Blogging, Clementine 1, and Birkat HaChama

Clementine 1

I have been avoiding reading the quiltart posts about whether or not blogging is still personally compelling. I have been questioning what to do with my blog. I initially started it in January 2005 because I couldn't figure out any other way to post comments on other blogs. Am I having fun? I love being able to look back and find recipes or planting dates but my inconsistency is frustrating.

I had thought that the blog would be a kind of journal for my interests but I struggle with writing. I struggle with all kinds of self-expression. I am posting this photo because there has been so little quilt content of late. This is a scan of a piece that is about 10" x 10".

Even so, this piece has been finished for months. I showed it at the G6 in January, I think. This was back when I had a temporary mania for needle felting but couldn't rationalize buying another machine.

I sketched out a series of additional clementine pieces and got stalled, again. The blog doesn't just write itself, nor does the work get done just wishing it would.

I missed the sunrise today because it was raining--wonderful rain that is soaking the soil. I am not Jewish but I am blessing the sun today and celebrating Birkat HaChama. According to the Talmud, today marks the completion of the 28 year solar cycle. Who will be around for 28 years from now on April 8 for the next Birkat HaChama? I am also celebrating spring and marking the Passover by making Rose Levy Beranbaum's Mediterranean matzoh (not exactly kosher with olive oil and rosemary) but delicious somewhat of a ritual.

Gentleness, 2009 and Winter WIP

I have toyed with the idea of goals for 2009 but have had no real desire to blog about them. I am embracing GENTLENESS as my word for the year (a la Christine Kane). Last year I found that to be very useful. My word for 2008 was Focus and I actually remembered the word, re-evaluated it, and re-interpreted it throughout the year.

I am really unhappy with the pictures I make for my blog. I have repeatedly told myself that I would do something about this and 2009 will be the year that this happens. I am reading a

Photoshop Elements book and I birthday-gifted myself with a copy of Gloria Hansen's book, Digital Essentials. So I guess I'm blogging about goals after all. I have been impressed that putting something down in black and white makes it more of a commitment and that is a good thing.

After reading Christine Thresh's most recent post, I decided that I really had to post something about my work.

The G6 theme for our next meeting later this month is Winter. We are still challenging ourselves to respond to a theme but it is optional. And I think that the 12 x 12 format is becoming optional. I like the idea of working in a smaller format if that's what happens. I have been playing with bits of wool and yarn discovered in my massive "studio cleanup." I had some hand felting needles and I made a postcard-sized view from my kitchen. Winter in my No. California garden is very green but not in a sunny way.

I cut the small piece into thirds and "applied" it to a piece of wool felt. I am contemplating purchasing needle felting machine. Yesterday, I test-drove the Pfaff 350P embellisher, and I brought this along to see how it would work and this is the result, unfinished. Only the center section was felted by machine. Much quicker. It was fun. This WIP is a scan which is also much quicker than taking a photograph.

Water

I finished this 12 x 12 Water piece that I made for the G4. I’ve been indecisive about posting a picture because it has issues. I used Melody Johnson’s facing technique instead of her pillow case finish or a binding because it was very heavily quilted and that method of finish permits “quilting off the edge.” The instructions are excellent and the technique is great. I’ve done facings before but it’s been some time and I certainly learned something: be gentle when turning. I also think I might have squared from the back (is that possible?) instead of the front. I have my next 12 x 12 ready to be faced so I will have more data soon.

I have been cleaning up old email files and I found something I’d saved from Marilyn Belford about work that might not feel “worthy.” She said words to the effect that it is done, and “you can’t win them all.” She does not discard, nor does she redo. I've taken that to heart.

I loved the “fabric” that I made for this piece (gelatin printing from Rayna Gillman's book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth) but I am not happy with the finished work, but I learned so much and I really should immediately start Water II.

12 x 12

I've been trying to finish some of the 12 x 12 pieces I've been working on. This is from March when the G4 was working on the vernal equinox theme. It is one of my trillium pieces. After showing it to the group, I decided that it needed more hand-stitching so it was never photographed until today. This whole-cloth piece was an acrylic plate monoprint, made before I discovered gelatin plate printing. I used Setacolor paints. Later, I went back in with some stamping, including string and rice stamps that I had made.

Gelatin Plate Printing

I can’t seem to make the time to get this sandwiched and quilted. This is my water piece for July for the G4: Not finished but better than nothing. The fabrics are all from my print sessions using a gelatin print plate I made from Rayna Gillman's new book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth.

I used her recipe but didn’t have a foil baking pan. Instead I used a plastic cover that I found in my supplies and lined it with foil. I used 4 packets of gelatin as that was all I had. This was not a case of good planning but the procedure is quite forgiving. My plate is about 8"x 12" and next time I will double the amount of gelatin and use a larger pan, perhaps a jelly roll pan lined with foil, to make a larger plate. The foil permitted easy lifting in and out of the container. With the larger pan, I thought I would use heavy duty foil as that is wider.

The plate is holding up nicely (and also breaking down nicely, gaining some character) in my refrig and I hope to do some additional printing this weekend.

I used a variety of fabric paints from ProChem (blue and golden yellow), and Jacquard (Olive, Sky Blue, Brown). I used what I had on my shelf.

Roses and Quilts and Summer

A friend of mine once remarked that anyone can make a spring garden because Mother Nature does all of the work. Well, spring is over. I've been planting seeds and deadheading and weeding and I'm about to do some ripping out. I need to be feeding if I expect to have very many more roses before next spring. The lemon basil is up and I am beginning to see some bean green. I have beet and cilantro seedlings and the Thai basil is poking up.

