Virginia A. Spiegel

Sir Winter McDormant by Roxanne Stoner

The Invitational Reverse Auction of Fiberart donates 100% of its proceeds directly to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.

Invited artist Roxane Stoner has donated Sir Winter McDormant in memory of Gaylene Stoner (01/17/09) and Fran Reed (09/11/08).  ”They were amazing ladies who died too soon of lung cancer.”

Roxane created this artwork especially for the Reverse Auction and shares her inspiration:

This quilt was born out of a little sketch and grew in colors and shapes. The title, Sir Winter McDormant, says it all: Under his hat, he protects the hope of the future in those dark hours when alpenglow is laying only a few colors on the horizon behind the trees. He is patient and helps nature take a break for a spell. When his time will come he will leave, retire until next time and waving his final goodbye to the coming of Lady Spring like the perfect gentleman that he is. He will release enough energy to help the birth of a new season take hold.  

Sir Winter McDormant was created with hand-dyed fabric by Judy Robertson of Just Imagination, collected beads from around the world and the ages, and variegated cotton and monofilament thread. Machine pieced and machine quilted. This irregularly-shaped quilt measures 28X18″.

For an inside look at the creation of this artwork, visit Roxane’s blog.

The Invitational Reverse Auction opens Tuesday, March 24.  Click here for more information.

Photo editing by Gloria Hansen.

Photo from my residency in 2007.

Karey Bresenhan, Director of International Quilt Festival, Houston, Chicago and Long Beach, is hosting an Open Studio Day on Friday, February 27 near the end of Carol Moore’s and my residencies at the Great Expectations Creativity Center in LaGrange, TX. 

I hope you will be able to join us as it promises to be a day filled with art, conversation, and nature. Click here for all the details and how to RSVP. Arrangements can be made to stay overnight.

I’m thankful for this opportunity to once again be an artist-in-residence for an entire month thanks to the generosity of Karey and Quilts, Inc.  

Waiting for me in Texas are 200 yards of white Kona cotton and several gallons of textile paint.  I am using the entire month to focus on painting and surface design on fabric.

Also an artist-in-residence for the month of February is Carol Moore. Carol is in full-time private practice as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Her artwork appears in the book Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project edited by Karey Bresenhan and was recently shown at the International Quilt Festivals in Houston, Chicago and Long Beach.  

Carol has also generously donated her artwork to the Invitational Reverse Auction of Fiberart to benefit the American Cancer Society.

Hands by Jeanette Thompson

Jeanette Thompson has donated this heavily-stitched 10×8″ art quilt to Collage Mania.  According to Jeanette, 

Hands was created with a piece of silk organza and free-motion stitched with variegated thread. The designs surrounding the hands express the joy and creativity that hands make possible. The outer edges are zigzag stitched. Most of what I create is through my hands and this piece honors them.

This is Jeanette’s second year of participation in Collage Mania. 

100% of the proceeds from Collage Mania, May 5-7, are donated directly by patrons to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.

Karen Stiehl Osborn, the keeper of the jpegs for this year’s Collage Mania, notes she has already received 60 collage jpegs.  That’s great!  

If you can possibly send your jpegs before the deadline of April 1, Karen and I would both appreciate it. I would hate for Karen to be swamped at the last minute.  I will be featuring many of the early bird collages here.

Mark your calendar for the upcoming Fiberart For A Cause activities:

March 19   Invitational Reverse Auction Preview begins

March 24 – 26   Invitational Reverse Auction

April 1   Collage Mania jpeg submissions deadline.  

April 28   Collage Mania Preview opens 

May 5- 7   Collage Mania

Stitching

The birds leave these wonderful patterns in the snow on my sidewalk. The little black accents are thistle seed which has blown off the feeders.

I thought you might need a bit more color after that photo, so here is something that makes me happy every day:

Eye of the Beholder

I have been burning some new screens on my Thermo-fax to take along to Texas:

Since I’m not quite sure where I am going with my painting, I decided to go for some texture screens. The dark black ones (and the photo that opened this post) are photos from Alaska that I photoshopped. Included are harbor scenes, nets, buoys, ropes, and various “junk” piled in a Coast Guard yard.  

In the bottom right hand corner and center are a page of text and the same text transposed into dingbats, large and small, that I did in Word.  And last are geometric shapes I drew with a carbon marker.

Remember my Surface Design Associate exhibit entry?  I thought it needed a “real” binding, so I made a trial run of a blue/green 1/4″ binding. I didn’t want to spend the time and fabric to make a double-fold binding, so I just cut and folded strips and pinned them up around the piece on the design wall: 

Even taking into account the glare from a flash, it’s just not to my liking. Although it picked up the blue in the piece and was a nice contrast, I really didn’t like the abrupt halt to the flow of the piece.  I decided to do a zigzag with rayon thread and then painted the exposed batting and edges with copper paint:

It’s subtle and sensitive to the piece while still making a nice sturdy edge.  I also added a bit more hand-stitching to bring those big hand-stitches all the way to the edges: