New Year, new blog, new ideas
It’s a new year tomorrow, Happy New Year! I sincerely and truly hope it’s a happy, productive, and miraculous year for each of us. Do you make resolutions? Do you take time in a meaningful way to reflect on your successes and failures in 2023? Do you take stock of both the good and the bad, from having new family, friends, and grandchildren to having Covid, a parasite you picked up in Mexico, and a blown-out knee being replaced in 3 weeks? Or perhaps, all of the above or none of the above?
I am looking forward to tomorrow because I love New Year’s Day. Growing up it was always a fairly quiet day at our house, and no, not because any of us was nursing a hangover (which was often the case as we got older), but because my parents met at a New Year’s Eve party when 1951 was rolling into 1952. This was a special time of year, and we as a family took time to reflect on the good. We had small appetizers before the clock struck Midnight, with, you guessed it, the same appetizers served when they met the last few hours of 1951. Celery stuffed with whipped cream cheese, tomato aspic (read: tomato Jello – ugh!), deviled eggs, tiny meatballs with plastic toothpicks shaped like tiny swords, shrimp cocktail, and Cherry Studded Angel Food Cake.
Sitting here writing a blog I realize how much I miss my parents, who have been gone for more than a decade. They always encouraged each of us to explore our creativity, and I’ll continue doing just that – push the boundaries of what fiber art is.
Look at the world in new and interesting ways, no matter what is happening, good or bad.
I will make art.
Make something good today!
Cheers,
Beth
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January 11, 2024 What’s on the design wall?
When it’s gray, cold and snowy here on a winter morning, there’s nothing better than walking into my studio…a large and steaming cup of coffee in my hands. I have to carry my cup with two hands, not because it’s especially large, but because if I don’t, I start fiddling with fabric, arranging and re-arranging blocks on my wall, and pulling fabric from bins. You know, touching stuff!
Design, of any kind, takes time. It’s hundreds of small, individual decisions that eventually lead to art. That art can be fabric, textiles, silk, lace, beading, painting, baking, drawing with charcoal or colored pencils, or 100 other things. Good design is good design, no matter what the medium.
When I get stuck on a project, like this one (for a couple of weeks), it helps to just walk away. When it’s winter and too slippery to walk in our parks or trails, I go to quilts stores, and JoAnn Fabrics. There are those who look down on JoAnn’s, but for me it can be an hour of inspiration. I walk down their many isles of designer fabric rolls, admiring the sheers, upholstery fabrics, and even outdoor fabrics. I run my fingers over the myriad of fabrics on these glorious racks of rolls that are 8 or 9 feet tall, and admire the color, the texture, sometimes silk and sometimes nubbly tweed. Sometimes I run across Minky or satin, which is always a surprise on my fingertips. Am I going to start making my own pillows? Nope! Am I going to make new curtains for the living room? Also, a nope! BUT, running my fingers along the nubby tweeds, sheers, linen blends, and jacquards, some patterns I would never have even thought about putting together, I’m inspired.
So, this black and yellow riff on a traditional Rail Fence is an experiment in quilting. While the size and shape of the blocks has been stretched, manipulated, and exaggerated, it’s still a fairly recognizable Rail Fence. Because I wanted to try quilting on my small machine and then putting the clusters of blocks together, each section has been quilted, but one, and each “block” has a slightly different character.
How hard can it be to sew y-seams into quilted blocks? I’ll keep you posted!
Make something good today,
Cheers,
Beth
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January 22, 2024 Working on the dreaded Y-seams
This project has been a challenge since I first started thinking about a quilt-as-you-go project with y-seams. I’ve done a number of exceptionally large quilts that were quilted on a Bernina 330 then stitched together with long straight seams. The first time I ever saw this done was when Katie Pasquini-Masopust was at our local guild and was piecing together large swaths of quilted parts and making them into a whole image.
Katie was teaching a 2-day workshop, and while we were sewing away and learning new techniques of shadow piecing, she would pull her own project from her bag and stitch while we practiced. Honestly, it was the first time I thought of using that technique – a variation on quilt-as-you-go, and thought it was brilliant since I only pieced and quilted on a small machine. A year or two later I was able to attend the first Alegre Retreat, organized and run by Katie PM, and where I spoke at length with her and a number of other quilters who use this same process.
