Fiber Arts at the Fredericksburg Museum

Remember to click on each picture to see a close up!

Last Friday I accompanied my fiber artist friends Barbara Posey and Stephanie Woolsey to the Fredericksburg Museum , in Fredericksburg VA, to drop off our work to be included in the First Fiber Arts Exhibit ever held at this venue!  The piece that you see above is a brand new piece titled Autumn Daisy.  I created this art quilt using all of my own hand dyed and sun printed fabrics.  The title references the glorious yellow daisy type flowers that bloom all over the place here in Virginia, starting at the end of August.  The wild small bushes bloom like crazy and are butterfly magnets.  We often see many Monarch butterflies swarming these bushes as they store up food to make their long migrations south.

I have been invited to join 6 other local fiber artists in this exhibit.  The exhibit at the museum will coincide with a large invitational exhibit, Contemporary Work in Fiber, that will be taking place at the University of Mary Washington just up the street.  You can check out that exhibit and all the particulars about it here.

Autumn Daisy hanging at Artful Dimensions Gallery in Fredericksburg along with Piece of the Rainbow, a mosaic work by Cathy Ambrose-Smith.

Every stitch on this piece was done by hand.

You can see a faint yellowing in the center of each daisy flower.  That yellow stain is left behind by the pollen from each blossom,  when the flowers are applied to the wet fabric and pressed into place the pollen comes in firm contact with the fabric and leaves it's mark.  I love that about these flowers.  the shape of their leaves is wonderful for sun printing as well, with the serrated edge to give extra interest.  It is almost time for the flowers to start blooming in the ditches and along the road sides again!! I will be doing many more sun prints and offering them for sale in my Etsy Shop!

My second submission is titled New Again.  This piece began as a needle felted piece combining wool roving with silk fibers and fabrics.  Then I added all sorts of vintage laces, trims and beads.  I crafted a puffed heart covered with a silk brocade from a vintage scarf and beaded the heart. I added many vintage mother of pearl buttons , some crystals, fresh water pearls and many tiny seed beads in all sorts of shades of pearl and white.  In other words the old became New Again as part of a New whole.

Here you can see some of the wonderful edging lace and vintage tatting that I stitched on and then embellished further with beads.  I made the frame myself using foam core collaged with brown paper, then painted and varnished the entire piece. 

If you click on this photo you can see a close up of the puffed heart and the surrounding area.

My last submission absolutely had to be my underwater tapestry titled Coral Cacophony.  If you would like to read the specifics of the creation of this piece you can click here.

The exhibit opens in early September, so check back to see pictures of my co-exhibitors work as well as the opening event!  you are in for a real treat!!! You can be sure that I will be sharing it here!!

Coral Cacophony Complete!!!

I have finished my Ocean tapestry textile Collage piece and I am calling it Coral Cacophony.  I want to thank all of you who visited and left such supportive comments and wonderful suggestions for names for this piece.  You comments make me happier than you will ever know!! Thank you SOOO much!

To frame the piece I first mounted it by stitching, to a piece of 140lb watercolor paper that I had painted about 14 times with various colors of blues, from turquoise to cobalt, Diazanine purple, Paynes gray and black paints.  Then I drilled thru the back of the shadow box frame and wired the paper and tapestry to the back of the frame to hold all securely in place.  this piece is now hanging at Artful Dimensions 3d Gallery where I have my Studio ( you can read more about that here).

Now for some detail shots and a bit of explanation about how I did what I did.  ( Remember to see larger pictures just click on the picture!!)
Here you can see that I created two red jelly fish and the tentacles of a third that has swum off the piece. These were made from red silk gauze and stuffed with raw silk fibers and red silk threads. The one closest to the viewer was stitched to the very top layer and the next one was stitched under a layer of deep blue tulle and the tentacles of the third were stitched under two layers of the netting.  This gives the effect of distance away from the viewer and it all works amazingly well, at first I was skeptical.

You can see the layers of singed organza and the hand stitched feather stitches to create sea weeds and sea fans and a small teal and lime green fish, just above the dyed pink linen sea fan.   ( By holding the edge of a cut organza shape next to the flame of a tea light candle , the organza melts and causes the fabric to curl and pucker and it becomes sea weed before you eyes! Such fun and so effective!!!) This piece really is all about the various layers!!

This is the very bottom , middle section of the piece and you can see the ocean tumbled rocks, from Nauset Beach on Cape Cod in Massachusetts,stitched into envelopes of hand dyed and natural vintage lace bits.  I must admit to thinking that I was a bit nuts as I sat one night selecting stones to stitch into lace!!!  But I am really very pleased with the results and with the weight that the reef is given by the bulk and textures of the stitched stones!! The lace also gives one a place to stitch more bits, see the pearl sitting on top of the white stone stitched into the green and blue lace? 
 I made several components out ot polymer clay to add to the rocks and crevasses of the piece.  on the rock to the far right you can see a polymer clay starfish and up near the top of the picture and to the left you can see a tiny pink and orange anemone. 
 There is also a chunk of cobalt blue sea glass, many many beads and ribbons, vintage buttons and many found shells collected from various beach walks.

The bright pink brain coral was made from a large piece of hand dyed silk velvet that I tucked and stitched into place and then added many beads and bits and shell pieces.  You can also see three orange tube worms that I created from orange cording with beaded lavender tentacles.  I had a good deal of fun making those particular components!

This is a very tight shot so i can show you the orange sponges that I created by stitching bits of yellow plastic vegetable bag into cone shapes and then stitching some orange silk inside the yellow mesh cones.  Just below the sponges is a polymer clay coral formation and next to that a purple star fish sitting on a lace wrapped stone.  At the right, on top of the lace wrapped stone is a tiny purple and orange polymer clay anemone.

 I stitched in many different tiny shells that I have always collected.  To the left of the blue lace covered white rock is a small pair of Siamese twin oyster shells that were found with a ready made hole and and at the far left edge of the picture you can see a bit of wampum (quahog clam shell that has been tumbled in the waves- it is purple and white, in color, it also had a ready made hole!)

The final size of the unframed Coral Cacophony is approximately 10 inches deep by 14 inches wide and it weighs about 4 pounds,  No doubt due to the four rocks and multiple  encrusted bits added to the piece!


I must thank the amazing textile artist Judith Baker Montano for writing her wonderful book Fiberart Montage!  If you are at all interested in textile collage, this is a MUST HAVE book.  Ms. Montano made me believe that I could even begin to attempt to create my own ocean piece by describing and showing how a master achieves her beautiful work.  You can look at the book in detail here.
Again , thank you all for stopping by and for helping me find my way thru this piece!! Now I am off to start working on another similar project as I am going through "encrusting withdrawal" and we cannot have that!!!!