Salsa Complete! and Design Wall Weekend #3

"Salsa" by Christina Fairley Erickson
Freehand Machine Embroidery, decorative stitching, freemotion quilting, trapunto

Fiber Art exhibit at the Schack Art Center

It's been a tough week.  Of course, completing my "Salsa" quilt and getting it entered in the Contemporary QuiltArt Association's (CQA) show (of the same name... Salsa), is a big achievement.  But perhaps it's a bit of a let-down too... I've put so much effort into this piece I'm not quite sure where to go from here.  I apologize for being offline this week- between taxes being due, having lots of work to get ready for the jury process for the Salsa show, and feeling a bit under the weather a couple days, I just didn't get much time at the computer.  I'll work at doing better over the next week.

"Pray for the Forest II" by Larkin J. Van Horn
Fabric, beads  $750.

I did get to a wonderful fiber art show of artists from the Whidbey Island branch of the Surface Design Association earlier this month at Schack Art Center in Everett.  Here are a couple of the wonderful pieces exhibited there.

"Compare and Contrast" by Liz Axford
3 layers silk organza- front and back layers
are screen-printed multiple times, hand-stitched
with cotton floss to reveal patterning $6500.

Design Wall Weekend #3 -- What do You Have on Your Design Wall?

What kind of blogs should link up?

I think that it's best to have content that matches the content and interests served with the blog that's hosting the party, so please only link up if your blog post is about any of the following:

• Quilting and fabrics 
• Fiber art of any kind
• Hand & machine stitch or embroidery
• Mixed media art
• Book-making, art journals, and sketchbooks
• Tutorials for any quilting, fiber, mixed media, sketchbook and other arts
• These can be works in progress or finishes

Rules for the blog linking party

• Mention Fiber Artist Journey in your post, either with a link or button-use the direct link to the specific post - not just your main blog website (this helps with your search engine position.)   If you have buttons on your sidebar that works great, please just at least mention something in your post, for example "I'm linking to Fiber Artist Journey, see my sidebar for their button."  An example of a link to a specific post would be: http://fiberartistjourney.blogspot.com/2013/04/red-hot-chili-peppers.html rather than http://fiberartistjourney.blogspot.com . If you need help on how to add your link, read this.

• If you follow my blog, I'll follow yours!  PLEASE make sure to comment and tell me you're following, and I'll visit and  follow yours too.)

• Please take the time to visit other links, everyone loves new visitors and comments!  Try to comment on at least two other blogs in the party.

If you would like to add a button to your blog you can copy the code which is below my buttons and add it as a gadget on the layout page of your blog. Here is a tutorial on how to do it.

You Might Also Be Interested in:

Tutorial- Sashing 
Pre-Quilted Blocks

True Triangles 
Video Tutorial

Fireworks Freemotion 
Quilting Design

Check Out These Other Great Blogs!

Nina Marie Sayre Art Quilts

Leah Day's Freemotion Quilting Project

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Quilt Matters

Richard and Tanya Quilts

Red Hot Chili Peppers!

"Chili Pepper" by Christina Fairley Erickson
Freehand machine embroidery with decorative stitching and freemotion quilting

Make sure to check out the start of my Design Wall Weekends Blog Link Party coming Saturday April 6!

Well, I finally finished up my final 5 x 7" block for the Salsa Quilt.  I had some fun with this and will be posting a couple of tutorials later this week for both how to do unusual lettering and a new freemotion quilting design.  I also will work on documenting my process for installing new fonts onto your computer, so you can play around with different lettering styles like this "Taco Modern" font I use in each of my salsa blocks.

I've been super busy this last week catching up after being gone for 5 days in the "Experimental Hand Stitch class."  I've been working on continuing to complete my hand-stitch samples, which are quite relaxing to do.  I've also started cutting and piecing a new practice quilt, which I'm doing along with Leah Day's Craftsy class.  Although I'm pretty comfortable with freemotion machine quilting, the more you practice, the better you get.  The one thing I haven't completely decided upon is whether I'm going to do all the fillers which Leah suggests in her class, or whether I'll pick and choose those which I want to do.  I'm not 100% thrilled with every design she's picked, so I may just substitute some of my own, or others I've learned from Leah's blog.

One thing that's going to be a little different in the future is that I will be hosting a "Design Wall Weekend" blog linking party.  This will be open to quilters, fiber artists, mixed media artists, and book/art journalists who have blogs to help increase exposure to all sorts of great ideas.

Now, it's on to do the sashing and binding for this quilt.  Not to mention, I will need to get going on a new 5 x 7 Challenge piece for next week!  So check back for tutorials later this week and I hope you will have some fun quilting this week.

You Might Also Be Interested in:

And the Winner Is...

A Slice of Lime

Peppers and Avocado

Check out these other great blogs:

Freshly Pieced

Freemotion by the River

Quilt Story