March 26, 2010

little yellow birds

Joetta Maue wrote about my narrative quilts over at her blog little yellow birds. 
Check it out and spend some time over there. She covers a lot of really interesting fiber work being made right now. Thanks Joetta!

March 22, 2010

Symmetry

Do you ever look in the mirror for too long and freak out about how asymmetrical you are? Please don't tell me I'm alone here.
Well, today I was reading a book about tesselations and symmetry by Jinny Beyer and there was an example of famous faces that were split in half and repositioned to be symmetrical. It is so interesting. In two of the three examples one of the symmetrical faces is far more attractive than the other.
So. Here are my three versions. I like to think of the two symmetrical ones as my dopplegangers. One of them is not very attractive. Be warned...

normal Kim

symmetrical Kim #1

This one is terrible. It could be my ugly twin's mugshot.

My father-in-law warned me that I need to be careful with social networking and sharing information. I think he was joking, but this might be a good example of too much sharing.

March 20, 2010

Quilt Appreciation Day!

The third Saturday in March is officially Quilt Appreciation Day. That seems especially fitting on a day like today that is so gray and snowy (at least it is in good old Kansas City). In honor of today, I thought I would share with you my top 5 favorite quilters ever.

1. Mary Anne Jordan. Her quilts are amazing. They are mostly whole cloth quilts that she paints with dye. Not only does she make beautiful work, Mary Anne is a wonderful person and is one of the key people that led me to quilting. She is head of the Textiles program at the University of Kansas and leads textiles trips to Uzbekistan. I got to touch one of her quilts a few years ago when she hired me to sew the binding on.
Tablecloth with Indigo Stains
 95"H x 78"W
COPYRIGHT: ©2004 Mary Anne Jordan
exhibition shot

2. Bean Gilsdorf. I first learned about Bean's quilts when I was in graduate school at KU. I was immediately drawn to the scale of them and her use of imagery. Since then, I have had the chance to see her work in person twice, most recently at the Surface Design Conference last summer in Kansas City. She had a show at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art. Her work continues to inspire me. 

Into the Ether (2007)

March 18, 2010

I'm stuck, yo.

The crocuses (croci?) in my yard think it's spring.
 
Hey Friends. I have the spring break anxiety, which is a lot like winter break anxiety and slightly not as bad  as summer break anxiety. It goes like this -
Kim: "I have so much time to get stuff done."
Bad influence Kim: "You better not waste your time. You're wasting your time."
Kim: "But I have a whole week. Think about everything I could do in one week."
Bad influence Kim: "The week will go really fast. Plus, you're on spring break. Enjoy it."
Kim: "Oh, but I have so much time to work in my studio."
Bad influence Kim: "Wouldn't you rather just watch Lost on the interweb?"
Kim: "I guess one episode wouldn't hurt..."
Yikes!

So I made myself go to studio today and printed some fabric. I'm still stuck, but at least I got in some good practice with my new registration t-bar.
 Rabbit print in progress. That's my t-bar there. It took me about 2 hours to make it yesterday because I had some power saw anxiety and couldn't find the drill bits. Plus, I was going to have the wood cut at Lowe's but someone had sawed through their power cord. Blerg.

Finished rabbit print. These little guys are in half-drop formation. After printing, I thought "those rabbits should be closer together, like a herd." So I re-measured and made this:
Poor little things are butt sniffers. After the first one was printed sniffing his friend's butt I considered stopping and starting over. I'm not really sure why I kept going. Next time I'll measure better.

I also printed this fabric today:
This was a practice for using hand cut stencils and multi-colored printing. This fabric is also not perfect but in this case the measuring was fine, it was faulty labeling. Kim! Pay attention!

March 17, 2010

Spring Break Madness

Yay for Spring Break and not getting enough done. This post is not even remotely quilt related, but the task took enough brain power to be worth about 1/2 a quilt.
Ages ago I saw a post on Apartment Therapy that was closet doors painted in a trellis pattern. I've been thinking about that pattern ever since we bought our house and trying to figure out where to put it. The entry way won out over the bathroom or dining room. With my mom as assistant, we went for it:
This is our entry before. It wasn't a bad entry, just not too exciting.

9" x 12" template + pencil + razor blade + level + almost two packages of frog tape =
a beautifully taped entry. 
It felt like we should have been done at this point...but no.

Painting is fun! This was the quickest step, only taking about 30 minutes per coat of paint.

Peeling tape is so satisfying. It's like peeling badly sunburned skin (which I know way too much about unfortunately). This task could not have happened without the instructions and pictures over at Modern Homebody. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I think it's definitely a busy pattern, but being on only one wall in a room we can't see from anywhere else in the house makes it perfect.