Welcoming Lamp

I've been working on a very special quilt  for a while now, and I'm happy to share it with you today. This is Welcoming Lamp.......

There's quite a story behind this one, so get yourself a cup of tea and settle in. 

Several months ago, through the wonders of the internet (instagram and Zoom) I met Karen Bolan, a gifted modern quilter from California. Karen and I quickly realized we had several shared passions, the biggest being a passion for inclusive community and a love of collaboration. Both of us enjoy sharing lectures on collaboration with guilds. We began meeting via zoom to talk about different ways we could work together. Basically, we wanted to collaborate on our collaboration lectures. These zoom meetings were filled with rich discussions on community in quilting and both of us had quite a few light bulb moments along the way!

Pretty quickly we knew we wanted to work on a collaborative quilt together. Karen and I decided to set basic parameters (size, colors, inspiration theme) and then each work with a group separately to create half of the quilt.

Our inspiration became The New Colossus,  Emma Lazarus' poem which is printed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. We talked a lot about creating a welcoming space for refugees and others who are oppressed. 

For my half of the quilt, I met with my friends Chris and Susan at a day retreat center nearby. I asked Chris and Susan because I knew the three of us each had different skills to contribute and that we would work well together. Chris has a great eye for color and is fearless when it comes to improv! Susan is a true artist and her design skills are something I often tap into. We worked as a team to design and piece our half of the quilt. We really got into a groove and it came together in a day.

Chris working at the design wall.

Chris, Susan and I with our finished top

 Our design thoughts..... the gold "sun" is the crown on the statue, and the gold slab is her torch. The strip piecing at the bottom represents oppression; prison bars, or the wall at the border... or perhaps refugees in a  long row leaving their homelands. The bright blues in the "sky" represent hope for the future.

I took our pieced top home, quilted it and added faced bindings. If you look closely at the bottom you might see something you don't ordinarily see on a quilt. It's half of a separating zipper tucked into the facing! Karen and I wanted a way to both attach and separate our quilts so they could be displayed as one quilt or two.

Here you can see the zipper with our two quilts zipped together:

Karen's half of the quilt came together very differently than mine! She had quilters each make one block representing a line from the poem, then she assembled them together. You can read all about her process over on her blog.

I encourage you to find ways to collaborate in the quilting community if you haven't already!

Exploring Collaboration #5

 

If you've been following along, you already know that Karen Bolan and I have been exploring different aspects of collaboration together for several months. Recently we decided to offer up tandem blog posts twice a month diving deeper into some of the topics we've discussed. I hope you'll hop over to Karen's blog and read what she has to say today. I will tell you, today's post really challenged me!

One thing Karen and I have done together is develop a method for creating collaborative projects. We'll be sharing more about that method in part 6 of our series in two weeks. Meanwhile, we've been testing out our method by creating some collaborations of our own. Our first project done this way was the creation of Welcoming Lamp, which you can read more about here. We invited several other quilters to participate in the creation of this quilt.

Welcoming Lamp

For our next project, Karen and I are choosing to make a quilt just between the two of us. An important part of the development of any collaboration is knowing what your inspiration is. Recently, Karen has been inspired by a Netflix documentary called Fantastic Fungi.  Yes, you read that right! It's a movie about mushrooms. 

You need to know that I am not a science person. Not one bit. When Karen suggested I watch this movie with quilting in mind, I was skeptical. What could mushrooms have to do with quilters, specifically quilting in community? I opened up my mind and watched the documentary, taking notes and surprising myself with some of the insights that came my way. I have a lot more digging to do on this topic, but here are some of the revelations I've had so far.....

* Fungi are incredibly diverse. There are millions of different kinds of fungi, JUST LIKE PEOPLE! 

* Fungi are changers, creating evolution. Fungi are what changes corn into bourbon, for example. It networks with the environment to cause change. Don't we do that as quilters? We use our creative powers to change pieces of fabric into works of art. 

