Made It!

You will recall that I had a limited amount of time to access the videos from this year's Sketchbook Revival once all of them had been e-mailed (see my first efforts here). Nose to the grindstone, I did watch the remainder of the videos with one day to spare! And shortly thereafter, they announce they were extending access for an additional week. I'm glad I pushed myself so that I could catch up on some of the exercises this week rather than still watch videos and take notes. One thing I did was part two of Helen Wells' mark making exercise using tools from nature, in my case a twig, a pine cone and a branch with tuffs of small needles. Once getting the feel of the kind of marks those tools would make, we were encouraged to actually draw something specific using the teachers inspirational photo or one of our own. I went ahead and used hers as I found it interesting for the same reasons she did and came up with the set above. I'd combined my two inks (brown and green) into one cup and was fascinated to see how the colors separated on the page, possibly because one is a permanent ink and one is not. I kinda got into it, knowing that none of these had to be great and a final result. What I did not expect was the way the watered down ink would bleed on the thin copy paper, so many of my "dots" spread into larger circles. Because they were actually tiny flowerheads in the photo, these enlarged dots beckoned thoughts of embroidery, both straight stitched and french knots. That was very unexpected to suddenly see how these loose and free marks could become a textile piece. Stay tuned for step three.

Next I decided to work on exercises where I could utilize my growing collection of stamp pads. Sarah Matthews is known for her stamping and showed us what has become her signature technique of layering stamped images. She demoed cutting simple designs to make a set of one inch blocks. Yes, you read that right - one INCH blocks. Then using 3 different colors ranging light to dark, she showed how to cover a page in sequence with these blocks, then shifting one to the end, stamp over the previous stampings with the second color, shift one block to the end again and do the 3rd stamping. I didn't care for her results and had no desire to cut those small blocks. But I thought I'd give it a small try with three half inch Celtic blocks from a set of varying sizes. Yeah, not impressed with my results either. But before she was done, she showed some other examples of how she layers her stamping and lots of them were quite interesting and she does it all with such ease. You can watch her in action on her website if you scroll down the home page I have thoughts of how I could do something similar with stamps I've already made and could apply to fabric.

Este MacLeod's presentation on printing and stamping was of interest because her only supplies were watercolors and a cardboard tube. Now, I've saved some toilet paper tubes that were slightly squashed thinking I might be able to stamp ovals with them, and here was the same idea being presented. As I watched though, I was not that impressed with using watercolors for the stamping. I'd normally use acrylic paint, but since I didn't want to get ANY paint out for this and had the stamp pads, that is what I used. I was surprised that they printed so faintly but at least I got some marks on the page and experimented with some overlapping.

Since I didn't have any perfectly round tubes to work with, I used a bottle cap for the perfectly round circles. But I've held on to that black piece of plastic for almost as long as the tp tube with the idea of stamping with it. I can't remember what it came off of, it is like those plastic endcaps of shipping tubes but oval. It has potential I think. Este's second step was to start painting in the shapes and manipulating the tube more for different shapes to eventually create a mandala that might inspire a work of art. Like Sarah's results, I was not taken with Este's which looked more like an hot mess to me. To each her own! Don't know at this point if I will try adding color to any of these.

This is my most successful work with watercolor painting, but as I mentioned before, the multi-media paper in my sketchbook is doing me no favors in getting good results or learning how brushes work and watercolor moves on the page. But this one with Sarah Simon was instructive and fun to do, adding little leaves here, jumping to another spot on the circle to add more, finally adding some berries and all the while the mind was working out how to adapt this to fabric. A wreath like this is a super foil for a simple message in its center.

I very nearly did not do this one with Koosje Koena, partly because I've watched many of her videos on Sketchbook Skool (she is one of the founders) and find her a little irritating in that she often tells you something, then says, well, I don't know if that's right, that's just what I think. It's one thing if her instruction is free but another if you are paying for her class only to find out she's guessing about important information. Anyway, not a fan and was even more not a fan with she said we were going to use crayons. Oh for Pete's sake (major eye roll!) - yes I was thinking, how childish and like her. But I DO have a big set of crayons bought on a whim and seldom used and we were going to draw whatever was in front of us because "Everything is interesting when you draw it." Now THAT I agree with. The point of the crayons is that it keeps you from being able to be detailed, encourages you to use whatever color you happen to pick up and allows a playfulness (frankly, I'm starting to hate that word - lol) that helps you break out a bit and mess with perspective. I had to keep pulling things off my desk onto the table where my computer screen sits and worked right along with her as I watched the video. And I enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would. Plus the more I look at it the more it reminds me of some of Laura Wasilowski's work, leading me to a different understanding of it. 

I have at least one more tidbit to share with you about the sessions but since this is already long, I will save it for another post. Maybe I will also have step three of that markmaking session to share by then. 

A Walk on the Bay Trail

We are finally warming up (again). I feel like I've said this before only to have our weather flip and bundling up weather return. Well, at least the winds have died down, which were making what otherwise would probably have felt comfortably warm into shivering ones. At any rate, I had an errand to run yesterday and made that easy side trip to the Pend Orielle Bay Trail for a change of scenery.

