Waiting- the Fiber Funster's Challenge

Waiting by Charo Lopez

My small art-quilt group, the Fiber Funsters, met yesterday with our every-other month challenge.  We take turns choosing a theme.  This time, Charo picked "Waiting" for us to interpret.  Charo's piece, left, features her cat gazing out the window at little birds and bugs made from beads, buttons, and embroidery.  The pillow her kitty sits on is puffy and with little braid and tassels.

Allison Chang's "Waiting" (work in progress)

Allison started with white fabric and she wrote "Waiting" in Chinese characters across it.  She then fused shapes in a metallic gold, red, green, and black.  The squares and plaids contrasted with the circles, spirals, and dramatic red diagonal slashes made for active composition.  She also has put three half spheres of beaded wool felted roving.

Carolyn Hitter posed for several photos for her quilt

Carolyn started with having her husband, Jim, take some photos of her contemplating something from behind.  Using a method she learned in Leni Levenson Wiener's "Photo-Inspired Art Quilts: From Composition to Finished Piece", Carolyn took the photos and applied a Cutout Filter in Adobe Photoshop Elements.  She then chose the photo she liked the best (on the far left) and traced the shapes (below.)  The background of Carolyn's quilt is made from a fuzzy interfacing... just like on a design wall!  Her title says it all: "Waiting for Inspiration"

"Waiting for Inspiration" by Carolyn Hitter

Any of us who are mothers can relate to the sense of waiting that goes along with pregnancy.  Waiting to get pregnant, to find out whether you'll have a son or a daughter, to make sure they're healthy, and finally for the wonderous day when you meet your child.  Lise's humourous spin on these aspects of pregnancy is whimsical with the pink (for girls) and blue (for boys) background that the pollywog shaped sperm are swimming through.  

"Waiting" by Lise Vandandaigue

Similarly, Debbie has a beautiful pair of thread-painted birds waiting over their nest filled with three eggs.  The background has a very delicate soft changes of color with light blue and lavender squares pieced by fusing.  

My piece is still a work-in-progress.  After missing a flight out of Paris one year, I had to wait for 9 hours for the next flight.  Pretty tough when you're by yourself and already time-lagged.  Of course, it's nothing compared to those who have been stuck in an airport for days due to whether or other problems... my heart always goes out to them.  I'm adding freemotion quilting for shading will continue for background 

"Waiting" by Christina Fairley Erickson (work in progress)

 You Might Also Be Interested in:

Fiber Funster's Group 
Reveal- Celebration

"Opening" - The
Fiber Funsters

The Fiber Funsters 
Group Challenge

Here's some other great blogs to check out:

Leah Day's FreeMotion Quilting Project

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Nina Marie Sayre's Art Quilt Blog

Never to Hot to Stitch

Progress on 2013 Goals

It's hard to believe that we're almost at the middle of March... almost 1/4 of the year is done!  However, with that in mind today, I thought I should review and see how I'm doing on My Goals for the year.

"Best Friends" by Christina Fairley Erickson
Commercial and artist hand-painted cottons, machine applique, machine free-motion quilting

My first goal is to work on finding and defining my artistic voice.  I've outlined several steps to help myself with this.  First, is to work with Gail Harker, of the Gail Harker Center for the Creative Arts.  You might recall some of my previous posts about the fantastic exhibit, Complex Threads, which featured the work of students of Gail.  I'm set for this part of my goal, starting next week when I'll be taking her Experimental Hand Stitch 101 course. This course will complete my 100 level series classes, and I'll be continuing on the path starting in May with Studies in Design and Experimental Hand and Machine Stitch 201 which will meet approximately every 3 months through the end of 2014.  

"Best Friends" detail by Christina Fairley Erickson

Next, I decided to kick up my production to help with defining my artistic voice.  To do this, I've been making my weekly 5 x 7 Challenge piece.  So far, I'm keeping up with this (one week I didn't finish, but then did two in another week.)  I also wanted to do my small art quilt group's challenge every other month.  I've only got a couple weeks to go to finish this and I'm not sure that I'm going to make this one.  The theme of the current Fiber Funster Challenge is "Waiting."  while I have designed a piece, I haven't even started it in production.  Maybe I can get it going this weekend.

Finally, I planned to document my progress in my blog, which I've been doing.  This also has helped me with my second major goal, which is to ramp up my pictorial quilts.  I feel like I've made a lot of progress through the weekly production of 5 x 7 pieces, both with my technical skills and composition.  I do still need to start working on a plan for creating a body of work.  

