A Toast to the Twelves

This weekend marks the sixth anniversary of the formation of the Twelve by Twelve International Art Quilt Challenge.

On 2 September 2007, Diane sent out an e-mail head "NEW Small Quilt Challenge:Wanna Play?" and, within a couple of days, the first items started appearing on this blog..  We went on to share our project in hundreds of posts and to create 348 works for three series: the Theme series (2007-2009), Colourplay (2009-2011) and the 2012 Series.  Along the way, we wrote a book Twelve by Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge and staged an international exhibition tour that continues in 2013:

• see the 2012 series at Northwest Quilting Expo in Portland, USA 19-21 September 2013: and
• the Colorplay Series tours next to AQS Quilt Show, Des Moines, Iowa, USA 2 – 5 October 2013..  

We have met up in person and via Skype and forged enduring friendships. We also developed a heightened awareness of all things "twelve" so this New Zealand pinot noir jumped out at me. 

Here's looking at you Twelves!

Mapping Twelve by Twelve

Deborah has selected such a rich and inspiring theme.  Maps, of course, are everywhere! Looking back through the Theme Series and the Colorplay series, there were several "mappish" works. Deborah has already mentioned Everlasting from the Shelter theme. When I was touring with the Theme Series in New Zealand in 2010, I stayed at Kirsty's parents home for a few days. They were travelling overseas and it was my first visit. Yet, somehow, thanks to Kirsty's schematic - it all seemed very familiar.  Here are some other pieces with a map element:

Everlasting by Kirsty

12N 12W by Helen

Terra Incognita by Nikki

Flight Path by Diane

As illustrated in the BBC series The Beauty of Maps (click for map highlights and video tour), cartography is full of art, intrigue and discovery.  I can't wait to see what 1 May reveals!

The Shoemakers Children...

After months of ignoring me, glass wise anyway, Ted has made a Twelve plate for me.  He picked one of my favorite pieces and I think it turned out really nice.  The figures are copper which turned a beautiful reddish/brown.

You can read about his process here http://sanityartglass.blogspot.com/.  I'm thinking his kiln will hold a 20 x 12 size, so hmmm, maybe that's next.

A plate in Paris

Yes, Karen and Ted came all the way from California to bring me this beautiful glass plate in Paris more than two years ago!

Isn't it gorgeous?

I must say that, at first, I was surprised when they told me that it was inspired by my "Mathematics quilt".

I really think Ted did an amazing job.

Actually there are also some similarities between Ted's plate and my "Twelve" quilt, although he hadn't seen that quilt yet when he made the plate, (and I hadn't seen his plate when I made my quilt). Do you see the 12 little dots on his plate and the 12 cross stitches on my quilt? And then the curvy orange lines on his plate and the undulating line of beads on my quilt?

Thank you so much Ted for this beautiful gift!

Book Release Celebration! Introducing Chapter 12: Deborah and Twelve

I'm closing down this party! Yes, I'm introducing the last chapter from our book Twelve by Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge. Thank you so much for reading our twelve posts and celebrating with us! We have enjoyed your insightful comments so much. You'll have until midnight PDT on Thursday, March 17 to comment on any of the Book Release Celebration posts for a chance to win a copy of our book. The book drawing is closed.  Stay tuned for the winner details.

Twelve by Twelve Theme Series by Deborah Boschert

When Terry announced "twelve" as the last theme in our original series, I originally struggled with the idea. Actually, throughout the project, I found myself wrestling with how closely I should adhere to each theme. I didn't want to make quilts that were too obvious, nor did I want to make quilts that appeared to have no relation to the theme. I think I found a good balance with Seven Houses, Five Trees. I wrote more about this struggle and the process of creating the quilt in my chapter in the book.

Seven House, Five Trees by Deborah Boschert

So, for the last day of celebration posts, please tell us: How do you celebrate when you've completed a project?

Most Colorful

This should be easy, just look at the mosaic of all 144 quilts and pick out the one that stands out as using the most color, right? Not so easy.

I set about circling all the ones I thought used a lot of different colors, and came up with 34! OK, maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong direction. I thought about it for a while and came up with 2 new "subcategories" within most colorful.

The first award is "The Twelve that uses the most color in her quilts", and that award goes to Diane. Although everyone of us had at least one piece with a rainbow of colors, Diane had several, including "All Togehter Now" in the Community theme, and the wonderful "All Hands" in our "Twelve" theme.














