How's Your Heart?

 

It's heart month. It's Valentine's month. It's Arts and Health Exhibition month at the Brick City Gallery in Ocala, FL! So of course I wanted to enter this art call with a small quilt expressing hearts as "The Rhythm of Life." That's the title of this piece. The exhibit is sponsored by Marion Cultural Alliance in partnership with HCA Florida Healthcare.

My artist's statement included with the quilt says this: "Our hearts beat continuously, often without us even noticing it. Therefore, caring for our hearts can be easily overlooked. Because heart disease is the leading cause of death, I wanted to underscore that we can be mindful to take steps towards improving our heart health and reducing the risk."

The EKG line is couched rat-tail cord and it ends in a hand-painted puffed heart. I tried something new in designing the entry. I consulted ChatGPT and Canva to find an image of a healthy EKG to base the quilt on. And I asked for some AI help in writing the artist statement above. That was a fun adventure, and eye-opening, too, mainly for the speed of response time.

Quite a few entries had a theme of heart health, perhaps because some of us have experienced heart problems. So that makes the theme ... ahem... "near and dear to our hearts". Pardon the pun. Join me for a look at some of the other entries on display.

"How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", oil painting, is the entry of Ellen Hosafros. She noted that experiencing heart health issues recently prompted her to reflect on personal responsibility for health and wellness.

This striking wood and brass sculpture calls attention to the center heart formed in the wood!

I always enjoy seeing stitching incorporated into media other than textiles. Here it is in wood! This is Brad Martin's entry titled "Mended Hearts". Brad stressed that art is a therapeutic healing process for body, mind, and spirit.

In this ink on paper entry, Joan Elizabeth illustrates her love for hand stitching on felt as a calming and meditative practice. I agree with her- I find it soothing, too. It's entitled "Open Heart."

Lorri Terbilcox relies on Scripture to inspire her art. This acrylic painting is titled "Matthew 5: 14-16" and depicts Jesus saying, "You are the light of the world..." 

The exhibit is up all month long at 23 SW Broadway St., Ocala. It features many more lovely paintings, photographs, and mixed media pieces. I was pleased to learn that my quilt was purchased and will hang in a local health care facility. 

Meet the Party Animals...

This is Helene. She was stitched during the summer hurricane of the same name. And she was stitched in response to a fun little challenge issued by our Fiber Art Bee. She's pretty dolled up and ready for a party. Do you love her bow and fancy twirl skirt?

Helene from the back- every bit as fetching!

Bee member Sheila Hiss crafted Spotsalotte for her challenge project. I believe she began as an empty bottle that got slip-covered. Cork legs, snout and a magnificent hair bow make her quite irresistible.

A damselfly was the creation of member Merri McKenzie. Merri favors soft sculpture projects of the flying kind. I'll share the cute damselfly she gave me at Christmas in a later post. But this one needed to meet certain parameters which you'll see below. 

It all began at a guild meeting at a table of yarn for sale. I knew I didn't need any yarn, but that never stops me from looking. Lo and behold I saw a skein of the spotted chiffon ribbon shown in the photo. I purchased it, thinking that I'd bring it to Fiber Art Bee to see what they might do with it. After showing it to a couple of other members, Merri commented that we could do an animal challenge. It struck Sheila that she had just passed up a length of giraffe print fabric on our "free table". She ran back to get it and our challenge took shape. Members who wanted to participate each got a 10" square of giraffe print and a one-foot length of leopard ribbon. One of our favorite things to do in FAB is to make up rules and then ignore them. So while we titled this the "Animal Challenge", members were encouraged to create anything they wanted as long as it included some of each print provided. They rose to the challenge and there were more than 15 entries. Unfortunately, I had to miss the meeting where they were revealed, so don't have pics of all of them. Suffice it to say, the creativity was over the top and included quilts, quilted bags/totes, wall hangings, a whimsy house, an owl, and even a sleep mask! Such quilty fun with friends.

The Rural Life...

