Praise Hands - a Rerun on Off the Wall Friday

 Since I started working full-time back in 2012, Thursday nights have always been my blog night.  This mostly works out well, unless an emergency pops up like today.  So I thought I would steal an idea from my favorite blog, Ask A Manager, and rerun a post that was hidden in the archives.  Since back in 2009 hardly anybody was reading, I thought what the heck!  

Praise Hands for Sacred Threads 2009

"Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God, the Father, for everything." Eph 5:19,20


I have a habit of emailing quilters if their work really strikes me. This is how I got to know a new friend, Lisa Ellis last summer. I loved a lily quilt that she made and posted. Looking over her body of work I could see many similarities with mine. We both like to use Christian themes, women in motion, and organic lines. She suggested that I enter the Sacred Threads Quilt Show. I put it on my list of things to do since I had seen articles on how amazing the show was. That said, life happens and the deadline for the show snuck up on me. So a week before they were due, I started designing. I had 3 or 4 designs drawn out and chose the one that I thought was the strongest. I had gotten inspiration from an online photo - which I blew up and cropped (twice). Then I drew in my own elements adding value with pencil.

I picked a pallet of primary colors (adding a bit of the complementary for accent). I pieced the background using fabrics not only from my stash but also from my scrap bags. Ever since I color-sorted my scraps, they are far more useful. With the background safely done, I created a pattern for the praise ribbons that would rise from the hands. I imagine them to gradate in different values of yellow, orange, and red. Still, I was a little stumped on how to do that until I decided to paper piece them right onto the pattern. I machine rough-edged the praise elements onto the background - which created a nice hard element of line - then added a ton of machine quilting. I don't think I ever added so much free-motion thread work before in a piece.
I sewed every free moment I had that week. It took just over 40 hours to make the quilt but I was really happy with the final result since it was what I had seen in my mind's eye. Lisa is Sacred Threads Web Master and she cleverly had set up an online entry system which is wonderful. I got my entry in with only 4 hours to spare. I was thrilled! The only thing that topped that excitement was when I received the envelope 10 weeks later saying that it was accepted - my first national show.

Reading this I think - Wow! - where does the time go!!  Obviously, I hadn't created my writing style yet but you get the gist.  

So What Have You Been UP to Creatively?

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Musings on Mosaics on Off the Wall Friday

 

The moment when you realize you've let things get too complicated

So today I took the afternoon off to sew.  It isn't a great time to take off since all of a sudden, the country has decided it's actually summer and they want to buy, buy, buy their summer clothes.  It's been kinda crazy at work and with summer here, crazy on the social front.  All of that adds up to no time to sew.  So I did it. I took the afternoon off to finally finish up Tessa's Mosaic.

I've been three weeks trying to get what amounted to 5 hrs worth of work done on this piece.  In the past, I've hmmm'd and hawww'd over a piece, procrastinating till I feel in the mood to do it.  This was different though.  I knew what needed to get done.  I even had an idea of how to do it.  I still couldn't get myself to sit and get it done.  Why?

Timna Tarr had the answer. (Another reason to surround yourself with women smarter than yourself!)   I was very emotionally invested in this piece.  Not only was it based on my Princess (and the wonderful time we had doing her senior photo shoot) but also it was the first piece I've done since having a creative block (aka Menopause..gasp!)  Add in there the fact that it's my first mosaic and my first portrait  and it had me kinda frozen in fear of failure.  

After 30 years of quilting, you'd think that screwing up a piece wouldn't matter much.  It's not like it's the first time I've failed.  Nor the first time I've made a dog. Or the first time a piece was so bad I didn't have the heart to finish.  But...this piece means a lot!  

So that's why finally,  I took an afternoon off and worked in my 82-degree studio to get the top done.  I won't say it wasn't a struggle.  First I had to finalize a way to pattern out Tessa's face.  YES - I did track down her roommate who has a copy of photoshop to use the poster filter on it.

Then made the pattern  itself

Get the blocks sewn...who knew so much work could go into 9 little blocks?

Finally, get the top put all together... correct the twisted block my husband pointed out, and tweak up the edges I wanted to smooth.  I decided not to smooth too many but just enough so it wasn't distracting to the viewer.  A good press and it's ready for Off the Wall Friday.  