* Communities of fungi survive much better than individuals. The strengths of one type might influence and strengthen another. They work together to create things that are of mutual benefit. Sound familiar? When we work in community with other quilters, don't we thrive? We empower each other to create powerful works that reflect our combined strengths.

Of course this is simplistic and selective. There are dangerous mushrooms that can weaken and even kill us. There are magic mushrooms that can cause us to hallucinate. But I'm choosing to stick with the positive impacts of fungi. 

How will all of this knowledge evolve into a quilt? That's a very good question; one I don't have the answer to just yet. Karen and I will continue to explore and create and you get to have a front row seat to our process. Buckle up, this promises to be a bit of a wild ride!

2021 year in review

 Whew! What a year! While it would be easy to focus on all of the crazy negative things going on in the world right now (no, I'm not going to list them. you already know!) I'm choosing to focus on the positive. And there sure was a lot of it in my world this year. Here are the highlights.... so I never forget how blessed I was in 2021.

Urban Emergence

In February, my group quilt, Urban Emergence was part of Quiltcon Together, the virtual MQG show that replaced in person Quiltcon this year. It was my very first quilt accepted into Quiltcon. Imagine my surprise when I won first place in my category! As if this wasn't enough, it was chosen for publication in the Quiltcon magazine! What an honor!

Later that month, Sarah Goer and I formed a pARTnership, inspired by Danielle Krysa's In 

tandem Art project. Sarah and I have continued to meet on Zoom every two weeks all year long, encouraging each other in our artistic journeys. One of the greatest things to come out of our friendship is the start of our new improv bee, Quilts Unscripted. This group is incredibly talented and inspiring! 

Again in 2021, I was able to participate in the Virtual Quilt Guild where I met so many amazing quilters. One relationship that came out of that group is my collaboration with Karen Bolan. Karen and I have also been meeting often on Zoom and have shared a collaborative quilt project (Welcoming Lamp), a series of blog posts (Exploring Collaboration) and coming soon..... a published article on Collaboration in Curated Quilts magazine! This was completed in 2021 and will be arriving in mailboxes early 2022.

Welcoming Lamp

One other thing I am so proud of this year is the completion of my Through Ellyn's Eyes project. When I set out on a six month personal journey to create a cohesive body of work and explore my creative voice it seemed daunting at best. The more I worked through it, the more joyful it became. I am so lucky to have had the time and the resources to complete this project and look forward to sharing it with guilds in the coming year.

Through Ellyn's Eyes quilts

So, 2021 proved to be a productive, fun year for me. Most of these things were not even on my radar a year ago, so who knows what 2022 will bring? Regardless, I look forward to sharing it with you. Happy New Year everyone!

Exploring Collaboration - Bees and Block Swaps

 I've really been enjoying exploring different aspects of collaboration with fellow modern quilter, Karen Bolan. You might remember reading about Welcoming Lamp, the project we collaborated on several months ago. Our conversations have continued since then and we are working on a series of blogposts to open up conversation in the quilting community about collaborating.Karen and I will offer articles on this topic twice a month and encourage you to join in by sharing your thoughts in the comments.

For our first posts, we are sharing our thoughts about the different types of collaboration. You can read my thoughts on quilting bees and block swaps here, then hop on over to Karen's blog to read more. 

Bees

Maybe some of you have participated in quilt bees. This is one of my favorite ways to collaborate. Basically, a group of quilters commits to working together for an extended period of time. Each month, one member of the group is the queen and gives the other members a prompt, block pattern, color palette or other specifications about what they desire for finished blocks. Bee members have that month to complete the requested blocks for the queen. Then the next person becomes queen and the cycle begins again.

Bees can be traditional, based on block patterns that everyone has access to (either original designs by the queen, free tutorials available online or a pattern all members have purchased), or less traditional, based on thematic prompts or improv methods of quilting. I've participated in both types and enjoy them for different reasons. Also, bees can be made up of all local quilting buddies or quilters who live at a distance, requiring blocks to be mailed.

