Watkins Woolen Mill!!

I am on spring break and in true spring break fashion I am having a week of heavy drinking, hooking up, getting sunburned, and generally making bad decisions. 

Not really. 

I've never had that kind of spring break. Instead, my parents came to visit and we took a day trip to Watkins Woolen Mill, made homemade ice cream, did some yard work, and went to a winery. That stuff is more my speed.

Anyways, who knew that Watkins Woolen Mill was so cool? Anyone? It is truly a great place to visit and only about 40 minutes north of Kansas City. Watkins Mill is a state park that encompasses a woolen mill (surprise) and Bethany Farm - Waltus Watkins' house, orchard, garden, etc. You can tour the house, grounds, and mill for a very small fee. In my party of four, only I am a fiber nerd. But my parents are good natured and easily entertained and my husband likes anything that is either outside or has to do with history or both. We were all thoroughly impressed and here are pictures to prove how cool Watkins Mill is. Go there. For realz.

 

This is a sweet red and green log cabin quilt. I think it is wool.

 

 More red and green in the carpet. Have you ever seen carpet like that? I haven't. Well, now I have.

 They had the same china that my in-laws have. How weird is that? And the tour guide mentioned something about grandma haunting the house. I couldn't tell if she was joking.

 Have you ever seen a turkey up close? They aren't pretty. This one was quite talkative.

 These are giant carding machines for combing the wool fibers into roving. The people who ran the carders were paid the most of anyone in the mill because their job required the most skill and was the most dangerous. You can lose a finger in there.

This is the rear-view of a warping wheel. All of those cones of yarn feed through hooks and then onto a giant wheel that measures the warp before it goes to the loom. 

All of the wool was grown at Watkins Mill, washed, sorted, dyed, spun, plied, skeined, woven, and sold. There was also a great market area that I didn't take pictures of. Sad face.

West Elm!!!

Oh my goodness. I have been keeping this to myself (well, mostly to myself) for months and now it is for real so I can share it. Usually I don't talk about things until they are for real in case something happens to make them not for real anymore. You know? So here it is.

My quilts are in the West Elm catalog, y'all! The first Spring 2012 catalog came out today and two of my quilts are featured on page 106/107. I could probably be happier, but I'm not sure how. They look so good. Don't you think?

This news totally hijacked a post I was planning about my trip to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. I guess that will have to wait. Now it's time to dance around the kitchen with an unwilling cat in my arms.

Deck the Halls NYC

A few weeks ago I sent some quilts to Caitlin Mociun (a clothing, fabric, and jewelry designer in NYC). She is going to be opening a shop in Brooklyn sometime early next year. Until then, she is showing her work and some of the artists and designers she will be including in her shop (including me!) at Deck the Halls. Anyone lucky enough to be in New York City this holiday season needs to get themselves over there. It is 12 days of shopping, from December 10 - 22, at the Old School, 32 Prince Street, NYC open each day from 12 - 8pm. It looks so fabulous. I'm totally jealous of anyone who gets to do some Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Holiday shopping there.
For the rest of us, here are some pictures of what we're missing (pictures borrowed from core77):

My quilts. I think they look great on this ladder.

Mociun's table full of goodness

BKLYN Dry Goods

fabric scraps for everyone

The semester is almost over and today was my first official day off in which I had absolutely nothing that had to be done. Of course there are always things that should be done, but those can wait. I went grocery shopping at the good grocery store and went down every aisle. Then I came home and decided to tackle my fabric stash. After gentle nudging and friendly reminders from Andrea in my quilt guild, I have finally gotten my sh*t together to start selling my extra fabric. This afternoon there was an explosion of fabric in my sewing room as I dug out all the little scraps from quilts I've been saving and all of the color samples and shibori examples I've been hoarding. I put together little bundles that are for sale in my etsy shop. Here is a sampling of what's available.