Now that it's done, it makes me think what was all the fuss about?!?  It's really that it comes back to the fact that no matter how well a technician you are as a quilter/artist, you still need to stay mentally strong.  Honestly, that isn't a bad distinction between craft and art.  Craft you can do technically well and succeed,  but for art, it has to be technically well, original, and a piece of you.  That piece is the part of yourself that wasn't too scared to show your vulnerability. It's the part of yourself that was afraid to fail. 

Next step is a nice mental break of cleaning up my studio which looks like oranges, greens and beiges threw a big party.  Then layer it and start stitching.  Hopefully, since I've been pondering the stitching line that will go smoother!

So that's my angst of the week...

What Have You Been Up to Creatively?

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The Quilting Line on Off the Wall Friday

I am traveling this week so it gives me a good chance to procrastinate on finishing Tessa's face.  I'm so close to getting that piece done that it has me thinking about the quilting.  I tend to do three kinds of quilting on an art piece...lines that are essential for the composition....lines that are essential for the texture...lines that hold together the three layers.  

Lines that are Essential for the Composition

After much trial and error, I usually will add these lines with just the top and batting layered (no backing).  This way I can really do as much stitching as I want and not have to worry about the nosey people who look at the back of my quilts.  (Okay, I 'fess up.  I'm a nosey netty who does that to pretty much every quilt that I can get my hands on!)  I create the lines through free-motion stitches usually with a small back and forth motion of my hands.  Not too much forward ... not too much back but moving progressively forward.  Don't even ask me how I started doing this.  It just gave me the little bit of texture and line I wanted on the quilt without too much uniformity.  Lots of times I'll use it to give a somewhat finished edge to rough edge applique.  I never use a statin stitch ... hmmmm I'm not even sure how my machine creates a statin stitch.

You can see it here ...all the elements are stitched on the outside with a scribble kind of effect

Lines that create Texture and Definition

For my work, these are the most common.  I'll look at a piece and think about what lines are needed to support the shape.  Normally, I do this with free-motion stitching but once in a while, I'll do it with a regular foot if the lines are gentle enough.  Also, I have to be careful with these types of lines.  Too many and the piece starts looking scribbled on and too flat.  Too few and the piece looks like a coloring book rendering.  Plus I need to leave off lines so I can add them in on the quilting stage.  Like I said ... tricky!!  Honestly, out of all the steps in an art quilt, I feel like this is the most important.  Let's face it!  The reason we use fabric, thread, and batting is the allure of texture.  If not we would all be painting..and ya'll know how I feel about painting.  

Here the lines transform the organic shapes into a lily and leaves

You can also catch a bit of that scribbling around the lily which I wanted to stand out more than the leaves.  Also, see how I don't stitch in the grey background of the wall.  I want that to recede.

Lines that Hold it Together

Finally, it's time to add the backing.  Most of the time, I'll layer it with safety pins.  For smaller pieces, I've used a light layer of adhesive spray (which surprisingly works better than I would have thought!).  I know that lots of quilters plan out their quilt lines.  I might do a loose line drawing but normally I follow the lines of the elements of the quilt.  This step  I pretty much always do with a regular foot on.  I do have a walking foot that "flips" into place easily on my Janome Horizon, but I never seem to need it.  One thing I never - ever - do is introduce a new element into a piece through the quilting.  So if the quilt is all curves, the quilting will reflect curves.  If the quilt is all angles and lines, the quilting will reflect that.  Now don't get me wrong, I've seen great curvey quilting done over a straight quilt top.  I just can't get myself to do it.  Not to mention, I'm not one for cutesy motifs in my quilting either.  (I don't think I've drawn a quilt line in my life!) For me, it's all about the composition which dictates the line. For once, I mostly quilt innately. 

 My favorite is the echo line which creates movement  and texture

There are simple lines that hold it together and give a nod to the composition.  It's a "less is more" approach.  

Ironically, by the time I get to this stage of a quilt, I feel like I know the piece so intimately that the quilt line comes naturally.  I seem to sweat blood and tears over the other stages of creation, but the quilting comes much easier.  I'm already itching to stitching Tessa's Mosiac ... if I could only finish her face!

So What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?

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Stitched Mosaics on Off the Wall Friday

You'd think after 30 years of quilting, I'd have learned every clever way to sew together fabric, right?!  Apparently not.  This week, I'm here at Marc Adams School of Woodworking taking a Stitched Mosaics class from Timna Tarr. Wow!  Am I having fun!  I'm not sure what is more amusing...learning a new process of translating a favorite photo into an art quilt or being surrounded by a bunch of people who have no idea what quilting is beyond that its something that goes on a bed.  Let's just say that the ladies in my class have been taking some time to re-educate the woodworkers in the other classes this week.