 

Rural life is coming to an end. This gift quilt, titled "Hoof Prints", is one Jack and I recently presented to our friends Carolyn and Ron. It's a thank you for Carolyn's very generous gift of her time and effort in inviting Jack to trail ride with her each week, using her horse Guy. They've enjoyed many rides on the state-land trails near her home. It meant a lot because, as you may know, Jack lost his last Quarter Horse Freckles last summer. And his passing precipitated a huge change for us- that of moving away from our beautiful farm near Ocala and into a smaller home closer to the city. It's been a bit wrenching.

I didn't get a good photo of the quilt before giving it Carolyn, so I asked if she would take one to share on the blog. She and Ron live on their own beautiful farm, and she takes some lovely rural scenes of their place. I knew she'd get a good shot, and this is just what I envisioned- the quilt on a fence with the backdrop of sunlit landscape. So pretty. I pieced and finished the quilt with binding and label, but the longarm quilting was done by Debra Johnston, who does lovely work. Panel quilts are pretty simple to make and work up quickly. And surely the panel design does much of the work! Fabric panels have come a long way and are available in so many lovely prints.

We knew a quilt was just right for Carolyn because I'd seen her colorful barn quilt in pictures before. I think it's a Pieced Lily in a Basket design. Hers is made from metal and was quite a feat of engineering to install. It involved a son-in-law and a bucket truck!

Here's how I'll remember the view from the front porch of our farm. I will both miss it and be grateful for it at the same time.

This was our view coming up the driveway to home and barn. Always a pleasure to come home.

At rest on the farm is the beloved Freckles. I shared more about him and another panel quilt I made in this post, done just about one year ago.

We also left Abby at rest in the grove of trees you see beyond her yard. It was one of her favorite places to play and romp. She passed at the age of 11 in August. Abby was a sweet girl with lots of energy who was another rescue pet. Nobody was more surprised than Abby when someone's pot belly pig came to call! He's actually on the other side of her pen, but she was unclear as to how to treat this uninvited guest. 

And speaking of surprise visitors- this handsome Gopher Tortoise plodded up the sidewalk one fine day. Our area had lots of these endangered animals who tunnel underground in pastures and fields, along with a very uncommon squirrel known as the Fox Squirrel. It's been a wonderful place to live and enjoy nature for nearly a quarter-century. But, as the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end." Our farm was a lot of work and maintenance for us as we age. And with an empty barn, the work was mostly, well, just work... no horses to ride or to enjoy seeing out in the pasture. So the time has come... sadly but providentially. I'll share more about our new place, and the much smaller sewing room in future posts. It's, shall we say, still a work in progress! Happy 2025 to all.

Please hold...

 

Thank you for holding... while we move! It's been underway for several months now, and believe me when I say it took every minute of that. There is a reason why moving is on the list of top ten stressors! Phew. I haven't been near my blog or my sewing machine in quite some time, and there is definitely a withdrawal at play. What to do? Go see a wonderful quilt exhibit that's what! Feed the creative juices. The Webber Gallery at the Community College of Central Florida in Ocala held "Threading the Needle: National Art Exhibit" recently. I found it so refreshing. Come along for a visit. This chaotic design really resembles our lives of late! It's titled "Gendankenkarussell: Insomnia" by Donna Blalock. One in a series on the swirling thoughts of sleeplessness, the title speaks for itself. It's also an inviting study of techniques.

A familiar face? I've shared some of Karol Kusmaul's work on the blog before. And I was fortunate to take a class from her in still life quilts. Her portrait quilts are so unique. You can see some others here. This expressive piece is titled "Mug Shot".

"Where Hope Takes Flight" by Gabriele DiTota is a beautiful study in fabric manipulation- it has cyanotype, hand-dyed, and hand-painted fabrics which are pieced, appliqued, and free-motion quilted.

"(Everybody Deserves) The Chance to Soar" was made by Michael R. Stevenson PhD. He used pieced African batik fabrics and enhanced the quilt with machine embroidery and hand stitching.

Isn't this dynamic? The hand-dyed fabrics work so beautifully in "Hidden" by Candace Hackett Shively. She interpreted the unknown mystery of who or what is on the other side of a window or opening. Her methods included fabric painting and dyeing, along with thread sketching.

