Shelter

I disovered that out new theme was shelter whilst I was using the free internet access at the Troppen Museum in Amsterdam. A moment before I had wandered through a reconstruction of a Morrocan house and then sat in a real Yurt to view films of nomads in Mongolia. So it was perhaps natural that my instinctive recation was to go for a literal interpretation.

However, over the previous days I had been to the Jewish Museums in Berlin and Amsterdam, the Corrie Ten Boon House in Utrecht ( where Jews were hidden during the war), and was also reading this excellent book
written by a refugee for Somalia who became a member of the Dutch parliament and a champion of human rights especially for muslim women.

Given that swirling combination of thoughts and my profession maybe it is not suprising that I have also been thinking in terms of International Law as a shelter against persecution and quilts as comfort and shelter in emotional terms also.

So, today I come to put some of my ideas to fabric and I have hit a dilemma of taste. I want my quilt to have a social message but how hard hitting and graphic can I be? I don't want to be too precise at the moment in what I am thinking about doing but let me just say that one option is to use photos of Holocaust victims about which I have no copyright concerns because they were taken by Nazis. Some photos are much more graphic than others albeit all would allude readily to the most horrendous evils. All are the kind of things you would see if you knowingly chose to go to a Holocaust related museum. But given that we hope our quilts will be viewed in a happy quilt show where youngsters or otherwise senstive people might be present and would not expect such images, am I crossing a boundary of taste?

I am happy to challenge and to pack a hard punch with my message but I do not wish to offend.

Any thoughts fellow twelvers ( or indeed potential quilt viewers?)

Sanctuary

After spending an inordinate amount of time sitting on trains and aeroplanes this week, it was a relief to finally arrive in London and to meet up with my one of my childhood friends. He happens to work as with London's largest charity for homeless people - St Mungos so he showed us around the temporary accommodation facility and wellbeing centre where he is based. And boy does he have some stories! We left my friend writing up case notes from an assault he suffered earlier in the week from a mentally unhinged client and stretched our legs walking around a different resting place - Brompton Cemetery. Sorry that I don't have photos but I did remember to photograph my completed Shelter quilt before I left Australia.

Taking Refuge

As I worked on my shelter quilt this week, it was a great thrill to look out my studio window to see a family of whales taking refuge at Copacabana VERY close to shore. (More photos on my blog.)

Almost finished

I think I'm about done with the shelter piece. I went in a completly different direction than I started out . It involves Machu Picchu again, and lots of painted interfacing. I was almost finished quilting it when I realized, Brenda, that I once again used a lot of green! I tried working it again in different colors, but this one is really the best. I always thought my favorite color was blue, but this dark green seems to have a hold on me. I will be previewing it and saving it for later post because I will be in Ohio during the big reveal. I'm taking a class at Nancy Crow's Barn with Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan http://www.nancycrow.com/HTML/barnbennmorgan.html .

Too Much Thinking to be Productive!

Shelter has definitely been on my mind, too much. Houses stresses mostly consume my energy--our previous offer fell through because of financing difficulties, so I'm back to trying to keep the place spotless to sell--but I have been trying to distract myself with art. My biggest problem is that I don't know how to create without getting everything out. I need to be able to see, touch and play with everything. Any helpful suggestions for a clean house and art simultaneously would be great!

I have managed to pull out my sketchbook and do a little research. Types of shelter listed in Wikipedia included: protection from weather, place of refuge, war related and geological. The most common Google images were bus shelters. Not were I want to go. From the Internet I travelled to the Bible. One of my favorite "shelter" scriptures is Psalm 61:4, "I long to dwell in your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings." I love the image of being wrapped in an embrace of safety. Last night as I was going to sleep, my thought was shelter pictured as a hug. We also went hiking last weekend, leading me to various trail names such as Boulder Shelter. And then there was the cave house we stayed in during our honeymoon on Santorini, Greece.

Which way to go? Hopefully I will move from words to visuals soon.

Pondering

I'm not even ready to pull out my sketch book. I'm still considering ideas for my "shelter" piece. I am a bit surprised that everything that comes to my mind is both open and closed. I think of a shelter as something that covers, but doesn't completely enclose. I don't know why I feel that way and I don't think it really fits the official definition, but that's the direction I'm heading for now.

It made me think of this tiny umbrella quilt I made for a collaborative project with my art quilting friends in Maine, the Frayed Edges.

We each picked a snap shot we loved and then we each made a quilt inspired by that snap shot. There are five of us, so that made for 25 small quilts. We mounted them in a grid format with all the quilts inspired by one photo mounted in the rows and all the quilts by each artist in the columns.

The umbrella was inspired by Kathy's snapshot. You can read more about the project on my blog here or on Sarah's blog here.

I created this piece with layers of fabrics and the image printed on Extravorganza.

