Category Archives: online learning

Glitches, patience, and white as an attitude

Please notice that I am not ranting. I am not. Even though the tree and fence above could be a visual for me and our technology problems of late. Think: “Upgrade”.

The Black Screen of Death, which was not the Black Screen of Death really, but more like a Coma Interlude, occurred multiple times yesterday. Eventually the system restored itself each time, but not without freaking me out. “Walk away from the screen, Ma’am! Walk AWAY from the screen!” What choice did I have? Days of not posting here or for my online class have me feeling a tad crazed. And now the taxes are REALLY, really due.

The good news? Scary glitches and slow processing are making learning a few simple tricks on the new Photoshop Elements seem like a piece of cake. And more good news: I managed to finish Schedule C this morning in spite of it all.

Back to quilting. Less screen time invariably means more sewing, which is also good news, I might add. Continuing with white, white, white for the Jude Hill class I’m taking over at Spirit Cloth has been productive. Interesting. Lots of white to share. But not now. I took a small intermission from white to construct the little row of houses below.

The formulaic nature of this design means they are relaxing to make. And yet, each set is different enough from every other to stay interesting.

The tiniest chips of fabric can be employed for this project (“Oh-oh!” you say with dismay. “You mean I can’t throw them out?!!”)

This drawing came after the cloth construction. It gave me this fun idea of a multitude of paths running to and from the doors.

The original impulse for ground and sky fabrics lies just above the drawing, and here is where I want to suggest that this project — though full of pink, blue, rose, lavender, rust, and indigo — bears a relationship to white. If you can stand to — keep reading!

The ground is that wool challis I’ve talked about before. The sky is a piece of a vintage silk from a deconstructed handmade bodice. The colors worked and they were the very first I chose. They were the INITIAL IMPULSE. The circuitous route back to the original choice got me thinking about white as a process or a state of mind. Specifically, about white as pure expression.

I fiddled. A Lonni Rossi broccoli fabric had potential but was rejected for being too literal and for adding visual clutter.

This shibori sky, suggestive of aurora borealis, was also too much. Stars, also too literal.

This started the return back to the original choice.

Here, I shrunk the scale and added a moon. The moon stayed, but the scale was revised back to original premise.

Here I am back to the original sky, only now with the moon, and a much too busy foreground. Departing miles from the original feel, it looked like I was trying way too hard and furthermore, the woven-strip foreground would have prevented stitching all those paths, and they intrigue me.

Now, almost there.

And back.

So, what if “WHITE” is purity? What if ‘white’ is an original impulse? The original set of colors? The original thought? I’m not suggesting that refining ideas and radically departing from an initial idea are not essential and exciting ways to create. I AM suggesting that there may be times when sticking with that First Thought (in this case a pairing of challis and silk) might be just right. A way to honor an intuitive and spontaneous creation.

You can find more of these row house quilts here.

time to make dinner

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For many years I resisted upgrades to our graphics software because learning one’s way around a new-ish program takes time and is frustrating. Invariably these ‘upgrades’ take perfectly acceptable features and make them more complicated or just switch them up in ways that undermine automaticity. I’m a big fan of automaticity. And, yes, that’s a sign of impatience and laziness.

It had gotten to the point, however, where I couldn’t even find answers to simple “help” questions online because no one talked about our antiquated version anymore. It was time to buck up or buckle down or stop bucking the trend, and place myself, happy or not, back onto a learning curve.

That’s why I didn’t post yesterday. Too busy figuring out how to resize pictures again.

And now, it is time to make dinner (I’m thinking — wilted cukes, shrimp cocktail, and a big salad with bitter greens, including watercress). So, a little photo story ensues.*

I’ve done a series of thread sketches based on a photo of my younger son skateboarding. Here it is, pinned to one of the back windows. Given this current exploration of white, I played with the exposure bar to lighten up the scene.

He’s doing (so I’m told) a ‘hard flip’ and yes, he landed it. The photo is a little bit old –taken sometime AFTER he broke his left arm the first time but BEFORE he broke it the second time. I study the torso pitch and the folds of denim and the outflung arm angles as an artist – what goes where? and how do I capture that sense of a body flying in a controlled sail off a set of stairs to the pavement below? As a mother I am using it to remind me of his strengths. Strengths such as — remarkable kinetic gifts, the willingness to land and land hard, and unbelievable persistence when learning something he cares about.

dirty damask – from black walnuts, maybe?

damask-backed sketch on the floor

The above sketch was photographed on the floor. Shot this way, the charcoal blotches are not very visible at all. But, below, see how visible they become when the cloth is pinned up onto glass, with light pouring through.

damask on window

black thread on linen, pinned up on glass

‘wrong side’ with pencil marks is my preferred side – here against a window

side-by-side, the mintons forming an ‘implied’ nine patch

and — ah!!! — how freeing it is to paint

and then scribble in that paint with a pencil!