The process seems deceptively easy.  Blow up your favorite photo, grid it out into  2" squares, chose fabrics to match the photo, and sew them all together.  No problem right?!  Welllllll, there is a bit more to it than that.  Timna has taught us all the skill of prepared turn under machine applique using Best Press starch which is useful in all sorts of applications.  Here though, we used it to do the blocks that had more than one color in them.  Plus the whole process is a great exercise in value and color!  It's enough to make your head spin!!  It all adds up to a week of a lot of thinking, sewing, and Advil.

So here is the play by play...

Day 1:  This is what I'm trying to make

This is where I was the first day....

Not too hard...the background was very reminiscent of putting together the watercolor quilts of the early 2000's

Day 2:  I spent the day getting a lot of the background sewn together ....started working on Tessa's hair, worked  out the issues with her lace dress using the backside of light flower fabrics and started getting her hair together. (sorry it's blurry - the florescent lights threw off my camera)

Day 3: Finally tried the machine applique process...only had to do the block over 3 times to get it right!  I did work out a system where I would prepare several blocks that needed to be applique and then sew them all at once which worked out nicely.  The right side came together nicely and I found just the right fabric for the Queen Anne Lace Flowers...an RJR snowflake fabric!

Day 4:  I spent most of the day  at the sewing machine.   I did finish placing all the fabric on the background and her arms.  The face is left  for last.   I'm finding mistakes here and there, but I am beginning to understand how to manipulate the fabric.  One thing I am reminded of is that my Janome Horizon does NOT like monofilament  thread.  I probably will switch to a nice 80 wt when I get home and give that a try.  

Next week I'll give an over all review of the class and school. Plus want to gush more about Timna and my classmates!   Right now I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open!

So What Have You Been Up to Creatively?

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Back to Upstate - Off The Wall Friday

Well, I'm writing this from my cabin in upstate New York...again.   Helping family is always a worthwhile pursuit even if it is in the middle of no where.  At least they have WiFi ... grin!!  I've been pretty busy here, but  I did take time to lay out all my pinwheel blocks and reevaluate where I'm going with this quilt.

After looking at it, I really do need to do some more Medium values.  I still have a big pile of lights that is not laid out and a big pile of darks that aren't laid out - but no mediums.  I do like where this is going.  I think when I do the final layout I'm going to let it happen organically.  Just let my eye work the gradations between values.

Laid out on my parents rug

Ohhhh speaking of that, I also need to make up some transitional blocks.  So that will mean half and half blocks.

I'm really glad I found this project again after such a long time lost.  Its the perfect thing to fit in while helping my parents.

So What Have Been Up to Creatively?

The Square - Off the Wall Friday

And the 10" by 10" square  saga continues.  But  after a couple of false starts, I finally came up with a good idea.  This morning.  At 7 am.  Right, just a couple hours before work.  #somylife

How did I  come up the idea?  Well, the thing about this design is that the square is going to be auctioned off at the Schweinfurth Art Center's 10 x 10 = Art.  So I thought not only does it have to have a decent design BUT it has to capture the interest of the bidder.  That got me thinking.  What would I like to buy at an event like this??? What would make me stop and say, "Oh, I like that".  The light bulb went off and my latest obsession on Pinterest popped in my head, Vintage Sewing Machines and Notions.

With just an hour or so before work, I took my normal route from idea to quilt and picked a picture.   Then it was time to play with different crops.  After a bunch of trials I settled on a nice simple one bringing the word Singer as the focal point.

One of the Trial Crops

With the final crop chosen, then I started thinking about the mood I wanted to create with it and played with some of the special effects in my photo editor.  I also changed the settings of the photo so that it could be easily traced.  I wanted to go on but  - alas - work was calling (literally since I work on the phone all day - grin)

After work, my husband Paul helped me out by using a drafting program that makes my picture exactly 10" by 10" and printed it out on a couple of 8" by 11" sheets of paper that could be tapped together.  Now its ready for me to trace the pattern and start finally getting this square done!   I decided that I probably will fuse it to give it a nice neat finish lines.

Finally  - a good idea - that I can't wait to finish!!

So what have you been up to creatively?