And it was glorious! Cool enough by the water to still need a light sweatshirt against a slight breeze in the shadows but still quite wonderful. I don't usually go to this trail until later in the season so I was pleased to find it in great shape, no muddy patches to worry about, no fallen trees or branches across it. The volunteers who tend to this trail work hard to keep it safe and open. And there was something quite special about gazing up through the branches at the tall tall cottonwoods before they have leafed out.

I had hoped to see some wildflowers along the way, but alas, I am either too early or too late. But there were cedar boughs next to the trail that caught my attention. They seemed so thick and heavy with needles.

There are indicators that tell me when I've walked to the half-way mark of the shortest distance I go on this trail, and since I've been a bit short on physical energy of late, I questioned if I could even do that over the slightly uneven terrain. But I hit that mark and wanted to keep going, felt fit enough to keep going. And so I did, ending up putting in half again as far as I'd intended. I could have kept going I think, but one has to remember about that return trip, will I run out of steam? Unsure of my stamina, I worried needless about how I would fare getting back to the car. The whole experience woke me up, excited my senses, got me thinking of the next trail to check out as our good weather is supposed to last into next week at least. All this as I should have been worried about the pollen count. Well, pollen count be damned, and I experienced no ill affects. Well, I AM pumped full of antihistamines!

Still Off The Wagon . . .

, , , or too many irons in the fire? I couldn't manage to crawl back onto the "finish" wagon to work on either Rhapsody or the baby quilt this past week. Even when there was a bit of time for the hand quilting, I couldn't convince myself to sit down at it. And when upstairs, instead of hanging a left into the studio, I hung a right into the office and spent time on the computer. Too much time deciding on a new printer model and then trying to track down where I could buy what I'd decided on. And then there were videos to watch. You remember my forays into Sketchbook Revival two years running I'm sure. Last year I even made the sketchbook I'd be using for it, thickening it up with enough signatures to carry me over into 2021. But at the start of this year, I determined I was not going to take on new projects, and I definitely was not going to spend hours with the Sketchbook Revival people, even though I'd found a lot of useful and fun stuff through them. Nope, not going to do it when I have so many other things I want to finish. By the time the sign-up e-mail arrived, I'd started to lose my resolve. Convinced myself it wouldn't hurt to register just in case, check out what was being offered, not necessarily pass up this free opportunity. So when it actually started, I just let the e-mails pile up without even opening them. Doing other things, focus elsewhere. But this is a limited time offer. After the last session, access to the videos remain for a few weeks and there I was, succumbing again, spending time at the end of the day going through a few videos, racing to get them in before they were gone.

I've mostly been taking notes as I watch the videos, leaving blank pages to do the actual exercises later, unless it's something that's quick and doesn't require anything other than a pen or pencil. But this particular watercolor session with Trupti Karjinni from India was longer than most and past experience has shown me it's better to actually work along with the instructor than just take notes when it comes to watercolor. So I saved it for today when I felt I had a bigger block of time. I only have multi-media paper in my sketchbook so I know my results would have been better on watercolor paper, but she had some really good tips and it was useful to paint along with her even on the "wrong" kind of paper.

As long as I was in there and had some things out, I decided to do a little from Helen Welles' session on seeking inspiration from outside. Mark making is big with a lot of artists but I've been slow to warm to it, and Helen's session was half mark making (using things you collected on a walk) and half working with the results. Sigh . . . wasn't sure about doing it at all, at least not with twigs and pine cones like she did. But I ended up at city beach yesterday for my walk and danged if I didn't find myself intrigued by a branch with needles and some small pine cones blown off the trees in a recent windstorm. Well, why not? It's all supposed to be about being curious and maybe finding something you can bring into your regular practice.

The mark making is done with a bit of diluted ink onto printer paper, and while Helen used black, I wanted to try my brown and green inks. Too diluted I think but they still worked. It would be easy to do dozens of pages of these, seeing what kind of marks a twig, those needles and even a pine cone would make, but I was careful to limit the number of papers. Even with these few, I quickly sensed that I'm more drawn to curved lines than straight, which may be valuable information. And that in spite of my love of those two colors of ink, I want to do some more pages with black.

If I keep up at this pace, I should get through the videos before they disappear. When I'll actually do all of the exercises is unclear, but I'm sure I'll get to it. Maybe add it to my list of things to finish . . . :-)

From yesterday's walk at city beach. Still very cold with brisk winds & even some flurries today!

Some Thoughts In Lieu of Progress

I really fell off the daily progress wagon this past week, only getting in a couple of days at the hand quilting and none at completing the piecing on the baby quilt. I'm reminding myself that an occasional break, for whatever reason, is not inherently bad as long as it doesn't become a habit. But it does mean I don't have much of my own work to share. I did run across a few things from other places I thought might amuse you or give you pause, like the color chart above. Every April Fool's Day, The Dharma Trading Company puts out a truly humorous newsletter that is so close to believable it would be easy to be taken in by it. Mixed in with "the catalog audio book", "mystery jar sale (Frankly we don't know what's in them and we're a little scared to find out!)" and "how to ruin your pool - mega marbling" was this 2020 inspired spring tones chart which I think they could probably successfully market. My favorite is dumpster fire orange!

