Finishing up more quilts for my upcoming show

Good Evening All,

I can't believe it... I've finished 7 quilts in the last two weeks. I had 8 "blanks" sculpted and ready for painting and quilting and I managed to get 7 of the eight finished. I've got my first solo show coming up and I have to be ready to hang on Tuesday - that's just two days from now. I will need up to 30 pieces to fill both of the large rooms at The Lobby which is the restaurant where the show will hang from Aug 16 - Oct 18. It's not that I've waited till the last minute to get these done - this was just the first available minute!

In the first photo are four sculpted pieces with the first coat of paint which I always paint with just one color.

In the second photo are two of the pieces with all of the painting complete.

In the last photo you can see me painting the second coat on one of the pieces. I started with black then added bright colors. I topped those with silver and pewter then with shades of the original bright colors and finally finished with fine white lines. When I finish with this piece I'll load up a photo for you to see.

Hope you all had a great weekend!
Till next time,
Heather

Good Morning All,
Lest you think I've been slacking off..........here are some of my new hand dyed fabrics. My assistant, Judy and I have been dyeing like crazy as we get ourselves prepared to hit the national show/teaching circuit. Because I don't want to be "just another hand dyer", I've been coming up with ways to make our hand dyes unique. I'm using several Shibori techniques along with color mixing my way. We get all of this glorious color using just 4 dyes; black, yellow, red and blue! I'm having lots of fun and learning new stuff along the way - just what life is all about.

I will be opening my own dye studio sometime in October. The space is a subleased area of a new teaching gallery that will be attached to the Golden Quilt Co. in Golden CO. I'm so excited to have dedicated space to dye and paint fabric in. My assistant's happy that we won't have to continue doing it in her kitchen too.

Once we get the space up and running, all of our painted and dyed fabric will have a home base from which to sell it locally. We will house all of the product there between shows and Tamara the lovely owner/operator of the teaching studio will be there to sell it to any takers.

I just love it when things work out. I cast my net in to so many waters. Sometimes it comes out tangled and empty, other times it's loaded with a full bounty. Ain't life good!

Till next time,
Heather

New Work

Good Morning All,
A Friend of mine and faithful blog follower, Christ Irell, just sent me an email and link to her blog, http://happyartgurl.blogspot.com, so I spent some time reading about her current artistic forays and got to see a video of The Artist Creed. It was time well spent, you should check her out.
I've been busy trying to get ready for my first solo art show - and it's a big un'. I need up to 40 pieces to fill the space and have been rapidly trying to get some new work done. The show will be called "Sculptural Quilts & other colorful stories". It will hand at The Lobby which is a downtown restaurant on the corner of 21st and Arapahoe streets. It goes up on the 16th of Aug and hangs for two months. The opening reception is Tuesday, Sept 6th, from 4-7.
Anyway, the top photo above shows one of the new pieces prior to quilting. The painted, sculpted piece is sitting on top of two layers of silk, two layers of batting and a backing fabric. The second photo shows it with the quilting done and with a frayed binding added. I don't usually make the quilting in these pieces so "frilly", but I really enjoyed doing this one and I like the way it looks. If you click on the photos you can see them larger. I combined several different stitch outs to get this fancy design.
I'll show you some more pieces soon,
Till next time,
Heather