 

Still A Mess - Off the Wall Friday

Lately, my favorite saying is taken from my teen, Tessa, "I'm a mess!"  But actually this week, it seems like things are getting back on track in my life.  Well, almost all things.  Not my flower piece, now . . . it's a mess.  I've redone it at least three times....THREE times!  The flowers more than that!    I worked on it
today and nothing was going right.  That's when it dawned on me.  I was doing art and working with fabric for fun.

And this was not fun.

Still the news is not all bad.  I did come up with a way to do the flowers. As you remember, I've been playing with the ideas of either making blotches of color that give the impression of flowers or to fussy cut flowers in a broderie perse  style.  I decided to take, the advice of Audree Faubert, "I think a little of both would be great."  So what I did was cut them out quickly and started grouping them together in batches.   I made to sure to vary scale and value just like flowers do in real life  and they looked great. . .all pinned to my design wall.  Sewing them down and keeping them in that arrangement didn't look like it was going to be easy.

Then the a light bulb went off in my head and I grabbed my Steam-a-Seam 2 Lite.  I used the sheets to arrange the flowers on just the way I wanted them (its sticky on one side), then fused them down lightly together.  This created a mass applique which could be stuck ( the other side is sticky too!) to my piece.  Ta-da - problem solved!!

The fact still remains that the piece was a mess!  As my husband states in a photo, it doesn't look all that bad but in person it reads flat.  VERY flat. Now normally, I would just trash the piece, but its due for next week and its - well - A MESS.  sighhhhhhhh

That's when the light bulb went off for the second time.  There are parts that are working and parts that aren't.  So I'm going to trash the parts that aren't and rework the parts that are.  All by next week.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

Or I can just admit to the world that artists make messes too.

So What have been up to creatively?

Busy, Busy, Busy - Off the Wall Friday

That's my redheaded daughter behind the wig & mask

Well its been a busy week here at the Sayre house. First its play week were Tessa played Topsy in the King and I.  The kids at her prep school are so talented. They literally take your breathe away.  Also, I made the move to work from home. So that means I need to set up a home office.  And to top it all off, the last weeks of school are called banquet season.  Momma's work is never done!!


With that all going, I did manage to fit in some more time on my Monet's Door piece.  The week was mostly working out different problem areas.  First of all there were some major value problems.  Normally I do value sketches to avoid these kind of problems, but I thought I could just wing this time.  Ahhhhh, No!  Anyways, I'm

added some light to highlight what I want to be the focal point, the door.  Also, the steps value is off and not giving me the depth I need.  sighhhh

Plus I added an accent color to the palette  - red/orange.  I think that will add some zing!!

And of course flowers, and more flowers!


One more week before pictures are due for the blog hop, but with working home - no more commute means more studio time!  Not to mention, I'm always more productive when the deadline looms!




So what have you been up to creatively?

WIP Angst - Monet's Door - Off the Wall Friday

Earlier this week

So here's the thing. . . . I like a plan.. . . I need a plan. . . . I create with a plan.  Now I know that a lot of artists are into the whole intuitive thing, letting their creations have a serendipitous spark  to them.  But that's not me.

Still I try not to be anal.  So in my last few figurative works, I've been working from a loose sketch which usually helps me get the proportions right  and then I work from there.  And that's where I'm at with my latest piece.... Monet's Door.

This week I worked through all the base of the quilt, leaving  all the many, many flowers I have planned for later.  I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do about the flowers.  Do I fussy cut them from my fabric stash. . . . or. . . . do I just abstract them out using patches of color to give the impression of flowers.  When I looked back at the impressionists painters they did it both ways .

Detail of Monet's Chrysanthemums  with blots of color

Detail of Monet's Spring Flowers - Much more detail oriented

When I was whining to my daughter, Tessa that I didn't think I had enough flower fabric in my stash, she said, "Momma, I've been in your fabric room -  you have a ton of flowers up there!"  So I took another trek up to the third floor and yeah  - she's right - I had a ton! (I really do forget how much cool commercial fabric I have since I haven't been using it lately!)

Anyways - its getting to be sink or swim time since this piece is due in less than two weeks to the blog hop coordinator!

So what have been up to creatively?
 

Retreat!!! Off the Wall Friday

Don't you love it when you have a good idea?  Yeah. . . me too!!!   

My latest idea came to me while I was brainstorming on how to shove myself out of a creative slump.  Well, creative slump is really a misnomer.  It was actually a productivity slump.  sighhhh, yes, its true . . . I got lazy and I had the hardest time jump starting myself  back to my productive self!  

