Claire Sherman Art

Liora’s quilt finished!

Posted on December 1, 2019 by admin

I’m really happy to have finished this quilt in time to take it to the EBHQ meeting which was the Monday before Thanksgiving. It’s always good to have a deadline. And Liora is only a month old, so I’m quite pleased. Especially since her parents weren’t public about what her name was until her baby naming at 8 days old. A week or two before she was born, I brought a pile of about 30 fabrics to her parents for some weeding. These were the 30 fabrics in my stash that had animals on them. I knew her parents loved animals. They whittled it down to 11 favorites and about 10 maybes. I managed to use 5 different animal fabrics on the front, and 5 more on the back, plus a green fabric with computer circuits. (Both her parents are computer techies). Here’s the back:

And here’s the label:

The letters on the front are backed with fusible web, then I zigzaged around each letter with a matching thread. I will deliver this quilt tomorrow morning.

Posted in Baby quilts, Machine applique | Comments Off

Maggie’s quilt

Posted on November 14, 2019 by admin

I got an email from the Chinese Historical Society of San Francisco asking if they could borrow my quilt about Maggie Gee again for a show. I looked and looked for the quilt- it’s quite small, about 20 inches in height, but couldn’t find it anywhere in my sewing room. I finally emailed back that I couldn’t find the quilt. They replied that they already had my quilt from the previous show. The show my quilt was in was called Towards Equality, and the next show is about WWII. I totally forgot that my quilt was already in the museum. This will be the third show this same quilt will be in the societies’ museum in SF Chinatown.

Here’s a photo of my quilt hanging in the museum.

And here’s a brief bio of Maggie Gee:

Margaret “Maggie” Gee, 1923- 2013 was born in Berkeley, CA. As a child, she loved to watch the planes take off and land at the Oakland airport, and dreamed of becoming a pilot. When the U.S. entered WWII in 1941, Maggie quit UC Berkeley and became a draftsman for the war effort. Her mother got a job as a welder, building Liberty ships. In 1943 Maggie and two friends decided to go to flight school with the hopes of joining the Women Air-force Service Pilots (WASP). They pooled their money, bought a car for $25, and drove to Nevada. After a rigorous test, Maggie was accepted into WASP training one of only two Chinese American women to do so. Though not allowed in combat, she trained other pilots. After the war she became a physicist for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. With a passion for politics, she served on the California Democratic Party Executive Board.

Posted in Quilt Shows | Tagged Maggie Gee | 1 Comment

Carrie’s baby quilt

Posted on November 6, 2019 by admin

I just finished this baby quilt for a neighbor who’s having a baby shower next weekend. She asked for orange, yellow and blue. I picked fabrics that had an interesting image in those colors. This quilt actually has 15 different fabrics! It’s a little quirky, with carrots, fish, lemons, snails and peaches in it. It’s certainly not an art quilt, but it was fun to make. I wanted it to be fast and easy. I cut out most of the squares at Hello Stitch, with their CriCut machine. I had to fussy cut the oranges and fish, so I did that by hand with a ruler.

Here’s the back. It’s Marimekko. I don’t remember how I got this fabric. Maybe June gave it to me? I think Carrie (the mom of the baby) will like the back since it’s so orange.

Here’s the label. Helen Green is a neighbor who quilts. She’s about 82 years old. At the neighborhood potluck, when Carrie announced her pregnancy, i offered to make Carrie a quilt. Helen also offered, so Carrie suggested that Helen help me. Helen offered to help me hand quilt the baby quilt! I said I had no intention of hand quilting it, but that Helen could help me sew on the binding. When I was collecting blue, orange and yellow fabrics for the front, Helen let me raid her stash. The fish, oranges, butterflies and kokopelis come from Helen. Unfortunately Helen fell and broke her hand, so she wasn’t able to help me sew the binding on. The up side is that she didn’t break her hip.

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PIQF

Posted on October 23, 2019 by admin

Here I am, visiting my quilt at the Pacific International Quilt Festival! This quilt was finished on the day before it was due for jurying. It was a huge effort to finish it in time, but I did it! Below are other quilts at the show. The first one is my friend, Julia, in front of 2 of her quilts.

