Wouldn’t the world be great if everything was beautiful like this. I would love to drink out of a fountain every day that looked like this.
Inspiration Thursday
Category: 2009
Use for posts written in 2009
Infinity Blocks from SIL
These are the blocks that my SIL sent to me via DH-mail. I think i will be interesting to take a photo of all of the blocks together.
I made another couple over the weekend, but am writing for an even number before I photograph them. It is more interesting if I have a few to show you.
Inspiration Tuesday
Art Quilting Studio Signing
If you are an Orange County reader, then July 12 is your lucky day, because one of the artists from the Premier issue of Art Quilting Studio will be signing the issue. Stop if you can; I’d love to hear about it.
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Creative Prompt Response #21
This drawing is different than some of the others. It has a little more detail – different types of detail and was a little more of a challenge. I took the prompt literally; that is a drip coffeemaker and not a percolator, but I often let ideas percolate while I am cooking breakfast. It is usually quiet.
Creative Prompt Response #20
The quilt in this drawing relates to a photo I took in Seattle in 2008. I still love that photo and will make something related to it someday.
Blog Housekeeping
Just a quick note to let you know that I am still working on fixing the blog. There is something wrong with the theme (Cutline, in case anyone is interested). It was behaving badly, so Deirdre changed it to this theme, which I know is not ideal in a number of ways. Yesterday we worked on rebuilding the right sidebar. I also looked at a bunch of possible other (free) themes as well as testing the old theme over and over to see if it was behaving itself.
In any case, we are working on it and will hopefully get back to normal soon. Thanks for your patience.
OK, I Submitted
I bought some fabric. It was cheerful; I had ideas for what to use it for and I just couldn’t resist.
I loved the pink stripe and pink flowers on the left. They are cheerful. I, first, bought a half yard of each to go with the blue. As I was chatting with the cutting lady, I decided that they would both make fabulous tote bags, so I bought enough for tote bags. The others are fat quarters that I thought were cheerful. The funny part was that the cutting lady kept all the bolts aside so she could get some of the same fabric.
I need to get busy on tote bags as I now have the fabric to make four of them!
Cookies in the Tarts?
SherriD has been encouraging me to include some cookies in the Tarts. I have a bunch of good reasons why I can’t or won’t. Mostly, I haven’t been successful at drawing them so viewers know they are a cookie. Of course, SherriD, resourceful quiltmaker that she is, found this quilt. I am sticking to my guns, but you can weigh in with your opinion below.
Happy Fourth of July!
Ursa Major on Flickr took some great Fourth of July Photos. Hope you had a great day (if you were celebrating) and enjoy this photo.
Longarming FOTY 2008
I spent time yesterday machine quilting the Fabric of the Year 2008 quilt at Always Quilting. It took me 3.25 hours from the time I started pinning the piece to the machine until I took it off. It was the fastest I have ever done longarming-all three times I have quilted a quilt on the longarm! I can’t really take all the credit credit for the speed, however. I did focus on the longarming, but the helper did everything for me except the actual quilting.
The quilting part is actually the speediest part of the longarm process. The other parts of the process are pretty time consuming. You have to, first, pin the quilt to the leaders on the machine afer you center it. When the bobbin runs out of the thread, you have to wind and change the bobbin and start up again, etc. While these tasks sound really straightforward, they add to the time it takes to move the process along.
Since I am not an expert, all of these tasks take me longer. I need to learn how to complete the whole process alone. In order to get the process straight in my head, I need time. I need time to think and make logical connections between the tasks while I am quilting.
Today was not the day to do this. They wanted me to quilt my quilt and get off the machine. They had a Kid’s Camp going and needed to have one of the girls finish her quilt after I was done and by the end of the day. As a result, anything except for the pinning and the quilting was done by my helper. I didn’t ask her to do this. She just, basically, muscled me out of the way and did it. It was fine. I have had a long week or so and was tired.
I am particularly fond of the quilting in the red next to the red circles with white background.
I stopped in this spot for some reason and snapped a picture so you could see an image of quilting and non-quilted spaces. See how tight the quilt is? You could bounce a quarter off of the top.
I make my labels by printing on fabric something that I type into a word processing program, like Word.
This is how the back looks after pinning it to the leader. I was looking down from the top.
Here is how the back looks from the other side when it is pinned to the leader. I am trying to collect pictures of the entire process in an effort to make a visual tutorial for myself, but it is taking me awhile.
After you finish a row, you have to cut the threads and move back the controller to the left side of the machine to start the next row. Before you can start quilting, the quilt needs to be rolled up to an unquilted section.
I don’t like borders that much, especially if the quiltmaker has just slapped them on to make the quilt bigger. However, I decided to add these borders so I would have something other than the piecing, which I like, to trim in order to square up the quilt. I wrote about this issue in a post from 2005 when I was binding Feelin’ Blue. I added a grey that had been hanging around the fabric closet for awhile. The ladies at the quilt shop were a bit horrified that I was going to cut this off. They liked the grey.
It was something I tried and it worked ok. There was still one corner that got a little distorted. We’ll see how it looks after I put the binding on.
Creative Prompt #21: Percolate
My godmother used to make her coffee in a percolator. I used to watch, fascinated, as the liquid bubbled up in the little glass top. Even though I was constantly warned that I would be burned if I touched it, I couldn’t stay away.
Ideas need to percolate.
Quilts, sometimes, need to percolate.
See the Creative Prompt page if you have questions about this project.
Post the direct URL where your drawing, doodle, artwork is posted (e.g. your blog, Flickr) in the comments area of this post. It will keep all the artwork together.
There is more information on the recently updated Creative Prompt Page.
A Little Chocolate to take your mind off the Problems
This pic is only related to quiltmaking through the fact that it is partially chocolate. Also, this blog wouldn’t exist without a keyboard and the Internet.
