Lenore's Art World

My Art Quilts in Art of Quilts Postcards

2011-11-15T14:40:00.001-05:00

Today I received my copy of the collection Art of Quilts Postcards Architectural by C & T Publishing. Four of my art quilts are included in this postcard set including those of Ruth McDowell, David Taylor, Katie Pasquini Masopust, Mickey Lawler, and Elizabeth Barton. The qualithy is very good and there is a great variety of architectural art quilts included in this set. I hope you will check it out at http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?sku=20158.

Book Review

2011-09-10T09:31:00.002-04:00

Check out the review of Joen's book Adventures in Design on http://seehowwesew.wordpress.com. They have photos from the book on this blog and a bit more information than I covered in mine. It really is a beautiful book and can be used as a reference for design whether you are a teacher or a student. I will definitely recommend it to my students!

Beautiful Book by Joen Wolfrom

2011-09-04T10:46:00.004-04:00

In this new book by Joen Wolfrom you will find many beautiful art quilts by dozens of artists including me! She has added many photos of my work and used them to help describe how to create a beautiful piece of art yourself. Her designing sense and descriptions give the reader a huge amount of information from which to create a balanced and beautiful finished piece. You will have to check this book out! It is by C & T Publishing and should be available soon if not already. I highly recommend this book to add to your library for reference or to just help you in your current creativity. My very first book on art quilting that I ever purchased many years ago was The Visual Dance by Joen from 1995, also a beautiful book. It inspired me to try art quilting! The back of the new book has my Yellow Poppies design I created for my pattern line!

New Technique CD

2011-08-17T16:08:00.003-04:00

I have just finished another technique CD! This one is on my Blended Fabric Collage technique using dozens of little pieces of fabric about 1/2" in size to create a scene. After you create the background you add trees and a little fabric paint to give them some depth. I love this way of using leftovers from other projects. These small designs are great for gifts for all occasions. My CD-ROM has 26 pages of great information and photos on how to create your own blended collages. It is a step-wise photo demo that will tell you exactly how to do this. The price is $15 each and about $1 for shipping depending on your location. I hope you will check it out. This is one of the workshops that I offer to groups too. You can see more at my website at www.lenorecrawford.com. This one is another design I have not using trees. It's fun to add little details such as cottages or animals to these blended designs.

New Pattern and Fusing CD Finally Finished!

2011-08-11T20:19:00.010-04:00

Finally! My newest pattern, Pink Hibiscus, is finished! It is a medium difficulty pattern because it requires 15 fabrics which are just gradient shades of pink/magenta and greens. This detail and shading with the fabrics give the design more detail and complexity. If you need help with it, you can purchase my Fusing CD which is 26 plus pages of instructions with photos on how to do my simple fusing technique. The CD is offerened on my website on the Patterns Page at this link http://www.lenorecrawford.com/patterns_by_lenore_crawford.htm. I'm sure it will help you create your own fused art quilts from your own photos!

Now we are off to Chicago this weekend for our 30th anniversary, my husband and I and his sister and husband. They were with us for the second half of our honeymoon so it's only seemed right they should be with us for our 30th anniversary!

Traveling to Teach

2011-06-14T08:22:00.006-04:00

Lately I have been traveling a lot and haven't been working in my studio on my own work. My students at Empty Spools at Asilomar near Monterey, CA, made me proud by producing the most incredible work since they actually had five days to work on a project. I also taught recently in Cambria at the Sandy Turner Retreat where they also did fantastic work! These multi-day classes are really allowing students to spend enough time to get a larger more personal project started. They design mostly and take the piece home to finish it later. Here are a couple of piece that are getting close to being finished. They work from their own photos and make them even better. We had a completely full class in Empty Spools of 25 people and had a great week! What a great venue for working on art!

This bird was pieced using my simple fusing technique. The artist used two different fabrics for the background instead of piecing the whole thing. These fabrics were perfect for it!

I will be teaching at Sisters, OR, next month over the 4th of July. I hear this is also a great venue and we will have another 3 day class where I'm sure students will put out some great work! I'm looking forward to it except the part where it's over the holiday. Normally I would spend that with my family! Oh, well. I guess teaching for the moment has to come first.

I will also be teaching in Knoxville this summer at the AQS show several different classes. This is the first time I have taught for AQS. I'm excited about this opportunity!

