Sacred Threads in Herndon, VA, through Sunday
As you walk through the Sacred Threads art quilt exhibit, you can listen to a recording of artists talking about their work. (More about the exhibit below.)
Coming up with a one-minute commentary about my piece, A Worthy Accomplishment, was a new challenge for me. I wrote and *cut and practiced reading,* and repeated between *s several times. That’s a reference to knitting and crochet instructions, in case you were wondering.
The volunteers at Sacred Threads set up a telephone recording session, where artists could call in and record their speech. I was able to listen to my recording and decide whether to save or re-record. It took me about three tries to get it just the way I wanted it.
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Sacred Threads is an exhibition of quilts that express life’s journeys. Through their art, quilters express joy, inspiration, spirituality, healing, grief, and peace. Read lots more about this thoughtful and interesting exhibit at www.sacredthreadsquilts.com.
The project is run by volunteers, like these two who were hanging the quilts for the 2017-2019 show, which debuted in Herndon, VA. This photo from the Sacred Threads Facebook page is used with permission.
The exhibit will be at the Floris Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia, through Sunday, July 23. After that, A Worthy Accomplishment is coming home, but thirty-six of the original 300 quilts in the Sacred Threads exhibit will travel around the United States through June 2019. These are the venues so far:
- Flint Festival of Quilts, Flint MI – September 2017
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HeART Gallery, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Toledo, OH – October 18-30, 2017
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Grace Episcopal Church, Gainesville GA – November 1 – December 15, 2017
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Voice of the Spirit Gallery, West Raleigh Presbyterian Church, Raleigh, NC -January – February, 2018
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Southeastern Quilt & Textile Museum, Carrollton GA – March-June, 2018
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Good Shepard Episcopal Church, Hayesville NC – July, 2018
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The Rectory Cultural Arts Center, Norcross, GA – August, 2018
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Virginia Quilt Museum, Harrisonburg VA – September-December, 2018
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Best of the Valley Quilt Show, Lindsay, CA – April, 2019
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A World of Quilts, Danbury, CT – May 2019
If you or your venue is interested in receiving a portion of the 2017 exhibit, please indicate your interest by filling out the Traveling Exhibit Interest form.
If you aren’t able to see the show in Virginia, I hope you will like to read the speech about A Worthy Accomplishment:
Hi. I’m Suzann Thompson, talking to you from Comanche County, Texas.
I’ve met a startling number of people who feel unworthy.
I think our culture feeds this perception. As a society, we seem to admire enormous wealth and power. We marvel at technology. And then we go to the movies and see heroes swooping in to save the world!
Those are BIG, IMPORTANT things.
My quilt, A Worthy Accomplishment, draws attention to the SMALL important things that most of us do every day. We take care of ourselves and others, work at home or away. We are kind and thoughtful. And sometimes, we take time to make something, like a delicious meal or a quilt.
We probably won’t become famous or rich for doing these things, but I think they are worthy accomplishments and because we do them, WE ARE worthy. I hope you think so, too.
Read more about this wall hanging in this blog..
Doily Yarn Bombs
The Celebrate Doilies exhibit of art, poetry, and crochet culture, opens in two short days! Yay!
But let’s dwell for a moment on the past.
My parents have raised cattle for a long time, and cows need hay from time to time. Mom and Dad buy big, round hay bales, which used to be tied up with yards of blue and white synthetic string called baling twine.
My dad can hardly stand to throw away anything that might be useful someday, and so he has a tub full of baling twine. “Suzie,” he has often said, “you could knit something out of that baling twine.”
Yes, I could knit something with baling twine, but as we say in my little family, “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”
All that changed when I was looking for a good fiber to make a doily to yarn bomb the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council gallery during the Celebrate Doilies exhibit. I tried crocheting the baling twine. It was kind of stiff and springy, but it could definitely be crocheted.
And here’s the baling twine doily at about row 13.
My mom offered a softer option: macramé cord that had been among her craft supplies for about 25 years.
I started with two 60-yard Kelly green hanks, and you can see how far those went. The 100 yards of white cord was a little heavier. I ended with 100 yards of the spring green, which was heavier still.
In this photo, my assistant and her assistants are stretching the doily on a length of PEX pipe. The doily measured about 4 feet across when stretched.
A Celebrate Doilies Interview at March On! Texas
I met writer and historian Kelly McMichael at a town hall meeting of our U.S. Representative last spring. It was a nice surprise to find out that Kelly is a textile artist, too!
Kelly offers a different spin on the Celebrate Doilies exhibition in this post at the March On! Texas blog.
