Where Did The Week Go?

Wow. It has been a BUSY week, and one that has flown by much too quickly.

Only one sketch to show you, from Wednesday. Yesterday I was busy working on a wall quilt (finally! More about that below) and on my Silly Sketch for Carla Sonheim's "Silly the Third" sketch class (which I'll post at a later date).

On Wednesday, I decided that I would sketch my beloved pooch, Maxine (based on the Sketchbook Challenge prompt, "Highly Prized"). She doesn't usually look this angry, but she occasionally gets quite miffed, so it's a fair representation of her, I think:

My other project this week has been a Fast Friday Fabric Challenge piece. This month's challenge was all about "color fields," which was both fascinating and frustrating. Here's the piece I came up with:

I call this "Border Crossings." Take a look at the FFFC blog for more information about this piece or about color fields, or to see other challenge pieces.

I hope you'll take a minute to leave a comment, and I hope you had a great week!

My Journal Quilt

Ok, I’m finally ready to post a pic of my year-long journal quilt project. For this quilt, I made one 6x6” journal quilt every week from my 48th birthday until my 49th (Feb. 2009 to Feb. 2010).
The quilt actually has 56 squares—52 weeks, plus 4 embroidered corner squares that read “Journal Quilt,” “Feb. 2009,” “Feb 2010,” and “My 48th Year.”

As it turns out, creating all the squares was probably the easy part. Once I had completed them, I couldn’t decide on the best way to assemble them.

I considered stitching them to a solid background in a grid. I didn’t want to do that, however, because each square has a hand-written label on the back describing the inspiration for that week’s square.
I thought about adding sashing between the rows and the columns, but I was afraid that would make the piece unbearably wonky.

Finally, I decided just to stitch them all together. Here’s what it looks like at this point:

I’m not terribly happy with it yet. I think the problem is that there is nothing to unify the squares, so it seems a little disjointed/chaotic. I’m considering adding borders to it, but I just can’t decide.

Another thought . . . I could disassemble the squares, stitch them to a background (black, maybe?), then cut away the extra background fabric so that the labels are still visible.

Ideas? Suggestions? I would like to finish this quilt before ANOTHER year has passed!

Catching Up

I’ve had a burst of energy after a rather draggy February. Fortunately, I know that around January/February my creativity tends to hibernate, so I’ve learned to be patient with it, confident that I can benefit from the creative “downtime.”

But the weather has turned all spring-like: warm, sunny days that make me want to tackle all those projects I’ve been thinking about but haven’t gotten around to. Of course, the problem is that the more time I spend working on projects, the less time I have to document or share them. And when I have lots of time to write blog posts, it means I’m not getting any work done, so there’s nothing to share (this is a corollary of that money/time conundrum; when there’s money for art, there’s no time, and when there’s time that usually means there’s no money).

Anyway, here are some of the things I’ve been creating/working on:

I finally got around to creating a portrait quilt, which has been on my wish list for a while. I’m using Maria Elkins’ technique here, which is a lot of fun and not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I’m not particularly thrilled with how this turned out, but I learned a lot about both fabric and portraits that work, and those that don’t:



Btw, this is my lovely daughter, Amanda. I’ll be making more of these. I think I may make one for every member of my family, then stitch them all together.

This past weekend the weather was so gorgeous that I had to get outside. That always makes me think of dyeing/painting fabric for some reason, even though I typically end up doing it in the house. But I ended up creating some screens for deconstructed screen printing and then setting them in the sun to dry. Here is the result of my first deconstructed screen printing project:



I’m really happy with this and loved the process. I’ll be doing more of this, as well.
While I had thickened dyes mixed up, I decided to paint on some fabric:



I’m not sure what I’ll do with this yet; I may cut it up and reassemble it.
And, I finally got around to ordering some Citra Solv (and some magnesium, which my body is always low on, while I was at it) so that I could try a technique for creating cool art papers. This is a messy process and the Citra Solv has a strong odor, so it’s best done outside. Plus, a sunny day helps the papers dry quickly. Essentially, I started with a National Geographic magazine and brushed concentrated Citra Solv on the pages, then closed up the magazine and let it sit for a while. I squeezed out the extra liquid/ink, then tore out the pages and laid them out to dry (this technique was in a recent issue of, I think, Cloth, Paper, Scissors). Here are the results:



Aren’t these scrumptious?