I was very lucky as many of you might know that I won the Moda Best Wall Quilt at Paducah in April. This was very exciting for me since my piece will be hanging in the National Quilt Museum now permanentaly! I also received a director's chair with my name on it (so I guess I'm the director now) and a crystal vase that was very beautiful with my prize information on it plus of course the $5,000 prize money. I bought two Ekorne recliners for my studio! They are gorgeous and comfortable. You can go to my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com to get more information on my schedule so you can try a multi-day class too and produce some of your own incredible art quilts.

The coast at Monterey/Pacific Grove is very rugged and harsh. The colors of the water and the wild flowers are breath-taking. The yards of houses along the shore toward town were covered with flox completely! It was amazing! A great place to visit for a week long quilting retreat!

Cincinnati IQF Fun

2011-04-11T17:34:00.005-04:00

Just got back from Cincinnati International Quilt Festival! So much to see and do with shows and vendors. My mom went with me and we had some great food and wine too. My classes were great with some great students who did some variations on my patterns that I wouldn't even have thought of. That's one of the great things about teaching. Students help us think outside of our own box. I was also lucky to have been demo-ing at the Misty Fuse booth with Iris Karp! It's such hard work to be bent over a table for hours and repeat the description over and over. Misty Fuse is my fusible web of choice. You can see more about it at http://www.mistyfuse.com/. It's very light weight and allows me to use many layers of fabrics. Unfortunately I didn't get to shop much while there!

This is my new pattern created from a photo by a friend who was traveling to the Arctic Circle to take photos of birds. It's pretty small and a simpler pattern to create. You can see it on my website at www.lenorecrawford.com patterns page. My other patterns are also listed there. I have been listing my work for sale on the Etsy website. If you would like to see some of my pieces available, they are listed on Etsy at www.etsy.com/shop/lenorehcrawford2461.

Back from Spain

2011-03-29T20:39:00.005-04:00

I am back now from Spain, Sitges, to be exact. We spent nearly two weeks in this beautiful town on the Mediterranean Sea with some very nice people. The location for my exhibit was wonderful and the festival organizers had everything very well managed. I had a great display of my pieces and taught classes. Everyone was so excited to see my work, it was nice to hear everyone's compliments and feedback. This is the church in town right on the sea facing the sunset. We stayed at a great hotel called La Santa Maria. They were so great and the hotel was very very nice with all the amenitites of home plus (like people to clean up after you).

We went to Barcelona and visited by tour bus which was great because you could get on and off as you wished. The most incredible thing I saw was La Sagrada Familia (the Sacred Family) which is the cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudi. He was a genius and engineered one of the most incredible structures ever created. It is beautiful in an indescribable way. Here are a couple of pictures for a taste. Look him up on the Internet and see what he did. The stained glass windows glowed in a rainbow of colors against the concrete columns in the sunlight. The ceiling was like flowers feathered together. The outside shot is from a postcard. Unfortunately I didn't take it but you can see how incredible this place is!

So now we will see what I will produce after being so inspired by the architecture and beauty of the countryside of Spain. I was very lucky to have been there.

Winner in Midland

2011-03-07T13:19:00.003-05:00

This is one of my newest fused pieces. I called it Colors for obvious reasons. I tried to use just my scraps to do it with and ended up adding a few Kaffe Fassett fabric pieces to it too. This was fused using my simple technique that I do all of mine with. It was interesting how long it actually takes to do a piece that is simply blended colors from one to the other. I entered it in our local guild show, Midland Artists Guild, and just found out I won Best of Show! It is very exciting to be recognized like that especially since it really is the first abstract fused piece I have ever done. I don't normally do abstract. But it was different and I like different. I also have just learned that my piece, Port of Cassis, was accepted into the AQS Show in Paducah which is also very exciting!

I want to mention that if anyone is near Midland, Michigan, this month, you can see the MAG Art Show at the Midland Grace A. Dow Memorial Library. We have many great artists that have their pieces also in the show. Check it out! Next week to Spain! I have already been asked to come back and teach at other venues in Spain. I guess I might have to brush up on my non-existent Spanish. It's a little like French I guess though.

