Saturday, June 14, 2014

On the Homestretch to ArtWalk

After finishing the last of the quilting on the two wine-dark sea quilts yesterday, I realized it was time to make a list of everything I need to do to be ready to hang my exhibit next Wednesday. As you can see, it is quite a lengthy list; from adding sleeves (or placing in frames) and labeling, to photographing, to filling out gallery cards...well, there's just a lot of non-creative stuff that must be done once the art is finished. Allowing all these details to clutter up my head only leads to moments of "spin cycle" (where there is so much to do one just stands in the middle of the room thinking, "This one, no this one, wait, this one first," and sometimes literally spinning, unable to decide which important thing to attend to, thus doing nothing). And if not spin cycle, then the less than efficient "pinball machine" behavior where one does actually start work on something only to bounce to something else, then something else again before any one thing gets totally attended to. No, this making of a list (which I called "run up to ArtWalk"), and arranging it in a logical order of execution gave me a feeling of relief; a lot to do, but if I refer to my list, it will get done on time.


I'm right on schedule, too, anticipating that the quilts would be ready to face and attach sleeves to this weekend. I must admit, I greatly dislike facing quilts, probably as much as some people dislike sewing on binding. But I have binding down to a science, and it rarely gives me trouble. Facings, on the other hand, always feel like a battle, no matter whose method I use. This one actually went on fairly well, but I never get the perfectly straight edges that I do with binding, and it is a lot of work to get it even close. Bleh! And now I have a second one to do, and I really don't want to. It doesn't say, "I need to be faced" quite in the same way as this one did.


And so, with no time to waste and every intention to "assembly line" the facing and sleeve process of these two, I started looking through my stash for and auditioning possible suitable binding. I think I'm going for it...

3 comments:

Lucia Sasaki said...

Hi Sheila!
Congratulations for finish your red wine sea quilts!! By the pictures I saw, they are so beautiful!! And remembering your technical difficulties, I am glad that all went well. I wait for your post with pictures of all of them in the exposition.
Following your creative process is always a pleasure and a lesson of how to persevere toward goals.
Thanks for sharing and for inspiration.

Christine Staver said...

Sheila, the quilting came out great. I know exactly how you feel about facing. There is no way to get those corners completely square with facing. At least one corner is wonky. I guess that is also the case with binding, but I don't think it shows as much. I think the issue with most of the facing methods out there is that you cannot under stitch the entire way. The method I sent you you are able to do that. Even then the corners are only as good as how square the corners are cut and how straight we sew.

The same thing is true of mitering a border. Three corners go in perfect, but there is always the one that does not! I guess it is good that most of us are not doing many borders these days! There is always something about a quilt that does not come out just right. The other day I took the binding off of the quilt I painted of our cat and recut the quilt. I always knew that one border did not come out as wide as the 3 other borders. I was trying to force the quilt to be 15 by 15 and ended up with those dimensions, but one border was between 1/8-1/4 in off of the others. Since I quit that group I decided the quilt no longer had to be exactly 15 by 15 and I fixed it last week. I think I was postponing working on the canal houses!

The Inside Stori said...

I feel for your....been spending days gettting ready for an exhibit here too.....the paperwork is clogging my mind!!