Thanksgiving creations

I hope everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving like we did!


Here's what started off our series of Thanksgiving creations--a lovely turkey with herbed butter under the skin. Oh man--it smelled heavenly!







And here is the pristine table and the eager eaters. Fiona chose the table linens and set the table.






Of course, for every yin there is a yang, for every black there is a white, for every exquisite Thanksgiving dinner there is the mess created in the kitchen. And so here is ours. sigh. I love how Frodo managed to get into the picture on the right with his nonchalant, hopeful look. Roasting anything drives both dogs crazy. Not to worry, they had Thanksgiving kibble with turkey pan juices (defatted, of course).


After dinner we played games including one of our perennial favorites, Jenga. We didn't set any height records worth mentioning but then Fiona created this amazing construction (no glue, tape or photoshopping, I promise!)


As good as (or maybe even better!) are the TURKEY SANDWICHES the next day. Here's the one I created to Ed's specifications. So far: turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes...

next: wild rice and cooked red cabbage (a german and austrian holiday side dish.)

















et..Voila! Thanksgiving in a sandwich!







The moist layers enabled the sandwich to hold together really well. It was inhaled in short order and declared a success!

New show!

This past week I was asked to mount a one-woman show at the Women's Research Center here at the University of Central Florida. http://womens.research.ucf.edu/index.html The Center occupies an interconnected suite with lots of wall space in the lobby area which they keep filled with art. I was thrilled to be asked and can't wait! The show will open in early January and will be up for about 6 weeks. I will be showing examples from all my different themes so the title "Disparate Threads" presented itself as the best description. I'll post more details soon! Stay tuned...

Time for some "grandma" quilts

I find beauty in traditional quilting patterns, too. I particularly like the log cabin pattern for blocks and triangles absolutely rule. I usually resort to paper piecing to get those precise points. Of course, when I explore the traditional techniques I have to use some outrageous colors to really wow the viewer. See for yourself!


Wonder of wonders, this is actually a functional piece! Its a lap blanket and a play on the colorway you often see in vintage amish quilts: all solid fabrics with lots of black combined with jewel and even pastel colors. This quilt is called "A hare off amish" which is a play on the composition of the black fabric which was a vintage print that had gray bunnies with yellow or blue capes on the black background.


Can you see the bunnies here? Its kind of cute and yet somehow ominous-- all that black, and why are those rabbits wearing capes, anyway? Another wonder--this quilt is hand quilted, something I don't really do anymore. The size is exactly the that of a plane lap blanket ('cause thats what the batting is!).


This quilt features some of the fabulous fabric designed by Kaffe Fasset. He does big bold and colorful prints that really resonate with me. Because of their large scale they are often difficult to incorporate. Using them as a border is a good strategy.


Another one of my favorite fabric designers is Jane Sassaman. Combining brights with black and white is a favorite technique of mine. I think this quilt looks a little like one of the old timey test patterns. The points of the quilt are reinforced with TimTex so they do actually maintain their stiffness even when hung on the wall.



Bright colors, paper pieced blocks combined with black and white stripes--all my favorite tricks!

Creativity from the west coast

Yesterday saw the completion of a trade of items with my new friend from the west coast. Donna, from Giggly Girl Designs on Etsy (that awesome site for creatives of all sorts from all over the world) emailed me a while back asking if we could trade. She liked my stuff and it turned out that I liked her stuff and the rest is history! I sent her 2 prints of my pieces and in exchange she custom designed and made a BEAUTIFUL bag for me. I'm addicted to bags and purses (just ask my family!!) and so it was a trade made in heaven.
Well! My bag arrived yesterday and it is AWESOME! Featured is one of my favorite artists: Frida Kahlo... and it has pockets galore! And the colors are perfect and the size is perfect and, and and--I love it!
Check out Donna's cool shop on Etsy at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/gigglygirldesigns and see if you like one of her other models! I can certainly attest to the good workmanship and she is very open to suggestions/requests.


Meanwhile, check it out:

Can you tell how much I love it by how tightly I'm clutching it?? BTW--I'm standing in front of one of my larger, abstract pieces called "Midwest Roadmap".











From the front--the smallest pocket houses my cell phone.













From the back--yet another pocket! And more pockets inside!

