Hoop-La-La Swap Sent

I meant to post this last week and didn't quite get around to it amid preparations for the arrival of my sister and baby Anna-Banana.  We had such a fun time, Anna is super-duper adorable. She is crawling all around and has so much fun playing with her rattles and chewing on things.  She has acquired a consonant (B) so we were excited about that too.

I recently participated in the Hoop-La-La swap being hosted by Sew Allegorical.  The swap was for a piece of hoop art involving piecing.  Since my partner (the lovely Jessica at Plum Patchwork) received the hoop I made for her, I thought I'd go ahead and share it here.  On the entry form you could specify whether you wanted a purely decorative hoop or a functional one (such as a clock or notions pocket hoop).  Jessica said either was fine so I jumped at the chance to try making a hoop clock, since I'd been wanting to attempt one for a while.  I figured a 12 point compass would be fitting for a clock and included some fun quilting around the edge.  It's hard to tell, but the outer hoop is wrapped in the same fabric as the stripes on the front.  I embroidered "time to sew!" on it since I figure we all need more of that!  I also included the pouch on the left below (which is actually more of a purple-blue rather than the bright blue the picture shows) and some yummy scraps as extras.  All in all a very fun swap and thanks so much to Sew Allegorical for hosting it!

WIP Wednesday, Angels All Around

It's been a bit stressful around here lately, but I'm trying to focus on the good things and get into a "gratefulness" frame of mind.  A couple of positives- we have adopted a delicious new puppy (she's the upside down one in the middle), my sister and baby Anna Banana are coming to visit this weekend, and Mike and I are going to New Mexico for Thanksgiving in just a few short weeks.

On the crafting front, I buckled down and layered the nativity quilt for quilting.  I used spray baste to baste it, and it's just barely small enough (40 x 40) that I think that will be ok.  Any bigger and I don't think there's any way I could keep it together.  I used a sulky temporary adhesive to attach the tulle to the quilt top (to cover up any loose corners), but I think I didn't use enough or something because it didn't stick very well.    Since there aren't any ditches to stitch in to stabilize, I started by stitching around the people in the nativity.  I also stitched around some major shapes that are not depicted in the mosaic but that will be overlaid in the quilting, namely two angels (in the sky) and a sheep (next to Joseph).  I'm now starting FMQing all of it- I began by filling in the angels with gold free-form feathers, and am slowly moving on with the rest of it.  I like it so far, it makes me happy that it is getting done, but there is a lot of quilting and it always feels a bit overwhelming to me at this stage.

And here's the angel from the back.

I'm starting to think seriously about the Christmas Crafting that needs doing, but so far haven't made any progress!!

Linking up with Lee over at WIP: Wednesday.

Updates on Seymour

Two pieces of great news you guys!

First,  Seymour is a finalist in the Art Quilt category over at the Bloggers Quilt Festival.  Head to this link to vote for your favorites.  You don't have to have entered a quilt to vote, so definitely go check it out.  There are so many awesome quilts in the running; it's exciting to have been nominated!

Second, Seymour is being exhibited at a SAQA exhibit at the Open Space Visitor Center Gallery in Albuquerque, NM.  The exhibit opens this Saturday and runs through December 30th.  The Albuquerque Journal did a story on it, so click through if you're interested (sorry for having the two random survey questions to see the article).  I'm super excited as it's the first time my work has been in a gallery show.  Any of you that are in Albuquerque should try to stop by and see it if you can,  you can give Seymour a virtual hug from me.

This is the flyer for the show.  In other awesome news, the donkey quilt on the flyer is actually a quilt my mom made that's also in the show.  I love the expression on the donkeys' faces!

Tour of Honor Mini Quilt

Mike participated this year in the 2012 Tour of Honor Motorcycle Ride.  

From their website: "The event is a season-long, self-directed ride to memorials and monuments around the continental U.S. and Hawaii, with more than 35 states participating in 2013. Beginning April 1, visit as many sites as you want, with any route you choose."

There are hundreds of sites to visit, all over the country, but he made it to all seven in Oklahoma this year.  He asked me to make him something with the pictures he took for the project, so I made him this mini-quilt.  He wanted me to take his picture holding the quilt but said something about wanting to remain anonymous on the blog today because of his hat?  It didn't make much sense to me but I swirlied his face.

The sashing is all 3/4" and I practiced different fillers in each piece.  They're all the same fabric, not sure why all the blues look different.

One of the main things I realized is that I can't free motion quilt over the printed fabric sheets.  I use the June Tailor ones from Hobby Lobby, and I've done lots of projects with them before but I've never tried to FMQ.  In the past we've just quilted 1/4" inside the pictures (with a walking foot), but on some of the larger photo quilts I've made the pictures are really starting to sag so I wanted there to be more quilting.  I wasn't trying to do anything complicated, just a medium sized stipple, but my thread was breaking like mad and skipping stitches.  I tried switching needles, I tried switching from monofilament to the YLI 110wt silk thread, but nothing helped.  I thought initially it might be my sewing machine, but as soon as I switched to a practice sandwich the quilting was no problem.  I finally decided it was just the really stiff material.  It might have worked better with stronger/thicker thread, but I didn't want anything to obscure the pictures, so I switched back to my walking foot and just quilted a loose square spiral with the YLI silk in variegated light green.  That worked ok, but if I ever do another photo project where I know I need to FMQ I'm going to try a different approach.

