Due to a death in my immediate family, Off the Wall Friday will be postponed till after Christmas. I'm just going to take some family time. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Blessings to everyone!
Nina
Friday, November 17, 2023
Friday, November 3, 2023
Friday, October 27, 2023
Easy-Peasy Value Studies - Off the Wall Friday
So my last week of traveling got cancelled since I finally caught the dreaded Covid. It took me 3.5 years so that is another thing I can mark off my bucket list! Luckily, with the last variant, it amounted to little more than a cold. It did disrupt my sleeping and eating though which seems to me so strange.So between those two things, I'm a bit of a mess. It's also kept me out of the studio for two weeks which is a bummer. Because of that...I am re-running a post I did on value. The reason I chose value is that I think it's the most important element in designing your own work. No matter if you're a quilter who does your own original work or one that chooses fabric for someone else's pattern, value is an important skill.
So here is the post I wrote 8 years ago.
Okay, I admit it, I've been lazy and it's getting harder and harder to get into my studio. I could blame a lot of things - domestic tasks. working full time, getting Tessa back into the routine of her senior year. But honestly, I think it's me.
Sometimes after a big project, it's hard to get back into the swing of things. So I thought I would take it easy this time.
That said, with the mood I'm in, I didn't want to over-exert myself looking for something new. I know I want to play around with simple shapes and keep working on my abstract. . . but after that it is kinda of up in the air. Luckily, I keep a pinterest board of inspiration. Even when I'm lazy, I still manage to keep adding to my boards.
This time it led me to some modern architectural pictures which I found very cool. Using them as the foundation of inspiration, I wanted to abstract them out without a lot of fuss. Now I could go through tracing them and then doing value drawings by hand. Why expend all that energy?
Instead, I used an online site - LunaPic - to help me manipulate the images. I could use my photoshop but I always find it a little bulky. This online source was easy and very intuitive to use. For my purposes today I just grayed out the picture (took the saturation of color down to 0) and pixelated them. Instant abstract value study!!! Easy-Peasy!!!
This was so fun I think I'll work on them a bit longer finding just the right one. I have an idea of what I want to do with that but I'll save them for another post!!
So What Have Been Up to Creatively?
Friday, October 20, 2023
Friday, October 13, 2023
Off the Wall Friday
I'm sorry, I'm traveling the next couple of weeks so I'll just
be hosting!! Be assured though I still will be reading!
So What Have You Been Up to Creatively?
Friday, October 6, 2023
Stalled on Off the Wall Friday
The change of seasons is tough in this part of the Great Lakes. Days get shorter with less sunlight. You never know if it's going to be 55 or 80 degrees out. It's sad thinking that 4 months of snow and glum are just on the horizon. I've learned to combat it some by getting out my Light Therapy lamp and using that while I work. It does help, but let's face it, this Sicilian girl does better in the summer.
Which brings me to the realization that I have stalled. My Quilt Show Block of the Month sits untouched. I can't seem to get myself to settle into hand applique.... My creative juices feel all dried up .... My studio is a wreck. sighhhhh I'm a mess.
At least it's not forever. I have a plan ...
1. Clean my studio
2. Organize/Put Away the BOM for later
3. Take out the Sunflower Girl
4. Start rotating my three main projects
(SunFlower Girl, BOM, Quilting Rain, Rain)
5. Make plans for the Impressionist exhibit at CMA
Honestly, if I don't write it all down this ennui will just go on forever.
What do you do when you get stalled on a big project?
Friday, September 29, 2023
Thinking about Classes on Off the Wall Friday
So it's getting to be that time again...the time when I start thinking of next year's quilt class/workshop/vacation. Every year I start the hunt for where do I want to go and what do I want to learn. In the beginning, it was so much easier....I never had been anywhere and I didn't know anything, so it was all new. I remember picking Paula Nadelstern for my first class, not because I actually thought I would learn to make quilts like she did (which I did not) but because I just wanted to see what kind of woman could make such amazing quilts. What did I learn? A persistent, smart one! A hard-working one! A woman who didn't mind spending hours designing her blocks just right. That was my first clue that although most great art quilters did have talent, even more, they had persistence and tenacity.
Now 25 years later, it's getting harder to find classes/workshops I want to go to. One reason is it's become that much harder to keep these types of events going. Between the economy and the plague, it has been hard on quilt conferences and retreats. Plus as the younger generation is coming up, they are much happier to take virtual classes (especially if they still have kids at home) It's a sad fact that the ladies that I've been taking classes with are aging out of traveling. Then there is the fact, that I'm getting to the point in my art where I just want to go and create. I'm not at a place to learn techniques but I would like to play more with design.
Quilting by the Lake, in central New York doesn't have it's schedule out yet. Quilt Surface and Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio is down to a 2-week schedule. Arrowmonth and John C Campbell's are always limited in quilting selections. Maybe I'll have to do a deeper dive into the creative places I wrote about here and here, It seems just too much to travel to the west coast.
hmmmm...shrug.... I dunno. Maybe it's time for me to just try joining a retreat where quilters go and just work on their own stuff for 5 days. Or maybe its the change of seasons and I'm a little down.
Anybody got any suggestions on where I can get away next year and sew?
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