The annual SAQA Benefit online auction kicks off tomorrow at 2pm EDT (USA) This year’s 470 pieces made and donated by members can be seen here Every one of these 470 12″ sq pieces will be on sale for $1000 from 2pm on Friday 10th through the Diamond Days up until 1.00pm EDT Monday 13th. After that, at 2pm that day, the first 1/3 of the unsold quilts will go up for bids starting at $750, with the price falling each day until the end of the week. If my work, #69, is not sold in the Diamond Days, it will be up in Group 3, from Sept.27th -Oct.3rd. At any time during the 3 week auction, any quilt can be bought for $1000, you don’t need to wait for its group to come up.

To find how this all works, and see the FAQs about the process go to this link

You do not need to be a member of SAQA to bid – our collectors include many people who are not makers themselves. Anyone anywhere in the world can bid in real time once you have registered with the Handbid auction platform. Registering does not commit you to bid on anything, but it does mean that if you do see something you want, your bid can go straight in – and it’s first in best dressed on Diamond Days! But also, every day as the price comes down there’s a rush on popular pieces from people who’ve gambled on getting away with waiting until that new price takes effect …

One of my Pinterest collections is titled ‘Holes’, and in contemporary textile art, especially embroidery and mixed media collage, there appear many lace-like effects featuring holes in both organised and highly random patterns.

Back in 2013, I wrote musing on the character of lace – what is the defining characteristic of lace – is it the actual holes themselves, or the material that is punctuated by those holes? After thinking about ‘lace’ for a long time, I’m certain that the patterning of the holes decrees ‘lace’, not the material.

We think of ‘lace’ as a textile made from fabric and thread using a wide variety of needle-crafts like crochet, knitting and needle weaving that produce lace incorporating fabric and threads. Lace effects can be produced in any medium really, with an unlimited variety of techniques. Mum owned a couple of delicate little lacy edged porcelain dishes, and delicate glassware often has lacy edges. But I also think the carving of wood, metal, and drilling into or cutting into any material, or welding even, can produce patterns said to be ‘lace’. For holes to give the effect of ‘lace’, though, I think those holes do need to be relatively close together… but I have more thinking to do on that.

I’ve used a heat tool in several works having nylon organza layers:

While browsing in Pinterest this morning, I came across the art of South Australian artist Giles Bettison. I must confess total ignorance up until now of this amazing artist, but in the world of contemporary art glass of which I’m not well informed, Bettison is the acknowledged master of the traditional Venetian “Murrini” technique, of which Millifiore is the well known floral form. Rods of different coloured glass, sometimes including colourless, are bundled into groups and fused together in extreme heat. Those bundles are then finely sliced, set edge to edge and fused again. I found several demos of Bettison’s process online, but the very best was at www.adriansassoon.com and strongly recommend you spend the 15or 20 minutes watching him work.

These two are typical of his beautiful patterned vessels. On the left, the clear glass centres create a ‘hole’ through which we see into the vase, or out through the sides – note the pattern of holes the light makes on the surface it stands on. The holes all have a coloured edge as if they were buttonhole or satin stitch bound, and then what looks like another type of ‘stitching’ spreading from that border to the edge of the square it’s in…. except that fine, delicate, stripe pattern must have been built up using very thin layers of glass in alternating colours. The one on the right I chose because of the pattern of hand stitching it suggests – boro, sashiko, mending and darning, or what many people today somewhat faddily term slow stitching.

Several years ago I fiddled with the idea of exploring patterns left in the sand by the receding tide, altered some photos, cut and stitched, but maybe I wasn’t crazy with the results or perhaps a health issue intervened – whatever it was, it didn’t seem very exciting and I didn’t pursue it.

But now that I have Mistyfuse bonding web in my life, cutting holes and fusing the resulting lace to a background fabric and adding stitch is a possibility for surface design:

Many of the shapes I love in repeat patterns are rooted in traditional patchwork, along with the the arrangement of variations into grids. They’re big influences in what I often do.

These two pieces of overlaid sheer fabric shapes with machine overstitching in metallic threads are now finished and mounted on 20cm artist canvases, ready for either framing or hanging on the the wall as is…. And yes, they are available for sale – contact me directly.

I keep saying I’ve been doing these ‘while waiting for my large floor standing frame to enable me to hand stitch or quilt larger pieces’, actually I do now have that frame, and it’s great; but I’m not yet ready to start that large piece. I am still fairly absorbed in experimenting with surface textures just now, and as I plan to use paint on the background of the work but the weather’s still a bit cold to paint outside, I’ll continue with my experimental Very Small Pieces series in recent posts, some of which are also on my instagram page https://www.instagram.com/schwabealison/

The following little piece pattern came from sprayed paint, not fused sheer fabric. Both these little pieces reflect my interest in ‘holes’, one of my Pinterest collection themes. Not all those pins are of actual holes; some are a shorthand way of saying ‘this is an interesting possibility for using holes in my work’.

On October 25th 2013, I wrote “I’ve just realized that I’ve had a love of ‘holes’ for some time, and of course they are the essence of ‘lace’ which I see as patterns of holes, though others might see ‘lace’ as patterns of threads.

A while back I wrote that I intended to do some circles in squares, but didn’t show the result. At 3.25 sq.in. there isn’t really the scope for interpretation in stitch that I had in mind, inspired by the painter Jeffrey Allen Price whose work I included in that post, and I will do something larger with room for stitch embellishment.

But interestingly, quite a few people liked it and commented on the private FB page for the challenge. I think I must have missed something, not being sure what the ‘reboot’ refers to, but if it refers to recharging the creative batteries, well, it is definitely showing in what the challenge participants are doing.

Up to this point, most of my posts have been of circular shapes, but there is one of overlaid squares which might appear in a future post, and I feel I will do something with triangles.

I said right at the start that what I was interested in doing in the challenge was explore samples of textures and stitch with view to some new, larger, work. Several people are working on drawing skills, someone’s experimenting with mono printing, someone else with eco prints, and several doing improvisational piecing. A few are using the challenge to finish off some projects. Several people who began with plans to end up with a quilt at the end of it have reached a point where their daily offerings are now showing what they have in mind to achieve in the 100 days.

Several times lately I’ve had comments or questions along the lines of “I will be interested to see this when you put it all together”… I’ve gently explained several times now that these little pieces don’t belong together, that they are samples only, auditioning ideas for new works. I know I am in the minority, as most art quilt makers do very little sample making, even when trying out something very new. It’s a shame, as making samples saves plenty of unpicking.

Every year Studio Art Quilt Associates, SAQA, hold an online auction of 12in. sq. quilted artworks made and donated by artist members to benefit the touring exhibitions program. I’ve participated every year except one, and this year’s Pandemic Pattern 2 is from the series that I began during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At https://www.saqa.com/auction you’ll find images on all works and artists, plus details on how to bid when it starts.

While I was making it back in December 2020, I wrote “Against a red background representing danger, the circular shapes of black leather are held in place with stemmed french knots in luminescent green. Those stitches really pop out, almost pulsate, though the drama isn’t apparent in this pic.“

One of the fun things to do as you browse through this year’s 469 items is to assemble your choice of 8 pieces you’d like to see go together into Dream Collections. There’s absolutely no commitment to buy one, though of course one could anchor itself on your wish list! But it’s fun to see how people react to the same image, and several popular images always turn up in what you’d think were totally different, unrelated topics. You decide a theme, and build your collection around it. For example, my favourite colour is green, so soon I’ll be putting a collection of quilts together in which the dominant colour is green. I may do one on birds, and will certainly try to find a group of 8 on Covid… and something else might come to mind as I look through them, too.