Weekly Report 2013 - 07/05

Oyster Bay is finished except for the label!

 Tips, Techniques and Thoughts

Today I am seeking your thoughts versus sharing one of mine. It seems all Calls for Entry for exhibitions of quilt art require one full view of the artwork and one detail of the artwork. The purpose of the detail image is to allow the curator or juror a better look at the techniques used in the artwork. It is recommended that the detail view also read like a stand alone artwork. My photographer aka my husband has provided me with 5 possible detail shots of Oyster Bay. Please let me know which of these details you feel best accomplishes the goals of a Call for Entry and why you chose this one. The contestants are:

#1 Detail of the two oyster shells resting on the sand

#2 Detail of the two oyster shells cropped along the lower edge,
but showing some ocean and sea foam

#3 Detail of the single oyster shell showing sand and sea foam

#4 Detail of the single oyster shell and sand

#5 Detail of the sea foam and water

You've probably surmised that despite it being a short work week in the USA I managed to focus on Oyster Bay. Here is what I accomplished this week.

1) “Oyster Bay” (deadline 8/20/2013)

a) Face the quilt. - Done!

b) Make and attach the sleeves. - Done!

c) Make and attach the label. - Step one has been accomplished. I always include a finished picture of my quilt on the label. I have the picture.

d) Add Oyster Bay to my website. - The pictures have been taken. 

2) Do whatever assignment Leah comes up with next.

The assignment from Leah was to practice Universe Spiral. This design is a tweak on McTavishing. The difference between McTavishing and Universe Spiral is that McTavishing begins with a gentle wiggly line that is echoed, as does Universe Spiral, but Universe Spiral adds a circle at the end of the line that is filled with an "*". Since I am on tear with my beach series, I further tweaked Universe Spiral by swapping out the "*" and inserting various sized circles within the circle to emulate sea foam. I chose to practice on some fabric that suggests the sea. I have chosen to call my variation Ocean Currents.

Ocean Currents Sample - Front Side

It has been a while since I shared the back side of any of my work. One thing that has become obvious from my focus on practicing free motion quilting is that the number of bird nests and hesitation spots on the back are greatly reduced.

Ocean Currents Sample - Back Side

An advantage of sharing the flip side with you on the blog is that the actual pattern for Ocean Currents is much more easily seen. 

3) Pictorial Painting

a) Watch the lesson that demos how to quilt the Canyon piece. - Done!

b) Quilt "Canyon." - Just contemplated.

4) Unplanned Bonus - I started designing my next artwork based on cropping a section of Oyster Bay using Photoshop Elements and changing it to grayscale and then rotating it 90 degrees. 

The germ of an idea for my next Beach Series quilt

There is nothing like starting a new quilt to fire me up. I can't wait to get to work on Monday and start creating. Here are my known plans for what I would like to accomplish:

1) “Oyster Bay” (deadline 8/20/2013)

a) Make and attach the label.

b) Add Oyster Bay to my website.

2) Do whatever assignment Leah comes up with next.

3) Companion Oysters (Deadline 9/01/2013)

a) Create the acetate overlay for aligning piecing

b) Cut and place the pieces

4) Pictorial Painting

a) Quilt "Canyon."

I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.

Week in Review 2013 - 2/01

A hint of what is to come.

 I zipped along this week.  It feels good to be hitting my stride with my art work. Everything seems to be pulling together with ease and joy. Although I didn't do everything I set out to do during the week, I made a conscientious decision to revamp my goals in a more logical manner. The amount of work completed was the same or more than I planned, just with a slight diversion from the plans.

Here is what I had in mind and how I differed from the plan for the week ending February 1, 2013:


1) Shore's Edge

a) Finish the beading on the beach panel. - Started.

b) Seam the beach panel to the ocean panel. - Done!

The Ocean and Beach panel are joined
using the quilt as you go method.

c) Appliqué the foam panel to the quilt. - Done!

Next comes the foam.

d) Add a scattering of beads to the foam and ocean to indicate bits of foam and spray. - Opted to save this for next week.

Let the beading resume. Note how the shell and sand
beading under an inch of ocean are paler in comparison to
the shells nestled in the sand.

Detail of the painting of the flower.

The Calla Lily is painted.

2) Pictorial Painting



a) Watch the segment on how to paint the flower. - Done!

b) Paint the flower. - Done!

Although I am blown away by what I was able to accomplish, I can't help but be aware of how much more practice would be needed to choose a subject to paint and execute it without guidance.


3) Express Your Love

The golden rays are created with McTavishing. The upper
right corner red ray is done in my version of Boomerang. The
remaining red rays were quilted using micro zippling. Note
that the same red variegated thread was used for all three rays.

a) Finish McTavishing the final six rays. - Done!

b) Do whatever assignment Leah comes up with next. - Nearly Done.

Leah came up with two assignments this week. One was to quilt some rays using micro zippling. The other was to quilt some rays in the Boomerang stitch. Zippling is like stippling, only instead of meandering curves the quilting line is straight with angles to help with turns. I didn't do the Boomerang stitch. For some reason my hands naturally made triangles - so I stuck with that while following the flow of Boomerang. The final product is similar in thread build up do to travel stitching.

4) Not part of the original plan for the week is my Canada Geese quilt with the working title of Reflection - Pieced the background.

My plan for the weekend February 8, 2013 is to:


1) Shore's Edge (Absolute deadline March 21, 2013)

a) Finish the beading on the beach panel.

b) Start adding a scattering of beads to the foam and ocean to indicate bits of foam and spray.

2) Pictorial Painting

a) Quilt the Calla Lily practice piece.

b) Bind it.

c) Make and attach the hanging sleeve and label

3) Express Your Love

a) Finish the final ray I plan to quilt using the Boomerang stitch.

b) Do whatever assignment Leah comes up with next.

4) Reflection (Absolute deadline April 23, 2013)

a) Determine how to best add the geese to the quilt.

b) Start adding the geese.

Tip/Technique/Philosophy - thought for the week:

If I were to be diagnosed with OCD it would stand for Organizational Compulsive Disorder. It's true - my spices are shelved in alphabetical order with the labels facing forward. My fabric stash is folded, scraps are nestled within their matching folded fabric and the bundles are shelved by hue and then value. I bring the same OCD to my computer files. A common way for me to begin a file's name is with  the date. The system I use is the "Gregorian big-endian starting with year (Year-Month-Day). In this format the most significant data items is written before the lesser data items i.e. year before month before day." (Reference Wikipedia) Today's date would be 130201. For Leah Day's project today's picture can be found under Documents:Quilt Related Files: Leah Day 2013:Express Your Love: 130201 Express Your Love. This way all my files for a quilt project begin with the earliest work and end with the most recent.