Walker Zanger displays Afrigraphica(s)

Pat McIntosh is the manager of the Walker Zanger tile and stone showroom at the San Francisco Design Center. She enthusiastically welcomed my tall, thin textile panels to her showroom during Fall into Fabrics 2009. In fact, she installed them prominently on the front doors, inviting the designers and their clients into the showroom. Check out her blog on my list ("You are invited to...") to see her sublime photography and check out her showroom to see her handsome product displays. She is an artist, a lovely person, and an ace for all matters of stone and tile. Thank you, Pat.

Ocean of Wisdom

The Mongolian name for Dalai Lama, Ocean of Wisdom, draws on the Water symbolism of Feng Shui. Inspired by the hand-painted silk fabric of swimming koi, each coordinating fabric conveys its own meditation on the theme. My friend Yasmin owns this quilt. She even painted her walls to match the art! As a Feng Shui Consultant, she knows what to do. There is a Thai ikat-weave silk in the quilt (lower right corner). She pulled that color to paint her kitchen aubergine and it's fabulous!

"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."

Dalai Lama

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.

Dalai Lama

Tom must be a Buddhist. He always tries to help and steps very lightly.

Afrigraphica I & II

This pair of bright banners was a geometric play of colors and textures, framed in black and dotted with cowrie shells. I have done these designs as a mockingbird spews new songs; they just keep tumbling out and the patterns can run for miles, ever changing and combining, never repeating.

This time, I tried to conceive contemporary African color combinations.

Ears pinned back in full attack mode, Tom bites off the enemy cowrie shell.

Afrigraphica I & II will hang in the Walker Zanger Showroom at 101 Henry Adams St. #412 during the month of November, as the San Francisco Design Center highlights TEXTILES. 10% of the proceeds for the sale of 36 displayed art quilts will be donated to the Textile Arts Foundation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Pumpkin Patch-Work

It's Half Moon Bay, after all. I had to have something pumpkin in my show, but determined it must have purple and blue to make it work. (I can't stand orange and black.) This was a cheerful quilt to make, and I'm delighted that it is gracing the home of one of my client/friends, Diane Prosser, in her Pumpkin Art Collection.

It must be an instinct.

He always knows just where to settle.

Redhead

Redhead was the sleeper of the Bamboo Hair Salon Art Quilt Show for Winifred's Threads. The patrons of the salon liked looking at her while they were getting their hair colored (often red) and styled. She apparently was given names by the stylists: "Jessica" by one; "Roxie" by another. People walked right up to her and examined the patent leather open-toed shoes, red button toenails, her (real) false eyelashes, tumbling red locks, and her strawberry-covered cleavage. This inspires yet another future collection of art quilts: Dames.

My fantasy was that some guy would discover this quilt and HAVE to have it as a gift for his redheaded babe. Know anyone?

Turn, Turn, Turn

The Byrds recorded Pete Seeger's song from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. Someday I will make a quilt collection inspired by my favorite songs of the Sixties.

My quilt Turn, Turn, Turn renders each of the four seasons as a California landscape.

Tom looks especially good on "Winter."

Biting off the beads again...

Iowa Corn

It's only 11" by 11" but it holds my whole heart. This is my farm. It floods me with memories of my dad who loved to drive those Iowa roads and look at crops. It brings back thunderstorms on hot, humid nights, and lights in farmhouses from 35,000 feet. My cornfield has black Iowa soil. It's earnest and generous; it informs my wholesome rootstock. That soil makes me breathe deeply, just thinking about it.

Tom went to visit last year. He LOVES Iowa. He also loves to bite off those gold bugle beads, each one an ear of Iowa gold.

Mobile Homes

As an interior designer, I find I'm drawn to the HOUSE motif, usually a stylized square body with a triangle roof.  I picture an entire collection of house designs into art quilts some day. My riffing turned to three dimensions: what about 3-dimensional quilted houses? And then it leaped to movement. What about QUILT as HOUSE as MOBILE? A-ha! Mobile homes.

On reflection, it would have been good to talk with someone about the construction. I just set about the old-fashioned way, with balsa wood glue frames, fishing line and dowel crossbars. What a fun excuse to go to the hardware store, looking for solutions.

5 Mobile Homes:

Home Sweet Home - Cherries & Dots -- Too Cute
Love Pad - Peter Max and Yin & Yang
Animal House - Cats & Dogs & Fish, Oh My!
Fixer-Upper - Before and After Half & Half
Eco-Friendly House - Solar & Recyling Bins

Quilt as Apron. Apron as Quilt.

It doesn't have to go on a bed or hang on the wall. It can get put to use as functional art.