Since I didn't finish piecing the baby quilt top, let alone piece a backing, I've not done any testing of that Warm and Natural Warm and Plush batting. I did take a close look at the packaging and was stunned to see "New - Available For A Limited Time Only!" So you may not want to wait for my appraisal of it but find a source and order some before it is gone. If there's enough positive feedback - i.e. sales - I suppose they would continue to offer it but you never can tell.

So while I was doing little on my  own "finish it" projects, I ran across a quotation from a letter Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother that I was unfamiliar with, or if I'd seen it before, I'd forgotten about it. But it is one that made me feel a bit better about my always slow pace with my quilting and art:

"...I must carry on working in calm and serenity, as regularly and concentratedly as possible, as succinctly as possible. I’m concerned with the world only in that I have a certain obligation and duty, as it were — because I’ve walked the earth for 30 years — to leave a certain souvenir in the form of drawings or paintings in gratitude. Not done to please some movement or other, but in which an honest human feeling is expressed. Thus this work is the goal…"

And then there's this which I found on Pat Denino's blog. She and I got to know one another on the internet years ago through our interest in art quilting. Pat also spent many years as an expert seamstress in alterations which explains her scrap stash she refers to here:

 "...I thought about my scrap pile, thinking a lot of people probably feel like they're just unwanted scraps. Depression does that. But I didn't throw my scraps away. If I were God and did to people what Pat does to fabric scraps, it would go something like this: I see you. You've been hidden away long enough. Let's get you out in the fresh air, trim you up a bit, and set you in a special place with some others so that you can all shine! Whatever you might have been, whatever you thought you were, well, now you're a piece of art!"

As one who has always saved her scraps, both from the days when I made garments and then as I made quilts, I think I've always felt this way about my scraps, even if I didn't express it this way. Reading this makes me want to dive into my scraps again! But how wonderful, especially on this eve of Easter, to envision that God might think of us in the same way we think of our fabric scraps, unwilling to toss them out but more than willing to give them new life. 

Batting

I'm arranging the rectangles in the last 3 strips of the Kaffe inspired strip quilt for baby Jesse Charm. For several reasons, I've generally used cotton or cotton/poly batting in quilts for babies but in the end am a little disappointed in how thin and flat they turn out, even after washing. So I perked up when I saw this Warm & Plush batting in a Connecting Threads catalog. Compared to the other Warm Company battings on the page, it looks to be twice as thick. Granted, I still have a fairly big stash of batting at my disposal so I didn't necessarily need to buy more just for this quilt, but my curiosity was piqued. I checked with my local quilt shop down the street who wasn't familiar with it but said they'd order it for me - perfect, as I really want to spend my money locally when I can and keep this shop going - the owner has done such a fantastic job of building it up and surviving even through the covid shutdown thanks to the loyal customer base. The batting arrived this week and I will soon be testing it out. Have any of my readers used this in a quilt?

How's Your Memory?

I have a cedar chest that belonged to my grandmother. After she died, my mother brought it back and told me it was my hope chest, filled with things from my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration and other family heirlooms. I think I was about 7 when all this happened, and for many years it was a sort of ritual to open the chest and remove each item for inspection before returning it to the chest. More a memory chest than a hope chest. Over the years I've moved some of the items to more visible daily spaces and some I shared with my brothers or got rid of altogether, making room to store some of my own memories I had no place else to put. I was searching in it the other day for the box where I kept cards and ticket stubs and other ephemera from my marriage when I spotted this box, a Made In Oregon box, and had no idea what might be in it.

Whether the two are truly connected, my ability to located where I'd put or stored pretty much everything I owned started to fail me after my husband died. We moved a lot and I suppose part of my memory system was tied to the fact that at each new location, I could store things similarly to the last place. Many boxes and shopping bags never even got unpacked from one place to the next. That started to shift with my first new place on my own which was quite different, I exchanged shopping bags and boxes for the now ubiquitous plastic bins, and few if any boxes remained unpacked. Suddenly there were so many things I could no longer put my finger on, and I've spent many frustrating hours rifling through boxes, drawers and bins looking for things that I just KNOW have to be in a particular spot, yet are not. Are you experiencing the same thing as time goes by? It's particularly annoying to me since I've always thought of myself as a fairly organized person.

I was truly surprised then to open this box and discover sand dollars! We lived for 3 years "behind the second dune" in Westport WA, taking daily walks with the dogs down to the ocean's shore where I collected so many of these, fascinated by the markings. Not wanting to take them from the careful packing, I moved a few aside to see that there were several layers of these.

A peek under the packing on the other end revealed other kinds of shells I had gathered over those three years. I didn't know what I'd do with them, only speculating how I might add them to a quilt. Why I decided that the cedar chest was a good place to put them I have no idea, except maybe that there was room and it would be a very safe place where they would not get broken.

I've actually been thinking about them for awhile, ever since I saw this idea in the photo above for an easy way to add color to ribbed shells with a Sharpie marker. But I was very sure they were in a shoebox in the last two moving boxes still in the garage untouched. Surprise! They were closer than I thought. I'm pretty sure my rock collection is in one of those boxes though, although now I'm not so sure. Just can't trust my memory anymore, apparently.

