Lost & Found: orange

I love the orange in the middle of this quilt, and also the intense blue. I quilted this new Lost and Found quilt using different colors of thread. This series has to do with losing a sense of self, then stripping away all non-essentials, including anything outside oneself. Once you find what you believe, you feel strong, and know who you are. I have moved away from the darker colors of the previous quilts in this series.

Failure...or not?

Wow, at the end of the week I realized I had spent 2 weeks doing things that did not work. New ideas I had thought of that didn't go anywhere-I had to put them aside to think more about them. Another quilt where I had tried an idea, but maybe should have worked with it a little more. And a new idea for quilting a big quilt, that I hated, and didn't turn out at all very well on a quilt so big. New ideas are hard-and you really have to spend as much time working through them as you did on your ideas that worked. There are some quotes about success and failure; having to try and fail a lot to get to success.

But at least I am finding what works on quilting a big quilt-and my new idea for a smaller quilt is sitting in the back of my mind for awhile. In the meantime, I had other ideas I was itching to get to work on, and that can start next week. I didn't really have a sense of failure-just relief that it was over. And now I can get to that wonderful orange fabric I dyed and make something out of it!

Fantastic Fibers 2012

Last week, after a short vacation on spring break in Tennessee, we drove home to Chicago through Paducah, KY. Paducah is a nice river town; we sat along the river and watched the barges go by, ate ice cream, and of course visited the National Quilt Museum. The quilts there were amazing! There were so many traditional quilts,so much beautiful stitching and attention to detail. There was an exhibit of quilts from the UK, as well as some more contemporary quilts. On Saturday we went to the opening reception for Fantastic Fibers 2012 at the Yeiser Art Center. The Yeiser, an older building from 1905 was a great venue for this fiber art exhibit. My quilt was along the back wall of the room, surrounded by some pretty great quilts: Jennifer Day, Marcia deCamp, Kathy Loomis, Judith Plotner, Deborah Bein all had quilts there, and there were others. You can see the list of works as well as the prize winners at the website. www.yeiser.com. I also enjoyed seeing the art that weren't quilts, involving paper and weaving-so many innovative ideas. I was so glad to be able to attend this show, you really can see what other people are doing in the fiber arts, and you come away feeling it is an exciting time to be making quilts.