I’m almost finished with this small (about 8x10) piece I started a very long time ago. This is silk that I painted after applying a resist. I stitched it with wonderful 30wt. Trilobal poly thread, and added a dyed silk border. I’m still debating on whether to add a binding, create an envelope finish, or stitch around the edges:



Here’s a sneak peak of a wall quilt I’m working on; you’ll just have to wait to see the whole thing when it’s finished:



Let’s see, what else? Oh, here’s a wall quilt I finished a month or so ago, but I don’t think I’ve posted it yet. This is reverse appliqué made from batik-fabric charm squares. I added some beads and hand-stitching for embellishment, but it’s hard to see them in the photos:



And a close-up:



And finally, here’s my 6x6” weekly journal square, #50:



#51 is from Valentine’s week; it’s finished, but I haven’t taken pics yet. #52 is from my birthday week, and I haven’t finished it yet. And that brings me full circle—a FULL YEAR of weekly 6x6” journal quilts! I’m excited to stitch them all together. Stay tuned for the final results of that year-long project!
And don’t forget to check out my other blog, A Year of Pleasures, to see my latest fascination with cotton yarn.

I hope the weather where you are is showing some lovely promises of Spring, as it is here in Central Texas!

FFFC #40: Milk—It Does a Quilter Good

December’s Fast Friday Fabric Challenge was really fun. The idea was to use product packaging, particularly the colors of the packaging, to influence a still-life-format quilt with a plant theme.

I knew right away that I wanted to use this milk carton, since I love the colors. It makes me happy every time I pull it out of the refrigerator (maybe that’s why I drink so much milk?):

The red, white, and blue colors were easy to work in, but I wasn’t sure how to work in the white & black of the cow “print.” Eventually, I decided I liked the idea of a bowl of ice cream (with fudge sauce, of course) to tie in to both the cow colors and the milk connection to the packaging. Anyway, here is the result:

I like the finished result, but my vertical and horizontal lines are off somewhat, I guess because of the stitching; I definitely learned something about when to use extra stabilizer. I may go back and do some quilting to the piece, especially on the red “tablecloth.”

I really love the challenges in the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group and I’ve had fun with every one of the challenges so far. Take a look at some of the other members’ results; they are really creative!

The Eye of the Turtle

This month I’m a super-straggler in the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group. Those darned Christmas stockings threw me behind :-)

November’s challenge theme was getting REALLY close-up and personal (microscopic, even) with the subject, and the technique was fabric painting. I started with a photo of a turtle I took at the Galveston aquarium, zoomed way in on the turtle’s eye, and painted it on fabric.

Then, I machine-quilted the piece like crazy. I lost the 3-d effect of the eye in the transition from the photo to the piece, and I don’t know that it’s recognizable as an eye, but I had a lot of fun doing it. Here is the finished piece:

Now, on to December’s challenge!

Time to Complete Those WIPs

Time, that is, in two senses of the word: I have this week off and therefore have a little extra play-time, and it’s time to get this stuff off the sewing table/design wall and finish it.

So, after a very lovely and busy Christmas, I’ve started with the easiest WIP. This one just needed a hanger on the back and a signature to be finished:

This is a silk & wool piece, created using a technique from one of my favorite books, Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art by C. June Barnes. After stitching, dyeing, and shrinking the piece, I added the washers and beads, then sewed the piece to a painted canvas. I’m displaying it in our den, but it’s a fairly small piece on a huge wall, so of course I need to make at least one more to hang with it.

And, I’ve caught up with my 6x6” weekly journal squares; these are for the month of December (with the exception of this week, which I’ll complete by the end of the week).

This marks the crocheted Christmas afghan I was working on the beginning of the month:

This one is influenced by work, and the boring, repetitive tasks I had to spend too much time on. Overlaid on that, though, is a little Christmas spirit:

This one is a compilation of the fabrics I used to make the kids & grandkids Christmas stockings; I thought it represented the holiday lunches, open houses, shopping, and other Christmas preparations very well:

And, here are the Christmas stockings, the last of which I finished at 5 pm on Christmas eve:

Finally, here is my 6x6” weekly journal square for the week of Christmas. I free-motion quilted the names of family members who were at Christmas dinner and helped to make it a lovely day:

 

And now, back to work on those WIPs. Or I could start the next silk and wool piece . . . hmmm, I think I hear that silk calling my name . . .