My most recent traditional bee quilt was made in pinks and oranges using the japanese x and + block.

made by members of the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild

Just for fun, I enlarged the block to add one giant block to my quilt. It was fun to see the fabrics each bee member used in their blocks and how they all played together in the end.

Recently I've been enjoying improv bees. First I was a member of the Solid Seven Bee and more recently, the newly formed Quilts Unscripted Bee. I haven't had a turn to be queen in the Quilts Unscripted Bee yet (soon!) but I have several quilts completed by the Solid Seven. One of my favorites is my This is 60 quilt with blocks they made to help me celebrate my 60th birthday. I gave the bee members a bright, happy color palette and asked that they include at least one triangle in each block.

made by members of the Solid Seven Bee

When the blocks arrived they were all different sizes. Puzzling together improv blocks is my favorite part of the process! 

Block Swaps

Another kind of collaboration I love is block swaps. Again, block swaps can be held among local quilty friends or with quilters all around the world. During the Covid lockdown, I organized a house block swap among my local quilty pals. 

of course I added my little red car to the mix!

Each quilter dropped their finished blocks off at my house. When I had received everyone's blocks, I mixed them all up and gave each quilter back as many blocks as they had given me. There were so many wonderful takes on the house block... from patterned houses to totally improv ones. 

A couple of years ago, I organized an internet block swap of bird blocks based on the free tutorial here. Quilters mailed me their blocks (you should have seen the hundreds of bird blocks that flew into my house!). Again, I scrambled the blocks and mailed new ones back to each participant. My finished quilt is one of my favorite quilts ever.

Have you ever participated in a bee or block swap? In an upcoming post I'll share some tips and tricks for organizing and participating in your own collabs.

Exploring Collaboration - BYOC

 

These bimonthly posts with Karen Bolan exploring collaboration have been challenging and fun! Today we are both sharing something exciting that we've been working on for a long time - BYOC! 

You might be wondering exactly what those initials stand for. Blue yams on cake? Buy yarn on clearance? haha nope. It's Build Your Own Collaboration!

Maybe you are familiar with restaurant menus presented this way. Some places have a build your own pizza.... choose a crust (gluten free for me please), choose a sauce (I'll have the marinara) choose a topping (mushrooms and black olives anyone?) and a cheese (always mozzarella for me!). Or build your own sandwich (bread, meats, veggies, dressing, sides), or build your own bowl (I'm going with brown rice, grilled shrimp, all the veggies and gluten free teriyaki sauce). Is everybody hungry now? Yeah, me too.

Anyways, Karen and I got to thinking, what if there was a menu to help you plan your collaborations? And BYOC was born. We even created a BYOC bookmark for all of you! If you are attending Quiltcon this week, find one of us and we will happily give you one. 

Not going to Quiltcon? No worries! We've made a pdf printable you can access from home. Find that here. 

The menu is tried and true! We used it to plan our Welcoming Lamp quilt back in the fall, and we are using it again for our Mushroom project. Does its include everything? No, that would be impossible. In fact that could fill a book. Some things it does not address include Building your Collaboration Team, and Setting deadlines. Topics it does include? Great question.

What is the Purpose of your project? Is it a charity quilt or a quilt for a cause? Is it to educate people? Build Community? A gift or for exhibition? Maybe more than one of these things? You can always check more than one box, it's your project after all!

What is your Source of inspiration? Will it be a topical quilt? Maybe inspired by a photo or another art source. Could be a traditional block or pattern.

What is the Contribution type? Will each member contribute blocks? Maybe your quilt will be done in a series or round robin style. Will you split the labor (one person pieces ,someone else quilts, another person binds) or will it be non pieced art or individual projects that link together somehow? 

Where will you Source your fabric? Will group members work from their stash? Swap frabric? Purchase specifically for the project? Or maybe a combination of these things.

Lastly, how will you Finish your quilt? Will group members piece individually or as a group? will you pay a longarm quilter? Or maybe one of the group members will volunteer to do the quilting. A group quilting bee would be a fun option!

We hope you'll print out our BYOC menu or grab a bookmark from us at Quiltcon and use it to get to Collaborating!