Let’s just say, in summary, there was some trial-and-error compensating for y-seams which were already quilted, but all in all, I would do this again. The fact that the Rail Fence blocks are varied sizes and different combinations rather than being laid out in a grid pattern, makes this quilt more interesting. It’s really a riff on a Rail Fence, and I like it!
A quilter asked me recently why I just don’t go back to making traditional patterns all the time… picking fabrics that “match” or going a “little wild” and totally scrappy? Picking a pattern where I know exactly what the end result would look like? Always being sure you know precisely what you’ll have? While I love traditional patterns… Isn’t it the joy of creating art that keeps artists constantly pushing the boundaries? While I genuinely have an abiding, deep love of the traditional quilt patterns, I also have a thrilling and addictive love of adventurous textile possibilities.
Try new things, and make something good today,
Beth
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February 14, 2024
Finishing Edges
Well it’s official, I took 3 weeks off for a knee replacement, but I’m back. Not 100% yet, but able to sit and stitch the projects I had lined up for this very lazy, but necessary, healing time.
I used to hate to sit and stitch bindings. It was honestly my least favorite part of every quilt, as it just seemed tedious. There weren’t any design decisions left for this piece. All the fabric choices and 1,000 colors of fabric – chosen. All the stitching and pressing and quilting – done. Once the binding is machine stitched on the front, the only thing left to do is hand-stitch the binding on the back. It was boring.
When I shared this with a very talented friend and fellow artist, she just looked at me and laughed. What was so funny?
She told me to think of binding as putting a frame around my work. While you can’t always see my bindings, they finish the work. If I had beautiful photos, (which are legion at my house) would I just make large, expensive prints of them and use thumbtacks in the corners to hang them on my wall? Well, I may have if I was still a poor college student, but I value my photographs.
I value my textile work. The abstract art quilts, the baby quilts, the custom quilts, the unusual and sometimes zany color combinations I create – and they all deserve this last stop where my hands work on every inch of the piece…with love.
Beth
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February 29, 2024
The Music in our Lives
About 2 years ago I began a series of small quilts based on the jazz music that has been such an integral part of my life. My mother loved Jazz, which surprised me, as she had not really grown up with music in their home. There was radio, but there was the church choir singing old hymns, and they all sang or whistled when they worked on the farm, but jazz did not figure into the equation. By the time she was married and almost 40, I came along as 3 out of the 4 kids in our family.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, my dad and his family all played: piano, trumpet, guitars, an organ, an accordion, and sundry other musical instruments. His aunt had graduated from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music when he was still quite young, so there was always music at his house, and musical concerts were an almost weekly event.
There was always music at our house growing up: piano, flute, drums, cornet, oboe, piccolo, and an organ. As we got older, there was also bassoon, French horn, and guitars. We listened to every kind of music, but jazz really spoke to me. It still does, and it’s often what I play when working. There’s a movement and improv in jazz like no other music. It’s simply magical!
Here’s the first in my series of Jazz Quilts, although not completely quilted yet.
Currently listening to:
Goat Rodeo
As Falls Wichita so Fall Wichita Falls
Al Di Meola
Dizzy Gillespie
Do you listen to music when you work? If not, give it a whirl, or try something new. Your brain will thank you!
Cheers,
Beth
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March 14, 2024
Jumping Jazz Quilts Continue
I’m still stitching away on the jazz quilts, where quilting is partially completed on Jazz 102. Learning any kind of music, art, cooking, or even games like chess, is a process. Quilts, and really all textiles, aren’t just a process of making something beautiful or unique, but it’s about mastering skills that get you to the point where you can actually MAKE what you want to MAKE. Much like a painter learning to mix paints, you have to master your tools.
Scissors largely gave way to rotary cutters – genius!
Hand-stitching is still an art, but it largely gave way to sewing machines – yea!
Quilting on a hoop or rack largely gave way to machine quilting on very, very large machines called mid-arm and long-arms – spectacular!
