Still laptopping from Ontario where, yes, it is hot too!  Everybody at Niagara Falls yesterday was basking in the spray instead of avoiding it!
I had some questions sent me re dyeing colours and colour temperatures and thought my response might be worthy of a brief note.

My basic MX dyes (Prochem names, but Dharma has the same dyes under different names) are Sun Yellow, Strong Orange, Fuchsia, Turquoise, Basic Blue (or sometimes Sapphire) and one of the Blacks.
Sun Yellow is a very cool yellow - i.e. on the colour wheel it is the yellow that is near the ...

Painters ask themselves why people buy their work and I thought it would be interesting  to think about this question  in relation to  art quilts. For the truth of “Many admire,  few buy”  seems to hold even more strongly for quilts than for paintings. Quilts are very accessible and when you have a show you get lots of oos and ahhs and how lovelys….people never walk around with a silent puzzled look on their faces!   So why isn’t the work rushing off the walls? What are the reasons to buy and own a piece, and what are the ...

Above is a view across the studio with the great big windows looking out onto the meadow and distant mountains.  A beautiful spot!  I think the ladies on the far left got so excited they lost their heads! (and arms!).

There were just 12 folk in the class (I posted six 2 days ago), and here are the pieces made by the other six.

 

Here is Michelle crouched over her sewing machine, she had never made a quilt before, never done free motion quilting….but she loves bugs!  She was absolutely determined to take home a completely finishing piece – and ...

I’m back home after spending two solid weeks focussing on nothing but teaching art quilts, in both real and virtual classes. No chores, no shopping, cooking, cleaning, watering, mowing, no tv, newspapers, internet surfing or blogging etc etc…so now I’ve a lot of catching up to do.  I had hoped to work a little on some new pieces for myself, but found I wanted to stay strictly in teaching mode.

The real setting was Penland School of Craft, situated in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.  This was the view from the studio early in ...

“Don’t let your art look contrived!” said my friend as we viewed my latest efforts.  I knew exactly what she mean as I love work that looks fresh and spontaneous – while all the while being the product of great thought, balance, compositional control and probably years of practice and the result of many attempts to achieve this effect.  It’s like the actor playing a part in a long running stage play – every performance must be true, valid, dynamic and effortless.  Most great performances (whatever the medium) have this quality – it doesn’t happen as a result of being ...

Dyes love the temperature above 70 degrees and here in Georgia they’re having a ball with mid to high 90s almost every day now.  So I’m alternating between agonizing over climate change and rejoicing in the reactivity of dye particles with fiber!
I posted before about RTS – reducing the stash…and since I’ve just returned from helping my daughter cull her shoe/boot collection by 50%…I’m in the “out, out out damned spot!” mode and even more determined to get rid of some of this stale, safe fabric that’s been languishing in my fabric ...

 
Are you in favour of a large stash? or do you dye or ( gulp) purchase (I just found out how much fabric COSTS now!) fabric for each new piece?

I was always a stash maker but now I’m beginning to wonder.     I can really only remember about 10% of the fabric I’ve got …and rarely do I have exactly what I have in mind as being the perfect colour for a particular shape.  Imagine a painter wanting to put a little dab of ultramarine in a picture and saying “well I’ve got pthalo, that’s close enough ...

Watching the dance show on TV last night (and stitching of course, forever stitching!), listening to the judges’ comments on the individual dancer’s performances, I was struck by how applicable those comments were to Art Quilts.

The most frequent criticism was that the dancer’s technique was flawless, but the performance lacked something.   And oh, haven’t we all seen quilts just like that? Beautifully pieced, neatly assembled, straight binding etc but just blah.  They don’t grab you.   Recently I’ve seen some exquisite pieces with tiny bits of painted fabric, lots of extra stitching, many details…but ...

As promised, here is the second half of images from the workshop I just taught at QSDS in Columbus, OH.  The emphasis was on working from an inspiration – and reaching the fulfillment of a quilt!  The variety shown is stunning, everybody had a different idea, a different way of working and the talent was brimming over!

Here are Margie’s gorgeous growing flowering creatures!  these are totally the product of her imagination – how doth her garden grow!  This is all hand appliqued beautifully and she plans a few more hand stitched tendrils (you can just see one in the lower ...

I had a great week teaching in Ohio.  There were 24 people in the class and each one had a different vision as to what they wanted to achieve and the results were excitingly varied, fresh and inspiring!  Over this week, I’ll post some of their pieces before I head on out again!

I’ve never had anyone work from a photograph of an interior before and this piece by Janet worked wonderfully well.  It’s so good to see someone tackle different imagery and in such an imaginative way.  She also had several more pieces designed from her ...

