Wandering Wednesday - Portland

Some actual wandering, I went to Portland to visit with friend Jaye who was already up there. On my first day there we went to Powell's City of Books. Imagine our surprise to see quilts on display up on the top floor! 

It was a really excellent Pride month display put on by the Portland Modern Quilt Guild.

It was really fun to sit on the benches to rest a bit and take in all that rainbow goodness, good vibes for sure. Here's a link to their instagram with some more closeups and info.

There were many many books that I sat and browsed through and considered buying like this one, Boro & Sashiko: Harmonious Imperfection by Shannon & Jason Mullett-Bowsby. I really want to make this reversible rectangle wrap vest that was one of the highlights of the book. They had so many used and by now vintage (from the 80's and 90's) quilt books that were fun to look through. 

Jaye had rented a small house in one of the many suburbs of Portland, we had a great time walking around checking out all the street vegetable boxes.

This cabbage reminded me of the monstrous plant, Audrey II, from Little Shop of Horrors.

I loved this old junior high building with this very excellent quote on top of the door way: "Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and Power are scattered with all its beams" - Daniel Webster

The extended version of this quote is even better and quite timely I think.

I think this was likely a repainted Coca Cola advertisement, but I still liked the colors and fonts.

I liked the walkway near the house that we stayed in, it had a great ground cover combination with flat stone. No tripping, but still pretty.

We also went to a couple of Portland's many quilt shops (of course!). This one was Pioneer Quilts, in a really lovely historic home called the Broetje House. The two main buildings are connected by a glassed-in walkway. Which I would imagine would be really handy in rainy Portland. It made for a nice space to display quilts and bolts of fabrics.

Really enjoyed this shop, they had a wide variety of fabric on offer that was really well-displayed. It's one of those packed-full quilt shops that is still easily navigable and organized. I'll post more later about what I ended up buying there. I resisted buying a Kaffe Fassett glasses case or umbrella (just barely).

Three Yes's

 

I was feeling a bit on a roll with paper piecing after doing the recent Pantone Project blocks, so I rolled right into making some more paper pieced letter blocks for my Y.E.S. coat. Here is the word repeated three times, some more subtly than others.

This one was a little hard because the letters were so much bigger, it was easy to confuse with the background.

So much so that I took to labeling the sections on the paper piecing patterns. It helped me not have to un-sew anything which was nice.

I'm really pleased with how this is looking. Each of the three yes's are quite different and will blend in well enough to not be too in your face. I think these will fit well on the back section of the coat.

The font on this one is very chunky.

When it was time to sew together the four sections of the S, I pinned them together just to check I was doing it the right way round. I had one off, so I was glad that I checked before actually sewing.

The letter going right up to the edge of the block was what really makes this font different from the other two.

Almost Disaster Letters

Here's a little more about the letters for the Remembrance Project. This shows the difference between the color of the card stock and the fabric. 

I followed all the directions to cut pre-fused fabric, but for some reason, it didn't work out. Fabric pre-fused, with the paper still on, fabric side down, on the pink fabric mat (below).

As it cut, the paper layer separated and started getting dragged around, but it kept going. It didn't seem to be a catastrophic thing so I let it keep going. But yikes on bikes, right?!

I was surprised to find that most of the letters survived or were close enough to use. I have a feeling that Steam-a-Seam is not what this is calibrated for, probably one of the thicker ones like Heat n' Bond or something would work. The paper on Steam-a-Seam always comes off very easily instead of being really stuck on like the others.
 

Getting the Words Down on the Surface

I really wanted to make a quilt to enter in the Century of Women's Progress exhibit, but I couldn't decide on one woman to focus on, so I went wide with the subject...very very wide.

I started out by making a rough sketch on my iPad in SketchesPro.

And since I had my new toy out and all ready to go I decided to try and use it to get words on the quilt surface that I wanted. I loaded up the Cricut with a sheet of Lutradur. 

I used Lutradur instead of fusible backed fabric because I was initially thinking of painting the letters.

