Collaboration and Creativity.........

We are very proud that during our "artist in residency" we have managed for the last few years to create new work that shows various ways to use our products,  enough pieces for our show booth to have a new look.  Speaking from my point of view this has not always been easy, I don't work like this usually, it takes a lot for me to get into the flow.   For me I cannot just call up those "creative juices" that are needed to create these new pieces,  so working collaboratively with my dear daughter has been a blessing....bouncing ideas with one another is a great way to begin our residency. 

Here are some more photos of our new work;

For that last couple of years we have limited the number of colors we were going to use to create new work for the booth, in order to give it a very cohesive look.  This year when all the colors were chosen my response even surprised me...but these colors reminded me of my childhood.

So....then my next line was something about "pinwheels"....I thought it would be cool to create a pinwheel quilt...using a pinwheel block....however; there seems to have been a "slight" bit of miscommunication, because this next quilt is what came about.

Next thing I knew dimensional pinwheels were appearing all over the studio,  then came the problem of traveling with a 3-D quilt.....

after a bit of a discussion the idea of attaching the pinwheels with snaps was floated out there and it has worked beautifully.  Then a friend suggested that we show how the quilt would look if the pinwheels were stitched down so.....

I swear two brains are so much better than one....when we bounce things around it is so much fun to create these new pieces.

When daughter dear began the large pinwheel quilt she had planned her stems and leaves to look a bit different than the end result.  However, after trying the first ones out they just didn't work, so.......  amazingly the next quilt came about because there was no way she was going to let them go to waste.

This quilt was the result of not wasting the leaves and stem....hmmm....I added a bit of wool and our new hand-dyed cotton velveteen.  It felt like this quilt created itself and that is a wonderful feeling when creating new work.

Thanks for stopping by....there are still several other pieces to come.

Overdue Photos' of New Work......

Our newsletter arrived in my Inbox announcing a sale on our hand-dyed burlap and I came to the realization that we hadn't shown any of our new work after our Artist in Residency this past April. Thanks to sweet daughters' efforts I thought I'd use those pics, show off a few new pieces and those of others who posted their work with our burlap on Instagram.

During our April residency for the last few years we concentrate on making all new work for our booth at shows for the coming year.  This year was no different; however our time in Paducah was shorter, we then taught in Peoria, Ill, came home and left soon for Spring Quilt Market, returned home long enough to repack boxes and leave for QSDS in Columbus, Ohio.  Whew!!!!  No wonder I didn't post anything.

We have been trying to show how we use our products in Home Dec, Quilts, Garments, 3-D pieces and Mixed Media.  The first 2 photos are of new pillow designs and the patterns are available on our website.

Flower Basket Pillow;
   This pillow uses burlap and osnaburg in Heather; a new color introduced at market.  The flower basket is wool applique, using Mary Flanagan Woolens.

Tuscan Bird Pillow;

We used Mint Hand-dyed Burlap for this pillow, scraps from our stash of commercial fabrics in shades of "tuscan" and "butternut",  because like many of you...we cannot resist shopping for fabric everywhere we go.  The embroidery was all done using our hand-dyed floss and perle cottons.

Kristin used a free cross stitch pattern by Southern Living to create this burlap zipper pouch.

These last photo's are from Instagram;  I must say I am very impressed with the variety of ways that our products have been used.  Thank you one and all.

Deborah Boschert highlighted a bit of our Kiwi Burlap in one of her art quilt collages. 

 

Olympic Wool Works Highlighted our burlap as background to her punchneedle design.

Mamajay55 (Instagram) used our burlap with cork fabric to create this dynamite purse!

 Right now we are dyeing like crazy, sooooo....hopefully I will have time to post a few more photos of new work.  I am also hoping to have time for a little "specialty" dyeing...maybe a few pics of that too.

Thanks for stopping by.