LOST AND FOUND

Way back in 2016, Melissa Averinos came to Chattanooga to teach a group of us how to make faces with fabric.  It was great fun and she taught us lots about creating portraits.  My first face didn't please me very much, and thankfully I had time to create another.  I liked it a bit more and even completed it shortly after the class.  Determined to try more faces, I cut and glued and made several more.  Then, as usual, I was distracted by something else and I stuck those portraits in a drawer and forgot about them.  

Somewhere along the way, in the infamous year of 2020, I completely lost my desire to create with fabric and just sat around making beaded jewelry. After making dozens of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces and lamenting my loss of mojo for fabrics, a friend sent a photo of her beautiful floral collage made with fabrics.  That little nudge clicked and I started searching for those old 2016 collaged faces.  It was a long search because I had no idea where I had stashed them.  I finally found them in a drawer stuffed full of paper patterns from old art quilts from years past.  I had even forgotten that I had saved so many of them, since I never, ever make the same thing twice.  I also uncovered a couple of portraits I had created of my granddaughter and found that I liked them better now, after they have "aged" a bit.  

In just a few days, I have them quilted and bound! Ideas have been swirling around like dervishes.  Hopefully my mojo will keep me inspired to play with fabric once again.  And I hope that some of you might like to purchase one of them before they are stashed into a drawer to be forgotten for another 5 years.  

Some people say this is a self portrait.  I don't really look that, do I?  

"Pouty Paulina" is 16" x 22" and come pout on your wall for $50 + shipping

"Sophisticated Sally" is 16" x 20" and could grace your wall for $50 + shipping

 

"Just Pat" 18" x 23" is available for $50 + shipping

Then there are these 2 characters.  I'll let you name them, but I think they are a couple from the 1960's Haight Ashbury.  

17 1/2" x 21 1/2" 

$100 for the pair

Now Showing

 completed pattern 

my hand dyed fabrics are chosen

Poplar Leaves are Falling

23" x 35"

a finish and a new name

Introducing "Totto" 

(channeling Georgia)

36 1/2" x 45 1/2"

closeup of quilting

And More Progress

Bicycle 101
pieced and ready to quilt
@ 30 x 36

I had this next piece hanging on my design wall since August 2013.  It was done during a workshop with Elizabeth Barton at Arrowmont.  Elizabeth graciously complimented the composition, but all I kept seeing was the big CBS eye.  It began to make be a big crazy, as it stared at me day in and day out on the wall.  A few days ago, as I was cleaning up some the the piles of fabric from a project, I decided that I was tired of it's glare.  And I had exhausted all ideas of what to do with it.  This thing had become an intrusive monster.  I snatched it from the wall and hacked it up with my rotary cutter. There! I said as I tossed the pieces into the trash and went back to my cleaning.  Feeling much more relaxed.  

However, those pieces were still wimpering for help the next day.  I reluctantly salvaged  them from the trash and began to play with them again.  The results were very pleasing to my eye, and as it hangs on the wall today, I am at piece with it's rebirth.  

eye to eye
@ 20" x 28"

Collaboration

Last fall my daughter, Casey, suggested that we might collaborate on a project, and since it involved quilting I readily agreed.  Also, to collaborate with my talented daughter and learn from her was exciting.  She had several ideas and sent me sketches.  After a bit of back and forth on the sizes, colors and design, we were off and running.  Her ideas were based on bringing the outdoors in by using constellations, but in a very minimalist style.  That style was a challenge for me, as I tend to over do it, just a bit, (wink)  

However, we were able to agree on the designs and once completed, I felt that they turned out quite well. Click here and here to see the photos of the completed quilted blankets  They are hanging in Tanner Goods shop in Portland, OR and are for sale!    

Moving along

Wild Rosie is pieced together and ready to be quilted.  Or should I say, she is ready for more accessories.  

Off to find the appropriate threads.  Hope she agrees with what I find.  

Walking among the trees,

I always take note of a dead cedar tree.

Mostly grey and sad in appearance.

Decided to give it another life

A bit happier, not so gloomy.  

  

It was  more difficult than I imagined.

Revival is often difficult, I guess.

Can it already be November?!?!?!?!

Momma always said that the older you get the faster time passes.  She is 92, pushing hard towards 93 years of age and time has slowed down for her.  I suppose when you no longer have the stamina to do much more than walk, eat and sleep, life begins to drag.  It reminds me of my preteen years, when Sunday afternoons were long and boring.  Mom and Dad took naps, and I paced the house hoping for something exciting to happy.  Needless to say, in very rural southeast Tennessee, the most exciting thing that might happen on a Sunday afternoon would be when some of the cows decided to make a run for it.  I know just how they felt.  Too bad I didn't follow their lead, use some imagination and make something exciting happen for myself. Back when I had all the time in the world.  C'est la vie.