Great big thanks and hugs to you, Donna! I now have a lovely new bag, custom made just for me (makes me feel special!) and, even better, I have a lovely new creative friend in California. Talk about a win-win situation!

BTW, I do have a link on the right over there somewhere, but don't forget my own etsy site at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/celestialtextiles

Embellishments: oddities

Sometimes I like to add odd bits to my pieces. Buttons are certainly on my list, but so are hooks and eye closures, rubber gaskets and even chinese fortune cookie fortunes. I have a little stash going of stuff that I think is cool or pretty or striking and when its right, I add it. One of my goals is to go further and more extreme with the embellishments so I'm keeping my mind and eyes open to future embellishing opportunities!


Since a cookie fortune is a rather ephemeral item, I mounted it underneath a sheet of polyvinyl and then did some quilting around it to anchor it into place.


Here are buttons, hooks and eyes and rubber o-rings all in black or red to go with the color theme of this quilt.

Embellishment: beads!

Sometimes a piece just doesn't look finished when I'm done sewing--it cries out for something more. Angelina fiber, beads, buttons, found objects, chinese fortune cookie fortunes--you name it! Here are some of the shiny, glittery pieces that really wanted some sparkly seed beads.

This is one of a 3 piece set titled: "Studies in Orange and Blue". Lots of shiny stuff here. I used seed beads to highlight a curve here and there.








Here's a detail at a higher magnification.


This piece is a long horizontal panel that depicts the different stages of the sun throughout its daily life. I called it "Celestial Vedas." Each sun and its rays are all accented with matching seed beads. Man--this one took me FOREVER to bead and finish but it was worth it.



A detail from one of the last panels.












Another close-up shot.

Collages and textile art

When people ask me what kind of artist I am I usually answer "textile artist". While its true that my pieces can be technically be defined as quilts I have come to find that labeling them as quilts and me as a quilter is limiting and somewhat misleading. People always think blankets when you say "quilt" and then to : "my grandma makes quilts...". Then I have to explain that my pieces are not functional--they are meant to hang on the wall...yadda, yadda, yadda. So its really much simpler to say textile artist and be done with it. Sometimes I elaborate and say that I make fabric collages. Collage pretty much describes most of what I do these days (but I do slip in some traditional quilt making assembly techniques when appropriate.)

Whenever I trim a top or nearly finished piece and the trimmings feature pretty fabrics and embroidery I keep the bits and later use them as the raw materials for an abstract collage. When I do this, I love to let the batting and raw edges show--its kind of a quilt deconstruction and reconstruction to more of a fine arts format.

Here's one of my favorite little abstract collages.


This guy is only about 5"x 6". I love the bright colors and loose placement of the strips. It feels very spontaneous and alive! I took this picture right after I completed it--now I actually have it framed in a shadow box format with a lime green brushed aluminum frame.


Here's a close up so you can see the stitches and batting and all the cool stuff. I love small works--how they draw you in and encourage you to peer closely at their details. I have this one mounted in my home at my eye level in a hallway that I pass through multiple times a day.

Unusual materials

Most often I use commercially produced cotton fabric for my pieces. I generally do not wash the material first. I like the sizing in the fabric--it produces a crisp finish when ironed (although it does build up on my iron which is annoying.) Sometimes, though, I use other fabrics for different effects. Here is one of my favorite excursions from the cotton fold:

Here is an entirely non-cotton piece. The black background is a heavy black linen--quite substantial. All of the colored fabric is felt. Some of it is wool felt which I happened to run into at JoAnn's one day. The rest is polyacrylic. So much fun to work with!

In this close-up you can see that I embroidered the felt prior to sewing it down. I wanted a real indigenous look to the piece so I used various embroidery stitches for the applique. I also used some off-white felt cut with pinking shears as a border around some of the pieces.
That's all for today. Hopefully I'll have something new to post about soon--

I've been through the desert...

Hello all. Its been a dry, gritty desert for my creativity since the beginning of August. As some of you may know, my marriage of 20 years has unravelled and dissolved. My husband (ex any day now) has moved out to another state while I remain here in Florida with my three kids. I am endeavoring to sell our too big house and obtain additional employment. Unfortunately, I have been unable to manage to get into my studio and create--no time or no serenity or both. It makes me sad because when I do sell this house I will lose my lovely, lovely studio. But I just am not in a place to create or even putter away on some of my works in progress. I just feel like I must get some of these major issues at least partially settled before my mind can rest.

