It's time

Christmas is over. It's time to get back to art. It's time to stop using all the Christmas prep as an excuse to avoid the studio. Of course, those were legitimate excuses: design Christmas cards, order cards, mail them out; purchase or make and ship presents for out of town family; purchase presents for intown family and friends and wrap them; make treats, lots of cookies and candies (short interruption for trip to ER to sew up thumb due to misuse of kitchen equipment); decorate tree, prepare meals, yada yada yada. I did spend some time in the studio but it was to sew labels and sleeves on finished quilts and make the storage bags. I'm on the last one and when I finish that there will be no more tasks that I can use to procrastinate. I will have to make some art.

At the moment I'm sort of devoid of inspiration and need a kickstart. Doing some surface design on fabrics always helps in that direction. Maybe some monoprinting with gelatin plates, or some soy wax batik (haven't done that in a very long time). Wish I had a foolproof method for getting up to speed....

What do you do?

Further adventures in knitting

Good thing I decided to knit one sleeve at a time. So far I've had to rip out three different times, for a total of about 30 rows. And it's not the kind of ripping where you can take the needle out, pull the yarn, and then pick up the stitches. With the pattern - knitting 2 together and yarn overs - I know I would never get it right. So I have to laboriously unknit one stitch at a time. Sigh.

While I was doing the research, I kept reading about AddiTurbo needles. Everybody raves about them so I did some more research to see if I wanted to purchase some. They are definitely not cheap. But it sure looked like I wouldn't have the problem of the needle unscrewing itself from the cable or the permanent loop in the other cable. It quickly became obvious that nobody was selling these beauties at a discount. All the web sites I checked had the same prices and even had the same charts. Must have some master site with the information that everybody is supposed to use. But I found this one site Bob and Nancy's Services that did free shipping, so that's a discount of sorts. I ordered them on Monday, they were shipped Tuesday, and arrived today. Pretty good deal.

I haven't been doing much art lately, for sure. I have a bunch of quilts that need sleeves, labels, and bags to hold them. Boring work, but at least I'm in the studio and I can listen to audio tapes. The label fabric that I ordered from Spoonflower arrived and I embroidered titles and dimensions for about 6 quilts, and those have to be sewn on. Maybe while I'm in the studio I will absorb some inspiration.

Adventures in Knitting

So I dyed yarn for a sweater, and found a pattern I really like at elann.com. It's a top down knitting pattern and I really like those because it nearly eliminates any finishing sewing, no side seams, and no sleeve seams if they can be knit in the round. This pattern is not real precise in its instructions and assumes that the knitter is fairly experienced. I thought I qualified for that until I got to this section:

Sleeves: Move sleeve-backs (underarm to back of shoulder) to one circular needle, and sleeve-fronts (underarm to front of shoulder) to a second circular need. Knit.....

Huh? I've used circular needles to knit in the round, but this use of two circular needles was new to me. I could not even visualize what this was talking about. Google to the rescue. I found lots of descriptions and videos of knitting with "2 circs". It actually seems easier than using double pointed needles, at least once you get the hang of it. But I couldn't find anything anywhere describing how to use this technique and knit two sleeves simultaneously. A little more searching revealed directions for knitting two socks on 2 circs at the same time. I thought I would try to adapt that to the sleeves.

This involves a lot of three dimensional thinking and my brain was clearly not up to the task. I threaded those stitches on the circs and they always came up in the wrong configuration - inside out or the beginning of the row was not at the needle ends or the whole thing was twisted. I struggled with this for a long time and it was not made any easier by the permanent loop in the one circular needle nor by the fact that Rosie the kitten thought all this yarn would be great to play with. Finally, I thought I had a workable configuration, and started knitting the sleeves. Disaster. Everything got tangled, I didn't put the right number of stitches on the separate needles so the pattern wasn't working out, and I finally surrendered. I'm knitting one sleeve on the 2 circs (notice how I've picked up the jargon), and it's going well. As long as I keep track of whether I'm doing a patterning row or a plain row. When knitting back and forth it was easy because the patterning row was the knit row and the plain row was the purl row. Now it's all knitting and I have to pay attention.

When I dyed this yarn I wasn't able to get even color throughout. I swooshed the yarn in the dye bath frequently and added the soda ash in batches and swooshed some more, but after I washed it I could see a definite variation in the color. I was concerned that it would look funny, like I had used different dye lots of yarn. But no, it doesn't because the variation is within the skein and it alternates lighter and darker. And it's really working out well - adds lots of depth to the patterning. I'm going to tell everybody it was intentional.

The last sweater I knitted I had to do a lot of reworking because I got the sizing wrong. Well, that and a lot of pattern errors and one sleeve knitted inside out. I certainly hope the sizing works out correctly on this one. I don't know if I have the heart to rip it all out and start over.

Keeping Busy

This is not a creative time of year for me. The days are dark and often gloomy, the trees are bare, and everything feels gray. I can't seem to get in the art mode, but I want to be in the studio. So what better time to clean the place up? I wish the horizontal surfaces weren't such magnets for stuff: magazines, fabric scraps, paperwork, stalled projects, yadda yadda. If I'm not diligent in putting that stuff away my work surface contracts into about 2 square feet. So I spent a day or so putting things away and dealing with paperwork. And I have several pieces that need the finishing touches - sleeves, labels, bags, slats. Boring work, but I can listen to audio books and the time passes quickly.

In the past I've made labels using t-shirt transfer paper. I've never been very successful with that stuff, and I think the papers have gotten old, because I was even less successful this time. I couldn't get a good transfer no matter how many times I tried. I had the idea to get them printed at Spoonflower, and created a jpg of the label with my name and address information on it, and uploaded it. I'm getting a yard of labels, which I think works out to more than 50. That should last for a long while. The title of the piece and its measurements will have to be added to each piece, and I could either write it out by hand or stitch it by machine using the built-in alphabet. Or I could even freehand write it out.

On one of my email lists there has been a thread about rejections. I've hit the trifecta this season with 3 (or maybe 4, is that a quadfecta?) rejections, all in a row. I'm not sure of that last one because I'm not 100% sure I even entered. It wasn't a show, so I didn't have to put it in the schedule, and I don't have a copy of the entry form. I intended to enter, but maybe I didn't carry through. I was never notified either way, and since I'm not on the list of people who did get in, obviously I didn't. Sheesh, I hate this CRS (can't remember s*^%).

