More LB International Quilt Show PIx

There were so many great quilts at the Long Beach International Quilt Show! Of course photos were not allowed for lots of them. There was one very interesting quilt made by a woman from South Africa. It had a lot of squares in it and there was a large piece across the middle and down the center that was needlepoint. I don't remember the stitch name, but it was all small squares where each one is defined by a set of maybe 6 diagonal stitches. And the interesting thing was, the needlepoint was not blocked, so it was a little wavy, and that actually added to the piece. It was very interesting to add canvas to a quilt. I did see quite a few quilts with Angelina and felting in them...

This is "Sonoma Coastline" by Jan Carter, with a few detail shots of the base of the piece. I loved all the texture in it.






This is "Spring in Japan" by Akiko Kawata. It was hard to get a good view of this quilt, but it was beautiful.




THis quilt is called "The Pond" and was made by Marylee Drake. I love the 3D petals of the flower and the wings of the dragonfly.


"The Thread of Life" is shown here, by Jean Overmeyer.




This is "With the Passing Days" by Marie-Jose' Michel. I really liked the design of this quilt. She used fabric printed with irises for the irises, fabric printed with wisteria for the wisteria, etc. I enjoyed the effects she created with the non-printed fabrics more, like the cascading leaves and cherry blossoms. It's interesting how some quilts are better seen up close and some better from a distance.








Looking at all the quilts really gave me a lot to think about. Sometimes my immediate reaction was WOW! and then I tried to stand back and figure out what made it a WOW quilt.
Enjoy,
~Lin Moon

Long Beach Quilt Show 2009

I spent all day Saturday at the Long Beach Quilt Show. I didn't sign up for any classes this year; I wanted to have plenty of time to see all the quilts on exhibit and visit all the vendors. I'm so glad the show is in Long Beach and not just in Houston; I've been looking forward to going for months. Here are some pictures from the show. Enjoy! Since some of the pictures get so big when you click on them, you might want to hit "control - " (that's minus) multiple times to get them to a better size.
This is an Antique CQ quilt from Cindy's Antique Quilts (in OK). It was in excellent shape. She was asking around $3200 if anyone is interested. The bird embroidery was wonderful. It has these cool motifs made of small hexagons placed in a circle and then embroidered over. It was beautiful!




























































This one is called Evening and is by Deborah Sylvester. It is made up of hundreds of tiny little pieces, used like paint to form the quilt.





















This last one is called "Ginkgo" and is by Marianne Haeni. The detail shows an inset of what looks like machine-made lace, with a piece of fabric inset into that, with a gingko leaf on it. I thought this inset was a very interesting idea.





















More pictures will come in another post - hope you enjoyed the eye candy!

Book Review Art and Embroidery of Jane Hall

Have any of you seen this book? It is called "The Art & Embroidery of Jane Hall". This is a great book for inspiration - it's not your usual embroidery book. Jane Hall also uses paint, paper, cut silk, wire, etc. to achieve her effects. When she shows a piece, it may consist of 3 or 4 vertical planes, placed one in front of another to evoke a particular effect.

This book transforms you to a different world. It is a richly textured portrayal of a reverence for nature. It's one of the few embroidery books that is enjoyable to read, as well as peruse for pictures. Jane Hall can find solace in a single snowdrop; she is awed by the wonder of nature and it shows. Her work is layers upon layers of shimmering silks, chiffons, organza and ribbons.

She spends 2-3 months minimum on each of her pieces; the care she takes is evident. No detail is left unstudied, nor its influence on the mood of the completed piece. Even her chapter on materials is mouth-wateringly inspiring. Her fabric/thread design swatches are gorgeous! Although her creatures are more inspired by imagination than reality, sometimes you have to look twice to see which is which. Each of her pieces is shown in full and then in several detail shots, with descriptions of her working methods. In particular, she describes her methods for achieving depth from afar to up close.

There is a mood to her descriptions – awe, wonder, delight in nature and veneration.
It’s hard to believe anyone could improve upon nature, but Jane Hall’s work does.

