Studio Quilt Gallery

You are seeing about 21 feet of my 30 foot studio design wall.
The part you are not seeing is a work in progress. Most of the time the entire wall is being used to work out designs for my new pieces.
The 4 quilts on the left are from the Colors Of My Life series. There are 20 quilts in the series.
The 5 quilts on the right are all my Ice Dyed Tapestries. These pieces were all in my recent show and will be part of another upcoming show in 2018.
The quilt on the far right under the window is In Living Color.
It is always nice to be able to see a sampling of the work I have done all together in one place.
I hope you enjoy this gallery display.
Click on the photo to see a larger view.

Although This Is a Day To Remember Those Who Gave Up Their Life For Us…….

I also always think of my girlfriends who did serve.

When my friend Kathy Comstock visited me in Wisconsin last summer this was her favorite piece I was working on,.

I made sure it was finished for my show. Kathy served in the United States Army and I see a link between the Army and the colors of this Ice Tapestry.

It also makes me think of my friend Pauline Frey Davy who served in the Air Force. The picture of her is on the flight line at Wurtsmith, AFB in Oscoda, MI. She also worked as a civilian for the Army for 27 years and was working for them when we met at a fabric dyeing class.

I am not sure what branch my friend Marge Hewitt served in? Everyone wants to be Marge when they grow up.
I am grateful they were willing to serve to preserve our freedom and grateful they all were able to come home after their service.
I am honored to know all of these women.

Still Dyeing

I don’t think I’ll every tire of Ice Dyeing.
Each piece is a new surprise. I play and try different fabric manipulations and colors on each and every one.
I can’t even remember how I did many of them when they are finished. And that is good.
When I made a quick visit to my show this winter before heading south there was a lady there who kept telling me how I should make a record of exactly how I did each one so I could duplicate it. It took me a long time to make her understand that I was creating ART and had no desire to make the same thing over and over. In fact, even if I tried there still would be many variables and each one would be different.
That is the difference between an ART Ice Dyer and a production Ice Dyer.

Where Is That Quilt? Part 4

These are the final pictures of the quilts I have laid flat on the bed.

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These photos are not meant to show the quilts in their best light…just the way I store them and a teaser as to what they look like.
The rest of the quilts are either stored under the bed on 2 trolleys we built to store them, stored elsewhere or are on display in my lower level gallery or throughout our home.
Yes, I have been rearranging and sorting quilts so they are more accessible.
I hope you have enjoyed this journey through some of my work. These pieces were done over a period of time. My work changes and grows, but I hope it stands the test of time.

Where Is That Quilt?-Part 3

This group of quilts are all from a series I designed called Historic Concepts- Contemporary Systems.
I used antique quilts for inspiration but did not copy any one specific quilt. I collected fabrics for many years and made kits for all of them. The kits were all very limited editions. I did this long before reproductions fabrics were available. They would not have the feeling of an antique quilt had a used one of the series of reproduction quilts available recently. Many antique quilts were made from scraps and leftovers.

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Many people learned to quilt with this series of quilt kits I made. They were all very limited editions as I had a limited amount of the appropriate fabrics.
All but one of these were hand quilted.

Where Is That Quilt–Part 2

I am continuing to show you the layers of quilts on my bed in my studio where I can store them flt.

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There is quite a variety of quilts in this stack. They were stacked in the manner they fit best on the bed.

Where Is That Quilt?

Although I have a photographic memory, each and every time I rearrange and organize things I often have a hard time remembering exactly where things are.
I have done this before and I am doing it again as things have made major moves in my quilt storage areas.

It is going to take several days to share all the layers of quilts with you on my blog. This is the bottom quilt on the bed I use to store quilts flat.

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I know some of you have seen many of these before. I hope you enjoy another glimpse of them.
This is not my any means a record of all of the quilts I have ever made as over half of them are no longer in my possession.