Winter time is knitting season for me, and I searched for a sweater pattern that had more interest than a plain stockinette stitch. I found one with an intricate cabling pattern and I really liked it. Knitted up a test swatch and tried to follow the pattern. Yikes - too complicated. I would never be able to get it right and would constantly be tearing out rows. So I've found another pattern that's not quite so complicated (I hope). Ordered more cotton yarn from DharmaTrading and dyed it the other night. For this sweater, I thought the yarn should be all one color and so I used three skeins and immersion dyed them. I know why variegated colors are so popular - they're so easy to do. Even coloration is very difficult, and I have the results to prove it. You have to stir the yarn in the dye bath to distribute the color, but the more you stir the more likely the yarn is to tangle. So I have different shades of the golden brown I tried to get. The skeins have been hanging on the line for 36 hours now and they're still not dry. Then I will have the task of winding them into balls, which will have the added difficulty of keeping the yarn away from Rosie, the kitten, who thinks everything is a toy. Once I knit the sweater, if the variation in color is too obvious or doesn't look good, I can always over dye.

But the news is not all gloomy - yesterday I shipped High Noon off to its new owners in California. They are celebrating an anniversary and decided to treat themselves to the purchase of my quilt. I think that is an excellent way to celebrate an anniversary.

High Noon ©2005

We will be celebrating our Thanksgiving on Saturday again this year, since my daughter goes to her in-laws on the official T-day. It always feels weird to be cooking the turkey dinner when everybody else is still recovering from their celebration, or out shopping. So, whenever you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a great day!

One last thing. John Hopper, author of The Textile Blog, wrote a very complimentary article about my work last month. He writes about the entire gamut of textiles - quilts, tapestries, knitting, carpets, embroidery, and more. There are some very interesting articles on his blog (in addition to the one about me, of course).

Girlfriends' Weekend

Last weekend I spent a delightful 4 days with 6 friends in Chicago. These are people I've met at the Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio and have enjoyed their company whenever I've been with them. As part of this trip, I attended the opening reception of "What's the BIG Idea" at the Northbrook Public Library, where I have a piece in this show. I have family in Northbrook and it was a real treat to have them come to the reception and see my work hanging on the wall. It's an all media show, with mostly painted works, and mine is the only quilted fiber piece. I didn't win any of the big prizes, but there is always hope for one of the Viewers' Choice prizes.

In Chicago we stayed at the Silversmith Hotel, an historic building in the Loop, two blocks from Millenium Park. The staff treated us like queens and we tried to not make too much noise as we partied in our rooms.

We wanted to visit the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute but had to kill some time before it opened and so explored Millenium Park. This is an amazing place. Here is the description from their web site:

"Millennium Park is an award-winning center for art, music, architecture and landscape design. The result of a unique partnership between the City of Chicago and the philanthropic community, the 24.5-acre Park features the work of world-renowned architects, planners, artists and designers. Among Millennium Park's prominent features are the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the most sophisticated outdoor concert venue of its kind in the United States; the interactive Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa; the contemporary Luri Garden designed by the team of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel; and Anish Kapoor’s hugely popular Cloud Gate sculpture."

I remember from my childhood that this area was railroad yards and parking lots, but in 1998 the City began construction of this park. What a change! We spent many minutes at the Cloud Gate, looking at our reflections in the highly polished stainless steel surface, and watching other people do the same thing. From one vantage point its curved surfaces reflect the skyline of the city along with the clouds in the sky. If you get close up you see your self contorted into very weird shapes.

We walked over the BP Bridge, designed by Frank Gehry, 925 feet long and serpentine in shape. There are panels that form the sides of the bridge and slope down to the ground and are an almost irresistible temptation to slide down. Slide marks from previous visitors attest to the fact that not everybody can resist the temptation.

We walked through the gardens which were showing the effects of late fall, and made me want to come back in summer to see them in full bloom. From the Park we ascended the walkway to the entrance of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute. This wing just opened last Spring and is another architectural marvel. We only visited a few of the exhibits, there is just way too much to see for a one day visit. We saw mostly contemporary art, both European and American and ate lunch in the gourmet restaurant.

On Saturday our goal was to attend SOFA - Sculptural Objects and Fine Art. I've heard of this show for years and never had the opportunity to see it. But first we had to get there, and that required a hike down Michigan Avenue, right past the old Chicago Public Library building. No longer a library, it now houses the Chicago Cultural Center and presents free art programs all year long.

From their web page:

"Completed in 1897 as Chicago’s first central public library, the building was designed to impress and to prove that Chicago had grown into a sophisticated metropolis. The country’s top architects and craftsmen used the most sumptuous materials, such as rare imported marbles, polished brass, fine hardwoods, and mosaics of Favrile glass, mother-of-pearl and colored stone, to create an architectural showplace. Located on the south side of the building, the world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome ― 38 feet in diameter with some 30,000 pieces of glass ― was restored to its original splendor in 2008. On the north side of the building is a 40-foot-diameter dome with some 50,000 pieces of glass in an intricate Renaissance pattern, designed by Healy & Millet."

The mosaics were incredible, some with pieces as tiny as 1/4" across. We could have stayed for many more hours, but SOFA was calling. It was a long walk to Navy Pier and by the time we got there we were all in need of food and drink. After a delicious lunch, we finally got into the show. I've been to the American Craft Council show in Baltimore many times, and sort of expected something similar. At the ACC show, individual artists show their wares in 10'x10' booths. At SOFA, the artwork is displayed by the galleries that represent the artists in "booths" that resemble a gallery setting. Much more sophisticated in presentation. And much higher prices, it seemed. The people in attendance seemed to be divided into two categories: gawkers like us and fashionably dressed people who obviously had lots of disposable income. And they were disposing of it as there were many red dots.

Saturday night was deep dish Chicago pizza (yum, my favorite!) from Lou Malnati's I have frequently ordered pizza from them - they will ship it overnight FedEx, packed in dry ice. But it's never quite as good as the real thing, hot from the oven.

Sunday morning half of our group headed home early, and the rest of us spent the time walking in Grant Park, hoping to see Buckingham Fountain in all its glory. Unfortunately, even the the temperature was a balmy 70 degrees, the fountain had already been turned off for the season. We strolled through the park, then came back up along the waterfront.

