Tag: Other Artists

Fun pincushion

I have been thinking that I would like a small project that I could churn out quickly and would have some use. The gift bags, you ask?? I know, I know. I should get to those. The fabrics in this one are bit boring for me, but can you imagine it in DOTS?!? What else? I am glad she posted the link to the directions. Easier to make….

May Britt from Norway has a tutorial of an awesome pincushion on her weblog! I love it so much that I had to give it a try 🙂 With this result !

Lucy

  blog it

Doing Time by Judy Martin

Judy Martin, a quiltmaker whose work I LOVE, sends out a periodic newsletter. She is finishing a book and sent out a newsletter, which had the article listed below. Since I have been attempting to engage in the process rather than the product of quiltmaking, I could very much relate to the article.

DOING TIME (Judy Martin’s Quilting Newsletter for September, 2007)
I read a lot of comments online and hear a lot of things that make me think there are a number of quilters for whom making quilts is a chore. Hear me out on this.

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from finishing any task, whether it’s doing the laundry or a big project at work or making a quilt. There’s the satisfaction of knowing you completed something; the satisfaction of seeing the end result and being happy with it; and in some cases the satisfaction of getting something out of the way so you can get on to something else.

Lost in those varying sources of self-satisfaction is the satisfaction of the process. I enjoy making quilts, from the first spark of an idea to drafting the pattern to choosing fabrics to cutting the fabric to sewing the component parts back together again.
The process never fails to thrill me. I like making quilts. When I finish a quilt, there’s the thrill of seeing the end result, but there’s also a little bit of emptiness to go along with it. The only way to fill this void is to start another quilt.

I hear and read things all the time, however, that lead me to believe that for some people making a quilt is a chore, akin to cleaning the garage, only it takes longer. For them, finishing the quilt must be just another notch on the belt.

There are two things about that that bother me. The first is that if quilting is a chore, perhaps it’s time to find a new hobby. If you are not happy until you are done, if it’s only about how many quilts you can complete and not about how much you enjoy each quilt you make, then it might be time to move on.

The other thing that bothers me, and it’s a corollary to the first thing, is that when FINISHING a quilt is what drives you, then you’re going to look for patterns with chunkier and clunkier pieces. With less to cut out and less to sew, your quilt will be finished in less time. But it will also be less interesting to look at, and the satisfaction of having done it will not be as long-lasting. Or you’re going to look for smaller projects, like wall quilts, pillowcases, or table runners. (Don’t get me wrong: I make those things, too, but shouldn’t the motivation be that one wants and needs a wall quilt or table runner, not that one needs a project that can be finished
quickly?)

My recommendation is instead of judging yourself by how many quilts you make, consider how much you like each quilt you make and how much you enjoy making it. Enjoy the process; cherish the result.

Thinking Blogger Award

Kristen awarded me the Thinking blogger Award. While it has taken me awhile to post this on my blog and write about it, I was really glad. I don’t think I have ever really shared my writing in any meaningful way beyond letters to friends, essays at school and my thesis. Receiving Kristen’s Thinking Blogger Award made me feel like I had achieved something.

I started this blog, because:

  1. I needed to jumpstart my quiltmaking work after a long drought of time and ideas. I figured if I had an audience of regular readers, it would help me to keep at sewing and writing.
  2. It was a regular opportunity to write for a reason: I was gearing to up to write something longer and needed to “train.”
  3. I wanted to share what I was doing, including pictures, so that I could get feedback without joining a quilt group.
  4. I wanted to chronicle my progress.
  5. I wanted to explore one subject thoroughly.
  6. I like the concept of social networking and the technologies associated with it.
  7. I wanted to show that an ordinary person could also do extraordinary things sometimes.