1/4 lb scrap bags of hand dyed cotton

there are 8 of them

1/4 lb bundles of shibori and screen printed fabric pieces

6 pack bundles of shibori, each piece is 1/8 to 1/4 yard of hand dyed cotton

and fat quarter bundles of 2 solid and 2 mottled dyed fabrics each (1 yard total per bundle)

Sorting through everything made me excited to start a fun new project. Now I just have to decide what to make...

sometimes you make a rainbow on accident.

Dang, November. Where did you go? Oh right, you flew by while I was busy making these new quilts. These quilt friends are headed to New York very very soon. I just finished sewing the bindings and washing them last night. They still need to have all their little threads tucked in, labels sewn on, and mega lint rolling. Please forgive the rough studio photos.

65" x 65", 16 hand dyed colors

also 65" x 65", 16 hand dyed colors (I like this one best, it feels tropical)

there's a pattern here. see the other two for details.

queen size (85" x 92"), 40 hand dyed colors of rainbow goodness

I can't wait to get photos of them on beds. Especially the last one. I'm uncertain about how much I like the last one. It is rather like a rainbow explosion. In my head the colors did not form a rainbow, but I suppose when you gradate between red, yellow, and blue you really ought to expect a rainbow. I realize that now. At first, I felt sick when I realized that I had made a rainbow quilt, when I had intended to make a sunset quilt. But now I am embracing the rainbow. It feels playful and fun and happy. We'll see what the response is, but worst case scenario: I have a new quilt for my bed.

Wonder Fair is Wonderful!

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to participate in a show in Lawrence, KS at Wonder Fair. The Wonder Fair is an amazing shop. Seriously. You walk up a narrow set of stairs and emerge into a sunlight filled, high ceiling-ed, wooden floored treasure house. It is one part shop filled with hand made goods and prints (including two of my favorite makers Donna Wilson and APAK) and one part gallery space. I bought Simon a sweet George R. R. Martin t-shirt there today.
Anyways, the upcoming show is called Hibernation and I'm more excited about this show than pretty much any other show I've been in recently. If you live within 60 miles of Lawrence, make the trek to the opening this Friday 10/28 from 6 to 10 pm. It will be worth the drive.

don't you love this image they made?

In addition to four of my quilts, there will be work by Christa Dalien and Kelly John Clark (two of my classmates from grad school at KU) and work by Dan McCarthy and Cat Rabbit (double love!).
Meredith and Paul wrote this description of the show, which I think is lovely:

 As the crisp chill of autumn creeps up the stairs of the Wonder Fair, we've begun to gird our loins for another long winter—Wonder Fair style. Preparations begin with Hibernation, an installation-based exhibition and D-I-Y idea kit designed to inspire winter-time productivity. Hibernation transforms the gallery into a cozy cabin, complete with custom-designed screen-printed armchairs, hand-printed brick fireplace, snuggly screen-printed firewood, and a charming menagerie of winter-ready stuffed animals. In their midst, Wonder Fair is thrilled to present a selection of hand-dyed quilts by Kansas City-based artist Kim Eichler-Messmer. In four stunning quilts, Eichler-Messmer translates Midwestern winter landscapes into beautiful, functional pieces of art.

At a special opening event (Final Friday, October 28,) visitors are invited to crawl through an extensive blanket fort to reach the Wonder Bar, a pop-up cantina stocked with hot mixed drinks, cocoa, and gingerbread. Throughout the month, the gallery will feature printed installations by Kelly John Clark, Christa Dalien, and members of the Wonder Fair Family; quilts by Kim Eichler-Messmer; fiber-sculpted woodland creatures by Cat Rabbit; and prints by Jonathan Metzger, Dan McCarthy, and Ashley G. (Goldberg). A series of hibernation-themed knitting/crochet events and performances are planned for each weekend of the run of Hibernation; details will be made available through the website.

I hope to see you at the opening!

