Keep the Birds in the Air

"Keep Birds in the Air"  12" x 8.5"   Machine pieced, and fusible applique,  Hand embroidery,  pulled thread 'feather', machine quilted.       

Completed on 2/23/2020 for Project Quilting challenge "Birds in the Air"


The lady's hat industry in the late 1800's caused or nearly caused the extinction of multiple beautiful bird species.  In 1896,  the near extinction of the Snowy Egret caused some high society women to petition for legislation to stop the killing.  This lead to the Migratory Bird Act.

more information at this article at Smithsonian Magazine:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-two-women-ended-the-deadly-feather-trade-23187277/


Now about this project:

The challenge requirement was to use this traditional quilt block: 

There are many ways to set this and use it, and of course, I wanted to find a political message for my project.  I thought about birds, and had recently heard a podcast about the black market trade for particular bird feathers - in this case they are being used for fishing lures, but the real decimation of our bird populations happened because of ladies hats. 

I started with some images of lady's hats like these:

I traced off a hat shape, then added the quilt block behind.    Notice that the "Birds in the Air" blocks change color when forming the hat (brown and tan)  than when they are in the background (blue and white) 

Next I pieced the larger triangles of the block and created a background that looked like this - again, notice placement of brown/tan  vs blue/white: 

I knew I didn't have the patience or the precise sewing skills to piece all the tiny triangles, and I've been enjoying using Lite Steam-a-Seam 2,  so I started laying in all the small triangles and then the contours of hat like this: 

Once that was all done, the hat was not really visible, so I embroidered an outline and then started embroidering the feathers.  After 3 days.  the resulting feather was SO unsatisfying that I decided to take it out.  But here is it (as promised) for posterity: 

                             

Going, going.... 

Gone! 

What I really wanted was a large white feather,  so I appliqued then machine quilted this feather, and it was almost right: 

On Sunday morning, drinking my coffee before binding the quilt, I saw an online tutorial for making fabric feathers, and I was thinking, 'man!  my sister would love those'.   Then I headed to my sewing machine to wrap up the quilt - because the post was due in an hour.  But those feathers!!   

I tried doing it, but didn't have the right fabric.  I resigned myself to just binding this and finishing and then it HAPPENED. 

The right fabric poked its head out of the piles I have sitting on the side of my cutting table  (my VERY  neat, VERY  organized, VERY ………  oh who am I kidding .... the mess I have all over my sewing space )    So I did some quick fabric feathers,  sewed them down, and voila!   FEATHERS! 

We are abusing our natural environment. We rape the land, the sea, the animals for our venal purposes and resist out of comfort, misguided sense of superiority, stubbornness, inertia any attempts to curb our consumption.   The land suffers.  The sea suffers.  Animals suffer - some all the way into extinction,  some to brink.   People suffer too.  We formed democracies to pull us out of the cruelty that is monarchy and yet are failing to truly consider our neighbors' pain in our life. 

Its just a hat.  Put something else on your head that doesn't cause such pain. 

Those feathers belong on the birds in the air.  Shoot them with a camera. 

Plastic bag bans are not going to kill us.  Start carrying a reusable bag.  Its LITERALLY the least we can do.  

Lets do more. 

Peace, 

Paula 

Heartless

"Heartless" - manipulated fabric, hand embroidery, machine quilted.  8"x8" .  Completed on February 9, 2020  for Project Quilting "Put a Heart on It" challenge. 

I first imagined this as a whole body, with the heart ripped out, and then every drawing just cropped closer and closer to this chest piece.  

I drew a heart on this heavy cotton fabric, cut it out and basted in 4 layers of red fabric behind it.    After clipping the red fabric, I pulled back one layer slice at a time, securing it with embroidery floss.  I wanted to give it a look like the heart was ripped out (or just exploded out.) 

I machine quilted some of the cruel statements by this president:  "knock the crap out of him", "blood coming from her everywhere", "close the border",  "people are stupid",  "I like people who weren't captured".  We won't soon forget these statements because of all the art being made to capture it and preserve it for the future. 

I created a shirt collar and then this out of proportion long red tie which I tacked in place. 