I’m Still Here . . .

sort of. I haven’t felt very well since my surgery. I had my follow-up appt. with the surgeon yesterday, and he said he wouldn’t have expected that I would be chipper and feeling well at this point. He’s revised his recovery time from 6 to 8 weeks, since this is what he calls a “re-do” (the 2nd surgery for the same issue). Plus, I’m fairly sure that the surgery kicked off another bout of pancreatitis, which the surgeon had said was likely. ANYWAY, enough of this boring stuff.

I have been hand-quilting my Garden Path quilt since I was in the hospital three weeks ago. I actually started this quilt almost exactly two years ago; I was writing in my 10-year journal the other day and noticed an entry from two years ago where I had written about completing the quilt top.

And now, I’ve finished it! Garden Path is 42”h x 26”w and is machine-pieced, raw-edge appliquéd, and hand quilted. Here are the results:

And a close-up:

The center of this quilt was originally a "convergence"-style quilt (from Ricky Tims' book, Convergence Quilts). I cut the plants and butterflies out of batik fabric and machine-appliqued them over the center panel, then added the borders.

I feel such a sense of accomplishment when I finish something like this. Otoh, I’m temporarily project-less and I don’t have the energy to start something new. I’m sure if I look around, though, I’ll find plenty of WIPs from the last couple of years that I can work on.

WIP? or File 13?

Here is a piece I have been working on, and I’m just not sure where to go with it. I feel like either it’s a) really awful; or 2) missing something important. If the latter, I can at least work on fixing it; if the former, I may as well give up now.

What do you think? Should I keep going with it? Is it too busy? Are the colors just ugly? Too many textures? Does it lack contrast? Is there a good focal point? Is it boring?

Any and all comments and suggestions will be appreciated, and please remember that you can make anonymous comments.

Stitching Exercise Continued

Here is the piece I wrote about yesterday, now with dye and all ready to be embellished!

Does This Path Have Heart?

I’m avoiding working on my flower quilt. It’s ready to stitch, and I’m in the “fear-of-messing-it-up” phase, so instead I’m finding ways to procrastinate. This is a piece I finished a while back, but it needed to be trimmed and have the binding sewn on:

A close-up of the beading at the top:

I quilted this piece on plain, white muslin, then colored it with Neocolor water-soluble crayons. Then I started beading, and I just couldn’t stop! The finished size is 10x14".

I call this “Does This Path Have Heart?” from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. This is what kept running through my mind as was working on it. Castaneda, quoting don Juan, a Yaqui Indian, writes:

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Does this path have heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t.

One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

A path without heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy, it does not make you work at liking it.”

This idea, of questioning whether a path has heart, is one I try to live by every day. At the end of my life, I hope that I can say that, most of the time anyway, I at least tried every day to choose the path with heart.

And speaking of, today is my one-year “anniversary” (I hate to use such a positive word for such a negative event) of being stricken with a brutal case of pancreatitis. I feel lucky to be alive, since the doctors say I almost died. I’m still wrestling with the physical after-effects of the ailment, but I feel stronger every day and more hopeful for the future. I’ll be having major surgery on June 1st to clean out some infected debris in my pancreas, and the thought of another hospital stay (after several months in the hospital last year) terrifies me. I’m trying not to panic or let that weigh too heavily on me right now. Instead, I’m working on meditating, deep-breathing, and positive visualization of the experience.

Hand-Quilting

I finished my hand-quilted piece for Nancy Chong’s Hand-quilting class at QU. I had played around with hand-quilting before, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. Here are the results, after I washed and dried the quilt (I love the soft, puffy look that results from washing, plus I had a smear of red velvet cake batter across one part of it):

Here’s a close-up of the stitching:

I discovered that I LOVE hand-quilting. It’s become my new favorite TV-watching activity. I’m anxious to try more, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I have a quilt top that I made a long time ago that I would like to try to hand quilt; I call it “Garden Path”:

And a close-up:

The plants and butterflies are fusible-web appliqués, but everything else is pieced, so I think as long as I don’t try to hand-quilt the appliqués I’ll be fine.