Why correlate jazz music and quilting? I very often like to listen to music rather than watch TV while I’m making design decisions. TV is distracting. It takes my mind off the art, and the decisions I must make between light/dark, form, line, and 100 other factors. Music inspires me.
While piecing this 2nd Jazz quilt, I listened mostly to Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, which is simply transcendent. The trumpet, oboe, and castanets are luxurious. Next, Al Di Meola and his greatest hits album – takes me to places I’ve never travelled and makes me feel at home. Both geniuses in diverse ways. Finally, another one of my favorites Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays together on any of their albums. This music gets into your soul.
Yes, in case you were going to ask, each quilt is a 9-Patch. 9 blocks, or 3 rows and 3 columns. Each block is a finished size of 7.5” W x 10.5” H. Not large, just little gems!
Be inspired today, and maybe listen to something you’ve never heard before.
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April 19, 2024
Splitting the workload works
Spring has finally arrived, so hopefully no more freeze warnings or snow. It has been a Winnie-the-Pooh season, with some sunshine, then a couple of really blustery days! Winnie and his friends had many, many life lessons to teach us.
Tulips are blooming, at least for today, and this morning was my first spotting of robins in the front yard. There were 4 of them, and my heart lightened. True harbingers of spring, I dug my Baltimore Oriole feeder out of the shed, gave it a good scrub, filled it with grape jelly, and am now ready for both warm weather, and warm weather birds.
After getting some dirt mixed with mushroom compost and bloom booster, I am ready to go when plants can actually go in the boxes and in the ground. Every year for many generations in my family, red geraniums have gone in pots or window boxes near the front door – because they’re happy and welcoming. Not sure how that tradition started, but I continue it to this day.
Getting some great sewing time in on Jazz Quilt #3, and it will soon be quilted completely. So, 2 down, 1 in the final quilting stage, 6 to go!
Cheers,
<(((><
April 30, 2024
Looking In, Looking Out by Rosalie Dace
During Covid, I was able to take a Zoom class with Rosalie Dace through Schweinfurth Museum in Auburn, New York. Rosalie is an excellent teacher, a brilliant artist, and a lovely person. The topic was ‘Looking In, Looking Out’ and I have been mildly obsessed with one of the tangents of this class – shadows.
‘Looking In, Looking Out’ had a lot of discussion about perspective, as you might ascertain from the title, but I’ve developed a slightly different point of view and think about looking at shadows that tell their own story. I began to notice the strong geometric shadows appearing on our entryway wall every sunny afternoon. The window sheers in our upstairs bedroom create a moving and cascading light-and-shadow dance in the mornings. The shadow of an oak leaf on our kitchen cabinet as the sun clears the trees in our backyard. Setting your coffee down so you can tie your shoes after listening to the news about war around the world. Endless. Fascination.
I’m taking a 2 week break from quilting the Jazz Quilts, mostly to let my shoulders recover, but am mulling a series of these shadow quilts as a possible new project.
What do you think?
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May 10, 2024
Retreat!
The word has many connotations and meanings in our culture, depending on how it’s used. In this case, it means a quilt retreat next week, and since I’ll be hours from home, I have to curate what I take to work on. There’s no running to my studio looking for a specific fabric that would be ‘perfect’ in my next project.
One project I’ll try to complete while I’m away is getting the next Jazz Quilt ready to be quilted. When viewing the 1st completed quilt in this series, it was evident that a light color fusible backing would lighten and brighten the bright colors in the quilt tops. This isn’t something I would normally do, given that my batting is a light color, but the seams where the lights and darks came together did not thrill me. These little gems just make me happy, but they needed polish to make them perfect. OK, not perfect, but perfectly lovely?
Not being around other artists was one of the most challenging things about Covid. Thank goodness for zoom! And whoever thought that would be a phrase coming from me has never actually met me. I normally suck at technology, and I own it. No tweeting, or rather X, no insta, tic-tock, or whatever other choices come and go. I don’t hate technology, it just seems like a time-suck to me. It’s easy to go down a Pinterest worm hole and have an hour pass. That’s an hour lost to making, designing, cutting, or stitching… and my time here is finite!