Fabric Dyeing Workshop 10/23

In a couple of weeks I will be teaching a fabric dyeing workshop in my studio. This is the first time I've thought about doing such a thing and with the support of my quilt guild, I decided it was time to go for it. It's going to be fun. 

my studio!

 I've been working on getting dye kits made for the students and planning out what projects we will do. The workshop is designed mostly for quilters, but anyone who is interested in learning how to dye cotton or silk using Procion MX dyes would benefit from it. This workshop is going to cover the basics: solid shade dyeing, gradation dyeing, and some low water dyeing (Ann Johnston's technique for getting interesting mottled colors). 

a lovely assortment of hand dyed fabric scraps

 I'm sort of waiting to see how well this goes and what the interest is, but if it goes well and people want more I'm thinking of additional workshops that would be a little more advanced, like shibori, color matching, and percentage dyeing (the method I use that is precise and reproducible). Here is the flyer for the workshop:

As you can see, members of the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild get a discounted rate of $40 because the guild is sponsoring the workshop. Non-members pay $75, which is still a really good deal. There is also a $20 supply fee that covers a dye starter kit with all the dyes and chemicals to get you started and two yards of my favorite fabric for dyeing. And guess what! There are two spots left in the Sunday, October 23 workshop! Anyone in Kansas City interested? Go to my etsy listing to grab a spot!

the quilt that is testing every ounce of my patience

I've been having a pretty good run of creativity lately. I made a bunch of new quilts (7!!) for my show at Park University in the span of about two months. They all were easy peasy - get an idea, dye the fabric, piece the top, quilt the thing, done. No issues, no ugliness, just a series of good quilts. Then it all went down the drain. There is going to be a Kansas City Art Institute Faculty show in October and of course, I wanted to make a new quilt for it. And of course, it should be kind of big. At first I thought queen size, but there will be 35 of us in the show and a queen size quilt seemed like a space hog. So I went with twin size (65" x 88" ish).
Nothing is going right with this quilt (you can read more about it in my last blog post).

Here it is in phase 3. I didn't take pictures of phases 1 and 2 because I forgot. And they were just too dreadful. To be fair, phase 1 wasn't really that bad. It just wasn't great. You know? It was fine, but boring. Phase 2 was pathetic and looked like I was trying too hard. Phase 3 is everything that happened on Saturday night, if you're following along. I really love the piecing in the lower left quadrant of the quilt. That will have to come back in another quilt, with slightly different colors.

In phase 4 I decided this was a winter quilt. So I dunked the whole bottom half in thiox (a really pungent chemical that strips dye out of fabric) hoping it would turn white. It turned a weird light greenish-tan. I knew that would happen, I'm not sure why I thought thiox would do something different this time, but there it is. So then I thought it would all be magically fixed if I dyed the bottom half a really pale blue color so it would like kind of icy. It didn't. It looked green. Bright, acid green with some sections of pale blue. Gr! So phase 6 was stripping the color out again (!!!) with thiox. Phase 7 was to dye the bottom half black.

All of the lovely piecing is still there, its just now all brownish and blackish and purplish. This is the thing after I quilted it for the second time. That's right, second time. The first time I quilted the bottom with some green thread that is really very lovely in theory, but in practice it looked like hell so I spent nearly 2 hours ripping out all the quilting. I'm happy. I think. Maybe I'm just happy to be nearly done with it (only binding to go).

Does anyone remember the Barbie doll who would say "math is hard"? There was a commercial for her I think when I was in high school, which would have been the mid 90's. She was annoying and made an even worse role model for girls than she already was. Anyways. Quilting is hard.

What I did on Saturday night.

