Appliqued Upcycled Blue Jeans Cowboy Baby Name Quilt

From about the age of 2, my baby boy wanted to be a cowboy. We live in an urban suburb, and are descended from long lines of gefilte-fish-eating city-dwellers, so this vocational goal was as implausible as it was delightful.

(Young people, that is not my son. That is Gene Wilder, the definitive Jewish cowboy, who played the role in Frisco Kid and Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, two stupid, wildly politically-incorrect, utterly hilarious movies.)

I seized upon my son's cowboy aspirations as an excuse to make a quilted wall hanging from my  favorite garments for upcycling:  Denim jeans.

What is this thing? Why, it's an appliqued denim cowboy name quilt, of course! All raw-edge applique, so easy, so fun! 

The background is red felt, free-motion quilted. The lettering, comes from various parts of the jean,with hardware like fasteners and rivets left in wherever possible. It's sewn on by hand or machine, depending on whether the seams were too thick for my sewing machine needle. (I hate to admit it, but you could actually do this entire quilt with glue.) 

It also includes novelty fabric cutouts of cowboys and their accoutrements (cows, herding dogs, covered wagons, cattle skulls, etc.), added with fusible and machine stitching. All edges are raw - stray threads are a feature! 

All four corners have denim pockets. The cacti are appliqued felt. I threw on some other stuff, like a piece of petrified wood tied to a string tied to a vintage metal button (lower left of the photo below), a Levi's label (speaking of Jews and cowboys), and a golden cord lasso.

Belt loops are set at even intervals along the top. A loop of navy-and-white bandana, tied through each belt loop, holds the quilt onto nails on the wall. (It's off-the-wall for the shot below).

The piece measures about 32" x 15" But of course, my son has a short name, all straight lines. If the child's name is Persephone or Maximillian, you will need to make the letters smaller, and/or the quilt much longer.

Obviously, this upcycling project works best if your child has hopes and dreams that are somehow related to blue jeans. Along with cowpersons, if s/he wants to be a carpenter, a professor, Bruce Springsteen, or an explorer, denim is perfect.  However, if s/he wants to be an Olympic ice skater, use something spangly; if s/he wants to be a neurosurgeon, scrubs would be ideal, etc.

My son's cowboy dreams did fade away, alas, and from about 3rd grade to today (he's in college), he has pretty much wanted to be a scientist, like his dad.  And come to think of it, his father, and his father's scientific colleagues, mostly wear denim jeans to the office. So if my son one day has a scientific office and/or lab, I feel strongly that this wallhanging will fit in perfectly with the decor.

The lassoing of stray cows will transform from a literal projection of a future career, into a metaphor for the ongoing search for elusive scientific truth. (Rising violin music). So I won't have to make him a new science-themed denim name wallhanging any time soon!  Happy Birthday, son! I bought you a nice science book, instead!


P.S.

Come to think of it, Gene Wilder also starred in a Mel Brooks movie about careers in science!

Best. Quilt. Book. Ever. (and Giveaway)

If you have to be stuck on an airplane with one quilt book, here's the one you want: Martha Sielman's People & Portraits.

I know, because last month I was stuck on a trans-continental flight from LA to JFK, on Virgin, with this as my only book. (I won it from Linda Teddlie Minton's awesome art quilt blog - thanks, Linda!)   The book arrived just as we were leaving town, so I threw it in my backpack on the way out the door.

But, to tell you the truth, although I am always thrilled to win something (anything!), a book of portrait quilts would not have been on the top of my wish list. For one thing, some portrait quilts are a little odd. Take mine. Please.

Photo of beautiful young lady, my DD, taken years ago by my friend Liz (thanks, Liz!):

My resulting quilt. 

Okay, for a first try. I worked directly from the photograph, following the same easy procedure as for my tree portrait. But what's up with the reaching Dementor arms in her hair? And is she running a fever? The rosy, almost malarial, cheeks are so much subtler in the photo (and real life.) Let's not even discuss what's happening where her shirt sleeves end. 

Fortunately, my husband loved it and claimed it for his office, so I don't have to contemplate its flaws on a daily basis.

