Balzer Designs

Salley Mavor of Wee Folks Studio

Quilters Connection -- my local quilt guild -- recently hosted fiber artist Salley Mavor for a lecture about her work and career.

It was fascinating.  Her felt illustrations are magical.  I snapped a few photos of the samples she brought with her:

Note the hand, in the photo below, for scale:

This next piece was extraordinary.  Photos do not do it justice!

The beautiful details are simply mind boggling!!

Salley has illustrated many children's books, such as Pocketful of Posies:

And written a how-to book, called Felt Wee Folks:

Most recently, she and her husband -- a photographer -- spent more than a year working on a 13-minute stop animation film featuring her felt creations.  Warning: It is political in nature, so if that's not your thing, skip it:

I found Salley's lecture fascinating.  Her work is beautiful and full of imagination.  The details are immaculate and inspiring.  You can read more about her on her blog and follow her on instagram or facebook.

Thanks for stopping by! 

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The guild is hosting a fantastic two-day workshop coming up with fiber artist Susan Lenz. This is some of her work:

I think there are two spots left in the class and non-guild members are welcome to sign up. If you live in the Boston area, you might want to check it out.  The website is a bit confusing because there's no way to directly link to the class.  This link goes to the lecture.  Click on the class description and you can read all about it!

Improv Curves: In Progress

A few weeks ago I attended a one-day quilting retreat with the Cambridge Modern Quilt Guild.  It was just a few days after we moved, so I actually packed my bag for the retreat before we even moved!  And it was a good call because I never would have found all my stuff in time to pack.  That said, I kept it simple.  I pretty much packed a sewing machine, a rotary cutter, some rulers, and a big bag of fabric scraps.

In the days leading up to the retreat, I thought about what I wanted to make with that big bag of scraps and I decided that I would work on a quilt that featured improv curves.  I wanted to put some of my curved sewing skills to the test.  These are the blocks I came home with:

I rearranged them a few times:

And then I made more blocks:

I definitely still have some rearranging that needs to be done.  And I'm debating putting some strips in between some of the blocks and possibly going back into some of the blocks to add more variety.  Going to mull it over for a few days.....

Thanks for stopping by!

From the Studio: My Moveable Walls

In the new house, my studio is in the attic.  It's a wonderful space with one big problem: low angled ceilings.  Beyond the fact that this eliminates the ability to hang shelves for storage (a problem I am currently working through as I unpack), it means that I don't have a painting wall or a place to put a quilt design wall.  I talked to my contractor about it and he built me two huge wooden walls on wheels!

This means that I now that 4 flat walls (2 sides on each of these wooden "boxes") to work with!  Yay!

However.

Isn't there always a however?

Plywood is not ideal for behind a painting wall or a quilt design wall -- because I want to be able to put pins in the wall. So, what's a girl to do? 

Steve and I headed to the home improvement store and bought several sheets of homasote. 

"Homasote is a brand name associated with the product generically known as cellulose based fiber wall board, which is similar in composition to papier-mâché, made from recycled paper that is compressed under high temperature and pressure and held together with an adhesive. It is ¹⁄₂ inch thick and comes in sheets 4 by 8 feet." 

A pregnant woman and a guy with bad knees carrying heavy homasote boards up to the third floor was a comedic/tragic experience, but we did it!  And managed to laugh at ourselves during the experience.

Next hurdle: we needed to cut the homasote.  We tried a couple of different box cutters and finally discovered that a rotary cutter was the way to go!  Yes, the homasote trashed the blade, but it cut like butter.  Here's the homasote mounted on the walls:

You can see that I put some duct tape across the seam between the boards.

Homasote is a little bit like cardboard.  It's absorbent and likely to disintegrate after continued exposure to water.  So, I needed to seal it.  I bought some primer and went to town.

I ended up doing two coats of primer on each wall.  The first layer of primer absorbed into the homasote so quickly that after I painted the first coat on the second wall, the first wall was dry and ready for a second coat.  The second coat took much longer to dry, which made me feel that the first layer had done its job.

I stapled some batting to one of the homasote walls in order to transform it into a quilt design wall.  So now I have a painting wall and a quilt design wall and two plywood walls (the reverse sides) that I will likely paint and use as decorative backdrops.

I am so thrilled with my new set up!  I look forward to many happy years of making things in this space!

Thanks for stopping by!

Improv Quilt Top Progress

You may recall that back in September I shared a photo of a new quilt top in progress.

Well, I've been working on it in fits and spurts.  And I've been using the black and white filter on my phone to make some design choices.  I thought I'd share that progress with you.

The "white shapes" are not dynamic enough in the image above.  So, I made some adjustments:

Better, but I feel like I need more details.  Some "white shapes" are just boring.


I like this, but some of it is really tough sewing.  Maybe I need to simplify some of the overlapping areas?

Feels good!  Some small fixes to balance need to get made and it's time to make it all fit together:

I'm pretty happy with the state of things.  I'm going to marinate on this and if I still feel good about it, I'll quilt it!

Have you tried the black and white trick to help "see" the design a bit better?  It's one of the reasons that Notan is an important artistic building block!

Thanks for stopping by!

#PrintInktober: Days 8 - 15

This is week two of #Printinktober! 

As you know, I've been printing on fabric.  Most of what I've been printing on is fat-quarter sized fabric. I've managed to post a process video every day so far -- even though we are moving yesterday and today.  Yay!  What you'll see is the process video, embedded from instagram (if you get this blog via e-mail you may need to click on the title of the post to view the videos online) and a photo of the finished fabric:

The last two prints were both made using my Balzer Designs Art Foamies!

I am deeply disappointed to tell you that when I washed this fabric, the purple and pink stars turned kind of white-ish.  Sigh.

I'm really enjoying printing on fabric.  It's a much larger surface than most of my paper prints and so my brain is having to think differently about it.  Details seem to get lost and simpler more graphic images seem to work better.  For someone who loooooves fussy tiny details, this is kind of a revelation!  I'm hoping to keep learning more and more about pattern scale as the month goes on!

It's not too late to join in on all the fun!  Remember, it's easy to participate using what you already have on hand:

• Use the hashtag #printinktober when you post.
• Any stamp can be used – foam, wood, silicone, rubber, hand carved, lino, whatever you want!  (And you don't even have to use a stamp.)
• Any ink can be used – screenprinting ink, marker ink, stamping ink, printing ink, etc.
• You can use the official inktober prompts, if you'd like.  Or not.
• Have fun and don’t worry if you miss a day (or more). The point of the challenge is to get those stamps out of storage and into use!!

Thanks for stopping by!