By the way, today is National Quilting Day, and I have been busy piecing more strips of the Kaffe inspired baby quilt. With sections sewn together, I've been able to move to the design wall and work over the top of what's on it to help me in arranging my lozenge rectangles. It's working out well. What are you working on to celebrate National Quilting Day?

Hand Quilting Progress

I've finished the hand quilting around the applique pieces of Rhapsody. I'll be winning no awards for even stitches but with a few exceptions, the eggshell thread blends right into the background fabric so only very close inspection would reveal the inconsistencies.

Now on to the cross-hatching, where I will use masking tape as my guide. I'm having second thoughts about adding this as I now realize how little open space there is for adding it except beyond the central design. Maybe just some echoing would have been a better choice, but I feel committed to this and have carried on.

I thought I would share with you the hoop I am using, my pride and joy: The Grace Hoop - Squared Polymer Pro. I don't exactly remember how I became familiar with The Grace Company, probably through an ad in a quilting magazine, but back in the 1980's I offered to hand quilt the queen size top my mother-in-law had made for one of her daughters. It was the part of the project she dreaded most while I was finding it difficult to get tops made for quilting, the part of the process I most liked. So suddenly I had a quilt to quilt and her hoop on a stand to do it with. It was a rickety affair with the classic round hoop but it was better than what I had on hand. I so enjoyed the process that when we fell into a large monetary gift to split, I opted to use mine for a full-size quilting frame, with the Grace Company's expensive, heavy duty well-made model with unique design features my first choice. And of course, I also opted for the one that could handle up to a king size quilt because, you know, I might regret it if I chose a smaller size. I was not disappointed, and quilted quite a few quilts of varying sizes on this sturdy frame that did not require you to baste your quilt before loading it onto the frame (did I not say it had some unique features?

The 3-rail system allows all 3 layers to be attached to the front bar, the other end of the backing to the second bar and the other end of the top to the 3rd bar while the batting hangs free. Each bar rolls independently to maintain even tension and smoothing, no basting required.

 

That frame got moved many times (being easy to break down into packable pieces), once while I was in the middle of quilting a queen-size quilt (it turned out to be relatively easy to roll the quilt on the three bars once the supporting legs were removed and a startled moving man figured out how to wrap it all in plastic and place it in the truck so that precious bundle would not be damaged), but once I finished that last queen, I was doing more machine quilting of any large projects and saving the hand quilting for smaller ones. I got very fond of my Q-Snap portable square frame. Then my husband died, I moved into a townhouse rental, and found myself with no place to set up the big frame even if I wanted to. I eventually sold it to my quilting friend and neighbor who was keen to have a full size frame and I started looking at other options that would solve the limitations I found myself struggling with using the Q-Snap frame.

Enter the Grace Company once again, as I eyed their latest product sporting more original design innovations incorporated into a quilting hoop on a stand. First of all, a square rather than round hoop, which makes tons of sense, as I'd discovered using the Q-Snap frame. Then it was the material the hoop was made out of, a sturdy polymer with no chance of staining a quilt left in it too long. The stand itself is Baltic Birch plywood, nothing rickety about those hefty parts.

 

But what really cinched it for me, made me think of this as the Cadillac of quilting frames, is this ball mechanism at the base of the hoop. Not only can you turn the hoop as you would a steering wheel, but you can angle it in all directions to get it positioned perfectly for your stitching style. (By the way, those strings of selvage are a tip I ran across for when quilting a large quilt. They allow you to gather up all that quilt beyond the hoop to keep it in check and off the floor.)

The arm that the hoop is attached to also adjusts up and down to accommodate different chair heights you might be sitting in or even your own body height. So easy to customize the quilting area to your needs.

Also included with the hoop are these weighted bars, just in case you need to quilt out to an edge and don't have enough quilt for the hoop to grab onto. I've never used these as I always leave a generous bit of batting and backing beyond the quilt top, but what a nifty idea just in case.

And as if all this weren't enough, the stand is designed to fold up smaller for storage. I even read about one quilter who used this feature so she could bring her hoop to guild when she wanted to work on something there. This is a really well-thought out design. Basically, I just can't say enough good things about the Grace Company and their product.

So I popped into their website thinking I could link to some of these products and features only to find they are now all about machine frames and the machines that sit on them, not a wood product in sight. Well, I suppose that IS the market now, not that many hand quilters out there looking for quality wood frames and hoops. They do sell a few hand quilting items, but not the beautiful wood ones that served/serve me so well. It all made me a bit sad. On the other hand, I'm sure everything they produce and sell now is of very good quality in order to maintain the name they built up starting over 30 years ago.

Aha!