Now that I am older and wiser (well OK, older at least,) I am becoming better at making life more exciting.  There again, I can't take full credit for making the latest excitement.  I must thank a forward thinking interior designer and a bank president.  My Fractured Honeysuckles was purchased to hang in the lobby of a new bank.  Giddy, euphoric, ecstatic and yes, even excited, describes my mood lately.  And if I might just say, it looks absolutely splendid in it's new home.

My new FDSB regimen is paying off as I am better utilizing my time.  And just in time I might add.  I have accepted a commission for another local facility and have been diligently plodding away with excitement.  I have a short time frame for completion and I am determined to meet that deadline.  So far so good.  Can't reveal too much info at this time, but just for fun, I will share a small peek.

Now back to work.  Or can you really call it work when it is more like play? 

C'est la vie.

Remember to keep all the victims of super storm Sandy in your thoughts.  

If you want to help out, I suggest that you check 

with Victoria, aka,  Bumble Beans  

click here to see what is needed.  

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

Once upon a time 

there was a young, innocent, country girl who loved to play along the fence rows and road sides where wildflowers grew in abundance  Having no playmates, she made friends with all the lovelies that nature had to offer. Acorns were her best buddies, always tucked away in the pockets of her clothes. Daisies were woven into delicate crowns to top her head.   

 

Queen Anne's lace made wonderful chains to circle her waist.  

Gathering many other beauties along the fields and dusty roadsides, the young girl scattered the seeds of all of her lovelies in her ma's well manicured yard, 

much to ma's dismay.      

Ma explained that these were weeds, and would just take over her lovely flower bed, turning it into ruins. The young girl was so dismayed to hear that all of her lovelies were considered to be undesirables.  Even though she could not understand why they were thought to be inferior to ma's iris, roses, lilies and jonquils, she obeyed her ma and learned to appreciate the right and proper ways of life.  She grew in to a woman and always tried to remembered  the rules as her ma had taught her.

Many, many years later, the woman remembered her love for the simple, road side lovelies where she spent many happy days in her daydreams.   So she decided there and then, it was time to find that openness and idyllic playfulness of her youth.  Disregarding all of the rules of prim and proper ways,  she once again let her imagination guide her. Playing with fabrics, she made a not so prim and proper quilt.  It began with free form log cabin blocks in mostly solid colors.  That still didn't make her happy. 

Where upon she decided to grab her scissors and cut lots of  
free form flowers which she randomly stitched onto the top of the quilt with wild free motion zig zag stitches.  If the fabric frayed a bit, all the better, she decided.  And continuing along with the idea, she created many more free pieced flowers stitched in colors to rival Joseph's multi-colored robe.    

Multiple leaves of all shapes and sizes were added to the mix.   

 Lots of freely pieced blocks bordered the quilt in fence row style. 

And all along the border the quilting will be sticks and blocks of all shapes and sizes. 

 Finally after days of play, the ole girl, deciding that the plain ole log cabin blocks were covered with enough colorful posies, it was time to quilt it.    She decided to cover the quilt with hundreds of quilted seeds with sprinklings of posey shadows.  







  The old girl was, at long last, free to be what she wants to be.  

The moral of this story is ?

Time to play some more

So many ideas, so little time

Stitched together

It was time to buckle down and finish sewing this together.  I stared at it for a week to try and find things that bothered me, and decided the time had come.  For me, it always makes a difference in the appearance of a piece to see it actually sewn together rather than all the separate pieces on the design wall. Couldn't decide:  do the deeper colors of the branches work?, does the background work?, is  it a balanced composition?, do I need to add more leaves?, should I do some thread painting on the blooms?,  add a border or not?,  etc, etc,

Reading Elizabeth Barton's blog post on eight steps to overcome quilter's panic recently only added to my indecision.  I printed out her steps and pinned them to my wall.  I have so much more to learn.  She posed some probing questions to ask yourself as you try to critique your work.  These 8 steps are tremendously helpful.  I must admit, while I was creating this piece I thought it was going well.  As I put it together, I asked myself the questions from Elizabeth's 8 steps. ( Dang!  It is really difficult to critique your own work.)   Just when I thought Pinkie jumped through most of the hoops sufficiently, I read Elizabeth's last statement of the post :  Remember not everything works and if you think everything IS working you are probably wrong!


YIKES!   Okay, so nothing is ever perfect. Decisions, decisions.  Now that is together, I will  let Pinkie hang around a bit longer before I do the normal (for me) thing.  Quilt it and hope for the best.  