Something Mo said about ‘light coming through’ got me thinking about how each and every needle puncture creatures a teeny avenue for light. Some of the recent things Jude said about clean and dirty whites were rattling around in my mind selecting the blackened damask… but more, actually, I was thinking about something she said less recently about how even when we cover up a section that has been worked and perhaps beautifully so, that section does not go away. The energy of it remains. With respect to the blackened blotches sometimes showing, sometimes not — I think about how they are always there even if not visible.

And now it is time for bed! Dinner did happen in between start and finish. And so did input on a Gatsby paper. And American Idol (Lazaro? Top three?! Are you shitting me?!)

I must stop before I embarrass myself any further.

* Again, this is a response to and inspired by, the goings on at Spirit Cloth and by one of my boys.

Dreams in white

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how white dreams look on black

Dream Fragments, 1992

a rack full of gorgeous crepes, including a deep blue jacket
on an ice floe, some are designated swimmers
a jewelry maker – silver, moss agate – I wrap her goods by folding them up in a display cloth
someone hands out bundles of electricity
between the floor boards — treasure! loads of quarters and some wind chimes
walking through the woods with Warren Beatty

top lighting

back lighting

Vertical dream-strip piece

To me there is something powerful about ‘whitening’ a chunk of personal narrative. I’m not sure why. It may have to do with aging away from drama. It may speak to the non-linear qualities of memories – how they can be rearranged, fragmented, or removed from the frame altogether. Or, it could be that the ordinary domestic process of stitching fragmented stories back together reenacts a healing process.

All that may be so, but right now, the power lies elsewhere. Working with fragments of a life (my life) in a manner truly lacking any ‘charge’ (in fact, in a process akin to mindless doodling) gives me a kind of casual dominion over these journal entries. I’m not studying them. I’m not trying to read them forward or backward. They are just there. They are just there in a way that I might like to just be here.

So it’s not that the meaning has been mostly stripped out that lends this exercise its freeing potential, but the fact that the meaning remains and I am not reacting to it. How liberating to employ an artist’s eye, viewing snippets of my life as abstract rectangles of cloth! No judgments in sight. Even as I read “Will I go all the way? With Warren Beatty?!!”

Square dream-strip piece

I am not sure I am making any sense. Or whether this is even a good thing.

But, here I am.

And here are a few practice notes. Using a Pitt pen, I scribed seven dreams from a 1992 journal onto two pieces of nicely pressed muslin — one swatch bleached, one swatch unbleached. Unlike the last time I used scribed strips, this time, I wanted at least some of the phrases to be legible. The five dreams were composed into a vertical piece (with no batting) and two other dreams were composed into a square piece (with the traditional three layers of top/batting/backing).

First, I applied a grid of machine stitches to adhere the muslin in place. Stitch, stitch, stop at an end, pivot the needle, travel a short distance to beginning of next row, and stitch, stitch, stitch a parallel line. Foot up. Foot down. Clap. Clap. Some variations were generated when introducing the perpendicular grid. Pivot. Foot down. Foot up, pivot. Rhythmic machine stitching in front of a window, alone in the house.

Square dream-strip piece

Square piece – with running stitches begun

Then I stitched by hand. White thread, or off-white thread. I had some loose rules as I did both of these things (tracking lines in parallel, avoiding stitching over a penned letter, stitching out bumps) which enhanced the relaxed approach, as few decisions were required.

I’m almost done with the square one. The vertical waits for hand-stitching.

Lastly, here is a teaser — this also was stitched this week. I am using a similar process on this antique silk Japanese sleeve (more on it later).

first a grid, then free-motion

where does the color go?

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Here are three exposures of a small quilt pinned to a curtain covering an eastern window. Early morning light. Not summer sun, but not winter sun either. Opening the aperture gives the impression that the color is fading into white*. But it’s more than that. Back lighting the piece lets what resides in back to shine through. I like both these ideas — fading into white and the hidden-coming-forward.

What is happening when ‘what is behind’ shows up? Could it parallel the Jungian process of owning the shadow? Claiming a long-fended-off weakness or strength? Could it be a metaphor for hearing from ‘the other side’?

I ask the otherworldly question because of that wool challis. Well, that and because of need. Sometimes in life, we just need our mothers. It’s so simple a thing. And so complicated. And it’s true whether she’s around or not.

That maroon floral challis comes from a scarf which in its original, drapey, and fringed incarnation, belonged to my mother. I wore it for a while after she died. It was moth eaten on the edges and eventually I felted it and let it take its lovely place in my scrap bin. Clearly, it means something more than ‘fuzzy’ and ‘maroon’ to me. Placing a moon of my mother’s fiber above what to me is a mysterious door is no accident. I have been thinking about her a lot lately.

Years ago when I showed my mother this tiny Gap vest (below), purchased while D. was in utero (middle boy in photo), she said, “Oh! You’ve found his palette.” That was signature Mom — pointing out the centrality of color to life and perhaps specifically to Mallon-life; assuming we all have palettes; recognizing that a mother might intuit her child’s colorways, even before he was born. It was one of many moments in her last weeks that juxtaposed new life with dying in an excruciating way.