I did not start this blog to:

  1. Blather on about my personal problems
  2. To talk about the entire universe of ideas and information.

Part of the Award is to make note of other blogs that inspire me or make me think. Here they are in no particular order:

  1. Yarnstorm creates a beautiful blog. The design of the blog itself is a work of art. Then I get the joy of looking at her photos and her projects and her color sense. It is fresh and well written. Her photographs celebrate the ordinary [work of women]. I especially like this post.
  2. Jan at Be*mused has a wonderful sense of design. Her photographs are little works of art. They really exemplify her sense of color. Her title looks like the Bewitched logo from a zillion years ago. An example of her fabulous color sense is in this post. I also like the photos she posts about projects that inspire her, which she follows up with examples of her interpretation.
  3. Red Shoe Rambling. I admire Deb’s perseverance in posting every day; she committed to doing it and she does it. She also has gorgeous photos. They are really different from Be*mused and Yarnstorm. I love the ones she posts of nature. I also appreciate her bravery in posting photos of when she was a kid!
  4. I really like Laume’s Studio, because she describes her projects and thoughts about them. Again, she posts wonderful photos. Laume looks at the world the way I do. She posts pictures of patterns that she sees in her daily life, such as this post about the photo of fence.
  5. I supposed I could have chosen more than 5, but in sticking with the rules, I decided to only choose 5. It was difficult, because there are a lot of bloggers I admire: Deirdre (love the tabs on her blog and she always reads my blog. Also, she is a master painter), High Fiber Content (Julie is fearless in trying new things. Her blog is also a great chronicle of all the various projects in her life), Fibermania (Melody Johnson is so consistent and cheerful in her posting), I chose Pamdora’s Box, because of her drawings and her sense of humor.

You can read Kristen’s post about my blog is here. You can find out about the Thinking Blogger Award in general here.

Project Progress


I now have 15 Cross Blocks (Flowering Snowball). I could have laid them out in a 3×5 grid, but it didn’t look that good.
MavMomMary and I took the Pineapple Quilt Class together back in January. She is already putting her quilt together. I haven’t seen it since she had only done a few blocks and was thrilled to see it today. I think it looks fantastic. And very different from mine.

And a detail.


Creative Journals

I have been feeling, for a long time, how I would like to work on a visual journal – painting, sketching, colored pencils…something. I am an inveterate journal keeper. I have been keeping a journal since about 1980. Perhaps earlier. I have scads of them everywhere. I used to put snippets of things in them and they would get quite fat and I would have to keep it in a big ziploc bag in order to ensure that the bits and pieces wouldn’t fall out. An old boyfriend spent the day reading my journals once and that was the end of him. Jerk. My journals are for my mental health and NOT for sharing. They are not nice, not always pretty, but they are a fantastic exercise.

Anyway, enough boring background.

Lately I have been writing bits and notes in my journal about Thr3fold journal in order to remind myself what I want to write in the review. Putting the notes in my journal keeps all the parts together. Today, I was reading an article in Cloth Paper Scissors. Jane Lafazio, Keeping Creative Sketchbooks, pg.24-27, March/April 2007 issue, writes a little lesson on drawing and the whole article is illustrated with pages from her notebooks. The images are fresh, alive, colorful drawings. They make me want to get closer, to know more. She also writes “The journaling makes my sketchbook more than a series of paintings; it becomes my illustrated personal story.” What a lovely thought. I love the thought of something being my personal story.

Darling Boy made a deal with me to draw every day. This is his picture. Of course it is about war, but I love the little alien in the upper right hand corner. I am tempted to enlarge it and paint it. Something about it appeals to me, perhaps the googly eyes.

Tonya showed a picture of one of her visual sketchbooks, so I have been reinspired all day to figure out how to do this.

And finally, I finished another Cross Block (Flowering Snowball). Two in one week! I am thrilled!

How do you like the fabric with the faces?

Be*Mused is Back

Jan over at Bemused Blog is posting about quilt blocks again. She has been working on selling her house and, thus, has been distracted. I am glad to see her post the basket blocks.

Be*Mused really has a way with color. I love what she did with the baskets. I tried to analyze what appealed to me about these blocks. I think the thing is the neutrals she added to the blocks: the various greens and the gray-green. I also think the colors, even the gray-green, are pretty clear.

I am especially enamoured of that dotty red. I wonder if I have it? St. JCN?

