Fiber Art Postcards for Wendy's Wish Foundation

The Stitchin' Post in Sisters Oregon not only organizes the most fun week of quilting activities I've ever attended, they also support Wendy's Wish Foundation, a Central Oregon non-profit that helps to make cancer screening and services available to those who cannot afford them. This year, I'm again participating in the Stitchin' Post's Wish Upon a Card Project by donating two fiber art postcards I made last month, both featuring fabrics I hand-stamped with Oshiwa blocks. On their way to Oregon are an elephant, with a funky, twisty and hairy fiber string trim, and a giraffe with a fancy fabric-lace frame. It was very fun to create these in support of such a good cause!

Oshiwa Tiles

Spring is definitely here, so I think it's time to post some photos of random colorful items to accompany the flowers starting to pop up in the gardens of Ottawa. To start, here you can see some Oshiwa tiles I've made using my blocks and model magic. The model magic is very easy to use and dries withut cracking or hardening, so you can make all kinds of fun items, paint them, and sew them to your fiber art. The Oshiwa blocks work very well to give texture to the model magic, and can be painted to resemble metal, or anything else. Definitely a fun technique to play with!

The art quilt above is Windhoek Sunset. At the bottom of the quilt you can see another example of an Oshiwa tile painted with gold fabric paint. It looks like metal, but it's very lightweight and is sewn to the quilt. Photo by Annaliese Moyer.

Snow Dyeing is Addictive!

I'm so sorry winter is over! I wish we could have more snow! Why? Snow dyeing. I took a class with Pat Hardie, and just loved it! Now I've snow dyed a bunch more fabrics, and am left lamenting the end of winter! I wonder if we can use the shavings from the ice rinks, or if the chemicals they use would cause problems? More on this later, if I can get a definitive answer...

In the meantime, here are some photos of the fabrics I dyed the first session. On the left is the whole piece, and a detail shot on the right.

I'll post photos of the fabric from the second dyeing orgy later. The detail that results from the snow is incredible---so beautiful it's hard to get a photo to do the fabric justice! Enjoy!

The Quilter's Affair in Sisters, Oregon will take place from July 5 to 9, 2010, and I'm thrilled to be part of it again this year! I'll be teaching two very fun fabric stamping workshops during the week: I bring a couple of seriously large boxes of hand-carved Oshiwa blocks from Namibia and teach students to use them to print with fabric paint, make rubbings with paintstiks, and emboss velvet with these exotic African carvings. With the variety of techniques we explore, students make their own fabrics for their art pieces or quilts, and we have a terrific time experimenting with color and texture along the way. I bring lots of different examples of my work showing how I've used my printed fabrics, and I give students handouts to remind them of the techniques we cover. It's an action-packed two days, and when we're done, the students have a beautiful collection of unique fabrics and a small piece already put together that they can finish and show off proudly! One of the best things about this class is that even though the students all work with the same variety of blocks and paints, no two fabrics or finished pieces are ever the same. Each student brings different fabrics to stamp on, combines colors in his or her own way, and builds a piece that reflects a unique vision. We work freely in a spirit of exploration, and no one gets too upset if paint drips, spatters or spreads---all these things happen now and again, and we treat it like an opportunity to get even more creative! This is so much fun for me as a teacher that I can hardly wait to get there and get started! I love teaching this class because no matter how many times I teach it, I always learn something new from the questions students have, from the "accidents" that happen, and from the inventiveness of these groups of artists working together.

If you haven't heard about the Quilter's Affair before, it's not just a week of classes with a wide variety of teachers, it's a phenomenon! Sisters is a small and charming town in Central Oregon that gets taken over by quilters during this week, and is positively flooded on Saturday when the town hosts the annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. There are so many quilters in town that they close off the main street and route traffic around the perimeter. There are quilts displayed all over town, in most of the shops, and on most of the buildings. Quilters come from miles around and from several foreign countries just to be part of the festive day. There are bigger quilt shows, but I don't know of any place that gives itself over so completely to a celebration of what we do! All this excitement is organized by the staff and dedicated volunteers working with The Stitchin' Post, a terrific place to spend hours (and dollars) looking at the gorgeous fabrics and all the other things we need to create. I don't mind repeating that I don't own stock in the shop, but I sure wouldn't mind if I did! You can see the details of the Quilter's Affair and the Quilt Show at the Stitchin' Post website www.stitchinpost.com/quilterclasses.html

Making quilts with hand-stamped fabrics is pretty entertaining. I've been using them for quite a while, but as I'm working on one quilt, another idea will occur to me, and then I've got to try yet another new way to integrate my stamped fabrics into a fun quilt. These photos show "Susuwe" 46" x 32" . This quilt is named after an island in the Kwando River, in the Caprivi Strip, which is a long narrow finger of land in northeastern Namibia. There you can see hippos, elephants, exotic birds and lots of other wildlife. It's the greenest part of Namibia, which boasts starkly beautiful deserts in most of the rest of the country. Most of the African prints in this quilt came from the markets in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where I used to live, but I also used some great pieces I bought from http://www.kallistiquilts.com/ , a wonderful place to shop for African fabrics!

Once again, my thanks to Annaliese Moyer of www.stagerightphoto.com for the photos of my work, and to the folks at Oshiwa Designs www.oshiwa.com for the printing blocks that I use to stamp my fabrics.

Earlier this month I had the very great pleasure of visiting Val Hearder in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. I was lucky enough to have a chance to visit friends in Halifax, and discovered that Mahone Bay wasn't a long drive, so a road trip was born. Besides making beautiful quilts, Val does wonderful work supporting women in South Africa who support their grandchildren after their children have died of AIDS. In many cases, these women have very few resources, but they embroider vividly colorful panels and do gorgeous beadwork, which Val then brings into Canada and sells on her website http://www.africanthreads.ca/ In this photo, you can see us wearing necklaces from Val's shop---terrific, aren't they? How fun to know that you're supporting such a good cause while shopping!

I was also very happy to meet Laurie Swim in her studio in Lunenberg, NS. Laurie makes textured landscape quilts that reveal intense threadwork close-up, and look like paintings from a distance. All this talent, and she's nice, too! Later that evening, I was able to attend the Mahone Bay Quilt Guild meeting, where the members impressed me by their great show-and-tell and their very welcoming warmth. I hope to have a chance to make a return visit!

Time for more photos! I now have professional shots of my work taken by Annaliese Moyer, who can be found at http://www.stagerightphoto.com/ . Annaliese works out of Portland, OR, but travels, especially to interesting places like Namibia!

This piece is Okapuka, named for a game ranch near Windhoek, Namibia, where we could go to see giraffes, oryx, kudu, rhinos and lots of other animals, all living on a huge stretch of land just 20 minutes from our house.

In this piece I've used African prints and some images I hand-stamped with Oshiwa blocks. The Oshiwa carvers make wonderfully vivid and lifelike animal blocks and geometric blocks that intrigue me with their bold, graphic designs.