The real reason for posting a strange picture is that I am having some trouble with the blog so posting is not happening as timely as I would like. My fabulous “hostess” is trying to work on it. You may see some bizarre changes or weird things happening. Please just ignore the man behind the curtain and continue with your creations.
Thanks for your patience.
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Responding to the Readers
Last weekend I posted the latest iteration of the Tarts. Mostly, I get really nice, short comments on my posts. I was surprised and delighted to find a long and thought provoking comment from SherriD. She wrote:
“You are more of a trained artist than I am, I think. You’ve taken classes or studied art perhaps? So I am only asking these questions in order to understand as I have not taken any art classes or quilting classes for that matter. 
1. Why did you choose to have the purple background and the pie’s innerds almost the same shade? (btw, I like the orange crust very much!)
2. On three of big corner pots, are you going to embellish them with perhaps something like thread painting?
3. Have you considered adding cookies or scones? I noticed that you have in a row, cream and sugar, then two cups, then a cupcake with another cup.
I hate to say things about someone else’s work but I really am curious as to the “why” in your projects. This is such a happy quilt in process. I love the colors and have really enjoyed watching the progress.”
Thanks to SherriD for taking the time to post a comment – a long and thoughtful comment. I thought responding through a post would be a great way to spark conversation about SherriD’s thoughts among all of my readers.
I was not an art major in college, though my major did allow me a lot of opportunities to take classes outside of the required courses. I took art history classes, studio art classes, Swedish, German, political science (blech!) and many others. I have also taken a lot of continuing ed and adult ed classes in art practice. I am not so much trained in art as informed by the classes I have taken.
In a roundabout way, I have tried to answer SherriD’s questions below.
I have taken a number of art classes and lots of quiltmaking classes. Many people think it is a badge of honor or courage not to have taken any classes and to have taught themselves. I applaud you for your fortitude. I just don’t have it in me to learn by myself. I learn by someone showing me and by doing, so I take classes regularly. While I am not interested in taking art practice classes right now and I am interested in taking more quiltmaking classes, I enjoy taking classes, in general, for a number of reasons:
- I don’t learn well by myself with books, especially something completely new.
- Even if I never finish a class project I always take something away from the class or the teacher.
- I like being a room with other people. I enjoy seeing what they are doing and how they are reacting to the teacher.
- I work mostly alone, so classes get me out of the workroom.
- Classes re-energize me when I get back into my workroom.
- I get turned on to new sources of inspiration, such as books, blogs and websites by the teacher and students in a class.
- Classes clarify things that I don’t understand.
- I am a visual learner so I learn best when someone shows me how to do something.
- Classes make me think about things in different ways.
This is one of my favorite pieces from a studio art class. It is colored pencil on Bristol Board and I took the class from Wayne Thiebaud’s assistant at the time. I wish I remembered his name, because I would LOVE to thank him. You might recognize the image from an old Lancome ad featuring Isabella Rossellini. I also took a framing class after college and framed this piece myself.
The other thing I do is practice. When you see a piece of pie appliqued down as part of the Tarts, what you see is the final piece. Sometimes I sketch many, many drawings before I make a pattern and cut fabric. I don’t consider myself to be an accomplished drawer (if that is a word). I do feel like I am getting better and I feel like I am getting better because I practice. Drawing skill is not something with which I was born. I feel that most people don’t have it when they are born. Drawing is a skill a person needs to practice. If you want to draw well, practice. You will draw a lot of crap before you draw something great. The thing to remember is that if you practice you will draw something great.
SD: “1. Why did you choose to have the purple background and the pie’s innerds almost the same shade? (btw, I like the orange crust very much!)”
In this piece, and often in other pieces, I struggle with the limits placed on me by the color wheel. I love color and, sometimes there just aren’t enough. When selecting fabrics for pieces like the piece of pie, I often decide on the background based on other large pieces in the quilt top first. My criteria for background vary, but often have nothing to do with the image on top of the background. I never thought about it before SherriD asked about my choices.
I examined my process and found that I figure out a good background and then go to work on the main image. In this case, I wanted to use the purple fabric for the inside of the pie because it looked like blueberries. It turns out that I didn’t put all the pieces together in my mind or on the wall until I started to stitch the pieces down. Normally, my rule is to “make visual decisions visually.” This is a classic line from Lorraine Torrence.
I always know that I can remake a block, so I decided to put the block up and look at it for awhile to see if it was too purple.
SD: “2. On three of big corner pots, are you going to embellish them with perhaps something like thread painting?”
The piecing and machine applique’ I am working on now has come to be barely the first step. My thinking on this piece was clarified, somewhat, after I took the Pamela Allen class. I decided that I needed, and wanted, to embellish this piece. At this time, I am focusing on getting the top together. I need the piece together to use as a canvas for the embellishment. I don’t know right now if I will use transparent fabrics, like organza, or Perl cotton, or beads or all of the above. I will, almost certainly, add some steam in appropriate places and some designs to areas I think are too plain.
As I often say: Stay Tuned.
SD: “3. Have you considered adding cookies or scones? I noticed that you have in a row, cream and sugar, then two cups, then a cupcake with another cup.”
Yes, I have considered cookies and scones. Because of their shapes, they don’t make good candidates for standing out and people knowing what they are. They are too flat, I guess. I also don’t want to introduce many more whites and beiges to the piece.
One of my goals with my quiltmaking has been to be about the process. It is hard, because my personality makes me very goal oriented. I realized a year or two ago that making a lot of quilts wasn’t as important to be as making good quilts that interested me. Since I don’t make my living by quiltmaking, I felt it was more important for me to enjoy what I was doing more than just getting it done. It is a struggle for me, but I have to keep trying.