New Work with Scraps

2011-03-03T09:10:00.002-05:00

I have spent a few days creating shredded designs using Noriko Endo's technique. This is when you shred scraps of fabrics using your large rotary cutter which gets to your wrist in a day. I can see carpel tunnel syndrome coming in my future. After you shred the fabric you design on a piece of fabric with the bits and then add tulle and then add trees or other things and then another layer of tulle. Then you pin it like crazy and top stitch it all down. When I'm done with my design, I use fabric paints to emphasize the parts. This is a very fun technique and uses up some of the scraps you have around the house. I have an infinite amount of them.

This birch design is currently for sale on my Etsy account at http://www.etsy.com/shop/lenorehcrawford2461. I have been posting my latest pieces for sale here. It seems to be a good outlet for art sales. Many others have their work posted on this site too. Check it out! I will be going to Spain to teach on March 15 and then have a little vacation while we are there celebrating our 30 wedding anniversary in Barcelona area. I'm sure it will be warmer there than it is here in cold and snowy Michigan. If you want to see my schedule, go to my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com on my schedule page.

Road to California Win!

2011-01-26T09:35:00.004-05:00

I am very happy to say that my piece, Port of Cassis, won Outstanding Art Quilt at Road to California last week! It was very nice to hear. I have been searching on the internet for other 2011 winners but haven't found them yet. They seem to be slow at posting on web prize winners. One day I would like to go there to the show. I imagine there are lots of things to see! Maybe I will teach there one year soon. Right now I continue to have writer's block on what big piece to work on next. A friend has thousands of pictures from there years in China that I am going to look at and see if I can find something to use. It's great to have access to resources like that. We'll see what I come up with!

Right now I'm working on some abstract designs only using my scraps. I have two large garbage bags full of scraps I have been collecting over the years. I would like to use them some how but don't think I am even going to put a dent in the mess! Here is a picture of my pile. I don't know what I will eventually do with all these scraps. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! I will also use some of them for some shredded designs like Noriko Endo does.

A New Pattern!

2011-01-18T19:57:00.003-05:00

This is my new pattern for you to try. I have been wanting to create one of architecture and especially with flower pots. So here it is. Try it yourself. This one was created on the lime green batik background fabric. The general pieces were fused down and then the fine detail and shadows were added with fabric paints. One of these days I will be adding a CD or DVD to my patterns to demonstrate pictorially how to do my simple fusing/fabric painting technique. So go to my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com and order your own pattern to try. Or try a different one. The instructions will tell you exactly how to do it and also some helpful hints on fusing I have learned over the past few years. Thanks!

Inspiration

2011-01-04T09:49:00.003-05:00

Where does it come from? I asked that question in my newsletter this week and got some interesting answers from readers. One suggested working in a series like my windows I like to create. I also like to do architectural scenes. I thought about a series with boat scenes from Lake Geneva I have taken over the years. Or cottages or doors or bridges. This is one of my pictures I could use.

Another suggestion was to check out other photographers and artists and what they are currently doing. That is a great way to get inspiration! Ideas come sometimes when I'm at a show and see other art quilts in their real-life spendor. No shows currently going though.

Another suggestion was to do something from other areas of the country. My mother suggested this idea to me. I love to do French architectural pieces and maybe more American architecture would be interesting. Farms could be interesting.

Cleaning my house could be inspirational while listening to some fun music. I just recently got my cleaning person back but there is always something that needs to be done especially in my studio where she doesn't clean. I have my stereo set up with surround sound there and my Ipod full of great music. I will try this!

So many great suggestions. I need to take some time to try some of them. Taking my camera around town might be interesting too. So I will let you know what happens!

Framing Our Art Quilts

2010-12-22T11:53:00.007-05:00

There has been much chatter in the SAQA email group about framing our art quilts. I have been struggling with this issue for many years since I began creating them in 1997. I first started stretching the pieces over wooden frames my husband made for me. I always put wide borders on them and then stretched the borders around to the back of the wood frame and stapled the fabric to the wood. Then I took a hot glue gun and went along the raw zigzagged edges of the fabric on the back to keep it from fraying. This was a good answer to the dilemma because they looked professional since each from was a custom size. My husband figured out how to to metal angle brackets in the corners especially on the really large ones to keep the frame from distorting. They just hung like a picture frame on a wall then.
So then I started sending pieces to quilt shows. They didn't ship very well. One piece shipped to Cincinnati for a show arrived with a broken wooden frame which fortunately didn't puncture the wallhanging. Also taking the pieces stacked up to art shows over and over became an issue. The edges of the fabric on the frames started rubbing together and making holes in the fabric borders on the fronts and edges. Not a good thing! So now what else to do.

