Dancing in the Light This ladybug is done in Bobbin Work in #8 hand dyed pearl cotton and # 8 metallic thread.
No. I did not misspell that. All art, all creative process is a journey where we ask questions about design, color, shape, materials and techniques. Each piece we do is an answer for the question. Do I make a big moon or a small one? Out of Angelina Fiber? Or tulle? Or that strange gold brocade I just brought home? Do I make rays? Or a big circle, or spirals woven into each other?
How do you do the bblack and white parts of a ladybug? Bobbin work again, but showing different directions.
Put them all together and they make a series. Series work helps us answer a billion and one questions.
Sidewalk Conversation How do I make concrete?
There are no right or wrong answers. But each quilt gives you other questions to try. And since experience is the best teach, each quilt is a new experience, even if you will never do it again. Try a new thread. Will it work from the top or shall I put it in the bobbin? This machine likes this kind of poly monofilament. Will it work better with a cone holder? Horizontal or vertical? Endless questions that can only be answered by an endless dance of doing.
Here my ladybug is cut from oriental brocade, fused with Steam a Seam 2; and free motion embroidered with #40 poly thread. But I hadn’t tried placing it directly on Angelina film.
But the other reason is fascination. We regularly explore bits of the world that fascinate us. I’m fascinated by bugs of all kinds, but in red? Red? Where’s the red?
Well of course, I now have a reason to explore all those reds together. What if she isn’t really red?
How does one gracefully leave your leaf chair?
Do I find repetition boring? NO! I find repetition changes as we put together the puzzle of each piece
So, if there’s something I don’t know the answer to, I sit down with a pile of new work that just might give me the answer. I’m not repeating myself? I’m on a journey. Who knows what I’ll find.
Knowing the definition of a word is a pinpoint on a map. It tells you where you are. It doesn’t tell you how to get where you want to go. It’s the rawest of beginnings.
In the same way, color theory feels like the the dreariest driest subject in the catalog of art education. We look at the wheel and say the canticle, red and blue make purple, red and yellow make orange…. It feels like a recitation from kindergarten. And sadder still, it’s not always true. We’ve all mixed yellow and blue to get the most grizzly browns. It feels like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. A nice story for children.
Part of what we’re missing with that is the reality that it’s a theory. It works, simply when it does work and when it doesn’t, we need to explore why. That’s mostly about imperfect color. Color me surprised. So many things are imperfect in a imperfect world.
But the real question is not where we are on the map but where can we go. What color theory really describes is the relationships between colors. Within the color wheel, the spots within that wheel define the same kinds of relationships between different colors. Those relationships go back to that primary list of monochromatic, complementary, and analogous color themes that seem so very dull. Because they define the tension between colors.
The distance between colors, creates the pull across the wheel. The closer they are to each other, the least pull. The least tension. The least excitement.
The farthest distance any color combination has is directly across from each other, as complements. Those are combinations that tug and pull and electrify us. Colors right on top of each other are smooth and slide into each other.
It’s not one combination. It’s a circle of combinations that create the same feeling. We can move the circle endlessly and get the same energetic result.
Daylily ?Dance
Daylily Dance goes all around the color circle with neutral gray blocks as an inner/outer framework. The relationship of each complementary pair, kicks it over the moon color wise.
How does that change in thread in stead of fabric? Fabric is macro. It’s large strokes of color. Thread gives us micro choices. But the relationships on the color wheel stay stable and chart our color choices. We know from where the colors are on the wheel, how they will make our art feel.
I’ve told this story before. I worked with a gallery who thought it was to their interest to remove the labels from the backs of my quilts so no one would be able to contact me except through them. They did not tell me that.
What happened next they really couldn’t have predicted. Someone stole 7 of those quilts. It was ugly. I know who. And I was that willing to never see that person again, that I have resigned myself to never seeing them again.
Even if the thief dumped those quilts in a place where someone could find them, they’re like children traveling on a bus without a note pinned to their collar. Someone might recognize them. In the same way that we may have snow in July. Not likely. I’m resigned that these quilts are gone for good. They were my teachers, as all good quilts are. At some point, I’ve learned to let go of pieces and hold on to what I’ve learned.
Breaking the Ice
Recently I was on facebook where someone posted about how they hate to sign their work.
My hackles raised. I climbed on that hobby horse and here I am! Sign your work!
Why?
Because your work is a measure of your life! It deserves documentation. It is a document in itself. Someone, your children if not your critics, will look at it and know you better. And find joy, and knowledge and power in what you did.
There is a book called Anonymous Was A Woman. This book, with all respect to the author, makes me furious.
It’s a lovely book and a real situation. Most women at some time have been only known as anonymous. It makes my blood boil. It’s a self inflicted nastiness. You can choose to be anonymous.
But why would you? Why would you silence your own voice? Why would you hide who you are? Who is served? Who is honored in that?
We are not anonymous. We are women making statements in our art and our lives that need to be heard, even if our statements are private and stay close to home. Not signing your work is an anonymous ransom note to the universe.
I now label all my quilts. And I sign and date them in the stippling. Someone will want to know. And I want them to know all about you and me and the things we made. And who we were. Sign your work.
This label has my name, the studio name, address and web site and phone number. The quilt number is the actual number of the quilt with the year it was made afterwards. There’s a space for me to sign the label when the quilt is sold.
Of course that can go wrong too.
Nothing is correct on this label at this time except the name of the quilt. Since the quilt itself is a document, I tend to leave them as they originally were made unless an owner asks for a label with their information on it.
Should you have a quilt of mine you want an updated label on, contact me and we will of course make one for it. Safety first.
For every embroidered creature in one of my quilts, there’s a drawing of that creature inside the quilt sandwich. I’ve always worked that way. The drawings are on Totally Stable, an iron on, tear away product by Pellon. I iron the drawing on to the back of the stabilizer and color it in with thread.
I wish I were good at drawing. I’m not. What I am is willing to do it over and over again until I have something I like. so there are piles of these drawings, some that get used and some that used to sit in a mesh laundry bin, mushed in with mountains of other drawings.
They weren’t bad drawings. Sometimes I’d pull them out and use them. They just weren’t drawings I’d used yet. But the mesh bag was a bit less than archival.
Today, Don unearthed his old file cabinet. Amazing! Flat storage!
I spent the rest of the studio day looking at old drawings that I’d saved, and gently folding them flat in preparation for being used.
It makes me wonder how much art we work on gets set aside, only to be mushed up, and forgotten. It makes me want to pay more attention to the side things that don’t quit work, just to see if they would work another time or in a different way.
Heron drawing
This heron needs some fineness. And perhaps a lot of thick thread. Now aren’t I glad I found her in the pile?