It is a real challenge to make a portrait that sings. And to get really good at it - like anything else - you probably should make a lot of them. YOU really should. Having gotten one that one out of my system, I figured I was done with human portrait quilts for a while. 

Until the plane ride. 

As I was reading The Book, I thought to myself: I have a LOT of quilt books. In many respects, this  might actually be The. Best. One. 

Although it's softcover and small enough to read in a cramped airplane seat, in spirit it's a coffee table book. 

For one thing, it's lavish. Who the heck publishes 200 page quilt books? With one or more color masterpieces on virtually EVERY page? The portraits range in style from photographic to cartoonish, thread-drawn to pointillist, and everything in between. There are even artists who pretty much leave facial details out completely - no eyes, no nose, no mouth - an approach that I feel has tremendous potential for my particular skill set.

The cover photo, is Marie Elkins' Windblown, (also on the book cover at the top of this post). What Elkins did with the quilted feathers in the hair and background is breathtaking.

Among the 88 artists whose work appears in the book, some are famous, and many are not.  My favorite quilt in the book is by Maine quilter, Holly Hascall Dominie, called 'Irrepressible.'

Holly Haskell Dominie's quilt, 'Irrepressible.' Used with permission of Sterling  Publishing.  See this and another of her astonishing portrait quilts by scrolling halfway down on this page.   

I had a ton of other 2nd favorite quilts and quilters in the book. These include the elegant nightlife quilts of Colette Berends, an extraordinarily creative textile artist who sadly died last year, according to her website; Sherry Davis Kleinman; Margene Gloria Ray; Phyllis Cullen, Marilyn Belford, and on and on. I'm randomly picking another favorite quilt to show you, because I'm a sucker for glassblowing, and for blue-and-orange color schemes.

Jenny Bowker's 'Hassan and the Glass'. Used with permission  of Sterling Publishing. 

What's unusual even for a coffee table book are the extensive chapters, about 21 portrait quilters, discussing their art, influences and techniques in well-edited detail. There are no projects, but the technique information is enough to go on if you want to try. 

Author Martha Sielman is head of the Studio Art Quilters Association. She and the creative team at Sterling/Lark - editor Amanda Corestio, the designers and the producers - should win prizes for this  book. I send them all my thanks for a job done to perfection, and for making my plane ride as pleasant as it could be.

Now if only they could arrange for more leg room.

GIVEAWAY WINNER UPDATE: 5/18/13: The randomly-selected winner is of the book is the 17th commenter below, Marilyn. Congrats, Marilyn, and thanks to all who came by! (You're welcome to comment some more, but the giveaway is done!)

Yogurt Lids, Yo Yo Quilts, and the Yardage of El Anatsui

 When I was in junior high school, in the late 60s, I collected yogurt lids. Here's one.

At that time there was mostly only Dannon yogurt. A lot of kids brought it for lunch. The lids were cardboard and had two parts; the part that snugged over the container's rim, and a colorful sturdy cardboard circle that popped into the top, with the color-matched flavor printed on it.

The insert mesmerized me. I wanted to make something from them. That's how I became cafeteria-famous as the kid that you threw your yogurt lid at. It was done in a mostly friendly way, and I happily collected hundreds.

Back home, up in the attic, I hung a bamboo pole sideways and started to make a curtain of  lids. I put staples in the north, south, east and west positions, to attach each lid to its neighbors. It  didn't work very well. They hung askew. I created an area a yard or so square, but the bigger it got, the wonkier it hung. I never finished.

Eventually, I went off to college, and in my absence, my dad threw them all away. I have one lid left that I found under a box during an attic excavation. That's the one you see above. Like me, it's now an antique. (Here's an age test: Do you remember PRUNE WHIP yogurt? I loved that stuff.)

Years later, when I became a quilter, I discovered yo yo quilts and recognized that they came from  basically the same instinct as my wannabe yogurt curtain. Here's an award-winning yo yo quilt held by its 98-year-old creator, from About.com.

Yo yos are not just for seniors. A new generation is discovering them. The picture below shows a small, hip, 'modern'  yo yo quilt with a tutorial, from Purl Bee:

Two weeks ago, while we were visiting New York, a dear friend took us to the Brooklyn Museum to see the quilt exhibit there. It was a very nice, small exhibit of mostly antique quilts (info here)...