 The Lutradur cut very well on the machine and mostly came off the mat easily. There was one font that I chose that made some of the letter sections too small and the Lutradur separated into layers.

Here's all the words before I peeled them off. How do you like all those fonts? The Cricut software has quite a lot to choose from which was a nice thing to discover.

My quilt subject is all about the roles that women can have and how they've changed since we got the vote in this country. 

I used Fabri-Tac glue to stick the letters to tulle netting which worked really well.

 I really loved the shadow in this picture so I enhanced it to post on Instagram. And isn't this font killer?

Here's how one of the words looks on the finished quilt. Once I find out whether the quilt is accepted I'll post more about it (sometime next week).

Oh Gerry

I love fonts and font creation and politics and this combines all of the above, a new font called "Gerry" based on maps of torturously gerrymandered political districts.

Perfect.

Be sure and check out the Constitution made truly illegible by the use of this font, now to me that's art.

Word for Word Class

 I was lucky enough to get into Rosalie Dace's three-day "Word For Word" class at the Sisters Quilt Show. I've always enjoyed seeing her quilts at shows like PIQF and was excited to get to learn from her. She turned out to be a very excellent teacher, inspiring, informative and organized.
Our first exercise was to cut out a letter from very nice thick black paper that she brought with her all the way from South Africa. I chose a kind of curvy letter Z, with the cross like my family taught me to do. (boy did I ever get in trouble for that in school!)

Then we were instructed to deconstruct the letter and find an interesting design(s).

 And also to play with the background pieces that weren't part of the letter.

And then we were asked to do a final design incorporating all the pieces. This was up on my design wall. It reminded me quite a lot of the research we did for the Notan class. This was a great warm-up for me, and I was ready to make a quilt out of this design, but nope...there was a lot more to come...

WaterWord

Yesterday I showed you a small detail of this quilt that is on the show postcard for the California Fiber Artists "California Currents" show at the EBMUD gallery, and today here is a picture of the whole thing.  This is my piece called WaterWord.

 And some more detail shots so you can see some of the stamping and writing I did on the quilt surface.  This was all done after the quilting was completed.

 I used a several times over-dyed piece of muslin that had some writing in sharpie which still showed through to the other side a bit, so it had a textured look already along the edge.  I wrote over those showing through markings with several different pens with the phrase
"The Word For The World Is Water".

Here's the artist statement that I wrote that explains the choice of those words:


Artist Statement:

The Word for the World is Water which is written several times on the piece is a take on the Ursula LeGuin short story title "The Word for the World is Forest". It just came to mind as I worked on this piece, I found that I liked the rhythm of the words and how they looked as I wrote them flowing along the edge representing a shoreline. The squares and rectangles represent the human imposed water systems and controls. The natural state of water and the managed state of water both working together to sustain humanity.

This quilt contains hand-dyed muslin, quilting cottons and upholstery weight fabrics.

Finally A Chance To Letterpress

 I forgot to post about the letterpress experience I had at Maker Faire this year.  I had always wanted to try it every time we went but the booth was always mobbed, this time I lucked out.  It was so fun to get to try the machine out, and then they had it all set up so you could make a little book with a simple stab signature binding.  How do you like the awesome mix of fonts on that one little print?
Anyways, it was super fun, and now I see what the big deal is, what a handy little machine a letterpress really is. (puts on the exceedingly long and out-of-hand *someday wants list*).  Thank you San Francisco Center for the Book for having this fun project to do.

 I added to my alphabet stamps collection recently with this lovely set of upper-case cursive.

I tried them out in my newly-made, letter-pressed book.  In case you can't read it, I stamped: Do It Anyways and Art Comes To Those Who Wait.  Not my best stamping job ever (I need to remember to check the corners of stamps to wipe off the ink), but I like the look of the font a whole lot.  Above it you can see the paper I put down to avoid getting ink on my Olfa cutting mat,  after using it for a while, this paper looks super cool with all kinds of stamps and paint all over it.  Yes of course I save it to use in collage and altered books projects.

Thanks Letters

Here are some closeups of the letters from the Thankful Banner from yesterday.