Fiddle fiddle. Shift. Replace. I was getting nowhere on the arrangement of rectangles for the lozenge. Still confused, still questioning, still cutting a few more from my pinks. So I decided to set that aside and work on the partial lozenges at the top and bottom of the quilt. Suddenly, everything fell into place. I went back to the full lozenge, made a few adjustments and was happy. Moved on to arranging rectangles in the strips that make up the partial lozenges on the side. Going like clockwork. No reason to dilly dally, so started sewing pieces into strips, filling in with the background fabric rectangles. So what you see here is 5 strips on the right completely sewn together and 3 strips ready to attach to each other and the group on the right. Progress! And I'm really happy with the way it is looking. Apologies for the uneven lighting and the camera that insists on making those dark pink rectangles look darker and stand out more than they really do. Now I'm enjoying the process and the results. This will be a happy quilt!

BTW, I'm not concerned about having rectangles left over (and there will be quite a few I think) because I have a plan for the backing which will include them.

Organizing Plan

I ran into a bit of a visualizing problem after I got all the background strips for the Kaffe inspired baby quilt cut and started in on my small stash of teal green fabrics. Apparently, just knowing the total number of 5-1/2 by 2-1/2 inch rectangles needed wasn't enough and after cutting up the first fat quarter and counting up how many I got from it, and starting in on some different sizes of scraps, I found myself a bit at sea, confused, needing to step away until I could get a handle on how to work with the design imbedded in long strips since my design wall has too much on it to make room for this quilt. Very different from working with blocks, and in a midnight muse while trying to get to sleep, I hit upon a plan that got me back on track again. It included utilizing this piece of recycled denim padding that had come as packing in an order as an auditioning space.

I also started stacks for each lozenge and partial lozenge, adding additional fabrics until all the teal was cut. Now I could definitely see that I'd need to add some pink fabrics too.

I've never been any good at random placements. I've always needed to have a plan, lay things out, move things around. Now that I have more than enough rectangles cut, there will be some moving around for sure before I am happy with this. I don't have a proper pink that falls between the light and dark ones you see in this photo (the dark pink is reading more strongly in the photo than in real life but it is still darker in value and standing out more than anything else so not sure if it will be able to stay). I'm thinking that when I am happy with each lozenge's arrangement, I will experiment with sewing it together, first the pieces in each strip and then the strips together leaving the beginning and end unsewn so the rest of each strip can be added above and below. Did that make sense?

How To Be a Good Fool

Little interesting to show on the progress of my sewing project so I share with you a couple of non-textile endeavors, starting with this urban sketch. I spotted this tree house down a side street while pausing at a 4-way stop. I'm constantly on the lookout for interesting buildings to add to my architecture sketchbook but am admittedly slow in returning to any to actually sketch. But I was spurred on by a fellow urban sketcher who lives in the Kansas City area and adds to the Urban Sketchers Facebook page such lovely sketches of homes and buildings that, this time of year, she works on while staying warm and dry in her car. I'd commented that she was making me want to join her on some of her drives, as she always adds commentary about the buildings' style or history and that is right up my alley. But she is too far away. But not far enough away to not have some influence on me as she urged me to quit dreaming about sketching my own buildings and get out in my car to do it! Ok, sounds like a New Year's resolution to me coupled with a bit of outside accountability.

So on a recent bright and sunny but still cold day, I gathered up my supplies and stopped nearby to capture this bit of color in an otherwise plain neighborhood. The other side faces toward the lake and mountains and I couldn't help but wonder what the view was out the ample windows, if indeed one would be high enough to see over the houses and catch sight of a bit of blue water.

The other thing I thought I'd share is from June of last year, a bit of multi-media play I never got around to adding here. And it seemed a perfect example of what Austin Kleon recently shared in a post he titled "Learn to Play the Fool." I'd been working on one of the Sketchbook School Revival classes that called for acrylic paint, and I had paint leftover on my brush and palette that seemed a shame to wash down the drain. Early on in my surface design experiments, I'd learned of expending paint onto a piece of plain fabric designated for this purpose. Eventually, that fabric will be covered in paint of various colors that might just provide an interesting background for something. I knew you could do the same onto paper so I turned to the back of the sketchbook and started dabbing paint in no particular pattern. I soon had a page that was nothing but ugly to my eye, and I couldn't imagine how it would serve as a first layer to anything. Random dabbing wasn't working for me like other artists says it does.

So I tried something different, something more in line with my aesthetics and just painted lines down a new page. Ahhhh, now I was relaxed and soothed and enjoying myself, my imagination seeing ways I could add over the top of these - 5 pages worth until all the acrylic paint was gone.

But there was still that ugly page. I'd been cutting out seahorse designs from catalogs and decided those purple and blue dabs that might peek out beyond my cuttings could read as underwater background. The turtles came from a greeting card and I finished off with bubbles added with pen. A good exercise in collaging and in covering up, although I still see more of the ugly background than I would like. But I think perhaps I decided not to post about it because this whole process and outcome made me feel like a fool. Yes, I really don't like it when I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like playing the fool, unless there's a positive result.

 

But in reading Austin's post and the people he quoted, I had the sense that the last couple of years when I've stepped away from textiles, I'd been doing just that, playing the fool, and it was a good thing. “It’s simple,” writes George Leonard in the “The Master and the Fool,” the epilogue of his book Mastery, “To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool.”

