International Fairy Tale Challenge

click here for the post by Kathie Kerler, on the 30 U.S. quilts in the International Fairy Tale Challenge, she also has posts about most of the individual quilts, so check her blog posts. Mine is the bottom row, middle. The Cottager and the Cat" an Icelandic fairy tale.

International Painters Exhibit

Friday night, I got off work, rushed into the bathroom at the drivers lounge, changed into a nice blouse and did my makeup. I picked up Clare and Pat W. and we raced up to Eugene, Or. in the pouring rain. The Emerald Art Gallery in Springfield was exhibiting our International Painters Challenge. They were having their 2nd Friday Art Walk & Artists Reception, the place was packed. My munchies that I brought, chocolate trail mix clusters were gone in under two minutes.

The challenge had 30 U.S. artists, 30 from France and 30 from Japan. One person from each country was assigned an artist, for a total of 90 quilted wall hangings, 19" square. They were displayed as a set, an artist with an artwork from each country, on a black fabric background. It was really interesting to see how each textile artist interpreted the painter. Mine is the top Leonardo da Vinci piece, you can see how I made it here and here.

Mucha by American artist and curator Linda Steller, she coordinated the U.S. artists, and has arranged for the entire collection to be exhibited at all the American Quilt Society shows in 2016. So it may come to your area, please go see it.

Cezanne was interpreted by Sylvia, from our Fyber Cafe group. It has pieces of hand dyed silk, that she dyed with this project in mind.

Many of the pieces had 3-D elements, as this Degas artwork by a French textile artist.

Beads and sequins added extra sparkle to this art work, by a Japanese artist.

All of the Klimpt pieces were richly done with gold metallic fabrics and lots of beading. I especially liked the way the face was painted/transferred.

The French version of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.


Monet's water garden was done in hand dyed fabrics, strip pieced by the U.S. artist and 3-D silk waterlilies, with organza flowers from France.

I really liked the beautiful color on this Georgia O'Keeffe flower and the detailed thread work, from the U.S.

Renoir's flower girls were wonderfully collaged from floral fabrics.

Tokaido's trees in the fog, was the most similar of two works by the same artist. All the others were completely different as the textile artists interpreted each painter from a different point of view, the 3 Klimt's & Mucha's were also the most similar style wise.

Warhol's style in different colors ways, was great, it reminded me of my Golden retriever. The thread painting was well done and unique to each section.

The layers of tulle and other shears gave this Wyeth painting the beautifully blended contours of the woman. I was impressed with the technical aspect of how this was achieved. There were many more wonderful art works, but I can only show you a few that caught my attention the most. The gallery was a wonderful place and I thank them for the excellent job they did to display everything. A bunch of us from the Roseburg area then went out to dinner at the Plank House Pub, and I got fresh steelhead with mushroom Marsala and roasted hazelnuts, it was fabulous. It was also interesting to see the "big" city atmosphere of a collage town, with the variety of people all conversing loudly, and enjoying a late Friday night out. Roseburg as a small town, tends to shut down early. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse in the World Painters Challenge, please see it if it comes to your area.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other talented textile artists are doing this week.

International Fairy Tale Challenge

My finished project for the International Fairy Tales Challenge, is titled "Social Climbing." 30 artists from the USA, France and Japan participated. One artists from each country were assigned a Fairy Tale, so there would be 3 versions of each tale. The quilts are all going to International Quilt Show in Tokyo in November, and then Quilt Week Yokohama. After being in Japan for a while, they will go to France for a year, then return to the US, for shows here. Our last challenge, "International Painters" has returned to the US and will be in all AQS shows in 2016.

I was rather uninspired for a long time. The tale is from Iceland "A Cottager and His Cat," the cottager's father dies and leaves him a lot of ill gotten money, a spirit tells him to throw all the money into the river, and take what he finds there. He throws it a way and finds 6 gold shillings. He buys a cat, rather unique to Iceland I gather. He takes the cat to the castle and it kills all the rats. The king is so happy, he lets the cottager marry his daughter. That is why it is titled "Social Climbing." See no trolls, fairies, dragons or anything special, just a man and his cat. I finally researched traditional Iceland costumes on Google. The women's outfits are elaborately embroidered, but the men's rather plain.

So I sketched out an Iceland winter scene, with the cottager and his cat going to the castle. I began with a printed sky fabric and a plain white on white hill of snow. I have lots of birch tree fabric from my time spent making landscapes. This style is right up my alley.

Traditional men's costumes are dark blue, black or green vests over a white shirts, with beautiful embroidery, but I kept my embroidery simple. I began by making the vest out of a heavy blue fabric that I had, maybe it is linen? I textured the sleeves with folds of muslin, and made a simple stand up collar.

The snow scene started to take shape, as I added the road in shades of gray, darker at the bottom. The birch trees on either side have snowy branched trees in the background, and snow filled pine trees scattered on the hill side. I had just bought the pine trees fabric from this years Christmas line, it has beautiful woodland animals on it, deer, fox, rabbits, birds and other. It was a shame to just cut it up for the pine trees.

I found the cat pattern that I wanted in a stained glass book. It is walking forward, but looking up at the castle.

The castle is finished in a brown stone blocks print. It looks like it is leaning, I fixed that before I quilted it.

All the elements are in place and ready for quilting. I used a flat cotton batting, I use so much thread painting/quilting that I did not need the puff of a polyester batting. I do a raw edge applique to quilt it all together, the pieces are in place with Avery glue stick. I tried the Elmers school glue stick that everyone had this "back to school" season and did not like it. For one it was purple and the color showed through on light colored fabrics, and it was too dry and stiff.

I use matching rayon thread for the outlining of each piece, going back and forth, so each edge has three layers of thread. One line of thread can miss the edge too often or get to far inside the edge, this gives a good solid line and keeps the eyelash fringe to a minimum. The hat was made from a knitted sweater sleeve from Goodwill. I used the ribbing first and then tucked in a long triangle for the hat. Traditionally they are long tailed and tipped with a gold or silver tube and a tassel. I used the silver tip from a bolo tie. I still have to make the tassel for the end of the hat.

It was an enjoyable process, once I had the idea in my head, and knew what I wanted to do. Having a deadline helped, I thought I had to have it for the beginning of October, but when I looked up the info it said Oct, 1. All this was done starting last Saturday through this Saturday. Then I read the info again, it said finish by the first and deliver by the 10th, whew, but I am glad I got it done. One of the other participants, will deliver it to the US coordinator in Eugene, Oregon this week, so I don't have to worry about that. I was going to go up today, but I still need to put on the tassel. I unraveled a bunch of yarn from the sweater but it is kinked from the knitting. I think I'll get it wet and see if it will relax a bit. Thank you for following along as I make haste for another deadline. I am very happy with the way it turned out and hope you like it too.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column to see what other talented textile artists are doing this week.