fiber artist
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| collage circles and falling leaves |
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| … collage circles with sewing accents |
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| collage circles done so far… |
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| and a couple of cards |
Kelsey at Lovely and Enough tagged me last week in an around the world blog hop. Several years ago we challenged each other to blog. She prints her own fabric and creates lovely contemporary art quilts incorporating traditional patterns with layers of screen printing and fresh color palettes. I’m a computer engineer by profession but my blog has become a spot to journal my fiber art. I’m going to be a final leaf on this blog tour (between a conference and busy several months I’ve not been keeping up with my favorite bloggers enough to be able to branch out).
What am I working on?
I enjoy creating art quilts with fabrics I have dyed and printed. I also enjoy creating modern functional quilts and smaller collaged art. In the works? a quilt top for my daughter ready to be quilted, a stash-busting quilt to donate, and collaging.
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| 21 plus quilt with backing ready to sandwich |
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| stash-busting strippy quilt |
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| collages for cards in process |
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
My style is a work in progress, but I love to work with rich colors, reflecting the dichotomy of the rich beauty life against the fragility and brokenness so close to the surface.
Why do I create?
Debugging computer code is a fun puzzle to unwrap, but I also revel in the chance to take bits of brightly colored fabric and create a tactile piece of art that both reflects my musings and challenges me. Art to me represents hope in a world too filled with despair.
How does my creative process work?
Scribbled pen sketches help transfer musings to paper, and then in my light-filled studio, I enjoy collaging fabric to represent my designs. I’m an inveterate doodler, so machine stitch painting lets me bring additional texture and color to my collages and art quilts.
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| stitch-painting on collaged paper |
If you are interested in enjoying other creative quilters on this blog hop, you can trace branches back through Lovely and Enough. Blessings on the journey.
Hoping to do some relaxing sewing, I opened up several stash drawers to pick out fabric. As I began, I realized I had one last project to finish with some of these fabrics. My daughters attended a great elementary/middle school and when they moved into a new building we designed and quilted a lovely hanging for the wall of the gathering space. Since then we have made small wall-hanging quilts for staff to say thank you at different milestones. I’ve been getting low on the fabrics for these quilts, so I needed to make just a few more!
Here are the five I began to work on — everything is selected and cut out. Squares, hands, backing, sleeves, binding, and labels. And there is NOTHING left of these blue and green fabrics. Barely had enough to finish the backings and bindings! Still not sure about the two on the left, but now I can dive into my stash at will for other projects. (And I found out on Sunday that I only need 2-3 out of these five)
I had several of the quilts that I never finished because they didn’t quite gel. Here you see the versions with a little more color. Cheerful! And yet harder to lay out and get the balance to work.
In 2012 I had a wonderful time thinking with a group of high school students and adults about wisdom. What is wisdom? Where is it found? How do we grow it within ourselves? Together we designed and created an installation reflecting our learnings on wisdom.
I enjoyed the wisdom imagery resonating in my head. Being slightly crazy, I decided to try to work in a series AND to try to work larger. I designed several quilts on paper, but began serious work on a fourth quilt. This quilt, “Wisdom: many laws to one love”, was the first quilt to be finished.
I made a small sample door quilt, but the first three quilts were languishing on the design board, and in the meantime I had drawn a design while listening to a workshop on grant-writing. “Wisdom: shoots and branches” was the next to be completed. Creating this quilt, I just kept powering through (not overthinking can be a good thing for me), and finished it within weeks.
The next three quilts were tough. The designs didn’t flow, composition was so-so, …. imagine a brick wall. I finally decided that I needed to power through and “finish” them all – no matter what! I sewed the last one to its backing yesterday. Perseverance! Below are four plus the sample in the sunny studio today. The fifth has a home with my mom (who loved all the squares and gave invaluable composition help to get me unstuck).