And then it was time to leave and come home. What a fantastic weekend! We're already talking about our next jaunt. Maybe back to Chicago, or maybe someplace else. And next time I will remember to bring my camera.

Doings

Hmm, it has been a while since I last posted here, hasn't it. So I have several things to talk about today. Yesterday I went down to Washington, D.C. to spend the day with my friend Anita Kaplan. We went to the National Museum of the American Indian, the newest museum in the Smithsonian. The building itself is beautiful and the permanent exhibits have more information about American Indians than I had ever imagined existed. In this case "American" refers to the continental Americas, and not to the country.

But what was most interesting is the exhibit featuring the work of Brian Jungen, an Indian from British Columbia, Canada. To quote Paul Smith, the curator of the museum, "he begins with objects that are ordinary, useful, and comforting. When he's through, they are unique, expensive, and useless." Jungen takes objects such as plastic chairs, plastic garbage cans, golf bags, baseball mitts, suitcases, and Nike Air Jordans, cuts them apart and reassembles them into whale skeletons, turtle carapaces, totem poles, statues, and ceremonial masks. You can read more about the exhibit here and also see some of the sculptures.

Being a fiber artist, the piece entitled People's Flag really captured my attention. There isn't a picture of it on the NMAI web page, but if you follow the link to flickr you can see images that others have taken of the exhibit. The People's Flag is red, very, very red and is constructed of red items of mostly clothing. We could see sweaters, dresses, jackets, towels, blankets, bags, whatever. If it was red, made of fabric, and could be flattened into 2 dimensions, it was sewn onto this piece. Sizewise, it it immense. I think maybe 30 feet by 20 feet, although I may be way off. On the flickr site, there is one image that has people in it so that you can see the scale.

This exhibit will be up until next August, so if a trip to D.C. is in your future, I think you will enjoy seeing this.

After we had lunch, we went to the National Museum of Art East Wing. There we saw some of Matisse's cutouts, another exhibit of huge proportions. Also, Jasper Johns, Sol Lewitt, Mark Rothko, and a host of others. Many of these works covered an entire wall, and are inspirations to making very big art. I need a bigger studio. There was much more to see but we were tired and I was going to be going home in rush hour traffic, never a pleasant experience. So much to see, so little time.

When I got home a nice surprise awaited me. A copy of Quilts Japan arrived in the mail with a picture of Family Reunion, my Quilt National piece in it. Also pictured from Quilt National were Kathy Loomis' piece, which won the Quilts Japan Prize, and Anne Smith's piece, Best of Show winner. They only showed these three quilts from the show, so I'm very pleased that I'm one of them. The magazine leans more towards traditional quilting and other sewing crafts, with patterns and such, but since it's in Japanese, I don't get much from the text. There are some nice patterns for totes and purses, and I always like those. I might even make one, if it meets my stringent requirements for a purse. That is, it has to have pockets in the right places for my stuff.

And last but not least, here is a picture of my new kitten Rosie. In August my old cat Chuck finally succumbed to kidney failure and had to be put down. He was 16 years old and a wonderful pet. I knew I was going to be getting another cat but wanted to wait until after I had gotten all our planned vacations out of the way. Three weeks ago I went to the local SPCA and found this kitten. She was 10 weeks old at the time. And they were having a special - animals were free for seniors during September. "Seniors" was defined as anyone over the age of 60, and I was not ashamed to admit it. Otherwise she would have cost $100. Of course, when I took her in to my vet for more shots, it was $140, so in the long haul, that first hundred dollars is going to be a pittance.

Chuck was pretty old and slow, in addition to being ill, so I had completely forgotten how much energy a new kitten has. She dashes from room to room like a kamikaze pilot, crashing into walls and furniture as she slides across the wood floor. Any little item she finds on the floor becomes a new toy to be batted around until it disappears under the sofa or the refrigerator. I'm working on getting her to use the scratching post instead of my furniture and she sort of gets the idea. It's going to take a while I'm afraid.

Quilting Arts Magazine

I'm very excited. This month's issue of Quilting Arts Magazine not only has a picture of one of my quilts on the cover, I am also the Featured Artist. Quite an honor and it's wonderful to see my work in print.




Last weekend I spent 2 days with friends at our semi-annual fiber retreat. The location is in the mountains of Pennsylvania (although it's not really very mountainous, just very pretty). This weekend was devoted mainly to surface design. We brought t-shirts to decorate, we used rubber fish to make fish prints, I made a gelatin plate to show everybody how to make prints, several used Sunlight dish detergent to discharge, and of course some stamping. And some stitching went on also. What made this weekend so wonderful is that we all had 2 large tables of our own and there was still plenty of space in the room to walk around. At our previous retreat weekend, we were limited to 1 small table each and you had to turn sideways to negotiate the aisles. So this new spot is heaven. Can't wait until the next one in March! I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures to share.

Bragging

Not about myself, for once. This is about my sister, Mary Ann Shaw. She is the Chairman of the Upstate Golisano Children's Hospital Capital Campaign. She led the effort to raise $21.5 million to build a new children's hospital in Syracuse, New York. The hospital is named for its major donor, Tom Golisano, who contributed $6 million. The hospital is unique in its design. It's part of the Upstate Medical University and perches like a treehouse overlooking downtown Syracuse. There are 71 private rooms and the rooms are large enough for family members to spend the night. There are performance centers for visiting arts groups, a cafe, chapel, solarium, and outdoor porch. There is an art gallery for showcasing rotating shows from local artists, a family resource center, playhouses for toddlers and older children.

This is a short video that was prepared for the 8,000 donors who supported this effort. I hope you take the time to watch this, as it is truly inspiring. I am so very proud to say that Mary Ann is my sister.

Fun with an air pen

Summer is pretty much over, so sad. How come summer goes by so more quickly than winter???? I'm working on a new piece for a New Image group show. It's about 60"L x 48" W. The background piece is composed of gelatin plate prints with black-eyed susan leaves spaced more or less in a grid. I inked up the plate, put the leaf on top with the vein side up, then rolled the leaf with more ink. The fabric took up the ink on the plate but from the leaf only the veins made an impressions and the surrounding areas were left white. When the piece of fabric was completed covered with the monoprints, I decided there was way too much white for this to be a background fabric, and went over the white areas with pale washes of blue or purple or green. Much better, everything settled down. Then a little yellow for interest. The picture here is of the practice piece. I also have another piece of fabric that has the second imprints off the gelatin plate after I took the leaf off. The background color was mostly gone but under the leaf there was still enough paint for a good print. So I have companion fabrics that could easily become another piece.