San Mateo County Fair 2007

We spent the day at the San Mateo County Fair yesterday. The Fair, in general, seems to get smaller and smaller every year, but they still had a great selection of quilts and other needlearts. I wish more people would take the time to enter one thing.

I attend county fairs for many reasons. I really enjoy it being a coming together of things that people in the county make/participate in. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the bee hive and talking to a beekeeper. The cut flowers and plants were also amazing. My two favorite things are the quilts and frozen bananas. I thought the frozen bananas had gone the way of the dinosaurs after I checked every food vendor and none had them. I finally found them hidden in the ‘international’ area. I never knew milkshakes and frozen bananas were considered foreign food. Oh well, you learn something new every day!


As you may remember, I entered Thoughts on Dots into the fair. It didn’t get a prize, but I was pleased with how it was displayed. I was happy that there were no Sunbonnet Sue stuffed dolls in front of it and it wasn’t folded over anything. You can really see the whole quilt.
I was also REALLY pleased with how flat it hangs (no ripples!) and how well the sleeve looks. No lumps!


While I like, what St. JCN calls, the San Mateo Dotty better, this quilt reminds me of it. I know they are very different, but there is something about it that brought the SMD to mind.

This is a close up and I really like the flower motifs for the quilting.
These were fun! They are crocheted cupcakes.
Detail shots. Do you like the “sprinkles?”
This quilt was tied and didn’t hang very well, but I loved the tree in the middle. That drawing was very well done.

Detail of the tree.

The complete group of photos, unaltered and BIG are here as well as few other needlearts items that struck my fancy.

Famous Last Words

Craft Night was last night. Although I was hostessing I was able to finish another block. A little at a time.


Here is the block I finished last night. I am trying to make sure that the backgrounds are all different, especially since I have enough now. When I started the project in March I only had a few of the black-on-white backgrounds, so some of the early blocks have more than one of the same in the same block. I think that once there are many blocks, that nobody will notice.

I am also trying to ensure that all the foregrounds are not only different colors, but also different values and different motifs. The motifs piece is a little tricky, because you have to worry about size, shape, relationship to other motifs in the same block as well as color. Still the tricky bits are the fun parts.

I am finding that almost every block has some turquoise in it. I have to watch that. Perhaps it could be a unifying element?

I need to work on rooting out more fun prints that I probably wouldn’t use for any other project out of my stash so that they see the light of day at least once. I have a little stack of the corner/foreground pieces that I am working with now, but will root out some others when that stack gets smaller.

I now have 8 blocks, shown above, and the pattern is starting to emerge. I wanted to see them all together and think that they look great. The secondary patterns that are developing are interesting. The colored corner pieces coming together are what you would expect. What I didn’t expect was the secondary pattern from the black-on-white background pieces. They look a bit like petals, which is wonderful. I think when I have four more blocks completed you will really be able to see them well. I am finding that working with these patterned fabrics and bright colors is really fun. I feel like I can use the conversationals and patterned fabrics effectively, which I normally wouldn’t use.

I originally thought I wouldn’t use black in this piece, except for the centers. Never say never. I found a piece of some fun beach fabric with pails on it. Unfortunately, it had a black background. I put one piece in to see how it looks. The pail makes it work, but I don’t think I will be including anymore pieces with black backgrounds. Famous last words.

One of the Craft Chicks started her own blog. It is primarily about knitting, but she talks about various events and other crafts as well. You can check it out at: http://craftchicks.blogspot.com/.

Random Photos and Bits of News

Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors have merged with or been bought by Interweave Press. Apparently, I am the last to know. I read a brief blurb in QNM of all places, then Nina directed me to the blog entry over at the Quilting Arts Blog. I hope Interweave Press doesn’t ruin QA and CPS like they did to Piecework.

In the meantime, Pamelala is busy creating some gorgeous stuff. She posted a ton of pictures of postcards to her website. It is great to see a bunch of her work all together. Then, as an added bonus, she has put together a little online demo showing how her postcards (and, I assume, her quilts) evolve. You can actually see them come to life.