Showing posts with label Liberated Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberated Challenge. Show all posts

May 13, 2015

Wonky Cross Quilt

Mary Lou has received my quilt with all of our cross blocks!

http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2015/05/the-mary-lou-weidman-healing-power-of.html
The Healing Power of Love by Michele Savikko Bilyeu


"The Healing Power of Love Cross Quilt" Project is finished!!!!

Pieced and Quilted by Michele Savikko Bilyeu
April 2015

The project involved:


122 Cross Blocks
Created out of friendship for Mary Lou Weidman's healing journey with stage 2 breast cancer

From 32 quilters across the USA and Canada who just plain love her!



Healing Comfort Quilt: 75 blocks




Pillowcase Styled Quit Case: 32 blocks, 16 per side




Pieced and quilted by Michele Savikko Bilyeu 
Salem, Oregon

April 2015

Front:
                                                               70 Pieced Cross Blocks


Back:
Timeless Treasures: "Quest for a Cure" and "Faith" fabrics
+
5 Additional and very dear Cross Blocks to match!
     


Any and all small remaining blocks will be made into a Prayer Flag for the People of Nepal,
With our thoughts for our mutual friend Andrea Balosky (Nyima Lhamo of Nepal) and all of her friends, family, and country people of Nepal and its surrounding areas.

And if you can't see your block, trust me some of yours is in there somewhere. I couldn't quite get 122 into the quilt but I did my best doing what I did and no block goes unloved and used for this cause!!Many are in the pillowcase sham..two sides, and others are going into the prayer flag garland!!!


My thanks to the wonderful and loving quilters across the USA and Canada, who donated their beautiful cross blocks and made this quilt possible. Thank you to those who donated fabric, scraps, and money for batting and thread. And many thanks to Yvonne Porcella, who told me to cut the blocks and the quilt size down or it would be too heavy! And to Mary Lou, herself, for all of her support, her advice and her help..and yes!..Mary Lou made some of the blocks, herself! She knew fun when she saw it! And she shared the process with her quilting groups as she worked her way through California on the way back home to Spokane and her earthly treatments. Bless you, Mary Lou!




I dearly loved making this quilt and am grateful to have been able to do so. I managed to listen to everyone's advice and kept it to the 'throw' or 'comfort quilt' size of 4' x 6'. It feels just right in all ways!

It is being mailed today to Mary Lou who is undergoing treatment for Breast Cancer, knowing that the healing power of love from the Divine through our hearts and our hands, will fill her to the brim and carry her through all that she needs to do to be healed in mind, body, and spirit, from the challenges of this disease.


We love you, Mary Lou!!!



363 views as of 5/9/15

The Mary Lou Weidman Healing Power of Love Cross Quilt

Postnote: 
For some reason, blogger occasionally double posts my blog entries. One of the many interesting things that happens in my world. I always see it as an opportunity to choose to redo my blog looking for duplicates, or just leaving it in and seeing if it goes away on its own ;-)  So, the next post is the original one, this was the update after I made a correction...it went into a whole 'nother edit box. I changed the wording slightly so I could tell them apart. I once deleted a duplicate post..only it was the original one. Boy, was that fun! You can't put back what you've already deleted! I'll leave them both for right now!

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey from Alaska to Oregon with thousands of free Quilting, Sewing, and Crafting Patterns and Tutorials. Help change the world, one little quilt, art quilt, and prayer flag at a time!

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Aug 18, 2011

Remembering Laurel





Michele Bilyeu
Salem, OR USA
Width: 9" Length: 12"
Materials/Techniques: Free-pieced cotton fabrics, ink jet photo printing of Laurel Burch quote on fabric, and glass beads. Liberated, freely pieced flying geese and curved seams to invite the 'freedom of birds in flight' and the 'mysteries of the earth' with Laurel Burch's cats and cat angels peeking out from everywhere.
Artist Statement: When Laurel Burch left home at the age of 14, she had a paper bag of clothing and a rare bone disease that created over 100 fractures and resulted in her death in 2007, at the age of 61. We all face challenges in our life. May we learn to face them with the exuberant joy, passion for color and zest for life and living that Laurel Burch had.