Make the most of every day.
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May 20, 2024
You’re outta’ here!
Growing up with brothers, both older and younger, I went to a lot of baseball games. While still very young, I recall our family picnics in part of the park where T-Ball was being played – usually between my younger brother’s game and my older brother’s game. We also went to Cincinnati Reds baseball games, which were always a treat. I love baseball, so ‘you’re outta’ here!’ has a very specific meaning – you’ve ticked the umps off to the point that you cannot remain in the game… or possibly the stadium. When Sparky Anderson would argue a call and eventually become completely aggravated, he would sometimes be thrown out, which led to endless booooo’s from the crowd.
In this case, however, I’m talking about the SAQA Michigan retreat in Chesaning, at Creative Passions. It was a breath of fresh air to be around a group of others making textile art. There was happy chatter as many of us met face-to-face for the first time, the quiet hum of productivity, getting others’ input on a project, meals together, and late-night gabs. As Rosalie Dace says, “There’s nothing like being face to face, fingers on fabrics,” and she is not wrong.
If you’re not familiar with SAQA, it’s an international organization for art quilters, with tons of resources, and lots of opportunities to display your work. Check it out: this was juried into ‘A Drop of Emerald Poison’ after a call for entry from collaborating states, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.
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May 30, 2024
Good Tools make the job easier!
Sometimes quilting is about the fabric. Sometimes quilting is just about the colors that make you happy or excited. Sometimes quilting is about the texture, whether it’s cotton, wool, silk, burlap, or tissue paper. Sometimes you have a grandiose vision of what you want to make, and sometimes you just walk into your studio with no idea where the muse will take you.
Then sometimes, sewing, making, textiles, or creating with fabric, is simply about the tools. Anyone who knows me very long knows that I’m hard on my tools, from rotary cutters and scissors, to pins and bobbins.
So today, out of the blue, a friend of mine sent me 2 new boxes of pins. I have arthritis in my right hand, and sometimes (ok, a lot) I bend pins when I’m using them. These new ones have a long shaft and a glorious little ‘knob’ for a head, making them easy for me to get hold of and move. NICE!
One thing I know for certain is that the art community is one of the most encouraging and giving communities in the world.
June 15, 2024
Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA
Big family wedding in Virginia this weekend, lots of fun! It was a beautiful outdoor wedding, and a beautiful, happy couple! Staying up late after the rehearsal dinner we sat by the pool so we could catch up with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. Great food, great wine, great company, great memories!
Driving home we decided to stop at the 9/11 Flight 93 Memorial at Shanksville, PA, where we spent about 3 hours. Until you drive up to it, and into the parking lot, you have heard it described, but you don’t realize it’s quite literally a field in rural PA.
The museum is filled with artifacts and finds from the plane crashed by American heroes who were stopping another plane from hitting NY or DC. Based on the flight path, it is believed Flight 93 was headed for the Capital Building, which would have been filled with people. Listening to the phone calls from passengers on the plane to loved ones will break your heart.
It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day, just as it had been on 9/11. The trees and tall grasses rustled in the wind, just like they did on 9/11. The memorial trail and building are situated on what they know to be the flight path of Flight 93. It’s a somber place. It’s a sacred place. It’s a mass grave. Every one should see it. Feel it.
It was such a moving experience, I don’t even know how to process it all. I don’t know how such evil exists in the world when there’s so much beauty, dignity, and grace, yet it does.
Not sure if I want to make something in my art about this, or just hold the experience close to my heart for a while longer.
June 29, 2024
Ramifications from Flight 93 visit…
I am still thinking about the Shanksville, PA visit. One of the thoughts running around my head since visiting the 9/11 memorial in Shanksville, is that I have a lot of unfinished projects. It’s beginning to bother me. When I first started making art quilts, I came from a very traditional quilting background. Make squares. Make them beautiful. Sew them together. Quilt through 3 layers, voilá, you have a quilt. With a pattern, you always know where you will end up.
With art quilts, you never know what’s next.