The Show Is Over, But The Memory Lingers On

My show at the Anderson Arts Center In Kenosha closed almost 2 months ago.

If you missed the show I am sharing the entire show on this post!

Here are most of the Ice Dyes Tapestries.

This shows the largest pieces and some vertical pieces.

And last but not least the shibori quilts and other similar quilted work.

I was not there for the closing but my work was pick up by a friend.

I was so pleased to see how carefully it was arranged in my studio.

I know you can’t see each layer in the stacks of work, but hopefully the show will make an appearance  in your area in the next few years.

The show has been scheduled already for another solo show. Stay tuned for details at a later date.

I am  currently in the process of taking bookings. If you know of a museum or art center that would be appropriate for this show please have them contact me.

Nicholas James Sorensen

One week ago today my grandson Nicholas graduated from the University Of Wisconsin-Madison.
Congratulations Nicholas.
He will spend the summer tending his garden, fishing and I am guessing playing some golf.
In August he will be studying dentistry at the University Of Minnesota.
I know you will be an exceptional dentist when you graduate.

Oh Oh Oh…Pretty Colors….Fascinating Design

This is another one of my newest ice dyes.

I PLAYED….and that is how I create some exciting ART!

I could never get what I do if I didn’t let my mind wander and continue to try new manipulations of my fabric and the dyes.

It is hard to share how gorgeous some of these are in a photo as there is so much detail, true color and shapes that can’t be seen in a small picture.

It was hard to end my dyeing season for the next few months with so many ideas swirling around in my head. I did jot down some ideas so I’ll be ready to hit the ground running when I am ready to dye again.

My Garden

It’s hard to visualize the size of this hydrangea blossom but I am guessing it is about10 inches in diameter which makes it the largest so far this year.

I love how the colors, shading and detail shows up on this close up of one of the other blossoms. In another week the entire plant will be covered with flowers.

How I Came To The Point Of Creating My Ice Dyes

This is a rerun of a post I wrote a few years ago. I get so many requests to teach this and questions on how I do this. I hope this explains how I got to the point I am at.

I have been christened “The Queen Of Ice” as my work is the best ice dyeing out there.

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 a 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 77 years you will never achieve these results. It is all the experiences, education, and my research and development that have directly or indirectly made what I am currently creating happen.
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,interior decorating, 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. Although I try to post as often as possible, sometimes 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.
I wish you success on your art journey wherever it takes you.
Be willing to play and accept the fact that you most likely will have to create 100-200 pieces to get some really good ones.

Don’t Believe It If They Say It is PFD Or Prewashed By Someone Else

This T shirt is from a company who dyes and washes their garments before selling them. SO…,I just figured I could dye it without prewashing it myself.
BIG mistake.
It didn’t want to absorb the soda ash solution so I just added more and tried to squish it through the fabric. Well, it was obvious when I took it out of the dye it didn’t make it all the way through.
This is the front.


This is the back and the same thing happened on the inner layer. Not only did the dye not work, but I lost all the patterning I had carefully arranged when I was trying to squish the liquid into the fabric.
The only thing I like a little is the colors I got, but even they were not what I would usually get with those dye colors.
If this doesn’t make a believer out of you, then you too likely will experience something like this when you are dyeing something special.
Is it worth the risk to take a chance when it is so easy to prewash your fabric or garment?

What Did You Picture My Dyeing Studio Looked Like?

There is nothing fancy about my dye studio. It is in my garage and uses the work bench area and a table I have covered with a plastic table cloth.
On an adjacent wall there is a laundry sink which I use for water and the rinse out process.
It took a while to figure out where to dye but now it is second nature. I also have some other stuff on the shelves across from here which are used occasionally.
I do make some adaptations depending on what kind of dyeing I am doing.
In this photo I have several containers batching ice dyed fabrics and I believe between them they contain about 7 pieces of fabric of various sizes and various manipulations.
And I can do all of this without taking the car out of the garage.