Celebrate Doilies March On Texas
Dr. Kelly McMichael reveals a whole new spin on Celebrate Doilies at March On! Texas.
Crochet Bloggers Spread News of Celebrate Doilies!
I am very honored to have the Celebrate Doilies! exhibit featured in two well-known crochet blogs! Please follow the links and read new information and a behind-the-scenes look at Celebrate Doilies!
Rachel Choi hosts the popular Crochet Spot blog, where readers can find crochet patterns, news, and tutorials. “Taking a Chance on Doilies” is the name of the post about Celebrate Doilies! Chance comments and other coincidences figured strongly in the making of the exhibit.
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Kathryn Vercillo is the author of several books including Hook to Heal! (100 crochet exercises for health, growth, connection, inspiration and honoring your inner artist). She studies and practices crochet and other crafts as therapy. Her blog is Crochet Concupiscence, where you’ll find Help Fiber Artist Suzann Thompson and Friends Celebrate Doilies.
Read lots more about the Celebrate Doilies! here on my blog.
Please contribute to the Celebrate Doilies Kickstarter campaign if you can.
Find exhibit dates, venues, and other details in the Exhibits tab in the menu above.
Celebrate Doilies Crowd-Fundraiser Launched Today Please Contribute
Exciting news! Today, I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to cover the remaining expenses of the Celebrate Doilies! exhibit you’ve been reading about on this blog. Donation levels start at just $5.00, and there are rewards for each level. The more you donate, the better the rewards.
(This is a screenshot of the Kickstarter page, so the video isn’t available. A live link is below the picture.)
Please donate for art, for poetry, and for our crochet heritage at the Celebrate Doilies! Kickstarter page.
And to give you a little extra incentive to donate, the first ten people to contribute $24 or more to Celebrate Doilies! will receive a unique package of crocheted flowers or leaves, crocheted by me!
A few of these items are designer originals from my crochet flower books. The tape measure is in the photos so you can get an idea of how big these flowers and leaves are. Inches on top, centimeters below.
This is the Paisley and Friends collection:
Here’s Fleur-di-Lys and Friends:
Big Orange Flower and Friends:
Maple Leaf Collection:
Purples Plus:
Pineapple, Pomegranate, and Friends:
Sweet and Simple:
Pink Plus:
Three Dimensional Flowers:
Sparkle Collection (see close-up at the end of this post):
Orange Collection with Leafy Spray:
Wait! Why are there eleven packages for only ten contributors? Two reasons: even the 10th person to donate $24 or over will have a choice; and I’m very curious to see which one is left.
Celebrate Doilies Kickstarter Campaign to Launch May 28–Please Donate!
Sunday, May 28, at 12:30 p.m. Central Time, I will launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to cover the remaining expenses of the Celebrate Doilies! exhibit you’ve been reading about on this blog.
Donation levels start at just $5.00, and there are rewards for each level. The more you donate, the better the rewards.
Please visit my Kickstarter page, and donate for art, for poetry, for heritage!
Celebrate Doilies! is a three-part exhibit. First there are doily-inspired art quilts by me. Here’s one called Winter Blues.
Find in-progress photos of this wall hanging here.
Part two of Celebrate Doilies! is poetry by Sandi Horton. She was inspired by the crochet-work of her mother and grandmothers. Read her poem about this pretty green and white doily here (scroll down a bit).
The third section of Celebrate Doilies! includes stories and photos of doily crocheters past and present, and their work. Here’s one of the stories that will be in the show:
The show will be beautiful, and your contribution will ensure that all the heritage posters and poems are printed and hung, and more.
I appreciate your support, and I look forward to sending your rewards!
Free for Two Days Only! Oak Leaf Pattern
Fiber artists Alyssa Arney and Liz Flynn (@thread.winners) called for community donations of crocheted or knitted oak leaves for “Reveries,” an exhibit they are putting on this summer.
Well, I felt quite a connection there, since I’m also putting on an exhibit this summer.
AND I had a few crocheted oak leaves in my stash of crocheted flowers and leaves. So I’m sending these. Most are “Gambel Oak” leaves from Crochet Garden.
Alyssa and Liz’s project motivated me to dust off a different oak leaf pattern and publish it. The red and green leaves below are now available in my shop on Ravelry (link below).
You can download the pattern FREE only on May 9 and 10, 2017. After that, the price will be $1.00.
Alyssa and Liz are offering a free crocheted oak leaf pattern as well. Find the link at their Instagram account (@thread.winners). They wrote about their project here.
I look forward to seeing their finished project!