"American Portraits: Harvesting Hope" by Patty Kennedy-Zafred incorporates 1930s photographs from the US Farm Security Administration. It's her tribute to the lives and times of independent farmers of this historic era. Vintage sugar sacks, hand dyeing, and photo emulsion techniques were all used by the artist.

Sometimes the story behind a quilt is as interesting as the quilt itself. That was the case for "Yaacov' Algae in Yellow". This is Zwia Lipkin's digitally crafted whole-cloth quilt with free-motion stitching and hand embroidery. Her father was a marine biologist who kept a collection of dried algae gathered in his student days. Zwia and her mother found the specimens after he passed and photographed them. Zwia manipulated the images and printed them on cotton cloth to make this piece.

Managing anxiety is the thrust of "They Tell Me to Calm Down" by Anne Kobus. Her improvisationally pieced quilt is meant to communicate that a dismissive phrase, such as "calm down," is an unproductive way to address anxiety disorders, which are generally misunderstood. She used commercial cottons in her colorful and chaotic quilt.

Soon I hope to show you something I've made! I really, really look forward to it. But first to say good-bye to our beloved farm, then sort and organize the new (and much smaller) sewing room.

Let's Visit a Quilt Show...

Even though I'm up to my eyeballs in moving from farm to city, and not sewing or crafting a thing, I still enjoyed our guild's bus trip to the annual Jacksonville QuiltFest. It was good practice in self-discipline needed to avoid purchasing fabrics and supplies. I'd only have to move them! Upon entering the exhibit hall, my eye was immediately drawn to this colorful abstract design. It's called "View from the Window" by Susan Skatoff.

It seems each year I'm drawn to different types of quilts. Last year my post focused on circle designs. This year it was the Modern Quilts. I'm told that this is the first year the organization had a category for Modern Quilt designs. And the designers and makers of the style really showed up with some spectacular entries. Quiltmaker Candi Lennox referred to the "joyful chaos" of her scrappy pieced "Rummage" quilt.

Modern Quilts are generally characterized by improvisational piecing, abstract designs, asymmetry, bold color palettes often worked in solids, and negative space as a design element. This entry, also by Candi Lennox and titled "Primitive Plains", illustrates this with units of improvisational piecing in varied sizes along with the the bright solids.

"Going Round in Circles" was Erica Dodge's entry and it was her first attempt at improv piecing. Her bright, irregularly pieced color wheels are offset and surrounded by low-volume solids with more improv piecing.

Good friend and quilter Linda Hungerford of Flourishing Palms blog really went to town with her "maximilist" take on improv piecing. After piecing the units and assembling the top, she also added appliqued circles atop the piece in what she terms a "more is more" approach. Notice the black and white binding that really finishes this piece so nicely. 

This two-color entry is also made by Linda Hungerford. It features more improvisational free-cutting and  piecing along with appliqued circle accents. Linda quilted it on her domestic machine, but also added lovely hand quilting using The Big Stitch method. We had a nice opportunity to visit and catch up at the show, and Linda brought me a sweet gift- the pop-up thread catcher shown at the end of this post. I hope to have some threads to catch very soon! I'm suffering a bit of sewing machine withdrawal. 

There were many other styles of quilts to enjoy at the show, too, of course. So I had to include this "Finn-a-Green" horse quilt by Lauren Jackson. I just love all of the various quilting motifs she included to enhance the horse image.

And what a face! Meet "Jake" by Jennifer Farago. Her info card says "Jake is a good boy," but we knew that by just looking at him.

Every year the organizers of the show conduct a quilt challenge. This year the theme was Quilt Your Heart Out. Eve Vallorani had some fun with her collage quilt titled "Sew Your Heart Out."

There were many lovely entries, but "Love Thy Scraps" by Mary DeWind especially caught my eye.

Here's the thread catcher by Linda. It folds right down flat or pops up to get to work! Thanks, Linda. And I must apologize for the slightly out-of-focus photos. Something has changed and I don't know what. Same phone, same method of posting. But they look a little fuzzy. Wish I were more techy.