The second category is "Most Colorful Theme", and that award goes to "Twelve". This was really a judgement call on my part, as several themes used a lot of color, but on this theme the variety of colors really stood out, including Gerrie's "The Twelves", Kirsten's "Midway", Terri's "12x12 The Board Game", Deborah's "Seven Houses, 5 Trees", Terry's "Twelfth of Twelve", and Nikki's "The Kissing Number".

I had fun reviewing all of our themes once more, and it made me so proud to be a part of this group.

And the "Separated at Birth Award"...

...goes to...

*dah dah da da daaaah*

"I Am More" by Terry and "Latent Colour" by Diane.

 

 

 

It's hard to imagine two more similar quilts being made in these circumstances. Whilst a large view shows just how very different each quilt is from the other, at thumbnail size they are most definitely twins. Amusingly, they also have a younger set of quad siblings - "Pop Art Identity" by Gerrie.



It was a close run competition, this one, but Terry and Diane were clearly the winners because they actually did it twice. Look at their Illumination quilts (Terry's Japanese Lanterns on the left, Diane's Happy Lanterns on the right)...

 

 

 

 

I have to add another award here (and then very tastelessly award it to myself) because it has been mentioned by more than one Twelve that the following two quilts are also rather closely related. So the Before and After Award goes to Nikki's Twelve quilt "The Kissing Number" and my Passion quilt "Oh". I leave it to you to draw the parallels...

The 12 Days of...

It's been a fun-filled two years completing 12 challenges together. We're about half way through viewing each artist's collection of quilts. I don't know about you, but I'm really enjoying seeing how all the pieces work together -- the preferred styles and color palettes, the compositions and themes. To keep the party going, we've got another fun series starting on the 12th.



In true graduate yearbook style, we're celebrating by giving out goofy awards. Starting on October 12th we will each post highlighting some of our favorite surprising and silly quilts. We invite our readers to think about what quilts you'd give these awards to and come back to let us know in the comments on those days.

October 12th: Gerrie: Favorite "Also Ran"

October 13th: Helen: The One I Wished I Had Made

October 14th: Kirsten: Separated at Birth

October 15th: Terry: Most Creative Use of Materials

October 16th: Diane: Most Likely to Get Pulled Over By The Quilt Police

October 17th: Françoise: Biggest Stretch of the Theme

October 18th: Kristin: How DID She Do That?

October 19th: Karen: Most Colorful

October 20th: Brenda: I Would Never Have Guessed (Biggest Departure of Style)

October 21st: Terri: Most Humorous

October 22nd: Nikki: Most Bling

October 23rd: Deborah: Most Unexpected

Twelve by Twelve Website Gallery Update

The Twelve by Twelve website has been updated to showcase all 144 art quilts in our first theme series including the latest Twelve works. Terry, who set the theme, once remarked on her blog that her favourite colour is orange-red and many us seem to have channelled an orange-red vibe along with a circle motif:

With the completion of twelve challenges, the individual Artist Gallery pages are now fully populated and it is fascinating to see the body of work created for the project so far. Over the coming days, we'll be sharing a compilation mosaic for each Twelve. Here is my contribution. You can see more of my contemporary quilts on my website www.brendagaelsmith.com. My other website www.serendipitypatchwork.com.au features my patterns, projects and workshop offerings. Both websites link to my blog Serendipity & the Art of the Quilt:

Half way around the world from Australia, is Helen in the United Kingdom. Helen's Twelve by Twelve works are predominantly inspired by stories:

You can see more of Helen's quilts and share in her design resources on Helen's new website www.HelenConwayDesign.com. Helen also keeps an entertaining blog - From Down the Well.

Twelve

Thanks to all of you for responding so Spectacularly to the "Twelve" theme! What a privilege it has been to be a part of this group. Now, it's on to the next phase. I can't wait!

Terry

Twelve Women

It's been 2 years since Diane asked me to participate in this online group, and I can't even begin to tell you what a wonderful adventure it has been. I have been pushed to create art I never would have come up with on my own, I have had feedback from people all over the world, and the most important part is that I have eleven new friends. The twelve of us have such diverse personalities and yet we all work together so well. We feed off each other, we give advice, we encourage, we critique, and in my opinion we have become a very unique group.


Twelve Women celebrates us, our friendships and our future endeavors. Thank you Diane, for starting this group, and thank you to the rest of you for being the strong, creative women that you (we) are.

This piece was made using my own deconstructed black and white fabric, with a sheer silk overlay. The figures and lettering were painted on using stamps and a thermofax screen. I then added handstitching to the painted areas.

