Newest Quilt–My Hand Carved Block Prints

About a year ago some friends and I got together and carved our own blocks to print.
Then a few days later we met again and practiced printing with them.
I brought a variety of fabrics with and experimented with different paints, brushes and rollers, and how they worked on the different fabrics. I was bound determined I was not going to purchase any other paints or supplies.
I was semi pleased with most of them. Robbie kept telling me they were good prints.

All of the fabrics had been shibori over dyed with black or red dye.
Fast forward to last week when I decided to cut them up and make something.
The irregular spacing made it a time consuming process to fussy cut and get the most useable prints, I used 30 of the 34 I was able to cut.
I spaced the block I had most of every other space, filling in with the others.
I cut narrow strips for the border from what was left.
My favorite part creating this quilt was doing the spiral machine quilting. It has become a feature in my recent work.

Family Fun Night

We started off with dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.

Sarah, Tina and Andy waiting for our dinners.

Andy and Kendall waiting for dinner.
If Andy looks happy it’s because he didn’t have to pick me up at the airport today!

We have a family rule of not using your phone at the table….but Drew is forgiven as it was a business call.

Next it was back to our house where everyone had their favorite ice cream.
Then it was time for brainstorming for names for my newest quilts.

Kendall held the quilts for the family to brainstorm ideas for names. She will make a great replacement when Vanna is ready to retire.

Andy and Tina coming up with possible names. Andy has lots of experience doing this. This was Tina’s first time and you can see how she was closing out the world and thinking about names and was very good at it.
This is such a typical Andy picture.
It was a fun night and everyone got plenty to eat and had a good time.

You Have 3 More Weeks To See My Solo Show

If you haven’t seen my show Florida Ice yet in Ocala, Florida you only have 3 more weeks to see it.

It is open through April 26th at the Ocala City Hall, 110 SE Watula Ave M-F 8 am – 5 pm
Ocala is near anywhere you are or are traveling in Florida and the city hall is only a few miles off I-75.
All work in the show is for sale with the exception of work marked sold.
It is a feast for the eyes if I do say so myself!

Chasing Rainbows 6

I am so pleased to have finished another quilt in this series.
Each one is very different than the others which is my goal.

The coloration of this one is more limited that the previous ones. It will be an easy quilt to live with and will evoke a peaceful feeling, all the while keeping you interested and seeing something you haven’t seen before.

This is the fabric I created by dyeing several times before I did the satin stitching on this finished piece. If you are one of my Facebook friends you may have seen me post the fabric recently.
I really love making these. They are very labor intensive as I need to do a lot of thread changes, design and color decisions. Yet, a finished work is so satisfying.

My Original Design Printing Blocks

     
About a year ago I got together with some friends and we each made our own printing blocks. These are a few of the images I printed with them.
Stay tuned to see what I do with them.

Sharing Some Recent Shibori Dyeing

I have now done a black, blue, red and black shibori bucket.
My total yield was over 60 pieces.

I did a black shibori overdye with this multicolored mandala. It has the look of stained glass.

Do you remember my Olympic Quilt 2’s ugly fabric I used in the border. It went from ugly to gorgeous. The section I didn’t use was still ugly. I did a black shibori dye over that and now it is exciting.

This piece needed some more definition which I was able to achieve with black dye and clamping sections.
I am pleased with the results of all of these.
I need to think about each one before I decide what I will do with them.

More Negative Positive Quilts

As with the previous ones I shared these have been framed but since I have not mastered taking photos of work behind glass these are before framing.
The images have been scanned so they are much better than any photos I could take.

The one on the right is for my middle son Andy. The one on the left is for his best friend Tina.

These two show the greatest difference of all that I created recently. The one on the left was for my twin Sally and mine is on the right.
Although they are labor intensive I really enjoyed creating these and spent several days making them as gifts for friends.

Easter With My Florida Family

Hosted by Andy, Tina and Kendall. Drew too!

Some of the family after dinner and swimming.

I think Ryder was teaching Uncle Andy how to find his own eggs!

Kendall and Laney were in a hurry to find the eggs and fill their baskets.
It was a great day. Dinner was delicious, company was superb and the icing on the cake was enjoying the little ones egg hunt and the “Big Boys” throwing out more and more eggs when the kids had cleared an area. If you are a Facebook friend there are also videos from the day.

Easter Greetings!

My If I Wanted To Meet A Man In An Airport Coat

I mentioned this coat on Facebook yesterday and my friend Nancy Dunnavan asked me if my coat had been on FB. So here is the blog I wrote about it.
It is being modeled by my DIL Julie who is Greg’s wife.