But what took my breath away was the amazing work of someone I'd never heard of, African artist El Anatsui.

El Anatsui takes discarded can lids, or foil bottle seals, or other metallic (or wood) scraps....

...and he turns them into heavy, rippling, monumentally massive enormous works of art. Some sprawl   across the floor...

...shoot up like stalagmites...

...hang in waves from the wall...

...or the ceiling.

Just being in their presence is intoxicating. It's like standing next to Niagara Falls or the General Grant Tree - the thing is so big that it gives off gravity waves or negative ions or color emanations or some other invisible force field that makes existence more exciting...

Wow.

I realized that I gave up too quickly on my yogurt lid curtain. Anatsui obviously had the same problem - things tied together wouldn't hang flat - and he grooved with it. His artist's statement says that his pieces are draped differently in every venue, and that's part of the art - a little bit of performance art!

The exhibit statement also says "Anatsui converts found materials into a new type of media that lies between sculpture and painting." 

As a quilter, I would respond: Hey, that's not so new. Quilters have been using found materials to create something on the borderline of painting and sculpture, for a very long time. But most of us are only a little off the 2D surface. Anatsui is a LOT. 

And like El Anatsui, quilters work with repetition. But most of us are so much more timid about working on a massive scale.

I'm still collecting lids - I especially have trouble throwing away milk carton caps. I've limited myself to one small box full (same box also has empty spools and a jar of metal bottle caps). Someday I will make something out of them.

But what?

El Anatsui has me thinking about working huge. That's pretty scary. What's the biggest quilt you've ever made? I don't think I've gone over 120" on a side. 

Not yet, anyway.

(Learn more about the Brooklyn Museum exhibit of El Anatsui's work here.)

Polka Dot Fabric: the New Sugar, Salt, Fat

For many years now, my first-resort host or hostess gift has been 9-patch quilted 'potholders' (or 'wall art', depending on how uppity I'm feeling).

The slightly wonky example above was stitched by my daughter - I led her Girl Scout troop in making them last year. They're easy, fun, and I always enjoyed using a wild variety of 4" novelty fabric squares, ranging. in the case above, from the sublime (raspberries) to the ridiculous (Reese's). 

They're always welcome - everyone needs a new and entertaining potholder. My friends use them for pots, hang them as art, or both.

My friend Petra mounted this one on a stretched canvas that she had splashed with paint, a la Jackson Pollock, but less, discussed earlier. Note that Petra does not eat kosher.

But last month, while continuing to wrestle mightily with my lifelong sugar jones, I splurged on a copy of the new bestseller, 'Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.'  The main point is right there in the title, but this book, by New York Times reporter Michael Moss, fills in the details with fascinating, horrifying anecdotes about the scientists, the business people, the research, and the money. I laughed, I cried, I read sections out loud to my husband, I couldn't put that book it down. 

On quilts, junk food is fun. In bodies, not so much. That's not news. But the book led me to a quilt-related revelation: There are more than enough paid advertisements for crappy (excuse my French) processed pseudo-foods out there. The world certainly doesn't need me to make even more, quilted, complementary advertisements for junk.

After all, I would never give a recovering alcohol anything that featured this fabric (however delightful): 

On the other hand, I don't want to make a solemn potholder. Can good health, entertainment, and art be reconciled in the quilt world? (let alone the real world?)

I needed a fast answer, because a few days after reading the book, we were heading out on a 5-day-trip, staying at friends' houses. Normally I'd make more nine-patch hostess gifts, but this time, enough was enough. I craved something fresh. 

Fortunately, just as today's supermarkets offer better produce than ever before, there are also now many more excellent produce fabrics. Lifelike, mouthwatering, 100% vegan fabrics, like this garlic (used earlier).

Check out RJR's Farmer's Market line for a huge collection. Similarly, Fabri-Quilt has 'Farmer John's Marketplace'.  Timeless Treasures has 'Farm Fresh.' Equilter carries an awesome number of produce fabrics by various manufacturers. I happened to have some 6" circles of high-quality quilters' food fabrics leftover from a completely different quilt project. I dug them out. Here's one. 