Dedication: Laurel's life filled us with color and joy and a passion for living. May this quilt carry those energies and fill your life with that magic, as well.
This quilt earned $50 for the AAQI and sold before it ever made it to the "quilts awaiting assignment page" or the "sale page" or the "Holding for Houston" page.

I really enjoyed making this one with its bright, joy filled fabrics, the lovely quotation, and lots of liberated piecing and curves. It took me about 3 days as I worked through the piecing, photo printing and beads... and they were all great fun!

7656 Remembering Laurel and...
I have one other 'Laurel' quilt awaiting assignment and photographing. The partner to this one is named is #7820 Laurel Points the Way...maybe she'll make it to Houston...or maybe she'll end up with her 'sister'....who knows? I'm having fun and they all go for such a wonderful cause.

Check out my other blog for our AAQI Liberated Challenge group quilts that have so far made the Holding for Houston page and remember that our group's quilts above #'s 6805 have not yet been selected for traveling. Maybe, I'll get a quilt to Houston yet. Do I have to hope that mine don't get sold in order to travel, now....big ;)

Free Laurel Burch Quilt Patterns:
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Jun 20, 2011

Bah Humbug!


7148 – Bah Humbug!
Michele Bilyeu
Salem, OR USA
Width: 12" Length: 9"
Materials/Techniques: Cotton fabrics with some hand painting, embroidery floss details and free motion quilting.
Artist Statement: Everyone has those "bah humbug" moments, when everything that can go wrong, does! We can choose how we handle life's challenges, but someone with Alzheimer's cannot. It's up to us to make the best of whatever life has to offer us and help those who cannot help themselves. This quilt is filled with the good will that says "Bah Humbug!" to ALL challenges and "yes" to making the best of things...day by day!
Dedication: For all of those who face life's challenges and in the spirit of unruly determination to keep going no matter what!
Bah Humbug is now on the "For Sale" page and available for purchase! All profits from the sale of AAQI quilts go to fund Alzheimer's research. Please consider the purchase of this quilt ...for yourself, as a gift, or for anyone having a 'Bah Humbug!' kind of day!

When I made this quilt, I had joined Tonya Ricucci's Bah Humbug liberated letters quilt challenge...and of course Tonya had just had knee surgery. So, I couldn't help myself...vision of band-aids, crutches and bah humbug moments flew threw my head! I just had to make a Bah Humbug! art quilt for donation to AAQI.

We all have Bah Humbug! moments....but having someone acknowledge it and cheer you up with good humor and maybe a little art quilt...just might help and it certainly reminds all of us that someone out there truly cares!

It's been listed by AAQI as for sale for $75. Won't you consider a donation towards funding Alzheimer's research by buying this little quilt for someone you love, today?



7148 – Bah Humbug!
$75.00

For Sale Here

Please check out one of my other freshly updated blogs for this wonderful news!

Island Batik Donates $25,000 to AAQI

PS on buying a quilt from AAQI:
For those of you in the AAQI QAM club, it fulfills the requirement for the purchase of a quilt for the Quilt A Month club for June. Remember! It's just as wonderful to buy a quilt as it is to make one each month ;)

MICHELE NOTE:
Are your sidebar links and photos failing to update for me? Please correct your link list to this setting for With Heart and Hands:
http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com
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Apr 25, 2011

I Want To Go Home: For the AAQI

6598 – I Want to Go Home
(sold/$75 donation to AAQI)
 
Michele Bilyeu
Salem Oregon/Douglas Alaska
Width: 12" Length: 9"
Materials/Techniques: Original design with free cut and fused cottons, raw edge appliqué, thread painting and beadwork.
Artist Statement: My mother would wake up every morning and go to sleep every night in our Alaskan childhood home that she had lived in for almost 60 years. She would always say the same thing:

"I want to go home."

