Maggie Weiss – Textile Artist

My friend Maggie Weiss won third place at the IQF show in Chicago with her quilt “Crocus”. Maggie does amazing things with surface design. You can currently view some of her work at Art Cloth.

In the booth

On the last day of the show Laura showed up! She even wore “Frieda Green” on my account. We were going a little stir crazy waiting to tear down and head home.

Hello Laura

Wendy Richardson Quilt Tapestry Studio

Wendy’s booth is always one of my favorite places to stop in and see. She does the most fabulous over-dyed things. This year I heard she has bamboo socks that just make your feet happy. You can view more of her offerings on her website at Quilt Tapestry Studio.

Rust Tex

Lois Jarvis is a very talented lady and she has a wonderful way of creating interesting fabrics. You can see more of her products on her website at Rust-Tex . I have a piece in her exhibit that premiered at the IQF show in Chicago and will be traveling to England in August. It is the only piece with COLOR, well I really don’t work in neutrals, but I love the way the fabrics look.

This is my piece in the Rust-Tex Exhibit.

The border is my hand dyed cotton sateen, the background is the over-dyed piece of rust-tex, and the Jack in the pulpit is my hand dyed silk.

Jack in the Pulpit

Look what I found blooming!!

I am so excited. I just love the jack in the pulpits, as if you couldn't tell. They make me so happy looking for them hiding in the woods.

These are up too, aren't they just so sunny looking?

Pro Chemical and Dye Company

Pro Chemical and Dye Company is one of the places that I get my procion MX dyes from. I went by the booth on Saturday and talked to Nancy one of their technical support, knows everything about dye people. She is great and when you call the company and have a question more than likely you will talk to Nancy.

 

They have their own brand of seta paints.

Jack in the Pulpit

I entered one of my new series big pieces “Jack in the Pulpit” at the Paducah show. I hope that if you are down there at the show or are going you stop by and say hello to it.

It is made from cotton, cotton sateen, and silk. The background is cotton, the border is cotten sateen and the jack and all the leaves are silk. It is in the wall quilts section. If you are so inclined take a picture of it and send it to me. You can get in the picture too :)

I leave on Sunday for Australia with my husband. I will be teaching at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne. If you are going to be there be sure and stop in a say hello, I don’t yet know my class rooms but you can always ask where I am, and tell me about some places to visit and of course some fabulous places to eat, because it is all about the food.

Judy Coates Perez

I have a few more videos to get up. Of course the show is over and it was a great time. It is always so busy and hectic at the shows and such a rush to clear out that I was just too exhausted to post the last two days. I actually sat around and watched TV yesterday, I NEVER do that during the day. Anne Lullie came by with a little business and I ran two errands and then I just vegged out. I even let my husband cook dinner:)

But I digress. Here is Judy Coates Perez and her daughter Nina. Judy is leaving today for New Zealand. Have a great time Judy.

Fabric to Dye For

I will be giving a lecture at 12:30 today at the IQF show on my new book
Fabric to Dye For hope you stop by.

http://www.friestyle.com/books.html

Meg Hannan fabric jewelry

I first saw Meg’s work probably 20 years ago when I started my first quilting business selling batiks on line, something you didn’t know about me. I was way ahead of the curve and quit that business right before the internet got really big. But I digress, I saw Meg’s work at quilt market and bought her pieces to sell in my booth when I traveled to shows. I am a nut for hearts and she makes the most incredible heart pins and earrings and brooches and pendants. I love her work and own many pieces. So I have videoed her booth for you. Sorry the close ups are a little fuzzy I’m getting used to this process but you can go to Meg’s website and she her much better and buy something for yourself for your birthday, it’s coming up you know, it always is. :) Enjoy

Bohemian Elements

I thought I would go around the show and video a few of my favorite booths. I won’t be able to get all of them, because I am in the booth alone this year, but I have gotten a few good places.

This is Teresa at Bohemian Elements - Bohemian Element brings you fabrics, buttons, embellishments, and other unique treasures from around the globe. We deal directly with village artisans in Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia and Japan to bring you the best possible quality and prices.

I always stop in here and try to buy something fabulous.

Hand dyed fabric - Let's All Spring Forward

I blogged about this before, but it deserves another blog. My friend Rosalie Baker took best of show at the IQF show in Rosemont with her original designed quilt "Let's all spring Forward". It is a fabulous quilt, she is a fabulous quilter and she used fabulous fabrics. Those reds are all my hand dyed reds and some of the greens are as well. Way to go Rosalie, a well deserved award.

Mud

One of the fun things about dyeing your own fabrics is all the mud colors you can get. Brown is not just BROWN. When you do gradation dyeing from one color to it’s opposite on the color wheel you will always get muddy browns in-between. It is invaluable to own a color wheel so you understand how color works.

C&T makes a nice 3-in-1 Color Tool.

Notice the gorgeous browns in-between orange and blue. In fact my favorite brown is 3 parts blue to 5 parts orange. It makes the richest, prettiest brown I have ever seen.

