Zen Quilting

I took another Zendoodle class last night at The Artist's Haven.  This is a picture of the doodle I did in the first class.  Last night we learned more about adding color and shading.  I really want to sit and doodle some more - I just need to find the time!

At the Quilt Festival in Houston we found evidence of Zentangling everywhere!  I bought a couple of books at this booth in the vendor mall.  The woman, Joyce Teng, was very helpful and let me take some photos of some work she had done and had on display.  She and her husband Thomas sell quilting stencils, fabric inks, books, embellishments etc. Joyce had used some of her stencils to trace a design on fabric, then did some Zentangle in the shapes, colored it with fabric ink and made a nice little wall hanging.

Here she did the same thing with a fan stencil.

And with a gecko stencil, but instead of coloring in the Zentangle, she colored around it and filled in the background.

You can check out their website at:
www.teacherstamp.com

In the quilt show we discovered some Zen Quilting!  I took some pictures that reminded me of Zentangle.  This one is actually machine embroidery, but it has the look of Zentangle.

This quilt, "A Pocket Full of Paisleys" was made by Lorilynn King from Colorado.  She machine pieced and quilted the background, then added the digitized machine embroidered paisleys.  This quilt was recently on the cover of Machine Quilting magazine.  She said the techniques used are:
original digitized designs, machine appliqué, using computerized embroidery, hand-dyed fabrics by the artist, hand-guided machine quilting, bobbin work, hot fix crystals.

This quilt is an award winner so I posted a picture earlier, but here are a couple of close ups as well so you can see the Zen Quilting.  This is called "Zen Magpies" by Helen Godden from Australia.  In her artist's statement she says, "What is black and white and quilted all over?  Painted on silk sateen, the magpies sing their song with such joy and freedom  They are surrounded by extreme quilted doodle-mania, an explosion of decorative free-motion fun.  With over 100 different designs, the quilter has found her Zen!"

So the Zen craze has hit Australia too!

"A Ripple in Time" was made by Jackie White from Canada.  The quilt is colored, embroidered, free-motion quilted and machine appliquéd.

She says, "This quilt describes the past summer, when I would work away on my quilt wherever my children were playing.  I would haul it outside on the deck as they played in the dirt, in the car on road trips, and up to the farm on those rainy days  I always find summers just seem to disappear in the blink of an eye.  The time vanishes, hence the title of the quilt."

Now a quick shout out to my friend Sherry D. Ficklin on her latest book release!  She co-authored the book "Extracted" with Tyler H. Jolley.  I went to their book signing last night at Barnes and Noble.  Hurray for them!  How exciting for us to have two famous authors in our little town!  Now I can hardly wait to read the book!
Have a Happy Day!