 

  

The details on these aprons can be downright silly, as we discovered at the Quilting Bee. Funny apron ideas had us all giggling as the embellishments got wilder. To be continued....

Here's another addition to the apron series:

 

Tom has a special fondness for sashimi.

 

And the seasons, they go round and round....

Circles on circles on squares was much more labor-intensive than I originally planned, all the while humming the song Circle Game. My friend Carol Forster helped sew (by hand) little running stitches around the outside edge of 40 circles. Then I pulled a thread of each circle to cinch in the outside edge, turn it under, and stitch it flat. Circle Game. I finally stopped, went to my computer, and looked up the lyrics so I could sing all the words with the melody: http://www.lyrics.com/lyrics/joni-mitchell/circle-game.htmlme.html Then I had to review all the Joni Mitchell songs on the album Ladies of the Canyon. This took me on a trip down Memory Lane with more and more songs, each one manifesting in a visual image of an art quilt. Now to take them out of my head and translate them into fabric compositions. Joni Mitchell has recently built herself a home in British Columbia, probably filled wall-to-wall with her own artwork (paintings.) Joni, if you hear me, I have Circle Game for you....

Tom wasn't around in those days, but he would have enjoyed seeing painted ponies going up and down.

Quilting Bee circa 2008

After designing quilts on paper for two months, it was finally time to put scissors to fabric!






With the Mountain Aerie home available for the long Thanksgiving weekend, I packed up my machine and fabrics and set up shop on that 8-ft dining table overlooking a redwood forest.



I put out the call to a few friends and they showed up to pour wine, serve tea, use the sewing machine, and entertain with hilarious stories and girltalk. It was a Quilting Bee, circa 2008.

Surprise of the weekend: there is glee in sewing a smile on the face of a cartoon cat and watching an expression emerge...

Farmer's Market

This is where it started. We completed this kitchen remodel using Amazon Verde Fire granite, custom cabinetry inspired by both antique red lacquer tansu and natural cherry lumber from the Leopold Preserve in Wisconsin, a custom light fixture, two family chopping blocks, and those many personal tweakings that make a cook's kitchen highly personal and just right.

And then came the question, "What goes on THAT wall?" I was reminded of an Oakland Art Museum exhibition commissioned in 1998, which paired women chefs and quilt artists, producing 50 varied, extraordinary art quilts. We looked at the museum's monograph of the show, selected our favorites, and were about to contact the artists, when I admitted my secret longing.....I wanted to make it. After all, I knew the homeowner was the Beet Queen, I knew that she got teary at the beautiful bounty of tomatoes at the Palo Alto farmer's market, I knew that she had been making Thanksgiving dinners since she was eleven. And I knew that her husband plumbed and wired that kitchen to code, that he ordered up the solar panels and music system speakers, and finally, that he grilled those beautiful vegetables outside. Yes, I had to make this quilt! They said, "We'd LOVE that, but didn't want to ask...."

And so, this wall hanging is a fantasy, a crazy salad of dancing vegetables, all of dupioni silks, beads, and embellishments. It is a combination of the homeowner's silk fabrics from her India travels, deer antler buttons she carved as a teenager in Minnesota, and pleated silk fabrics from my collection that picked up the kitchen color scheme of a redwood forest.

Oh! And this all took place before I was a pet owner. The world looks different now, and this is one quilt that didn't require rolling with the lint remover before delivery.....

Moon Town Schmatts

Half Moon Bay is home of the Moon Town Schmatts, a bassoon trio, and not your ordinary bassoon trio: favorite hits of the the 40s, 50s and 60s, rendered for bassoon. Contra-bassoonist Mia Gates and I were featured on an HGTV segment Crayons and Cats, which showed her colorful home packed with design ideas in, yes, crayon colors and cat paw motif. This prompted the red bassoon to serve as rod for her wall hanging. Each of the nine cats has its special personality and name, surrounded by the text "Every life should have nine cats." Shown here at Bamboo Hair Salon and later to be displayed in Mia's home against some crayon wall color, yet to be determined. Electric blue?? Cheddar cheese yellow?

Designing and Stitching Art Quilts

When Julie Powell decided to blog about cooking, she cooked to blog and blogged to cook. Which came first?

I have quilted without a blog, but never without a cat. In fact, I don't know how to make a quilt without a cat pawing at the threads, beads, tape measures and other paraphernalia spread out as I work. I watch my thimble get batted across the table till it tumbles on the floor and rolls away. Tom's favorite pastime is toppling things. And reclining on the ironing board to survey the world.

Feel free to add a thread.....