All Squared Away by Jan Girod

When the word "Square" was announced on August 1st I thought of a "town square" or a "game board", but these just didn't excite me enough to provide the motivation to create a piece of work, so......! Procrastination seems to be what has happened with the last several words and this one was no different, at the last minute Tuesday, September 27th this came about.

For the last several years I have been working on water soluble fabrics, allowing me to create small machine embroideries, dimensional work such as the leaves in "Kudzu" or needle felted backgrounds for embroidery. The small trees were done in such a manner, then framed within this small quilted frame. The little quilt was machine quilted in a simple square grid pattern.

SQUARE

The start of this challenge was August 1st, our Nationalday.
Our national flag is a red square with a white cross. So I decided red to be my color.

Square came to my mind, when I was thinking of quilt patterns. Many of them are based on squares. I like traditional quilts as much as I like designing my own ideas.

I machine stitched with white thread squares on a red background. Then I cut 4 different red fabrics into smaller squares, mixed them and machine stitched the piles in the middle of these squares.
With threads, beads and buttons, I embellished this quilt.

Square - Heidi Stucki

Heidi

Yes, In Any Language by Jan Girod

This is not the quilt that I set out to make. How many times has that happened to you? The idea of using the word "Yes" in several languages was part of my thought process for this challenge from the beginning, but not the techniques used or the end result. Once again my daughter had to flat out tell me that I was hung up on the techniques, clearly they were not getting me where I wanted to go and that I needed to forget the plan. Well she was so very right. I actually had to grovel tonight. I thanked her for the "kick in the pants", that I actually love the way this piece turned out and that it is probably better than expected. Actually kissed her cheek in gratitude for her bluntness...which by the way she is very good at.

I am sorry that the colors in the photo's seem so different, I wanted to get these posted and did not wish to take time to set up my photography lighting. The top photo is the accurate photo, but in order for you to see the writing clearly I had to illuminate my design wall with my work lamp.

New Word for August and September 2011

SQUARE
•

a flat shape with four sides of equal length and four angles of 90°

•

any square-shaped object

•

an area of approximately square-shaped land in a city or a town, often including the buildings that surround it

•

a particular space on a board used for playing games

•

the number that is the result of multiplying one number by itself

or have a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/square

Use what you want of the meanings and technique possibilities within the work.
I wish you happy and inspiring hours working on this.

Heidi

YES

And here it is:

The YES, which is as important as the NO.
Yes, I will go on - no, I do not give up.

The fabrics (old linen sheets) are hand-dyed or screen-printed and were waiting to be used - even the YES.
The yarn matches the blue fabric and puts forward the blue screenprint pattern.

 

Screenprint with water solubale waxcrayon

YES

 

 

 

Sneak peek YES

Sneak Peek YES

A littli preview .....
Heidi

"Ain't No Spring Chicken" by Jan Girod, theme "Spring"

This is not what I orginally planned to create, but a nap with the dictionary and I awoke with a whole new plan. After recently cleaning, organizing and having our studio spaces photographed, our studios are currently appearing in the Summer 2011 Studio magazine by Cloth Paper Scissors, I found so many things long forgotten about. This chicken block was left over from a Mary Lou Weidman quilt I made eons ago. She provided just enough attitude to create a great looking "spring chicken".

Her curls were orginally the springs in 3 older ball point pens, they don't work anymore and hubbys' collection is a few less. A trip to the party store provided her legs and feet. Dismantling little notepads left me with the right length white springs for her legs and her feet were part of a hand clapping toy. She has made me smile and giggle ever since she was done.