Artquiltmaker Blog

Food for Thought p17

“…if you are anything like me you never have everything that’s listed in the recipe but you’re so impatient to start that very minute you decide to go ahead and do it anyway.”

The article is about finding inspiration in Thr3fold and their hopes for the mag. It is basically a mini-ad where Linda compares finding inspiration in cooking to finding inspiration in quiltmaking.

I like it that she used the word impatient rather than excited or some other word. I think it describes the way I feel about starting a new project exactly.

My first thought after reading the article was: is Linda in my head?
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Twisted Knits p18-21
Remember the fiber cupcakes from the fair? Friend Claudia, with whom I had lunch on Wednesday, is knitting some like them and I am delirious over them. Hers sound so gorgeous. Knitting is something that I have had to give up 🙁 because of my hands, but I long to make 15 or 20 of these cupcakes to decorate and give as gifts and amuse (imagine them on a tray in the living room or dining room!). I long to try out the fabulous yarns available and decorate them with beads just to get a little taste of knitting and beading.

LLC must have sensed my lust for yarn, because they give the pattern and tips for this easy twisted scarf. One tip is to make the tassels first, so you don’t have to worry about running out of tassel yarn. What a great idea! I wonder how this could be translated to quiltmaking? Make the border first?
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Diary of a Quilt p22-25

Diaries are nice because they get you into the head of the writer, which is a bit of self serving comment as I am writing a blog here! I am a journal junkie. I love reading people’s journals (with permission!), because of the … rawness, though I am not sure if that is the right word. Still journals, diaries and blogs are all about process, not about product. Sometimes exhaustively so. This article is, I assume, a much edited, fairly sanitized version of Catherine’s journal of her quiltmaking process. I would expect nothing less from a publication. In a way, it is too edited. I would have liked a bit more detail, but the editing doesn’t detract from the description of the process. It also accurately depicts, without whining, the frenzied feeling of having quilt deadlines to meet while trying to enjoy part of the process that she finds fun.

This is the fine line that I desperately try to avoid; wanting recognition via quilt shows and events/exhibits while trying not to imbue quiltmaking with the hated aspects of a job.

The quilt that is the center of the article is one of seals (or maybe sea otters – I have no idea what the difference is and only a passing interest) and it is wonderful. There is such a sense of peace in the quilt when I look at it. She talks about missing her seals and a Sedna quilt, which I haven’t seen and wasn’t able to find on the web. I hope it is on the CD, but it is a reference I would have liked to have seen as a picture in the article.

This brings up a tangential point about multimedia journals. What exactly does that mean? Are they truly multimedia if I can’t click on a link like “Sedna” in the actual text of the print journal and be taken to the image or description on my cell phone or PDA or a screen that is projected form my glasses and pops up in front of my face? Or is it just multimedia because they include a CD? What about weblinks in magazines? If QNM includes a URL, does that make it a multimedia magazine? I guess this is a new frontier.

Anyway, the seals look playful and happy. The brown part on the right of the quilt is not something I would have thought to add, but it really adds to the quilt. It could be cliffs or an undersea ridge. I am not sure how I feel about the quilting. There is a delicacy about the quilt that the quilting doesn’t fit with. However, it does give the idea of swirling water. The shell (abalone?) buttons that she used for the bubbles are great. They add a little texture and shine to the quilt without overpowering it.

I liked the pictures of painting the faces. Until I looked carefully at the detail of one face I didn’t realize they were painted. I though that the faces had been fussy cut out of some hand dyed fabric to take advantage of the coloring. Looking at the whole quilt (not the detail) more closely, I can see the delicacy in the coloration that certainly cannot be achieved with a dye process (that I know of – being such an expert on dyeing and all NOT) JulieZS will have to weigh in here and set me straight.

Big annoyance: the article basically stops in the middle and tells me to go to the CD to see the rest. I guess they are forcing me to look at the CD on their timeframe rather than my own, which leads me to believe that they want the CD to be considered an integral part of the package. Not necessarily a bad thing. They are teaching me in more ways than one.

The Associated Press is reporting that the restoration of the frescoes in the Pope’s apartments (called Stanze of Raphael), done by Raphael, are almost complete after 30 years of work. Hooray!

I have spent a remarkable amount of time writing notes for Thr3fold reviews during the past couple of days. As a result, you do get a part 2.* Amazing!

Challenges: thr3 and 3/4, p.6-11

This article is lavishly/lushly illustrated. The first picture is a quilt of 3 trees. The photo is so clear that the detail of the quilting is clearly visible. The article is about challenges that “stretch us…stretch to rise to the creative challenge. We challenge each other to think in new ways, we challenge each other to go beyond our personal comfort levels, we challenge each other to experiment with a new art material or a new technique.” p.6.

Catherine writes the main text, but each artist puts in her 2 cents in adjunct kind of journal entries interspersed throughout the main text. In the course of the article, the artists talk about different types of challenges: particular techniques, limited colors and/or fabrics. Catherine uses a particular challenge with the theme of ‘home’ to illustrate challenges in general. She incorporates LLC’s philosophy of challenges as well. One interesting part of the article discusses historical challenges between famous artists. Picasso and Matisse as well as Hemingway and Fitzgerald provided creative stimulus and support to each other. “The benefits of challenging a ‘like-minded’ friend brings out the best in each of you, you become both a sounding board and a ‘net’ for each other, a safe place to land.”