Fabric to Dye For

One of the things that I think is so important when you are starting to dye is to keep a notebook. It is something I didn’t do right away and wish I had, and even now sometimes I forget to write in my notebook, but it is so important when you start playing around with different color combinations that you write down what you did or you will never remember the exact combination of colors that you put together and if you want to reproduce that color you will need to refer to your notes. This is something that the science world does very well and the art world is not as good at. It is something that we need to do as artist as well. Journal about your art, write yourself notes. Remind yourself of your successes and your failures. Journal about the art you are making, where the inspiration came from, keep pictures in your journal if you take digitals, or sketches next to the final picture of the work. When I was in art classes one of our first assignments was to keep a notebook with inspiration pictures. Where ever you find pictures that you like cut them out if you can, magazines, newspapers, print digital images off of the internet and put them in Design Idea notebooks, I have lots of these. I just keep filing them up. When I am stuck or uninspired I can pull them out and look through them and before I know it I am off and running with a new idea.

Dye notebook

Pages from Idea book – sketches

Chicago School of Fusing Patternworks

Usually my friend Laura Wasilowski and I share booth space at all the quilt shows we do together. This year we will be apart for two of the big shows. I will be in Chicago at the Rosemont show all by myself in booth #1123 and Laura will be in Paducah all by herself at the AQS show in booth #1905. I hope you will come to see each of us and all our fabulous wares for sale. I will have a little bit of Laura’s thread and she will have some of my patterns.

We will unit once again for the booth in the UK in August and of course for the show in Houston in November. The November show is the week following my eldest's sons wedding so all of you who come by will be admiring wedding pictures. :)

 

Lovely Laura and Fabulous Frieda or is that Ethel and Lucy ?

I won’t have anyone to be silly with so please stop by and help me laugh. We can have an impromptu SAQA or PAQA meeting as well.

Machine Quilting

When I can when I am machine quilting I usually work in layers. Because I do so much fusing I often leave top layers off until I have quilted the layers underneath. This allows me more freedom and less stopping and starting when I am quilting. Here are a few samples of what I mean. These two little quilts are tiny versions of my larger pattern quilts Autumn Mums and SunDance . In all of my patterns you receive the tiny version as well as the larger version of the quilt. You make the tiny versions using your left over scraps from making the bigger piece. I really love these tiny versions. You can see I have left off the center of the flowers so that I can stitch in the ditch around all the petals before I put on the centers. It is so much faster and easier this way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Springs Greeting

Spring is in the air and definitely in my back yard. My daffodils are BLOOMING. Spring is also the time that we like to infuse our quilts with those pretty pastels, and I have a great combination for you. It's time to do something light and sunny to lift your spirits and chase away the winter blues! My Spring Special of 4 quarter yards of yummy sunny yellows, petal pinks, grassy greens and sparkling sky blues will make you happy and bright eyed again .You don't want to miss out on this charming combination of fun fabrics.

Because April is Tulip and Daffodil month, my gift to you this month is a sale on those patterns. You will want to have these quilts on your wall as well as in your garden.

Don't forget those notions

• Decorative blades
• Rayon Thread
• Wonderunder

48-5" pre cut squares on fun and useful colors

For all of you who appliqué, my fabric pack of 48 pre-cut 5" squares is an economical way to get the most and best variety of different colors, shades and gradations in your designs. The red pack will make your roses and petunias bloom, while the blue/green pack will spice up your sky and sparkle your leaves. Try these you'll like them.

Chicago School of Fusing Pattern Works

Be sure and come by booth #1123 at the IQF show in Chicago April 15-25. I will have all my hand dyed fabrics; cotton and silk, patterns with kits, hand dyed shirts and many extra things I just can't fit on the website. See you there!

Trilliums and May Apples

The Trilliums and May Apples are starting to come up through the winter blanket of old oak leaves. This is one of my favorite times of year. I love to see the Trilliums cover the ground in the woods it is a soft and inviting fuzz over all the dull plain brown of old decaying leaf matter.

 

All the trees have these gorgeous little Frieda Green leaflets sprouting. It all makes me so happy.

A happy surprise

Jane from The Villages in FL sent this in the mail to me. It appeared in the Daily Sun Newspaper. That was very thoughtful. Thanks Jane.

Pretty Blue Pines

I said I would post pictures of this quilt once I finished it. So here it is.

Pretty Pointy Pines 12” x 14” Hand dyed cotton and silk, machine quilted with rayon #30 and silk #50 thread.

Detail

Bright and light hand dyed fabric

Get some new spring colors in your art work this year. Stop by my booth at IQF in Chicago #1123 Chicago School of Fusing Patternworks.

48 – 5” precut squares in a variety of color packs, Yellow/Orange and Red/Purples for all your flower needs. Green/Blues for your leaves and skies.

Or try out a bundle of quarter yards to fill all those color desires

Of course there will be lots of other colors as well. Hope to see you there. If you can’t make it to the show you can always order on line at my website.

Machine Quilting tip

I am starting to make little video’s. This is my first attempt, let me know what you think, I know I left out some info, but I was so excited to do this I just had to post it:)

Here is a close up of what I am demoing. It is one of my little “One a Day” quilts. I have been trying to make one small quilt every day or every two days depending on the quilt. I will post the finished quilt once I have it all quilted. It measures 12” x 14” and is made of my hand dyed gradation cotton and silk. This is the perfect size to practice machine quilting on as it is easy to move around and not too big.

I have used YLI silk thread and Madeira Rayon thread to quilt this tree design. I used a microtex sharp needle size 70.

Self threading needles from Clover. This have a slit in the top so that you can thread them easily.