Art In The Redwoods 2016

I am so excited!  Art In The Redwoods is this weekend (Aug 13-14) and in the quilt division of the art exhibit, I won 1st place and 3rd place.  I can hardly believe it!

The first place winner was this Sunbonnet Sue, where she is standing on the bluff top, in a very blustery wind.  It is small, about 14" square, and you can read about it in this previous post.

I also entered my relatively new Poppy Quilt.  It won 3rd place!  I still can't believe it.  You can read about it here and here.

My third entry was this Sunbonnet Sue, where I've depicted a naked Sue jumping into the water, near the sign that says "No nude swimming." 

 

This small quilt didn't win a prize, but it won what is called the "Red Dot Award," which means that it sold.  (A red dot gets put on the identifying label on the wall next to the artwork.)  In fact, both Sunbonnet Sue quilts sold, and that makes me very happy too!

I feel extremely lucky to have won these awards and for selling the two quilts.  I remember many years ago hearing Alex Anderson speak about quilt shows and contests.  She said that sometimes it is just "your turn" to win an award, and other times it is someone else's turn to win.  I guess it was my turn this time.

Lots and Lots of Coasters to Sell

I recently sewed a lot of coasters for my guild to sell.  We had a booth at Art in the Redwoods a few weekends ago, held at the Gualala Arts Center.  I'm not really sure how many I made, but there were quite a few!

I had some San Francisco Giants fabric, so I made some coasters using that.  Notice the nice baseball diamonds that I quilted on them!

When I ran out of the baseball fabric, I simply used orange and black fabric.  These would work for either the Giants or for Halloween!

Even though I am not a fan of the Oakland A's, I thought maybe other people might be, so I made some coasters out of yellow and green fabric, the A's colors.

These coasters would also be nice for fans of John Deere equipment!

Now here are some everyday coasters out of some pretty fabric.  I tried some rather random, straight-stitching quilting designs on these.  They were too small for free-motion quilting.

And here are some Christmas coasters!  Most of these have a Christmas tree quilted onto them.

And some more Christmas coasters.

This last photo shows Halloween and autumn coasters.

I really had a lot of fun sewing these.  They went fast, and it was gratifying to see the stacks grow taller and taller.

Hooray! I Won A Prize!

I'm not sure if you remember this quilt (from here).  I made it in a class at Empty Spools Seminars/Asilomar.  The class was taught by  Denise Oyama Miller and Nancy Ryan.

Last weekend was the annual Art In The Redwoods art fair, and my humble wall hanging won second prize in the Textiles category!  To say that I'm excited is A Lot of understatement.

The art display will be up until August 30, so if you're in the area you should really check it out.  There is a lot of phenomenal art, besides my own!

Abstract Buttons

In a previous post I wrote about a class taught at our guild by Rosalie Dace.  I had started work on a three-piece quilt based loosely on a painting by Wassily Kandinsky.  This is how my pieces looked when finished.  They were three different widths, between about 10.5" and 14" wide.  They were all about 32 inches long.

I worked deep purple curved strips into the black background.  Then I attached the various circles onto the background.  I used quite a few decorative stitches for this.  I free-motion quilted loose, intertwined circles onto the fabric circles.

More crazy circle quilting!

I quilted a few wavy lines up and down the quilts.  Then I wanted to add some more interest, so I did some long hand quilting stitches in wavy lines up and down the pieces.

This is the "rogue" block with the square pieces instead of round!

And again, the finished product.  I learned a better technique for adding a faced binding than I had used before.  I'd never sought out a way to do this, and just added two facing strips on each side, sewed them down, then added two facing strips on the top and bottom.  But this method is much better.  It gives a mitered corner finish on the backside.  You can find the tutorial on the Occasional Piece blog.  Elizabeth, the writer of this blog, is a talented quilter and a really good blogger, too. 

I entered Abstract Buttons in Art in the Redwoods, an annual art show at Gualala Arts Center in Gualala, California.  I won the "Red Dot Award," which means I had a red dot on the entry ticket, indicating someone bought my quilt!  So that was very rewarding.

Art In The Redwoods 2013

Hi again!

I'm really excited because my quilt, "Nature Redesigns Highway One," won second place in the quilting division at Art In The Redwoods this month.  Happy hardly begins to describe my feelings!

I wasn't there at the opening and the judging, but I'm told there were a lot of comments from gallery visitors.  Almost everyone recognized this patch of the highway, which lies just north of our community of Gualala, California.

I blogged about this last year when I put the quilted wall hanging into our guild's challenge show.  Here is the original photo from which I designed the pattern.

And here are a few close-ups of the quilt.

Part of the tree section, where I folded fabric
before fusing it to create the wrinkles.

Tiny snipped grass area.

Flowers were added to the side of the road with my
Bernina felting attachment.

Sky area showing swirly quilting and a felted cloud.

The Art In The Redwoods exhibit will be up till September 1st at the Gualala Arts Center, if you can make it there.

Art in the Redwoods 2011

I'm afraid I'm very behind with my blog posts. Art in the Redwoods happened in August, and I told you that my quilt earned 2nd place here. Now I want to finally show you another beautiful quilt that won the first place ribbon.

First place was won by Jo Dillon, a quilt she called "Turkish Delight." My poor photo doesn't do it justice. But you can see the intricate piecing and beautiful shading she used. Jo makes really incredible quilts.

And, once again, my quilt, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which won second place. SisterStitches quilted this great big quilt for me.

Shameless Bragging

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

I entered this quilt into Art In The Redwoods, an art festival held in Gualala, California every August. And I just found out that it won second prize in the quilting category!!! Hooray!

Do you remember this quilt? I blogged about it here. I designed and sewed it and SisterStitches did the awesome machine quilting on it. It was for my guild's challenge show last May.

I know that a great deal of this quilt's beauty comes from SisterStitches's quilting, so I am very proud to share the award with her.

More details later when I come back down from my cloud, and find out more about the other winners.

Art In The Redwoods 2010

I've been away on vacation for a while (hence my lack of postings--more on that later), and I just found out yesterday that a quilt of mine won 2nd place in the Textiles division of Art In The Redwoods. I am so excited about that! Art In The Redwoods is an annual art show held at Gualala Arts Center in Gualala, California. The festival lasts for one weekend, and the art show is up for about a month. It is great fun to attend this festival, and great fun to take part in it. People from all around submit their art to the show.

I entered my Sonoma Coastline landscape piece this year. I decided to have it matted and framed, as my teacher had recommended, so I entered it under Textiles, rather than Quilts. I can't believe it won a prize. I'm just thrilled!

I only got the piece back from the framer just in time to turn it in for the art show, so I don't have a photo of it in its frame; here is a photo of the piece, though.