More playing with needleweaving

I love texture and decided to get out some of my yarns to do some needlewoven bars (long ones!) for this landscape. My felting pad came in really handy; once I felted the background. I pinned the end of my loooong loop(s) down into the pad to prepare for the needle weaving. Ironically, I didn't use a needle for the weaving, since my yarn lengths were a yard long or more. At first I kept running out of yarn before finishing weaving the loop, but eventually I just doubled the yarn, like you would use a double thread in a needle, but without the needle. Then you have a loop at the end of your weaving yarn and if you run out, you can just loop another long length of yarn onto it, avoiding a knot, and keep on weaving.
So I had a bunch of bars coming out of the left side and some coming out of the right side. I hid the end of one bar under the curve of another. It was fun to intertwine (weave!) the bars to resemble hills, the ground, etc....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon

Playing with needleweaving

I've been playing more with needle-weaving as part of SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009 and I have so many ideas floating around in my head! Not enough time to try them all, but anyway, I thought the idea of a hand was a good one. It was hard to get good proportions - even though I used a picture as a guide (basted to the back), the fingers came out longer and fatter than I planned, but still, you can tell it's a hand. I didn't want to spend hours weaving the palm of the hand, so I used a thicker and lighter shade of blue for the weft portion of the palm.



I didn't secure the thumb and 2 of the fingers down, so that I could try making a peace sign. Peace out, man..... yes I was a hippie in the 70s....

Happy Needleweaving,
~Lin Moon

Sun with Cloud Mask

Here is my needle-woven sun, complete with a cloud mask for those not so happy moods. The sun's face is felted, then padded before I sewed it down. I combined 3 or 4 threads and treated them as one to needle-weave the rays of the sun. Then I couched down some chenille to cover the edge of the felt sun. I added beads and wound some wire around a pencil for some extra rays.



Here is a close-up of one of the rays. At first I mixed yellows with some gold metallic fibers, but didn't like the way it looked, so I just stuck with different shades and textures of yellow fibers.



This shows how I created the felted cloud. I drew the cloud on a piece of paper, cut it out and set it aside. I pinned down the paper with the cloud cut-out to some grey felt on my felting pad. Then I placed 2 cut-outs of the eyes in the proper place and pinned them down. I used a single needle to felt wool roving around the outside curves of the cloud, around the eyes and in the middle. I was careful to pull the roving away from the paper eye areas so I would end up with the eye openings in the cloud. I know you can order cookie-cutter type forms for needle-felting, but they are really not necessary. With just a piece of paper, you can create any shape you want.

This was so much fun!

Happy Stitching,
Lin Moon

Fabulous Embroidered Jacket

There is a fabulous all embroidered denim jacket on flickr - check it out here. Jacket

This must have taken ages to do!

Happy Stitching,

~Lin Moon

Book Review

Recently I bought this book "M. Joan Lintault: Connecting Quilts, Art & Textiles". She makes very interesting quilts and the thing I like most about most of them is that they have holes in them! She's made a quilt that has a latticework background, filled in near the edges with flowers and butterflies. Sometimes her quilts have sewing machine lace between the main images. Her machine lace is beautiful and sometimes has a very fluid, water-like quality. Her quilts are not usually square and are the kind you want to stare at for a long time, to see every detail. She never uses commercially printed fabric, instead she dyes it, stitches it, then paints it, achieving a fabulous depth of color and texture. This book is a wonder to wander through, with lots of great pictures, inspiration and thoughtful prose.

Happy Stitching,
Lin Moon

Assisi panther

I've been working on this piece for SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009. In Assisi, the main motif is left unembroidered, but is surrounded by embroidery. I really like black, so decided upon this panther for my main motif. I had some challenges with stitching over the felted portions, like underneath the panther's body. The felted area stood up higher than the panther, yet needed to look like it was underneath/behind it. I had fun doing the fern on the right in the trellis stitch, and wished I had tried it sooner (as in last month's Stitch Explorer). I took the panther from a tapestry I have showing a tiger(see below).
This was really fun - I think I could improve on it, but will call it finished for now.....


