Fanciful Wool Applique by Sue Spargo

Just in the nick of time, the second to the last day of the exhibition, my quilt/bead buddies and I went to see the show at the La Conner Quilt & Textile Museum. WOW!

Sue Spargo's quilts on the 2nd floor just caught my heart, wrapped it up, and sent it to heaven! I've always been attracted to folk art, the whimsical, fanciful, happy, colorful art, which I assume is made by people who are equally whimsical, fanciful, happy, and colorful. 

While I loved every single one of Sue's quilts, I think this one makes me the happiest. Look at all these little chicks (36 of them!), jauntily dressed in their best, and headed toward a big hoopla somewhere to the left. Sue calls it "a small study sampler," and names it Bird Play #1. Here are some of my favorite players.

(I apologise for the shadows on the bottom of each of these detail pictures, caused by my hands and camera, and for the inaccurate colors, especially of the background. Picture them much brighter, more highly saturated colors, and the background is blue, not grey!)

Sue's technique of using hand-dyed wool, cotton fabrics, hand-dyed velvet, silk thread, Perle cottons, buttons, and beads to applique and embellish her little chicks (each about 3" high), lends itself so well to creating character. And birds are a great subject for "character," with their colorful plumes, spots, stripes, combs, feet, etc.

After making Bird Play #1 in 2013, Sue further developed her techniques in a larger wall quilt called Bird Dance, which is another piece at the top of my favorites list.

Once I had admired each of the 30 birds and photographed some of them (see below), I began to notice the background, the way she layered and stitched the background blocks, how they compliment the birds, balancing the entire composition, keeping the birds from appearing to be "stuck" on the background. Pure genius, if you ask me!

Although birds lend themselves to folk art and fanciful design better than any other subject matter, Sue also gave her talents to various animals, leaves, flowers, and circles. Here are a few examples to show what I mean.

This is Travel Journal, with impressions of Italy, Vietnam, South Africa, and Australia.

My favorite animal here is the camel. As you can see in the circle of critters, the camel is upside down. I've left her that way for you to see in detail. As with all of the pictures, you can click on the image to view the stitch details in a larger size.

Sue had many small study samplers in the show, several of which were of leaves. Here is a detail from one of them. The machine quilting on all (or most?) of her quilts is done by Janet Joehlin. It's worth noticing because it doesn't compete with the applique at all. One automatically studies the applique first, before even noticing the quilting, which is (in my opinion) exactly as it should be.

Many of her quilts also include flowers, another subject that lends itself well to this design style. Here is a detail of one of them.

If you've been drooling over the stitches, the bullion loops, the Italian knotted border stitch, the Palestrina knots, the woven picots (bird beaks), etc., if you've been itching to learn them (as I was), there is good news! Sue's book, Creative Stitching, How to Create Vivid, Lively Textures Using 50 of my Favorite Stitches, tells and shows you how to do them with easy-to-follow drawings and photos. It's available in the gift shop at the La Conner Quilt Museum, or through Sue's website, here. Sue also teaches classes. She's teaching 4 one-day classes in La Conner this fall, all of which are already full. But they are taking a waiting list. Guess who is on it?! She teaches around the country and sometimes out of it. Her schedule is here.

I have only two regrets: 1. that I didn't get to La Conner at the start of the show, so I could go see it again, and maybe again, posting about it in time for local readers to go see it too, and 2. that I didn't know about her workshops before they filled.

Her work makes me happy. I'm happy posting about it. I was happy working with the photos. I am happy just thinking about all those little chicks heading left, bless their little hearts!