I’d give almost anything to hear one of her honest and shrewd observations right now – no matter how brutal. She had a knack for that. Making pithy observations that knocked you over. In the moment, I might hate her… insist she was wrong… loudly argue back or scoff at her sources. But many times out of ten (I refuse to quantify), I’d have to at some later point admit that she was right — even when the source was Cosmopolitan Magazine (Damn You, Mom!!).

Sometimes the judgment was something I could run with. It all depended.

So, yeah (as my nineteen year old might say), I have been wishing for my mother’s ‘take’ on things — specifically, on this messy business of parenting teenagers. Once we got over what would undoubtedly be her smug satisfaction at my getting a little of what I dished out, I’m sure she’d have valuable and specific insights to offer. She’d say things I haven’t thought of yet. She’d offer reality-based optimism that would make me feel better and would make me feel better about my kids and their futures. She’d call me a worry wart and laugh. Pearls of wisdom would be dispensed like sticks of gum (no big deal). She’d casually address every single thing that is ‘up’ right now — resilience (or its absence), stubbornness, fear, and the unpredictable paths of talent — without having to ask a single question.

February 13th marked the 17th anniversary of my mother’s death. I only know the number of years off the top of my head because she died five weeks before D. was born. Right now, I always know how old my boys are. Seventeen. Nineteen. I suppose that could change, like everything else does. I hope not for a long time, though.

This hung on the west window of my bedroom last week. Here, red threads were stitched in prayer (as has been talked about here and there on blogs that matter to me (links later)). This thread was dyed in India, purchased in Colorado about this time last year, and stitched onto white, then covered with a grey/white silk. You don’t really see the red lines when the cloth comes off the curtain. They’re still there, of course.

That says something on this topic of mothering, doesn’t it? Something about the strands of love that connect us, whether we see them or not, whether they’re live or remembered. These red threads could also represent the strands of genetic code that determine, in part, who we are… representing that strange, perplexing and miraculous way that some aspects of person get tugged through the generations… binding one group to the next (and the next) whether willing or aware, or not.

And then again, it is a series of red threads.

* Like yesterday’s post, “Meditation on White”, I am inspired here in large measure by the online class over at Spirit Cloth

Bird Woman: Power in Completion

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In these quiet weeks, I am finding it hard to come back to the screen. This screen, specifically. Is it because the space where my knees sit is freezing cold? (My hands are freezing right now, too) Or, because a pause midwinter makes sense from 1,000 perspectives? Or, maybe I have nothing to say (when has that stopped me before, you ask?!!).

An unexpected benefit to my neglect here, has been getting into a rhythm of finishing work. Ironically, I had signed up to do a spring show and was DREADING the prospect of spending a season ONLY finishing things, but the moment I decided (for a host of reasons) NOT to participate, the finishing seemed to want to happen. I have to ask myself: WHY am I capitalizing words as if I am writing an article about the THRILL of orgasm for COSMO?!! No. Seriously, what is my deal about finishing?

Once Upon a Time, Bird Woman was born. She emerged from scraps of embellished linen and pieces of a hideous 1970’s jacket, and some sequins that my cousin sent me at the time. I put a small island of Victorian sequined black silk below her feet (that came from a friend for my birthday one year). I made her wingtips look like flames, to make her a powerful bird. I blanket stitched a full moon over one wing and she got even more powerful. For her general environment, this creature was lucky enough to get one of the many woven cloths that I made during a Jude Hill class (it might be two combined, actually). Then she went into hiding again. I wondered where she was for awhile but I didn’t look for her. She resurfaced, got some more stitching, then disappeared again. I found her about two weeks ago, and now, apparently she is ready to be given a little more starry sky above her head, and some edges.

The blue silk frayed like mad. The NEXT time I used silk for a background, by the way, I ran a line of machine stitching along the side prone to giving off its threads. The lost cloth here created a bit of a challenge – but not too bad. Mostly, I was sorry to see so much of that Noxzema blue go. After trimming the batting off, I auditioned backgrounds, with the idea that I would put the whole thing onto another cloth.
I looked at these selections starting with upper left and going clockwise. The purple velvet was nice, but I liked the burnt orange of my slippers (just visible on the frame’s edges) better. The green and whites both fell completely flat. But, orange? Why, yes. It makes the Bird Woman sing! How can a single infusion of color do that?!! But it does. Orange makes Bird Woman sing!Here you can see how I applied some tiny seed stitches and “X’s” to approximate stars. The upper edge slanted precipitously downward, and since I was loathe to lose anymore of that rich, blue silk, I tucked a kind of corny cotton printed with a night sky. I will tuck something else on the left side to complete that edge.

This will be carefully stretched a bit before mounting onto its backing (which of course I had to piece because the orange swatch was not wide enough). Stay tuned for the finished piece!!

What is your style of finishing a piece? Do you run to it, with eager anticipation for the satisfaction of a job well-done? Or, do you resist? If you resist, how do you work with your resistance?

Pattern and Outrage : Dee Mallon

cloth, justice, writing, and food