So, this morning I had a friend dig out the dreaded ‘WIP’ box. Works In Progress, or WIPs have never been too concerning for me. I have a number of unfinished projects, but mostly a large box of things started at a workshop, or inspired by work at a workshop, and simply never used. I’ve made a couple of quilts from these orphaned WIPs, but I feel pushed now to finish everything in the box or begin sewing it together for a totally new project.
This was a FB challenge a couple years ago, which is now hanging on my design wall waiting to be finished. Each ‘block’ or ¼ of a circle was one day’s challenge. It’s pretty easy to make a small block every morning when I’m warming up, so this wasn’t a stretch. Now it’s 1st on my list to finish. I’ll keep you posted!
Is there something in your life you have started and would like to accomplish or something you want to finish that you haven’t yet done?
July 5, 2024 Oh, boy, the Grands are here!
There are few things in the entire world that make me happier than when I see our grandkids. I love my husband, our kids, their husband/wife respectively, but there is just something that warms my old mama heart when those babies hug me! They are ‘helping’ me water my geraniums every morning, and keeping an eye out for the wild turkeys that wander into our backyard. When they bring leaves or flowers in, they don’t know it yet, but they are helping me get ready for a Wen Redmond Workshop I’m taking in August. We love found objects, and with our gardens, we get lots and lots of “found treasures” as they call them.
For the last couple of years, I’ve done lots of eco-friendly dyeing with different fabrics, and with different things we’ve found either here or near-by… black walnuts, Michigan blueberries, Oak and Maple leaves, etc. I have no idea how the workshop will go, as I’m not a hugely savvy tech person, but always willing to learn. Willing to learn also means failing, but I’m good with that too. Every workshop I’ve ever taken I’ve walked away with tools in my creative toolbox, and sometimes that’s the greatest achievement.
Here are a couple of my ice dyed and eco-dyed fabrics using all nature & found material: blue/brown is ice dyed and yellow/brown highlights is natural materials. I credit The Modern Natural Dyer: A Comprehensive Guide to Dyeing Silk, Wool, Linen, and Cotton at Home by Kristine Vejar for encouraging her readers to just start looking around to see what they could use for dye.
July 10, 2024 Quick projects!
Do you warm up when you’re getting ready to sew? Do you warm up when you’re getting ready to run or play tennis? Do you warm up when you are getting ready to practice piano or any other instrument?
A number of years ago, I began doing a ‘warm up’ for sewing. It takes anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, and I just sit down, check the machine, the thread, the bobbin, and then run a strip of fabric through it. Then I sew a block. Any block. Nothing that has a pattern to it, or any kind of structure usually, just a block. Then I move on with making.
For the past couple of weeks, my warmup has been sewing skinny-mini-lines in true “blocks” that follow the rule of 4. The rule of 4 in improv is making anything that is cut to 4.5” and/or in increments of 4 + 1/4” for the seam allowance. Yes, it’s true, even with skinny lines, my sewn allowances are ALWAYS ¼”. When sewn, each block is 4” finished, or 8” finished, or 4” x 8” finished, 8” x 12” finished, etc. So, my 8” x 12” finished block is trimmed up to 8.5” x 12.5” which allows for ¼” seam allowance on each side.
Why such a fanatic about my seam allowance? Simple: baby quilts will be washed about 1,000 times and my art quilts hang and this weighs or microscopically pulls on the seams. I’d like my quilts to be around a long, long time!
This summer’s warm up: Skinny-Mini-Lines
July 20, 2024 Singing in the Rain!
I take a lot of inspiration from nature. The gorgeous purple crocus peeking through the snow, the 125+ daffodils we’ve planted near our short wall, the billowing butterfly bushes in the summer breeze, pulling weeds in the rain because the ground is soft… but this summer wins the prize for rain. Hard rain, hail, a little more torrential downpour, and wind. Over-flowing gutters, hail pinging on the windows… it rains early in the morning. It rains after second breakfast and before lunch, during dinner, when the sun is setting, and in the middle of the night with unbelievable thunder and lightning. It’s rained so hard in the last week that all of my geranium blooms are naked. Oh, the stems are still there – but underneath, in a ring, are the tear-drop shaped, radiant, red petals.