All Hands

I loved that Terry chose the theme "Twelve" -- it was the perfect theme to wrap up our first 12x12 cycle! Isn't it amazing that we've all worked together for 2 years?

I had lots of ideas, and spent a lot of time working on an image of a staircase with a sole glass slipper and a fleeting shadow. Maybe it's the fact that Caroline is just now beyond the dress-up and princess phase of little girl-hood that I loved, but I liked the idea of illustrating the stroke of midnight for the "Twelve" challenge.

And yet... and yet... I kept coming back to wanting to celebrate the twelve of us working together. I have loved getting to know everyone in the group better, and I've learned so much from all of you.

So. I decided to work with 12 hands. Can you tell that's what they are? I cut them out in various colors of silk organza, and fused them down, focused around a circle which is meant to symbolize our common purpose in participating in this project. I do like the transparent effect. The result is a bit jumbly, but that's sort of what I like about it. I've had it up on my wall for a week or so now, and I'm not sure if I love it or it's too chaotic. Or maybe the chaos is what I like about it.

Quilting added another challenge. I quilted a big spiral of concentric circles, but found that washed out the hands a bit more than I liked, so I went back in and quilted those, too. So there's a level of stitchy chaos here, too -- lots of seemingly random crossing of lines -- but there you have it. I figure that there is always a touch of crazy unpredictability in any group!

Here's a detail shot:

The Twelves

Good friends are like shooting stars....You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.

When Terry announced this theme, I just knew that I had to do the twelve of us, a remarkable group of artists from around the world. When Diane asked me to be part of this group, I had no idea that I would garner a close group of virtual friends that I love and admire. After 12 challenges, we know a lot about each other. We collaborate well. We work out our differences in a most civilized manner. What can I say, but, I love you all.

I wanted to do 12 little Picasso style portraits of each of us. Life got in my way. I realized that would never happen, this time around. I started thinking of other ways to put us into my art and came up with the idea of a thermofax screen for each person.

Now, I have to ask your permission to use your photo. As there are 3 attorneys among us, I hope I am not in trouble. Anyway, I found photos of the 11 of you and photoshopped them to create black and white images. I will share on my personal blog the mess I created in doing this.

I screened images on to a rainbow of fabrics and cut each into a block and pieced them together. I decided to do some seed stitching around each image and just took a few stitches to tack the faces in place. Here is a detail:

Working on this made me happy because I love the friendship that I have with each of you.

Midway

My Twelve quilt was one that wasn't born until the Eleventh Hour (so to speak). As the weeks went by, every time I considered the theme and tried to think of directions in which my quilt could go, I hit a wall. I thought about dozens (bakers and dirty), I thought about numerals and base 12 and binary, I thought about disciples and jurors and... nothing enthused me.

Time was running out. Ah yes, time. My Nemesis. Time and I have a turbulent relationship. I never wear a watch. I would prefer that clocks not exist at all. And yet, I dread being late and am always on time for everything (except deadlines - that's another story!). Then again, I can't stand waiting (it feels like such a waste of time)so arriving early is not pleasant either.

I frequently am not sure what day of the week it is and usually have to check a calendar if the date is required. I've even been known to forget what year we are in and often have to calculate how old I am.

As I thought about time, it struck me that Midnight and Noon are the only two times of day that have names. They are also the two times of day that I like the best because they are my two significant markers. Midnight is magic. The witching hour. My favourite time of day, when all things seem possible. I have always been a Moon person rather than a Sun person. And Noon? Well, that's lunchtime! I have what a colleague once told me is a Public Service Stomach - it grumbles at 12:00 exactly.

So my quilt began to show itself to me. Midnight and Noon. Blue and orange fell into my hands and once again (for the THIRD time in this project!) the design is a circle. Of course, there is always a glitch somewhere. This quilt's glitch was that my O stamp is lost, so Noon became Midday. :D Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!
That little tussle that time and I have on a daily basis had to show itself somehow, I guess.

So, the message is that between Midnight and Midday and Midnight and Midday and Midnight is a whole bunch of numbers that, quite frankly, don't mean very much to me!

Twelve by Twelve - The Board Game

After discarding my first two ideas I had for this theme, I landed on the vision of a clock face. A clock has a “twelve” on it, so that’s where my sketches started. I drew a round shape for the clock and added the numbers around the outside. I somehow wanted to associate each number with each theme throughout the past two years (has it been two years already?).

I divided the circle into twelve sections. In each section I embroidered the corresponding name and theme. At this point I was still envisioning a clock so my first sketch included the clock hands and they pointed to the twelve.