My idea?  I rented my friend's studio for a long weekend and gave myself a mini sewing retreat!  I schlepped all my stuff over there and sewed 10 hours a day.  Now I know what you're thinking . . . doesn't she have her own studio?

 Well yes, but it does come complete with all the familiar distractions.  At Sandy's studio, it only had distractions designed for her; for me, there was only pure sewing.

And boy did I sew.  I wanted to get the next idea in series started.  Now the series is on curves, but after I designed this one, I think I'm going to have to rename the series since this one is very linear.  But still you can see its part of the series.  I started the retreat with designing it - thinking that I would make big pieces and gradate the colors.  What I ended up doing was playing with color and value again since - well - I love playing with color and value.

You wouldn't know it from me getting only a quarter done - but there is a ton of piecing in this.  I really like where its going.

So What have been up to creatively?

Improvisational Piecing - Off the Wall Friday

More than once during my week at QSDS, I was asked about my piecing method.  I never really "learned" it from any place.  Its just something I started doing to create a certain effect.  Since its not hard and  the kind of thing you can personalize with your own style, I thought I would write up a tutorial.

1. Choose Your Palette - Decide what colors you need in the space you want to improv piece.  I do this two ways - I either pull out my color wheel (and all the color theory behind it) or I use a picture that I like to help me pick the colors.  Either way make sure have a full range of values and saturation of the colors.  Lots of times (like with the curves) I do a monochromatic palette adding in just a neutral color (black, grey, brown, white).  Adding the different saturations of color and neutral is important since it will give the piece interest.

2.  Lay Out Your Values and Saturations - I usually make little piles going from Light to Dark and the muddy saturations I keep on the side.  (Red Solo Cup Dye fabrics are perfect for the "muddy" fabrics).  Cut hunks off each pile.  How big the hunks are depend on how big the area you are making.

3.  Cut the hunks into manageable pieces - usually 3 or 4 sided shapes 4 - 8" big (or whatever - you know how I am - grin).  You want to pay attention to the values here.  If you want an all over chaotic look you can mix all the values.  If you want your piece to have a dark look - choose mostly darks with a few mediums and a very little light for spark.  With a light area I just tend to stick to the lights with a bit of medium.  I always make sure to add in some neutrals and a bit of an accent color.

4.  Pair them together.  Sew with 1/4" seam (or whatever).  Iron.  Trim off any uneven edges  - making straight edges easily pieced again.  Sometimes at this point I will cut a piece in half or on the diagonal  or where ever to be paired with another piece of fabric.

5.  Repeat step 4 until you have a bunch of interesting blocks of varied shapes.  Mine tend to end up rectangles.

6.  Decide how big a shape you need to improv piece.  (If you haven't already) I usually have a tracing paper pattern that I can lay my rectangles out on - piece all the rectangles.  Cut out the shape.  If you're doing it for a background like in Praise ladies - I only pieced the background you could see - then used muslin behind The Ladies.  It took a little thought process but it was a lot faster than piecing a whole background that you wouldn't see behind them.

7.  Press With Spray Starch or some other stiffner.  This is important.  Once you've pieced and repieced and repieced the fabric, all those bias edges get very stretchy.  The spray starch will add some stability and make your life a LOT easier.

A Word About Spray Starch: I've been using a heavy spray starch which has worked great.  But until Mary Jo Bowers clued me in, I had no idea that it leaves a residue.  So now I use my ironing sheet - also I spray and iron on the backside because sometimes the pieces can get shiny ( I do starch with a very heavy hand since I rough edge applique my pieces.)

8.  Cut the pieced improv pieces to the size area you need - using a pattern or dimensions.  Give a final press and final trim.

9.  Important - Save all trimmings except for the itsy-bitsy tiny ones.  Through out the whole process this is true.  All the scraps can be pieced back into blocks which add surprising little gems of interest.  This will create an look of complex piecing without much effort.  At the end,  I save all interesting bits in a baggie by color.

See Easy-Peasy, right?  Things to remember - don't try to be too matchy-matchy.  Mix in the saturations that you normally wouldn't think go together - like the warm greens with the cool greens etc.  Remember the mood you are trying to create.  Do you want a happy mood - use a lot of pure bright colors - sad mood - use a lot of muddy colors.  You can choose a palette of neutrals with a bit of color for a calm mood.  Also - think about scale - you can do this using big hunks of shapes or you can get as complex as your patience will allow.

Please feel free to email me with any questions!  Remember if you have your comments set to "No-Reply Comments"  I can't email back.

So What have you been up to creatively?

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