So I started just putting bindings on my pieces and sleeves for hanging. It was so easy to transport and ship this type of finished piece. The only issue I had was that I thought they didn't look as professional as the stretch framed pieces. I thought about all the other famous art quilters and how they just put a binding on them and call it good. So if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me. Now that is the only way I finish my pieces. If the piece is really large, I do put a smaller sleeve on the bottom of the piece so a dowel or wooden slat can be put in it to help keep the piece flat and straight. This piece was hung with this sleeve method and hangs very flat.

One of my customers had her piece framed. They simply put it in a copper colored frame and covered up the binding while not using any glass. It has a more professional look. You can see the picture of it here. Nice but I don't know how practical this would be for very large pieces. But you can decide that for yourself!

Off to France!

2010-09-04T09:34:00.003-04:00

I'm off to France to visit friends and get re-inspired. Three weeks is not a long time there for me. I would love some day to spend 6 months at a time there. I have been going to this village now for 40 years. Man, have I gotten old. I always remember the very first time I walked into this village, Yvoire. What an incredible difference of architecture from what I knew! So beautiful and very very old. This is the main entry to the walled village which is right on Lake Geneva, Lac Leman. I have taken hundreds of pictures over

the years and still will take hundreds more. What really makes a place beautiful are the people. I have many friends here and once worked in this restaurant when I was a teenager. It was hard work but so fun at that age. It would kill me today to do the same thing. The village was built around 1000 and my friend's family has lived there for over 600 years. I can't imagine that!

I will also be teaching at the European Patchwork Meeting in Ste. Marie aux Mines which is in Alsace, France, the more northern part of the country. It is very beautiful there too, and the architecture is very different from the Haute Savoie region. It should be a great trip as usual except that my husband won't be coming this time.

2010-07-25T12:52:00.003-04:00

My new pattern is Sunflowers created from a photo I took in France a few years ago. They have the most incredible fields of sunflowers. Of course they probably exist in the US too but I haven't seen them. Speaking of France the Tour is finished today. I have to watch it everyday! What incredible endurance those guys have! I can't even ride my bike up a tiny hill without getting off it and pushing it up. I am very excited to be going back to France in a few weeks in September, a beautiful time to be there. I will be teaching one class at the European Patchwork Meeting in Alsace again too. That is always interesting. The festival takes place in several villages that are close to each other. They have classes in each one and then a vendors tent in one also. They have a few different quilt shows and competitions going on at the same time. It's very fun! I will also be having lunch with other members of the SAQA group that are going to get together there. It will be nice to meet those that I have only read about on the internet.

I am also very lucky to have several of my pieces in shows across the country right now. Here is a list if you are in these areas and can go to see them.

Brigham City Museum, Brigham City, Utah: Ramparts of Yvoire, Eau Potable, Foxgloves

Fabric Fair, Bay City, Michigan: Sunset Over Lac Leman

Charlevoix Circle of Arts, Charlevoix, Michigan: Michigan Color, Bearded Iris

Art Quilts at the Whistler, Lowell, Massachusetts: The Garden Parasol

Lowell Quilt Festival, Lowell, MA: Afternoon Delight

International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX: Port of Cassis

500 Art Quilts Exhibit, IQF, Houston, TX: A City Walk in Spring

It is a great honor to have all of these pieces in these great shows! Now I have to get busy and get my next piece finished so I can enter it in them too. Summer is usually a slow time, not teaching much, so I think I can get some work done. It seems to be very busy now though. We had a garden walk at our house this week with a possible thousand people that might have come through. Fortunately for our neighbors I don't think that many actually came. They sold over a thousand tickets though. This is a picture of our beautiful yard which is the nicest this year that it ever has been. My husband worked hard with me to get it looking this good. We have a lot of hostas and impatiens that are great for our particular yard. Check out my website to see more of my patterns at http://www.lenorecrawford.com and to get your email version.

