“Quilts - Art with a Q” at the Fries Museum

October 24, 2008

 thin_ice_cellphone.jpg

Quilting the ice is what I was most worried about. I finally decided that I that I wanted a swirly, skatey pattern, and was thinking about how ice skates leave those white scratches in the ice that get covered over and over.

What was that term that Jason Pollen used for layers and layers of drawing marks made on top of each other, like on an old chalkboard menu where yesterday’s image is ghosted behind? Can’t remember, oh well.

The skating marks slowly transform from swirly to crackly at the bottom, where PaMdora’s skate blade precariously balances. Not sure how successful that was, but it was an interesting experiment.

thin_ice_bypamrubert.jpg

Here’s the finished quilt, Skating On Thin Ice — it’s 42″ x 61″. Today I have to ship it off to The Netherlands along with another winter-themed quilt for a November-March exhibition at the Fries Museum. For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been stressing about how to do the shipping, but this morning got it worked out with the museum register. She was very nice, and told me that some of the hundreds of quilts — both traditional and contemporary — were already arriving at the museum.

Filed Under exhibitions, process, quilts 


Comments

17 Comments so far

  1. Gerrie on October 24, 2008 9:38 am

    I think the ice quilting is perfect. Have you ever skated on an outdoor pond. I grew up doing just that. Because you only skate when it is really, really cold and there are not a lot of other skaters, the marks tend to stay on the ice like that. You have achieved a very chilly feeling with the colors.

  2. Linda on October 24, 2008 2:39 pm

    Wow, I love how this turned out.

  3. Karen Mason on October 24, 2008 7:28 pm

    THANK-YOU for sharing your process! I have loved checking your blogs and silently watching your progress. It has been very educational and inspiring for me to see how a fabric artist that I respect works.
    Congrats on shipping off another EXCELLENT piece!
    Karen M.

  4. Judy on October 25, 2008 8:57 am

    Terrific job Pam. I can understand why you were stressing in that it needed to be shipped off so soon. I really love this piece….so much to look at! The hat is so much fun.

  5. Kristin L on October 25, 2008 10:58 am

    Congratulations. It’s been fun watching the evolution of this quilt. I hope PamDora has a great time in the Netherlands. I wish i was still in Europe so i could go see her in person. ;-)

  6. natalya on October 25, 2008 1:51 pm

    bbrrrrr… she’s perfectly chillin’! Thanks for all the in-progress pictures, it was wonderful to follow along.

  7. emprint on October 26, 2008 5:59 am

    It’s a great quilt and I enjoyed going to the Fries Museum site. Looks like a really big show.

  8. Beate on October 26, 2008 12:53 pm

    OH Leewarden is almost 2 hours away. I’ll go there.

  9. PaMdora on October 27, 2008 8:09 am

    That’s great Beate — I hope you can see it and maybe do a blog post. I would love to read about the show since I won’t be there. The registar told me there is some kind of opening reception on Nov. 15, but I can’t read the postcard. Maybe you could call the museum and ask them to send you one.

  10. lee on October 28, 2008 5:38 am

    is the word palimpsest? it is used in archaeology to refer to texts that have been erased form vellum so that new work can be put there.

  11. Vivien on November 1, 2008 3:31 pm

    Thanks for sharing the creation process of this piece. I’m glad you posted details, too. The quilting is something I’m always longing to see up close.

  12. Mai-Britt on November 2, 2008 12:35 pm

    Just fantastic, Pam - I hope it will be shown in the Festival of Quilts next year. So glad you kept in the greens.
    Congratulations……..

  13. Phyllis Dobbs on November 6, 2008 8:55 am

    What a delightful quilt - I love it!will you attend the exhibit in the Netherlands? Congratulations!
    Thanks for your comment on my blog!

  14. susie Monday on November 7, 2008 12:54 pm

    I got it — the word in mind (i think) is pentimento. Jane Dunnewold used it as the title of a workshop she gave long ago — it means according to wikipedia, “A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is an alteration in a painting, evidenced by traces of previous work, showing that the artist has changed his mind as to the composition during the process of painting. The word derives from the Italian pentirsi, meaning to repent.” But, I think, in a larger or more metaphorical sense it’s any kind of traces of previous thought, work, layers of process through time and imagination.

  15. PaMdora on November 7, 2008 8:51 pm

    Thanks Lee and Susie, I’m studying up on the difference between ‘palimpsest’ and ‘pentimento’. Need to learn how to pronounce them so I can use them in conversation and sound smart :) Actually they are both cool concepts.

  16. Janet Wilson on November 8, 2008 4:46 am

    Hi Pam, your quilting is lovely. What machine and fram are you now using to quilt on?

  17. PaMdora on November 8, 2008 7:53 am

    Hi Janet,for details I still use my table top Bernina because I can get up close and it gives me more control. But for big areas like backgrounds, I use a Viking MegaQuilter on an Inspira frame.

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