"Generosity" by Judy Momenzadeh

Wow, was I in for a surprise. I entered three pieces in the show, one large that I hoped to win something for, and two small works that I really liked also. I won an Honorable Mention ribbon for one of the small ones, "Generosity" that I made a year or so ago. It's really interesting trying to outguess the judges; you just never know what they will like. I tied with another artist. They gave two Honorables and no third. I felt really pleased that I won in a fairly traditional show and won for a relatively small piece. The other small piece I enetered was "Orange Butterfly" which is farther down in the blog. "Generosity" measures about 12"wx18"h, can't remember exactly. It was a good show, Catherine Waltz won Best of Show for "In The Garden" which was spectacular. I'm sorry, I didn't take a photo but I did want to mention her name. They have not updated the show site with current photos. Congratulations to all the winners and to all who entered!

I used oil pastels to shade in the areas of the hibiscus that aren't in the photo itself. This is an inkjet print, 8x10", on cotton.  I stamped the oriental seals with black ink and free motion quilted.

Coming Soon: Mo & Mike

We're excited, very excited to announce we will be offering quilt patterns that include a pre-printed photo on fabric.  We will be offering printing services and will print your photo on fabric.  We will also have stock photos to choose from.  You can get a sneak peak on Flickr: of a few of our photos in our catalog
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mo_and_mike_photos

We will offer photos for artists to use in their work.  There will be textures and artistic backgrounds, all of which we can print for you.

The Mo & MIke web site will be up and running in June.

Winter Garden

This is a small piece I just finished. I've been working on extending the images in my photos into the backgrounds. I hit the jackpot with the light fabric from my stash. It was a perfect match to the beige leaf in the photo. Sometimes things just go right; this piece seemed to design itself. Almost anyway. I really enjoyed the quilting. I also scanned a page from an old book,and layered it onto a photo of some rusted fabric that I also scanned using Elements. It is the element bottom center with the vertical black lines. It 

measures about 22"x18".

.

My First Thread Painting

I wanted to share this piece with you all because I had so much fun doing it and I was very pleased with the result. Liz Kettle posted a tutorial on the Havel's Sewing website that made it look so easy-and it was! I used a photo of mine of the daisy, printed in the size I wanted in B+W and then traced as she suggested. I had no problems with the sewing although it does take a while. I kept taking it out thinking it was done and then saw spaces that I had missed. I created the background out of tissue paper, heavier decorative paper, and parts of a Chinese newspaper from San Francisco. Then I painted it, stenciled and fused it to the background fabric. I used nylon invisible thread to stitch it down because I didn't want the petals to be free. I free motion quilted the background and then did a little hand embroidery in spots. The binding is some hand dyed fabric I had on hand. Here is the link to the tutorial that Liz posted--- 
http://blog.havelssewing.com/

Thanks Liz for sharing; I know I will be doing more of this.

Judy's Won a Ribbon

Congratulations, Judy!!  Judy has won a ribbon at the Broward Quilt Expo, but she won't know which of her quilts won until the winners ceremony Mar. 17.

I think her quilt shown below won.  I dropped it off for the show, and a few of the workers went crazy when they saw her quilt.  "Oooooh, the curves are gorgeous!"  "I love the photo!!!!"  "OMG, it's gorgeous!"

Go, Judy!

A Couple of My Newer Pieces

 

Here is the quilt I made after taking a class Maya Schonenberger taught last year in Miami.  Everything is glued and then stitched.  I didn't like the way the white muslin back looked when I was finished, so I mounted it on a piece of black fabric covered Timtex.  I took the photo before I mounted this piece. 

I painted Pansy on Egyptian cotton.  I took wool roving in the different pansy colors and spread it out and layered colors.  I topped it with tulle.  I thread painted shading and pansy detail.  The leaves background remained painted with quilting to emphsize the leaves.  This quilt is faced.

Reflection

Reflection was my entry in the digital category in the AQU Journey Show.  It won 2nd place.  Mind you, there were only four entries.  I took a photo at the NC Arboretum in Asheville last October.  The leaves were magnificent shades of yellow, gold, and red.  I turned my photo into a black and white and transferred it using an orange based cleaner onto cotton fabric in three different sizes.  I used water soluble colored pencils to color the three transfers.  The trees are pretty heavily thread painted in shades of brown thread.  The judge complained about the fabric I chose for the background.  Most everyone agrees it was a poor choice.  That's what happens when you don't plan or give any thought to a project.  It turned out to be a happy accident.

Whoa

This year has gotten off to a very creative start. This quilt, "Whoa," won 1st place at the Ft. Myers AQU Journey Show (art quilts only) in Jan. in the Florida Original category.

My inspiration was a photo I took of my neighbor's brilliant potted bromeliad.

I used Maya Schonenberger's glued background technique. I painted it to make lighter and darker areas. I used silk and polyester fabrics to create the leaves. They were fused to buckrum. I painted them and stitched them to give them a lot of detail. The leaves were then glued to felt and glued to the background. I stitched each leaf to the background. This gave the bromeliad a lot of dimension. I did some quilting on the background. I used black flannel as batting only to provide a third layer to meet some show requirements. The back is black Egyptian cotton, which is folded back and stitched to look like facing. The frayed edges of the background and batting give the quilt more interest. The edges are not straight.

I entered "Whoa" in the Broward Quilt Expo at the War Memorial Auditorium in downtown Ft. Lauderdale's Holiday Park Mar. 18-20.