My idea for the foreground was a large drawing of a fading coneflower. I used a picture I took several years ago and used one of the filters in Photoshop Elements to get the outlines. Since I wanted the drawing to be big, about 36" long, it wouldn't work to make a thermofax screen. The air pen seemed to be the (more or less) logical solution. I could print the drawing out onto several sheets of paper, tape them together, and then trace them onto fabric with the air pen. My last experience with the air pen was an exercise in frustration. I was using it to write out words and wasn't happy with the little blots and stuff I was getting when starting and stopping. And the scraping of the metallic point on the fabric was like fingernails on a chalkboard. This time I used one of the plastic points, which is a bit larger in diameter, but doesn't scrape along the fabric. And the little blots didn't detract from the drawing enough to bother me. So this experience was a whole lot more positive than the previous one.

Now I have these two pieces of fabric and am mulling over how I'm going to put them together. Right now the coneflower piece is rectangular, sort of, but I think it would be more interesting if I cut it to follow the shape of the flower and then sew it onto the background. After quilting I may rub some paint or paintsticks onto areas of the flower to emphasize them, but that's a ways off. I can think about it as I'm quilting and then decide if it needs it or not.

Yesterday I went to the opening of the National Juried Quilt Show at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Center in Frederick, Maryland. This is a very nice art center in a very nice town about 40 miles west of Baltimore, right off Interstate 70. The show has 32 quilts in it and was juried by Karen Bresenhan, of Quilts, Inc. Many of the artists in the show, including me, have 2 or 3 pieces hanging, which is really nice because you can get a better idea of the artist's work when there are several pieces. There were prizes awards - best traditional quilt, best art quilt, best of show. There was really only one traditional quilt in the show, which of course won the prize, but this quilt would have won a prize even if there had been competition. Before the prizes were awarded, I picked the art quilts I thought might win (I mean besides mine), and picked out two. Obviously, the prize committee disagreed because they selected different pieces. The art quilt they selected is the one pictured on the link to the show.

The Miracle of Modern Medicine or...

did I beam onto the USS Enterprise in Star Trek? Last night I had emergency surgery for appendicitis. Less than 24 hours later I am home. It was diagnosed early enough (did I say my husband is a physician?) and so it was relatively quick and uncomplicated. I have three holes and a sore belly, but I can move around and eat fairly normally. No driving for a bit, which puts a crimp in my life right now. And I won't be able to use my boogie board when we go to the ocean next week.

Sorry, no pictures....

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday. She is 97 years old. I hope that I inherited those longevity genes. I know I inherited a lot of other things from her, for which I am very happy.



She lives in Chicago, a long way from me but we have webcams and can talk to each other with pictures and it's great. I wish I could be there today to celebrate. I used this picture to make a screen and printed us out onto fabric. She lives in a one room apartment in assisted living, so she doesn't have lots of room for more stuff, so I made this into a pillow. She can move it around and it won't take up much room, but every time she looks at it, she will think of me. How great is that?



So, Happy Birthday, Mom, and may you have many more!
Love,
Cathy

Chemistry Exercise Part 2

As promised, the second part of the dyeing exercise, using what Elin Noble calls "Jewel Tones". I used Fuchsia, Turquoise, and Sun Yellow (ProChem 108). The greens, oranges, and purples produced were clear and bright. These used only 2 dyes in combination. When using all three dyes, the results were less bright and moved into browns, some nice and some less so.



As I examined the results of the combinations of all three colors, I wondered how Elin came up the proportions of yellow, blue, and red that she chose. It certainly wasn't an arithmetic progress, like 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. And it didn't seem to be geometric, like 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. I'm certain that it has much to do with the relative strengths of the dyes and that the numbers she came up reflect that. I'm just curious.

Part 3 of the exercise combines the earth tones and the jewel tones to see how they differ from the straight combinations done so far. I could really get carried away here but I'm going to just be content with what I have. And maybe someday I will take Carol Soderland's class.

Chemistry Exercise Part 1

I love the excitement of dyeing fabric and watching the wonderful colors emerge but I've never been very precise or scientific about the process. I have Ann Johnston's Color by Accident: Low-Water Immersion Dyeing
book and refer to it constantly, particularly for the dye concentrate formulas and occasionally to get a particular color. It's always been hit or miss, with the emphasis on the "accident" part. When aiming for a particular color, sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not.

I also have Elin Noble's book Dyes & Paints: A Hands-On Guide to Coloring Fabric, which is also a great resource. I refer to her color pyramid with the percentages of yellow, blue, and red needed when I'm trying to get a particular color. She talks about "earth tones" and "jewel tones" and herein lies the basis of my chemistry exercise.

(I know I could take Carol Soderland's color class and end up with a marvelous resource of color recipes, but I know I will never be that precise when dyeing fabric. I'm just looking for generalities here and to see how the various primaries affect the final color.)

Part 1 - the plan is to use the "earth tones", which are somewhat subdued from the "jewel tones". I used the three dyes she recommends, or at least something close: Golden Yellow (Dharma 3, which is nearly orange), Light Red (Dharma 12), and Intense Blue (ProChem 406). The orange tendency of the Golden Yellow has a big influence on the final color.

I took her percentages and translated them into milliliters of dye concentrate, which I made using Ann's formula of 2T dye powder in 240ml of water (talk about mixing measuring systems, but I only have measuring spoons in teaspoons and tablespoons, and it's easier to use milliliters when calculating percentages.) I used fat eighths of fabric and labeled each piece according to the color it was going to get. I knew I had to get everything arranged ahead of time in order to not get mixed up. I used little syringes marked in milliliters to measure the dye concentrates, if not exactly, at least pretty close. Here is the color pyramid from earth tones:

This is not a very accurate color presentation, but you can certainly see how the yellow tends toward orange. The outside edges of the triangle are combinations of 2 colors only: red and yellow, yellow and blue, blue and red, with the points being the pure color. I find the colors on the inside of the pyramid much more interesting - these use all three dyes in varying amounts. It's equivalent to adding the complement of the color to the color to mute it somewhat. If I mix yellow and blue, I get green. Red is the complement. Or mix yellow and red to get orange, then add blue. Or mix red and blue to get purple, then add yellow. It was really interesting to see how little or how much of a color was needed to make a change. The color in the middle of the third row from the bottom is the brown that results from equal intensities of the 3 dyes. But not equal amounts, since red is about twice as strong as blue or yellow.