The problem is, I’m not sure what type of hand-quilting “pattern” to use on something like this. Simple, straight lines? Echo quilting? Circles on the center “path” part to look like rocks? I don’t know. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Two Down, Twenty-seven To Go

I always feel good when I complete a project since I’m so much better at starting than finishing them. I feel especially good today because not only is it a perfect Spring day, but I’ve completed TWO projects! And to top it all off, neither one of them will get tucked away in a dark closet.

The first one is a piece I started back in January (you can read about its birth in this post). Later, I added some color to it with Neocolor crayons:

I beaded this piece while watching (or mostly listening to) TV. When it was finally finished, trimmed it to 8”x10”, added a back and binding, and fused on a label:

This is going to my sister, Suzanne, and her partner Judith, who both have birthdays coming up. If you’re reading this, Judith, Surprise! Happy Early Birthday!

The second finished project started as a piece for Lily Kerns’ Fractal Fragments class at QU; I blogged about it here. I wanted to add a lot of fractal elements, but I just couldn’t get excited about it, so this morning I free-motion quilted the piece and made it into a pillow. I’ve never made a pillow before; it was fun!

And now, I think it’s nap-time . . .

Nostalgia: A Trip Down Memory Lane

I have a hankerin’ (hey, I’m from Texas; it’s part of the required vocabulary, along with y’all and fixin’ to) to make a larger quilt. Everything I’ve been working on has either been small—samples, journal quilts, mixed media pieces; or experimental—painted and dyed fabric, painted canvases, stamps, screen printing. The only larger pieces I’ve made have been for class projects.

So all night I had thoughts/dreams/ideas about creating a larger quilt. I hadn’t decided whether it would be a wall quilt or a “bed” quilt (ok, I haven’t yet made anything large enough to cover a bed, so I guess mine are technically lap quilts).

Then, early this morning, I remembered a quilt top I made a long time ago and never quilted because I was afraid I would “mess it up.” It came about because I had made my first quilt, which my lovely partner immediately claimed. And when I say first quilt, I literally mean first quilt. I had no clue what I was doing, but I read everything I could get my mind around regarding free-motion stitching, appliqué, and piecing. I had no skills, but I was armed with information and self-confidence.

I look at that quilt now and I’m amazed at what a good job I did! I think it was because I didn’t know enough to doubt myself. Here’s my first quilt (35x47”):

This is a combination of basic piecing and raw-edge appliqué. I used commercial fabrics that I really loved, along with early experiments painting fabric. I sewed the binding on by hand, something I still love to do because it relaxes me. Here’s a close-up:

I even stitched an “M” on it as a signature!

For my second attempt, I decided I better learn to make a “real” quilt, which of course in my mind meant piecing, no raw edges, and a traditional pattern. I made it for my grandson, who I knew wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t perfect. I couldn’t be completely traditional even with this one, though, and opted for the “wonky” blocks:

That meant my two loves had quilts, so I needed one for myself. I started with a Ricky Tims convergence quilt center, then added appliqués cut from batiks and the batik borders. This was the largest quilt top I had made to date—35x53”—so of course I panicked and was too afraid to free-motion quilt it.

Here’s a close-up:

So, it’s been hanging in my studio closet for a couple of years now.

I’m not quite as in love with this quilt now as I was back then; I think it has some design flaws, the colors aren’t what I use now, and I’m battling a desire to paint something on it or over-dye it. But I do have the confidence to free-motion quilt it, so I think I'll just leave it alone, quilt it, and make a nice lap quilt for the den. It’s 35x53”, so it will technically be the largest quilt I’ve made to date.

Of course, the close-up shot makes me think I could trim the border, add some painted or stamped pebbles to the path then stitch those, do some thread painted flowers . . .

My Girl

I finished the project for Terri Stegmiller’s Faces on Fabric class. This was a fun (but scary!) class; I love painting on fabric, but I’ve never tried painting a face on fabric before.