I highly recommend using Elizabeth's suggestions.  Her blog has a wealth of information and inspiration.  She is a fantastic artist and I have heard great comments on her teaching skills.  I hope to be able to participate in one of her workshops one of these days.  As I said, I still have so much to learn. 

ideas for my next one

lured away from piecing the pink dogwoods

 to the iris blooms in my yard

the warm, sunny weather

 camera in hand

life is good

 " graceful ballerina"

 "delicate lady of a certain age"

"spun silk"

"purple tiger"

"lemon drop swirls"

"hold on, I'm coming"

Now then, back to the pink dogwood

it is coming along, making more changes as I go

Spring has sprung

Or is it summer in disguise?  Down south we have had record high temps.  Whew!  Need I say that I am not ready for summer?  What happened to spring?  The dogwoods and iris are in full bloom. Gloriously.
I am stuck with my latest geometric triangular design. So why not go with the flow?
Taking pictures of the prolific dogwood blossoms and giant white iris blooms, I have left those geos in the dust/mud and felt compelled to create new textile art/fiber art/quilt from my pictures of the exquisite deep pink dogwood tree in my backyard.

Taking multiple photos of all the dogwoods, pink and white, I quickly settled on the composition of the white dogwood.  However, not wanting to do another white bloom, I used this photo as my design, using pink as the color of the blooms.

Okay, so I know that they are totally different botanical configurations, but this composition just spoke to me.  Hello.  Use me.  But make me pink.  Call it artistic license.  Does that work for you?  Hey, it is working for me, at any rate.  Here is where it has gotten me thus far.  

the pattern:

day 3:

Just know that these are simply pieces of fabric pinned to my design wall and not sewn together.  Subject to change at my whim.  They are not my usual colors of choice.  But I am liking the pink (okay I have begun a new love affair with pink) and the blue greens, which seem to play well.

I am off and running again with my fav.  

I can't wait for tomorrow.

Originality

Recently some friends and I were talking about originality.  As in, there is nothing original in this world.  I do agree with that.  As much as I try to create an original quilted piece, and I occasionally think that, aha!, by jove I've done it.  I've only to go as far as my laptop and find that the little black sliver of fabric I've inserted into one of my last quilts to make the blocks line up has already been done!
Yet, that seems to inspire me to try and try again. 

I do enjoy a challenge.

The past few days I have been playing with triangles.  Nothing new there.  But just maybe.  If I take my pattern from the last piece, 

and play around with the lines in a new sketch, I'll find another way of doing this motif.  (Am I really going to do a series?)  Yeegads!

First I cut 1 1/2 ", 1", and 3/4" strips of black and white fabrics, using my ruler.

Next, using my scissors, no measurements, no rules, I cut little triangles from multiple colors.  I decided to sew alternating black and white strips on two sides of the triangles.  Need I mention that it became addicting.  Here's what I have got so far.  

Although I didn't stick to the sketch, I am enjoying the way it is going.  So far this is some good therapy and some good fun.  It makes me happy just to look at it.  Not too sure where I'll go from here, but I like the idea of the colored triangles being different sizes.  Little bits of color.  Zig zags.
Original?  Maybe not in the worldly scheme of things. but for me, definitely yes.  Geometrics.  Series.  I would have never dreamed that I would be doing this.

Now that I've gotten several triangles made, I'll sew them together and see what happens.  And I am not going to stress over matching them up perfectly, as they are all just a bit different in size.  To my eye, that is what will make it more interesting.  But then, that's just my opinion.  Life is good.  Maybe not too original, but still good fun. We'll see what tomorrow brings.  

Food for thought

Geometrics are not my strong point.  It's been a challenge for me to take a motif and convert the lines into something pleasing to the eye.  Part of it might have to do with the decision making process.  Trying to visualize what to make of these lines. I agonize far too long over all sorts of sketches.  Why can't I just pick up the fabric and start cutting and sewing?   Without a pattern?  Yikes!  That is the other difficult part for me.  No drawn pattern so that I can get the proportions and scale right.  So I ended up drawing a scale pattern.  And I got it finished.

After all the serious doubts about which way this was going to hang, I went with my first thoughts.  At the suggestion of a friend, I kept revolving it.  As this assignment for my art quilt study group was about asymmetrical balance, I liked the way it felt at this rotation.  It invokes an Asian design to my eye.  It turned out nothing at all like my original sketch.  Yet it was interesting and fun to work through the process to see what it might become. 

room setting with another motif project, the pillow.
can anyone see what the motif is supposed to be?
does it look balanced?

I am going to let it hang this way as I continue to study it and perhaps go back to the original sketch and try another design.  This series stuff could be fun.  And hopefully the next one I will attempt to do without drawing a pattern.  

Explorations

just to much chaos for me, today

which will calm the chaos a tiny bit?

pink/orange silk won out as the flavor of the day for a 58" x 68" finish

Pulling out all my books showing Gee's Bend quilts, browsing the web for Anna Williams, as well as some of my favorite quilters, it was time to just get on with it.  Make a decision to complete this one as best as I could.  It was not going to be an Anna Williams masterpiece, nor a Gee's Bend masterpiece, it will just be what it will be.  It has been a love/hate affair of sorts, always depending on my mood.  There has been difficulty separating the mind and the moods.  Try as I might, I was not able to view it with a detached eye.  As usual, the emotions won out.  It is what it is, I am what I am.  Finish this one up and keep exploring. 
What have y'all been exploring lately?