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I’ve had this moth wing print laying around for a while and I’d been wanting to try my hand at a word quilt. Match made in heaven?  I think maybe:

It needs a little beaded dragonfly? moth? fairy? Underneath the “W”, I think. 

 Not a butterfly, though.  I love a good butterfly as much as the next person, but I don’t think a butterfly works here…

I’m creating 4″x4″ mini art quilts as the mood strikes me each day.  There’s no over-arching theme except size and that I will be using what I have on hand and whatever inspiration strikes me that day.  For now, I am just enjoying the small format that allows me to use up some of the ideas that have been floating around in my head; almost like a brainstorming exercise.  I plan to lay them out calendar style once the month is over and I can’t wait to see a complete month of quiltlets.  There are further explanations of each quilt and the inspiration I used for each over on flickr.

1. “Starlight” – January 1, 2011      2. “Green” – January 2, 2011      3. “Oath of Office” – January 3, 2011

Be sure to bring a quilt.

So I have these two friends.  And they are good friends.  And for the last couple years they’ve been living in Frankfurt, Germany.  I missed them. A lot. Last May, I guess it was, we got a call from Frankfurt that they were finally going to get married!  Hip, hip hooray! 

In September, they returned stateside for a short stint and began planning.  May would be the date, California would be the place; in a lavendar field not far from Davis.   My husband and I were asked to do a reading:

i carry your heart with me
by e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Fast forward now to January when the bride requested that I make not one, not two, but THREE quilts for the wedding ceremony.  What could I do but oblige?  I mean, these are goooooood friends, after all.

We shopped for fabric, designed, cut and sewed together two lovely, traditional (in pattern only) table runners, but the pièce de résistance was left up to me – the altar decoration. 

I looked at tons and tons and tons of pictures of California and the rolling hills and lavender fields in California and even in France.  I printed out my favorites, cut them apart and pasted them back together again to make what I felt was an interesting, if not quite accurate, representation of the wedding venue.  And then I re-made it in fabric.  And the whole time I was sewing, I was singing … 

“If you’re going to san Francisco/Be sure the wear some flowers in your hair…”

I didn’t, by the way, wear flowers in my hair.  Feathers worked better with my dress.

Wind Moon

Hare Moon, Seed Moon, Moon of budding Trees,
Let fertile magic sprout within me,
Kali, Hathor, Ishtar, Bast,
This abundant, creative cycle now be cast.
-Dallas Jennifer Cobb

Living in the DC Metro area, there is one thing that you just cannot escape from in the early part of April – the Cherry Blossoms.  The delicate, ephemeral quality of these of these blooms attracts me…I don’t know what it is about ephemera, but I love it.  Maybe it’s just the sound of the word itself…I wrote a post a while back in my personal blog all about my love of ephemera…when I have a little time and some patience, I will sort through those posts and link to it here.  But anyway, I digress.  In early April this year, in the DC Metro area, when we were firmly in the grip of the Cherry Blossom frenzy, that is when the full moon fell.  Known as the Wind Moon or the Pink Moon it wasn’t just apropos that the idea for this quilt include cherry blossoms.  They are the herald of spring for us, after a very long spell of cold, dry, brown grass and barren trees and things stirring IN the Earth, but very little on the surface of the Earth that we can see.  The cherry blossoms are an explosion and a celebration of life after the winter has ended.

Wind Moon detail
Originally uploaded by alyson_olander

I quilted this piece with the swoops and swirls and spirals that you would see if wind were visible, then used thread painting techniques to create the tree branch that passes in front of the moon.  I clustered beads together on the branch as they would appear on an actual cherry tree and added swirls of beads flying from the tree as the flower petals get caught up in the wind.  The beads are a combination of small and large seed beads purchased from the craft store; and small & large Swarovski crystals and sequins, purchased from Accessories of Old in Bethesda, MD.

Storm Moon (Working Title)

Seed Moon, Plow Moon, Moon of Winds,
Illusion ends as true growth begins,
Hecate, Athene, Astarte, Morrigan,
In pure inspiration the cycle begins again.
-Dallas Jennifer Cobb

Once again, I was left in the dark; clouds filled the sky on the night of the full moon and there was nothing for me to gaze at in order to find my inspiration.  I had to imagine it all. 

I find that I am generally fascinated by water color quilts & the idea of taking the traditional quilting methods and weaving them into an art piece.  I love that I can create a piece from tiny little squares of fabric that give you the impression of texture.  Have you ever looked at a stormy sky?  At first glance, it seems like it is all one color, but there are shadows and tints and shades hiding in those clouds.  The same goes for the moon, it is not one solid color either.  That is the idea that I am attempting to convey by piecing both the sky and the moon with tiny 1 inch squares, the texture of a stormy sky and the true face of the full moon.

The piece is quilted using three colors of thread in a style usually used to convey the impression of water – here it is also used to convey water, just in a different form.