I put the circle on another virtuous food - in this case, brussels sprouts (The selvage says it's cabbage, but I feel strongly that it's brussels sprouts.)

Better, but not yet thrilling. 

Fortunately, I had recently purchased a bundle of assorted polka dot 'charms' - 5" squares - in a variety of color combinations.

I decided to make them into rectangular accents, symbolizing nothing really. Just to spice things up. 

Now we're talking!  Extrapolating from the work of Freddie Moran, I long ago decided that polka dots are the new black - they go with everything. Or should I say, polka dots are the new sugar/fat/salt? Like sweet, fatty, high-sodium processed cheeze sauce on frozen broccoli, polka dots make everything more delicious - but unlike the sauce, can't harm your health. 

Here's the back of the potholder above:  

Fresh figs. My mouth waters every time I look at this awesome fabric. 

Next, bananas on collard greens/chard. OK, maybe not the tastiest combination in the real world, but the fabric for both involves yellow crescents. The yellow polka dots speak to them. 

The back: 

Next: Mixed nuts on pretzels. I know pretzels aren't healthy....but they could be worse.... and gosh, the color went so well with the nuts.

OK, my willpower lapsed. The back atones for the sins of the front:

I had a Chinese food fabric circle so I surrounded it with my favorite chopstick fabric. In this one, the polka dot accent is a long isosceles triangle. 

Pretend the rice is brown.

The back: 

Bags'o'rice. Continue to pretend it's brown rice.

It occurred to me that these shapes might make interesting quilt blocks too. Here's how the potholders  look laid out in a four patch:

Whatcha think? Is there an entire quilt in these shapes? (Maybe a lollipop quilt?)

I finished the four potholders in time, we went on our trip, and they were very well received by our  hosts and hostesses. I felt good about leaving them with a useful item that is also a subliminal pep talk to eat (mostly) clean.  Everyone lived happier and healthier ever after!

Or did they? 

That was SUPPOSED to be the happy ending, but while writing this up, and making a few more, I had a headslapper of a good idea: The polka dot band can be a handle! For the one below, I fused the polka dot band to another piece on the inside, then stitched it to the potholder only at the ends. 

Ta daaaa! Next is one I made with lime green polka dots on lavender. 

 

The other new and different thing about this project is that my friend Linda L. gave me a big strip of Insul-brite to use as batting. (Normally I used 2-3 layers of cotton batting for a potholder). Along with the promise of better heat protection, I like that Insul-brite is very stiff, yet thinner than 3 layers of cotton batting. So if you do hang these up, the corners won't flop. (Thank you, Linda!)

All this leaves me wondering about you, dear reader: Do you make quilts that have helped you adopt healthy habits or discourage bad ones? Exercising, weight loss, eating right? If so, I'd love to hear about it. 

Quilts for Boston

In the wake of tragedy, quilters organize quickly.

Quilt blocks and/or supplies for people affected by the tragedy are requested.
Details here: http://bostonmqg.blogspot.com/2013/04/quilts-for-boston.html
Flickr group here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/quiltsforboston/

UPDATE (4/1). Flags for Boston project here: http://vancouvermodernquiltguild.ca/blog/2013/04/to-boston-with-love/

Artist Trading Cards: You Know You Want To

I participated in a thrilling Artist Trading Card exchange last week. Several participants became alarmed when they looked at my cards and realized that I cut into an actual dictionary - a disintegrating, 1960 student dictionary, I hastily explained in my defense.

The idea of libricide appalled me, too - at first. But  since discovering ATCs and their ilk, I've become much less squeamish. I only cut into out-of-date reference books, falling-apart books, or bestselling books of which used bookstores have far too many (How many paperback copies of Angels and Demons are at your nearest thrift shop? I counted nine in mine.) When in doubt, I check Amazon or ebay, to make sure I'm not about to eviscerate a Gutenberg Bible.

