Preparing for Juried Shows, and Gallery Exhibitions

With the first set of designs for my line of pillow covers out of the way, it's time to start preparing a portfolio for my applications to juried shows and gallery exhibitions.
If I'm going to participate in any shows next year I need to get some pieces together in a hurry.
The first decision to make is on product. What do I want to exhibit? Fiber of course. One show piece garment. One major quilt and four really small story quilts. One exquisite stole. This will give me three possible categories for jurying - fiber, artwear and quilts.

The show piece garment.
My favorite pattern of the moment is a Donna Karan DKNY coat and dress. Vogue Pattern V1074. (This is out of print.)

I love the coat, but probably would prefer a sheath dress underneath. There are enough pattern pieces to use a variety of coordinating patterned fabrics. The fit of the coat is loose so it will cover three sizes. This is the pattern I think I'll use for my show piece garment. I will post future blogs and images as the piece comes together.

Collaborating with a fashion designer.
There is also a designer, Minor Poet, with a shop on Etsy, I'd love to work with. Take a look at her shop and tell me what you think.

The large quilt and the four small quilts.
I knew I wanted to start on the quilts, so several weeks ago I took some images of plants and trees around the garden. The first topic I want to cover is a winter, Southern California garden. (This is really preparation for the food, politics and economic quilt series I'm planning.)

What follows is a vague outline of how I'll make the series of garden quilts using surface design hand processes and digital textile processes. The images are all from the photo shoot several weeks ago.

Obviously the first step was to take the images. Next I downloaded them from the camera into Photoshop, did a basic crop and sizing.

I'll select the images I want to use in the quilts and begin to edit each one individually in Photoshop. I find editing images a Zen like process and love it when you get down to the pixel level. Deleting one little square at a time.

After the images are edited I'll print them in color, and cut out the white backgrounds. Then I'll play around with placement, until I'm pleased with the composition.

I haven't decided if I'll send collaged images to the textile printer or individual images of the plants. Either way the printed fabric will be appliqued onto the quilt front.

The backgrounds will be based on the sky images. I'll dye fabric the color of the sky and using a discharge process create the cloud formations. Discharge is a bleach out process.

Next for the earth, I'll use shibori techniques to create the texture of earth. The earth and sky will be quilted together and the garden plant images appliqued on top of that.

The quilts at this point will require a review. I'm thinking of adding block print leaf motif borders, but that may be too much. An alternative idea would be a block printed leaf motif backing, that I would use as my quilting pattern.

The pieces will be hand quilted, with organic cotton batting. All of the fabrics will be organic cotton.

Now that you've seen the images you can see why I think I should quilt one large piece and four smaller pieces. If you live in San Diego and know how to hand quilt, come join the party.

I'll let you know my plans for the stole in the next post.