Commissions scare me stupid. Which is why I don’t do them often. They either need to like what you do or they need to tell you what they like. The translation from word to piece is treacherous. However they do tend to change how you think and what you do.
This was a commission for Scott Forsman. They didn’t want the quilt itself. Just the image. And it went onto the bottom of a 1.5 reader in a story called Tadpole to Frog. Don finally found me a copy of it. I never got to see it at the time.
It was to be 8″ by 48″. It had never occurred to me to do a that kind of an elongated piece. I couldn’t image who would buy it, but Scott Foresman had sent it back to me after paying me well to photo it.
I had three ladies fight over it.
Ladybug
It turns out that these elongated quilts fit in places nothing else fits. They go over doors, over bedposts, fireplaces, panorama windows, and all kinds of odd crannies. But they also have a huge impact for a small piece, in terms of square footage because the eye travels through the space of the quilt.
Branch in Bloom
These have become an obsession with me. Japanese art talks about taking the eye on a journey through the space your art creates. It makes a visual path.
Lettuce and Roses
Because it’s already elongated and not “balanced” it’s already in motion before you start. How good is that?
Forest FloorBeetle in BloomVisual path quilts pull your eye through the piece.
Of course I enjoy running these long quilts over the edge. I’m feathered if I’ll cut off a leaf or a rock to make something square. Really!
Everything worth doing is worth doing badly. I wish I drew well. I don’t. But what I don’t lack in skill, I own in stubbornness. I am willing to keep doing something badly a very long time if I wish to do something well.
I’ve been revisiting my drawing skills as I’ve been starting new work. I’ve needed a fish in the next piece and spent some time this week. It sent me back to my books and my drawing board to struggle with the dirty d word again.
My drawing surface is an iron on pull off pellon product called Totally Stable. It shows up at sewing stores everywhere. The iron on part is like a freezer paper with a softer drawable, tear-away hand.
light pencil sketch
I wish it were possible to just draw free motion. I can sketch but it helps if there’s a drawing to start from. The hardest thing for me is that I can’t draw smooth lines. I rough things out, and then scratch all over them and then I trace and retrace over and over again. Is that wrong?
rougj outline sketch
It may be but it doesn’t matter much. It’s just the best I can do. I’m deeply dyslexic. It’s not a problem, it’s just a condition. Really, it’s it’s own gift. A different way of looking at things.
When I moved my studio over, I found some french curves I’d bought a while back. I didn’t quite get the use of them. I kept trying to. I just couldn’t quite get it. I didn’t see how the shapes fit around the drawings. Dyslexic.
I have a light table. It helps to have illumination. Even from beneath.
fitting the template to the curve
So I got out my rulers and took my drawings and smoothed them. I turned the plastic templates over and over around the lines and found they did fit in if I was working just in small areas at a time. Using the curves, I outlined the drawing cleaning it, smoothing it out. At first I thought I was cheating. And then I realized I wouldn’t have blinked if I was using a ruler for straight lines instead of soft curves,
It fell apart when I went to do his scales. I didn’t have a template that fit that. So I have shaky scales.
Then I realized he was heading the wrong way. More dyslexia. But this is the good part. The directions just are different for me. I mix them up but I can get there in a heartbeat.
I pulled out my light table, flopped over my drawing and traced it the other direction.
I don’t do this for myself, but for the blog, I zoned the drawing in color, so you can see where I’m going. The fish up above is the same kind of bass, but in another quilt. Just so you can get the idea.
Of course the question is whether smoothed out drawings are better? Is there something stronger in a rough edge. Or have I just made my drawing more defined? I need to sew it out to know.
For you, I hope you grab any tool you need without embarrassment or shame and use it to do what you dream. It’s not cheating. It’s working with what we’ve got.
I can’t explain my fascination with owls! I only know I want to fly with them. In general, I think it’s the silent, swift explosive movements they make. I only wish I could move that way.
Or it just could be a need to occasionally work with browns. Owls will do that for you.
Or the desire to live in the light of the moon. I don’t do them often, but I love it when I do.
Indigo BluesHunters Moon 2Hunters Moon 3Owl faces
Or their faces, wise and feral, and all seeing. I would very much like to be an owl.
Sometimes its a wonderful thing when a quilt doesn’t work. I did an attempt of a quilt with 3 owls in it that was awful. I never got the background to work. But the owls… Three owls. Just doing nothing.
Hunters Moon 2 detail
Here is the first owl in Hunters Moon 2
I’m working with the second owl now in Owl at Sunset. It will be in process for a while, but I thought you might like to see some of it’s bits.
Woo knows what will happen with the third one. Aren’t you glad that first quilt didn’t work. I am.
owl with backgroundsplit light source to give her more roomthread choices for mothsmoth embroidered for lunchtrimmed and ready mothsAngelina Sunsetangelina sunset detailcut rocksThe owl so farsun and rocks added
Come back and I’ll show you more as I get there. It can’t get more serieous.
My father fished as a religion. His days off, his sabbath, was spent in a battered row boat, sitting, waiting for the fish to bite. The First Church of Fishing created much better people than those in my mother’s church. I didn’t really catch either of their faiths, but I was shaped by them. Perhaps faith is something one can really only come to on your own. She took me to her church on a regular Sunday
But when I was very lucky, he’d take me with him. He quickly learned that I had no interest in the death of fish. Or their consumption. I wanted nothing to do with fish dinner. Bur I was fascinated with their fishy lives. I would lean out of the boat until I could almost touch the water with my face, to look in on their fishy world.
I remember his hand on my shirt, lightly caught from the back just in case I slipped. I suspect that taking me fishing was very different than fishing on his own. But he never complained or refused to bring me. He just knew the day wouldn’t be spent in the catching of fish.
One of the things we do working in series, is that we retell our stories. Memory is not a static box. It’s a fluid river than changes moment to moment. In retelling the story, we find a way to make ourselves more brave, more healed, more whole. I know that I grow through series, working the images until they heal me.
To turn to turn, will be our delight, till by turning, turning we come round right.
Shzker song
If there’s an image or subject that catches your soul, even if it frightens you or unsettles you, work with it. It’s part of you trying to find it’s place, turned round right.
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.