New Piece for Tall Ships Festival

2010-06-16T10:52:00.004-04:00

My newest piece is finished and ready for the Tall Ships Festival in Bay City, Michigan, during the month of July. It is called Sunset over Lac Leman and is 36" X 36" as required by the competition rules. I painted the sky with Setacolor Pebeo fabric paints and fused it on the muslin background with Misty Fuse. The boat is one piece of light blue fabric with the detail of the boat painted on with the fabric paints. Rocks are pieces of textural fabrics. I top-stitched the water with a variegated thread which gives it a rippled sort of look. It was a fun piece to make! Information on the Tall Ships Festival can be found at http://www.tallshipcelebration.com/. It is July 15-18. My piece will be shown at Fabric Fair in Bay City on Fifth Street which is also a great fabric store and Bernina dealer! So check it out if you are in town during the month of July!

E-Patterns!

2010-05-17T14:34:00.004-04:00

I had a brainstorm the other day and thought how convenient it would be to start emailing patterns to people instead of mailing by USPS. It would save shipping costs, printing costs, time, and much more. So I set up my patterns page to receive them by either regular mail or email. So far the emailing has been going well. Customers say they have no problem receiving them and printing them out, then taping them together. They can be made larger this way too. They receive by email: the instructions, Helpful Hints page, at least four parts of the pattern, a photo of the finished design which can be seen much better on the large screen of their computer, and extra sections if the pattern has a lot of detail. So we will see how it goes. It's especially great for customers overseas in Europe or Asia or Australia! No mailing fees! Just check it out by going to my website on the patterns page at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/patterns_by_lenore_crawford.html. This is one of my newest patterns called One Poppy. It's a simpler pattern than some of the others. The email patterns are only $9.00.

Next I want to let everyone know about a website that has an art show where several SAQA members including me were accepted. It is found at http://www.infinityartgallery.com/AQ10/.
A couple of my pieces were accepted into the only exhibit. The winners also created incredibly beautiful art quilts.

Awards at the Bay City Quilt Show in Michigan

2010-04-27T19:30:00.003-04:00

Last weekend we had the local Bay Heritage Quilt Show. Many wonderful quilts were shown by great quilters! A lot of traditional pieces and some more artistic like mine. I was very lucky and privileged to receive Best of Show, Small Piece, Best Use of Color and Best Machine Applique, Individual, for my latest piece called Afternoon Delight. It is a design I created from photos taken in the south of France on a small island in the Mediterranean Sea called Porquerolles. The building in the picture was an ugly sort of peachy color with some gray shutters. I didn't think about the fact when trying to decide on my next project that I could actually change the color of the building and the shutters. So of course I had to choose an orange batik. The shutters were from a McKenna Ryan fabric with great texture, a light blue viney kind of fabric. I liked the way they looked when I was designing the piece.

The beige ground is a textural batik that I thought would be interesting to top-stitch using a sort of dark variegated thread in stone pattern. The bikes were fabric first and fabric painted to get the detail. I left out lots of detail in the design such as extra pedals and a flower pot that was behind the bikes. It was a fun piece to do. The fabric paint is what gives the design depth.

I have been working on getting my Bernina 820 functional for me. At the Viking store in Ann Arbor Kris told me I might try using thread that has long staples, something I didn't know anything about before he mentioned this. He explained that since the machine was a larger more commercial size the fibers that make up the thread need to be longer or they might break during usage. So this sounded logical. My mom had some Mettler thread, and also some Isocord, YLi, and others I don't remember so I tried them. So far the machine has been sewing well. I got the tension set using mono-filament in my bobbin so the top thread doesn't show up on the bottom of the quilt. So far, so good. We will see how it sews on my next design after I fabric paint it. That seemed to be a bit of an issue for the machine. But I will keep on trying whatever I need to make it work. It's only been about 10 months now. We'll give it a couple more. It's other features are so great!

If anyone does fabric painting and top-stitching and can let me know what kind of machine they are using, I would love to hear from you about it! Thanks.

Best Pictorial Quilt at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival

2010-02-25T09:39:00.004-05:00

This weekend at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in New Hope, PA, you can see my wallhanging called A City Walk in Spring I created from a photo I took in Annecy, France. It was fun to enhance the buildings using strong colored batiks with texture definitely enhancing the real thing. I also use fabric paints to add detail to the design like the little light fixtures. I painted them on muslin and then fused them on afterward. This piece was done with my fusing technique I have developed over the past few years. Check out more of my work at my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/.