Posted in Improvisational piecing, Quilt Shows | Comments Off

Process photos for Circular Rectangles

Posted on September 4, 2019 by admin

Circular Rectangles is the kind of quilt where you keep making units, without firm ideas about how to sew them together, and put them on a design wall. The blocks don’t get sewn together until the whole quilt is on the wall, and you’ve stopped rearranging it. I chose not to square up blocks or make them all the same size in this quilt. Some of the edges are curved rather than straight. Some blocks are square, some are rectangular, and some edges are slightly rounded. This makes it more challenging to sew together.

Here’s the first process photo, above.

Here’s the second. Note the little white rectangular holes in the design. With this quilt I decided to embrace “partial seam construction.” I ended up with 3 holes where I needed to sew in a rectangle with partial seam construction.

Here I was working on adding the red to the upper corner, and the blue to the lower corner. I really liked the fabric with the polka dots on the bottom right, but it never made it into the quilt. In the finished quilt, the lower left corner is my favorite part of the quilt. I like the way the edge of the piecing interacts with the blue negative space next to it.

Posted in Classes, Improvisational piecing, Work In Progress | 2 Comments

Two quilts finished!

Posted on August 31, 2019 by admin

This is the small healing quilt I just finished. I’d like to make a larger one, and maybe add more embellishments, like embroidery and tassels to the bottom. I have a lot of ideas for another healing quilt. I’d like to experiment with quilt edges that aren’t straight. I’d like to do more with middle eastern archways.

It’s hard to see in this photo, but there are seed beads sewn in the flowers. I used fusible applique for the hamsa in the middle, and used a straight stitch to sew it down. I used to do a lot of paper-cutting with an Exacto knife. It’s harder with fabric, because it stretches, but the skill set is the same.

I call this one, “Circular Rectangles”. I started this quilt a year or so ago when I first taught my circular squares and rectangles class. I taught it again, recently, and made more rectangles with the same colors. I decided it was time to gather both sets of blocks together and make a quilt. My favorite part is the lower left corner where the edge of the pattern meets the blue of the negative space. I’d like to make another quilt like this, but with more negative space, and less busy, overall.

Here’s a detail of the quilting. I used my walking foot, of course.

Posted in hamsa, Improvisational piecing, Machine applique | 1 Comment

House shaped hamsa quilt

Posted on August 12, 2019 by admin

I took the hamsa I cut out in the fusible appliqué class I taught, and put it in an appliquéd archway. I think I’m going to wait until it’s ready to be quilted before stitching anything down. In this photo I’m auditioning the other fabrics for this small quilt. I’m really pleased with the ombré fabric behind the hamsa. This quilt won’t be a square or rectangle. I’m planning to make it house shaped, with a pointy roof.

In the photo above I was experimenting with making a pointy roof. I decided not to do it this way, but to make it larger, and add an additional fuscia triangle for the roof.

Posted in Classes, hamsa, Machine applique, Work In Progress | Comments Off

Fusible fabric appliqué i.e. Paper-cutting

Posted on August 7, 2019 by admin

I taught a fusible fabric appliqué class at Hello Stitch last Sunday. This was the first time I’ve taught this class as a fabric class and not a hamsa or paper-cutting class. I taught the basics of paper-cutting, but everyone did it on fabric. It was a great class. I had 6 students, 5 of whom had never taken a class with me before. Here is my students’ work:

Below is is the hamsa I worked on during class. I was too busy teaching to finish it then. But I finished cutting it out (with an X-acto knife) while watching Outlander on Netflix.

Posted in Classes, hamsa, Machine applique, Work In Progress | Tagged Claire-Sherman, hamsa, hamsas, Hello Stitch | Comments Off

Really? A hamsa air freshener?

Posted on July 19, 2019 by admin

In Mount Vernon, Wa I found this hamsa shaped air freshener. I’m amazed that hamsas have become this mainstream. Not only that, but it has rainbow stripes on it.

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A quilty stone floor

Posted on July 17, 2019 by admin

This is the stone floor in a train station in Seattle. The colors were richer than what you see in the photo. I could easily imagine it as a quilt.

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