My Online Quilt

You have to go see Melody Johnson’s website.  WOW!

Melody has been a quilt artist since 1981. She was also a professional dyer for twelve years and formed a company with Laura Wasilowski, called Artfabr!k . This creative duo traveled to quilt shows and conferences selling their hand dyed fabrics and threads, while at the same time making award winning quilts and teaching workshops in fusing both here and abroad. The Chicago School of Fusing , a completely imaginary school, became world renowned due to the musical antics of these two artists. Melody’s education includes a BA in painting and drawing from Northeastern Illinois University in1981 and an MA in Fibers from Northern Illinois University in1994.

This would be a great inspiration piece to design a wool applique after. This is an ojibway bandolier bag, very traditional. My family has an Ojibway background, so I’m very familiar with these. I’ve seen them in museums in Michigan. I would love to take this traditional floral pattern and make a quilt pattern from it. 

This is all beadwork that is woven, sometimes on deer skin. Men wore these across their chest with the bag hanging at their side.

I have a love of all textiles. This appears to be hmong embroidery.  The lines and the bright colors intrigue me.  I would love to take this idea and make it larger in an applique piece.

Ethnic textiles have intrigued me for a long time. I dream that someday I will travel to many places and search out textiles, see them in person, and be inspired to create all kinds of great pieces.

Playing with wool again. I’m still exploring embroidery on wool. The thread in this one looks a little too heavy. I should try using less strands of floss when I’m stitching, or stitching a larger pattern that won’t make the thread seem so heavy.

The wool in the background is easy to work with. But again, if the thread is too heavy, it becomes difficult to pull through the wool without distorting it.  The distortion is not quite to my liking, but I’m still just getting used to thread on wool.

 The juxtaposition of yellow to red to purple is perfectly in balance, yet out of harmony.  These colors were considered a clash whenI was growing up.  We put so much stock in the importance of matching, whether it was socks or clothes, or a multitude of other things.  Even today I am sometimes held to the matching-standard by others.

But I’ve decided enough is enough. My sense of style is another’s chaos. I am not concerned any longer. If my socks do not match, so be it.  If I come to work with different shoes on, accidently of course, what difference does it make really? If my sewing room is not the picture of perfection, I still can produce wonderful quilts from the space. In fact, the less-than-perfect room is what I prefer.

Because I hand-dye wool, I have boxes and boxes of small scraps. I’m playing with this idea of piecing together this pattern on a foundation of re-used dryer sheet.  I intend to stitch them together then, again, emblish with embroidery and maybe beads. 

I’ve decided that I do not have to have a purpose in mind when I play with pieces like this. Everything I touch does not have to end up in a finished piece.  I like the idea of the journal quilters who work on small pieces each month simply to explore a new idea or technique.

This piece from Susan Shie is a fabulously brilliant hand-painted art quilt completed in 2009. I love Susan’s work and have been visiting her site from time to time for a couple years now. The entire piece is filled with small script handwriting.  To view Susan’s work up close, visit http://www.turtlemoon.com.

Susan’s Description:

Whole cloth painting on fabric. Beginning drawing and colors airbrushed on, then airpen writing with fabric paint. A little hand brush work with fabric paint.  Machine crazy grid quilted. One row of hand sewing inside edge of border,using perle cotton. One Green Temple Buddha Boy bead, one Pink Buddha Girl bead. One Peace Cozy appliqué.

This is my third piece in the Minor Arcana in the Kitchen Tarot.  I’m selecting which minor card to work on by drawing a tarot card at random, starting with this one, after I consciously chose the first minor card quilt’s theme: The Ace of Coins, which became “Salt of the Earth: The Ace of Potholders.”

When I drew the Queen of Swords for this second minor card theme, right away I thought of Michelle Obama, who’d just become our First Lady the month before. The Queen of Swords is very intelligent and hard working, helping others, and has learned a lot of lessons in life, which she passes on to others, in her wisdom. Swords are the air sign, and Michelle is VERY air-like in her Gemini-like communications skills and hunger for learning, her Libran  love of fairness and beauty, and her Aquarian desire to help the down-trodden.  Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius are air signs.