Painting Fabric with Mom, a Couple New Quilt Tops

Hola! Good Evening (or Night, depending on where you're hailing from).

Mom and I painted fabric today (learned it from Rhonda Blasingame) for some secret projects (and because it's fun).

Also, I'm including some recent work as part of my goal to complete a quilt top per week for 2015.

Here are a couple photos of painting, then the tops follow:

This is the finished version of some blocks I'd started last month.
About misrepresentations of God.

This one isn't done yet, but I like it already: it's make-it-as-I-go, and I didn't know where I'd end up. I started with the four-patch kaleidoscopes.

Miniature versions of Amish quilt tops I'd completed, but four of these sewn together. I dig how spicey it is!

Recent Work

Happy Morning!

Some new quilt work here, as I'm a little behind on my goal for the year of completing a quilt top per week. I'll still make it if I'm consistent.

First up, a top I've been mulling over for quite a number of years. I think the original design idea came to me about six or so years ago, if my calculations are correct! See journal entry soon.

I'd completed a Stacked Chinese coins quilt called, "Klee's Garden," and wanted to do another Chinese coins quilt, but with the coins stacked at an angle within the framework of a rectangle.

I didn't embody those ideas until recently. Here is the result (unnamed as of yet). It's about 40" x 50".

Next up, I'd been percolating about a series of word quilts, which focus on one word, or on the same word repeated and rendered in different fabrics to convey their meaning, somewhat like Ed Rusha's paintings: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/18

This one, a series of six repetitions of "God," depicts representations of God. I've made it super-huge in the photo so you can see the fabrics better.

Each of the rectangles is about 12" x 18" or so, fused, going to be machine appliqued down, then pieced together and quilted.

Finally (for this post), I was working on another "Self as..." portrait, this one a dragon fruit. I picked the head first, then the shirt, then the background, which isn't exactly how I've done the others. I usually choose the head, then the background, then the shirt.

I like the color combinations. It's about 14" x 18".

That's all for this time, folks.

Thanks for reading.

Mo Fam

FAMILY, JOHN, FAMILY

Some Family Fotos:

July is...

Bon Soir!

Month of July: full: not much quilting (but a meeting), lots of writing, teaching a Creative Writing class, in-town family, and...and...and.

First, an image of "Self as Bomb, Zelda Bomb," another miniature self portrait in the vein of the fruit/etc. I've been doing.

It's about 14" x 20", from commercial cottons and a kids' shirt, fused and machine-appliqued, and machine pieced. It's subtly about world domination/violence.

Then, a couple photos from Fourth of July fireworks with Mom, Sue H. and family.

I love the parallelism/contrast between both man-made lights in first photo, and the ironies of the beauty happening above and the nonchalance of some spectators in the second photo.

Here's a photo of my now-finished Creative Writing class (MW evening, 6-9:55, at William Carey):

I told them we look like the Twelve Disciples of Literature.

Some writing:

writing poems in class

students scared of getting it wrong

heavy sighs, then silence

classroom

clock ticks

what have you learned today?

watching meteors

after the rain

their moist lips

And that's it for now....

Next time, on Quilts, Movies, Making...

Weekley travels to...

Night shoots

Hey Folks,

Posting from a collection of night photos, inspired by entering UK Competition, "Life After Dark." I started walking around towns, photographing, when I lived in Lubbock, TX, even included some of those in an exhibit with Linda Cullum at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts. I enjoyed the low hum of cars, electric lights, and an occasional breeze. Or, nights I went shooting from my car, when it'd snowed and condensation began to form on my lens from the cold. I focused mostly on aged buildings cracking, brought to life by halogen, tungsten, or neon lights and equally important shadows. I also had the fortune of working with author Gail Folkins on the book, Texas Dance Halls, and many nights we spent listening, watching, and recording life in and around dance halls.

Then, when I graduated from TTU in 2006, I started focusing on trees: trees in landscape, trees against buildings, trees in urban settings.

Here are some examples from my earlier night work:

Above: from a fair in Fort Wayne, IN in 2006. I liked the lonely girl waiting for the night to be over.

From the Dance Hall book in 2005: I enjoyed the girl watching me watching the scene.

Above: a tree lit by a streetlight in Fort Wayne, 2006. It strikes me how the trees seem like living things emerging from the shadows, but hiding also.

Also from Fort Wayne.

Also from Fort Wayne.

Also from Fort Wayne. I don't know if I'd gotten a hold of Robert Adams' Summer Nights yet (see the images here), but I can definitely see the similarities.

Then, when I moved back down to MS, I kept shooting at night.

In the neighborhood in Ocean Springs, around Christmastime, 2007. I'd started shooting Christmas lights in Fort Wayne, but kept it up in MS. The above and below photos.

Above: I liked the sad look of deflated Christmas lawn ornaments.

Above: I enjoy cutting off or minimizing what many think should be the focus of photos. So, many would want the beauty contestant to be in the center of the photo. How boring! It's much more psychologically interesting to have her marginalized. Imagine how alone she might feel on stage, lights in her face, everyone watching and waiting for her to do everything perfectly.

Above: Mom in the kitchen at night in Steubenville, OH in 2008. Many happy memories of Mom in the kitchen, but this one's a look at another side of that experience.

Above: Once I'd shot trees for a while, I got into shooting flowering trees and flowers more specifically. This is a tulip poplar or a magnolia, I believe, in Jackson, MS in 2010.

Above: a church on the edge between Petal and Hattiesburg, MS, right next to the train tracks, in 2008.

Above: my older brother, David, and I went to the Henry Ford Museum and it was getting on toward evening and I saw these two lights, shining together in the darkness.

Above: went to the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby with a dear friend and her kids. I enjoyed the irony of the young'ins contrasted with the weapons, more specifically, artwork made from war paraphernalia.

Above: this final one, at evening rather than night, is also from Ocean Springs; somebody'd painted over the stop-sign. Who knows what inspired them.

Have a good one.

M