All my 12x12 pieces thus far have been somewhat abstract. I think it's time for me to mix in some realism. Scary.

Grand meetings

I see there is dissension on our fantasy meeting place. Ever the conciliating family lawyer, I have a suggestion. Round the World Tickets are generally cheaper than multi-trips. So, I will buy one and visit Australia to see Brenda and Kirstin. They will buy one and join me on the flight to see Kristin in Hawaii. She buys one and joins us to go to Dianne etc until we get back to my house and I stay and the rest of you follow on to Australia etc until you complete your trip and get home. How's that for a round robin?
Or, we meet on neutral ground. I vote Cape Town.
Meanwhile back to reality - too much work to enable me to even put away my Festival shopping never mind use it. Sigh.

Francoise and I

Finally, I got to meet one of you. Francoise and I were both at Festival Quilts and we met briefly, by co-incidence at the Ricky Tims concert, again by design for lunch on Sunday ( when she showed perfect manners in not commenting on the fact that my main course consisted of baked cheesecake and ice-cream) and again by accident by the pictorial quilts later that afternoon! She pre-approved my posting this delightful picture of her. Excuse the fact I am also on it!

The show is a great one and our view is that we should have a Twelveby12 meeting there next year. There is an airport on site so you all have no excuse ( other than that dratted money thing!).

Just for Fun

Back at the beginning of our Illumination challenge, I was toying with the idea of an illuminated manuscript and how it relates to fabric. The illumination in historic books and bibles is often the initial caps, or first letters on a page or paragraph. In textiles, we find fancy letters on monograms. 

I particularly liked the idea of a monogram because I could do it all by hand while everything I owned (including my two sewing machines) was packed up and sent halfway around the world. Then I got sidetracked by the flashlight quilt. 

In the end, I decided to complete this quilt too. It was a pretty good airplane project since it's so small. I embroidered the "Illuminated" Chi-Rho at about 3000 feet somewhere between Greenland and Helena, Montana (which has nothing to do with the concept of this piece, it's just kinda fun to say).

To round out the heirloom textile feel of this piece, I quilted it by hand and then added the crocheted border. To be honest, although I had finished the embroidery and quilting by our deadline,  I had no way to upload photos to the blog so I took my time with the crochet and finally finished it a week late. So this is more of an aside than an official contribution.

I really like the idea of this and thoroughly enjoyed making it, but in the end, I'm not completely happy with some of the fabric and color choices. If I had it to do again, I'd try a darker "glow" behind the monogram to set it off from the shirt, and then probably make the monogram lighter for contrast. The crocheted border is nice, but although the color is pretty with the plaid of the shirt, I think it draws the eye away from the monogram too much. If this were my "official" quilt for the challenge and if I had the time, I'd do it over, but since it's not, and the idea here is to experiment and learn, I'm not going to worry about it.

Now I DO need to get serious about our Shelter challenge.

:-)

Shelter Under Construction

I have nearly completed my quilt top for the shelter challenge. I can't show any pictures without giving the whole thing away but I can report, with a small degree of frustration, that this quilt wants to be smaller and an irregular size and shape. I keep telling it that our name is Twelve by Twelve not 13 x 11 3/8 x 12 1/8 x 11 7/8...

Radiance Detail

I made a start on a shelter-themed quilt today. Can't say much at this stage. Meanwhile, this is for the people who asked for a detail image of my illumination quilt. Click to enlarge:

Shelter

My husband and I were discussing this theme and I first threw out the Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter", then he threw out homeless shelter and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I am picturing midnight mission, shopping carts, bag ladies and my brain is zooming!

Illumination question

I got an email this morning from someone I don't know about my Illumination quilt. She started by saying how much she liked it, then ended by pointing out that the wire holding the lanterns defies gravity and thinks it "spoils" the piece.

Yup, she's right. The wire, as shown, doesn't work logically. I actually knew that when I was laying it out, but artistically it is a better line. I decided to go with it as shown and let the viewer assume there were unseen things going on that make that wire work! My writer's suggestion was that I run a vertical "wire" from the top of the blue lantern so it looks supported. I think that is too fussy and distracts from the lanterns. But I am asking for input and opinion. Do you think the illogical wire spoils the piece? I can change it if I need to.

Shelter->Home->House

I had a premonition that Terri would choose the theme "home" so I wasn't far off. Whether, shelter or home, it's not a big leap to get to "house". I have some Freddy Moran gift wrap featuring bright coloured house quilts from the book Freddy's House:

I have often contemplated making a house block or quilt featuring my home. It's not a conventional house shape...

I'm not certain that this is a direction I will pursue for the theme of "Shelter" but, whatever I do, I have to get it together before I go travelling later in the month.

Shelter

Just an idea...