Sue's Quilted Gardens

Another year gone and a new one has begun.... Looking back, 2009 was not a year that I would want to re-live.... Quilt wise, I didn't accomplish much at all. I couldn't seem to crawl out a super creative funk.... I did have a few short lived bursts of creativity, but only a fraction of past years.

My main goal for 2010 is to spend more time creating my art and quilting. I have realized that I need that creative time for my mental as well as physical health. I plan to get back to keeping up with the Fast Friday Fabric Challenges again, and participate more in other groups on and offline. I will try to not over-think what I am working on, and embrace the diversity of my creations instead of worrying about focusing on a certain direction. I enjoy working with my sunprints, flower photos, rocks and stone walls, and more. I have tried to put it all together into a more cohesive body of work. Maybe if I just let whatever wants to come out at the time happen, I may find that there is a thread that connects things.

While spending the time I did with my grandmother, I scanned some old photos she had. This photo jumped out at me.... I have been taking more and more photos of old houses, barns and other abandoned and deteriorating structures. I tend to wonder what some of these would have looked like when they were occupied and taken care of. I added beautiful flower gardens around the photo of the run down house on the road I live on for "Water Road House", and also used that house as inspiration for "My Dream House".  This photo of my great aunt shows what I have been imagining... The somewhat wild, full garden of blooms around the house and garage.  I also have memories of a great grandmother working in her gardens when I was young. These memories, photos, and my love of gardening seem to be merging into some of my latest works

The wreath workshop has officially been closed for the season.... It will now turn back into a woodworking shop again.

I finished my orders of wreaths and grave blankets and all were gone by this past Monday.

Here is one of the branches of Fraser Fir that are literally a pain to work with.... the cones shatter, leaving behind the spiky centers... If I needed to use these branches for wreaths, I had to cut off the spikes... really adds to the time needed to construct things.

In direct contrast to the spiky, sharp Frazer cone centers, is the softness of Concolor Fir. The Concolor is used mostly in the grave blankets. The needles are a bit long and sparse to make nice full wreaths, but the flexibility of the branches make them perfect for weaving into the blankets. They add a nice soft texture than the Fraser fir. The grave blankets are constructed on a base of wire with appx. 1"x3" openings. the stems of the branches are woven into the wire base until it is covered and the greens hang out the desired size around the edges. The Fraser Fir is the bluer looking variety, along with some Scotch Pine- longer needles.
  This is the finished product- This is the largest blanket I make- appx. 3'x6' in size, with extra decorations in addition to the bow, cones and berries I usually use.
Here is a standard size blanket on the top of a pile of a batch ready to go out. 3'x4' or so is the normal size of most of our blankets.
Here is one of the decorated wreaths for the second large order, ready for pick-up. As you can see, my sneakers catch a lot of pitch from working with the greens. My clothes also get covered in the sticky stuff, too. I usually use one outfit or "uniform" for the entire season, so I only ruin one pair of jeans and one or 2 sweatshirts. Sometimes if enough waterless Goop hand cleaner applied to the clothes will remove much of the pitch. At least one shirt gets pitched each year after wreathmaking is done.
This is one of a few special ordered wreathe that get done each year, This wreath is a bit larger than most, and I added extra ribbon to brighten them up a bit more.
There was quite a bit of cold and windy weather while I was making the wreaths, but the biggest snowfall happened after they were done... Our first 6" snowfall for the year.... Most of it melted the day after it fell, but what didn't melt is now rock hard from very cold temps.

Whew! The past month has really flown!! Zack came home, I left to stay with my grandmother, got home, met my sister for shopping. And then the wreaths began...... First here is a photo I took while with my gram of an old schoolhouse that her mom went to school at. I drove or rode past this building many, many times while growing up, but never really paid much attention to it. It is now pretty much hidden from view by the trees, brush and vines.

I'm not sure where the year has gone, but the smell of evergreen boughs has been strong in the wreath workshop for the past week.
  This is the result of many days of cutting and clamping. We begin by cutting overgrown trees from a tree farm. The branches are piled into the truck and then piled in the workshop. Then my job begins....

