We had our first reveal of 2022 on April 27.  As usual, it did not disappoint.

Bird's eye view

"Miner's Ravine Springtime"
36" x 16"
Jan Mitrovich

This is an imagined bird’s eye view of a portion of the park:  Trees, boulders, path, and patches of color representing poppies and lupine among the meadow grasses. The inspiration was walks though Miner's Ravine. Materials include cotton prints (some hand painted), organza, tulle, various yarns, cotton batting, hemp burlap background, assorted threads. Nature is a ragged collection of textures, colors, and elements that work together to create the beauty that we love. This piece experiments with straight/crooked, soft/hard, thick/thin, loud/muted in an attempt to imitate the art that is nature. Jan chose to include “human views” of the poppies and lupine that include details we may see when we look closely, in contrast with the aerial perspective.

City Scape

"Urban Decay"
"35" x 18"
Tracy Visher

Cities are busy, exciting places to visit, and for some, to live a unique lifestyle. It’s not hard to imagine young professionals in such a role. What if you HAVE to live there. What if you HAVE to live in the parts of the city no one wants to see or care about? This quilt depicts those areas. Whatever they may seem on the outside, they are homes and lives well lived for many.  Tracy had wanted to make an “inner city” quilt for some time. She happened upon the line of fabric by Tim Holtz called “Abandoned” and it all just came together. She used cotton fabrics, cotton, blend and metallic threads. WINDOW SCREEN! Inktense pencils and blocks, acrylic paint and beads. 80-20 cotton/poly batting.  
For Tracy, the trickiest part of this quilt was getting some sort of accurate perspective with the buildings. She also had a very clear mood in mind when she made it. While somber, she wanted to include bits that told you this was still home to people. It was a lot of fun “aging” the buildings and street. If you look at the far L building closely, you will see that she used some actual window screening material (saved from a replacement she did last year). She found the sky fabric and knew it was just the thing, with a little paint added.

 

"Sun Shades over Fudenjuice Food Court"
30" x 21"
Robin Hart

The inspiration was a photo challenge from the Nevada County Camera Club.  Robin was assigned a grid in Nevada City and went out to photograph a city scene with umbrellas.  She found the food court outside of Fudenjuice and not only were there umbrellas, there were beautiful red sun shades.  She shot a number of images with her camera and then picked the best one and processed it in Photoshop using the pen and ink and poster filters to give it texture and interest.  She then had it printed at real Graphics and quilted it for design.  The materials include cotton percale whole cloth, cotton batting, and cotton back fabric, various colors of cotton and polyester threads.  It was inspiring to Robin to create a piece that fulfilled a photographic challenge and a MAQ challenge at the same time.  

Lynda Loves Lace

"I Do - Reuse and Recycle"
13" x 21"
Shelli Fried

This piece was inspired by the work of Natalya Khorover, an artist who uses her work to bring attention to the environmental impact of single-use plastics. When Shelli started to collect single-use plastics to use in this piece she was shocked just how ubiquitous they are in our lives. This challenge was an opportunity to integrate the plastic flowers as a reminder to herself and others to look for and lobby for alternative packaging. Materials used include satin, various lace trims and borders; plastic wrappers from toilet paper, paper towels, and frozen pea packages; plastic caps from medication and toothpaste tubes; ribbon; cotton batting, Superior Monopoly thread. This piece morphed over time as ideas came and went. Initially Shelli wanted to have stuffed glove hands holding the bouquet. After trying a couple of different sizes, she abandoned the idea as they covered too much of the lace. The first bouquet turned out to be too dense and heavy looking. Three of those flowers were cut out and replaced with the top flower to create better balance and lightness. The flowers were glued to pipe cleaners which were inserted through a hole she made through the all layers. The pipe cleaners were spread apart and stitched down and covered with a piece of satin on the back. Shelli had forgotten how much lace can stretch!!! She made her college roommate’s wedding dress, and that was too many years ago to remember.

"Cinq Pots de Fleurs"
20" x 16"
Ginny Lee

The inspiration was a Libby Williamson workshop at Craft Napa on technique process.  She use acrylic paint, canvas, cheesecloth, lace trim, white-on-white & black-on-white cotton, felt.  This was a process of sketching a design concept, painting fabric with acrylic paints, free motion stitching individual components to a felt backing and collaging the shapes, using scraps of lace & cheesecloth to break up the background.  Ginny especially likes the 3-D effect and intuitive process for future quilts.

"And Still I Rise"
30" x 40"
Kathryn Madison

The inspiration was Maya Angelou's poem, "And Still I Rise."  

"You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I rise"

Materials used were Alencon lace, tsukeniko ink, inktense blocks and pencils, organza, cotton, batting, beads, monofilament thread, crystals.  In the dark ages when Kathryn first started working for IBM, women in the 'business' side of the house were mandated to wear dresses or suits, nylons, and heels.  even Kat, who did construction contracts. Picture it...climbing a ladder in an Oleg Cassini suit, heels and a hard hat.  Kat is sure the guys below loved that.  She sewed many of her clothes to save money.  One of her "uniform" regulars was an ivory silk chiffon blouse with Alencon lace down front, back and sleeves.  It worked with every suit and was cool in the summer. So... when the "lace" challenge was announced, she immediately knew what she wanted to do.  Strip that lace off that blouse and turn the "uniform" into a Phoenix rising from the flames.  This Phoenix is created with the lace from that "uniform" blouse.