Unseamly Collage and Next Meeting April 1

The next meeting of Unseamly in Boulder is April 1 at 12 noon at Sharon's home. Sharon is providing pizza, Cynthia is bringing hot wings, others can bring whatever else they want.

We are planning to talk about our show at Presbyterian Manor and the artists night at BOMA, have show and tell, have lunch and the usual....and do some photo transfers of our Unseamly photos! Some of us are going to do individual quilts or collages with the various photos. Bring your photos to scan or on CD or email to Cynthia to put on a combined CD. It might be fun to have the kiddie photos as well as photos of us as young women and recent photos.

We will have both an Ink-Jet printer and a Pigment-ink printer to play with.

Bring Fabric to print the photos you want.

• The Ink-Jet printer requires pre-treated fabric like Printed Treasures (or check out this cool website to order a wide variety of fabrics pre-treated for printing http://www.colortextiles.com/products.html ) or Bubble Jet treated fabric with a paper backing.
• The Pigment-ink printer use untreated fabric with a paper backing. The backing and fabric should be cut exactly or a smidge smaller than 8.5 x 11. The backing can be freezer paper, whole sheet labels, or Steam A Seam 2. Best results are usually with tightly woven white or light colored prewashed cotton.
• Here's an article for more info http://www.gloriahansen.com/inkjet.html

If you are interested in collaging your photos along with other fabrics, motifs and images, here's an couple examples from Cynthia using this cool book called The Art of Fabric Collage by Rosemary Eichorn http://www.sewjourn.com/navset.htm We'll have the book at the meeting.

Supplies for Collage:

Quilt sandwich (backing, batting and top background fabric) in the size you want to work with

Motifs cut from commercial fabric or photo transferred scans from magazines images & photos

Scraps of fabrics to layer on the background and tuck in between the motifs and images

Scissors and pins

Thread, hand needle and/or fabric glue stick to baste scraps, motifs and images onto the quilt sandwich in a pleasing arrangement

Sewing machine to quilt it all together (we won't have time to do this at the meeting)

Changing Perspectives

This exhibit organized by the Fiber Arts Connection in California will be showing at several venues. You'll recognize my "Deconstructed" piece in the show. There are lots of great pieces in this non-juried show and they did a really nice job on the catalog.

The online catalog is available to view or print at http://www.fiberartsconnsocal.org/exhibitions.htm

Cynthia

Primedia Exhibit V - Nicole Yardley

“Shona Sculptures” by Nicole currently at Primedia Gallery in Golden, CO until March 31, 2006. Pictures on the three quilted panels were taken at the Denver Botanic Gardens during its 2004 “Chapungu. Custom and Legend; A Culture in Stone” exhibit. “The sculptures in this exhibition tell stories, record history, observe everyday moments, teach lessons, bear witness, honor, mourn and celebrate.” There were over 80 sculptures in the exhibit and “. . . the sculptures are the work of 35 artists – three generations of Shona Sculptors from Zimbabwe who have hand-chiseled, carved and sanded monolithic pieces of stone into works of art that are at once powerful and poetic.”

Photography, original quilt design, fabrication and quilting done by Nicole Yardley.
Descriptions of sculptures from GUIDE TO THE EXHIBITION, Denver Botanic Gardens.
Photo of quilt by David Yardley.

Primedia Exhibit I - Cynthia Morgan

Quilts in the Primedia "The Language of Color and Design" exhibit until March 31, 2006.



"Serpentine" uses a variation of the drunkard's path block in a complementary color scheme of blue-green and red-orange. Size is approximately 50" x 50".

"Cosmos" is a piece designed to show depth and relies on value contrasts to indicate light source and shadows and create the illusion of depth. Size is approximately 40" x 40"

Primedia Exhibit IV - Sharon Diehl

Quilts by Sharon Diehl currently in "The Language of Color and Design" exhibit at Primedia until March 31, 2006.

Primedia Exhibit III - Martha Gimenez

Quilt by Martha Gimenez currently in "The Language of Color and Design" exhibit at Primedia until March 31, 2006.

