Prairie Fire

One unofficial nickname for Illinois is the Prairie State. My older daughter Colleen attended Knox College in Galesburg, and the school’s team is called the Prairie Fire. Collen’s comeback would always be "how cool is that?". Cool indeed. One of the Knox professors, Penny Gold is a quilter, and she has organized the making of a couple fundraising quilt projects, and I have contributed. The last one was this design that uses the Knox Prairie Fire logo as inspiration. My daughter loved the prescribed prairie burns she participated in during her environmental studies; my husband designed the van Gogh-esq swirl. I made 3 blocks in this design in three different color ways for the Knox quilt. And Penny kept all 3 … so I had to make a 4th for this project. Decided to add prairie points because I’ve always wanted to try that out and thought they might complement the fire. It works for me.

Tenacity

I had too many ideas about what to create for this one.

Wanted to keep it simple because I’d been in a bit of a funk and not sewing at all.

Was really just going to do a weed growing out of the driveway.

Maybe just use duct tape for the driveway?

A tenacious cockroach, maybe?

A cockroach surviving a nuclear blast?

Or my daughter surviving – hanging on with life support in intensive care.

Or not hanging on when she fell 100 feet in the first place.

Enough already.

Then we saw the NOVA program where David Pogue at The NY Times says spider silk is the strongest substance around.

There we go.

Spider silk; not rope.

Spider; not cockroach.

I pieced a quasi-spider web from scraps.

Attached a Halloween spider ring on with tenacious old Velcro. Made a duct-tape rock for a tenacious weed to grow out of.

Backed it all with everyone’s favorite tenacious fabric: denim.

Attached sticks so I could attach that fun Halloween spider-webby stuff to. Voila!

Road to Monument Valley

I took this picture of my husband last summer when we were driving into Monument Valley in the early morning. For as many times as we’ve been to canyon country in Utah, I’ve never been to Monument Valley. Of course, I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, either. No matter. I loved Monument Valley more than I imagined. We took 4,000 pictures on that trip. But this is a favorite of mine. When "Road" because our next word, I had no problem deciding what to create. But I’m not big on interpreting photographs with fabric. Especially people. That’s new for me. A real experiment. And the result is just as flat as I expected. I really did a terrible, sloppy job making this quilt. No matter; I’m glad I did it. I did that snippet–net overlay technique for the sage brush, then realized I also needed the netting over the actual road so the morning shadow fabric would be visible. Marsh likes the fact that I used old pumpkin fabric to make the red rock formations. A quilter has to do what she has to do.

Catching Up.....?

I've been trying to play "catch up" after being so far behind in making these little quilts!  Still only halfway there, but here are two that are finished and one almost finished.  First is "green", titled Simply Green, because of the words on one of the fabrics is Simplify.  The back is a fabric with the recycle symbols and a green world.

Next is Tenacity.  This was a difficult word for me because there were just too many ideas and interpretations.  So, I chose that "tenacious leaf" just won't let go, no matter what Mother Nature dishes out.  The background is one of my hand dyes, the branches are twisted fabric strips, and the leaf was free motion stitched with thread.....lots of thread.  What you can't see is what I used as a base to stitch on (besides several layers of Solvy stabilizers).  Kaye had some dried corn silk from last summer that retained its color.  So, I stitched all over the corn silk because I wanted a bit of yellow as well as a more opaque leaf.  I left the strips from the tree branches hanging to represent the roots of the tree.

The next one is my interpretation of the word "road".  After several months of looking at pictures of roads, I saw a photo of a "road runner".  For this one I used water color pencils to blend the sky and add detail to the bird.  I'm still adding stitches to the background, so it is not quite finished, but the end is in sight!

Baseball

Batter Up!

BASEBALL has been the toughest of all the words that I have had to so so far in this 12 x 12 challenge.  When I heard the word, nothing came to mind, so I searched the internet.  Thank goodness for Google, saved yet again.  I  copied the picture, enlarged it, and then picked fabrics for the circles, which are sheer, and the background, which is my hand painted.  I enlarged each of the baseball players, making them appear as shadows of the first player.  Quilting and zig zaging the edges finished this little quilt.

Tenacity

What a GREAT word tenacity is. When I was still in high school my father used the word tenacity all the time when he was talking to me. He told me to persevere and to stick to my commitments, get the job done, and stop procrastinating all the time. Complete the task you start, and follow through because the job won't get any easier if you wait. I have generally followed this advice throughout my adult life. I decided to take the word and break it apart and illustrate each part of the word. Therefore, you have the number 10, in a cart, being pulled by a donkey, or ass, standing in front of the city. I cut the pieces out of wool and used my needle felting machine to adhere each piece to the background. I then machine, as well as hand quilting to complete the piece. Tenacity, "stick-to'a-ness" is what I did.

Slick Rock Thunderstorm

The word ROAD is represented in this little quilt that makes me think of heavy rains over the red rocks of Southern Utah. The lighting flashes and the thunder rolls and the clouds part letting the rain spill across the landscape of slick rock country, leaving a glistening glow on everything the rain touches. Last summer when it was warm and dry, I dyed multiple colors of fusible web. If you have never tried it, do so; it's a blast. I then decided to build a picture out of the painted fusible. It comes off the paper backing easily, and you can tear it into any shape that you desire. I placed it on my hand dyed background and started building layer upon layer until the picture emerged. The more I layered the more fun it was. The only thing you need to remember is to use a teflon pressing sheet to protect your ironing surfaces. When the word ROAD was chosen for November, I decided to make the road going into the desert landscape in my picture. Again, I used fusible and added organza for the road. Machine quilting completes the Slickrock Thunder Storm vista.

Prairie

I had been wanting to try machine embroidery and the prairie dogs seemed as good a chance as any. I got a copyright free picture, traced it onto stabilizer and hit the pedal, literally. Again, as with any new technique, it had its problems but since I could just go over with more thread, my mistakes were covered. It was a lot of fun and helped me get out of my perfection mode.

Kathy

Where the Buffalo Roam

Buffaloes were one of the first things that came to mind when I heard the word "prairie."  I think of the hundreds of thousands of American Bison that used to roam across America's prairie's and how we over hunted them and are just now working to raise the numbers of buffalo across the country.

My quilt is a reversed appliqued buffalo silhouette on a free form pieced prairie.

Gulf Oil Spill

Do you remember those Matinees that we all attended as children on a nice Saturday afternoon? The headlines were boldly placed on the movie screen as they declared the state of our world in a bigger than life manner. This is what I thought of when I heard the word Matinee. The Gulf Oil Spill is bigger than life news, and the pictures of the Pelicans sitting in the vast oil spill is enough to tug at your heart strings. To watch the story unfold every night on the 6 P.M. news made my soul cry. I just could picture those words flashing across the movie screen declaring the state of our world on that fateful day, April 20, 2010. When, are we as a people going to learn that the world is vulnerable and we are stewards of it? It is up to us to care for that which the Lord gave us.

I did a photo transfer and then machine quilted it in grey threads. Using Setacolor paints I highlighted the eye of the Pelican and some on the wings. I hope the solomeness of the picture will speak to our hearts.

In the Likeness of Green

I took a class from Libby Liehman this spring, and discovered the circle atttachment for the Bernina machine. I decided that I would use it to make my "Green" quilt. After piecing the background in different green fabrics, I used multiple green threads to make different size circles.