"By fool, to be clear, I don’t mean a stupid, unthinking person, but one with the spirit of the medieval fool, the court jester, the carefree fool in the tarot deck who bears the awesome number zero, signifying the fertile void from which all creation springs, the state of emptiness that allows new things to come into being."

And here's how the playwright George Bernard Shaw encouraged an aspiring writer to “resolutely” make a fool of himself: 

"You say you are scarcely competent to write books just yet. That is just why I recommend you to learn. If I advised you to learn to skate, you would not reply that your balance was scarcely good enough yet. A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself. You will never write a good book until you have written some bad ones."

Well said. Indeed, how many people decide not to sign up for a class because they don't know enough about the subject and don't want to look stupid (raising my hand here). 

And Austin himself gave me my answer to why I've been so doggedly trying different things, not really understanding why.

"In Show Your Work I also wrote that mastery isn’t enough for the searching life of the artist. “You can’t be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again.” (In some cases, literally: I’m thinking of Erik Satie, going back to the academy after he was already known as a composer.) And this starting over, or beginning again, learning something new, requires a willingness to look like a fool, or a “curious idiot.” "

And So It Begins

You have an idea, you pick out a pattern, but the making of a quilt doesn't truly begin until you start pulling and auditioning fabric. And while I'd been going about my business, I realized that in the back of my mind, I was sorting through my stash, trying out different fabrics from different collections (yes, I have what I consider collections that are other than the usual commercial prints, batiks and hand-dyes I've put in a centralized storage system, sorted by color). Not getting in the studio and actually looking at fabrics, but working from memory in my head! Well, time to start pulling for real.

Once I'd charted the design and worked out dimensions of individual pieces, I could quickly figure how much background fabric I'd need, which in turn would determine what colors and kinds of fabrics I might use for the rest. I've been trying to figure out a home for that floral fabric underneath all the rest ever since I finished a commissioned quilt for my niece-in-law's baby back in 2014. It was the lone colorful thing about the quilt, used for the backing and binding, and as it had been hard to track down, I just took what was left on the bolt, leaving a good yard extra when I was done. To be honest,  it's not very me, not a print I would normally gravitate to even though it has colors that I really like, so it's been hard to convince myself to use it in anything. But suddenly, seeing it in a stack on the floor, I realized that if there was enough, this might be the best way to use it up. There is ample, and it may be the case that once cut into strips, I will be just fine with it. That's been the age old wisdom of quilt teachers - if you find a fabric ugly (or not to your liking) just cut it up (preferably small) and work it in with the rest. Well, these won't be small pieces, but they will be pieces all the same and the print has given me a palette to work with. I don't have as many teal green fabrics as I thought but plenty of the orangy and pink ones. I'll have to get cutting so I can experiment with mixing the two together in a lozenge or making each lozenge a single color. Fun soon to commence.

Because that green is perhaps my favorite color, even my signature color as it were, I tend to put these fabrics back in the stash when looking for candidates. You know, "saving" them for something special or just right. I had that slight stutter when I pulled them out, then carried on. I've had these for so long, I'm making fewer quilts than ever these days, and I felt that feeling of their preciousness fall away. For Pete's sake, what's more precious than this new baby, and why shouldn't his quilt have my most precious fabric in it?

Charting

The hand quilting continues at a slow but steady pace in a nothing-to-see-here fashion. I did finish quilting around motifs in the hooped area and shifted the block to an unquilted area, which let me see just how much was already quilted. I wasn't sure how far I had gotten so was pleased to find only about a third left to go (plus around those blue swirls around the outside). In the meantime, the mind keeps playing with the baby quilt configuration and what colors I might choose. Most of all, I felt I needed to pin down the size of the individual pieces, both to double check the finished quilt size and to get a sense of how much of each fabric I might need. I know a lot of quilters might turn to a software program to help them out with this, and I used to too. But sometimes it's just quicker to get out the graph paper and chart things out. So that is what I did this week. Did you know you could download PDFs off the internet for printing your own custom graph paper? Lined paper too.

Having this visual is helping me consider whether or not to shorten and/or widen the quilt. And mapping it out using paper and pencil helped me see the rhythm of the design, the relationship between the pieces. Where for awhile I was letting this idea for a quilt intimidate me, now I have all the information pinned down in a way that shows me it's not intimidating at all.

Rhapsody

Here's the next "finish" project, the one I alluded to as my next work-on-while-watching-the-news handwork. It was started in a Suzanne Marshall workshop which featured one of the blocks from her award-winning quilt "Rhapsody", probably around 2002. I didn't start blogging until 2006, where I found a post about it when the applique was complete and I was readying it for quilting. In that post, I talk about the value of working from patterns, and as I reread what I said, I find I still feel the same and I think it's worth a read. You'll also find links to both Suzanne's website and a photo of her Rhapsody quilt.

https://idahobeautyquilts.blogspot.com/2006/02/training-wheels.html

The only other post about it is in 2008, where I was planning to take it along to a retreat since I couldn't take my machine. Apparently, I'd not touched it since the 2006 post when I was marking a feather pattern in the corners. They were so faint that I had to find the pattern for the feather so I could remark it darker.