But there is still some creativity going on in the kitchen so I'll post a couple of my recent favorites. I guess I can only think about nourishing myself and my kids right now during this scary time. I hope that changes for me soon.


Here is a rendition of one of our house favorites: salmon salad. Whenever we have broiled salmon leftovers, I make some salad with a small pasta like this couscous (I've used orzo and wild rice together too--yummy!) Chop some fresh herbs, purple onion, maybe some tomato or cucumber and add oil and vinegar or commercial vinaigrette type dressing (I usually use Paul Newman's sun dried tomato vinaigrette.) Serve with lettuce, tomato and avocado. Low in calories and omega-3's too!


This is one of my brilliant sandwiches. In another life somewhere, I own a gourmet sandwich shop. Here's one that is divine after being heated and pressed in the panini press. Start with some whole grain bread--I've used sunflower bread here. Add a smear of spread--creole mustard is a good one. A slice of prosciutto and a slice of mesquite smoked turkey come next.



Cut up some avocado--this gets really yummy when heated. Spice things up a bit with a sprinkle of Tony's cajun seasoning on the avocado and then top with purple onion slices. A slice of reduced fat lacy swiss cheese is last. This will melt and hold all of the other ingredients together after a couple of minutes in the panini press. I initially bought this cheese because it was lower in fat but I found that has additional advantages: no messy runny oil running out after it melts. Heaven!

That's the food that feeds my soul--I hope you like it too. Let me know if anyone needs more detailed recipes. Maybe next post I'll show the white chocolate and nut scones that I've been perfecting....

Arizona writ large

Its still all about Arizona for me so here are the pictures of the larger Arizona morning piece that I'm working on.


I'm using all of the same fabrics as in the postcard. Here's the start of my sky (remember: that orange-purple at the top is actually not so dark.)


A few more layers are laid out and the upper ones are sewn down. I did have some rough sketches for the composition which I followed only loosely.


This light blue is my lowest and brightest level of the sky. Its a pretty good early dawn color, I think.


Time for the horizon to make an appearance. A few mountains in the distance to give the essence of the skyline as seen from Tucson.


The precise number, size, shape and placement of the saguaros is a lot more important so I have sketched them out here on some tracing paper. I could absolutely not get by in my studio without tracing paper--I use it for just about every collage piece. I then cut the shapes out and used the tracing paper saguaros as tracing templates.


And here are the fabric saguaros in the same positions. When placement is critical, I adhere the new shapes with a craft glue stick as well as pins. I am then assured that there will be no slippage as I sew them down or manipulate the entire piece.

Of course, I had to listen to some cowboy music while I was working! My choice: "A Great Big Western Howdy!" by the Riders in the Sky. Between their music and what I was creating and seeing in my mind's eye, I was completely transported for an hour or two to, well, Arizona.

Wish you were here (in Arizona, that is)

Today I completed the Arizona postcard and sent it off on its merry way to Tohono Chul Park. Good luck, little postcard! Sissy, I hope you like it!

Arizona as an inspiration

In case you haven't noticed, postcards are really speaking to me these days. So, no big surprise, I came across a fiber postcard exhibit and I just had to enter. For this exhibit at the Tohuno Chul Park in Arizona, artists were asked to design a fiber postcard that represents some aspect of, well, Arizona. See the details in their call to artists here: http://www.tohonochulpark.org/PDF/Exhibits/Entry%20form--Wish%20You%20Were%20Here--PDF.pdf

The interesting twist: we are to mail our postcards directly there! Then they display all of the cards that they receive. The entry fee and SASE for the postcard's return are sent separately. So all of that was intriguing and I was considering it. But then I looked closer at the entry form and saw that the park is located in Tucson where my sister lives. So then I HAD to enter so that she could go and and see my card in person. Sissy--this card is for you!

A little googling on the internet yielded some beautiful saguaro images. I was particularly struck with sunset and sunrise pictures. I decided to make two pieces: a postcard to enter the exhibit and a larger pieces (mmm-maybe placemat size) with more detail. I'll post the progress I made today on the postcard and save the larger piece for a later post. Here's the progress I made today. One of the fabrics that I chose to use is a lovely batik in orange to purple that just does not photograph well. Its not really as dark as it looks. I'll try to shoot some more pictures tomorrow under different lighting conditions.