Part 2 of the exercise is to use the "jewel tones", which I mixed up last night. Those colors are Sun Yellow, Fuchsia, and Turquoise. I haven't rinsed those out yet, but I can see that there is a huge difference in the results. The colors are definitely more brilliant, like jewels. I have to be a little more patient before rinsing these colors out because turquoise takes longer to fix.

Part 3 of the exercise is going to be smaller in scope, because I could drive myself crazy here with all the combinations and permutations. But I am going to combine earth tones and jewel tones to get the secondaries (green, orange, purple) and the middle brown.

Then I will put all the information in a notebook along with color swatches and have a marvelous reference!

Cover Girl

This month's issue of Professional Quilter is using my Quilt National piece Family Reunion as its cover.



Other good news - two possible sales, one through Artful Home and the other to the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities. Both are still on an approval basis, so I can't spend the money just yet. Keeping my fingers crossed.

It's July?

I could tell you this fantastic story about my adventures since my last post, how I've been to the Antarctic and dog sledded to the South Pole, or maybe how I've made the ascent to Mt. Everest, but I'm pretty sure nobody would believe it. So what have I done lately? Been to QSDS, came home, unpacked, got back into the routine of ordinary life. What did I bring home from QSDS - my class wasn't a stroke of lightning where I discovered some amazing new artistic direction to pursue. But I did bring home a tool of sorts: we made little 4"x6" compositions, some in black and white, some with color. These served as exercises and some were put up on the board to illustrate principles of good and not so good composition. Elizabeth Busch, our mentor, selected some from the group and arranged them on the board with the good compositions at the top and moving down towards the not-so-good ones at the bottom. We discussed what made these work and why the less successful ones didn't work. It's difficult for me to verbalize what is a good composition, but I know it when I see it. I think. Anyhow, whenever my little cards showed up on the wall, they were in the top row, in the company of the "good" compositions. Doesn't mean all the cards I did were good, of course, but at least some made the grade.

This is a greyscale version of one of my cards. While at QSDS I attempted to make this piece on a larger scale and did put something together. It didn't quite have the same impact as the card, mostly because the proportions were not the same. I needed to find some method of enlarging the image to the size I wanted. Elizabeth suggested an opaque projector. Others suggested scaling up using a grid. Both of these had to wait until I got home. I was able to borrow an opaque projector from someone but I wouldn't get my hands on it for a few days, so I did the gridding technique. Oh my, how tedious can you get? Trying to keep track of which little box I was working on, and figuring out the fractional parts of lines nearly drove me to distraction, but I did finally make a full size cartoon of this piece at about 40"x60", and then made patterns for the various pieces. It's finished now and I'm please with the results. I haven't photographed it yet so I can't share it at this point.

Now I'm ready to begin working on the second card that I did. (We actually did about a dozen in class, but as I said, not all are worthy of prime time.) While still at QSDS I pulled out some fabrics trying to pull this one together, but what I couldn't quite get were the subtle shape and line variations that make this work so well visually. Using blocks of fabrics with straight edges made the design clunky and much less interesting. I need to have a "pattern" to follow.


This is the card in the actual colors I used, little swatches of fabric that were right at hand. By now I have the opaque projector and wanted to try it to scale this up. The projector came with no instructions but it's supposedly simple enough that directions aren't really needed. Which means I spent some time figuring out how to get it to work and get the image in focus. It was not a successful venture and I will be returning the projector to my friend. What I did instead was scan the postcard and bring it into Photoshop Elements where I could enlarge it to the desired size. Usually, enlarging images is not recommended because the image quality degrades severely, but in this case, image quality is not an issue. Then I printed it out onto about 35 sheets of paper, one 8"x10" section per sheet. After trimming the margins down to the edge of the image, I could tape the papers together, and voila! my full size cartoon. So much easier than trying to draw it or grid it up.

I have some of the fabrics selected and will be working on this for the next few weeks. I'm excited about this new (to me) tool of little card compositions and have been making a few here and there as practice. One is already selected to be the next piece.

I have a new book in my library - Ann Johnston has re-issued her book The Quilter's Book of Design. I have the first edition and really thought it was well done and this one adds a lot more information and examples. It doesn't seem that there are many design theory books that are geared towards quilters, many of whom do not have art backgrounds (like me). Ann's book relates the theory to a medium that is familiar and that makes it very much more understandable. If you're well acquainted with the principles of design, this book is a good review with lots of illustrative pictures. If it's all new to you, this is a great introduction.

Packing in Earnest

All week long I've been putting stuff in boxes, getting ready for the Quilt Surface Design Symposium. We're leaving tomorrow and I'm taking a 7 day class with Elizabeth Busch. Today it's time to really get serious, finalize my packing, move stuff up out of the studio and into the car. This class I'm taking is called a "Master Class". It's more of a mentored studio where we have the benefit of input from both the instructor and all our classmates. We bring our own projects and pretty much do work of our own choosing. There are usually group critiques and one-on-one critiques plus other art-inspiring activities. We're also going to be doing some painting on cotton duck, something I don't usually do.

I been thinking about my years of attendance at QSDS. My first class was in 1993, when it was still run at the Josephinium Seminary, a college for priests in Columbus. The facilities were primitive, to put it mildly. Our rooms were the cells in the dormitory, no air conditioning, big enough for a single bed and a dresser. The showers were down the hall, and two rooms shared a toilet and a sink. One quickly became acquainted with one's "sink-mate". The class I took was titled "A Problem-Solving Approach to Design" and it was a series of small projects that taught us how to boost creativity. The best lesson I took away from that class was to not be afraid to experiment and to not let the work become so dear that you're afraid to try something for fear of wrecking it.