 When we told her "This is your home!”

 She would always say "It sure doesn't look like my home! Everything is all crazy and mixed up!" 

 She is still being cared for at home and it is still crazy and mixed up. Once the chaos of Alzheimer's enters your home, nothing is ever the same again.

Michele Bilyeu
Dedication: In memory of the 14 members of my family who have already passed with Alzheimer's and related dementias, and in honor of my mother who still does her best...each and every day, in her crazy and mixed up world..
This quilt has Fast Finish Triangles.

This quilt earned $75 for AAQI.

Note from Michele:
It's always delightful to learn that someone has purchased one of my AAQI quilts before it ever made it to the web page or auction block.

I am honored and delighted that it earned $75 for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative....and never more so than when I am actually up in Douglas, Alaska actively caring for my mom with her advanced Alzheimer's.

This little story quilt depicts my childhood island home in Alaska... with its mountains, birds, valleys, and our lovely Sandy Beach where we actually play in the sand, and find starfish and seashells. When our Taku winds blow, our houses sway, our rooftops can even fly off. It gives others the chance to know what our home feels like inside and out..... without or without any wind.

Alzheimer's disease tears apart the fabric of so many lives and stretches and bends us all to our limits of sanity. Our respite come from contact with nature and the quiet places within that give us deep solace. We learn to bend with the winds of time and change and learn that we are all part of a greater cycle.

I am 'home' with my mother no matter where I am, she is, or where she 'thinks' she is. And it's always so very good to truly be home.
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Dec 31, 2010

New Year's Eve Dreams



It's New Year's Eve and I'm dreaming of places far away yet so dear and near to my heart.

So much has happened in just one year. I look back on it all, all of those Stitches in Memory and Time and it's almost unbelievable. 

I am so grateful for the time I was able to spend with my mother and father last year even the challenges - my terrible broken wrist and resulting alien encounters and my sad loss of my father.

If I hadn't broken my wrist and needed the surgery there in Alaska, I wouldn't have had all of those extra months with him! If my mother hadn't developed blood clots, I wouldn't have flown back to Juneau to be with both of them again right after bringing our family to Anchorage for a nephews wedding- just one month before my dad passed away!

With all of the challenges, so much good and so much gratitude in spite of them. And yes, four trips to Alaska was both incredibly expensive and challenging but it was a time and a place that I can never have again.

I learned so much about myself this past year. Learned that I am capable - physically, emotionally, and spiritually, of so much more than even I thought I was. 

I learned that I can do and be the things and the person that I want, and need to be in this life time and not waste it any more than I have to.

I am thankful that my life wasn't any harder than it needed to be. Thankful that I still could enjoy family and friends and my hobbies and passions that mean so much to me.

I am so thankful for all of you, for having this blog as my fulcrum point for connecting, and for all of the laughter therapy and friendships that all of you have shared with me. Such a wonderful gift!

And today - tonight, on New Year's Eve - I offer all of you "Twilight Dreams." 

My 11th art quilt donated to the Alzheimer's Art Quilts Initiative during 2010 as part of my AAQI Liberated Quilters Challenge to myself, and all of you and my Quilt #11 in Finn's New Year's Eve Quilt Challenge

http://fb.me/RP7DnWk1 12:05 PM Jan 11th via Facebook

Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative Sold quilts #6165

Michele Bilyeu quilts for AAQI..the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Won't you please join us?


Love to you all!


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Dec 20, 2010

Winter Solstice




From ancient times, the winter season has been seen as part of balance of nature...a time where the balance point changes between the darkness and the light.

As with the falling of the leaves, it is a time for change and a natural time for letting go of all that which seems dark within one's life. A natural time for making choices to bring in the light...both to lessen the darkness within, and to open ourselves to life's full beauty and grace.