New Version of an Old Pattern

2010-02-23T14:36:00.004-05:00

The Yellow Cone Flower pattern came out nice in yellow on black background, but I wanted to do it in magentas as some of them actually are in real life. So last week I finally got around to creating one. Here is a picture of my result. I love the color how it almost glows in the magentas. The background color helps to make them pop out too. I haven't top-stitched it yet though. This is also what it looks like before fabric painting it for detail. I will post that picture when I am finished. This version of the pattern was inspired by my mother's version of my pattern. Hers is very similar. I decided to offer this version as a separate pattern called "Coneflower" which will soon be available on my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/ on the Patterns page.

I am still working on my sewing machine dilemma with the Bernina 820. For some reason it doesn't want to sew free-motion still without breaking the top thread constantly. This is very annoying to say the least! This has been going on since last July when I got the machine. It went back to Bernina and they found a couple of things to fix on it (it was brand new at the time) and it started to sew okay. Then after an hour or so it started breaking the thread again! We'll see what happens when I spend more time with it. I just got it back a couple of weeks ago from getting "fixed". Thank God I still have my old Bernina 180 Artista. I did have to put a new engine in it. It was about 10 years old. Doesn't seem long enough a life for a motor in a machine to me. Anyway...I'm not a very good blogger. Not frequent enough. I will be better. I promise!

Woe to Woes!

2009-09-03T09:48:00.003-04:00

I just realized I had two posts about woes. I want to post a positive blog to counter the negative ones. I will be at the Michigan Quilt Network next week in Lansing, Michigan. It should be a very fun time with my two classes. My mom is going with me since she also enjoys these quilt shows. So much shopping, so little time! I will be teaching a class using the 2" squares again and hopefully soon to be the last. The other class is the fusing/fabric painting using my patterns. Then it's off to France to visit my friends in Yvoire outside of Geneva, Switzerland. This is a wallhanging I did a couple of years ago of Yvoire on Lake Geneva or Lac Leman. When I get back, it's on to Toronto to teach a couple more classes at the Creativ Festival. So it's going to be a busy time. Good to be busy! I will take more pictures in France for more artwork. I really love fusing/fabric painting and create my art for its beauty and not for the hidden meaning. I will work on my little mini-blends while I'm there since that technique is very portable and very fun too!

Sewing Machine Woes!

2009-09-03T09:13:00.003-04:00

Have any of you out there had sewing machine troubles? I guess if you sew at all, then you have! I have had a Bernina Artista 180 for at least 10 years. I was then in Houston last year teaching and of course visited the Bernina booth where I talked to one of the reps there. I also took the mini training on the 830 they were having. Of course I fell in love with it! What an expensive machine though. So I decided I would buy the 820 when it came out because it was less expensive and didn't have the embroidery unit which I never use anyway. I also already had a high end Pfaff which was not very cooperative on the free-motion using different threads. So I sold that on Ebay for what I wanted and decided to go through with the sale of the 820. S0oooooooo now I have that at my house. I decided to give my 180 to my daughter and just keep the 820 since it should do everything I could ever want a machine to do! Well, unfortunately I am not having that good of luck with it. It breaks the thread while free-motion sewing. I always use mono-filament in the bobbin to do free-motion sewing in my 180 and it works beautifully and always has! So now the 820 is in the shop to see if they can make it cooperate with mono-filament in the bobbin. So far, no luck. I am happy I still have my 180 to go back to. This is the piece I tried and tried to get my 820 to work on free-motion. The back looks pretty bad. The top doesn't look very good either. I used white thread in the bobbin and it pulled toward the top where I changed directions. I consider myself an expert free-motion sewer. I have improved dramatically and have won the Best Wall Quilt prize from American Quilters' Society Nashville Show in 2007 for a piece with tons of free-motion sewing. So anyway we'll see what Bernina does about this machine. I love the 820 because it has a huge space under the head like a commercial machine. I don't want to go to a free-arm because I don't have the space for it. So let me know if you have any suggestions or comments on this topic!

Creating Mini-Blends

2009-08-13T18:46:00.006-04:00

My new thing is what I call mini-blends. I learned about this technique from Ann Loveless who calls them confettis. Hers are beautiful and mine are a little different than hers. She teaches and I teach. This is a picture of my studio while I'm making these little pieces. Such a big mess for such small projects! I have been using a lot of my 2" squares I have from doing fabric blending with them for many years giving me lots of variety. They are fun, and it doesn't take too long to create one. I have had lots of experience blending fabrics over the years. I cut up one of the 2" squares into at least 16 small pieces - mini-squares. Then fuse them to a fabric backing and add the fabric painted birch trees. Each piece is 5" X 7". Once they are designed I glue them to an 8" X 10" mat board and put some in frames and others in sleeves to sell. Something fun to do with all those scraps!

