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.

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.

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.

Journal Quilt Week 3 of 2008

I thought about not making something last week because I am trying to get something done for my guild show. The East Bay Heritage Quilters have a show every two years. Every member may exhibit one quilt and one piece of wearable art. It’s an amazing guild. It’s a wonderful show. I’m not even at the point of having some pictures of the work in progress.

On Friday, while cleaning up my work space, I found a piece of fabric that I made in an EBHQ workshop with Kerr Grabowski. I cut it up and started quilting my tree shapes. This fabric was screen printed with thickened dyes, using Kerr’s deconstructed screen printing techniques. I had intended to do more hand stitching on this piece but I decided to take a look at it first. I mis-positioned it on the scanner bed and got this image. I’m going to leave it for now and get back to my EBHQ project.

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.

Working Small

This is the first really small quilt I’ve tried. It's 6" x 7" I think of it as a prototype of sorts, as I have decided to work small for the time being. I love how Terry Grant (August 30 entry, Almost Finished) has mounted her work on fabric, so I have been experimenting with that.

This is the first time I’ve used my new photo scanner, an HP G4050. This would be a great step forward except that my latest obsession is with the 12” x 12” format I’ve been seeing and thinking about from the 12 x 12 blog. Inspired by their creativity, I’ve started a small group. We are doing a 12 x 12 about once a month and we are off to a good start. Pictures to follow.

Rosegarden Quilt

2007 Journal Quilt: My story

This project had several requirements including a size of 17" x 22" in the vertical direction; and that the design incorporate at least three techniques from the Creative Quilting book. I had never done any beading so I tried that in the "bubbles" in the water and the pots on the deck. I love Pamela Allen's big stitch embroidery and I used that as well. I really love seeing hand work in fiber art. I am probably happiest with the quilting. I had so much fun with that. The quilting really tries to tell a story: this year I gave myself permission to call myself a swimmer.

We have been members of this pool for almost thirty years. Our two sons learned to swim here. I began quilting here with my dearest friends, The Poolside Quilters. We sat by the side of the pool and quilted while our kids swam back and forth during swim team workouts. Both boys retired at age 18 but I didn't really start swimming until three years ago. When I began, 25 yards left me breathless. It was not unusual to feel panicky half way across the pool. I grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan and I learned how to swim at the Y, but I never really swam for fitness. This year was my best "season" ever. By mid-July, I was swimming a mile (that's 1760 yards, 71 laps, 45 minutes) and I averaged 4 times a week. All of that information is quilted in the "water." But the pool was also a wonderful, magical place at 6:30 AM with the sun rising, only a handful of swimmers around, and the crows! The pool closed for the season on October 29, and will not re-open until the beginning of May. I am looking forward to getting back into the water.

2007 Journal Quilt

The Pool

A Page from My Book
Journal Quilts 2007 - Journal Quilt Project
inspired by Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project, Karey Patterson Bresenhan, ED.

After three years of living vicariously through the Journal Quilt Project on the QuiltArt listserv, I finally joined in the fun. This piece was inspired by a summer of swimming at the neighborhood pool.