I think Mike really liked it, he was very excited to hang it on the wall in the bedroom, although mostly I think because it got to replace S is For...#2 (or the vomiting dragon quilt as he calls it).  I moved the vomiting dragon into the studio; it's one of my favorites, but he really hates it, so this is better.  Hope you enjoy!

Happy Halloween (ish)

I so wanted to post this yesterday but just got a bit behind. I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween!   I dressed up for a party last weekend (as a knockout mouse), but didn't dress up yesterday.  I had choir practice at church last night so Mike stayed home and handed out candy (under duress).

I was in charge of the Cell Biology department pumpkin carving/decorating contest this year, so just wanted to share a few pictures from it (excuse the crappy phone photos)!  Here's my pumpkin

And here are some of the others.  There was an individual category, but also a lab category, and many of the labs had bunches of fun decorating their pumpkins yesterday morning with stuff from the lab.  Here are a few of the others!

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Seymour the Coelophysis

The always awesome Bloggers Quilt Festival is here again!  Head on over to Amy's and check out all the wonderfulness.

Update: My BQF entry number is 175

This time I want to share with you a fun quilt which I recently finished featuring the dinosaur Coelophysis.  Coelophysis is the state dinosaur/fossil of New Mexico, thanks to discovery of a large bed of Coelophysis skeletons at Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, NM.    The quilt is called "S is For… #3: You Cleared My Name".  It's the third in a series of quilts incorporating the serpentine S shape (created in this case by the dinosaur neck and tail).  For a long time, Coelophysis was thought to be cannibalistic, but recent scholarship has shown that he did not eat his own young, and thus his name has been cleared!

The design is original.  My main concept was to have Seymour's skeleton depicted on a background of his current home while the reverse side of the quilt would depict Seymour's body in a more triassic setting.  The background on the front of the quilt is Chimney Rock, a New Mexico landmark.  The quilt is raw edge applique and is made with a variety of types of commercially available fabrics.  It is embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, dryer sheets, polymer clay, foil, and paint sticks.  

The quilt is actually constructed as two completely separate pieces, each quilted and bound.  The two pieces are designed be laced together (via trim incorporated in the edging) enabling display as a two-sided back-to-front work, or unlaced and displayed side-by-side as a diptych (as shown below).  Each side is a mirror image of the other so that when the two pieces are displayed back-to-back the bones sticking out on the front side (for example in the tail) line up with the body parts (for example the tail) sticking out on the back side.  I quilted it on my old Singer 201.  It was a challenging project as I pretty much made it up as I went along!  I hope you enjoy seeing my dear Seymour (that's what Kenda named him) because I certainly enjoyed making him.  For more posts about him, click here.

S is for...#3: You cleared my name.  Displayed side-by-side, left panel is the front while the right panel is the back when displayed for two-sided hanging.

Quilting Details

 Detail of the bones and body where they stick off the edge of the quilt (taken during construction)

Detail of foreground elements

And one more, sorry, but I love the teeth!  I made them out of polymer clay and sewed them to the quilt at the very end.

Blogger's Quilt Festival Stats:

Title: S is For… #3: You Cleared My Name

Size: Each panel, 24” x 70”, 2012

Special techniques: raw edge applique, beading, handmade teeth composed of polymer clay, surface embellishment with dyed dryer sheets, wool roving etc.  Trim incorporated into faced binding to enable lacing of one side to the other.

Made and Quilted: Shannon Conley

BQF Categories: Art Quilt, Wall Hanging, Home Machine Quilted.

Super thanks to Amy for hosting such a great event!

I'm also linking up at the Off the Wall Friday Art Quilt Linky over at Nina-Marie's!

Here's the label, sorry for the out-of-focus picture!

This is the label text:

Coelophysis bauri, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur, is the state fossil of New Mexico due primarily to discovery of a large number of skeletons near Ghost Ranch, NM.  Coelophysis had long been the poster child for dinosaur cannibalism until work published by Nesbitt et al. in Biology Letters (2006) demonstrated clearly that stomach contents from mature Coelophysis were not juveniles of the same species or even dinosaurs at all, but rather were unrelated early crocodylomorph archosaurs.  In honor of Coelophysis’ “cleared name” I created this original art quilt depicting him, at approxmately full size. He is shown in his modern-day home (in front of Chimney Rock) on one side and in a more Triassic setting on the other side.  The quilt is made of commercially available fabrics of all types and embellished with twine, trim, wool roving, beads, dryer sheets, polymer clay, and paint sticks.

Hexie Pouches

I wanted to make a little pouch to send along as an extra to my swap partner in the hoop-la-la swap going on now (hosted by Sew Allegorical).  I had a bunch zippers in a variety of colors hanging around, and these hexie flowers have been pinned to my design wall for ages waiting for a home.  I decided to go ahead and make a bunch of pouches while I was at it.  They're in the neighborhood of 9" square and have contrasting bottoms for fun.  I'll send one to my partner and add the rest to my charity pile.  My favorite is that bottom one on the right with the moo fabric.  It's lined in this super fun pink fabric with white polka dots!