My third goal has to do with studio organization.  Here I have made some progress, but not enough to be proud of... I am at least working in my studio almost daily, rather than my studio being such a disaster area that I end up pulling my work out into other areas of the house!

My next goals, opening an Etsy shop and working towards a solo show in 2015 are still in the thought process, although I have looked through Etsy and think I can stay on track to open by mid 2013.  Beyond that, I'm on track for completing my piece for the Salsa show (entry due in mid-April).  I haven't yet decided upon my second medium-to-large sized piece to create, although I may go back to my roots and make another horse-themed quilt.  I won a first place (and cash prize!) at an equine art-show two years ago and just received the call for entry for this coming summer. Alternatively, I may shoot for finishing one of my works in progress, such as my Waterfall quilt or Cathedral Visions.  

I'm scratching the final goal, completing a driftwood art sculpture in time to enter in the May show.  Although I love the driftwood art, I'm not having the time to do it as well as my main love, fiber.  

Well, I'm in a bit of overwhelm now, with all that I need to do.  Guess it's time to get back to sewing!

You might also be interested in:

Complex Threads 1

Complex Threads 2

Artistic Goals 2013

2013 Artist 
5 x 7 Challenge

"Celebration" - Fiber Funsters Group Reveal 2

"Opening" by Christina Fairley Erickson

A small favor to ask... I've entered my quilt "Opening" in a online gallery of challenge quilts which viewers can vote on their 4 favorites.  Please check it out and vote for your favorites!  http://quiltinggallery.com/2013/01/18/vote-challenge-quilts/

Last Wednesday, I showed the quilts that our small art quilt had made for our first challenge around the word "Opening."  Today, I have the next set, which were made with the prompt "Celebrate."  Due to the holidays, not everyone had either finished a piece, but we have quite a bit of diversity in what we do have!

The first piece, made by Sally, is entitled "Celebrate! Belize Anniversary."  Sally and her husband went to Belize for their 40th anniversary and really enjoyed the snorkeling.  Sally had recently taken Lola Jenkins' Thread Art Class through Craftsy, and used her know knowledge to make the incredible picture in this quilt. She layered the color using Crayon d'Arche Swiss water soluble pastels and encapsulated it with Textile medium.  The beads hanging on the left include gifts of a dried seahorse which Sally had received from her family and a mini plane and passport.

"Celebrate! Belize Anniversary" by Sally Simmons

"Celebrate!" by Marylee Drake

 Marylee and I were on the same wavelength, inspired by the incredible fireworks show at the Space Needle for New Years Eve.  See my post "Fireworks Freemotion Quilting Design" for a great photo from that show.  Marylee's piece is hand-stitched and beaded for the fireworks.  Her balloons are double layers or organza--she didn't quilt them down, so they are puffy, semi-transparent and add a great texture.  She had a fantastic tip for getting lettering on a quilt- print out the word(s) you want in the font and size you want from your computer.  Then put that paper on the right side of your quilt and stitch over it.  Tear away the paper (you might want to use paper-piecing paper which runs through your printer).  Then you can either add additional stitching or paint in the lettering, as Marylee did here using Lumiere fabric paints.  Marylee still has some work to complete, including possibly adding in a small Space Needle to finish the piece off.


I used my hand-dyed and painted fabrics to make an abstract piece that reminded me of New Years.  I quilted the piece with the fireworks design I created, then quilted over the right-side fireworks with silver thread, to echo the silver in the painted section in the center.  I also added a decorative machine stitch in the center portion and some fuzzy, metallic yarns.

"Fireworks" by Christina Fairley Erickson

Caroline has lived a fascinating life with lots of travel to remote places and living abroad while in the Peace Corp.  When she lived in Africa, it would be completely dry for 6 months.  When the rain finally came, it was something worth celebrating!  Children would go out and dance naked in the rain, mothers would hold their squealing little babies out from under the eaves in the downpour, everyone would sing and be joyous.

"The Rain He Done Come" by Carolyn Hitter

You might also be interested in:

Fireworks FreeMotion 
Quilting Design

"Opening" 
The Fiber Funsters 
Group Reveal 1

The Fiber Funster's 
10 x 16 Group Challenge

Fantastic Blogs to Check Out:
For great ideas on how to freemotion quilt your projects, go to the Freemotion Quilting Project.  Leah Day's tutorials are fantastic!

Get inspired with different quilter's completions at Confessions of a Fabric Addict!

