Lavender Diamonds

 

"Lavender Diamonds," 68" x 68", made by Pam Geisel in 2014

“Lavender Diamonds” is a traditional “Broken Star” (a version of a “Lone Star”) but created in a non-traditional way, and cropped differently.

Instead of being pieced, it is fused with hand-dyed fabric. Each of the 560 diamonds is made up of 6 to 8 pieces of similarly colored fabric. By the end, every time I closed my eyes I saw diamond shapes.

There’s a “swoosh” that goes across the middle where the same color family is used but the pieces are darker and is outlined by couched black thread. Where the swoosh goes through the negative space there are fused pieces of gray, black, dark green, and dark blue fabrics.

The black negative spaces have thin strips of black fabric fused in them and they are framed by the same maroon fabric that I used as the inner border.

My original idea for the quilting was to quilt in a spiral, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sew down enough of the pieces, since even though they were fused, they weren’t very good about staying put, especially when I had to fold and roll the quilt in order to quilt it. My second idea was some sort of fractured pattern, but I had the same concern. The night before I was going to start, just as I was falling asleep, I thought I could do quilting lines that were 1/4" apart and echo the design element in the center of the quilt (where the colors are darker). By the end of this time, every time I closed my eyes I saw quilting lines 1/4" apart.

Edited to add this quilt won "Honorable Mention" in the Large Quilts - Home Machine Quilted category at the American Quilter's Society show at the Lancaster QuiltWeek in March 2015. The list of winners can be seen here.

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Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour: meet my guest artists

That's me in the center when the video crew stopped by during last year's event.

The Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour is this coming weekend, Sat., Oct. 18 and Sun. Oct. 19, from 10 am-6 pm both days. This is my seventh year participating as a host, and this year I have three guest artists. We have 25 artists at seven locations with one new host artists and 11 new guest artists.

Courtney DeYoung incorporates drawing, painting and sculpture in her jewelry design. She enjoys using clay to create a surface and design that works well for delicate detail. The images are often inspired by flowers and creatures. After firing, a color pallet is selected and she paints a design using a a thin layering technique to create a vibrant finish. Courtney lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. 

Kimberly Rorick creates figurative sculptural art depicting stylized features and expression of the human form, predominately female. She works in porcelain clay, underglaze, and glazes. Each piece is fired multiple times in an electric kiln. Her figures are likely to be adorned with fish, birds, cats, head-
dresses, hats or ‘hair’ made in either a stylized or a realistic manner. Kimberly lives and works in Ossian, Indiana.

Deborah Dixon uses stenciled shapes, printing inks, drawing techniques, and silk screens to create her textured and layered abstract prints. Deborah was on the tour many years ago and has recently moved back to Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she lives and creates. 

The tour is a driving tour. Visit the Yellow Springs Artist Studio Tour website for more information about the other hosts and guest artists and to download a tour map. Maps can also be picked up at the Winds Cafe, Young's Dairy, the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce, and at the artists studios the days of the tour. All studios will have red balloons and signs. 

Heirloom Bouquet

"Heirloom Bouquet," 30" x 13.5", made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

"Heirloom Bouquet" was machine pieced and quilted and then hand embellished. The quilt has a knife-edge finish.

It was the hand-painted vintage crochet piece that was the inspiration for this piece. All of the other fabrics, yarn, and beads were selected based on how well they complemented it. It is hand-sewn to the pieced background and then was hand beaded with gold beads in the center of the flowers.

A piece of red-orange variegated yarn was then hand attached around the piece to help set it off from the background.

The fabric with the white spots on it is covered with tulle which was added when the background was pieced. The red-orange variegated yarn was couched down by machine.

This piece of rainbow-colored upholstery fabric is darker on the left side. I hand-beaded corresponding beads where the darker part meets the lighter part.

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Waterliles Fabric Mosaic

"Waterliles," 10" x 10", made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

The colors in this fabric mosaic were inspired by the color's in Monet's Waterliles paintings, only instead of painting, I used small pieces of fabric arranged on a backing fabric and then covered with netting and stitched down. Because it is three or more layers held together with stitches, it is technically a quilt.

This mosaic is 5" x 7" and is matted and framed in a black wood frame that is 10" x 10".

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Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty

"Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty," 13.25 x 41, made by Pam Geisel, Oct. 2014

Has it really been seven months since I posted about a new quilt? The good news is that I has several new ones to share over the next few weeks. First up is "Another Fragment of the Frontier of Beauty."

The title is a quote by Albert Einstein from a wonderful story titled "The Night I Met Einstein" by Jerome Weidman, which I first read in Reader's Digest but you can read by following the link.

I actually started this piece back in June, doing the machine piecing and design work but saving the hand beading for when I needed a project to work on away from the studio. There was a lot of auditioning fabrics until I found the solid green pieces that I used to complement the focal fabrics. The long vertical piece that runs through the middle is one piece of hand dyed fabric that starts with a gold tone that blends into a blue color and hangs below the bottom of the quilt.

One of the focal fabrics has the pinkish abstract football shapes had pink beads hand sewn on them, making some look like fish. Here you can see some of the minimal vertical quilting that appears on the upper green pieces but doesn't go all the way to the edge of the fabric and instead stops at different points and has green seed beads where they stop.

The other focal fabric features a batik sun on the left and a maze of sorts on the right. There are small, clear seed beads in the maze and at the end of the sun's rays, with a beaded face in the middle of the sun.

There is a lime green sheer on the lower right with some coins that came off of a hip scarf used as part of a belly dance costume.

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Art on the Commons in Kettering, Sunday, Aug. 10

Left, clockwise: Pam Geisel (fibers), Lincoln Park Civic Commons, Paula Britton (jewelry), JBird Cremeans (graphic design), raku firing

Recognize the photo on the left? It's my art quilt "Sunflowers at Whitehall Farm" and it must have caught the eye of someone on the Rosewood Arts Centre's staff because they've used it several times to promote their event Art on the Commons. The image above, along with the other artists, was used in the e-mail blast about the event, it appeared in the Dayton Daily New's article about the event in the Aug. 3, 2014 issue, and it was used when I was one of the featured artists on the Rosewood Arts Centre's Facebook page. 

Too bad that particular quilt is in the "Wild Lands, Wild Life" art quilt exhibit at Aullwood Audubon Center through Aug. 24. Luckily I have plenty of note cards of "Sunflowers at Whitehall Farm."

Art on the Commons is this Sun, Aug. 10 from 11 am-5 pm at the Kettering Civic Commons, 675 Lincoln Park Blvd. in booth #59.

Forest Friends Baby Quilt

 "Forest Friends" baby quilt, 35" x 35"

This extra-soft baby quilt is made with cotton flannel featuring adorable baby forest animals on a green background so it can be used for a boy or a girl.

There are bunnies, hedgehogs, raccoons, owls, deer, foxes, squirrels, and lady bugs.