I vaguely remember quilting on it a bit during the retreat but I think most of my time was spent prepping the applique on sashing for a different quilt. I know I quilted on it after the retreat, getting those corner feathers done and starting the quilting along all those applique pieces, but there's no more mention of it in the blog that I can find, although if I wanted to take the time to leaf through my engagement calendars I could track down my progress and the last time I actually worked on it. What I do know is that it has sat in this hoop-on-a-stand in a part of my livingroom with a sheet thrown over it for protection since I moved into my current rental in 2012 - there was no where else to "store" it. So this UFO is not a case of out of sight, out of mind, as I saw it every day, while sitting on the sofa watching tv, passing by it on my way to the front door or the stairs to the second floor. For whatever reasons, lame or valid, it has awaited my return in a patient daily stare. Wait no more.

It has been so long since I've hand-quilted on anything that I wondered how it would go. Would everything feel foreign and awkward? Would I even be able to track down my tools and thread? Turns out the latter was more difficult than to get back into the rhythm of rocking the needle through the sandwich. Were those first stitches nice and even and not too large? Well, of course not! But not nearly as awful as I expected, and getting better with each session. I've gone around those teardrop shapes above the blossoms and up the left side of the stem and calyx of the central flower. When I make it around all the applique, I believe my intent was to fill the background with a 1/2 inch crosshatch. Lots more to do before it's ready to hang on the wall. 

By the way, I have the patterns for all the other blocks in Suzanne's Rhapsody quilt. We had the opportunity to purchase them individually or as a set and the practical part of me said, "You'll never get around to making any more of these, let alone all of them," while the also somewhat practical part of me said, "But if you don't buy them now, there no doubt there will come a day when you regret it, ready to make more and the patterns no longer available!" And truly, I do think the chance of me making even one more of these gorgeous blocks is pretty slim, yet I don't regret hedging my bets.

On Being Creative

Just ran across this short clip on being creative from an interview with cartoonist, musician and the first Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, James Kochalka, and it both makes sense and inspires this person who has such a long creative journey behind her with more yet to come.

And here's a book that might be worth a read: David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World recommended by my fave, Austin Kleon in this post. I'm drawn to the title because I've always been a generalist, which is often negatively thought of as jack of all trades, master of none. I truly have been proud of all the things I've tried and can sort of to very well do, but sometimes regret the things I did not stick at long enough to truly master (like playing the piano). I realize that my broad scope of skills has stood me in good stead in getting paid jobs when I was still in the work force but a lack of what some might call focus may have kept me from advancing into higher paying ones. At any rate, here is a quotation from the book that Austin pulled out that describes me well:

“[I] realized that I was not the type of person who wanted to spend my entire life learning one or two things new to the world, but rather the type who wanted constantly to learn things new to me and share them.”

And a couple for all of us to ponder and believe in our creative ventures:

“In [Dan] Gilbert’s terms, we are works in progress claiming to be finished…. The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been.”

“One sentence of advice: Don’t feel behind.”

“Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you. Everyone progresses at a different rate, so don’t let anyone else make you feel behind. You probably don’t even know where exactly you’re going, so feeling behind doesn’t help.”

 

All Wrapped Up

Literally and figuratively. Behold my first finish of the year, the mobius scarf I started knitting on Christmas Day. I found a particular daily program I watch that I could also knit to, and on most days sat down with my needles while I watched/listened. This particular pattern has some rounds that take a lot of counting and concentration so no show prattling on in the background, but the rows in between could be knitted almost without looking. I'm just not as good as I once was at splitting my concentration between what I'm working on with my hands and what my ears are taking in, but this worked well and got me into a routine that got this done. It reminded me of when I was hand quilting Masks while I watched a Saturday morning news program. It's encouraging me to find another project to finish that requires handwork that could just as well be done during this hour-long program. I know just the one . . .

 

As you can see from the opening photo, this scarf is quite wide and in fact can also be slid over the shoulders like a wrap (thus the literal all wrapped up) as shown in the pattern above. It's very light and stretchy yet for all the laciness quite warm. Wrap it again to encircle the neck twice and it gathers around it and down the front without bulk and should fill the opening of a jacket quite nicely.

I was excited at how many responded to my question of design layout in the last blog post, and pleased that there was mostly consensus on which one might prove the best for my baby quilt project. I particularly appreciated Kathleen's reasonings for her choice (Jan too). I'm that kind of person who might want to go with my gut feelings but feel better about it if I have an explanation to back it up. I also agree with her that, with tweaking to make the first choice wider and thus proportionately better, it would work as well. I also chuckled at her comment about "fewer pieces rather than smaller" being a good idea since I happen to know how many quilts she has made with truly small pieces. And she wasn't the only one to applaud that choice.

Several also noted that thing about where inspiration and solutions come from. Vivian noted that hers often come when she first awakes while mine often come as I'm trying to fall asleep. Jan hit it on the nose, that subconscious of ours that works away while our active brains are taking care of life in general. I love how the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain school describes it, that the left side thinks it knows everything and is easily bored while the right side is open to all possibilities and doesn't need the left side's input. It's liberated when the left side is busy with, say, keeping track of where you are going when you are out for a walk. Indeed, a lot of my problem solving happens when I take a break and get out walking. It clears the cobwebs in more ways than one!

