!) a kind lady named Gerry at our church asked me if I'd be willing to make some table runners for each of the church seasons for the conference table in our church office.  She also wanted an altar cloth for one of the chapels.  I agreed, but it wasn't until August that we actually got together to do the project.  She picked out and paid for the fabric and I stitched them up!  I decided to go ahead and use my embroidery machine to put some embroideries on them to add a little interest.  I'm always surprised by how long even a fairly simple seeming stitch-out takes.  These took about 45 minutes each, so with thirteen of them to do (two each on the table runners and one on the altar cloth) it was a lot of time babysitting the embroidery machine! The fabric was all really slippery, but I think they turned out nicely.

This first one is on my design wall folded in half.  They were pretty long, about 84" I think.

And here's Gerry in the church office with the one for ordinary time.

There are two more, a red one and a purple one, but I didn't get very good pictures of them.  And these next pictures are of the altar cloth.  It's a bit wider and shorter and since it has a definite front, I used a different cross embroidery.

Tote Bag Swap

Hi guys!  Today I wanted to share a bag (actually two) that I recently made as the tote bag swap being hosted by Lia's Handmades.  The theme for this round was nature, and my partner requested something classic looking with no batiks.  I thought it was the perfect opportunity to use some of my precious Tula Pink fabric and the coordinating tree embroidery pattern from Urban Threads.  I made up my own pattern for the bag, but the idea for the criss-cross triangular front pockets came from Bonnie over at Fishsticks Designs.  She was my partner in another swap and made me a bag with that triangular pocket and I loved it so much I put it on this bag!

Here's the front.  The main body is actually navy, but I'm still getting used to my new camera and am having some difficulties.

And the back, both main panels are quilted, and I wanted to include a bit of coordinating patchwork as well.

Inside is a zipper pocket, and the top features an inset zipper closure. I've never done one of those before and just sort of made it up as I went along.  I think it turned out ok- in any case it opens and closes and all the raw edges are hidden!

And here are a few extra goodies I sent along with it.

I liked the bag so much I made a coordinating one for me.  I think it's going to be my IQF Houston bag.  It's a bit bigger than a purse (with room for purchases!) but not huge, and has nice padded straps for a long day of carrying.

And now, I really have to get back to quilting.  But I really hope my still-secret partner likes the bag!

Pet Postcards

Once again, Pokey Bolton is collecting 4x6 fabric postcards to sell at the Houston Quilt Show this year to raise money for Houston Animal Shelters.  Pet adoption is a cause I feel very strongly about, and we're actually going to the Houston Quilt Show this year, so I thought I'd better make some.

I encourage everyone to participate, it doesn't take that long to make one and send it in.  For more information, you can see Pokey's blog post:  http://pokeysponderings.com/2013/06/28/quilters-its-time-to-get-busy-quilt-festivals-pet-postcard-project-is-back/

I made six, one for each of my dogs.  We don't have six dogs now, these are just all the dogs I've had and loved (not counting the lots and lots from growing up).  Six cards also fit easily on two 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper (to run through the printer).  I fixed my pictures in photoshop and then printed them onto regular fabric (I used a very light green batik) which had been stuck to a full size mailing label.  The first three may look familiar, they're just slightly altered versions of the larger dog portraits.  The other three are pictures of my dogs which either passed away before or came to us after the large dog portrait project started. For those, I found a picture of the dog I liked and superimposed the dog on a brightly colored abstracted background.  

Missy, who was adopted in ~2007 from Mike's brother who couldn't take care of her.

Bullett, who was adopted in 2006 from a girl at Walmart whose dad was going to drop him at the Humane Society

Pumpkin, who was adopted in 2007 from the Oklahoma City Humane Society.

My precious Angel, who was adopted in 2003 from the Humane Society of Southern Arizona..

Bentley, who was adopted in 2010 from Second Chance Animal Shelter in Norman, OK.

Shooter, adopted in 2012.  She was a stray out in the country northeast of Oklahoma City.

I don't know what I'd do without the dogs!

Glacier NP

I'm back from an outstanding, rejuvenating trip to Glacier National Park, and hope to have some fabric goodness to share later in the week.

This fabulous one was taken by Mike

Black and White and Read All Over

Saturday very very early I'm leaving to meet Mike (who is already up north with the motorcycle) for a week of hiking and motorcycling in Glacier National Park.  I'm super excited, I love National Park trips and Glacier is lovely.  Luckily my good friend Justin always housesits for us so the monsters don't get too lonely.

I've been trying to decide which hand project to take on the trip-  since we're traveling on the bike it has to be something pretty small.  I'm thinking about one of Carina's embroideries, but we'll see if I get sufficiently organized in time.

Before going though, I wanted to share this recent finish.  It was also made for the black and white  and one color challenge I talked about last week.  It's not the terrible one which made me so frustrated with the pink blotches but a second piece I made by combining two of the other versions of this print I designed (the bottom two).

It's actually a fairly simple piece, I quilted the four parts individually and then bound them all together.  The white stripes you see between the panels are actually empty space, not white sashing.  The only tricky thing was figuring out how to fold/lace together the binding where it crosses.  I wound up using button holes and it worked fairly well. 

Black and White and Read All Over, c. Shannon Conley, 2013 18 x 24

I'm pleased I was able to do something with these prints, I had fun making them and thinking about books that have influenced me over the years.

Dogs

My dad brought me a new-to-me camera last weekend and I'm super excited. It's his old Nikon D90 and is the first non-point-and-shoot I've ever had.  It's going to take me a while to get used to, but here are a couple of gratuitous dog pictures I took with it.  Everything is better with dog pictures.  Unfortunately the other three wouldn't sit still long enough to be photographed.  Alas.

Swatch.  She's a sweetie and has actually been adopted by my parents so has left us now. 

My Bullett Dog!  He's our oldest, but still only about 8.  He's pretty lazy though.

Quilting Gallery: Leaves, Trees and Flowers Contest

Hi guys, my orchard quilt  (Winter in Lincoln County #1: The Orchard) is over on the Quilting Gallery blog today in their Leaves, Trees and Flowers Contest.

There are a bunch of lovely prizes for visitors (even if you didn't enter a quilt) and voting has started, so you can go and pick your favorites.

http://quiltinggallery.com/2013/09/06/leaves-trees-flowers-quilts/

Winter in Lincoln County #1: The Orchard

Finished! Taming the Gorgons

I'm so excited to share this recent finish.  It was made for a black and white and one color show to replace my disastrous first attempt at the identity quilt, and was previously glimpsed here and here.  I have actually gone back and done another quilt based on that original identity concept which I hope to share next week.

The design was based on Greek architectural elements and is constructed out of a variety of gold apparel fabrics (the background is cotton).  I used cutaway trapunto to make the gold elements stand out and give the quilt dimension.   The background quilting is done with metallic silk thread as well as regular threads.  I love the curviness and sweeping arcs in the central design and tried to echo those in the quilting.  It's finished off with gold piping and a black and white binding that matches the quilt background.

I named the quilt "Taming the Gorgons" because the large sprouting feathers at the top reminded me of a calm, civilized version of the snake haired Medusa, one of the three monstrous Gorgon sisters of Greek myth.

I love the sparkly shiny nature of the gold apparel fabrics, for more on how I work with them, you can check out my previous posts.  Just keep your fingers crossed that it gets accepted into the show!

Taming the Gorgons, c. Shannon Conley 2013, 18" x 24"

Linking up with TGIFF, Richard and Tanya Quilts, and the unparalleled Off the Wall Friday over at Nina-Marie's