It was my first exposure to Quilt National and I was gobsmacked. These "quilts" were like nothing I had ever seen and I wasn't even sure I liked them. At that point, I wasn't even ready to call myself an artist. If someone had told me that my work would one day be hanging in Quilt National I would have laughed and laughed. Now I feel very comfortable calling myself an artist.

I didn't attend QSDS again until 1997, but I have been there every year since. For a long time I took different technique classes: low water dyeing, stamping, machine quilting, screen printing - lots of surface design techniques to add to my repertoire. After a while I realized that I also needed education in design principles and how to think like an artist. Luckily, QSDS began their Master Classes, just what I was looking for. At some point you have to really start doing your own work - take all those different techniques and make them work for you.

To digress a bit... I don't remember what quilts were the first ones I entered into Quilt National but I'm sure they were deserving of rejection considering the competition. Here is one of my entries from QN 2001. It's titled Rx: Chocolate. It's a self-portrait of sorts. I stamped words that come into one's vocabulary as one reaches a "certain age": menopause, bone density, mammogram, yadda, yadda. Quilted into the background is my own prescription for these facts of life: chocolate. Doesn't solve the problems, but it makes them more bearable.

Rx: Chocolate ©1999

51" x 40"

Here is a detail view, and I just noticed that the "g" is upside down in "mammogram". Must be some hidden meaning there, I think.

Rx: Chocolate ©1999

I've always thought this would be a great piece of art for an OB/GYN's office, but so far there haven't been any takers.

Resting

I'm sure all my fans are wondering where I've been these past two weeks. Or maybe it's longer, shame on me. I've been resting on my laurels, basking in my Quilt National achievements, but now it's time to get back to business. One QN success is terrific, but it sure doesn't last forever.

I've been working on a few things, partly to get back into the swing of things and partly to prepare for QSDS, which is actually starting this weekend, but I won't be going until next weekend. Sessions IV and V with Elizabeth Busch is what I'm taking. It's a "master class" meaning it's pretty much self-driven with lots of input from the teacher. We're going to be doing painting in the class and she wanted us to get cotton duck. We also have to print up color 8.5x11 pictures of the last 5 to 10 pieces we've done and they will become part of the class discussion/critique. Should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. I've been going through my paints and throwing out the old dried up ones and trying to decide which ones to bring. It's tough to limit myself but there is only so much space. I also have to decide how much thread to bring. Last year I think I brought my entire collection and it's alot. But I hardly used any of it. If I decide to only bring a small selection, I will probably wish I had more.

Part of the QSDS conference is an auction of small works that benefits the scholarship fund. It took me a few years to actually contribute work to this auction because I was fearful that nobody would bid on my work. Last year there was a bidding war on the little piece that I contributed and it was a huge morale booster. This year I'm donating two pieces (they have two different auctions, each at the Friday Banquet). They're very similar: background from the same piece of fabric, the foreground is a positive image on one and the negative image on the other. Would make a nice diptych, I think. They're both 10" tall by 9" wide.

There will be an online gallery of pieces up for auction at the QSDS web site, probably starting next week. If you're not there to bid in person, you can contact them and place bids by phone or by setting a top limit. The entire proceeds go to the scholarship fund.

Inside ©2009

Outside ©2009

News from Athens

The opening to Quilt National '09 was last night. It was quite the event. First the artists had a preview of the show with no one else there. We could see everything without the crowds and it was wonderful. We had our books and pens in hand so that we could compare the actual pieces to what was in the book and also get the artists to sign their pages. About three fourths of the artists were present and that included many from other countries including Australia and Japan. That's impressive that so many made the trip.

My piece is actually one of the smaller pieces in the show, at least that's my impression so far. So much for my theory that a piece needs to be big to be accepted! But the really cool thing is that I won a prize: "Persistence Pays" - a prize awarded to the artist who has entered QN the most times before getting accepted. I shared it with Glenys Mann from Australia. It surprised me that she also won it because I was sure she had been in QN before. I've seen her work over the years and it certainly looked to be of QN caliber. So anyhow, we share the award. If you look here you can see the list of winners and images of their quilts, which don't do them the least bit of justice.

The catalog is pretty good and certainly worth purchasing, but catalogs never give you the real picture, so to speak. Everything is so much more wonderful than the book image. Colors might be a little bit off, metallics don't sparkle, transparent pieces don't show their transparency, and most of all, the textures just don't show up. You need to really see the show in person to appreciate how wonderful it is. I heard quite a few people say that it was a really great show, which of course I think also!

And this is really cool -- I knew this from way last October but could not say anything. Marvin Fletcher purchased my quilt. Marvin is the widower of Hilary Fletcher, who was the director of Quilt National for many, many years. She died several years ago. The Persistence Pays award was established in her honor because she always encouraged people to keep trying. I met Marvin last night and he told me how when he saw my piece, he just had to have it. And then the fact that it won the award made it even more precious.

The only down side is that they didn't publish that award information in the catalog. Perhaps if they republish it they will fix that. But I still get the prize money.

And the QN people are being quite diligent in enforcing the prohibition on prior publication. One of the jurors told me that after they had made their final selections three pieces were eliminated because they had been published. QN hires researchers to search the web and print publications. Publishing on your own web site is allowed but no where else. If they found an image on another web site and it was there with the artist's permission, it was eliminated. I'm glad they're enforcing the rule because I know people have gotten by with it in the past.

Today is another event, the artists' and collectors' breakfast. Then more SAQA stuff, including a talk by the three QN jurors, Sue Benner, Ned Wert, and Katie Pasquini Masopust. I'm looking forward to that. It's always interesting to hear the back stories.

And as I walked around the room I was in awe that my work was hanging in this most famous location with all these wonderful pieces!

It's time!

I can't believe it's finally here: the Quilt National opening, with my quilt in the show. We're driving out tomorrow to attend the SAQA Convention which starts on Thursday. There is a private reception open only to the QN artists on Friday, then the official opening, and then the banquet. The events of the SAQA convention and QN are sort of intermingled and I'm going to be missing some SAQA stuff. But this may be my only QN opening and I can always go to SAQA!

