I WON A RAFFLE QUILT!!!

Last Sunday I was on my way to a Christmas Party when I found out that I had won the raffle quilt made by the Buda Bee for the benefit of the Onion Creek Senior Center in Buda, Tx. I was so excited I couldn't stop smiling every time I thought about it. I called Monday morning to claim my prize and the ladies that pieced this beautiful quilt invited me to their Christmas potluck today in Buda. The quilt was quilted by Carolyn Hessy and she did a beautiful job quilting it!! I purchased the lucky ticket at the Chisholm Trail Quilt Guild from when the quilt was making the rounds visiting guilds. I can't wait to hang it in my home on the wall over the fireplace.

Thank you Linda Stavlo and the rest of the Bee for such a beautiful quilt and a great luncheon. I will take care of your creation!!   Love it, love it, love it! 

CELESTIAL MORNING-  The quilt won a 2nd. Place ribbon in the group category  at the San Antonio Quilt Show "A Rainbow of Quilts" 2013
Pattern, Cascade by Stitchin' Post.

TEXAS sampler

It has been a crazy couple of months, busy with family, quilts, short trips and just life in general. For the last few weeks I have been quilting this beautiful Texas sampler. It is perfectly pieced and the embroidered elements are exquisite!
The quilting is going slower than I thought but it is one of those quilts that can't be rushed. I will post more photos once it is quilted.

Thanks for visiting!

Capital of Texas QuiltFest 2012

Happening this weekend is the AAQG Capital of Texas QuiltFest 2012, Please click on the link for information about the show.
Although I didn't enter any quilts this year, I have to say that I'm well represented because I quilted
the beautiful raffle quilts made by members of the guild. This quilt is a treasure, all hand appliqued and made with batik fabrics. It took me many, many hours to quilt it and I was very happy with the results.
For more about the quilt click on this link.

So head on to the quilt show and please  buy many raffle tickets. The proceeds help the organization fund their programs for the upcoming year.
The show takes place at the Palmer Center, this is the second year at this venue and it is a beautiful space to showcase incredible quilts, and parking is next door.
Have fun!


1st Place - Open Division Group Quilt Category - 2012 Dallas Quilt Celebration!





  

Happy Leap Year and Janis quilt!!

Here I'm, still living in this planet, quilting beautiful quilts for other people and at the same time getting things together to remodel my kitchen. I didn't realize that the kitchen thing was going to absorb so much time and energy. I do realize that I have been enjoying the process!
On the subject of quilting, below is the last quilt I quilted, as you can see a beautiful piece of art. This quilt belongs to Janis Keane, a member of my quilting guild. She will show this quilt in several quilt shows. Truly a show stopper. Good luck Janis!!

UPDATE: Janis quilt won 1st. place in the small quilt (didn't feel small when I was quilting it) category at the Crossroads to Texas Quilt Guild show in Killeen, Tx. March 30, 2012
She also received a 3rd. place at the Georgetown Quilt and Stitchery Show, March 23, 2012.
Well done Janis!!

(Click on the image to enlarge)

A Stitch in Time: Texas Monthly

"Karey Patterson Bresenhan and Nancy O’Bryant Puentes have finally completed their life’s work, a massive three-volume history of the quilts of Texas, from 1836 to the present. Here are ten that tell the story of quilting—and our state" By Katharyne Rodemann

I'm very honored that my 2 quilts are part of the slide presentation. One is
"Big on Texas" and the other one is "Texas DNA". They are also included in the book.
Please click on the link to view the short slide presentation.

A Stitch in Time: Texas Monthly

A series of fortunate events

I truly believe that things happen for a reason. Let me elaborate...back in December I read a book called "La Catedral del Mar" or "Cathedral by the Sea". I won't be telling you the whole book but to summarize, the story takes place in 14th-century Barcelona and it is about a porter who carries stone blocks to a cathedral construction site. I highly recommend the book. Now back to my story. In February I visited Mexico, and while there I went to the Metropolitan Cathedral, an architectural jewel in the center of Mexico City.

A few weeks later my family and I went to Southern Spain and France for Spring break. We visited, like most tourists do while in Europe, many cathedrals and palaces in Madrid, Seville, Granada and Paris. It is hard for me to tell which place was my favorite but I would have to say that the one that impressed me the most was the Cathedral in Seville. Its central nave rises to an awesome 137 ft so once inside the cathedral one can't help to feel insignificant.