I talked about this coat some time ago, but did not have a picture to show you.
The weight is similar to the weight of a trench coat, but it is so much more fun to wear than a boring old trench coat!
This is what I said on the previous post:
I posted about a coat I had made from my Slashed Coat/Jacket pattern. The subtitle of mine is "My If I Wanted To Catch A Man In An Airport Coat".
I didn't want to and I don't want to. But every time I wore it men would stop me and ask about it.
The first time it happened I was on the people mover at the Atlanta airport. A man struck up a conversation with me, which surprised me since I was past the age where men hit on you! He was very interested in the coat and very complementary about it.
This continued to happen each time I was in an airport and I was flying a lot back then. It was the perfect weight to go from cold weather to warmer weather.

This is the now famous coat.
This particular one was made with 4 layers of cotton.
The base layer is slightly heavier than a quilting cotton.
Layer 2 is a carmel color quilting weight cotton. (as are all the other layers)
Layer 3 is what makes this so fun and funky. It is made from diagonal strips of red, black and rust alternating in no specific design.
Layer 4 (the outer layer) is an olive quilting weight cotton.
Using 100% cotton is what allows these layers to fluff out when the coat is washed. It is one of those garments that just gets better and better the more you wash it and dry it in the dryer.

Both the front and back have a neat asymmetric design.
Since there are no seam finishes or edge finishes this is a relatively quick coat to make. All the lines are stitched in one direction and there are no extra patterns added to the stitching which also makes this a quick project.
I have made several other variations from this pattern, both jacket and coat length.
They all get a lot of attention each time I wear them.

My One Of A Kind Art Cloth–Will It Be For Sale?

I AM THINKING!
I just finished about 30 new pieces of my original art cloth.

Most of them have at least 3 layers of pattern on them which means I have invested a lot of time in each one. Some have more, some less. Layers create rich complex  fabric.

I am realizing I will never be able to use each and every one of them.

I am considering setting up a pop up shop for a week to 10 days on my blog to sell just a few special ones.
Let me know if this interests you.

It will be the first time I have ever sold any of my art fabrics.

I am thinking I would offer them to you at rock bottom prices of $50 to $100 for each one depending on complexity, size, and design. Sizes will vary from smaller than a fat quarter on up.

You could edge finish and hang as they are as ART,  add a backing, quilt them or whatever else you choose to use them for.

You could also just collect them. Each piece will be signed by me.

If you are interested respond to me at   kay@kaysorensen.com
with your email address.

If there is enough interest to make it worth my time I will pursue this. It not, I won’t.

The QUEEN OF ICE Speaks

I am the QUEEN OF ICE!
I have developed my own proprietary method of ice dyeing as an artist.
I am NOT a production dyer. As an artist dyer I use all that is within me as I create each new creation with new ideas.
Since my show opening I have had many requests to teach/share my methods.
My teaching days have been over for a long time and I have used that time to develop further as an artist.
If I attempted to teach/share at this time I would charge $1000 and hour….2 students at a time…. 5 hours minimum.
I am worth that. However I would be self directing anyone who took me up on this.
If you have been to my show you will realize the prices I sell my ART for are a bargain and they can add far more than the cost to your surroundings improving your life and those who enter it.
At this point I am adding a blog post I wrote some time ago which should help to explain this further. I feel I should share this at least once a month.
I have had a lot or responses from people who said they really understand after reading this post.

How I Came To The Point Of Creating My Ice Dyes-Rerun 2018

These are 3 of my experiments on the journey to create the BEST. I consider the above so-so but it takes a lot of these to achieve the best.
Thanks you to everyone for all your comments about my most recent piece which I consider the BEST of the best Florida Ice.
This never could have happened without a lifetime of learning involving fabrics and color.
Many have asked how I do this and it is not something I can share.
For one thing, the results are serendipitous.
And the other thing is unless you have lived the same life I have for 78 years you will never achieve these results.
I am no longer teaching, but am pursuing my own art.
To attempt to share this would not be fair to myself, nor to people who would try it and not get the results I do.
When I was doing one on one teaching for a fee I had a student ask if she could come and learn everything I knew about color from me in a one day session as she would have to travel a distance to get to my studio. It would not have been possible as she had not lived my life. I could have taught her about color theory but even if I did that until she did exercises,etc she still would not have learned what I attempted to teach her.
I can only suggest you take as many color and design classes as possible from the very best instructors and do the work from the classes.
Don’t concentrate only on working with dyes, but with paints, fabrics. yarns, food and papers.
Then play with your chosen materials until you get results that please you.
Devote every waking moment to your art as only then will you achieve your potential. You can multitask and think about your art being influenced as you live your daily life and think about what you want to do and how you will start.
You are all welcome to follow me on my BLOG and sign up to the email list on the page which will notify you each time I post to the blog.  In addition to my art I share parts of my life on my blog. There are times when a week or more may go by with no posts as I have nothing to post. The blog address is: http://quiltspluscolor.blogspot.com/
And in closing I am going to share some not so successful things I’ve dyed recently so you don’t thing I get a winner ever time.