Throughout history, in all of the world's cultures, through belief systems, festivals, traditions and practices, the changes in the cycles of birth, death and rebirth have been intrinsically and symbolically honored. From this honoring comes our holidays...our 'holy days.'

When we walk between the veils of one season and the next......or one change or one emotion and the next...or even one 'holy day' and the next..we find ourselves always balancing our emotions...balancing the dark emotions, the very ones which create power and change, or the light emotions, the ones which bring in joy and abundance.

Winter Solstice is dated by changes in the calendar but it falls on December 21 or 22 in the Northern Hemisphere and December 20 or 21 in the Southern. It is truly the exact moment when the earth is at a point in its orbit where one hemisphere is most inclined away from the sun.But has come to mean the turning point to midwinter, or the first day of winter.

Solstice is of a Latin borrowing and means 'sun stand', referring to the appearance that the sun's noontime elevation stops in its progress. It is both the shortest day...and the longest night of the year. Many cultures, the world over, perform solstice ceremonies. At their root is the ancient fear that the failing light would never return unless humans intervened with some vigil or celebration.

The Winter Solstice has always been associated with the birth of a divine king in many different cultures, long before the rise of Christianity and the blessed birth of the holy infant, Jesus.

Since the Sun is considered to represent the male divinity in many pagan traditions, this time is celebrated as the return of the sun god where he is reborn of the goddess. Other cultures have similar beliefs and associations.Many cultures celebrate or celebrated a holiday near (within a few days) the winter solstice... Yalda, Saturnalia, Christmas, Karachun, Hanukkah, Festivus, and Kwanzaa.

Christmas, like all holy or holidays, is a special time of remembrance of both the birth of the new, divining power and all of the symbols of home and family. It is a time when we can most acutely feel the greatest darkness or the brightest light...a time of giving, of receiving.....or for some a time of loss of light, and a feeling of going into the dark.

This is a deep time and a sacred space, a time and a symbol for all of us about being lost, facing those emotions and feeling the sadness, the yearning, and the grief that such loss brings into our lives.

But with that darkness, comes the sacred birth of a new light and all of the wisdom, power, and knowledge that this sacred birth created and brought into our lives for transfiguration and rebirth.

We create our gifts of abundance, we manifest blessings and peace, and we enter into a new place of well-being and joy. Celebrate with the gifts of nature, the gifts of our hands, and the many blessings and gifts from our hearts.

height
Winter Solstice /Lunar Eclipse! Dec.20 or Dec 21 depending on where you live.
NASA will be streaming the eclipse live

The last conjunction of a total (full moon) lunar eclipse and the solstice was Dec. 21, 1638.


6078 - Far, Far, Away
This little quilt has been created for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. It is a manifestation of the polarity that has been created in my mother and even our own lives with Alzheimer's Disease and a representation of the world she lives in...far, far, away.

Finn's New Year's Eve Quilt Challenge:
Quilt #10: Far, Far, Away

Liberated Quilting Challenge: Our AAQI Challenge Quilts January 2011 Update
Michele Bilyeu quilts for AAQI..the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Won't you please join us? :)
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Dec 13, 2010

Art Quilters AT AAQI Finance New Alzheimer’s Discovery!


Our AAQI Quilters Have Financed a New Alzheimer’s Discovery! I have just learned from Ami Simms that the research financed by AAQI and carried out by Dr. Mi Hee Lim and her colleagues at the University of Michigan has yielded wonderfully positive results!

Their research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Thousands of web pages all over the world are now carrying this story and a mention of our funding is showing up in them, over and over!

Imagine seeing our own Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative listed right next to the National Institutes of Health on one of the many thousands of web sites carrying this story on the latest Alzheimer's discovery!

In March of this year, the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative awarded a $30,000 grant to the University of Michigan for research under the direction of assistant professor Dr. Mi Hee Lim for research she has been doing with lab members Jung-Suk Choi and Joseph Braymer regarding molecular tools that both grab metal ions and interact with amyloid-beta tangles in Alzheimer's victims brains.