Another highlight during the trip was visiting the Alhambra Palace in the city of Granada. While being there I was just going through the motions of moving from one room to another and trying to take everything in. The grandeur of the place hit me once we were back home and I looked at the photos we took. One thing I do remember is that while visiting all those historical places and taking photos, my eyes would focus on the materials used to construct them. At the cathedral in Mexico City I couldn't get over the size of the wooden doors and their intricate pattern. In Seville, the chosen materials were smooth granite and marble. The Alhambra, due to the disrepair in some areas, had stucco falling off many walls and the dirt and stones were visible creating beautiful texture. Notre Dame, in contrast, had beautiful well maintained stones that were set hundreds of years ago .

If I haven't lost you yet, you may be wondering where the story is going. Well, a couple of weeks before leaving for Europe I got a phone call from Laurie Brainerd, a fantastic fiber artist from San Antonio. Laurie called me to see if I could help her quilt a series of art quilts she had been commissioned to do for the San Antonio Baptist Mission Trail Hospital. I love quilting art quilts and immediately said yes!! So during April, Laurie and I worked together for a few weeks. My job was to quilt stones and bricks and fading stucco and wooden doors on her beautiful quilts. I truly think that reading the Cathedral of the Sea and traveling to see old churches and palaces prepared me for the task of quilting Laurie's 3 art quilts. It was indeed a series of fortunate events that led me to successfully quilt Laurie's ideas onto her art quilts.


Close up of work done with my longarm. All the stitching was done free hand.







Here I'm quilting in my studio



Quilt made by Laurie Brainerd, quilted by Martha Tsihlas
Property of the Baptist Mission Trail Hospital in San Antonio, TX.



LONE STAR Raffle Quilt - CTQG Quilt Show 2011

  
Latest News: The Lone Star Quilt received a 2nd. place award in the Open Division  at the "Dallas Quilt Celebration"  show in Dallas, Texas on March 18, 2011

                                  


Lone Star Fiesta (c. 2010)

 


Close up of Lone Star Fiesta (c.2010)

 
I'm so happy that I'm finally able to post photos of the raffle quilt I quilted for the Chisholm Trail Quilting Guild, Georgetown, Texas.

The quilt, named Lone Star Fiesta, was designed by  Maureen Scheevel, Lori Wolter, Rhonda Darholt,
Deana Everett Tollerton, and Ramona Griffin.
Pieced by: Maureen, Rhonda, Lori, Ramona, Judy De Los Santos and Missy Shelton.

The above team spent many hours designing and piecing this beautiful quilt. When they were done, it
was handed to me for the quilting part.
I started by making a sketch of the quilt to help me with the quilting idea. I then proceeded to draw the design on the quilt while it was hanging on the design wall. I did  the drawing of the flowers and vines and I mounted the quilt on the longarm machine. Ready to quilt.....
I first quilted the borders  using a straight ruler for stitch in the ditch. Quilting on an angle was a little bit of a challenge, sometimes the machine had a mind of its own. The next step was to quilt the flowers and leaves and then stitch in the ditch the star.  After doing all of that I continued to free motion quilt the background. I used So Fine and Highlights threads from Superior Threads.
People have told me that the background looks like tooled leather.

The quilt was presented to the CTQG members on February 1st. It will be at the Dallas Quilt Show on March 11 through the 13 and to different guilds and quilt stores in Texas up until the CTQG quilt show on Sept. 30th.
For more information on the Quilt Show for CTQG please go to Chisholm Trail Quilt Guild.
Raffle tickes for this quilt are available. $1.00 per ticket or 6 for $5.00. E-mail: martha@delsolquilts.com
I can only accept checks and money orders. Thanks!!

Gigi's art quilt

I recently finished this  art  quilt  but I didn't want to post about it until its rightful owner received it. A friend of mine, Gigi, Adriana Mederos, is a fantastic artist who lives in Massachusetts. She sent me one of her paintings, a tiny one, 6x6 inches, for me to recreate in fabric. Making a piece of this kind is a lot of fun and for the most part relaxing. I don't have to think about the design because Gigi already took care of that.

Art quilt 22"x22" Cottons, hand dyed fabrics, dupioni silks

The process goes like this:

1.Take the original to a copy center so it can be enlarged to the required size . In this case 22" x 22" The original can be a photo, drawing or like in this case, a painting.
2. Trace the elements on Wonder Under or fusible of choice. Remember that the tracing will be reversed.
3. Fuse the wonder under to the fabrics you are going to be using and cut out.
4. Using your copy trace the original design onto the fabric for the background. This will help place the pieces with the fusible.
5. Once the arrangement looks good iron on. Secure with your stitch of choice. Since this is a wall hanging, I just used a straight stitch around each branch and circles, matching threads.
6. I used textile paints to paint the white and copper lines.
7. I quilt on a long arm machine. I set up the finished art quilt and quilted the background first and then I
quilted the organic tree like shape with black thread. The circles were quilted last
9. I bound the art quilt with a traditional binding, single layer as to not to add bulk.
10. I put a sleeve for hanging and label on the back .