A number of years ago I planted a very small, rather scraggly, Hydrangea bush and it didn’t bloom until it’s 3rd year here. After all of the storms this year, just as it was putting tiny buds out to bloom, more storms. I was pretty sure the bush wasn’t dead, but certainly wouldn’t bloom either. It turns out that sometimes you just have to have a little faith. Art is like that, too. Not really sure where improv pieces are headed when I start, but have a little faith and keep moving forward.
July 30, 2024 Taking stock
It doesn’t seem possible that we’re more than half-way through the year already, but here we are. There are a lot of people who take stock and make ‘resolutions’ at the beginning of the year, but I like to do that here, too, at a little more than the half-way point. Does it seem silly? Perhaps. However, if I take stock now, it helps me stay on track to finish some of my goals for the year. I’ve never made New Year’s resolutions, but I do keep track of what projects I have started, am still working on, and those I have completed.
If I don’t take stock now, I might start another 3 projects and never finish the ones I’m currently working on. It’s not out of the question that -SQUIRREL! – I can become easily side-tracked. SHINY OBJECT!
Do you set goals for yourself… fitness, personal, artistic, financial?
My goal is to finish quilting all the Jazz quilts, take a class or do an online workshop again this year, and quilt/bind the crazy circular quilt, above. I also have to finish cleaning up the landscape that was storm damaged. Maybe a start from my lilac bush can replace this pear tree? It's a good thing I live in an area with long winters – otherwise I might never finish outside projects!
August 9, 2024 Wen Redmond Workshop
I’m looking forward to taking a workshop with one of my textile idols, Wen Redmond, whose work includes collage, photos, ground-breaking takes on art, textiles and paper. Her work has inspired me for quite a while, and she has a workshop through FibreArtsTakeTwo. I’ve been looking for a way to incorporate more of my thousands of photographs (yes, thousands!) into quilting and am not always ecstatic with the photo-to-fabric results. There are so many B/W photos I would like to use, but how to choose?
For the past week, I have been taking out my notebooks full of 35mm film and it has been a walk down memory lane. I’ve chosen a number of pics I want to use, but I never really appreciated how much the digital age has made taking pictures easier… until now. If you don’t like how an image turned out, delete it, and most of the time you can take another shot immediately. You can edit your photos on your phone, from fixing the color automatically, to cropping, highlighting, and 50 other edits. All of this magic happens with the tiny computer that lives in my back pocket. I always know where my Canon is, and it always has a full battery and SD card ready to go, but I seem to use it less and less on a daily basis. Are 35mm cameras going to go the way of the typewriter?
So here are a few of the photos I might like to use: Ansonia roses, chihuly glass sculpture, and Fairy Light garden glass
August 19, 2024
The storms continue!
But I am tucked away in my studio going through photographs for the Wen Redmond workshop. Part of this workshop includes painting on different surfaces, so, I am beginning to paint on different papers as well. I’ve never used acrylic paints before, and it turns out they really do not come out of your clothes. At all. Stubbornly set in, as my darling mother would have said.
Because this process of making art is so utterly new to me, I do not have any expectations of success. It’s pretty freeing! This is all experiment, play, trying anything and everything, with some successes and some failures. It is very exciting and am pondering how to use these techniques down the road.
Pondering shall continue.
Another of my favorite artists is Bobbi Baugh. While she seems to use some of the same techniques as Wen Redmond, her work has a totally different flavor. That’s one of the great things about art and artists: Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh all used oil paints, but you could never confuse their unique styles. That’s what I would like to continue to develop… using quilting and print techniques that have been around for a long, long time, but made new with my unique voice.
Here are 2 different papers so far, both layered tissue paper: Let the experiments continue!
August 30, 2024
Oh, boy ~ Learning new stuff!
When I think of quilting, I fondly recall sitting under a quilt frame my father built for my Grandma Broyles, her nimble hands moving more slowly every year due to arthritis. As she stitched away, she would help me practice my spelling words and times tables. Every quilt she ever made (and there many!) were hand-pieced and always hand-quilted.