The base of an ATC is a stiff material of your choice, cut to  2 1/2" x 3 1/2".  Depending on how strong you need it to be, you can cut it from a Cheerios box, or buy pre-cut mat board, watercolor paper, chipboard, etc. Blank ATC packs of various materials are sold online or at an art supply/craft store. 

For this set of ATCs, I used Kraft-tex which is like a cross between fabric, leather and interfacing. It takes paint beautifully, with a misty dappled effect, and allows all kinds of watercolory techniques (learned from  Sherrill Kahn). I sprayed the Kraft-tex with water, then did mostly horizontal strokes with blue, purple and green shades of Dye-Na-Flow, letting the colors run together. Once dry, I cut the Kraft-tex into card-size pieces, and stenciled a seagull onto each, with shiny opaque silver acrylic paint. 

Then I found a comfortable spot in the middle of the floor, surrounded myself with bead and button boxes, Crafter's Pick The Ultimate Glue (my current fave for the 3-D embellishments), a glue stick (for paper and fabric), toothpicks (for precision glue delivery), a wire cutter (for snipping shanks off plastic buttons), a scissors, an X-acto knife, and ye olde dictionary, open to the "aero" page. 

Here's where the real fun began: Seeking definitions to fit my embellishments, and vice versa.  

The definitions had to be cut with an X-acto knife (or small sharp scissors), because the lines are so crammed together. The next card has a vintage propeller airplane button.

Below the next bird is a square chunk from an old French map:

 Here's a floating, lacy, metal UFO (broken earring?)

At one point, I became bored with the "ae" section of the dictionary, and flipped randomly to the fl's, where I spotted the soothing illustration below of a flageolet. (Never flog a flageolet, which is a member of the flipple flute family - I kid you not). I also adhered a tiny woven label that says "Sweet Dreams." My  friend Kay gave me the label. I wish I had 100!

What I do have a 100 of is that question mark bead on the lower right of the card above. I found a pack at a store a few months ago. Those poor identical little beads, peeping out from behind the plastic, looked so lost and pathetically quizzical, that, of course I brought them home. Now I'm gluing them to everything but my forehead. It's the all-purpose existential embellishment, without the commitment or blood of a tattoo.

(Deja vu? Yes, you've already met that gal's identical twin, on my Elvis toy sewing machine.)

Once everything was glued down, I gave the cards a couple of coats of matte Golden Gel medium, brushing it carefully around but not on top of the 3-D embellishments. It created a nice even surface, and took the shine off accidental glue smears. Unfortunately, it also took the shine from the silver gulls. With not enough time to repaint the birds, I quickly learned to love grey, signed and dated the backs, and was good to go.

So easy!  So fun! So you-don't-have-to-be-an-artistic-genius! And that's not even the best part! The best part is the swap. This particular event was set up by a friend of a friend. I only knew one participant, and met 5 such interesting people, and learned so much from them through their art. We ate and drank yummy things, socialized, asked questions, and enjoyed each other's wildly diverse cards and ways of thinking. Thanks, Jenny, for putting the whole fantastic event together!

Now you know you want to do this, right? If you don't have enough like-minded friends, ask about swaps at your local art and/or craft store. Or go to Groups.yahoo.com/ and type in "Artist Trading Cards." Some groups trade through the mail; others arrange face-to-face meetings in specific cities. There are also lists of local exchanges at Artist-trading-cards.ch/events.html.

If you're primarily into fiber arts, you might find that this article I wrote a couple of years ago for Quilt Life magazine helpful. It is mostly about making fabric ATCs, especially from quilty UFOs. (In this case, the acronym stands for non-aeronautic Unfinished Objects). Some of the links listed in that article are extinct, unfortunately.

A final tidbit: ATC makers don't sell them. If it's called an ATC, it's individually made for the sole purpose of trading. If you make a card to sell, call it an ACEO, which stands for "Artist Cards, Editions and Originals." Zillions of ACEOs are sold online. Just search ebay.

While  there, you may also find a worn-out copy of the Gutenberg Bible. If you can afford it, buy it, but then you absolutely must resist the temptation to cut it up.

***

PS: I have no financial affiliation with any of the products mentioned by name in this post, except that I did receive a free roll of Kraft-tex in exchange for a completely different project. I truly  love the stuff.