At some point the two clock hands became one hand, a single pointer. At first I was thinking I would somehow add this pointer with color, either thread or paint. As I was working on the embroidered names, I came upon the idea that it should be a real clock hand and I’d worry about how to attach it later. Then my thoughts moved onto a game spinner. The more I worked on my quilt, the more it resembled a piece from a board game. But I didn’t know what to use for the spinner and how it could be attached so it would spin.

Well my thoughts then turned into a discussion with my husband. After some brainstorming and searching for something to use as a spinner, we landed upon the almost 15-year-old thermometer that was attached to our garden shed. The plastic face of the thermometer had yellowed and aged so much over time that it was hard to even read it anymore. So off the shed it came and was dismantled. Perfect spinner!

My husband helped me install the spinner so that it would work. Doesn’t this look like a fun game?

Seven Houses Five Trees

After considering several things that actually come in "twelves," I decided to create a quilt using elements of 12 in my design. I enjoy creating graphic landscapes and hadn't really explored that in any of my other 12x12 pieces. (My identity and math quilts are technically landscapes, but they are missing the usual elements from my quilted landscapes.)

I also haven't really created any quilts in strong, straightforward colors. Red is especially lacking. My chair quilt is colorful, but in a different way.

So I started off with the very general idea of creating a landscape including some red. I also wanted to work more loosely. I was inspired by paintings I found in Nino Art Studio on Etsy. Eventually, I created this wacky little world.

The black tree and house elements make up the first 12. There are two sets of 12 green brush strokes on the right. There are also 12 red dots in the sky. And Roman numeral 12s stitched across the hillside.

I loved doing all the hand stitching. It's a lot of stitching and it takes a lot of time, but as I'm stitching I never wish I were doing it any differently. (As long as I've allowed enough time before the deadline.)

I think the binding is especially effective. I fused a simple blue binding and covered it with long stitches all the way around to match the color of the main part of the quilt.
I love the way the blue binding still peeks through.

This was a quilt that kept wanting more. More paint, more layers, more stitching. I may have stopped too soon. And I really didn't loosen up as much as I would like to. But, I'm pleased and I'd like to go knock on the doors of those seven houses!

The Kissing Number

12, it's a number. What can I say, I headed to Mathematics and then threw in some Passion for spice. (Hum, and I did find illumination while sitting in a chair and looking out the window. Hehe.) It turns out that 12 is the "kissing number" in the third dimension. What? The kissing number is the number of spheres of the same diameter that can touch or "kiss" a center sphere at the same time. Basically, if you have 1 ball, twelve other balls of the same size can touch it at the same time without crowding anyone out. A rather interesting concept when compared with all the other "12's" in history, religion and society we've uncovered throughout the last two months.

I took the geometric approach to depicting the "kissing number" and used 12 colored circles surrounding a single white circle. I used fabric paper, created with muslin, scrapbook paper, tissue and paint, for the colored circles and wool felt for the white. The three back circles can be hard to find peaking out from the others, but trust me -- my sewing machine could feel all those layers. I then added the XO with embroidery floss -- 12 sets of 12 in 12 different colors. I wasn't sure which actually stands for the kiss, X or O, and doubted a single X or O would come across as a kiss, so I decided to use the recognizable set.

Once again, I didn't budget my time well with the hand stitching. I finished all the XOs with time to spare. I then thought I would add the backing and do a little hand quilting to tie it all together. Well a little hand quilting quickly turned into a lot of little stitches. Add to that, the fact that I used a heavily painted fabric for the backing and I now have very sore fingers. Thankfully, they can now take a little break to recover before they get to work on the next 12 quilts.

12N 12W

Entering 12 Degrees North and 12 Degrees West into Google Earth will take you to a dense area of foliage in the hinterlands of Guinea in West Africa, one of the countries plundered for the slave trade.

The men and women traded were put in boats and sent to the plantations of the Caribbean and the United States of America. From there goods such as cotton, tobacco and sugar, grown with the toil of shacked workers made their way across the Atlantic to the bustling seaport of Liverpool. The ships reloaded with textiles and alcohol - goods to barter for human cargo - and completed the triangle with voyages back to Africa. By the close of the 18th century 40% of the world's, and 80% of Britain's Atlantic slave activity was accounted for by slave ships that voyaged from the docks lining the River Mersey.