The End.

"Texas DNA"

In a previous post I had just given you a sneak peak of my entry "Texas DNA" made for the exhibit "Blending of Cultures" The exhibit opened up last night so I'm now posting a picture of the whole quilt.
I also want to share that "Texas DNA" won the themed prize.  I'm so thrilled!!
During the awards ceremony, the juror for this event, Liz Good, senior editor of Fiber Arts Magazine, started calling the winners and when she called my name it didn't register, my husband was standing next to me and
he had to nudge me and said something like: that is your name...then I started walking towards the podium to receive the prize. It was definitely a surreal experience...anyways...I'm very excited  because in this kind of events you never know how things will turn out but this was definitely a great evening for me.

"Texas DNA" designed and made by Martha Tsihlas,
55"x55" c.2010

Liz Good and moi in front of "Texas DNA"

A little bit of everything

This was a great week with many things happening. I decided to submit my portfolio to qualify for Art in Public Places here in Austin. I made the decision (the first step) and I'm submitting next week. I already received one of the 3 letters of recommendation I need and I have the JPG files ready. I just need some quiet time to write the proposal and describe my ideas on how to involve the community in this project.

Another happening was curating the exhibit for the Texas Museum of Fiber Art exhibit titled "Blending of Cultures". Curating the exhibit was a challenge for me but the venue, the Mexican American Cultural Center had an excellent installer helping us. I also got my husband involved in the hanging of the pieces. I have to say that besides being there for hours the process went very smoothly.

To end the week well we celebrated my daughter's 17Th birthday...just us and her BFF! The girls went to the Melting Pot for dinner, Steve and I we were still at the MACC, but later we all sang happy birthday and ate chocolate cake.

I almost forgot...one of my quilts was featured in the blog Quilt Inspiration. This site just like the name says is really inspirational. I always love to see what other people are doing, so after you are done reading this please go visit Marina and Daryl's blog spot.

In a couple of ours I will be getting ready for the opening of the TMFA exhibit. This year the juror is Liz Good, Senior editor of Fiber Arts Magazine. The fiber art
is very diverse at this show so I can imagine that it would be difficult to select
the winners. I already have my favorite, and no, as much as I like my piece and I believe in what I do, I found one that I think deserves first place. But you never know. Wish me luck....
I will post photos of the exhibit after the opening!

Queen of Hearts

Sunday was a day designated to making art quilts using the heart template. As I explained in my previous post, I used a template to do the outline and free motion quilted the rest.
On the heart with the black and white check on the left and the purple/many colors on the right hand side I used tulle over the fabric. Black for one, lavender for the other. After I stitched the hearts and background I cut off the tulle so It would show the fabric underneath. I had a lot of fun playing with the template technique and the outcome is always kind of a surprise. I will call them art quilts with a heart!


Pls click on the photo to enlarge c.2010

Hearts

Hearts...the universal symbol for love I read somewhere. I wanted to play a little bit today and I thought I would do a heart art quilt in my longarm machine. I used a work station made exclusively for the Gammill machines. It is basically a template with hearts in different sizes, it is kind of tricky to position the heart in the center of the square but the more I do it the better I get at it. For this piece, size 10" x 10" I decided to use a piece of dupioni silk for the center and border the square with a pretty batik. For the heart I used a tangerine color Signature brand thread. I outlined the heart making 3 passes every time to make a thick line and then I went ahead and filled the heart with free motion quilting. Now all I have to do is bind it and frame it and it will be ready to go.





/>

TEXTILE TWIST- Fiber Art Exhibit

If you are visiting or live in the Austin Area, the Austin Fiber Artists organization is having an exhibit called Textile Twist at the Tokyo Electron Company.
Over 30 pieces of fabulous fiber art (if I must say so myself) will be on display from February 24 to April 1st, 2010. The opening of the exhibit is on Feb 24, at 6pm. If you can't make it to the opening the exhibit can be seen from Monday to Friday, 9-5pm.
I have 2 pieces in this juried exhibit...one is called "Deconstruction I" and the other one is "New Beginnings"
For this exhibit I wanted to make something that still resembled a quilt from a distance (to honor my background as a traditional quilter) but up close you see how -deconstructed- it is.
I used the same method to create both of my pieces:
I started by making 2 quilts, quilting each one individually, and then cutting them up in random strips. I think this was the hardest part, cutting up a quilt! Imagine that! After the 2 quilts were cut up I put all the strips in the washing machine so they would unravel. After this process was done, I wove the strips to create one whole piece, or quilt per say... Then, the new piece (pinned to death to keep it together) was quilted with straight stitching, vertically and horizontally to keep the woven piece together.
I broke all the "rules" of traditional quilting, meaning that the quilting stitches are purposely uneven, the edges raw, no binding in sight and points that don't match. I had to struggle with "breaking the rules" and at the same time work in a way that the resulting piece would appeal to the viewer.
Most times I don't post before an exhibit but I will give you a sneak peak so you know what I have been talking about.