This is my Provence Country design without any birch trees. It's fun to do some without them too. Check out more of them at my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/. I have added this as a class but haven't had any of them yet. A few of them could be created in one class!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I always think that I can't have much of interest to say. I have been busy and went to Paris in the spring for nearly two weeks. Only five days in Paris, but also went to northern France and to Giverny, the home of Monet! How beautiful his garden was. But I did a really stupid thing. I forgot to take my charged spare battery for my camera, and so of course the one in it died. No back up battery at Monet's garden. Inexcusable! I bought two disposable cameras. The pictures were tolerable, not great. They will have to do until I can go back there and take more pictures! Here is a picture of the garden. I did figure out how to trick my camera to think it still had a little battery juice left. If you take it out, and then put it back into the camer, it will take one or two pictures. I think I got about eight decent pictures this way. The home page of my website has a piece I created on it from one of my photos. More to come thought.

Computer Woes and New Art

2009-03-29T11:49:00.004-04:00

This has been a difficult two weeks for me. My computer hard drive croaked so badly that I can't get anything off of it. Starting over is very difficult after so many years. I had backed up my files about 11 months ago. So unfortunately everything I have done in the past since then was lost! I had a lot of photos for work I was going to do. Pieces I finished and sold are gone. Business contacts and personal contact information is lost. It's a very hard lesson to learn. Then last weekend my website went down along with my email. So whatever I had gained back in email and contacts is rendered useless for now. Sometimes life gets frustrating! Amazing how dependent are on computers these days. And I have become addicted to my email. So I started a new personal email through google. I'm hoping they will be around for a while. It's lenorehcrawford@gmail.com for anyone who is interested. So enough of the old news. On to the new.

The photo of my piece, Tuscan Country, was created a couple of weeks ago for the Cleary University in Ann Arbor for their fund raiser. It was a fun piece to do after having so many computer problems. I needed to relax and create. I am also excited to mention that one of my patterns, Hybrid Lily, is in the current Keepsake Quilting catalog. They are also going to offer my patter, Red Poppies.
I just want to remind people to back-up your work often! It's a tragedy when you don't. Of course there are greater tragedies in life, we all know. But why add more to them if you can avoid it? Please pass my email address to anyone who might be interested. I will keep working on the people to get my website going! Happy Fusing!

Workshops/Lectures

2009-02-03T10:34:00.002-05:00

Last night I talked to a great group of ladies in Interlochen, Michigan. Nothing like a group of 77 women just wanting to hear you spout about your own work! Every time I talk to a new group I learn something from them. It's very refreshing, and now I don't even get nervous when I have to do it. Okay, maybe a little. I will be giving a three hour mini-workshop this weekend, Sunday afternoon, in Ann Arbor at the Viking Store which is a wonderful fabric shop. I'm sort of like a kid in a candy shop. Hope you can come if you are in the area. Just call (734) 761-3094 and sign up. I will also be giving a lecture in Saginaw on February 18 at 7:00 pm at the Piecemakers Quilt Guild. If you are interested in that one, call Lori Kruska at 989-792-3685. My year is very full for which I am very grateful with workshops and lectures. Next year is starting to fill up too. For more information on my workshops and schedule go to my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/. Here is a picture of my newest pattern. To order it you can go to my website and pay through Paypal which I managed to set up for purchasing patterns. That's another whole Blog subject. Thanks for your interest in my work.

Dyeing Fabrics with Quilt University

2009-01-22T09:46:00.003-05:00

The last two weeks I have been dyeing fabrics with an online class at Quilt University. What fun! I love the way the orange turned out! Of course I love orange! I'm hoping to make lots of fabrics I can use in my art quilts. The right textural prints are difficult to find. These are like batiks. I bought some Kona PFD (prepared for dyeing) cottons from Dharma Trading Co. and MX reactive dye powders from Pro Chemical. The rest was easy. It's very simple to do if you have the right formulas. The class is taught by Marjie Walker. She is a great teacher, and the class discussion is very helpful. I would highly recommend it. These fabrics will definitely end up in my pieces. I'm also currently working on a new pattern which will be finished in the next couple of days after which I will post a picture of it for everyone to see. I'm very excited about it too. More to come...

