art bits

Several years ago my guild, Bits N Pieces formed an art quilt group. I've been a member for several years. I will miss this group when my husband and I move to Overland Park Kansas. We meet monthly to share ideas, get feedback, and assistance with our projects. We also work on challenges. We had a literary challenge--choose a poem, book or a movie title and interpret it in cloth. I chose a book that I have enjoyed for years, Platero and I. Another challenge involved choosing a work of art to interpret. I used Renoir's Dancing at Bougival.

A tribute to my ancestor

I wanted to do a piece honoring my Fourth great grandfather, who served eight years during the American Revolution. He was only 18 when he enlisted. He was from Stratham, NH. He was at the seige of Boston. His unit headed toward Quebec, but joined the retreating American army as they fled down Lake George. He was at the Battle of Saratoga, and spent the winter with Washington's army at Valley Forge. He  fought at Monmouth, NJ, and finally he was present at Yorktown. He received the Badge of Merit, whose design was later used for the Purple Heart. He received  pension, and a letter of commendation from Washington. He lived to be 82.
My piece illustrates his life.

new pieces

It's been a while since I posted. My husband and I are moving to Overland Park Ks to a senior living facility. We will be near our daughter and our twin granddaughters. Ron has developed Parkinsinism . There is no family in St. Louis to help, so we are moving closer to our daughter.
This fall we celebrated 50 years of marriage. I made a piece with our high school pictures and the high school pictures of our children and our four grandchildren. The gold thread represents the fifty years. I'm going to try to post more. Since we are moving and most of the work of sorting out stuff has fallen to me, I haven't had much time or energy to devote to my fiber art. I also made a piece celebrating my maternal genealogy.

My maternal ancestors came from Ireland, especially County Mayo. This piece has three sections: Ireland, Macclesfield, England, and Holyoke, Massachusetts.  I made an Irish cottage, and an embroidered family leaving Ireland. My great great grandfather was a tailor. I have his shears, and I used a photo of the shears in all three panels. My son spent his honeymoon in Ireland, and I used two of his pictures of ruins, and another of an altar screen. Family legend holds that Michael earned money making uniforms for members in the workhouse. The Welch family left Ireland in 1849 during the potato famine. There is a  picture of Michael in the upper right hand corner, and an appliqued piece of the workhouse.

The family stayed in England for ten years, where two of the daughters, including my great grandmother, worked in the mills. I found a picture of girls working in a mill that I placed on a dyed piece of crochet. I also appliqued a picture of a mill.  The family lived on Derby street which I pictured on the piece, I also mounted picture of my great grandparents, Mary Welch and Thomas Doyle, and included their marriage registry and St Albans, the church where they were married.

The last panel shows their life in America. They traveled on the Tarifa and settled on Holyoke. My grandmother was born in Macclesfield, but she always said she was Irish. There are some pictures of my grandparents, Maggie and John Eagan. They had a general store, which I pictured. I mounted a scrap of fabric and what was left of her silk pincushion. I cut a piece from an embroidery. I also show my mother, pictured with Michael Welch, in her nightie, and at Nantaskett Beach, where her family owned hotels, until the went broke in the late 1920's.I used a book by Maggie Grey, Long Diaries Tall Tales for inspiration.

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My favorite art quilt

This piece is part of me English series. It is titled Marketplace at Stonehenge. I used purchased hand dyed fabric. and hand appliqued and embroidery. I made a triptych. It hangs in my kitchen.

Baby quilts

I have four grandchildren, and I have made them all baby quilts. On the quiltart web there was recently a discussion about whether baby quilts should be simple. Mine aren't--I couldn't resist making them special. My oldest grandchilren now 11, are twin girls. My daughter lived in a rented house, and requested quilts to hang on the walls. I made Rosie a sesame street quilt, and Caroline a quilt featuring my daughter's favorite books. Four both quilts I used settings based on some Japanese quilts I had seen, as I didn't want them to have rows of pictures. This design allowed me to fill in the blank spots with some jazzy material.

Since these were wall decorations, I felt they needed quilts to drag around. Rosie loved bunnies, and Caroline loved ducks. Here are their drag around quilts:

When my son had a daughter, I decided to make a quilt based on The Cow jumped over the Moon. I used the house they were living in at the time, and added their two pugs. Murphy, the black one, has  only has one eye, and Maggie has a Gene Simmons' tongue:

 

A few years later my son had a boy, Sean. His parents requested Eric Carle quilt. I didn't use preprinted material for Sean's quilt; I created the images myself.

I have made all four grandchildren bed quilts and Christmas quilts, using my own designs. 

Rosemary Hopkins

working on the beast quilt

I am still working on the beast cloth.  I am almost finished, just a few more holes to fill and, of course, quilting the piece.  I don't know what I will do for the edges. At first I thought I would turn the edges of the tablecloth over to the top, but I think I will have problems with the corners if I do.  I could always make a border using some of the cloth in the beasts.
I have used several of my granddaughters drawings in the piece.  I asked them to draw me some beasts.  You can see them below:

 I'm not very good at moving the pictures around, but you get the idea.  The first picture is a 2 headed beast drawn by 7 year ole Ellie.  The next one with 2 heads also was drawn by 11 year old Caroline.  The rest of the beasts were drawn by Caroline's twin sister, Rosie.

January 16, 2016

I'm still working on m beasts.  Three of my granddaughters sent me drawings to interpret in fabric.  Here is Ellie's, and her drawing:

This is one of Rosie's drawings

Caroline has sent me a beast but I haven't transformed hers into fabric yet.