Even today there are streets around the city whose names stand as testimony to the nefarious history of Liverpool. Rodney Street, known as the Harley Street of Liverpool for its conglomeration of medical practice rooms, is named for Baron Rodney who was a champion of the slave trade. John Gladstone, father of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, lived on Rodney Street. He made his wealth through the sugar plantations in Demerara and Jamaica.

Goree was a bare rock off the Cape Verde Islands where slaves were assembled for transport and which gave its name to the piazzas near the docks.

Hardman Street was named after the landowner John Hardman who earned his money in the slave trade.

However, despite the fact that slavery permeated Liverpool's institutions ( 16 mayors were slave traders and the town hall retains a frieze of a kneeling slave) the city also bred Abolitionists. Roscoe Street is named after William Roscoe, a lawyer (I am proud to say) who was the Member of Parliament for Liverpool in 1806 when he cast his vote for Abolition.

Every day, when I go to work, I walk past buildings which, whilst built after Abolition, were founded on the back of Liverpool's wealth and success as a port nation, achieved during the slavery era. These days the renovated docks house the International Slavery Museum which explores the city's historical legacy. However it is also currently housing an exhibition, Trafficked , highlighting the forms of slavery which still exist in today's society. Whilst we all celebrated the election of the first black president of the USA and his slave-descendant wife, modern slavery is the fastest growing form of organised crime in the world today. To find out more visit the website for the Anti-Slavery Organisation.

This quilt is made with a piece of tie resist fabric from Guinea, sourced through The African Fabric Shop and chosen for its chain like pattern. The degree symbols are beads also from West Africa. Street signs of significance are formed into luggage labels to represent the Trans-Atlantic voyages of the enslaved and to encourage the viewer to consider how far (or how little) we have come since Abolition. The quilt edge is unfinished, both to reveal the cotton, previously picked by slaves and to represent the incomplete extension of ftrue freedom to all human beings.

12 Months

... the length of a deployment.


Twelve horizontal strips of fabric from three different uniforms my husband has worn during his various deployments (plus a few other fabrics for visual texture) represent the twelve months. The vertical quilting indicates the actual days of the months. Although it is not specifically a narrative, the fabrics and colors move from having the best intentions of sending letters, marking the days, being supportive and patriotic, etc., to the darker, tired feeling one inevitably has towards the end of such a long separation. The 365th day, however is marked with the open heart with which we welcome daddy back. The large number 12 is conceptually redundant, but the piece needed it graphically for a change of scale. Besides, it reinforces the theme of this challenge.

Twelfth of Twelve

I had so many ideas for this piece—too many really. I couldn't settle on one for a long time. One of my ideas was to show a glass slipper lying on pavement, next to a pumpkin. Would you have understood that one? It would represent the events of TWELVE o'clock, midnight, in the story of Cinderella when she dashed away, losing one of her slippers and her coach turned back into a pumpkin. My enthusiasm for that idea faded as I pictured what my piece might look like—a child's book illustration that we have all seen all too many times. I really did like the idea of a dozen eggs in a big bowl, all in pale egg-y hues. Maybe I'll do that someday. I thought of a clock face with the numbers 1 to 12 and that led me to my final plan.

A number of years ago I made a series of quilts with mandala themes. Classic Tibetan mandala designs are circles that are typically divided into 8 segments, but for reasons I don't even know, I created all my mandala designs, starting with a circle divided into 12 segments. Here is one of those quilts, called Earth, Moon and Sun. It was published in a book of mandala quilts called Within Sacred Circles.

When I remembered this, I also remembered that I learned that mandalas symbolize wholeness. This twelfth quilt, in a series of twelve would complete the group, making it whole. Once I hit on that idea it occurred to me that the parts that make up the mandala design should be elements taken from each of the previous 11 quilts. If you look carefully, you will see elements from each of the 11 pieces I made as my part of the Twelve by Twelve project.

I used Photoshop to isolate elements from the 11 quilts, then began moving them around on a 30° wedge, drawn in Illustrator and imported into Photoshop. When I had a design I liked, I copied and rotated the wedge to form a circle. Every other section was flipped so the sections seem to be reflections of each other, much like the images seen in a kaleidascope. Then I printed twelve individual wedges on treated fabric, which I put together on a fabric background. The green circle in the center is the green ball that appears in my "chair" piece and is the only element that is not repeated twelve times.

I am very disappointed in the quality of the prints that I got from my printer. The color looked so rich on my monitor that I was very excited about this piece. The resulting color is a letdown, though I still like the design. Below is my Photoshop design that I printed from.

I actually love it most, from across the room, where you can't see what the individual elements are.