The cruelty is the point with the monster in the White House, and frankly all those who stand by and say nothing.  The GOP is complicit in this evil and at this point all we can do is vote them ALL out in November.  I'm so sorry for all who will be harmed in the intervening months.  

I am an unapologetic liberal Democrat.  

Peace, 
Paula 

Blue Wave

"Blue Wave" - paper pieced, machine free motion quilted. 12"x12".  Completed on Jan 26 2020, for Project Quilting season 11 - Team Colors challenge 

My team is DEMOCRATS. 

I drafted my own wave pattern because I didn't want to use the traditional wave created with a snails trail  like this: 

They do look like waves, but I wanted a gentler angle (not 45 degree)   so I drafted something like this:   This is just my first sketch.  I don't have the final version because I used it as my foundation for paper piecing:  

After piecing, I machine quilted all over with the word 'vote'

I'm team Democrat in the upcoming elections - I hope there is a blue wave, but I also would be fine with squeaking by with a small majority.  Just win.  Watching the GOP obstruct a fair trial in the impeachment hearings, I want them all out.  

VOTE! 

peace
Paula

2020

17"x9" faced quilt,  Paper-pieced numbers exploring the concept of color transparency.  Quilted in 6 colors.   Completed for Project Quilting Season 11, challenge 1.


This small quilt was an exploration of transparency,  both in overlapping colors and dark/light transparency.  So the green '2' overlapping the yellow '0' turns light green  (color transparency)  and the blue '0' turns darker blue when it is on the black background.  However there is no actual overlapping going on.  This is all done with color and is paper pieced. 

I started with number patterns from Hunters Design Studio 'Quilt Talk' book, and traced then colored in how these might overlap.

Next I pulled the different shades of color fabric.  I didn't have exactly what I needed, so I made do with this:  










Then I had to transfer the lines to the actual pattern and I colored in the pattern so I would get the colors right.  This was more complicated that it sounds because paper pieced patterns are backwards. 

Finally I started quilting this (with an hour to go for the Project Quilting deadline!)  Why I decided that that needed 6 different colors of quilting is something I'm going to blame on Teri Lucas and her announcement of her new color quilting book coming out this year.   (image before quilting - also added black and white quilting in those background areas) 

I would do this again but make it much bigger and get the right dark red for the lower left corner (that one doesn't stand out from the black - oh VALUE my nemesis) 

Happy New Year everyone! 
Peace, 
Paula 

Liar Liar

 "Liar Liar",  Large wool pants, hand embroidered, extra long red tie, custom measuring tape to read the chart data.  Created for CUNY Graduate Center Data Visualization class, December 2019. 

The current occupant of the White House lies.  All. The. Time.  This is so far beyond 'politics as usual.'  When he was inaugurated in January 2017, the Washington Post started tracking his lies in their Fact Checker Database and as of October 2019 he has lied over 13,000 times.  In comparison Obama factually lied 18 times in 8 years.   I'm not talking about exaggerations.  These are factual lies.  Trump lies more in a single day than Obama lied in 8 years.  Here is the link, read for yourself: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/

I'm in a class this semester titled Fundamentals of Data Visualization ( for a Master's degree)  and most of the work is done using a tool called Tableau.  But I'm a textile artist, so I have to do it this way. 

First I collected the data off the 
Washington Post site.  Although I asked for a downloadable file, I was not able to get that, so I manually recorded monthly data (32 months) in the various categories recorded at WaPo. 

Next I entered this data into Excel, then combined the categories into 4 - because I learned in my class that less is more.  



I worked with the data in Tableau, creating a stacked bar chart and I wanted it to look like flames.  Although I knew I needed Yellow, Orange and Red colors, I had to refer to a piece of flame clip art to get the colors right: 

Then I had to create a scale to transfer the stacked bar chart into centimeters of embroidery stitches.   I tooked the highest and the lowest data lines (October 2018 and February 2017) to make sure they would fit on the pants and look reasonable.   My scale is 15 lies per centimeter.  I used formulas in Excel to create my pattern: 

I found these pants at a local Salvation Army Thrift Shop, looking for pin-striped men's suit pants in as large a size as possible.  The pin stripes helped keep my data lined up and also gave it that old-timey businessman look.  I started embroidering on a Saturday evening, and this project was due in class 12 days later.  

