The Price of Peace

Thought Process: When I think of Peace the word seems to morph into "peaceful" and when I think peaceful I think trees, forests, nature and cemeteries. It may sound morbid but let me explain. Cemeteries are quiet places where one can think without much interference. Also my mother and I have always enjoyed going into cemeteries and looking at the names, dates and inscriptions on the tomb stones. We wonder about the people each tombstone represents. Who were they? How did they live? How did they die?

Recently my family and I went to Washington DC. While there we visited Arlington National Cemetery. The Cemetery is 200 acres of grass, trees and white tombstones and although the surroundings are very peaceful, the immediate effect upon entering the cemetery can be anything but a feeling of peace. Despite my facination with cemeteries and wanting to know about each person who lies buried there, I couldn't help but remember that each person is buried there because of our nation's search for Peace. And no matter how you might feel about the subject of war I think you can't help but feel the irony in this. As a result I felt this image would best represent this month's word.

How I made the quilt: I cropped a photo I took at Arlington and then used photoshop to superimpose the word "Peace" into the grass. I printed the photo in reverse and then took the print to a copy shop to be enlarged and color copied by a copier that uses toner. I then used Citrasolv to transfer the image onto a cotton fabric. I enhanced the image using colored pencils and Paintstiks. As I quilted the image with my friend Juliette's really cool Bernina, I did a bit of threadpainting on the trees & grass and then quilted around a number of the tombstones and the word "peace." Next I used a homemade foam stamp, which I learned to make when I read the book Inspired to Quilt, to put leaf images across a piece of silk organza. I placed the organza on top of the piece and quilted more. Lastly I cut the organza off of the main tree, the word "Peace" and the foremost tombstone. The edges are left unfinished.

OK Finally, I was having computer issues. I don't think I'm going to continue with the faces... can't think of anything to do for the next WORD... it seemed to me that doing faces with hats would be a good idea...but maybe not..

angela

Sandstone

Updated photo of Anne's Sandstone piece.

Sandstone-Delicate Arch

Sandstone....what images this word evolks. Southern Utah with all its beauty. Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch, Zions, Bryce, and all the red rock elegance. This quilt is a pattern by Carol Johnson from Nibley, Utah. The top was given to me by Martha Dickey. I decided to finish it by adding the borders, and quilting it. What memories I have from the many trips I took to Arches National Park with my husband and two children. Now in cloth I can perserve one of them.

Kaye Evans

My version of Sandstone comes from a photo I took of Uluru, or Ayer's Rock, on our last trip to Australia. I used curved piecing with freezer paper, ala Caryl Bryer Fallert, and stitched like crazy (ala...me!). Except for the little insert of stripey fabric on the right side of the rock, all other color variation on the rock was done with thread. The only things missing from the photo/quilt are the flies that continually buzzed around our heads, which were protected with nets.

Sandstone

I must say that this 12x12 project has been a real challenge for me. Working "fast" (yes, 2 months is fast for me) and "small" puts me out of my comfort zone. Which is good! I will definitely learn from this experience. I've already learned that I shouldn't care too much about deadlines where art is concerned. Right? Is that a good excuse? And to simplify!!!! I love what Lisa Chin did with the chennile technique. And Leslie's wool roving was beautifully done.

Anne

Leave No (Sand)stone Unturned

Was the back, now is the front.
Was front, now the back.

Like others, I Googled "sandstone" and also looked up some of the formations in a book, found a couple pictures I liked, chose the fabrics and threads, then just messed around with it. I was disappointed with it until I turned it over and looked at the back more carefully. The back actually looked better, I thought, so it became the front. And that also inspired me to call it "Leave No (Sand)stone Unturned."
Nancy

Sandstone in Wool

Looking at pictures on the internet, I came across a very colorful sandstone picture that I tried to emulate with my quilt block. I used wool roving in several colors and hand felted it on a wool background.

Leslie

A glorious Week-end

Having just returned from Arches National Park in Moab two weeks prior to our chosen word it was easy for me to paint a picture of one of the arches there. Acrylic paints were applied to muslin fabric and it was machine quilted with coordinating thread. I straight-stitched several times around the edge for the binding.