I am on my way in minutes to stay with my grandmother.... While my son has been home, he is working on moving my website, and so far things are not working very well.... If you try the link to my regular website from here or anwhere- Andrus Gardens & More- Sue Andrus Art Quilts you may not get it.... right now things are not working.... hopefully it will be fixed soon... It is also making things goofy with my email... I can get some, but right now can't send anything....

Hopefully things will be remedied very soon!! My Artfire shops and blog are fine, so if anyone wishes to contact me, you can do so through either Artfire shop by clicking on the Contact button...

MAybe I'll get another quick post out in a while, but if not... I will be home around the 12th of November...
Links to my Artfire Studios are now on the right sidebar here...

I have been very poor again at keeping up with posting here.... The past weeks have been filled with preparing for and vending at a quilt show, preparing a lecture for another guild, gathering  items to deliver for a sale, and more. I am also preparing to head back to  Fillmore, NY the end of this week to spend a few weeks with my grandmother. My parents Really need a vacation, so I will be staying with her while they are gone. And to add even more excitement.... Our son Zack who has been deployed in Iraq popped in unexpectedly last night on a 2 week leave!!

I did do a little blog post announcing my newest patterns available at my newest Artfire Studio. We now have studio Blogs available there to use, and I will probably use them to promote new additions, and other artists.

I have also been trying to add little bits here and there to my Facebook Fan Page. Follow the link to become one of my fans!

I will probably be MIA from the web a lot while at my gram's.... there is only very slow dial-up service there unless I go to my brother's house. I will be taking all my items listed for sale in my shops along with my shipping supplies so that I can fill any orders that come in while there.... It's really hard to teach Ken how to do that, and my storage units are portable.... Printing mailing labels online makes shipping packages so easy from anywhere....

Here are a couple photos from my gardens a few days ago....   The trees still have leaves, and a lot are still green....

My garden out the front door.... Looked more like January than Mid October.... Thankfully after a day or so it all melted.
  Not exactly lawn mowing weather.... The mowers are parked outside my studio window.... Might be time to put them away.... This has definitely been a strange weather year...  The snow tires get installed this week.

Today I received a very nice hand written note informing me that my photo, "Waterfalls", was chosen for "The Eye of the Quilter" exhibit that will be at International Quilt Festival in Houston later this month! The exhibit will be a group of photos taken by quilters that give an idea of what inspires our quilts.  We sent digital images, and those selected will be printed and framed for the exhibit..... It should be a great selection of photos.... Here are the two photos that were not chosen...

Top is a photo of "Lemon Puff" yellow roses, and the lower one is a view from inside an arbor at Inniswood Gardens, Columbus,OH. The opening of the arbor frames the view of the gardens beyond.

Now that it has been two weeks since our trip to the Morris Arboretum, Philadelphia, PA, I am finally getting some of those photos posted... I took well over 300 photos.... here are just a few highlights.....

A nest in an exhibit high in the trees that lets you see things from a bird's eye view in the treetops. To give an idea of the size of the nest, we could walk in through the side and look up, out the top.... There were many walkways high up in the trees, a really neat experience.
  After we walked out of the treetop exhibit, we wandered  through a formal rose garden complete with a fountain in the middle. This gazebo was on one of the outer corners of that garden. There are many beautiful huge, old trees of all kinds through the arboretum, like the one here.
One of my favorite places.... The Fernery.... This beautiful conservatory greenhouse has been restored to it's original state. It is beautiful from the outside, but inside......
Ferns, ferns, and more ferns..... It was such a beautiful, calming, cool place to be. The photos above just aren't like being there..... There were ferns of all kinds, moss, and other plants tucked into every corner... There were many paths to walk, ponds, waterfalls, fish, and more.... Lots of my most favorite family of ferns- the Maidenhairs.... many different versions were here.
I forget what type of tree this was, but it was another really hige one.... The tree branches hung down all around it, many to the ground... I should have gotten a photo of Ken while he was nearer to the main trunks...

I have had my Artfire studio for quite a while now, and have over 100 art quilts, notecards, journal covers, and more available for sale. The guys that run Artfire are super.... they have really been working hard to come up with new ways for us as sellers to be able to promote our products easier and to as many people as possible.

They have just announced a new promotion geared to increase the customer traffic to the site that will help all of us sellers there. The Holiday Free-For-All!!  For sellers, they are offering the free Basic members an unlimited number of listings.... In the past, a free studio could have only 12 items.... This really changes things up!!  There are no fees for listing items, or fees when items sell... How can you beat that??