Nina Marie Sayre's great art quilting blog shares a great way to transfer a drawing onto fabric for redwork or other stitching

See some great projects and quilts recently finished on Richard and Tanya Quilts

"Opening" - The Fiber Funsters Group's Reveal 1

The Fiber Funsters, my small art quilt group, met this morning at my home for our monthly meeting. Our group decided last summer to start doing a challenge piece based on a particular word every-other month. Our first word was "Opening" and we shared these pieces with each other in November.     Today I was able to photograph most of our pieces to share here!  

"Convento Santa Catalina" by Carolyn
Hitter

The first piece to the left, "Convento Santa Catalina" was made from a photograph that Carolyn took at a convent in Arcquipa, Peru.  Carolyn's technique includes the use of tulle to create the shading and shadows.  She built up separate parts of the landscape and then put the different elements together, doing a majority of the stitchwork before backing the piece and keeping the quilting minimal.

Opening by Rebecca Simmons

Next, Rebecca also chose an opening flower (as did I.)  Rebecca made her piece using Tsukineko inks, basically painting both the flower and background.  She uses heavy stitch to accent the petals edges and veins.  The center of her flower has Angelina fiber and beading.

"Opening" by Debbie Hiatt

Debbie's piece is abstract, using up "leftovers" - scraps of silks most of us would love to have!  She highlights the "opening" in her piece with hand embroidery stitches, while the curved machine quilting echos the shape of the opening.

"Australia Rock" by Sally Simmons

"Australia Rock" in Narooma, Australia has a natural opening that Sally remembers vividly from her trip there. She used one of her photos to complete this piece, adding shading with tulle and very realistic looking greenery with threadwork.

Charo Lopez's "Open to Love"

What would this theme be without a piece that really opens?  Charo's heart stays closed with a bit of velcro, but you can also open it to see what is inside... the great loves of her life, her pets.  She says that Devon, the black cat, is her only pet at this point, but the others are waiting for her in heaven.  Charo used a template of hearts with glitter, paint, and rhinestones at different places over the piece, as well as lots of buttons (surrounding the main red heart both outside and inside, giving a real depth to the piece, and little heart buttons interspersed on the front.)  She printed photos on fabric of two of her animal loves, as well as having different charms to represent some of her pets.

"Open to Love" by Charo Lopez with heart opened

Close up of the inside of Charo's heart

Marylee designed this cute piece with "openings".  The little round balls seem to be rolling down the planks and through the openings like a pinball or pachinko machine, only to end up being gobbled up by a "Pack-man" shaped object.  Guess this dates me that I know pinball, pachinko and packman, huh?

"Opening" by Christina Fairley Erickson

I've shown the piece I made called "Opening" previously on this blog.  It is all machine embroidered.




While some of our newest pieces are still works in progress, I'll share them soon!

Thanks for all the inspirational projects at Seven-Alive! and Sincerely, Paula.


You might also be interested in:

The Fiber Funster's 
10 x 16 Group Challenge

Designing for a Theme

Designing for a Theme 
- Innovation Part 1

Current Works in Progress

Original sketched design

New week, new project. Well, actually one completely new, one just finished, and another in process. First, I started my next 5 x 7 Challenge piece, which I had sketched out last week.

Paper-piecing pattern

In thinking about how I could most effectively make this, I decided that paper-piecing would probably be the quickest with a nicely finished result. Since most of my art isn't geometric, I haven't had a lot of practice with paper-piecing.  

First section completed

This is where those of you who are familiar at this skill will probably laugh.  When you look at my pattern to the left, I have had to build each section with numbering.  However, I'm having to build parts of the sections on separate papers and then combine them, as my lines don't all match up.  It's seeming to work however.

"Opening" by Christina Fairley Erickson
100% Freehand Machine embroidered and Freemotion Quilted

I also just completed my first piece for the Fiber Funsters 10 x 16 challenge. Guess I'm all about the challenges this year! finishing off this dense freehand machine embroidery was more difficult than I expected. I decided to do a trap unto effect with a second layer of batting inside the lily, to have it stand out from the background. I then added the backing and freemotion quilted around the flower and in uneven horizontal lines over the blue background. Of course, I realized after doing a good portion that I could have just as well quilted from the back side since the flower was already outline, which would have made it possible to have even spacing of the lines. As it turned out, I couldn't distinguish my quilting lines from all the thread of the background, which makes it a little less precise when you view from the back side.

"Opening" back - faced and freemotion quilted

See the white
on the edge?

The real difficulty came when I faced the piece and tried to turn the facing to the back. With such dense stitching, it was remarkably stiff and didn't want to gracefully bend and hide the facing. Also, the process stressed it a bit and little bits of the white under-fabric were showing through.

