Members are making and  preparing to submit 10″ x 7″ samples for the SAQA 2017 Trunk Show  (these little pieces are way too small to call  ‘an art quilt’, in my opinion!)  The purpose of the trunk show is to share/spread technical information and inspiration by way of these samples, on the back of which will be quite a bit of information provided by each artist.  Several hundred are expected based on previous trunk shows, and they will be divided into groups of about 40 to tour for 3 years, including being available for hiring out to groups.  After that time some will be selected to add to SAQA’s permanent collection.  They have no set theme, but may be of a any technique used in art quilt making, can explore new ideas including materials, or may also be by a technique or style with which the artist is familiar.   Items in the collection will be in plastic sleeves so people can handle and really look closely at them.   Touring schedules and hiring information will be posted on through www.saqa.com from early next year.

This untitled 10″x 7″sample uses many of the materials and all the techniques of a much larger work entitled ‘Land Marks’  2016,

and it is possible there will be further works in this series.

I’d certainly like my offering to be added to the permanent collection.  This sample is on grey metallic finished leather backed with nylon organza, coated with silver sparkle glue.  Silver mylar backed nylon hand patterned with permanent marker pen was cut into slices arranged in a loose grid format, and sewn on to the leather base using very fine clear nylon thread.  The edge is defined with a single line of silver machine stitching, which, see my previous post, was a bit awkward to do because of the springy nature of the thread, but hey, it was only about 33″ of hand/machine sewing.

I’ve been sewing some silver glitter to leather today, and it took me a while to get going.  I hadn’t used these particular materials and threads together before, and found as I did the little sample I always do, I had real problems with the top silver metallic looping and being fed below to the backside of the work with a crazy result; and that every few stitches if they weren’t looping, there were occasional skipped stitches. Pulling out stitching with leather of course leaves holes, so when you re-do it you need to have the same stitch length to re-use those holes, going slowly until you’re in new territory.

I need to say, too, that my machine here in Montevideo is a very basic domestic Bernina – a great little machine, but there’s absolutely nothing computerised in it, and there probably are newer models that easily handle this kind of thing with the flick of a button or two.

I noticed that every now and then there was a skipped stitch (upper left)  Now I really wanted to use this silver thread and so decided I’d just try this little sewing job of 75cm, I’d take my foot off the pedal altogether and just turn the drive wheel manually. While doing this slow motion thing I I saw the springy thread loop under the needle point and come up round behind the needle so the next up-down movement would make the thread loop and bunch underneath and I realised this was probably causing the thread to skip occasionally.   I finished the line of stitching around the edge of the leather, having the time to keep the several potential trouble spots under supervision.  These are highlighted in the pics below.  I know I could use a much larger needle, like a jeans topstitching needle,  or there’s probably a leather needle I don’t have, but I did not want to make large holes in the leather, so that’s a trade-off I faced and decided to keep the needle as was.

(UL) Skipped stiches; (LL) twists/loops may occur at the feed into the tension discs; (Centre) twists/loops may occur at the top of the overhead arm; and (Right) thread may twist/loop round the back of the needle.

Sometimes I wonder why I do the things I do – and you might, too.  More on the overall little project some other time.

The maker of each of the 12″sq. small art quilts pictured below has donated the piece to the 2016 SAQA Online Auction , and between today and the start of the auction on September 16th, an exciting blog hop will feature in turn each of these pieces with posts from their makers about inspirations and processes used to create the works.  We’re all members of Studio Art Quilts Associates, “a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt through education, exhibitions, professional development, documentation, and publications. SAQA defines an art quilt as “a creative visual work that is layered and stitched or that references this form of stitched layered structure.”  For more go to www.saqa.com

So you can start hopping today with a great post by Linda Robertus creator of ‘Colouring In’, (second from right, middle row, above) with well illustrated detail about her inspiration and how she went about making the piece.  

On wednesday 17th, two days from now, we’ll be able to visit the post by Dale Rollerson  

My own contribution, ‘Mosaic Pathway’  (top row, 2nd from left)  will appear on here on August 29th.

Mosaic design – New Zealand, N.Is. somewhere.

It would come as no surprise to my regular readers that I have always loved segmented designs, though now it occurs to me perhaps you could categorise much patchwork as ‘a segmented design’ anyway.  Scrolling through some old pics looking for this particular pathway one,  I realised my Ebb&Flow quilts certainly are segmented designs too :

So the recent exploration I’ve been doing with mosaic-like designs continues.  With an eye to the closing date for Quilt National entries in about a month’s time;  I have committed to participate in an exciting exhibition in the US next year ; and some time in 2017 will entries open for the next Art Quilt Australia – so over the past 3 months I have accumulated two 90cm x 120cm wall quilts of silver mylar on black, and a third of bits of metallic finished leathers sewn onto black.  

If it’s not finished by monday, at least I’ll have some idea of when will be a sensible time to book my wonderful photographer Eduardo Baldizan to take pics of them.   These three works are the first reasonably large sized works I’ve been able to make since having both shoulder joints replaced over the past couple of years, and I have great hopes for them.