I decided on a scene of two or three saguaros at sunrise. The intense colors of the sky contrast with the saguaros and the earth which are both still black. Here are my first few layers of sky streaked with colored clouds.


These are all of my sky layers. I'll have more on the larger piece but this is enough for a 4 x 6 postcard.


And now I've added the fundament. Looks pretty simple so far. Hopefully it will all come together.



I've trimmed the top to size and added two saguaros. I really like it!


Here's a close-up of the saguaro. As usual, I have added all my fabrics with "raw edge applique". I used a courser fabric for the saguaros and some of the thread edges have poked out beyond the satin stitch line I used to anchor them down with. Usually, I try to avoid that at all costs but in this application, I love it--it really calls to mind the halo of spines that a saguaro sports. Gotta love serendipity.


I got a a bit of a start on the quilting. There are lots of loose threads that I have to thread to the back. That will be my job this evening. That has to be my least favorite job, but is necessary for a quality job.

The Baldwin Park Art Stroll

Last night I participated in the Baldwin Park Art Stroll despite the ominous weather. There were storms all around us and lots of thunder and at 5:00 pm it looked pretty iffy. But my assigned location was under a generous building overhang so I decided it was worth the risk. My artist friend Cheryl Jones Evans also attended and was gracious in sharing her display panels. We mixed our pieces all together on them and I brought along a table to display my note cards and christmas cards. And, of course, my famous postcard rack!! Here are some pix:

My table and card set-up. That's Cheryl in the black blouse. I couldn't have just that ugly table bare to the world so I covered it with my "Midwest Roadmap" piece. Bright! Those are my smaller pieces and name sign on the panels on the right. I sold the black one on the lower left at the very end of the night when we were packing up.


Here is the front or street side of our "H" panel configuration. We thought one of my brightest bigger pieces would be a good eye-catcher.


My table from the front and there's my awesome postcard rack on the left. It sure caught a lot of people's attention. I ended up selling three postcards.


The back side of our "H" had 2 of my pieces. A lot of folks stopped and read my litany of annoyances that I had written all over the "What really bugs me" quilt.



On the other side of the "H", Cheryl displayed some of her hand crafted journals. She sold 3 of these.

So, all in all, I think the show was a success. Cheryl and I both had some sales and we had a good time gabbing with each other and with friends and family that came by to support us. Thanks Leslee and Julie for coming out! And thanks to the folks who purchased some of our art! Double thanks to friends who came by AND purchased art! In this economy, discretionary spending has dropped off the map, so every sale is a precious commodity indeed. Thanks also to the organizers of this event! Brad Biggs--you did a great job. Hope I can participate again!

Branding

I was in the final preparation phase today for the Art Stroll tomorrow. I talked to my friend, Cheryl Jones Evans http://www.cherylevans.net/and we seemed to be all set with my table, her display boards etc. etc. As I was chatting with her, it dawned on me that I needed a sign for my display with my name! Duh. Of course, the sign would have to be a quilted hanging--what else. So here is what I put together.


Here's the whole thing. I used several colors of permanent markers to write out the "Celestial Textiles" and the "Elizabeth-Harris.com". I was shooting for several things: #1. my name (!)-- I wanted that to be seen and recognized first and foremost. #2. The fact that my name is actually spelled out as a URL lets people know they can go to there and see more of my works. #3. The title "Celestial Textiles", if googled, will lead to my 2 celestial textiles sites: this blog and my etsy store. So the sign is a sign for the show, some branding of celestial textiles, and references to my websites all in one!


A detail shows the quilting, drawing and gold bias strip for trimming.

And yet another blue strip...

Today I completed another blue strip. That makes 6 down and 4 to go. I really can't wait to sew all of these strips together and make that damn background already. Cut out some more of the seaweed leaflets also. But I am still in a quandary about what animal form to include with the seaweed in my underwater scene. Realistic fish (or other sea life) is not grabbing me as a concept and mermaids are too cutsey-poo. Some other fantastical undersea creature?? I will have to quickly cogitate upon this and come up with a plan.

I also did some work on The Blade Garden. I need to finish that off as I am considering submitting that in some sort of venue.