The above are some less than lovelies but it takes creating a lot of these to find my direction to make the BEST!
Even the less than lovelies are useful for backs of quilts or they can be cut up and used in piecing. So all is not lost no matter what happens in my work.
And now 3 years after I originally wrote this post, some of these less than lovelies have been made into very successful pieces with some overdyeing or quilting!
I wish you success on your art journey wherever it takes you.

Florida Ice Poster

Ocala Cultural Arts created this poster for my show.
It has my Artist Bio, Artist Statement and a very brief explanation of what ice dyeing is.
I hope you will be able to enlarge this if you would like to read it.

Negative Positive Quilts

I just completed these small negative positive quilts.
The quilting done with a zigzag stitch was an accidental discovery I made. My grandchildren were creating fused quilts faster than I could quilt them for them. I put Jessica’s under the needle and started quilting. It didn’t take me long to realize the machine was not doing a straight stitch. I decided it really was a great idea and have used it on everyone since.
I have framed them. I have not figured out now to take photos of something behind glass in a frame.
In fact, these images were scanned so they are much better than any photos I DO take.
Can YOU see the pattern I created?

My Hand Quilter-Robin Koehler

Robin and I finally met in person when she came to visit and go to Ocala to see my show.
We visited, had lunch, went to Ocala so she could see my show Florida Ice, came back to the house and visited some more.
We had a lot to share with each other.
Don’t forget this name as you will be seeing more of her in the near future.

A VERY Special Quilt

I  can’t take credit for designing this quilt. This is the first and last mystery quilt I every made. It was designed by Jinny Beyer for one of her seminars.
I did select the fabrics to make it my own. I brought the lily fabric with me to the seminar. We were given the directions to cut and piece the twirling patchwork.  I selected the fabrics to coordinate with the lily fabric. The measurements were very odd sizes.
I finished the top during the seminar and was very pleased with it.
Like many things I make it didn’t get quilted. I had it pinned and thought I’d machine quilt it, but somehow it wanted to be hand quilted.
When I became aware of Robin Koehler and started to have her quilt some quilts for me I knew this was one for her to do.

She designed the quilting pattern and it is perfect to highlight the piecing.

She also designed the perfect quilting for the lily print and the borders.
I couldn’t be happier with it.

You Can Never Have Too Much Money Or Too Much Red Fabric!

I’m sharing more of the Dye Dogs that became gorgeous fabrics from the red shibori bucket I did recently.

This was a silk screen image on white fabric. I wanted to add some color and texture to it.

Although you see a lot of blue in this one, the final shibori dye was done with red dye.

This is one of those pieces that is so much better than the photo.

Each piece is manipulated differently and I can’t even tell you how I did them. I purposely to NOT keep records as I want to play and experiment to get my original designs on each one I dye.
I never know what to expect when I rinse, washout, dry and iron my projects.
The red batch produced so many wonderful pieces.

My Florida Family’s Favorites–Florida Ice Show

These two quilts were favorites of my Florida family at the opening of my show.

Whisper was the favorite of my Florida daughter Lauren Bedford Chenette.

Hex A Gones was the favorite of another family member Tina Romstad.
My solo show runs through April 26th at the Ocala City Hall at 110 SE Watula Avenue in Ocala.
It is open M-F 8 am – 5 pm.
All work is for sale by contacting me at: kay@kaysorensen.com

Red Magic

I did shibori dyeing over some dye dogs and got some amazing new pieces to work with.

Over twenty years ago I painted this with thickened dyes. I was surprised how the red dye really made this come to life.


This is the before.
This was a green piece with some glue resist I believe. I was not expecting results as wonderful as I received with the red dye.
The photo below is the before picture.


This piece was given to me and it had been painted. The red really made it sing.

Four of us got together and carved our own printing blocks and then a few days later we got together and printed with them.
Since these were test pieces I didn’t use wonderful fabrics to print on. The red dye definitely brought this up enough notches that it is now something I will use in a composition.
There will be more to come in the future sharing my results as there were 20 pieces in the bucket.

An Awesome Miniature Quilt

I developed a technique for piecing miniature quilts about 35 years ago called Magnificent Miniature Patchwork.  I taught the method all over the Midwest and beyond.
My work was featured in several magazines including the Japanese magazine Patchwork Quilt Tsushin.
The quilts we created were to scale - 1 inch to 12 inches  - of a full size bed quilt. This measures 11 inches square.
This particular one is an off center log cabin and I have used silver lame in the centers of each block.
It finally got quilted this year when I started having Robin Koehler do hand quilting for me. Her work is AMAZING and she also binds most of the ones she quilts for me.
Her stitches are so perfect. I love her work best done on solid colors as they really show off the quilting.
Since she has been quilting for me I have been able to reduce the number of works in progress and I have several more ready for her to quilt.