Quickening Moon: Seedling Ambition

Hunger Moon, Wild Moon, Ice Moon stealth,
in quiet preparation I love my self,
Brigit, Persephone, Diana, Kuan Yin,
Help to cleanse and heal what’s within.
-Dallas Jennifer Cobb

In February, I watched for the moon for days before and days after the after the actual full moon event, to no avail.  The sky, for days, was completely shrouded in clouds; not even a peek at a star could be seen.  I imagine before the modern days of electric lights or even the earlier gas powered lights, these nights would have been very, truely black.

The Quickening is when tree sap begins to flow again and the Earth starts to awaken.  Each year, there are seeds that sprout too early while their brothers and sisters sleep just a little deeper down in the dirt.  This quilt is about those ambitious seeds, dreaming of the coming growing season, and jumping the gun, awakening too early.

Three little seeds (apple) are nestled within their own little full moons, but one has jumped the gun, so excited by his ambitious dreams that he popped out a little bit too early. I machine embroidered the tiny seedling onto its moon first, then attached each of the 3 moons to the quilt.  I free motion quilted the piece being careful not to let the quilting lines touch the seeds that were still ‘sleeping’.  Finally, I attached the seeds and tiny glass seed beads to give the impression of stars in the sky.

This piece will be shown at Artomatic 2009, but will not be offered for sale on Etsy—it has already found a permanent home.

I’ve been keeping myself quite busy for the past few weeks with preparations for Artomatic, and now the show is finally upon us!  Walls have been painted, lettering has been added, postcards printed, paint touched-up and, most importantly, art has been made and HUNG!  Even though I completed my installation on Sunday, there is still a nagging voice in my head saying “What on Earth did I get myself in for?” and “Isn’t there more that I can do?” I can’t wait until 10pm tonight—the last minute of installation.  After that, the building will be “hermetically sealed” for staff to clean and finish prepping things like lounges, bars, and classrooms.  So as of 10 pm, I can’t do any more, even if I wanted to.  The show opening is this Friday, May 29th—I will be there as soon as I can be after work.

My Artomatic Wall, from the side
Originally uploaded by alyson_olander

I’m showing two different sets of work—4 pieces of each series.  The Full Moon series that I started at the beginning of the year includes Wolf Moon, Quickening Moon: Seedling Ambition, Storm Moon, and Wind Moon.  I realize that I haven’t made blog posts about any but Wolf Moon; I am going to try to get them together and post this week or in the first week of the show, in case folks come here wanting to know more.  The second is a series that I began over a year ago which I’m calling Water & Stones. I pieced the large quilt many moons ago as a study of patterns and lines and colors and just got stuck.  I pulled it back out and quilted it just recently in time for Artomatic.  The small quilts that run along side it were fun little variations on the theme.  There is a fourth, but 3 is a better number for display purposes.  My current description of them starts out with “if Andy Goldsworthy were a quilter…”  Once again, I realize that I haven’t made a blog post about any of these.  Just like with the full moon series, I am planning to post something descriptive up this week or next.  If you want to see more pictures and details of the quilts, check out my set of Artomatic pictures on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alyson_olander/sets/72157618608512307/ .  Once Artomatic opens, I will be posting (almost) all of the pieces on etsy for purchase: http://wonderlandquilts.etsy.com .

Me & my wall
Originally uploaded by alyson_olander

Here’s the oh-so-important plug and show information:

55 M Street, SE (Navy Yard Metro, Nationals Stadium Exit)
Washington, DC 20003
My work be found on the 4th floor, near the education area

May 29-July 5, 2009
Fri-Sat: Noon-1 am
Sun, Wed, Thu: Noon-10 pm
Meet the artists night: June 13th (I’ll be there!)

More Information: http://www.artomatic.org/

They chose the piece that’s been around the block and back, the purple swirly journal quilt. I was serious about retiring it after this show, if I can. No other quilts seem to stand a chance against it.

Anyway, I have to admit, at first I was a little disappointed. The “reception” was some plates of cookies and bottles of water. My quilt was in a “gallery case” through another set of doors, along with 8 other pieces – the rest of the pieces were located in a separate but attached length of hallway that seemed to gather much more in the way of crowds. AND they spelled my name wrong, making it impossible for anyone to contact me if they wanted to.

But then things improved. A few of my co-workers showed up, then Bill, then some of the people I am friendly with and then some Important People Whom I Am Friendly With. And then I finally went and spoke to the guy who had done much of the work on the show, to ask him to take my picture with the quilt. He told me how much he loved my piece and that they really wanted to display 2 of them, but that they were trying to go with only one piece/person (they had 500+ piece to chose from and only 40+ places). And then he asked me if Lillian had contacted me because she really wanted me to do a PRIVATE SHOW. Like…a show, all to myself, at NIH. Um. *blinkblinkblink*

We are not holding our breath.

But it was really nice to hear.