Windmill Flowers

The weather has been hot humid and there has been lots of rain. My garden and the weeds are so very high. I've spent hours weeding.

I finished another little quilt from my hotel series. This one is called Windmill Flowers.  I actually started this tiny piece in my last workshop at Empty Spools, Asilomar Conference Center in CA. I brought my bag of Wonder Undered scraps to class and asked everyone to start a little piece, it had to be smaller than a sheet of notebook paper. Mine finished up being 10.25 x 7.25 inches. They could use my scraps and add some of their own. It's fun to dig through old scraps, or someone else's stuff and come up with something. You never know what will develop! It's fun!

Beading is one of my favorite hand sewing activities in the evening. I didn't want to overload this machine embroidered piece with beads so I confined myself to just the flowers. Adding the seed beads to the outside edges of the flowers adds a different effect to the outline of the petals, I'm pleased it. You can see it in Ann's Small Quilt Gallery

Right now, I am hard at work on a new quilt. In an earlier post, I showed you a picture of a bouquet of daffodils and narcissis. My house was filled with such arrangements. This photo served as a starting point for my new quilt called Tea and Daffodils. I'm not going to say anything more, I'll post in-process photos as soon as the quilting is done. Traveling and writing seems to consume so much of my time; when I allow myself the freedom to design and fabricate a new quilt, I am on cloud 9.

News tip: go to Diane Gaudynski's blog. Her cat Oliver recently posted a review of my new book! http://dianegaudynski.blogspot.com  The title is "book is cat approved."

Have a great day------Ann

Of Ferns and Quilts

I got a new printer last week, and I've had a devil of a time, getting everything to work together. It took almost 2 days of calls to the tech support phone lines of HP and Toshiba before the difficulties were solved. Most of you know how absolutely frustrating it can be to spend so much time, trying to get your systems to work together. Right now, everything is working well, so I am both relieved and relaxed!

Finally, I've had some time to work on a little quilt. This is another in my hotel series, using little scraps, hand painted background, and a few beads in the red strips. I hand beaded the little red pieces, machine embroidered and quilted the rest. The name of the quilt is Beads, Ferns and Spirals.  You can read more about it on my website http://www.annfahl.com/ann2/quilts.php?key=142

Here is a detail shot showing the embroidery, beadingand quilting. I had fun making this little quilt.


All the ferns in my shady garden have all opened up and look kind of lush.  We've had some really hot weather here, and lots of rain. All my late spring plants are fully opened and blooming.

My little quilt is just a piece of my outdoor garden.

Ann

It's a Beautiful Day!

I haven't been quilting much since I returned from my teaching trip to Kansas. The last 2 days have been gorgeous in Wisconsin so I have spent some time at our local garden centers.

The young gal at the garden center said these beautiful red Verbena baskets would do well in strong sunlight, so I bought 2 to hang on our deck.

For the last month, I've also had a hummingbird feeder on a hook. I have carefully hung a red ribbon near it, to attract any new-comers to the yard. But yet I have not seen any evidence that anything had been feeding from it. My friend Linda mentioned that a few days ago the hummingbirds finally came to her lilac bushes. Of course I was jealous! As I was hanging up one of my new Verbena baskets last night, something large and dark buzzed past my head. I'm so glad I didn't swat at it, it was a hummingbird.  At last they've found my house too.

Today it was really hot outside, so I couldn't wait another day to fill up the pots for the front and back of my house. They don't look like much yet, but soon they will look beautiful. I used a vine that is a succulent, a red geranium, purple wave petunia, and a little white lacy filler plant for texture.  As summer progresses, I'll try and remember to show you a more mature picture.

I would like to also ask a favor of you, my readers. If you have had a chance to read my new book, Dancing with Thread, would you please write a review for amazon.com and any other bookseller that you use online?  Thank you very much.

Ann

New Quilt part II

Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve never gotten into the goddess thing. But in my personal study of Egyptology, I have found my personal goddess; she is Maat. Rarely seen as a human in Egyptian artwork, she is usually depicted as a feather. You will see a feather at the top of this Sycamore Fig tree, she represents balance. As an artist, wife and mother, it is always a challenge to maintain a balance between the elements of my life. If you are a quilter, I'm sure you understand the concept of balance.

The water lilies or lotus are merely an extension of much of my early work. Here in this quilt they are water lilies with an ancient twist. They are partly embroidered, and partly quilted. The little fish are swimming in the pond, may eventually become someone’s dinner. They are simply cut from commercial fabric, the clamshell quilting makes them come alive.

Some of these were left from an earlier quilt, Egyptian Garden I. http://www.annfahl.com/ann2/quilts.php?key=122  I practiced the embroidery on a smaller beaded piece called Lotus Garden. It can be found in my Small Quilt Gallery. I love all the seed beads, and my quilting dances around all the shapes.   You can find a large image and a detail shot of this quilt at http://www.annfahl.com/ann2/quilts.php?key=123   

So finally, here is the actual quilt, EGYPTIAN WATER GARDEN II; which is related to so many other of my quilts!

Here is a close up of some of the quilting near the trunk of the tree. I’ve created more branches of leaves in the quilting motif.

The quilting of this piece was very creative and energizing for me. I tested almost every idea for quilting motifs on a smaller sample, before I actually quilted on this large piece. This pretesting was key to the success of the final work. When I was sure it was right, then I jumped right into the real thing, and had a great time filling the areas with the appropriate idea. I call it “dancing on my quilt” just like the title of my book.

A little too late, I found one of the original sketches I used for the quilt. This is a xerox copy of the sketch from the 1820's, in the book (titled Treasures of Egypt and Nubia by Ippolito Rosellini), where I colored in the background with colored pencil. You can compare the results.

Thanks for reading.

Ann Fahl

New Quilt part 1

My newest quilt went for a little trip to Paducah KY in April. I had high hopes for it, but no ribbon was ever pinned on it. That is a little bit disappointing for a quilt that I thought was so wonderful, full of color and nature. I put my “all” into it.

 The quilt was inspired by a line drawing made in the 1800’s from a tomb painting in ancient Egypt. I couldn’t get the sketch out of my mind! I took the basic layout, and then placed the tree and pond on a patchwork setting. Designing the entire quilt was very exciting as it went together quite easily. I’ve never made anything this shape before, it is taller than I am, but because it is so narrow, it will fit on a small wall.

 I had great fun fabricating the parts. I love the way all the pieces worked together. The small water garden fits right below the fig tree. It took hours putting together the plants, ducks and geese.  When the trunk and the limbs of the tree went up, I could see the skeleton of a great quilt. Then I started cutting out the leaves. What was I thinking? There are hundreds of them. The little yellow figs made the green of the leaves sparkle.  It is going to take forever to embroider them.

The ducks/geese on the lower edge, took a great deal of time to fuse together.

The last one was finished before I realized that it was backwards! I couldn’t throw it out. I wound up on my quilt Pipe Dreams on the right side.http://www.annfahl.com/ann2/quilts.php?key=125  I love it when my quilts relate to one another, by having imagery that come from each other.

The earthen pots of red poppies are the crowning glory of the composition. I chose to use a
magnificent piece of orange and red hand dyed fabric by Dagmar Plenk of Milwaukee; the colors make the flowers sing.

These flowers were the last object to be quilted on the quilt. I had to do lots of experimenting to find the right idea to stitch.  I made a miniature quilt with similar flowers, and tried a different design on each one.  You can see this small quilt in my small quilt gallery.go to http://www.annfahl.com/ann2/quilts.php?key=132 

You can see the entire quilt-- later.