Journeys show at Seatac International Airport

Caverna Magica at SeaTac airport

We had a little snafu when we went to set up our "Journeys" CQA show at the SeaTac International Airport earlier this year.  The schematics for the cases which they had sent to us were wrong!  So, not all of the quilts our jury had picked out fit into the cases.  One of mine, Caverna Magica, was left out of the initial hanging and then switched in half-way through the show.

There are two areas in the airport with our displays.  The first is in a hallway leading from ticketing near the Southwest Airlines ticket counter to security and entrance to the gates.  This section has the large cases pictured here.  Each piece in this exhibit has an accompanying "educational display" which teaches something about either how the piece was made, inspiration, or materials.

The educational display for Caverna Magica reads as follows:

Caverna Magica Educational Display

"The Caves of Nerja (photo 1) are located in Andalusia, in Southern Spain.  Filled with impressive stalactites and stalagmites, these caves were discovered in the modern era in 1959 and stretch over 5 kilometers.  As a major tourist attraction, sections of the caves are lit with colored lights.  Having visited these magnificent caverns in 1996, I immediately thought of them when I completed the first dyeing of the fabric for this quilt.

Starting with a piece of 100% white cotton fabric, I poured several colors liquid Pro MX dyes onto the piece, which lay with numerous ridges and folds on a flat surface.  These folds created the interesting patterns which are reminiscent of stalactites (photo 2).    Much of the white fabric was still showing through, and I wanted to create more crystalline structures within the piece.  This was done with a second dye bath, using a snow-dyeing method. 

Close-up of some of the machine quilting on Caverna Magica

Snow-dyeing is basically like making a snow-cone… you crumble your fabric up in a container, pack snow on top of it, and then pour several colors of dyes over the snow.  As the dye trickles down through the snow, it hits the fabric and slowly starts the color transformation as the temperature rises.  Due to the unusual nature of this process, the results are one-of-a-kind and typically form beautiful crystal-like patterning in the color.  After 24 hours and the snow completely melting, you can wash out the excess dye.  The colors were intensified and additional details representing the rocky caverns came out through this additional dye process.

The final layer of this piece was to add more detail through densely quilting the fabric.  I do my quilting on my Bernina 730 home machine, free-hand guiding the fabric in the directions I want to go.  With this piece, I wanted to emphasize the feeling of stalactites and stalagmites with the stitching lines.  I continued using a wide array of colors of thread, to match the feeling of the wonderful lights shining on these incredible natural structures.

Part of the Contemporary QuiltArt Assocition's
Journeys show at SeaTac

It's always exciting to see your work on display.  Since I had to pick my husband up at the airport this week, I finally got to see my piece now included in the exhibit.  If you'd like to see some additional shots of this show, see my post "Designing for a Theme."

Part of the Contemporary QuiltArt Assocition's
Journeys show at SeaTac

Thankful for project time

Happy Thanksgiving!  I am so thankful today to have had a relaxed joyous day with my family, as well as being able to do many of my projects.  My sweet husband did much of the cooking, to help keep me out of the kitchen, as I've worked very hard this year to get down to my goal weight by losing 30 lbs (and keeping it off.)  I do love to cook, but I knew I'd be tempted to taste all day long!  He did ask my support in one thing, however... clearing some space in the freezer for the leftovers.

Well, that meant that it was time to get into my dye studio- I had to use up the snow I've had in the freezer since last winter- time for snow-dyeing!  It's also a great way to use up some left-over old dyes.  While the colors may not come out quite as rich or vibrant, I'll always be able to over-dye or do additional surface design on the fabrics.  So I prepared 4 separate yards of cotton, put each in it's own container, packed the snow on top, and poured 3 colors of dye onto each one.  It looks like giant snow cones! 

Ryan, my Viking warrior

Since I was already dyeing, I also mixed up a fresh batch and dyed a couple yards of linen.  I've never tried dyeing linen before, nor is it a material I use in my artwork.  The things we will do for our children!  My son, now 17, is fascinated with Viking culture and hopes to go into anthropology and/or archeology.  He's found that there are Viking re-enactment groups, similar to the ones that put on Renaissance fairs, and has talked me into going to a holiday "Good Yule" celebration in full Viking dress.   Of course, it has to be authentic!  Last week I taught him basics of sewing on my Bernina (ok, not so authentic that we're going to sew it by hand!) and he made his own Viking tunic out of wool.  He's still deciding if he wants me to dye it or not (it's currently a beige-brown.)  The linen I'm dyeing will be for a Viking apron, the style which they wore around the tenth century.  I'll make sure to post the pictures when we have our outfits complete!

I've been working on encouraging my Mom to start back to sewing again, so she brought over her machine and a Christmas table-runner project which she had started.  She was having some problems with mitering the binding.  It's easy to get confused with a mitered binding if you are used to making a mitered border on a quilt.  The process is a bit different, since you're turning the finding to the back side.  She also some a 60 degree angles, which I admit I had to look up how to bind.  Thank goodness for Google!

Once I had my Mom going, I started working on some freemotion quilting samples from the wonderful collection by Leah Day on her FreeMotion Quilting Blog.  If you are interested in improving your quilting stitches, I can't recommend Leah's blog highly enough.  Here is the "Calm Sea" design which I stitched this afternoon.  I have several notebooks of practice samples such as this, which I  keep adding to on a regular basis.  Then, when I am ready to stitch a project, I can look through my samples and think about what would work best for the piece. 

Tomorrow I'm taking off with my husband for a few days, so I've packed my sketchbooks and look forward to looking for new design inspiration, as well as working on thinking through some of what I'd like to accomplish in the year ahead.