So, what did it take to just “finish” them? The second from the left was on a green background – ripped it off the background, picked a happy light blue, changed the size of the background, then needed to make the circle of wisdom smaller, added some squares just because I could! The fourth from the left still has composition flaws – added watercolor pastel, then some white gesso, bright coral thread for the border. Lesson learned – if the composition isn’t quite right, fix it before you start sewing! The fifth one from the left, over a year later after literally living on the design wall – added watercolor pastel, narrowed the canvas, added more watercolor pastel, added white paint, and more white paint, and I finally stopped. And to think this all started with the sample door on the right.
And I’m thankful to be taking pictures with no snow on the driveway in Ann Arbor. I’m blessed.
As 2014 began, I took a look back, trying to figure out what has made it so hard for me to try to work on larger projects. Its not that I’m not sewing! I’ve enjoyed many projects over the last several years. However, whenever I try to be creative on a larger scale, I’m finding myself challenged.
So, in the spirit of scientific research, lets look back to when things were working well on a small scale.
I took a class on creating art quilts with Sue Holdaway-Heys maybe 10 years ago now. Sue is a great encourager and I began to sew for fun, just for me! My mom and my grandma were both excellent seamstresses and I never really had the urge. My sister took sewing classes, but not me. The precision required for sewing clothing? Not me. (image my terror when my daughters both decided they enjoyed this kind of sewing and kept asking for help … needless to say, many phone calls to grandma were in order when things went awry).
I started doing “quilts of the week” in 2006 to give myself an excuse to try out all sorts of techniques. The beach scene at the lower center was one I did with my mom. Some of these are simply lovely – so why couldn’t I take these concepts are translate them?
One of my daughters said to me over Christmas “Your larger quilts have a lot going on.” She was right. I’m losing an elegant simplicity that I love as I change scale.
So, my challenge this spring is to start with basics. I’m going to focus on dyeing a set of fabrics with designs at a larger scale. Then I’m going to quilt. Simply. With bold swaths of fabric and color. Can’t wait!
I find my artistic side balances the science side of me … except, when it doesn’t. Sometimes crafting just the perfect figure for a paper takes extensive use of the creative side of my brain and I find myself enjoying sewing as almost a meditative space.
This Saturday morning as the sun came up I was enjoying a break from scientific writing to audition thread for a quilt in the wisdom series I have been working on. The series has been giving me grief, but I decided to simply finish each of the quilts in progress without agonizing too much, and learn something from each one. These quilts will probably never make it onto a wall, but as I worked in series I found that branching out when inspired makes a more interesting series!
This quilt had a different shape, and different background, and I was ruthless in editing to get closer to what I was envisioning. I’m still not too sure about it, but enjoying the sun coming up over the snow-covered ridge while enjoying thread colors can’t be beat.
I’m making progress on Kelsey’s 21st birthday quilt – I’m aiming for the top done in time for her half-birthday. The good news is I didn’t ruin any of the fabric she brought back from Italy and all the plus blocks are done!
Because we didn’t have quite enough fabric, I was able to include one plus of Kelsey’s hydrangea print from her summer printing class. The big question is “Where to put the hydrangea plus?” What do you think?
Serenity. Elusive when aiming outside of your comfort zone.
An artist friend suggested just getting into the studio and doing something. Sew something. Sift through raw materials. Feel your fabric.
I’m trying to work BIGGER. And yet, the rhythm of larger scale is elusive.
So, for myself, just for now, I’m creating SMALLER. For fun. Just to use my hands, cut paper, maybe fabric, a word here, or there. Or entire dictionary pages.
And, its delightful. Had to share it simply because I have such a big smile on my face. And, tomorrow is soon enough to pick myself back up, and aim for BIG again.
As I’ve been cleaning the studio, I’ve been enjoying unearthing scattered remnants of creative projects: dresses, duvet covers, pillow covers, altered skirts, vintage recycled throws, and more. Tangible, visible, colorful, all bring joy to my heart.
While I love fabric, sometimes paper with the words and memories is fun too. In the midst of cleaning, I’ve been collaging and sewing paper for cards.
I find the process of cutting, pasting, cutting some more, and then combining a relaxing process. I’m always tickled when you get lively results and then sometimes the serendipitous flow of mood you weren’t quite expecting. Its hovering near zero degrees and yet my design board looks like summer on the water!