AAQI has now awarded six grants since we began making, donating, and raising research monies with quilts and this was the third of those six awarded so far. Ami and her support team not only brought the check for our earned research monies but she also brought quilts to show the researchers, as well. Just picture that amazing scene.....Ami and her support staff showing our quilts as they described how we make them, donate them, and auction them off to raise the money for the check that Ami then handed over to them! What a wonderful and amazing thing!

Because of our funding, Dr Lim and her team were able to create new molecular tools that show promise for cleansing the brain of amyloid plaques. These plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, are clumps of misfolded proteins thought to cause cell death leading to devastating memory loss and cognitive decline. Finding ways to cross through the blood brain barrier is something I have been reading about for years and here this team has worked out a means and a method that might significantly alter Alzheimer's research from now on!

The researchers went on to show that in solutions with or without living cells, the molecules were able to regulate copper-induced amyloid-beta aggregation, not only disrupting the formation of clumps, but also breaking up clumps that already had formed.

This is just one amazing step towards a possible cure, but it's a promising one!

As someone who has a very great chance of getting Alzheimer's myself...with 15 immediate family members having had or my mother now currently having this horrible disease....everything that AAQI does, every word that Ami Simms writes or says in a press release means the world to me and I have shared that with her repeatedly. She and all of the researchers and all who care and take that caring and do something positive with it...they are my heroes.

If any one of you, who loved your own mother, your own father, your aunts or yours uncles, your husbands, or sisters or brothers, had to watch what happens to them...first their memory, then their body...limb by limb, organ by organ, until they no longer have control over anything anymore...trust me, you would be as passionate as I am.

Never underestimate the power of quilts, quilters, and quilting! We are making a difference!


One of the 11 art quilts that I made and donated to AAQI in 2010 and 1 of 53 small quilts that will be traveling the country as part of the AAQI 2011 Traveling Exhibit of larger 'name' quilts.
Alzheimer's Illustrated: From Heartbreak to Hope

I support the Alzheimer's Art Quilts Initiative
and moderate the AAQI Liberated Quilters Challenge
Please help me by joining in and making small 4" x 6" or 9" x 12" art quilts for this cause.

Link to this story:
Quilters Finance New Alzheimer's Discovery


Google:
Unraveling Alzheimer’s: Simple small molecules could untangle complex disease
Quilters Finance New Alzheimer’s Discovery

Ongoing Liberated Quilting Challenge: new quilts added in

Liberated Quilting Challenge

Get the latest news about the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative on the AAQI BLOG!
For more frequent news follow the AAQI on FaceBook and Twitter.

Michele Bilyeu quilts for AAQI..the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Won't you please join us? :)
Michele Bilyeu on Facebook
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Dec 10, 2010

Liberated and Improvisational Quilting


What is Liberated, Wonky, and Improvisational Quilting?

The term was first introduced when Gwen Marston published her iconic Liberated Quiltmaking and opened up the world of quilting to the ideas of process quilting. Unlike traditional quilting where one simply followed patterns and used templates, liberated quilting is more about the free piecing of non-traditional elements without sacrificing our quilting roots of the patterns we have loved in the past.

So whether you are looking for wonky houses, stars, asterisks, barns, baskets,birds, butterflies, fish, hearts, nine patches, crosses or pluses, flowers, letters, space ships, spools, strings, or wonky and liberated ideas and patterns of all kinds. You've come to the right place!


As an ardent liberated quilter, I am sharing my own collection of ideas, links, and process 'patterns' and tutorials to give you a jump start into the world of Liberated Quilting, as is opening up and continuing today. Thanks to a whole new generation of quilters, as well as the wonderful world of the utilitarian quilts as demonstrated by the Quilters of Gee's Bend and others...ideas and techniques abound and books and other forms of tutelage are coming into free play.