Marsha

Kolob Canyon

When we got "the word," I immediately got an image of what I wanted to do and how to do it. I wanted to make stack n slash blocks, or what Sylvia calls EZ Crazy, but decided to sew two fabrics together with curved piecing before I started slashing and rearranging. When I went to my fabric stash to pull fabrics from my orange bin, I found leftover strata from my Beach Party Strips and Curves class that I took from Louisa Smith at Empty Spools last spring. The colors were perfect, so I paired them up with batiks. I had some pictures of what they looked like before I started slashing, but they got lost in the camera or something. I added some deserty green browns for the canyon floor, and a few bits of blue because I love the sosuthern Utah combination of water and desert. The blocks ended up being quite small, so the curved piecing doesn't show up as much as I had envisioned. So I curved the outside edges of the quilt instead. And then added some blooming desert plants.

Many Sandstones

When I first heard the word for this challenge, I thought of Delicate Arch in Moab, and I thought most of us would think the same thing. Also, knowing what beautiful Batiks Anne has done on the subject of sandstone I felt a bit intimidated. I tried to "mix it up" by thinking of crazy things I could do to make Sandstone really different: make layers of sandstone in blue, or make the layers using zippers, or something not natural like a building made out of sandstone but in the end one of the things that kept calling me was petroglyphs. I found this cool petroglyph of Ghanaskidi, the Hump-backed God and really fell in love with the image. The second link is of the actual petroglyph and the first link is of a replica someone made which I translated into this reverse applique.

I really like how this turned out with the curls of the Batik behind the hand dyed fabric but I haven't quilted it yet because after talking with my son another idea kept bugging me. My son told me that sandstone wasn't an image for him, but rather a texture and so I played in my mind with different ideas of how I could create sandstone texture without actually glueing sand to the fabric. I came up with this:

Basically it is the same idea as that used in making faux chenille. I layed a large number of small scraps onto a piece of batting creating about three layers. The scraps were arranged in random directions. I then put a solid piece of fabric on the top and back and stitched lines all over the fabric in a pattern I had seen in many sandstone pictures on the internet. After I stitched, I cut between the stitches and viola! multicolored layers of texture. They are soft layers, so maybe not the rough texture I was looking for tactilly but more visually rough.

Here is a close up of some of the cut through layers.

I really, really liked this idea and decided to try to take it one step further by making another layered sandstone quilt and then "carving" an arch from it and placing it on a sky:

I don't like this quilt as much as I like the plain sandstone because I used a printed batik for the outerlayer instead of a solid. The underlayers don't seem to show through as well, and the dark outerlayer and dark blue background isn't enough of a contrast in value so the whole thing is reading dark to me. If I decide to do it again I'll change up the values. This might be something fun to try in a bigger size!

I can't wait to see what everyone else has come up with!

Comfort-Jer's Bucket

COMFORT-JER AND HIS BUCKET
Kaye Evans-2009
This quilt represents what was going on in my life Jan and Feb of 2009. My son, Jeremy, was remodeling my kitchen, and watching 5 children, while his wife worked because he was caught in that economic lay-off that so many are experiencing at this time. He would come up and work at my house, bring along with him his bucket of tools, which contained screwdrivers, hammers, pliers etc. It was the typical remodeling story, sheetrock dust, sawdust, and stuff everywhere. I attended during that same time a class at Asilomar from Sue Benner, which was fantastic. She teaches collage. When, after a week I returned home, to the unfinished kitchen, my wonderful son and his bucket of tools, I decided to do this collage representative of that period in my life. Jeremy and I have always had a joke about his bucket of tools, every time he does some remodeling for me. Last summer it was the downstairs bathroom. When he leaves it at my house I know he will be back shortly, thus comfort, if he takes it with him it will be several days before he comes back. The top part of the collage represents the disarray in my kitchen, the bottom part is order restored when Jer is there with his bucket of tools. By the way, my kitchen is finished, and Jer did a beautiful job. I will miss Jeremy and his bucket of tools. Let’s see…what is my next project?