How Crochet Comets Started
At our 2015 Dublin Rippers quilting retreat, my friend Donna challenged us. She had a black plastic bag full of fabric. We had to close our eyes and reach into the bag. We had until the next year’s retreat to make something from the fabric we drew from the bag. She said we could make anything we wanted. It didn’t have to be a quilt.
My fabric was a tiny print that gave an overall impression of a kind of pinkish gray. It reminded me of the night sky.
Weren’t there a couple of yellow and white doilies in my collection at home that might make good comets? I went home to my doily collection and, yes! There they were.
To get an idea of scale, I photographed the doilies and the gray fabric, plus some yellow fabrics that I planned to use for the comet tails. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements to digitally build the wall hanging, cutting and pasting the images of doilies and fabric.
I put several stars in the sky, just to give me an idea of how they would look. In the real wall hanging, I would use more stars and they would be a lot fancier. And I’d sew on a bunch of buttons as smaller stars.
Photoshop Elements has a click-and-drag tool for drawing boxes and circles and, hey–stars! I clicked on the star shape and dragged the first one. It was black, because that was the last color I had used. I changed the color, and the next stars were yellow.
The sketch was pretty rough, but it served its purpose. I could tell that the quilt would have to be about five feet wide to give the doily comets and their tails enough room. The horizon and a few houses gave me an idea of proportions between sky and earth.
I started laying out the quilt top, stopping only to buy a length of fabric to go between the dark earth and the lighter sky. As I worked and laid out the doilies and houses and moon, I got a feeling. It was definitely located in my chest. It was a feeling of inevitability that seemed to squeeze my heart.
The feeling was that the sketch might be rough, but it was perfect the way it was. Any attempt on my part to fancy things up, would not make the finished product look any better. As I worked I came to know this without a doubt.
So the quilt is as close to the sketch as possible. I did fancy up the comet tails with buttons and beads, but the sky is plain, except for the appliqued stars, including a black one.
The back is made from scraps, many of which were giveaways from my quilting friends. It is quilted in mostly parallel, curving lines. That took a long time.
This was my first mostly-fabric quilt with raw-edge applique and very simple piecing, and I learned a lot. It is also the biggest quilt I have made so far.
Crochet Comets is on display at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden, Colorado, until April 23, 2017. Starting July 1, it will be part of the Celebrate Doilies! exhibit, making its debut in Stephenville, Texas, at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council River North Gallery. (Details here.)
Flowers of Winterling
It’s great to have a stash of ready-crocheted flowers, because you may need them for a wall hanging. Here’s a rundown of the crocheted flowers in Winterling.
Flower Number 1: In the summer of 2006, I pitched a book idea to Lark Crafts, a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing. That book idea became Crochet Bouquet. Flower number 1, the buttony sunflower, was one of the sample flowers in my proposal.
Crochet Bouquet and Crochet Garden readers will recognize all of these flowers.
From Crochet Bouquet:
2 These deep purple leaves and their antique gold partners are “Small One-Row Leaves” from pp. 120-121.
3 The yellow flowers with black button centers are “Small Petals Around,” p. 36.
4 “Circles within Circles,” pp. 22-23. Here’s a step-by-step photo-tutorial.
5 The medium sized “Primrose Layers,” pp. 90-91. Hints and photos for crocheting the flower here.
6 You can make several versions of “Five Point,” pp. 85-86. This is rounds 1 and 2 only.Here’s a tutorial.
From Crochet Garden:
7 “Rafflesita,” pp. 122-123. This step-by-step photo-tutorial will help. The Rafflesita in the middle of the bouquet is an original flower from the book.
8 “Samarkand Sunflower,” in all its sizes, pp. 60-61. The yellow beads really brighten these flowers.
9 “Forget Me Not,” pp. 86-87. Here’s a tutorial.
10 “Twirl Center Rose,” pp. 116-117.
11 “Any Color Pinks,” bud and full flower, pp. 96-97. Bud and flower are designer originals.
12 “Anatolian King Flower,” pp. 104-105. The bright King Flower is a designer original.
13 “Russian Spoke Flower,” pp. 100-101, another original from the book.
14 “Turkestani Star,” p. 70, another designer original.
15 “Perspective Daisy,” pp. 56-57, inspired by the Winterling china factory’s Zwiebelmuster.
And finally, a motif I made for Crochet Garden, but it didn’t make it into the book:
16 A variation on “Leaf and Berries Spray,” Free pattern here.
Winterling will be among the doily-themed quilts at the Celebrate Doilies exhibition, opening July 1, 2017 at the Cross Timbers Fine Arts Council in Stephenville, TX.