So, whether you love Gwen Marston, or you're just a free spirited or modern quilter, today, Gwen led the way by showing all of us the the process she was using to create her non-traditional quilts. In that process, she discovered a variety of new quilting ideas involving piecing. The idea of liberated or wonky, free-pieced houses and liberated stars was born...and it has only continued to grow in leaps and bounds since that day.

Welcome to the Wonky World of Liberated Quilting!

wonky: adjective
1) rickety, shaky, wobbly, wonky; inclined to shake as from weakness or defect;
"a rickety table"; "a wobbly chair with shaky legs"; "the ladder felt a little wobbly"; "the bridge still stands though one of the arches is wonky"
2) askew, awry(p), cockeyed, lopsided, wonky, skew-whiffturned or twisted toward one side;

Great List of Wonky, Free-Pieced, or Liberated Quilt Block Patterns, Techniques or Ideas:...use these to understand the liberated process and jump start your own ideas!

Asterisks by Tonya Ricucci
Baskets from Basket Full of Scraps by Sujata
Birds, Free Piecing Tutorial by Lynne of Patchery Menagerie
Butterflies, Wonky Free Piecing Tutorial by Lynne
Butterfly BlockTutorial by Mrs. Schmenkman Quilts
Charming Butterfly Blocks by Ferne
Crazy Nine-Patch Lattice Quilt by Oh! Fransson
Cross or Plus Quilt from Sew Mama Sew
Crumb Chaos from Patti at Quilting... is Still My Passion
Curved strip piecing tutorial by Brenda of Strips and Strings
Disappearing 9-Patch with Pieced Hearts by Block'n Swaps
Free Pieced Flower by Sarah (Kromama)
Free Pieced Letters by Brenda of Scraps and Strings
Free Pieced Rose Tutorial shared With Heart and Hands
Free-style Tree from Sophie Junction
Fungly Challenge from Tonya Ricucci
Hand Quilting without a Hoop
houses (Wonky Houses) by Tonya Ricucci, the Unruly Quilter
Liberated Rose: Free-Piecing Roses by Michele from With Heart and Hands
Orphans Blocks Tutorial by Finn, Pieces from My Scrapbag
Red Cross Block Tutorial by Camp Follower Bags
Scrappy Heart (6 inch) Quiltingabout.com
Scrappy Pieced Heart into a Liberated logs quilt
String Fish Aquarium by Ruthie
Strings ~ Hearts from Mary at MaryQuilts.com
Letters. . . We've Got Letters by Sharon of Indigo Threads
Strip Pieced Letters by Brenda of Strips and Strings
Liberated Amish 2010 Get Together
Liberated Basket from Blocks n Swaps
Liberated Spiderweb block - no paper
Mary Quilts Wonky Rails from Maryquilts.com
Sarah London's Selvage Star tutorial is a 28 page PDF
Slash and Stack Wonky Blocks from Blocks n Swaps
Strip Pieced Letters by Brenda of Strips and Strings
Strings ~ Marys Patriotic Star from Maryquilts.com
String Quilting:Tutorial and Free Patterns
Taking the Leap Challenge from Tonya Ricucci
Tic-Tac-Toe (8 inch) from Sophie at Sophie's Junction
Tiny Wonky (Maverick) Stars by Bonnie Hunter
Twinkle, Twinkle, Wonky Star from Sew Take a Hike
Waverunner by Victoria at Bumble Beans
Wavy Seams Log Cabin from Pink Chalk Studio
Wonky butterfly by Lynn at the Patcherie Menagerie
Wonky Scrappy I Spy log cabin by Sarah, Kromama
Wonky Drunkard's Path from Quilting About.com
Wonky Houses by Tonya, the Unruly Quilter pdf
Wonky/improvisational log cabins from Jenny at Blempgorf
Wonky log cabin by Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie
Wonky or Maverick Star by Victoria The Silly Boo Dilly
Wonky RWB Rails (PDF file) by Maryquilts
Wonky Seams block from Pink Chalk Studio
Wonky Star Block from The Silly Boo Dilly
Wonky Star Ring Tutorial by Zonnah
Wonky Shoo Fly from Sophie's Junction
Wonky Spools from Quilter's Cache
Wonky Squares-in-Squares Block from Quilt Dad
Wonkytown from Tonya Ricucci
Liberated Links:
Liberated Quilting Blog
Liberated Quilters Yahoo Chat Group
Liberated Quilters Blog & Liberated Quilters Message Board Quilt for AAQI
Tonya Ricucci, the Unruly Quilter
Bonnie K. Hunter, Quiltville: Strings and Crumbs
HeartStrings Quilt Project
Wonky Tidbits:
Advice from Tonya Riccuci, The Unruly Quilter:
UnRuly Piecing Basics - UnRuly Basics Pdf