We had both boys home for the last weekend in May and that was so great. We will all be together again for Steven's graduation on June 14 in Santa Barbara.

This small quilt was what I came up with for February 2008 and the G4 challenge of Crazy, Crazy in Love, Crazy Love, or whatever the challenge was. I found these “crazy” log cabin blocks in my WIP file. They were inspired by a quilt by Jean Wells.

Focus?

Air 1
12" x 12 "

Somewhere in the not too distant past I resolved to try to achieve some. If I honestly consider what I have accomplished in the last 5 months I would have to be happy. It's just that my “to do” list is always very optimistic. Of late, I have been having just too much fun. There was the trip to New York. Last weekend was Twain Harte. This week was “get something done in time for the G4 meeting on May 8.”

I was very inspired by large wall paintings by Sol LeWitt at MOMA. One in particular was a grid and what I remembered were red, blue, and yellow crayon lines that reminded me that I am a quilter of fabrics. I got out my hand-dyed fabrics. I had been thinking about greens following some posts by June Underwood about green.

Our theme for for the G4 for April was air.

Mole poblano

The reveal for the current 12 x 12 group Chocolate Challenge is today, February 1. I was so inspired by the work this group was doing that I decided to set a goal for myself to do a journal quilt every week. Most of my journal quilt work has been 12 inches square. It was so fun to read about the groups' research that I started thinking I might take the chocolate challenge. I started this last week, when I was stuck for a journal quilt idea. I had been thinking about skinny strips and decided to do some piecing. The first thing that came to mind was mole poblano. We honeymooned in Mexico and I had a personal goal of tasting as many preparations of this wonderful sauce as was possible. A quick check of Wikipedia has this:

Mole poblano is prepared with dried chile peppers (commonly ancho, pasilla, mulato, and chipotle), ground nuts, spices, Mexican chocolate (cacao ground with sugar and cinnamon) and a variety of other ingredients. Mole de guajolate (turkey) is widely regarded as the country’s national dish.

My version has chocolate, dried chile peppers, and fresh red and green jalapeños.

Early Spring

This is still journal 3 of 2008 but I added hand stitching to the trees in an attempt to draw focus to them and away from the "background." I had been looking for a way to create what I "saw" in my walks in the woods, putting the emerging green of spring into softer focus. Coming upon this piece of fabric which had been screen printed was exciting. Quilting the line of the trees was interesting but didn't seem to be enough.

I'm not so sure about my "no rules" approach to my goal of weekly journaling but I am satisfied that I am making work.

Resolution : Focus

The Gang of Four had our January meeting. We had selected Resolution or Resolve as our prompt. I have been much more interested in the tree thing I’ve got going than the concept of resolution. In the course of this project, I did spend some quality time thinking about the end of 2007 and what I accomplished. I have been subscribing to the EDM listserv (check out EDM Superblog) where there has been a huge discussion of goal setting for 2008. Somewhere I found a link to Christine Kane’s blog and I loved her idea in her December 28, 2007 post about choosing a word for the year, rather than resolutions.

I haven’t been drawing every day but I have been drawing and more importantly, I have been working in my sketchbook. When I am overwhelmed with a blank page in my sketchbook I will break the page down into boxes and doodle in the boxes. I took that approach in designing this piece. It was actually the only idea I had. I decided that the important thing was to make something that was 12 x 12, rather than getting caught up in the “making a masterpiece.” I enjoyed just getting it done. I knew what would go in some of the boxes. I finally settled on the irregular grid and filled in the boxes that I was sure of. I treated this quilt as a sketchbook page.

In my initial research, I had come up with ideas like fireworks, streamers, and confetti which I thought might be ideas for quilting motifs. As the piece turned out to be a kind of whole-cloth quilt, I didn’t really have space for extra quilting. But I did have that spool of metallic thread which I had never used. I was afraid of the issues that might develop but I experimented anyway. That was good. Our next meeting is in February and the prompt is crazy or love or crazy and love or crazy in love.

Winter

This is the third journal quilt I've finished in the 12 x 12 inch format. My goal is to finish something every week for 2008. I continue to be interested in trees and line. In looking at my sketchbook, I noticed that trees have been a recurring motif. I feel as if there is much more territory to explore. Can this be a series? In this piece I experimented with monoprinting with acrylic paint on a Plexiglas plate.

Winter Solstice II

After finishing Winter Solstice I, I had an idea of simplifying the tree shapes using only lines. I was still fascinated with the greys. I had been in the garden and had noticed that there was a lot of green for late December: the lichens and mosses have sprung back to greenness; the freesias are popping up; the Daphne odora , with bright green calyxes, is loaded with buds and looks as if it is ready to burst into bloom. I was also having so much fun with the hand stitching that I wanted to do more.

One of my goals for 2008 is to post something that I’ve made at least once a week.

Winter Solstice I

The Gang of Four (pending some other appellation) met in early November for the first time. We are all young artists, at about the same place in our careers. We are close to each other in age but our children range in age from 13 to 24, so our parenting responsibilities are not the same. I believe that our goal, for now, is to encourage each other to make more art. We plan to meet about once a month. We were inspired by the Twelve by Twelve gang and have adopted that format with the idea that we might make smaller format work that we could show together.
We decided to challenge each other to meet in December with a fiber response to the winter solstice. It was very exciting to see everyone’s work. In addition to making more work, another of my goals is to do a better job of using my digital camera. This was another scan with my new scanner.