Whisper Project #2: a textile exhibition

A few days ago I was delighted to attend the opening of a textile exhibition in Ingersoll, a small town near me. This was the opening of the Whisper Project #2, a project of the Fergus-Guelph Pod of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates), which I belong to. I don't get time to participate in a lot of activities with the group, but this is the second time I've made a piece for this project. 

It's really fun -- it works like the old fashioned game of telephone: the first person gets a photo and creates a 12x12 piece based on the photo, then passes a pic of only their piece (not the original) to the next person in line, and so on, until the end of the line (usually 5 to a group). It can result in some pretty neat artworks! 

This time I was smack dab in the middle of a group, and really enjoyed working from my inspiration piece, which was beautiful. I was able to see the whole show hung, 7 groups of five this time, and it was great. 

My piece is called "Before the Coffee Gets Cold", inspired by the Japanese novel of the same name, and I was so pleased to see that it was on the promotional card for this show. What an honour! 

This was great fun, and the show will be moving around to various locales over the year, so I may get another chance to visit it again. It's nice to have a deadline to help you finish something :) 

Mini quilt for a conference auction

Last year when I went to the SAQA Conference in my local area, I made a small quilt for the traditional conference auction. The Spotlight Auction features 6x8 textile art pieces which are auctioned off to benefit the organization. It's quite fun to see all the variations on a small artwork that show up during this display.

This year's conference is a virtual one, but the auction is still happening - it will just be 100% online. I decided I had time to make a small piece before the deadline. I started it last week but it's taken me over a week to finish, as I just couldn't decide on the design. I knew I wanted a labyrinth motif, but I started with an embroidered idea -- nope, didn't work -- then cut shapes out of two different fabrics, neither of which was just right. I finally found the right fabric, applied the motif, had a fusible glue accident that took an evening to fix, then had to decide what stitching to add, and found it needed a little something to finish it up. I have a pile of plastic florets that come off of sewing pins that wear out (yes, I save everything) and found that three white ones worked nicely as stars. 

It's finally finished! I'm calling it Night Walk, and it will be making its way to the SAQA auction shortly. It's nice to have a different kind of sewing challenge sometimes, to give you another sewing experience. I hope someone will end up liking this small piece enough to bid for it. I certainly enjoyed seeing it come together. 

Stepping Stones: an art quilt

One of my other sewing hobbies is making art quilts, although I really am a beginner in this area. However, I mentioned last month that I'd started a little 12x12 quilt based on the materials I picked up at the SAQA Conference in Toronto. 

And I've finished it! Finished and hung within a month, it's a record for me ;) I wanted to get this done to hang it up in the staff art exhibit at my library, which I've called The Creative Library. I manage the art program so when there was a gap in the schedule I knew it would the perfect time to highlight the many creative coworkers that I have. There are photographs, digital collages, old-school collage, paintings, cross-stitch, and my textile pieces - so far! 

I am really pleased with this little piece, which I'm calling Stepping Stones. It was made with fabric picked up at the Community Stitch table at the Pathways to Possibilities conference, and it looks rather stepping stone-like. Also it's another stepping stone in my learning journey. I put the fabrics together fairly quickly, and added some embellishment, but I was a bit stuck on how to finish it. After looking up varied techniques, I decided to create a binding with butted ends (I can't get the hang of neat mitreing). I used this tutorial almost exactly. I think that it worked very well, and would definitely use this style of binding again on a small quilt.

I used my own fabric for the binding and the backing, but everything else was from the community table.

Backing with a split sleeve and a little hook 
to hang it as well (a pop tab)

 I really enjoyed how this worked out, and it's now up on the wall to share with my own community! And to balance it all out, I hung one of my older small pieces above it. Nice to have them out for viewing.