It's All In There...

So many treasures fit in this small hanging journal. It's a creation I made during July in Fodder School 3 with instructor and creative visionary Kecia Deveney. I've taken online classes before with Kecia and this one was just as much fun as the others. It took me more than the month of July to complete the project because, as you can see, there are many elements. It's all in there. Class members made the journal itself which includes fabrics, sewing, and mixed media. And we also made the swag from which to suspend and display it. All together, it's quite eye-popping wouldn't you say?

 

Here's the swag alone. It's composed of a good-sized, yarn-wrapped stick, various lengths of jewelry chain, shrink plastic doo dads, funky round tokens, charms, fiber ties, and pretty much anything else we had on hand that took our fancy! I had a lot. Still have a lot. But, oh the fun of this.

We made a cover of other assorted fiber, trims and papers. And we learned to alter Tim Holz paper doll images to make them colorful and shiny.

Paging through the journal, you can see the inside is just as much fun. These three little First Communion vintage girls looked so nostalgic and invited the addition of colors and flowers.

There's a place for everything inside the journal. The fabric background is one that I stamped with paint. The ruffle is a journal embellishment given to me by a friend. Another Tim Holz paper doll image- isn't she sweet? That hair bow! This was such an enjoyable project. And guess what? I've got enough stuff to make another!

 

And now in "other news". I've been missing from my blog, and may be for a little while yet. We sadly lost my husband's beloved Quarter Horse Freckles this summer. He was 21 and had been born and raised here on our farm in Florida. My husband Jack, who is 84, still rode him nearly every day and they were bonded. So the loss has been very difficult. It also precipitated some hard thinking about where we live and whether we can continue to maintain a 10-acre horse farm. 

Around the same time, we had to make the decision that our sweet Abby was at the end of her life as well. She had several chronic health problems. Abby came to us as a rescue about a decade ago. Jack found her near a restaurant dumpster, malnourished and unwell. We took her in, and while she had some difficulties, it would be hard to find a more devoted and sweet natured pet.

So, rest in peace Freckles and Abby. Since their loss, we have found and purchased a new home closer to town- smaller, more manageable, and closer to services. We've always been rural dwellers, so this will be quite an adjustment, but a necessary one.

This will explain my absence from blogging for awhile. As you might imagine, my sewing room is in an uproar and nothing much is happening at the moment in there! I may have a post about a lovely quilt show I attended and will share some photos of the exhibit quilts. Until then....

Humble Beginnings...

 

Bits and pieces is all it takes to make one of these Tiny Sacred Art Journals as part of artist Colleen Attara's online class. Colleen encourages students to see items that may usually be tossed out in new ways. This journal, which measures just 3" square, is made using a vintage photo matt I had in my paper stash. There are also pieces of old wallpaper, rusted papers, thread nests, and lace trim. A little on the trashy side. And yet here it all is in a fun little journal to hold in your hand. The cover photo is a sweet vintage photo of a crafting friend's family members. What kid didn't want to have a photo taken on a pony?

And inside, there's a photo of her grandmother tucked behind a stitched fold out. I was very taken by this photo- it is so artistic.

Some pretty thread ends all wound up embellishing a page.

And the same friend gave me this vintage button card which I tarted up to put in the book. I think the whole journal will be a gift to her. She's always generous in sharing things like this. But the book is about her family (not this little girl, though-she's a Tim Holtz paper doll.) So, I'll present it back to her. This is the second Tiny Sacred Art Journal I made in Colleen's class.

The first journal began its life as a long, narrow clothing hangtag. After following Colleen's instructions, I was able to peel the tag into layers which became the pages of the book. 

Inside is some hand stitching and a machine stitched paper web.

Colleen invited students to send one of their Tiny Sacred journals to her to be included in her exhibition this month at ArtWRKD Studio in Newtown, Pennsylvania. The title of the display is "Exploration of Art Journaling: Lost in the Found". That about sums up the nature of these little journals. And this is one of the 80+ student journals that will be exhibited, along with works by Colleen. So what was once trash, now has a life and is on the road in its own journey!