Once I put a certain amount of work into the wall quilt, it was scary to consider all the ways I could have messed it up while painting the face.

One blog-reader commented that she paints her faces first, then appliqués them onto the quilt; this way, if she ends up not liking the face, she can do another one. I may try that in the future.

But for this round, I had to work with I started with, and that required some rework here and there.

Btw, the flower on the left side is cut from what Sherrill Kahn calls “serendipity cloth”—you know, that piece of fabric lying around to mop up extra paint, wipe brushes on, etc. I love being able to “recycle” things in my studio.

My girl’s name is Penelope, which she hates, so she goes by Pen; her friend’s give her a hard time about this by calling her Pencil (this was funnier back when her face was simply pencil lines on fabric :-)).

Catfight!

Ok, just kidding, but it IS nice to hear family members squabbling (playfully, of course) over who gets this wall hanging:

This was the class project from Susan Brittingham’s Viewpoints class at Quilt U. She provided the project instructions for this one, and now I’m anxious to experiment with what I’ve learned and create more perspective quilts.

My family has made it clear that I won’t have any trouble getting rid of them once they are complete!

Is it Spring Yet?

Even though the weather is beautiful here (or maybe because it is?) everything I do lately seems to look forward to spring; this could have something to do with my state of my mind, too, which is more optimistic these days.

I painted the pears in this piece about a year ago; they are actually stamped with a cut pear and fabric paint. I also had this wonderful fabric that I had dyed a year or so ago, and the two had been hanging on my design wall for a while, so on a whim I threw them together.

This piece makes me happy!

Imagi(ni)ng Faith

I just finished a journal quilt that is all about questions instead of answers. Since I got sick, I've been struggling with issues of faith. In my past, "healthy" life, I thought I had a good grasp on my spirituality, my beliefs, my understanding of the universe. Since then, though, I've been struggling with questions about how my illness (how I?) fit into the bigger scheme of things.

For some reason, thinking about all these issues brought to mind one of our "wildlife" adventures, blogged about in this post. I kept thinking about those birds, swooping through the garage with their sticks and bits of fluff to build a nest, then with food for those little cheeping babies. I wondered if their diligence required a good bit of faith; living in the wild as they do, do they approach the nest every time with fear that either their eggs or screeching little hatchlings will be gone? Or do they fly confidently back with faith that everything is just as they left it? Maybe both: maybe there's no extracting fear from faith, and vice-versa. Or maybe neither: maybe those birds are just living life day-to-day, doing what it is their instincts tell them to do without thought. Either way, they go on, pushing through every day, and I have no doubt that they'll be back this spring, seeking out the relative safety of our garage.

This quilt started as a mixed-media collage on watercolor paper, using scrapbooking papers, stickers, stamps (rubber and postage), and paints. I then printed the collage onto fabric, cut it up into three pieces, and fused it to the background fabric. I left the edges of these pieces raw and pulled some threads to fray them. I machine-quilted the whole piece, then added the ribbon and, on top of it, the beads (which are pretty hard to see in the pic).

I don't think this quilt brought me any closer to resolving my struggles around issues of faith, but I do find something comforting in thinking about those birds and how they press on year after year in the face of their own struggles. Maybe in some small way, that's what faith is about.

Back on the Path

Here's a quilt that I just finished binding. It was inspired by one in The Quilting Arts Book: Techniques and Inspiration for Creating One-of-a-Kind Quilts.

The background fabric is hand-dyed, with acrylic ferns stamped on using gold paint. I quilted the piece with free-motion stitching, then added the leaves. Those have fabric on both sides (fused together with SaS2), are satin-stitched around the edges, and are attached at the top with a few stitches so that they sort of "float" off the background. Then I couched some fun fibers on and sewed some beads on. The piece is 19"h x 16"w.

It was fun to do something sort of different. I really like the dimension and texture that this one has!

Back to Basics

I've been so busy creating fabric for quilts that I haven't made an actual quilt in a very long time. I think that's one reason I took Ellen Lindner's Instant Art Quilt class; I tend to be much more structured and disciplined when taking an online class.

So, here are the results. Can you believe this quilt came from this piece of fabric?

I love being able to use the fabric I've dyed in an actual quilt!