Strip Piecing Letters: Learn by watching the Progress:
Letters. . . We've Got Letters by Sharon of Indigo Threads
Strip Pieced Letters by Brenda of Strips and Strings
Letters by Lynne of the Patchery Menagerie
Wonky Alphabet Letters Lynne's fabulous work...check her letters in progress

Photos and ideas:
Flickr: Free Pieced Quilting Pool
Liberated Amish Challenge 2010
Tonya Riccuci's Fall/Winter Class of 2007
House, Home and Pantry - Fall 2008

Books of Interest:

Liberated String Quilts
Liberated String Quilts
Gwen Marston

Liberated Quiltmaking
Liberated Quiltmaking
Gwen Marston

Liberated Quiltmaking II
Liberated Quiltmaking II
Gwen Marston

Collaborative Quilting
Collaborative Quilting
Freddy Moran, Gwen Marston

Freddy & Gwen Collaborate Again: Freewheeling Twists on Traditional Quilt Designs
Freddy & Gwen Collaborate Again: Freewheeling Twists on Traditional Quilt Designs
Freddy Moran, Gwen Marston

Ideas and Inspirations: Abstract Quilts in Solids
Ideas and Inspirations: Abstract Quilts in Solids
Gwen Marston, Gregory Case

The Quilts of Gee's Bend: Masterpieces from a Lost Place
The Quilts of Gee's Bend: Masterpieces from a Lost Place
William Arnett, Alvia Wardlaw, Jane Livingston, John Beardsley

Product Details
Word Play
Tonya Ricucci

Shown at top:
Liberated Rose:Free Piecing Tutorial
My little "Liberated Rose"art quilt may be only 9" x 12". On display this fall at the 2010 Houston International Quilt Festival,it was part of the:Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative and my own Liberated Quilting Challenge.

AAQI links of note:
Art Quilters Finance New Alzheimer's Discovery
AAQI For Sale page and ongoing QUILT AUCTION
Ami Simms and AAQI Quilts onThe Quilt Show
http://www.alzquilts.org/loatallqu.html

Liberated Quilters make 16 quilts to fight Alzheimer's: http://with-heart-and-hands.blogspot.com/2010/03/liberated-quilting-challenge.html
Liberated Quilting... | Facebook
Liberated Quilting Blog shares news of AAQI-funded research! Liberated Quilting Challenge: Unraveling Alzheimer's: Simple small molecules could untangle ...
www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid...id... - Cached
Twitter / Alzheimer's Art Quil: Liberated Quilting Blog sh ...
Liberated Quilting Blog shares news of AAQI-funded research! http://fb.me/FNzoBHSF.
twitter.com/AAQIUpdate/status/14367857865400321 - Cached


Follow the AAQI on TwitterMichele Bilyeu quilts for AAQI..the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Won't you please join us? :)
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Dec 6, 2010

Word Play (Quilts)


In honor of the release of the Unruly Quilters new book Word Play Quilts, December 7th has been 'officially' declared "International Tonya Ricucci Day."

Under her former covert code name of LazyGal Tonya, Tonya Ricucci is the guerrilla commander of the underground "Alphabet Liberation Front."