Thanks Sharon, for another wonderful challenge idea.
Happy Stitching,
~Lin Moon

Raised Cup Stitch

In SharonB's Stitch Explorer 2009, the featured stitch for March 15 was the trellis stitch. Although this post is about the Raised Cup Stitch, not the trellis stitch, the directions are similar - only the beginning differs. This is one of my favorite stitches, and I wanted to share it with you.
My stitch diagrams were originally for use with silk ribbon, since that is one of my favorite ways to do this stitch. In the photos, I am using a chenille fiber. It's good to use a fiber that is not easily split. For each step, first I show the drawn diagram, then the photo(s) of the actual stitching.


1) You begin by making 3 straight stitches to form a triangle. In the photo above, the black dot represents A in the stitch diagram above.


2) In the photo above, I have changed to yellow thread to make it easier to see. But normally you bring your same thread up at one corner of the triangle, and switch to a tapestry needle. All future stitching is done without piercing the fabric, until the flower is complete. Slide your needle under one of the straight stitches and bring the thread over, then under the needle. Pull tight to form a knot. This knot should be snugged down near the corner of the triangle where you first brought your needle up (A in the diagram).


3) Slide your needle once again under the same backstitch and bring your thread over and under the needle. Pull the needle through and form a knot close to the other end of this backstitch. Now the first side of your triangle has two knots on it, with a bar connecting them.


4) Slide your needle under the next backstitch and form a knot. This knot will be very close to the previous knot, making the bar between them very short. In the stitch diagram, you can see a black needle placed there to make sure that there will be a bar (however small). Slide your needle under this backstitch again and make a second knot. Now there are four knots and 3 bars connecting them: a long, a short and a long. See the stitch diagram below.


5) Now form two knots on the last backstitch, being careful to have a bar, however small, when you go around the corner. Now you have six knots and five bars, three long and two short.


6) Now slide your needle under the bar you formed on the first backstitch and make a knot. I switched to grey thread to help you see, but you would continue around as shown in the diagram above.



7) In the photo above, I have continued around, forming 2 knots on the long bars and only one knot on the short bars. I have gone almost all the way around with the grey. Once you are happy with the flower, you can end your thread by weaving it vertically in and out of your stitching and piercing the fabric near your triangle of backstitches.

The following photos show how the flower comes out when finished. A bead in the center is a nice touch.

Kiwi Done for Fertile Earth class

I finished lesson one of the Fertile Earth class. This was inspired by a kiwi (see below). The background was supposed to be stamped, but my stamping didn't really work out well for my kiwi, so it was back to the wood-burning tool to cut some "leaves" and swirls and those made up my background. I used Misty Fuse to adhere the cuttings to the background fabric and meant to put some tulle on top of it before plopping the kiwi on, but forgot the tulle. This isn't a mistake I want to make again. All the lint, threads and everything else then sticks to the Misty Fuse. I was constantly picking these off - they made it look dirty. Anyway, this was fun and now we are on to week 2. The inspiration? Flowers! Oh, how will I ever choose just one flower to be inspired by?

Happy Creating,
~Lin Moon

Fertile Earth Class

I'm taking Susan Sorrell's Fertile Earth class at joggles. You can see the picture for the class here. This is the first week and we are doing a piece inspired by a fruit or vegetable. My inspiration was this picture of a kiwi. You can see that I changed the colors a bit! I started out with some lavender fabric, which I cut out in an oval shape using a wood-burning tool like Allison Aller explained in the current issue of CQMagOnline. I layered some tulle over it, then a darker purple, then some white satin and tulle in the center. At first it looks pretty blah, but once I added some embroidery, I just couldn't stop. Purple is my favorite color, so it's hard not to just do everything in purple! This has kick-started me into doing something creative and is just what I needed, plus it's really fun!




Happy stitching,
~Lin Moon

Leaf for Tree Project

Here's a leaf I've been working on for the Tree Project. I just haven't been able to get motivated to be creative lately, so I started this since it's a small project and you can pretty much do whatever you want. The due date is March 15, so there's still time if you'd like to get involved.

Also, I've signed up for Susan Sorrell's Fertile Earth online class on joggles.com. This is another effort to kick start my bag-o'bones to "get creative!". We're just on the first week, but so far it's fun and I'll post a pic or two soon.
Happy creating,
Lin Moon