In mid 2012 I was invited by Meta Heemskerk of the Netherlands to join her new site, Galleribba, a site devoted to featuring small, affordable art works by new and established artists from around the world. This week Galleribba was featured in an article on Textile Artist. Take a few minutes to read about Galleribba […]
Blog
Forget Me Not, Collaboration with Grandma
I am very much enjoying having the Forget Me Not quilt home, hanging in a prominent place. While it was hanging at the gallery I made the label for it. It was a great opportunity for me to salvage yet another small treasure from Grandma, a piece of broderie perse that I removed from a […]
Happy Anniversary
Last year I was inspired to felt some dryer lint. When my friend Shari saw this she brought me some of her lint. Initially I thought “Oh no!” I mean really, what if all my friends brought me dryer lint and expected something to be created from it? So I did the only thing I […]
Wordless Wednesday
Door in the Garden
During the summer I swapped a trellis that wasn’t being used for a door my friend Peter no longer needed. We’re both happy. Today the door was installed in our back yard. Here you can see the rather uninteresting side of the house: the hill is being terraced to create long flat spots so the […]
More From IQF Houston
There were so many incredible quilts at the Houston show! Here are a few more that I especially enjoyed. Suspicion by Tanya Brown is a diminutive quilt of 11 inches square. Tanya used Tsukineko ink, watercolor and free-motion quilting on cotton fabric for this original design. Poly Dressler Bech said she played with solar printing […]
International Quilt Festival Houston
I’m still a’flutter from my trip to IQF in Houston. Jenny Lyon was my travel partner and we were a perfect combo — she is high energy and kept me on my toes. She started posting about the show before we left Houston. You can see what she had to say about it here. When […]
Early Girl Tomato Marmalade
Our Early Girl tomato plants have been very productive this year. We’ve enjoyed the fruit steadily all summer and, even though it’s November, the fruit continues to ripen in our mild weather. Time to try another of Rachel Saunders’ recipes from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook! I love marmalade so what could be better than […]
Seadragon Up
When we hosted Senol Sak this summer he gifted us with some of his art. I was happy to have oil pastels on hand so that he could create this in my studio. Read about his process here. It has finally been framed and has a home in our guest bathroom. The simple brushed silver […]
Art Reception
The reception for my solo show at Creative Framing & Gallery was Saturday, October 20 from 6 – 9 pm. People came and went almost as if they had a time-stamped ticket which meant that the gallery was never over crowded and I had an opportunity to talk with everyone who came — a real […]
Sunflower Scrap Postcard
I remember mentioning the possibility of more sunflower scrap work in my future. I couldn’t resist doing another one, this time as a postcard. Click on image for a larger view. I used a newly learned zentangle design for quilting on the left side of the sunflower. Rick and Maria have named this […]
Zentangle Class
I took a beginning class with Grace Mendez on the art of zentangle. Zentangle is an easy-to-learn method of creating beautiful images from repetitive patterns. The tools we used to create the drawings include a pencil, a smudging stick, Sakura micron pen 01, and paper tiles which are mould-made, acid-free, 100% cotton, heavy-weight print-making paper […]
PIQF
I went to opening day of the Pacific International Quilt Festival at the Santa Clara Convention Center yesterday. So much eye candy! So much fun! Here are a few of the art quilts that stopped me in my tracks. I’m sorry I cut off the top edge of this charming quilt by Jenny Lyon. Love […]
Building a Collection
I was the lucky bidder on three foot-square art quilts during the SAQA Auction this year so I have to admit that I’m building a collection. Here is Spring Moons by Jeanne Marklin. The colors and texture of this quilt are just plain yummy. And I love the fact that her signature in the bottom […]
SAQA Auction
The annual SAQA on-line auction sold 267 art quilts, raising $54,200 for the organization. If you would like to see all the quilts that were available click here. Different View III by Mayann Weinberg came home to me yesterday. I am completely charmed by it. I love the way the muted colors swirl into one […]
Sunflower Scrap III Done
The third one of the Sunflower Scrap series was completed last weekend and hung on Monday in my solo show. This 12″ x 12″ size is simply wonderful for experimentation. There may be a few more of these in my future. See the first two of this series here and here.
Forget Me Not Done
And here it is! Top portion. It measures 54 1/2″ x 20″ and will eventually rest in my entry way. But first it will hang in my solo show beginning Monday, October 1st and running through October 31. If you are in the area, I hope you’ll stop by to see it and all the […]
Sunflower Scrap III
While Forget Me Not is being blocked I returned to work on another sunflower scrap piece. With just one flower on this one I said to myself, “Be bold with the quilting!” So here we are — I’m not confident enough to free-motion quilt and design the quilting simultaneously. Someday perhaps. Meanwhile, the blue sketch […]
Forget Me Not Progress
Keeping the nose to the needle is yielding good progress. Here’s a peek at how it’s shaping up. My friend Sherry Boram said she liked this collaboration. I had not thought of this quilt in quite that way, but she is absolutely right — it’s great to be working with Grandma again. I’m on track […]
Forget Me Not
Goals are good — deadlines can be overwhelming. That’s life. I have a solo exhibit opening October 1st and I set myself the goal of having a significant number of new works completed. It’s crunch time and I have two pieces yet to finish. I’ve shared some of my grandmother’s fine hand work before and […]
Studio Tour
When I grow to love someone’s art, I become curious about their inspiration, habits, equipment and their studio. I cannot tell you how moved I was to be standing in the actual apartment where Beethoven lived — several times during the span of 1804-1815 — in Vienna. Heap upon that the fact that his pen […]
Broken Ginkgos V
Here is the latest in my Broken Ginkgo series. For now, at least, this will be the last. I have two other pieces that need to be completed before my solo show which opens October 1 at Creative Framing & Gallery (check the side bar for more details). To read about the first 4 in […]
163 Steps to Wow
In the tourism trade my back yard is known as a Destination. Folks save their money and time away from work to visit the beautiful Bay Area of California. I work at not forgetting just how lucky I am to be here. One of the things I like to do is explore like a tourist. […]
Copyright Concerns
As an artist, I try to be diligent about acknowledging other artist’s work whenever I share it here. It has been my practice to watermark the images I take with ©FrankiKohler.com because I actually clicked the image. When your cursor hovers over the image the name of the art and the artist are revealed. During […]
Foto Friday
Sunflower Scrap 2 done!
This is the second of a series of 12″-square art quilts begun with a small scrap of printed cotton fabric. This one included a challenge of using three colors of blue thread and several sizes and patterns of free-motion quilting lines. Here are some details You can see where this idea began here. Earlier postings […]
Wordless Wednesday
Charming Pots
Last year when I planted the succulent wall with Barb there were a few cuttings left over. I knew immediately that I would plant them in the three completely charming pots that my friend Dale gifted me with several years earlier. Here they are today. I’ve searched my blog for the posting about the succulent […]
Sunflower 2 — Moving Forward
I realize that this is just fabric and thread but I am pushing myself in new directions and it feels more like walking a tightrope. One slip, and well, let’s not go there. I’ve had this piece on my design wall long enough. Time to move forward with something. The next layer of quilting is […]
Evening Feeding
This time of year the hummingbirds become thick at the feeders. We have one at our kitchen window, one in the back yard and one in the front yard. All three are the hummingbird/oriole feeder because we have regular visits by the orioles as well. We’ve had enough traffic at the kitchen window that a […]
