fiber artist
When I went to look back at my early “quilts of the week” I was amazed at the variety of quilts. What fun! I’ve decided to resurrect the habit this year. This year I’m doing 8×8″ quilts. My focus is trying out techniques to use on larger quilts.
Today was bright and sunny (and 10 degrees F), so I took headed out to photograph the first four.
Testing free motion quilting ideas and overprinting here!
Our family is a sewing family. My grandma was a seamstress and excelled at upholstery. My mom sewed our clothes growing up. Me, well I avoided sewing class. I couldn’t be bothered with finicky sewing. When my daughter Kelsey wanted to learn how to sew, we found a class at the The Quilting Season and Kelsey enjoyed making this quilt. Her grandma became her expert sewing consultant.
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| Kelsey’s first quilt |
Then I took a class in art quilting from Sue Holdaway-Heys and found a sewing niche that I could enjoy. Trekking to various fabric stores with me, my daughters enjoyed picking up their own fat quarters while mom was shopping for fabric. Fast forward ten years and they have impressive fabric stashes, but maybe not quite to their taste as young women. This summer both daughters were home and we started a quilt from their stashes. With the healthy infusion of more low volume fabrics, we sat down over Thanksgiving and I asked everyone to design one 12.5×12.5 block for me. A couple of hours later and some excellent conversation later we had this taped to our dining room wall. Wow!
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| Thanksgiving weekend designing |
More strips, more blocks, and voila!
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| the daughters with the finished quilt top |
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| all wrapped up |
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| ready to sandwich |
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?
Kelsey’s college house this year is lovely. 100+ years old, great bones, large living spaces. And very WHITE! She and her housemates have decorated their rooms, creating comfortable spaces, but they didn’t have many items left over for the common space. I decided I could do a simple quilt, almost a single block, in solids, to add color to the walls. Quick trip to Pink Castle, helpful color advice, and here is the final product!
Imagine this in a craftsman-style house, massive white fireplace, contemporary grey and white accents, traditional furniture touches, with aubergine couches and citron accents. I’m hoping it adds the warmth Kelsey is hoping for.
Being able to be creative with people you love is such a blessing. My mom and I started on this table runner together and then she took it back home to finish laying it out and quilting.
What wonderful reminders of special family times on the beach! We combined fabrics from my stash with fabric I hand-dyed and printed for a fabric swap back in March (final swap fabrics, lighter prints, rubbings, solids and early prints). Before winter comes to Michigan, I wanted to blog this reminder of warmer days, and windswept beaches.