Floss colors to get this to look like flames:

Marking the data lines using tailor's chalk and centimeters on a ruler:   

Chain Stitching in the 4 colors.  The wavy lines are random as I wanted to keep on the right side of the pin stripe at the top and bottom of the line.    

Adding the month abbreviations to the hem.  (oops- what happened to MAR?)  There was lots of unstitching going on. 

Here is the legend, where you can see how all the categories from WaPo are grouped and translated into the 4 colors I stitched.    (Note:  My data goes from Feb 2017 to October 2019 - the Washington Post continues to update this database, so it is possible there are more categories now.) 

 I stitched the title of the piece on the waist band, and this hangs using 2 hangers, drawing attention to the waist size.   I also made the extra long red tie, which if I get a chance to hang this again and photograph it, should be sort of waving off to one side, rather than hanging down between the pant legs   (OR, if I can make that tie again i would make it twice as long, so it puddles on the floor) 

This tie is in response to class feedback where one classmate wasn't sure who 'he' is.  So following the lead of so many editorial cartoonists, I use the super long red tie as shorthand to indicate that this is Trump, like this: 

In Tableau, the graphing software, outlier data can be annotated with a call out text box.  Since so many people wanted to know what happened in October 2018 to generate so many lies, I created this 'price tag' shaped text box, that connects via a string and is stored in the pocket. 

"Midterm Elections - 1189 lies" 

That's nearly 40 factual lies each day in the month of October, 2018.

No wonder we are fatigued.

The final element created with this piece is the lies measuring tape.  I considered including a regular tape measure with the pants, but my scale is 15 lies per centimenter, which is hard for the audience to interact with.  (How many lies is 13 centimeters??)   

So instead I created a scale in excel, which I carefully sized so that the 30 lie tickmark would be at the 2cm mark on a ruler. 

I printed this in sections using inkjet printer fabric, then constructed a 1500 lies long tape measure: 

Visitors to the piece are encouraged to measure any line they wish to discover how many lies in that category he made in that month. 

Also, in proper data viz scholarship fashion, the tape measure includes my data source, the Washington Post web site. 

We are all tired of the lies and the shame this liar has brought to our institutions and reputation around the world.  At the time of this posting the Democrats are impeaching this President, however its clear the GOP in the Senate will acquit him.  Shameful.   We will have to vote him out in November 2020.  Vote them all out.  All those senators who normalized this level of dishonesty.  I can remember disagreeing about policy with voters who supported the other side of the aisle.  But I can't remember a time that felt like this - where one side lies so blatantly, and its casually accepted.     

Liar Liar Pants on Fire ! 

We won't forget. 

  

25 Million Stitches

The 25 Million Stitches Project is collecting fabric panels with stitches to represent 25 million refugees.  From the project website:  

"The world is in flight. 25 million people across the globe have been forced to flee their homelands as a consequence of genocide, war, poverty, natural disasters, targeted violence, and other grave threats. They leave behind everything they’ve known, possessed, and been a part of in order to live; they face immense struggles, misfortunes, and perils on their journey; and, though it all, survival, much less successful resettlement, remains but the slimmest hope."

I chose to stitch the phrase 'Are We There Yet?" to highlight my privilege.  It is so different travelling with children who's only complaint is 'getting there', compared to these families who are escaping violence and may not know where 'there' is.  

I started this project without knowing where 'there' is either. 

The letters are hand sketched, and I started by outlining the letters, then making these equidistant lines 'behind' the letters.  But it all disappeared into the background. 

Next I started filling in the letters with these concentric curved shapes in blue/green embroidery floss. 

And finally added more background stripes in red/orange/yellow colors.  

I don't have any idea how many stitches are in my panel, and I don't know how the project estimates the stitches. 

But I do know that its a lot. And I do know that there are too many refugees on earth.  Anything we can do as a nation to help is the right thing to do.  Our country is not 'full'; we need to find a way to welcome people. 

This project will be on display in the Sacramento, California area starting in June 2020, then hopefully it will travel to other parts of the country.  Perhaps you can see it when it gets to your town. 

Peace, 
Paula