A Project To Finish

My goddaughter had her baby the day after Christmas so now I feel free to really get going on a quilt for the little boy named Jesse Charm (yes, I'm somewhat superstitious about making a quilt before a baby actually arrives). This isn't starting a new project, in case you might think I'm deviating from my resolution word "finish"), since I'd chosen a design and started working out the size of its pieces a few months ago. I'd not wanted to make my version as large as the Kaffe Strip quilt that had caught my eye, but as I sized it down, the rectangles went from 2 inches plus seam allowance wide to 1-3/4 and then 1-1/2 plus seam allowance wide. Oh how I just wanted to cut 2-1/2" wide strips and subcut to various lengths, remembering how fussy the cutting of the narrow pieces for this baby's sibling's quilt was and how long it took to sew them all together. I was losing my enthusiasm for sure. And then not long ago I had a thought, could see it in my head. What if I didn't make the pieces smaller, just used fewer of them resulting in the same basic design? You can see what I mean looking at the picture above, the dark line outlining one configuration that would give a quilt measuring approximately 30 x 49.

But I think I like this one better and by moving the side lines out a bit, it gives me a better width at 38 inches. Actually I could do the same thing on the first one. It just seems to give a better balance as well as a better width. I could also eliminate the partial blocks and replace those areas with more background fabric. All while giving myself fewer pieces to cut and sew. What always amazes me though is how long I have to let things sit and my mind aimlessly mull things over to, out of the blue, come up with what suddenly seem obvious answers that will make my life easier.

Which version do you prefer? I'm leaning toward green(s) for the background and whatever from my stash looks good with it/them. I still have some cutting dimensions to work out and a design wall with no room to work on, so there's still time for mulling.

What's The Word?

 

When I took a late stroll on New Year's eve, this quite amazing snowman was guarding the mail locker. What a fun surprise to end the year with. And now, here we are in a new year. But in our hearts we know not much will change just because we've put up a new calendar. Many of the same challenges, inconveniences and true hardships from 2020 will still be with us for many more months. But there does appear to be a light at the end of the tunnel and at least for me, much that can be done to keep one occupied (and perhaps distracted?) while we wait this pandemic out.

Yes, lots on my plate if I wish it, and I settled on my resolution word of the year weeks ago. While last year the word was "GO!", chosen to inspire me to just get into the studio and do something, anything, rather than pass by the door with a sigh. However, I'd say maybe a third of the way into the year, my get up and go got up and went (as my mother used to say). So all those things on my optimistic to do list more or less stayed undone. Yes, I did learn some bookbinding stitches and techniques early on, and participated again in both Sketchbook Revival and Inktober, but there are days and days in my engagement calendar where I keep a record of progress on my arty endeavors that are blank. I don't blame the pandemic at all for this. I just slumped into a long stretch of auto-immune syndrome energy sapping and muscle pains. Sometimes there's no point in fighting back and better to find what you can manage until you have a day when you realize you have energy to spare and/or little pain hampering you.

So with stacks of ideas in the beginning stages, bookbinding lessons to catch up on and UFO's all around me (and several very old ones that insistently called to me from the closet throughout last year), to name just a few things I can be spending my time on, I've chosen "FINISH" as my resolution word of 2021. Wouldn't that be nice to see what clutters my worktable and floor and even design wall morph into things that are done? Wouldn't it be nice to have handmade items ready to give away and art quilts complete in case I decide to exhibit again this year? Wouldn't it be satisfying to be productive again, with that fresh engagement calendar recording near daily progress on my many creative interests? Yes it would! And I've already begun, knitting a little nearly every day on my mobius scarf.

 

I love the "wave" pattern which is easy to do

 

I'd like to end with a sentiment from Michelle GD that came in her New Year's Day note which seemed an affirmation of my chosen resolution word:

"I’ve been thinking about fresh starts being a continuation of something already underway. With this kind of fresh start, there’s no drama, no buildup or let down. Just a carrying-on. I find this comforting."

 

Yes, I find it comforting too. She goes on to talk about the other kind of fresh start, the wiping the slate clean and starting over kind which can be necessary, exciting, but daunting as well. "They can feel like insurmountable hills that you’re too tired to climb," she says, and boy, does that speak to my struggles with my auto-immune syndrome. But the "just a  carrying-on" kinds can be "quiet and soft. Unassuming. Not earth-shattering in their existence or in their beginning." That's for me, I think.

 

At the end of this letter (which is worth reading in full here), she included a more complete version of a quotation which I had run across awhile ago and really spoke to where I'd let myself go and desperately needed to come back from. I wish it for you, my readers, as you face 2021 with renewed hope:

 

"Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place."

~ Kurt Vonnegut ~

 

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Previous resolution words:

2008 - Freedom

2009 - Calm

2010 - Focus

2011 - Refocus

2012 - Balance & Harmony

2013 - Perseverance

2014 - Explore

2015 - Fearless

2016 - Light

2017 - Endure 

2018 - Refresh

2019 - Wing It! 

2020 - Go!