Tag Archives: sewing

Blog through the fog?

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Three small pieces

Three small pieces

Last week found me sick, distracted, and stuck, and so I did not post.  It wasn’t that I didn’t have time, with the kids home and all, it was that I couldn’t stand to hear myself.  Today my need to show up outweighs the need to feel presentable (and I DO feel better!).

These three ‘sketch’ quilts were made over the last two weeks.  The Journal Quilt on the far right did not start out as a house, but once I put the windows on there was no going back.

Journal Quilt Feb 15, 09

Journal Quilt Feb 15, 09

The thing I like most about this quilt is not the final result, but the way the cotton batting took the needle as I hand-quilted the background.  So often, I am quilting through four, five, six layers of fabric, one of which is drapery weight, with poly batting (almost necessitating pliers!), so I want to remember how smooth and easy this was for future projects.  Also, I dyed the muslin in coffee and the aged look is nice.  The house I can take or leave, mostly leave.  Perhaps the slumping roof expresses the time of year and the wish to get out of town while staying home.   For future projects, I also want to explore using that silk of the roof for ‘drawing’ a fish — I can just make out the beginnings of a large Pacific salmon in a leaping arc there.

I seem unable, however, to generate any polar bear that I can stand to incorporate into the kitchen table quilt.  The bottom is nearly done, and the top, still waiting.  I experimented, unsuccessfully, with printing onto lutrador, and also tried using oil pastels on fabric.

kitchen-table-feb-21

bottom-big-quilt

If I am going to include this in the quilts that will be showing at the Arsenal Center for the Arts starting Friday, I’ve got to hustle.  Or jettison the idea of a polar bear altogether!

Here’s where I’ve been having some fun:

many-buttons

Sewing paper, swimming bears

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polar-bear-full

Journal Quilt Week 5 (18" x 24")

For the first time since starting these journal quilts, Sunday morning arrived without my having so much as having picked a background fabric.  I knew I wanted to depict a polar bear, but that was it.  Two weeks ago, sitting with two other artists in a fledgling crit group (yeah!!), a painter asked another quilter in the group, “Do you ever do studies before making a quilt?”  While I make variation upon variation, I’m not sure I’ve ever made a study.  I liked the idea.  So, given that the “hot” part of the large global warming piece that is all over my kitchen table is resisting attachment to the  “cold” part — study was definitely in order!

animal-picture-polar-bear-swimming2-ucumari-animalpicture

"Willy" by ucumari

On Saturday, I did a google image search, gathering a handful of pictures of bears swimming, and fell in love with the above photo by ucumari (check out her great animal pictures on flickr!)

Sunday, I started the day flipping through a book of Rick Bartow‘s artwork — incredible pastels, ink drawings, and sculptures of animals — mythic and full of gesture.  Absolutely gorgeous work.  I was also remembering the stunning, muscular animals of the artist Nancy Erickson, who works on fabric and paper.  (I looked at her website today and found that one of her polar bear quilts is titled the very title I was considering for my kitchen-table-piece — and that is,  “Where’s the Ice?”)  Anyway, their combined artistry inspired me to render my polar bear with pastels, rather than fabric.  Since I am out of sheets of fabric to feed through my inkjet printer and since the deadline was rapidly approaching, I stitched the paper right on the quilt.

bear-with-bubbles

Now, I have stitched a lot of paper — for cards, in particular — but never for the central image of a  mid-sized quilt.  It was exciting and freeing, and justified the whole discipline of doing these journal quilts, I think, but I wonder at the durability of it.  Even though these pieces are meant to be finished by Sunday, I plan to bind this one, and also to trim some of the pointy edges of the paper.bear-constellation

I stitched a bear constellation in the sky, using the leftover Heat n’ Bond paper from my earlier bear journal quilt as a guide on the wrong side of the quilt top, right against the batting.  It was a good idea, but I would like this quilt better without it.

I am encouraged by this piece.  It suggests a direction that might satisfy my need to work faster.

Speaking of stitching on paper, here is a flashcard I made awhile back.  It is too big to be an official ACEO (Art Cards, Editions and Originals – must be 3.5″ x 2.5″, the size of a trading card), but could be a collectible nevertheless.  I think I’ll offer it for sale in my etsy shop.

find-that-peacefind-that-back

The front is a photoshopped digital image of a small Buddha statue which might have become a holiday card if I was someone who got it together enough to send holiday cards.  I like the fact that there are two sides.  The very emphatic directive to “find that peace” seems like a pretty apt suggestion from the Buddha!

Keeper of Dreamtime

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peter-pan-girls

I spent several mornings last week creating decorative pieces for students playing Native Americans in a local Peter Pan production… Afterwards, I decided to continue using black fabric with Heat Bond to create this week’s Journal Quilt.  In keeping with Native traditions, I allowed a dream to dictate my choice… last week’s dreamscape produced a black bear.  I cannot tell you how many Novembers and Decembers found me wishing that I was a bear, so that I could purposefully, rightfully load up on carbs and fat in anticipation of a long, long nap!

Journal Quilt Week 3

Journal Quilt Week 3

Bears are associated with the North, with winter, and with wisdom and introspection.  Native Americans call them the “Keepers of Dreamtime”. Their energy is considered feminine, both because of the womb-like cave of hibernation and the duration of mothering time for cubs (as long as 7 years).  We have so much snow this winter, it’s no surprise that Bear Energy is strong!

(To satisfy my Journal Quilt Rule of carrying over a fabric from the previous week, I used strips of yellow-ish linen — found on the right side of the bear).

global-warming-four-table

And speaking of bears, for a long time I’ve known that the fourth quilt in a series on global warming would have polar bears in it.  The thought of polar bears drowning as they swim in search of ice is heartbreaking.  The first three quilts in this series featured hot, saturated colors, with wavy lines signaling heat and circles representing suns and unrelenting radiation. I am not accustomed to working with the pale palette that I’ve collected for the polar imagery and find it challenging — which probably means this is a good exercise.

I am also trying to sort out a more streamlined way to go from the initial collage-phase to the finished quilt.  If I piece almost everything, I get bogged down by the slow tempo and lose much of the initial feel of the design.  Someday I may just slide a big piece of canvas underneath and gesso the thing together!  My recent idea is to create four smaller quilts that I will join.