So now that the show is upon us, I'm posting my piece. It's titled Family Reunion and measures approximately 32" x 40".  The design is another in my windows series, but they're getting a lot more abstract and less like windows, which is okay. This piece has quite a variety of surface design techniques: in addition to dyeing, there is painting, screen printing and deconstructed screen printing, batik, monoprinting, paint splatter, and probably a few more things that I don't remember right now. The piece is heavily quilted with grid quilting and also parallel line quilting, which is a little more obvious in the detail shot.

Family Reunion ©2008

Gotta get back to packing! By the way, the catalog is already available on Amazon and I saw a copy last week. I think the color is a little off, but I'm thrilled to be in there. 

Thoughts

I go to the gym three times a week. It's a really nice gym with all kinds of weight training equipment, a huge selection of cardio machines, 4 swimming pools (including a whirlpool). It's always clean and since I go in the early afternoon, seldom crowded. It's also pretty expensive and I really wish that all I had to do was pay the money and I would automatically reap all the benefits. Apparently it doesn't work that way.  Anyhow, two of my workouts include resistance training with weights and all three have an hour's time on the elliptical trainer. The elliptical trainers at my gym have built in tv sets so I can watch a program while exercising. I plan my sessions so that I can watch Law and Order in its various incarnations or Without a Trace. It makes the time pass by more quickly. Except I wish that TNT and USA would get some new episodes, since I've pretty much seen all that they have.  I don't really look forward to doing these workouts but it's become a really strong habit and at this point I would have a difficult time giving it up.

I used to be a marathon runner and an aerobics instructor but I ruined my knees with all the pounding. I've run 6 marathons in my life, including the Boston Marathon. For those who aren't familiar with the marathon distance, it's 26.2 miles. In order to qualify to run in the Boston Marathon, I had to complete the distance in less than 3 1/2 hours, which I did. I did all this in my 20's and 30's and it's now been more than 25 years since I had to stop running. Sometimes I still miss it. I always watch the Olympic marathon and it gives me chills when the lead runner enters the stadium. 

So why am I blathering on about this stuff, probably more than you really wanted to know? Because I often wonder why I do this. It certainly isn't giving me the body of a fashion model. In fact, judging from the other bodies at the gym, I'm lucky I've got the body I have. Gravity and the aging process are merciless tyrants and all we can do is hold them off a little. I always think of the quote from the Red Queen in Lewis Carrolls's Through the Looking Glass. She says to Alice: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"  That's how I feel - that I am running as fast as I can just to stay in the same place - watch the diet, take the medications, exercise regularly, wear a seat belt, yada yada yada. My doctor says I'm doing very well (although she leaves unsaid "for someone your age.")

Longevity is in my genes - my grandmother lived to nearly 100 and my mother is fast approaching 97. So I had better take good care of this body because I know I won't be getting another one. And I want to be able to watch my grandchildren grow up and have my great-grandchildren. And still be doing art.

Here is your reward for reading through all this - the azaleas in my back yard are nearly in full bloom.

Finishing off the dyes

I still had some dye pastes left but I was done mentally with doing screen printing. I hate wasting dyes so I thought that I would just add water and do some low water dyeing and that would use up what was left.

These first two pieces are some green that I had mixed up and some gold/yellow/brown that I combined. The green looked pretty awful when wet but got much better when it was dry. Usually I like the colors better when they're wet, so this was a surprise.

The one on the right is fuchsia (no surprise); the one on the left is scarlet. I love red.

This was the surprise. The dye color is Deep Cherry and in the dye pot it looked nearly black. The wet fabric looked very very dark purpley-red and rich. The dry result is less so and is destined to be the base for something else. I don't much care for this color.  The light grey piece was dyed in the same container but added after about 15 minutes had passed (like Ann Johnston's parfait method). It looked lilac when wet, but all of the red washed out and the fabric is a lovely grey. (Eat your heart out, Linda in Belgium!) This was a reminder that red always fixes very quickly and isn't be available in subsequent layers of parfait dyeing.

I had 4 different blues left over: navy, intense blue, turquoise, and I don't remember the name of the 4th one. I always have lots of blue left over because it's the color I use least when dyeing. So why do I mix up so much? Can't resist having a selection. And blue is necessary for green and gold and purple; I just have to remember that I need relatively less blue than I need red and yellow.

These last two pieces were done with screen printing, using 3 different screens. I cut stencils from newsprint. The first one was the outline of the connecting squares. The other two were the squares that were slightly offset from the outlines and also sized and positioned so that they didn't quite fit inside the boxes.  I like how these turned out, but I did them on white fabric and there was too much white. I put each of them in a very dilute yellow solution just to take the edge off the white. 

I'm thinking that I will make some thermofax screens of these boxes and outlines. This kind of stuff is quicker to do with paints because there isn't the batching time that's needed with dyes. Also, doing these designs with dyes meant I had to wait to let the dye paste dry enough that it wouldn't blur when more layers were added, a step that isn't necessary with paints because they dry so fast.

The real surprise was in one of my dye containers. I have a collection of 1/2 gallon sized plastic milk containers with the tops cut off that are terrific for the layered dye method. They're stored in the closet, which is next to the crawl space, home to various and sundry uninvited wildlife. Imagine my delight when I found a mummified mouse in the bottom of one of the containers. Must have fallen in and couldn't get out.  At least it wasn't a snake. Yuck.

What the turquoise did

Thanks for the great comments! Sometimes it takes me a while to appreciate what I've done and I know that each of these fabrics will be perfect somewhere sometime.

Linda asked what the turquoise on the blotter fabric went into. This is the piece. It's turquoise and also another deep blue, either Intense Blue or Navy Blue. With some pale yellow to soften the white. It's very difficult for me to leave white areas. Even a little bit of color is better than pure white.



This morning I took all the dye pastes that were mixed and used on soda soaked fabric and slopped them onto a piece of fabric. It looked very very dark. It's batching right now and it will be interesting to see just how much color was left in those pastes. Stay tuned.

Deconstructed Screen Printing once again

I've been working on some deconstructed screen printing again, hoping it will provide some inspiration for new work. I have to pull out my notes from previous sessions so that I don't spend days relearning what I already know but have sort of forgotten. In spite of that, I still did some things that produced less than satisfactory results. So here are some of my new fabrics. You can click on the images for a larger view.


I like this one. The dot images are from some kind of tape that I got at Home Depot. I have no clue what it's supposed to be used for but it makes a great screen image. I used a Deep Cherry Red to make the screen and then used a yellow print paste for the release. Or maybe two yellows.


