Tag Archives: cloth company

Looking at the sky

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The sky was distracting and overly busy, and rather than cover it up, I removed it.

I had wandered around my bins a bunch of times before finding the grey cotton, which I consider to be perfect.

The sharp line along the bottom edge of an arlee barr swatch kept grabbing my eye in a bad way… and so, even though my intention was to keep as much of the swatch visible as possible, I added a “tatter” from Deb Lacativa to bring some of the dark of the midsection down and to slightly interrupt that otherwise distracting line.

A still life from my sister’s mantel. 

And, more stars and reflections from Salem on Christmas day.  What wish would I wish upon a star tonight?  The first day of 2012?

One of the New Year urges I am feeling that is relevant here, is the desire to write juicier shit on this blog.  I find the reporting that I stick to in order not to make myself wildly vulnerable, boring, to be frank.  It is tough to be soulful enough, consistent enough, productive enough, or funny enough about my stitching work to add the kind of verve and zest that make a blog worth visiting.  So, how to do? Any ideas?

One idea is to abandon my strict policy of not including quotes from my large library of inspired writers, out of copyright diligence.  Who cares?  Does anybody check?  It’s not like I’m about to be ‘discovered’ and therefore have to be original across the board… Thoughts?

Another idea is to devote a day a week to a post of non-craft writing… I could groom one piece of writing per week to share here.  Things like character sketches, pages from the journals I kept for the boys as babies, writing that comes out of writing prompts (right now I’m ticking through the prompts on creativewritingprompts.com) or my Thursday writing class.  I’m conflicted about this because when I see too much text on a craft blog, I skip away.  But maybe others are different? And, if this energizes ME, and ONE OTHER person, does it matter if it is being offered to an audience primarily interested in pictures?

 

late in the year

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Caught what C & D had.  So has Ken.  Laying low.  Reading. Walking the dog.  Watching movies.

Slowly putting things away.  It is satisfying to put the decorations out, and satisfying to put them away.  I generally begin putting things away before everyone else is ready to see it all go.

We would love some snow.

Amazing how soft seven horns can sound.

K. finally made me my bottle tree.

Thankfully the ‘Cookie Angel’ has flitted elsewhere.

All the ‘making’ has been meals, gatherings, gifts, returns, and running around.  Looking forward to getting back to a few pieces:

Collage to quilt

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playing with paper

You can click on pictures for larger versions.

("doesn't SMELL like fish!")

stitching paper to paper

letting images direct where piece is going

making marks on back with oil pastels while wondering, what is left of an experience years later and how do we mark it in consciousness?

More marks.

 

Color copy of new version - with B&W figure in lower left. Abandoned brick/grape leaf background.

Using inkjet printer and prepared, commercially available fabrics - I print one copy on cotton; one on polyester organza.

love this

Placed sheer version on top of partially quilted opaque version

This corner is too dark - so paint and ink to the rescue

Made 'suckers' from erasers out of the junk drawer

Scary to mess about with this much time in, but stamped with copper ink and white paint

Finished piece is edged with striped linen and stapled to wooden frame - you can't really see the quilting or the layering effect in this light

Octopus on the wall.

saved backing sheet to use under fabric as stitching guide

Backer sheet is below the green wool. I stitched from back, following lines. Very messy because toner is not set on page. To be continued.

P.S.  Hope to fix picture resolution issues ASAP.  I have been wondering why my pictures are defaulting to a 72 pixel resolution and looked and looked at my Photoshop settings, but it now dawns on me that perhaps it is a setting on my CAMERA that I changed (the file size while noodling with something else – will check and hopefully fix.

One Little Fishy

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I am back to work on a commission from the spring. How great it feels to wrestle with all the challenges that attend improv quilting rather than the challenges associated with not working at all!!

The sewing challenges presented by improv quilting include — lumps where different weight fabrics meet, lumps where a necessary re-fragmentation of a pieced section renders a formerly bigger patchwork piece into a very tiny postage stamp-sized piece which is butted up against a new seam; the imbalance of motif or color that occurs when rearranging large pieced sections;  the sorry loss of a quarter inch of a beloved fabric chunk… like this little fishy’s nose.

I consider the satisfaction of designing-as-I go well worth the lumps and bumps.

Thank you readers, who offered so much encouragement and insight to me recently after a particularly gloomy post. It surprises me when taking the risk of sounding like a whiny baby proves so worthwhile. Thank you.

I particularly took to heart two things — one, that trust is important here, and two, that stepping into the river of creativity is more important than the style of one’s waders — in other words, when time is tight perhaps a medium that lends itself to quicker results might be the ticket. Or, in the alternative, now that I have a paycheck, perhaps I don’t mind making fewer quilts a year.

Thank you again.