"Deconstructed I" (c.2010) 48"x70"


"New Beginning" (c.2010) 40"x 52"

"BIG as Texas" Fiber Arts Exhibit

The Texas Museum of Fiber Arts is having a juried exhibit on Memorial Day Weekend here in Austin, TX.

The exhibit is called "Big as Texas" and the opening reception is on May 22, 2008 at the The Bob Bullock Museum

I'm posting a section of my entry and once the selection process is over I will post a whole picture. The name of my entry is called "Big ON Texas"

If you are afraid of color.... don't look. Too late ;)

I have been working on a commission for the last few days. I made another quilt like this 4 years ago for the Austin Area Quilt Show and there is a photo in my web page. Well, I never thought I would make another one until Becky commissioned me to use this pattern for her art piece. The quilt is made with cottons, batiks and beautiful blue and red fabrics bought in China especially for this project.
It took me a while to piece the center of the quilt (the pinwheels) due to the color sequence. The tranquility sign was fused and machine appliqued before being attached to that row.






I have the borders ready, in blue, red and black and also the cornerstones with the Chinese zodiac characters. The cornerstones were also fused and appliqued as the tranquility sign. I will post later when the piece is completed and quilted.
As much as I like to do what I'm doing it gets to a point where I'm looking forward to finishing the piecing so I can mount it on the long arm machine and start doing my favourite part which is QUILTING!!
It could have been finished by now, and I mean the pieced part, but yesterday I unplugged my machines due to the hail storm we had here in the Austin area.
I had just gotten home from picking up my dog from the vet when the sky got very dark. Before we knew it ping pong ball size hail came down with such a force it broke our spot lights on the back deck. I have big windows and the noise was terrible. I'm not fond of storms, fortunately it was over in a few minutes. The cleaning up though, will take longer since so much debris came down from all the trees around the house.

Dallas Quilt Show

Last Sunday was the last day of the Dallas Quilt Show and my friend Barb invited me and 2 other friends for a quick ride to pick up her quilts. We left in the morning and came back that night. While at the show I had an opportunity to do some shopping. I was in much need of thread for quilting and I also picked up a couple of books from Dover Publications. I visited Susan Cranshaw in her booth and saw her latest design, beautiful bluebonnet flowers. I also stopped at Michelle Watts booth, I like her quilts and her own line of fabrics. She also has a line of jewelry that is beautiful, inspired by blocks designs. Michelle will be the speaker at the Chisholm Trail Quilt Guild meeting in May. I'm looking forward to it.
I'm posting some of my favorite quilts from the Dallas Show. Four people from Austin (that I know of) received awards: our own Kathy York, Barb Forrister (I don't have a photo), Bill Horn and Laurie Evans. Congrats!
And FYI, I didn't win the gorgeous Amish quilt at the Guild raffle. :(
Enjoy the Show

"Vertigo" by Kathy York, Austin, TX

"Floating Frames" by Bill Horn, Austin, TX

"The Leaf Quilt" by Laurie Evans, Austin, TX

"Bursting of Joy" by Sabina Thompson of Fort Worth, TX

Squared Illusions by Gloria Hansen From East Windsor, NJ

"Celestial Compass Rose" by Pat Connally, Midland, TX

"Reclamation Retro" by Barbara Oliver-Hartman, Flower Mound, TX

Gallery Show.....

Just a reminder for those who live in Central Texas to attend the Copper Shade Tree Gallery Show.....looking forward to seeing some friendly faces. Go to this link or click on the side bar of the page with the Copper Shade Tree icon.
http://www.coppershadetree.com/

It is not a quilt....or is it?

This is an exciting time!!
I have been busy finishing up my pieces for the Fiber Art Exhibit at the Copper Shade Tree Gallery in Round Top, TX.
My studio looks as if a tornado has gone through with fabrics and threads and pages with ideas scattered all over. There is no point in straightening out at the end of the day if by morning it starts all over again. Just 2 more small (of five) pieces and I will be done. I will be posting photos of my finished pieces after the show.
I'm so looking forward to this exhibit and I have to admit it, a little intimidated because some of the other people in the exhibit are very talented fiber artists. I will keep you posted and wish me good luck!!