Today, however, I believe that quilts fall into categories: baby quilts, which are meant to be used, dragged around the house and car, cuddled up in, and occasionally puked on. Colorful, fun, durable, but HIGHLY washable.
Next are bed quilts, also quilts to be used, thrown into the washer and dryer, loved, used at ‘bedspreads’ and worn out until the binding needs to be patched or replaced. These and wholly and dearly loved. In my family these are passed down generation to generation.
Art quilts, or wall quilts, always meant to be displayed. Art. Artistic. Distinct design elements, realistic or abstract. I have made many of these and been privileged to hang and display them all over the world.
But now I’m learning surface design, printing elements, using products that I had never heard of, or walked right past in an art supply store and had no idea what they were to be used for. They just looked like bottles of ‘chemicals’ to me. Today that’s different.
Here are my first 2 prints: double exposure B/W photographs, layered substrate of painted watercolor paper and Cut-Away interface or stabilizer. My brain is buzzing with new possibilities!
September 5, 2024
More Surface design adventures…
Learning about surface design is like learning an entirely new language. Substrates? Inkaid? What will go through my printer and (a) actually print an image and (b) what won’t wreck my printer? It’s been an exciting adventure – somewhat challenging, but rewarding when an image prints correctly.
Painting on paper – got it. Painting on watercolor or regular printer paper – easy. Painting on foil tape – what? Painting on cut-away interfacing – who knew? Painting on cheesecloth – messy! Painting on silk organza - lovely but very delicate! So, still a lot of practice happening, but kudos to Wen Redmond who has a lovely, gracious, fun way to teach. Totally stress free, learning at my own pace, and a genuinely encouraging group of artists.
I’ve taken thousands of pictures, so part of this process is choosing what to use, from flowers to garden lights and antique farm equipment, what can be combined to make an interesting image? Here are 2 of the images I’m working with this week, both from my own photographs, although taken years apart. I love how crisp and clean my flower photos usually are, and how rustic and industrial the farm equipment is, but part of the challenge for me, as an artist, is, again, combining images to form a cohesive message or inspiring art. It’s a process…
September 15, 2024
Time flies…
Many years ago, my grandmother used to say that when you get older time just seems to fly by. As a kid, I thought this was silly, and would remind her that time couldn’t move any faster or slower, no matter how old you were. Boy was I wrong, and I wish I could take back those words!
We are having unseasonably warm weather right now – it’s almost 80° here in my little slice of the Michigan Mitten. The trees haven’t really started to turn color yet, and I’m walking around in shorts and a T-shirt. It’s weird. My calendar says ‘September’, but my thermostat reads ‘July’. In trying to get ready for winter days, I’ve started pruning back some of my plants, but mostly I just end up sitting on the front porch and enjoying the afternoon sunshine.
Consequently, normal autumn chores in the garden are put on hold, but one thing remains: my autumn quilts get hung up around the house. Do you switch out decorations or art for different seasons? I admire people who decorate for all the different holidays, seasons, and events. They have time and imagination I can only dream about…but I do have my autumn quilts: here are 2 of my favorites.
September 25, 2024
Leaves of Lothlorien
I know I’m biased, but being born and raised in the Midwest, when the leaves on the trees begin to turn glorious colors, I wax sentimental. That crisp air with just a hint of leaves burning or bon fire nights means apple cider, caramel apples, and leaves crunching under my feet. It also means football Friday nights, victory parties, or pizza at Marion’s to console a loss. Funny how looking at a huge, glowing red or orange Maple can transport me through time.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve made a number of “autumn” quilts, which I bring out the middle of September and leave up until the week before Christmas. The fact that these colors and textures can evoke such strong memories of my childhood is amazing. Art, including music, painting, quilting, and a myriad of other mediums, makes all of our lives more beautiful.
Below is ‘Leaves of Lothlorien’ an unabashed nod to J.R.R. Tolkien, and was my first attempt at just winging it in the quilting. I was trying to depict wind with leaves swirling above and around me.