There are also Pro accounts available that cost a flat fee of $12 per month.... Why would anyone want to pay for a studio when they can list as many items as they want for free????  There are a lot of great things available for Pro Account studios... They have a Facebook Kiosk that will allow customers to shop right from your Facebook page.... As Pro Members, we have no ads on our sales pages to distract our customers, and our items will randomly be placed on Basic Member pages to give us more exposure. We have accesss to a Global Editor that allows us to make changes to groups or all of our items at one time.  We also have the ability to create coupon codes to help promote our studios.... and there are more.....

If you ever have a problem or question it is very easy to get answers from forums where you oftem have various admin people answering questions themselves- How is that for customer service? In addition, there are many help guides and tutorials to help you to learn to promote your products and optimize your listings for search engines.

You never know what will coming next as far as new things to help us as sellers be successful. For more information directly from the source, pop in and have a look around! Check this out for more information...
If you wish to open a pro account, use AndrusGardens as your referral and that can help me and one other of my friends....

From someone who has been in on a bunch of behind the scenes discussions, the guys running Artfire have really thought things through for the future, and they are very interested in our success as sellers, and also offering buyers a great place to buy handmade Christmas gifts or unique gifts for any occasion... There are many great artists with wonderful handmade items that will make super holiday gifts and decorations.... Come check it out!!

Here is a quick post of the progress, or lack of it on a piece I have been working on since my QSDS class in June. It has spent more time being stared at than anything else, and I have taken more photos of this while working on it than any other piece I have ever done. My camera and laptop ended up being a great design tools during the process of this piece. In case you haven't noticed, I love flowers, and have lots of photos I have taken that I want to work into my quilts after I print them onto fabric.

The piece in question is in the upper left of this photo.... an attempt at getting my work out of the box, or frame, etc.... It was pointed out to me that I tend to most always frame or box in parts of my quilts. This has been a huge challenge, to use mainly my flowers without boxing them in!

I took this home as it was, and put it on my design wall, but something really seemed off.... I loved the colors and the flowers, but it just seemed like a "jumble of stuff"...

I then took a photo of the piece and changed it to black and white in the computer.... It still looked like a jumble to me.... The colors that looked strong to me, fade out when just looking at the values, not colors. The white and pale pink flowers seemed to jump out. The flowers are printed onto cotton fabric that I have backed with Wonder Under. The piece is being arranged on a large piece of backing paper saved from a large piece of Wonder Under that was used earlier for anther project. I keep all of it... you never know when it will come in handy.
Another idea was to add some bits of color with narrow strips of bright pink fabric, and I also draped some deep colored batik to see what would happen..... I changed this to B&W, and still had problems with values... the bright pink didn't show at all, and the batik seemed to take over- too dark.... back to the design wall....

I had been tacking flower pieces onto the paper base with the iron, but ended up moving things so much, that I started pinning everything in place- easier to move around on my foam design wall.

Besides flowers, I have been drawn to old architecture and have taken photos of quite a few old houses, sheds and barns. I printed a couple on fabric, and added them to the corners. I still had the bright pink pieces in the piece....

Thanks to a crummy cold, this post is later than planned.... Please pardon rambling, run-on sentences and broken thoughts.... the brain fog still hasn't cleared....

Now that you have an idea of how to display Mini Art Quilts, here are some ideas and information for display larger Art Quilts. What is considered a "larger art quilt" can be pretty subjective. For this post I will consider anything larger than 11"x14", to be in this category, but the following display methods may work for smaller pieces, too. I try to add some type of hanging "device" to the backs of the larger quilts to make displaying them as easy as possible for my customers.

I have pulled this photo from a previous post to show these long, narrow Sunprint pieces (OK, with the cold, I just didn't feel like setting up for more photos). These Art Quilts have bamboo skewers hot glued to the upper backs for hanging them very easily. All that is needed is a thumbtack in the wall to hang the lightweight quilts. The skewers are fairly thin, so the pieces will hang very close to the wall. A hanging sleeve could be used to hold a dowel or slat, but it would add more bulk to the back of the piece.