LLC, through this article, are challenging me (us) “to think about challenges and what can be gained in stretching a little further than you are comfortable.” pg.11 I have done round robin challenges, Carousel and Starry, Starry Night, in the past and I have been fortunate to be in good groups. St.JCN and I collaborate quite frequently. She Had to Have her Latte is one of the first, but Ocean Avenue, Get the Red Out and the Punk Rock Quilt are all examples.

Leaving my challenges with St. JCN aside for a moment, the other challenges I have done have been great, but they have not been the day to day support group that Catherine describes. I don’t think that you can have a growth experience through a challenge without working with people you know very well and who know you. In reading the article, it made me think wistfully about an art quilt group that would provide a supportive environment. Obviously, such a group would take time to develop since relationships don’t just happen. No time for that now and I am quite happy working alone in my workroom for the time being.

“How Can You Resist” pg.11-12

This article talks about watercolor. I almost skipped it, because I am not interested in watercolor, but I ended up reading it and came away with some interesting information and thoughts (interesting to me anyway). The article seems to start to go in a direction of talking about a variety of media, including oil pastels, but the watercolors really take center stage and the discussion of watercolors was the text that drew me in.

Linda spends some time going over materials: paper, paint and brushes. The bottom line: you get what you pay for. You know that if you buy cheap materials, there is a higher probability you will fail. However, if you buy expensive materials, succeed and don’t enjoy the experiment, you will be stuck with a lot of expensive stuff that will clutter up your workroom (see Melody Johnson’s blog about moving two states away). Solution? Find a friend (or iSoldIt or eBay or Freecycle) with whom you can trade or give those materials.

I liked the description of what watercolor paper is and what all of the cryptic descriptions mean. However, I just want to sew and work with fabric, but this article makes me think about how other media can integrate with/help with my quiltmaking.

I had some particular thoughts about watercolor:

• Would it work?
• Would it be inspirational only or would I do sketch-paintings an try to replicate them?
• How would it work?

In a strange twist of my brain, this article brought up the failings in my workspace. I have a large room that is still suffering the effects of the remodel (I am going to work on this today, maybe), but the actual space in which I work is quite small and usually, embarrassingly, messy.
I also use the floor, when I am laying things out, and the ironing board. It is a flat surface, after all. This article, however, makes me think that it would be lovely to have a long desk/table in my workroom, where I could set up paints, pastels, oil pastels, and sketchbooks, collages and just pop in to work on one or the other for a few minutes, let it dry while continuing to be able to to eat dinner at the dining room table and walk across the floor of the garage. More space for creativity.

In the journal, Linda has posted a fabulous picture of a watercolor paintbox. I love the texture on pages (from background photos) is another asset to this journal. The non-completely white pages really appeal to me and make the journal much more interesting to look at. The background draws you in and made me look at the details more closely.

The article is finished with a video on the CD.

* Of course, creating a part 2 in no way implies that there will be a part 3. 😉

Note that I put ‘part 1’ at the top. This is not intended to imply that there will be a part 2, but I will endeavor to review the entire journal. 😉

Thr3fold Journal is a multimedia journal written by Linda and Laura Kemshall and their friend/colleague Catherine Nicholls (hereafter LLC). It is 53 pages long and comes with a CD. The front cover is interesting (and a bit of a pain, but I hope they don’t change it), because it opens like a double door from the middle rather than the way regular magazines open from the right. It is also small – just 8.5″ x 8.5″ (21.5cm x 21.5cm). It is a good size to tuck into your handbag. The journal is packed with color and pictures and details. In fact, the introductory section, called Why?, shows a fantastic detail shot of machine quilting.

For the moment, I wanted to write about the article called “Inspired by Landscape”

“Inspired by Landscape” is all about inspiration that can be found in daily life. This is right up my alley, because I live in a city and don’t get these gorgeous landscapes that you see on Deirdre’s blog, on a daily basis. I do see interesting things that can be used for inspiration, which is the point that I took away from the article. LLC write “… the view we see every day on our way to work, the scene from the kitchen window as we do the dishes, any vista we see on a regular basis”- p.3. I like this, because it is makes quiltmaking accessible. You don’t have to live in Hawaii and see unbelievably gorgeous scenes every day (though, wouldn’t that be nice!?!) in order to be inspired. The smallest things can be the basis of a quilt or a scribble in your sketchbook or a machine quilting design. The point is to look around you and SEE.

The girls say “You can take a look in the early morning, pop outside with your sketchbook on a warm summer’s evening or make a few quick notes from the bus as you travel through town” -p.4, which they follow with “All landscapes change, the view from the kitchen window will be different from day to day and month to month. A cityscape will change with the seasons in a different way than a countryside landscape”-p.4. If you travel the city along the same paths and street every day, there is still an opportunity for inspiration. Look at the patterns cast by shadows. Notice the change in paint colors of the houses. Even the cracks in the sidewalk can become ideas for quilting designs. This is the wonderful thing about using what scenes you have: they are easily accessible and never the same.

“If you move house or when you travel, you will surround yourself with new scenes” -p.5. LLC do not discount vacation inspiration. Have you gone on vacation and taken 500 photos (aren’t digital cameras wonderful?!?!?). One reason is that everything looks new and different, but the other reason is that you are drinking in a new landscape and, by default, new inspiration.

Finally, the writing style is upbeat, not relentlessly positive, but upbeat. I felt good after reading the articles. Not good in a way that makes me want to go out and buy a bunch of new materials in order to do exactly what LLC are doing, but good in a confident way; good in a way that makes sitting down with a sketchbook tantalizing. Thr3fold journal is expensive and a bit of a pain to get hold of, but I am finding this issue wonderful.

Thanks for reading!