Finishing

I have been absorbed in the final stages of finishing my MFA degree portfolio in the past month, and am about as near to finished as I can be before the graduation presentation in March. What a relief! I am starting to look around me and think about other things again, things like starting new art projects! I am thinking I will discontinue this blog, however, in the New Year, letting it be what I intended: a process blog about my MFA studies. I am so grateful to be finishing.

Unearthed Pictures

Check out this organization Unearthed Pictures which supports safe houses and other such organizations helping the victims of sex-trafficking world wide.

Seattle Quilt in Chicago - 1st play test

My small Seattle Quilt is just over half way quilted, and I took it with me on my August trip to Chicago. When I showed it to the little girls of the families I was staying with, they got it immediately and asked to play with it. Though their cars sometimes got caught in basting stitches, they drove along the yellow roads, parked in the parking lots, dove into the water, and started arranging doll house furniture on the building squares. Success!

First RESTquilt complete

At the end of July, just days before the Goddard residency was scheduled at the start of August, I finished the binding of the edges of our first REST quilt. Here it is! And I took it with me to Port Townsend, and it hung on display in the Goddard student showcase at Fort Warden. Fully eleven different women worked on this quilt, either contributing squares or helping to quilt it all by hand. It is a beauty, isn't it?

Faith Ringgold

I just learned about Faith Ringgold's quilts through a link on another quilter's page, Michael Cummings. This one really pleases me, and I am inspired by how she uses both quilting and painting techniques in her work. This is called "Crown Heights Children's History Quilt" made in 1994.

End of Semester and summer break

In a final creative push at the end of my fourth semester at Goddard, I made two more of these house squares. Two other women have officially agreed to make squares as well, with at least three others very interested. I have decided to take a summer break from this project and then restart it in September. No one really wants to work on a quilt in the summer anyway! though I have been enjoying mine. I am actually finishing our first REST quilt in the next two weeks; it is all quilted (and off the quilt frame) and now all I have left is to sew the binding strip with a neat little hidden stitch. I find this enjoyable.

Commissioning quilt squares

It has taken me over six weeks to make this one ten inch square for my next quilt project. At this rate, it will take me over three years to make this quilt top! So I am starting to commission handy women I know to make squares with me. I found a terrific book written in the 1980's called Quilting Together: How to Organize, Design, and Make Group Quilts by Paula Nadelstern and LynNell Hancock. There are photos of quite a few group quilts with a house theme, though my idea of combining the Victorian crazy quilt method with house imagery still seems to be original (I doubt it is original, but I have yet to see any other examples of it). Today I am sorting and cutting small silk scraps for each lady who has tentatively volunteered to make a square. I am thinking about creating a little card to go with it with a prayer for a safe house for girls escaping the sex trade on it, and brief instructions. Now I have to figure that out...