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stuck

Summer has been about being outside, being with family, enjoying Lake Michigan, sailing, camping, and more. Fall has been about new rhythms in my volunteer work. Art quilts – on the back burner!

Partly, this is because I have been enjoying other things. Partly, I’m stuck. I started a series of 15″ quilts using this gorgeous color scheme that I love, but I simply got stuck. Nothing seemed to work right. Here’s where my 15’s are now.

The rhythm of these quilts feels like scratchy static. Love the fabrics. Love the ideas in my head about infrastructure, support, movement, life. Not showing up in my designs.

The fall colors have been beautiful in Michigan and I keep seeing beautiful juxtapositions in my head. With a little more time for sewing, I’ll get back into the swing of it. But, for now, I’m working at getting rid of the static and finding the images.

In the mean time, I planted these fall into winter planters which are working much better than my fiber art.

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fifteens

After finishing the Lenten twelves series of 12″ quilts, I decided I wanted to switch up the palette and work a little bigger, so I’m trying 15″ squares. Going bold, here is the fabric stack!

15s fabric stack
I’ve been printing fabric and these fabrics include the new set of colors I’ve been focussing on, golds, turquoise, steel blues, burgundy, burnt sienna, with pops of purple for fun.
Spring 2015 fabric printing
Moving to the design wall, I began to try out combinations but the process slowed down considerably!

 Here is the first I decided to start quilting, auditioning thread for the free-motion quilting I’m hoping to do. Then the weather got nice, and I have not been doing much sewing (but my beans are 6′ tall and flowering!).

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Lenten twelves under construction

The Lenten twelve quilts for the last couple of weeks are in progress. I’ve been amazing myself at how the first four weeks of designs came together, but #5 has been a challenge.  I’ve been reflecting on how growing into a healthy sense of self and purpose takes constant work, and maybe this quilt reflects this back at me. A little messy. A little busy. Slowly emerging towards what it can be.

 

Lenten twelves #6 is also on the design board. The thread colors are going to be fun and I can’t wait to put the quilt sandwich together and get going on it!

Lenten Twelves: My daughter Kelsey and I challenged each other to create 12″ quilts each week in Lent to feast into creativity (and fast from those voices of doubt). My first four quilts are posted as lenten twelves 1, lenten twelves 2, and lenten twelves 3, and lenten twelves 4.You can see Kelsey’s lenten twelves 1, lenten twelves 2, lenten twelves 3, lenten twelves 4, and lenten twelves 5 on her blog at Lovely & Enough or on Instagram with #lententwelves.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. 
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avoidance or dance?

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.

Then, mid-morning after ruthless editing of more scientific writing I put the finishing touches on these cards that make use of quilted squares from my unfinished projects box. Somehow the simple squares (the complex bits were all done already) were just what I needed after editing out 100 words from a 330 word abstract!