I worked. That is what I do most Saturday nights...and Friday nights, too. Pretty much every night and every day. Sometimes I waste time watching lame tv on my computer or talking to the cats that live outside while pretending to pull weeds. Sometimes it feels unfair that my work is also my favorite hobby (if you can call it that) because it leaves me very little time for other hobbies and the long list of fun things I would like to do. But then I think "hey! your work is your hobby! that's lucky. don't complain". So anyways. Here is a glimpse into my Saturday night (times are approximate):
6:45 - eat supper with Simon (after working in the sewing room since about 4:00)
7:05 - eat a little more supper because I'm still hungry
7:15 - go into the disaster area that is my sewing room and take a great big breath because it is such a mess and boy am I stressed out
7:17 - start ripping some seams because all the work that I did on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoon looked terrible and things need to be rearranged
7:18 - curse quietly to the cats about how much I hate ripping seams as I accidentally rip the fabric
7:19 - get over it and start ripping again. then iron. then trim. then start sewing strips together
7:19 - 8:09 - sew strips together, iron them, cut them up into vertical strips, sew those strips together, repeat until there is a 70" x 30" piece of patchwork fabric
8:10 - stand back and look at what I just did. it's good, but not great. brilliant idea! cut the piece into strips on a 45 degree angle and then rearrange and sew back together.
8:29 - this sucks. what was I thinking? gr. power through. just keep going.
9:47 - done. it is badass. now sew that part onto the rest of the quilt.
10:00 - good! now hang it up and look at it because it's going to be so great and I'm better now than I've ever been before.
10:04 - despair. it looks like crap. the color is all wrong and it is way too busy. damn.
10:04 - 10:13 - sit on living room floor staring at shitty, ugly quilt and having a mini freak out session.
10:13 - 10:18 - eat some nice bread with some lovely strawberry jam and drink some hot tea. talk to the cats about how cute they are and what good kitties they are.
10:18 - unpin the quilt from the living room wall and start seam ripping again
10:19 - 12:17 - frantically seam rip, iron, cut, sew, iron, cut, sew, iron, cut, sew, iron while singing loudly along with Roseanne Cash
12:18 - pin the quilt segments back together, pin to living room wall, step back. still not good, but better. fixable. I can see how to make it good.
12:24 - turn off lights and iron and sewing machine.
12:25 - go to bed.

Quilt Guilt and other non guilty quilts

I have been so busy lately with teaching, getting ready for my show in Parkville, and stuff I'm not supposed to talk about yet. It feels like there aren't enough hours in the day and when I try to make my fingers sew more quickly they won't listen. With all the craziness, I have been working on something I shouldn't. I call it my guilt quilt. I started it a few weeks ago and it was inspired by two quilts in the book Amish Crib Quilts from the Midwest: the Sara Miller Collection that I bought at the International Quilt Study Center last fall. It's a pretty traditional quilt using the Hole in the Barn Door (HIBD) block. Here is a picture in progress on my design wall:

I have a couple of parameters. First, all of the blocks have to be HIBD. Second, I can only use scraps of fabric. That part isn't really too hard because I have a ton of dye mistake fabric - things that I didn't measure right, or made too much, or whatever. Third, I can only spend an hour cutting pieces and then I have to make as many blocks from those pieces as possible before cutting new pieces. That forces me to make decisions I wouldn't normally make such as making things asymmetrical and putting strange colors together. At the end I will put in 1" undyed cotton sashing and it will be a queen size quilt. I'm pretty much in love with Amish quilts and using traditional blocks. This quilt will go on my bed when I'm finished, so I'm thinking of backing it with flannel for extra warmth.

Yesterday I went up to Park University in Parkville, MO to hang my show. Simon went with me and was a big help. I forgot to get a picture of the show all together but I will try to do it before I take the show down in October. I made seven brand new quilts for the show (in less than 2 months) and finished sewing pockets on the back about 15 minutes before we had to leave for Parkville. Last week was the week of very little sleep.

In some of the quilts, I used the quilting lines to mimic wind or rain or rays of sunshine. You can see the rest at my website: www.eichlermessmer.com. Now I get to cut some more pieces for one hour and then make more HIBD blocks. Yay!!! (totally not sarcastic, I really am very excited.)