The edge after painting
with fabric markers

See the difference/?

Well, I steamed and starched and pulled and cajoled, stay-stitched the seam allowance to the facing, and cut away as much of the seam allowance as possible.  I hand stitched the facing down, but still wasn't fully satisfied with the result.  In the end, I dug out some fabric markers and 'painted' the edges and little white spots that shouldn't be showing!  I think it did the trick!

My final piece to share is the second quilt for Fiber Funsters.  The word we're using this time is "Celebrate!" as our theme.  I'm not sure what I think of this piece yet or if it has any promise.  I played around with some fabrics I'd hand-dyed and painted and this is how far I've gotten.  I don't really know how I'm going to free-motion quilt it yet... But it's supposed to be done in a week, so that gives me a little motivation!

"Celebration" - work in progress by Christina Fairley Erickson

You might also be interested in:

52 Weeks of Art

The Fiber Funster's 
10 x 16 Group Challenge

2013 Open 5 x 7 Challenge

Blogs You Should Check Out!
For Fantastic Tutorials on FreeMotion Quilting go to The FreeMotion Quilting Project
Work in Progress Wednesday (Thanks Freshly Pieced!),
Link it Up Thursday  (Thanks Seven Alive!) and
 Can I Have a Whoop Whoop (Thanks, Confessions of a Fabric Addict!)
Off the Wall (Thanks Nina Marie Sayre)
TGIFF (Thanks Diane - FromBlankPages!)

Juggling Many Projects

Between link parties from WIP (work in progress) Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced and Freemotion Fridays on the Freemotion Quilting Project, we've got a great start in generating interest in the 5 x 7 challenge for 2013!

Hand-painted and block-printed fabrics and papers
by Christina

I've been struggling with how to juggle getting a project done while designing and/or conceptualizing one or more others. It's not like I don't do this all the time in my everyday life... What woman doesn't? Even my studio has a minimum of 4-5 things going at a time-some on the design wall, others in various states of completion. But when you come down to a commitment to produce a finished product each week, my stomach gets a bit tight, I wonder if I'll be able to persevere throughout the year, and I feel a bit frantic about wanting to work ahead and get a bunch done, so that if things come up, I won't end up with nothing to show for the week.  But that seems a bit off-target.  After all, the idea is to learn to consistently produce art, right?

Christina's gradation run of sunshine yellow Procion MX dye

So, I'm taking a deep breath and thinking about how I'm going to do my next piece.  I also think that I'll allow myself to work on design ideas in my sketchbook, which I can then decide whether I want to produce in a more finished form at a later date.  But I won't actually have more than the current week and the coming week's projects in any phase of production.

What I'm wondering is what would be the best way to balance getting my "other" projects complete.  After all, I do have other goals for 2013 which I need to make progress on.  I didn't even put in additional time for dyeing and surface design in my goals, nor did I mention any of the pieces I have in various stages of completion, other than a vague mention of "ramping up my pictorial quilts" and having a couple pieces completed to enter in various shows.

As an example, in a little less than two weeks, my small art-quilt group (the Fiber Funsters) has our next meeting where we reveal our second challenge quilt.  (Details about this challenge are posted on my blog post "The Fiber Funsters 10x16 Group Challenge.")  The current challenge is based on the word "Celebrate."  It seemed appropriate for the holiday season and I had hoped to incorporate something which would work both for this theme and "Salsa!" the theme of the CQA Mighty Tieton show coming in early summer.  However, it just didn't really work for me.  I designed a piece using photos from a cathedral door with a chili-pepper wreath on it, but when it was shrunk down to 10" x 16", it just didn't work for me.  I may still create that piece in a larger format for the Salsa show, however.  So, now I'm working on something more abstract and playful with my hand-dyed and painted fabrics.  With time running short, I'm going to have to get a lot of time in behind my sewing machine this weekend!

Hand-painted and block-printed fabrics and papers
by Christina

Realistically, what I'm talking about is time management.  With my background in business, I understand and can get focused when I think about it in this way.  I can schedule my sewing sessions, make a timeline for when I have to get things complete, and have to-do lists for each step of each project.  The main thing is not to get mired down in the daily muck of being run by your plans and schedules.  That, after all, doesn't really allow for free-flowing creativity.  However, it can be very useful for managing showing your artwork and possibly for getting more accomplished (I haven't really tried it for managing my work in the studio.)

How do you manage your time, projects and priorities?  Do you work on one project or many?

You might also be interested in:
Making Fabric
Scope Creep
The Art of Organization