Primedia Exhibit II - Denny Webster

Quilts by Denny Webster currently in "The Language of Color and Design" exhibit in the Primedia Gallery until March 31, 2006.

"Unseamly in Boulder" - Primedia Exhibit

Primedia's Gallery in Golden, CO currently has an exhibition titled "The Language of Color and Design" which features quilts created by Heather Thomas and her students, exploring the interaction of colors. The quilts shown on Primedia I - V postings are those which were created by members of "Unseamly in Boulder" - Cynthia Morgan, Denny Webster, Martha Gimenez, Sharon Diehl and Nicole Yardley. (See Primedia Exhibit I thru V.) The exhibit continues until March 31, 2006.

Nic's "Shona Spirit Sculptures" at RQM show

This is my "Shona Spirit Sculptures" quilt which was accepted into the "Spiritual Expressions in Fiber" exhibition at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, CO. The show runs March 28 - June 3, 2006 - opening reception April 1, 2006, 4-6 pm. The photo transfers on the quilt were made from photos I took at the Denver Botanic Gardens in August of 2004, during the "Chapungu. Custom and legend; A culture in Stone" exhibit. "The sculptures in this exhibition tell stories, record history, observe everyday moments, teach lessons, bear witness, honor, mourn and celebrate." The sculptures were hand-chiseled, carved and sanded pieces of stone by sculptors from Zimbabwe. This piece is the second in a series. (Quotations from the Guide To The Exhibition, Denver Botanic Gardens.)

Pennie's quilt for the Florida Museum of Natural History

Well, my quilt about springtime in Gainesville, Florida was accepted into the "Quilting Natural Florida" show. It's the first quilt I submitted to a show. I lived in Gainesville for ten years while I was in graduate school at the University of Florida. My favorite time of year was springtime, when the azaleas and the dogwood are in bloom. The whole town is pink and white.

The show will be from June through August, 2006. Maybe I'll have to go back to Gainesville to see my quilt!

Posterized Image example

Supply List for "Faces"

Here's what you need for the Faces session (Saturday, March 18th 9:30 am at Cynthia's home):

Photo/Image to work from.

If you have photoshop, scan in the photo/image, and open it in photoshop. On the menu bar, select Image, Adjustments, Posterize. Play with the Level choices...I find 4 is about right. You're looking for definition between shadows and highlights, but not so many levels of definition that it would be hard to construct. For this project you want only want 3-6 different fabrics for the face. If you don't have photoshop or get stuck, you can email me the picture or just bring it with you for our session. See example of posterized photo above.

Once you have the photo posterized, crop it if needed. Select print preview and check the box scale to Fit Media. That gives full page size. If you like that size, click Print. If you want larger, you'll need to click OK and segment the photo to print multiple pages you can tape together. I think there is a trick to this, but I don't know it! The only way I know is to crop 1/4 of the photo, print that, then undo the crop, crop the next section, print that, undo, etc.

Other Supplies:

1-2 packages of Seam-a-Seam Lite 2 or 1-2 yards if you find it that way

Fabrics: Best to use prewashed cottons. Make sure the fabrics have some value contrast to use for the shadows and highlights
3-6 fabrics for skin (for the Sudanese faces, I think colors like maroon, blue, purple, and browns would work)
1-2 fabrics for hair
various fabrics for clothing
Also, if you have any scraps of leftover fused fabrics from other projects, bring them.
Background fabric: a fat quarter size will make a nice size for this project. Something lighter so it will contrast with the face and clothes. Also lighter is good if you want to trace the face onto it to make it easier to position the pieces.

Freezer paper
Tracing paper
masking tape
Pencil and eraser
Fine line sharpie/marker
Paper scissors
Fabric scissors
Iron

Heather Smiles

On January 29th, we presented our group quilt to Heather Thomas along with our get well wishes. She loved it!

Unseamly in Boulder

This blog is for the quilting group, Unseamly in Boulder which consists of Betty, Cynthia, Denny, Martha, Nicole, Pennie and Sharon. This is a team blog, so all members can post writing and photos. Let's show our works in progress, talk about activities and goals and generally support each other in our creative pursuits.