Clad in wild shirts, with a cat under each arm (and one wrapped in a quilt), Tonya is the one who opened the doors to the releasing of the entire ABC Nation.

Single handedly, with the cheering on of Queen Bonnie of Quiltville and the lovely lady, Clare...Duchess of Dordogne, (and her ladies in waiting, too numerous to count), she freed first the Upper Case, and then the Lower Case, and then...the period, the comma, the question mark, and the exclamation point!

"Free at last, free at last" the untethered letters proclaimed. They jumped off their perfectly cut and perfectly lined foolscap and off into uncut, and unlined horizons.

Once the horizon was changed, even the liberated stars began to fall out of alignment....and the escaping celestial chords began to chime to a different key, and in a new and full array of rainbow brite colors.....the quilting world was forever changed, once more.

The stars and the Asterisks, the houses and the Wonkytowns, and the amazing holidays..Halloween, Hallowistmas, and Christmas and everything, and everybody, began to march to a different drummer. We began to sew with a different palette and the rainbows opened up in the sky and the tones, and the hues began to warm up....and and then suddenly....the color orange became the new neutral.

Tonya had it all sewn up in a bag and the bag was a gift to the liberated who were pointless, and hoopless, and out of line, at last.

LazyLady Tonya wasn't lazy anymore. NewandVeryBusyLady Tonya began to create a new vision. One that did not involve jumping through hoops, or even quilting with one, for anybody.

The now proclaimed, UnrulyOne, not only gave us the UnRuly Piecing Basics but as her ladies staggered into uneven formation, the Liberation Front was filled with H-O-P-E once more.

Quilters had a cause and a be-cause at last.

Hoopless, but not hapless, she showed up in our Houses, our Homes even our Pantry and it was she, who made ugly fun again. She took a leap and a bound, and began her plan of a 2010 Liberation of the Amish.

One by one, we began ripping off our perfect points and we burned them in the cataclysmic fires of the future of freedom. Looking disdainfully at the meeting of great seams, we knocked them all wonky and askew.

"Woo Hoo!" we hollered, as the Wonky Women united. We built wonky houses, and wonky villages, wonky forests that hid the wonky trees, wonky cats and dogs,wonky butterflies and birds, wonky flowers and fish. Our own imaginations ignited, and we set off on our own paths of creative de- and re- construction.

It didn't matter if we could free-piece letters. It didn't matter if we couldn't immediately let go of the rules and regulations. What mattered is we now knew we didn't have to play by any rules. We just were given permission to play ,? ; : and !.

Thanks Tonya! For all you did for the Liberation of the Alphabet Nation, your creation of the Liberated Front, and for your inspiration for today's Word Play fun!

And Clare Worthy, the Duchess of Dordogne who proclaimed today as Tonya Ricucci, the Unruly Quilter Day, asks:

"How did Tonya, personally inspire each of you?"

I became a Wonky Woman and a Happy Free-Piecing Fool.

I was inspired by her AAQI HOPE Challenge, to create the AAQI Liberated Quilting Challenge and invited by Clare to co-moderate Tonya's blog Liberated Quilting.

I was inspired to collect, and to create, the first Liberated Quilting: Blocks, Letters, Patterns and Tutorials list.

And I was inspired to say...the heck, with it all. If your blog post that is scheduled to officially post on Tuesday, December 7...in honor of "International Tonya Ricucci Day"...self publishes on Monday, December 6th.....I give a big sigh...and go ahead and allow its liberation. After all...I've always been spatially challenged. So, if a blog can publish by itself...can it write its own posts, too ;)

Thanks for all of the cat hair Tonya. Thanks for the extra hours in my sewing room, the huge mess on the sewing room floor, and for the husband who now wonders if I am ever coming downstairs again.


LINKS:
Liberated Quilting
Liberated Quilting Challenge
Liberated Quilting: Free Patterns, Blocks, and Tutorials
Word Play (Quilts)
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