October 10, 2024
A quick project on one of my favorite things…
Water: Water is life, as you cannot live without it. Water is sport, as it calls you to move, to race, to swim, to dive, and to explore. Water is a balm for the soul, as we kick through the surf only up to our ankles, dolphins 15’ away. Water is inspiring as we realize how small we really are when sailing in a huge ocean of blue. Water is full of majestic creatures and ancient knowledge, of which we can only guess. Water is dangerous if not respected. It is all these things, and many, many more. The sailboat race is just a single sliver of a day in the endless oceans, bays, and waterways. Harnessing the wind, racing on the blue, water is life.
Do you have a favorite beach? Did you ever picnic with family or friends on the bluffs over the ocean? Do you ever just prop yourself up on rocks near an inlet and become mesmerized by the rhythmic waves? Were you ever in a canoe or kayak on a river where suddenly a lovely day becomes challenging because of the rapids, which you knew were there…and were still unprepared? Have you been deep-sea fishing off the Florida coast? What about snorkeling in turquoise waters surrounding Caribbean islands? Have you gently and patiently waded around tide-pools to see the abundance of life, tiny as some of it might be? You get the picture…I love water: oceans, rivers, streams, lakes, tide-pools, and everything in between.
October 20, 2024
What is your point of view?
Remarkable and lovely weather here in Michigan is keeping me outside quite a bit this month, a month which can often be gray, damp, and chilly. Not so this year! When the temperatures range daily from 50° to 65° I can still have my coffee on the deck, and tinker in my gardens getting ready for winter.
Over the years I have been inspired many, many times by simple things in my garden: luscious, bright yellow iris (Big Bird is the variety) and dappled sunlight through the butterfly bushes. I love the radiant golden Hosta leaves ready to be cut down, and even simple vignettes of finding a bright red or yellow fallen leaf on freshly cut grass. It turns out that I love the beauty of the ordinary.
The Roman poet Horace said that “Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.” He was right, so look at things until you find a view you like, or one that inspires you. If I didn’t love the radiant Hosta leaves, I would change my pics to B/W and admire the strong, hard lines of the deep veining. Cool.
November 1, 2024
I stopped to take some photos today on my way home from ordinary stuff…grocery shopping. Japanese Maple and Burning Bushes underneath. There really is nothing else to say except I love my neighborhood.
November 15, 2024
Design elements are pretty common:
I have been asked via email what is the most important element of design? It’s kind of a broad question when making art (including fabric design, painters, sculptors, architecture, landscape designers, etc.) as ALL aspects of design need to work together to form a coherent WHOLE. If I made a huge quilt, think about 15’ x 15’ and it was entirely white with a 1” red square just north and west of the center, is it art? It could be. Is it good design? It could be. The question is not so much “Is it good design?" but rather what Degas said: “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
Some might wax poetic about the entire white area representing our lives from beginning to end, and the red square represents the moment we fell in love or had our heart broken for the first time. Or others think the square represents our tiny place is an unending universe. Or, or, or… The list of things it could mean is endless.
Where do I start teaching design? Start with what you already have preferences for: color. What is your favorite color? What color clothes do you buy? What color is your bedroom? Next, introduce “LINE” and ask students to start looking at lines we see every day but don’t really pay attention to: telephone poles, books or laptops, stairs in your house, windows and window frames, and cereal boxes in your pantry. Now ask yourself if these were the only two design elements, how might you combine them?
December 1, 2024
Doing the unthinkable…
I may do another post or two for 2024, but I’m getting ready to do the unthinkable: clean my studio. A couple of years ago my studio flooded and it was a period of months where I was sewing in our dining room. It was less than ideal, but my fabric, all my material, books, notions, etc. were safe, but stacked around the house from our dining room, to our entry way, to the laundry room, and upstairs guest room. It may not sound awful, but it challenging. Ironing in the living room where you normally entertain is just kind of weird. Anyway, for the last couple of months when I’ve been sewing I just stack fabric, batting, thread, etc. on the end of my sewing table. Now I have to sort and put-away since my sewing table looks a little like a bomb went off on it! Cheers!