3 Day Marathon Overload

I am toast. Been recuperating from a 3 day marathon class with Sherrill Kahn in Ashland, Oregon this last weekend. Sherrill has boundless energy and spent 90% of the time demoing techniques and answering questions. I was feeling a bit overloaded after the first day but got started on a piece and by the second day I was well along with a second one. That evening I did 'homework' on both pieces to get them ready to be made into final wall hangings or ???. I spent most of yesterday adding embellishments to the first piece (the orange one shown below) which I was fairly satisfied with. The second, black piece did not get so far. But I am ready to do more painting to create fabrics to go with it. It was a long three days but very much worth it as far as learning new techniques. More pictures are on my Flicker photostream here.

Class Update

Beginning of Wall Hanging
Originally uploaded by Jill Lee Jones

Well, I finally got around to taking photos of the things I started in Marcy Tilton's workshop in June. It was an enjoyable drive to her beautiful home in the woods outside of Cave Junction. Marcy and her sister, Nandini, put on a great workshop and even served us a wonderful lunch. It was fun and inspiring, I spent the time making lots of materials to compile into future projects. Above is the beginning of a wall hanging I started. We did lots of painting on fusible web, fabric, discharging, silkscreening, and other techniques. I was so inspired and excited at the prospect of creating my own cloth or using the ideas to embellish clothes or other items. I want to go back and take another class sometime before the weather gets bad here. I highly recommend Marcy's workshops. More photos are on my Flicker photostream here.

Also, I wanted to mention that I've been busy working on some other pieces which I need to photograph and put up here soon. My Bali Wedding Ring won 3rd place in Machine Quilting at the Mt. Shasta Quilt Show!

Bali Wedding Ring

I've finally finished this one and it is ready to be dropped off for a show on Monday. I've spent the last day sewing on a sleeve and a label because I had originally decided that I was just going to use this one as a lap quilt, but a quilt show application came across my desk on Wednesday and I decided to try to squeak in by the deadline. Here's hoping I make it! Sorry for the lousy color on these photos, I'm waiting for my color corrected photo bulbs to arrive. Here is a close up of the quilting...



Tomorrow I am off to Marcy Tilton's for a painting on fusible web class in her ArtBarn.

Textures

A few days ago I took some time to walk around the farm and capture some images of objects hopefully for some inspiration for a new body of work. Although these are not technically textures, I liked the idea of looking closely at some things and seeing them for what they are and how they interacted with light and shadow. Here's a few of my favorites...

February / March Challenge

I thought it would be good to put up this picture of my most recent challenge quilt. I belong to a group called Rogue Art Quilters who take on periodic challenges to use particular fabrics, fibers, and themes and then create a piece that reflects this. This particular one was for a candy-themed challenge to coincide with the Chocolate Festival in Ashland. Sandy Globus, owner of a very nice quilt shop called Fabric of Vision, initiated the challenge by passing around a basket of different candies. Each person was to choose a candy and then create a piece representing that candy. There was a particular Martha Negley brown bow fabric that had to be used and the quilt could not have a traditional binding. My chosen candy was Lifesavers. So I created this quilt. It uses several techniques including paper piecing, fusible applique, hand and machine quilting and trapunto. I enjoyed doing this challenge and am now working on the current one which I'll talk about later. You can see more of the candy quilts while they are hanging at Fabric of Vision until the end of March or online on Karen Bates blog.

In Process

Here is the wedding ring quilt I have been working on this week. It is made completely from batiks I've collected over the years. I've always wanted to make a quilt in this pattern but wasn't sure my piecing was up to snuff to do it. So I finally took a class with Veronica Nurmi and used her easy piecing method. Now if my machine quilting is just up to snuff....

Is It Spring Yet?

Well we have another beautiful day here in the Shasta Valley. We have been busy planning our vegetable garden and working on projects that have waited the whole winter to be done, such as pruning the fruit trees, preparing flower beds, cleaning the pool, etc. It's been nice to be able to get outside and get some things done.

Dave has been working diligently on getting the Jag running so we can take a little vacation to the coast when things warm up a bit more. Of course Spunky is always available to help out in his own special way.

I have been working on quilting a batik wedding ring quilt that I made in a class with Veronica Nurmi last fall. It is going slow as I am really out of practice with my machine quilting. Will try to snap some pics of it later today. I am using Superior Threads Rainbows on the top with their Bottom Line in the bobbin. So far I am really happy with this combination on the Juki. It seems to just flow really nicely.

OK, well I'd better get to work. Have a great day!

Welcome!

Hi everyone and welcome to my blog! I decided that now was a good time to start this up to keep everyone in touch with what is going on here (Napua thinks so too--more lap time). So check back for new posts, or add me to your RSS feed to get notification when I update. (Don't ask me how to do this because I don't know....but I'm going to learn!)