The long sunprint pieces could also be mounted to long, narrow canvases as shown in the photo above. "Gilded Ohio Stars" is between the two sunprint quilt sizes in width. Choose a size that will give a good border around the piece, or get one if available the same size as the quilt. I painted the canvas this piece is mounted on. (The skewers can be carefully removed from the backs if framing or mounting on canvas). One thing I did find with this particular piece is that if you have a narrow border of the canvas showing, it makes stitching the quilt on a bit more  difficult- the wooden frame was right where I needed to stitch.... It was a challenge! In the future, for a piece with a narrow amount of canvas showing, I would stitch the piece to fabric first, then staple that to the canvas- no poked fingers!

The above photo shows 2 of my narrow sunprint quilts along with "Antique Iris and Tulips" displayed along with framed art in a gallery where all were for sale. The quilts are hung with no frames or canvas and look right at home.

Hopefully this info has been helpful.... My next post will be showing a few photos of a new quilt I am finally making progress with.... It has gone through many, many changes along the way....

"What do you do with those??"  That was probably the most asked question about my Mini Art Quilts when I was displaying and selling them at art and craft shows.  This post will give you some answers and examples of displaying my Mini Art Quilts, by framing, mounting on canvas and more.

When most people hear or read the word Quilt, they think bed quilt or blanket. I have done those, but get the most enjoyment from creating my Art Quilts, which are works of art to be displayed like any painting or photo, on the wall. The largest number of my creations are from Postcard size to 11"x14", and even some tiny ACEO's, with most made to fit standard sized frames. My earliest Mini Art Quilts were made with framing them in mind. I began with small versions of my Windows and Trellises Series, and made most 8"x10", and a few 11x14". You could just use a small straight pin and pin the quilt directly to the wall, but here are some more options.
Garden Arbor is an 11"x14" piece that I decided needed more than just a frame, so I matted it to fit a 16"x20" frame. The quilt is mounted on an acid free backer board with double sided archival tape along the top edge of the quilt, then the mat was taped to the backer board, and all popped into the frame with the glass. 

I have always admired the simple framed botanical prints that can be seen in many decorator magazines. The next series I began was my Botanical Applique series, that are already "matted" with a white or ivory fabric border. These just need to be sandwiched between the glass and backer board in the frame.

To the right are two of these 11"x14" Art Quilts shown in frames. The color of the frame makes a difference in the final look of the piece for hanging. I tend to prefer the dark or black frames to contrast with the light borders, but the gold tone frame works well, if that fits with your home's decor better.

 {All of the framed pieces shown are available for purchase unless noted otherwise... please contact me for more info.}

This photo shows 2 pieces displayed in a grouping, you can display a number of the smaller pieces on a large wall, using similar frame styles to make a cohesive display.

The first of my Sunprint Series Art Quilts were made to display the same way- a sunprint on fabric, matted with white or ivory fabric, quilted, and ready to frame without a mat if desired. If you are interested in my sunprint process, check out my Sunprinting Mini Tutorial, earlier in this blog.

After framing and displaying many Mini Art Quilts like this over the years, I have seen no ill effects from the glass touching the quilts. The first Sunprint piece on the right is an 11"x14" quilt framed in black. The second one is another 11"x14" sunprint piece in a gold tone frame.

Below is a 5"x7" sunprint mini in a frame, the color of the frame coordinates nicely with the colors in the sunprint. These examples will give you an idea of what a quilt you purchase can look like in a frame. 

The texture of Quilt Art can be better appreciated when displayed without glass, and I have been mounting some of my Mini Art Quilts on fabric covered pre-stretched artist canvases. "Wild Roses" above is an 8"x10" quilt mounted on a canvas covered in a hand painted fabric that coordinates with the sunprint. I have switched from a satin stitch edge to couched yarn to finish my quilt's edges in more recent works. These pieces look great stitched to the canvas with their edges in full view.

The fabric can be stapled over the canvas, then the quilt stitched on through both layers, or the quilt can be stitched to the fabric before stapling over the canvas- a bit trickier to be sure the quilt is centered this way. You don't even need to cover the canvas with fabric. "My Dream House" is mounted on the white prepared canvas just as I purchased it. Tiny screw eyes attach picture wire on the backs of the canvas frames for easy hanging.

"Beside the Door" on the right is also an 8"x10" quilt mounted on a canvas covered with black fabric.