 

 

Tomorrow I’m flying upto Columbus OH to teach a 5 day workshop. It’s .5 hour to drive to the shuttle, 2 hours on the shuttle, 2 hours in the airport with luck, 1.5 hours on the plane and probably 1 hour to exit the plane and get the shuttle to the hotel totaling 7 hours – I suppose it could be worse! If I drove it would be a little over 10 hours, says Mr. Google map – but then I bet he hasn’t been stuck in the endless traffic jams of Knoxville…still that’s not that ...

I always enjoy reading Robert Genn’s newsletter Painters’ Keys because often he makes an observation that sets off my cogitations. Today, quoting Robert Frost whom as we all know took the path less travelled, Genn talks about the possibility of taking the wrong path with one’s art. If we can look back over our art quilt career and think of it as a journey, can we see any wrong turnings? I can certainly see places where I lingered too long and should have pushed myself onward and upward a lot more quickly than I did.

Almost 10 years ...

I find it’s always helpful to read about things one knows from a slightly different perspective. Dow published his book on Composition well over a century ago and thus talks about the basics of art in unfamiliar ways which make you think more. He defines the study of art as learning how to perceive and then create fine relationships between lines (and shapes), values and colours. The way to learn these is by practice practice practice and by “the influence of good examples”. Understanding what leads to “fine relationships” comes as a result of training in appreciation. Not only ...

I’ve often wondered why the representational art quilts seem to be those less favoured by the art quilt cognoscenti.     I’m beginning to think it’s because this type of quilt is often much less well and interestingly composed than an abstract quilt.  With some notable exceptions, many people making more representational work don’t consider the abstract basis for their composition.   In his 1899 book on Composition, Arthur Wesley Dow states that in designing art work based on a real “naturalistic” scene it’s important to consider the elements from an abstract point of view. Don’t think ...

It’s wonderful to come across some art criticism that doesn’t pull its punches.  Peter Plagens’ recent review of the Whitney Biennial ( the major New York show that tries to “take a look at the art world in general and see what’s happening now” ) in May’s Art in America describes the show as tepid and vanilla  and “stunningly unromantic”.  His review is anything but tepid and vanilla with tasty little barbs (maybe the change in university art programs is “finally bearing dried fruit”) and spicy acid drops ( art works that exercise “all due artistic license for incompleteness ...

I had a very interesting question from Suzanne in Florida wanting to know how I organized my stash – the above picture illustrates!!  Sort of scattered..with some similar elements grouped together!    I do like to keep the bigger bits separate, especially background colours, like the blue sea , or the sky…and then I have boxes with interesting little rock like scraps! 

Thinking about it more, I realized that I organize the fabric in four dimensions – which might account for the apparent confusion!  I organize
1.by type of fabric (silk, mercerized cotton,  cotton sateen and muslin),
2.by size of ...

As a teacher I have found evaluations to be exceeding helpful; I really appreciate the time people take to say what they’d like more of, or less of, what worked ,what didn’t work , what was the best thing, what was the least interesting etc.  It’s not always easy in a real classroom to know what is going on – everyone is generally SO nice!!  You don’t even hear the mutterings in the bathroom (unless you sit there very quietly with unidentifiable shoes!! ) and of course, online, there arn’t any bathrooms!!  Nor facial expressions, vocal nuances, body ...

It’s so energizing working with another person, ideas spring back and forth…and you’re  much more inclined to take risks.  Psychologists have studied  the risky shift  in more negative contexts, but in art shifting to taking more risks is a very positive activity. It’s something I’ve often found difficult to do, especially in composition, but when synergised all things can happen.  That’s why it’s so good when you find a friend who has the same interests and energy  so you can get together on both surface design and critiqueing – of one’s own work ...

There’s something wild and exciting about taking the rotary cutter to a long finished piece and with a few swipes cropping it down to size!!

Above is a poor unloved piece: “Twas a Dark and Stormy Night” (60”w, 21”h) .
I guess it was the name that put people off!!!  Although I have always loved games like Consequences, I know a lot of people just groan when they are asked to play.  
This piece was based on a photograph I took from the top floor windows of one of the major department stores on Princes’ St in Edinburgh ...

It can be difficult!  some people put it off for hours and days and weeks with displacement activity (I MUST tidy up before I get started, I can’t work with the blue fabric mixed in with the green, ugh! disgusting!), or blind optimism (if I go away maybe the studio elves will get this thing going), or magical thinking (if you pretend it isn’t there it will go away)  and its opposite (if i pretend it is there, it will appear!).

So, what d’you do to get going?  I find it helps me to have a solid ...

 

y/m collage 2
(collection of the Bascom Center
Highlands, NC)

I was posed an interesting question yesterday: as a person who dyes, paints, prints all the fabric she uses in her quilts, did I view the fabric I made as being art in its own right, or was it merely a medium with which I made other art?
Only a little introspection revealed to me that I usually make fabric just to have fabric..blueish stuff goes into the blue box, red into the red and so on.  Consequently, since I'm not limiting myself to any particular thought ...