Summer, summer, glorious summer!

I imagine at some of the larger race tracks they are even more glorious. This wonderful horse is a grey and I have, for some reason a preference for greys. This beauty’s name is Catch a Tiger by the Tail.
_grey-horse
I have now finished putting my jigsaw hanging together so it is now ready for quilting. It has taken me forever this month to actually knuckle down to get at it. The problem was that I had started thinking about two other pieces and starting sewing them. I now understand why there are so many UFOs in the quilting world. (For the uninitiated that doesn’t mean green men from Mars but unfinished objects)
jigsaw-in-place
The jigsaw hanging, which I am thinking of calling something that will give the idea that we are all part of the whole, was definitely a learning project. I made each of the jigsaw pieces separately and they consist of backing fabric, batting and the designed front and each was also quilted. If I did it again I would leave out the back fabric, which I had used to turn in the edges pillow case fashion, and would just turn in the edges around the batting. It would have been easier, quicker and certainly would have made the whole piece lighter and easier to handle. I would also use MistyFuse to stick them all to the sky fabric before I stitched them in place instead of tacking and pinning them. I left them just stitched around the edges as I wanted the look of them falling from the sky but it would have been much easier to ‘glue’ them than to pin and tack! Now to the quilting!

My piece that is my protest against the proliferation of fracking all over the world is now at the stage of quilting. It is so much smaller than the jigsaw piece and so is so much easier to handle. The richness of the colours has also made it a pleasure to work on. I have done some embroidery and bead work to give interest and used TAP, Transfer Art Paper, to print information about how much water and chemicals are used for each fracturing job.
words
water-fabrics
The third piece I have been working on is about water and how we abuse that too. The colours are in direct opposite from the warmth of the geophysical one being cool blues and greens. I have tried to portray how water can be clean and life giving but by ill use can be full of contamination. I am using TAP in that too having raindrops in various colours and sizes to illustrate acid rain. That one is still being sewn together and I have yet to draw and make some fish.
Acid-rain-quilt
Still haven’t finalized my design for Ekphrastic. I had had told myself by the end of June I would have the final design done. Many scribbles and drawings later I am still constantly changing my mind and am now going in a totally different direction – definitely by the end of July!

I belong to a group of women called Fibre Art Divas and we spent Saturday dodging the rain and the thunder storms painting on fabric. By choice I was just an observer – I enjoy looking at what other artists are doing, gaining knowledge and getting inspiration - and in spite of the rain some of the pieces produced would make beautiful skies.


I don't have a solo show this year so I'm finding that everything seems to be taking me a long time to do - I guess because there is no pressure!!! However this month I am in a group show in Selkirk, have fibre hangings with various FAN shows in Western Canada and also am part of the Fibre Art Destination 2015 in Weyburn Saskatchewan. Then Saturday found out that I had one painting accepted into the MSA Juried Show. The adjudicators picked 40 pieces out of a possible 215 so I'm feeling pretty good about that!
MSA-poster-1