Torn paper for one image and a design I drew on the screen for the cross hatch lines.


Furnace filter screens for the big circles, bubble wrap for the small circles, and hand drawn circles for the medium sizes red circles.


Torn paper striping, a thermofax screen made from a previous session with torn paper, and some squares made with regular screen printing and torn paper.


This was from a screen made with big bubble wrap and it didn't work too well because the print paste covered the entire screen. So not much of the bubble wrap design showed through. And the red was an experiment in doing a monoprint by putting the dye paste on some plexiglas, pulling a striping tool through, then putting the fabric on top. It smushed the dye paste so that the stripes disappeared, so I tried putting the dye paste directly on the fabric and using the striping tool. Which sort of worked but not very well.


Blotting fabric - when making the screens I used this piece of fabric to blot up the dye paste that goes through the screen. What I find so interesting (besides the fact that it's a pretty cool piece of fabric) is that this fabric doesn't get the special batching treatment that the printed fabric gets: wrapping in plastic and sitting in a warm spot. It just sits by the side of the work table, drying out, not covered, not warm. Obviously, it's humid enough that the dye is reacting with the soda ash that is in the fabric.


One of the first pieces I did. I had an idea for these overlapping rectangles with intersecting blue rectangles (which of course turn green on the yellow dye). Not sure this worked out all that well, but I can always cut it up.


This is construction fencing and it deconstructed really well. The first pulls started at the bottom and there is a good image of the fencing. By the time I got to the top of the fabric it's only a small portion of the original image left.


Not exactly sure what I did here, but I think it involved some direct application of the dye paste.


More dotted paper and torn paper. This turned out alot lighter in color than I expected it to. I violated one of the cardinal rules of screen printing with thickened dyes. Once the dyes in the print paste come in contact with the soda ash soaked fabric they begin to react and lose their strength. Any used print paste put back into the unused print paste will begin to react. So even though the color still looks good and strong, in actuality there is not much dye left to react. I was putting the used print paste back instead of segregating it. Live and learn.


Another blotting fabric, given the same treatment as the first one. Some really interesting sections on this one also.


Good color, the way it's supposed to be.


I might have gotten carried away with the dotted paper.



Very pale background. I thought it was coming out much darker but this was using spent print paste.


I thought I was screening with a gold color but only the yellow I added to the spent paste showed up.


This is the color it is supposed to be. The dye paste on the screen was medium blue and green and the print paste was clear. So the background color is what was released from the color on the screen.


Another one where the background was supposed to be a lot more golden. I guess I won't be making that mistake again.

I still have some good print paste left, but I think I'm going to finish it off with some direct dye painting onto the fabric. And using some thermofax screens also.

The End of March

This month has gone by in a blur. And I'm glad to see it nearly over because April is such a wonderful time in Baltimore. Every day something new is blooming. While I was in Chicago over the weekend (where it had the audacity to snow) my daffodils began blooming. I can see blooms on the new hydrangea bush I bought last year, day lilies are poking up, and buds are swelling on all the trees. Another winter has bit the dust. Hooray!

I've been doing something I haven't done in a very long time - sewing clothes. I want to wear something arty to the Quilt National opening so I thought that a shirt made out of some hand painted fabrics would be perfect. But since I haven't sewn for myself in so long, it would be a good idea to test out the pattern (and my garment sewing skills) on some not-so-precious fabric first. In my stash was some batik fish fabric that I bought years ago and would be perfect and with only a little bit of searching I found it. There was more than enough to make a shirt so I pinned, cut, and sewed and finished it in only a few hours. Originally it was not going to have buttons because I've never been very good at doing buttonholes, but at my retreat in mid-March I learned how to use the automatic buttonhole maker on my Janome. OMG it's so easy, why didn't I try it out before? So the shirt has buttonholes. And cute little fish buttons that you can't see in this picture.


The pattern has a collar but that got left out. So now I'm ready to paint fabric and make the shirt again. I have an end cut of fabric that I got from a shirt factory and decided this would be perfect for making a shirt. Painted several yards with yellow/peach/orange paint over some soy wax batik designs. Then screened a spiral shape with gold metallic paint. I was so impatient that I couldn't wait long enough for the paint to cure and washed it. Well, bad move, most of the metallic paint rubbed off. I had heat set it but really didn't give it enough time to cure. And I think the shirt fabric might have some kind of finish on it. Pulled out more fabric and paint and did it again, along with the metallic gold. Except I went ahead and made the shirt without washing the fabric and I've let it cure for 10 days now. This is the shirt before it's been washed. I'm going to wash it by hand and hope that the gold metallic paint stays put.

There is a carrier for a belt and I have a twisted fabric belt that Elizabeth helped me make while on our retreat. Not sure what I'm going to do if all the gold washes off again. Maybe I'll go with the antique look.

EXPO 2009

This weekend is my local quilting guild's biennial show. The membership in the Baltimore Heritage Quilter's Guild runs the gamut from very traditional workers who only do handwork to people like me who do all their own surface design and only use machines. This weekend we have more than 270 on display at Goucher College, Towson, Maryland. I've always volunteered to help with this show and this year I planned and oversaw the layout and hanging of the quilts. It's a very detail-oriented job that involves alot of blood, sweat, and tears trying to fit everything into the limited space that we have and also trying to make a pleasing presentation. It takes a lot of time to plan, but the plan only works when there are alot of volunteers who help make it happen. Yesterday the poles and standards arrived at the venue around 3:30pm.

This is what the gym looked like at 3:30pm. Empty.



This is the lobby area, nearly empty.


Here is the gym at 9:30pm, looking down one of the aisles. Show quilts are on the left and vendor booths are on the right.


Looking down the central aisle with all show quilts. I think that getting this put up in 6 hours is a tribute to organization, cooperation, and volunteerism.



This is part of the lobby area. These quilts are part of the Buy It or Bid event. Visitors can put down a silent bid on a piece or they can purchase it outright for a pre-set price. No waiting, take it home now.



This is the Guild's Raffle Quilt, titled Chesapeake Bay Treasures. You can read more about the design and execution of this original design here. I can't sell raffle tickets online but if you contact me directly we can arrange it. The quilt measures 107" L by 97" W. The drawing is next December; tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5. Email me