Sawtooth Shirt Quilt

The Sawtooth Shirt Quilt began as part of the first shirt quilt, as you see in this photograph of my sketch on the felt wall. With some help from my advisor, I avoided  ruining the soft look of the curves in the Wave Shirt Quilt with these bold graphic sawtooth strips. They were set aside for a second project which is finished this week. 

Wave Shirt quilt with sawtooth strips on felt wall

I had a lot of sawtooth made out of three repurposed shirts, a blue-gray linen and the burgundy and white shirts from my pals Tom and Peter.  The sawtooth strips are edged with long vintage printed gold fabric and some wider blue or more burgundy shirt fabric. To make the second design I went looking in my pile of yardage fabrics, where I found a blue and orange-gold homespun plaid, also a thrift store find, that seemed to work into the color scheme quite well. This homespun looks and feels like a shirt fabric making a nice complement to the others from real shirts. Then, I wanted something to lighten the whole picture and realized I had some natural beige linen that would be a nice soft light to add to the mostly dark composition. Beige linen makes a good resting spot for the eye as well as a place to show off the hand quilting in the overall design. This top finished up being 8 inches taller than the Wave Shirt Quilt because I had so much of the sawtooth strip made. Since I was thinking about my friends who inspired the quilts the differences in the two men felt like they are reflected in the different designs using their shirts.

Finished Sawtooth Shirt Quilt. 46"x 68"

On the back again in a thrift store I found a beautiful burgundy cotton sheeting and I had solid burnt orange yardage that together would make this quilt back a little different from the Wave Shirt Quilt while a little the same. I was lucky to find a rusty orange perle cotton #12 at Suzzie's Quilt shop in Manassas to complement the homespun plaid and set to work quilting straight away.

back of the Sawtooth Shirt Quilt

For the quilting design I chose to follow the 45 degree angles in the saw tooth's half triangle squares as my pattern lines. It was a coincidence that they were going in opposite directions on the two sections of the quilt top. When I finished basting the layers of cotton, linen top and back together with a fine wool batting, I used the Hera tool with a long metal straight edge to mark diagonal lines across the majority of the top, then shorter lines in the other direction making a arrow point angled design where the two sections meet. 

label is hand embroidery on a blue-gray linen scrap including the content to help advise for cold water wash and low temperature drying.  

Sawtooth Shirt Quilt 46"x 68"

Wave Shirt Quilt finished 46"x 60"

side by side two quilts made from Tom, Peter, my father Clarence and some anonymous fellow's shirts.

Bustling October

This has been a busy time of year as it usually is but I was astonished how many things were going on that I could not get to because of some climax on October 13th. The two big events I did attend were The DC Modern Quilt Guild's meeting at NGA's Sculpture Garden and my good friends Peter Montgomery and Dan Vera's wedding at the Thrugood Marshall Center. I got to do show and tell and enjoy a visit with 4 quilters in the garden from 10-noon and stitch a few stitches on my Williamsburg throw quilt and show them my bigger quilts in process. Then they showed theirs and it was just warm enough and very quiet down in the gardens where they are beginning to build the ice rink for skating that opens next month. Then I was home for lunch and packed up the 12 lovely mason jars of roses and garden flowers Keith arranged for Dan and Pete's wedding. I delivered them and got to participate in the wedding by tying a ribbon around their hands with all the Lavender friends and family and then enjoyed the picnic theme pot luck dinner and huge delicious wedding Cake made by Chris the baker! I think the plastic ants he brought and Dan's grass table cloths were really fun and made the picnic theme come alive with none of the real problems of out door events.

Pictures of the quilts and wedding are in my flickr.com collections here:

DC Modern Quilt Guild 

Peter and Dan's Wedding 

Things I had to miss included, Peter Wood's Art Soiree in Middleburg VA.
Mid-City Artists Open Studios, Washington DC
Sketch Crawl Internationale's quarterly sketch crawl in DC with Urban sketchers...
There was more but we can not do everything. What a splendid life of plentiful joys.\
Hope you got to do something wonderful this October weekend the best time of year in Washington DC to do almost anything.

Art in the Burg day

I was up before the sun and off to Middleburg, Virgnia by 7:25AM on my art sale day in Piedmont horse country. The sky clouded over on the hour and fifteen minute drive but I arrived ahead of schedule and got started quickly setting up my area. I had 12 vertical prints and 10 horizontal prints to hang in rows on wooden easels. I also had to lay out my table and get ready for visitors and meet the other artists. I got so wrapped up in the hanging and visiting I forgot to shoot my display when I finished setting it up later I snagged a few shots while I had a few minutes of quiet time. In the end it was over before I expected and easy to break down thanks to the great space and the great team hosting the show. We enjoyed conversation, art sharing, some sales, vegetable stew and cheese with crackers cookies and special thanks to my new art pal Gail Guirreri-Maslyk for a delicious  cup of coffee! She needed one and I wanted one, and so she went to the grocery store and bought the fixings then made us a pot! It was just perfectly brewed and enjoyed with some sugary treats I never eat anymore.

Chris, Peter, Tom and Gail 

 parish house Peter Wood staked out the front door to sell his rusty metal creations and fill the guest book with contacts 

My favorite of Peter's rusty metal sculptures. 

Our day was busy and visitors came and lingered and enjoyed looking and many buying some new art works. I was showing my new series of flower sketches and prints for the first time and also my hand bound books. I also took a few folding book prints from the old days in Artomat® that always attract gift buyers or people who need something small to delight. I was happy to see my pal Judith from West Virginia for the first time since 2007 and meet her buddies one of whom is also a graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY were I studied so many years ago. I even had a visitor from my gang of sketch crawl friends drove out from Reston. It was a perfect day even if the sky was threatening rain on and off all day. We managed to stay dry most of the day in our lovely parish house great room meeting hall. The carpenter who built our easels did a fantastic job and they worked better than anything I have used to hang and display art in a room where you can not put nails in the walls. So I am very happy today if a little tired. Thanks to everyone who made yesterday possible and a handsome success for my new works. For a first time event it was very good and we all were excited at the prospect of a return next year. I now look forward to reorganizing my prints and sketches for the next installation in Crystal City Arlington, Virginia across the river from DC at Artomatic 2012.

Jim the painter with two visitors, Jason Alexander the potter and wife Maria who are talking to a third visitor (left to right)

My book/portfolio table and display easel, after 6 prints in frames sold. 

ARTOMATIC 2012 this is my wall on the second floor of 11 stories of office building, soon to be painted and filled with flowering sketches!