Exciting News!

2009-01-14T20:47:00.004-05:00

I'm very excited and thankful to the judges to announce that I have won First Place Art, Pictorial at Road to California for my piece called On Winter's Coming. It was created from a very old photo of my father's farm he took about 40 years ago. He wrote a poem even longer ago than that called On Winter's Coming. So I put the two together and created this art quilt. This piece is completely fused. After I finished the piece I realized it would have been easier to design if I have put all the diamonds in the background. Instead I pieced in all the pieces of the diamonds around the the trees. I also decided to use Sliver for the free-motion top-stitching to make it look like sparkling snow as it is in the winter on very cold days which we are having right now! It's always great to win prizes for our pieces. I am planning to give it to my son who's great grandfather actually built this farm many years ago. He doesn't know about it yet though so no one tell him!

New Work

2009-01-08T08:55:00.009-05:00

As the times go my workshop in Granbury was canceled due to lack of enrollment. I'm very disappointed about this turn of events. I was looking forward to my first multi-day class in fusing/fabric painting. Now I am changing my work focus to get ready for future lectures and workshops. My solo show in June will be needing some smaller pieces, and I want to create at least two new patterns for my line by April when I will be going to Toronoto to the Creativ Festival. Since I speak French fluently, hopefully this will also appeal to new students wanting to take classes in Canada. We have a week of snow coming so I will be spending a lot of time in my studio. Here is a picture of our house after a snowfall. I love this old house. We have spent many years rennovating the interior to our preference. It's very ecclectic and colorful inside. My studio is in the rennovated attic. It's very nice, cozy, and close. When I can't sleep, I can walk up the stairs and work on my art. Here's a picture of my studio. It is very functional and organized. My design wall is about 6' wide by 7' tall. Lots of room for designing my work.

I will be continuing my work on Port of Cassis while making some smaller designs in the meantime. Work is progressing slowly on this piece since it has some large areas that take a lot of time and which are very repetitive detail oriented. My design wall does have a smaller adjacent panel to the left where I can make smaller pieces at the same time. The design walls are made from framed peg board with feet. I then covered them with cotton batting stapled to the peg board. This way I can stand back and look at my design as I am creating it. My studio is around 800 sq. ft. On the wall I have taped pictures to inspire me. I have one skylight at this end and none at the other end where our television is. Sometimes it's nice to have the mindlessness of television going on while top-stitching a very large piece. Time to get back to work!

Happy New Year!

2008-12-29T14:48:00.004-05:00

Soon we will begin another year! I am looking forward to this coming year since I will be teaching my new classes on fusing/fabric painting at many venues around the country meeting new people and introducing them to my fabric art techniques. The wind is howling wildly here again. Crazy weather. Makes me happy to be indoors creating more fabric art quilts. I am still working on my newest design which will probably take me a few more months to finish. It is being created from a photo I took when my husband and I went to the south of France in October while on vacation there. It is the small port of Cassis in the evening. I thought it would be fun and different to do one with the evening light which makes the lights glow. Here is a picture of it so far. Christmas preparation set me back in my progress. I was hoping to finish it to enter to the Paducah show in April, but the deadline is January 5. It will definitely be ready for next year's deadline. I will be going to Granbury outside of Dallas on January 11 for a multi-day workshop there at the Iron Horse Inn bed and breakfast. Looking forward to that! Hopefully we will have a full class because we are going to have an exciting time of creating an individual project from each student's own photographs. They will definitely learn a new technique in this class! Have a great New Year's Eve and drive safely!

My First Blog Posting

2008-12-10T08:39:00.000-05:00

To let followers know what my art is like here is a picture of one of my latest pieces. I use any kind of fabric I find to create my fabric art mostly from photos that I have taken. I will keep you updated of my newest art and latest creative adventures. In 2009 I will be teaching all over the country beginning in January at the Iron Horse Inn in Granbury, Texas, outside of Dallas. This will be my first multi-day workshop using this new fusing/fabric painting technique as I have mostly been teaching my 2" square impressionisit fabric blending style for the past 10 years. Time to move on to bigger and better things. I have also created several patterns now available which can be seen on my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/.