Small work

I've spent the last few days in the studio, and I've been pretty productive. I finished 2 pieces which were tops, finally, so that they can be juried for a group show next month.

Since June I've been making a small (8x10) piece a week. Well, that's the goal - I tend to get behind. I have some rules, or rather guidelines that I work from: one a week, 8x10, explore perspective, use scraps, aim for abstraction. So far, I'm pretty good at making them 8x10. I haven't kept up with them weekly, but I'm close to caught up for '06. Close. Anyway, this is the latest one. It's pieced.


I'm pleased with it. I did 3 this week, all of them trees. I'll post the others another day.

Today's Holiday Hint

I've discovered that you can freeze homemade pumpkin pie, but once it's thawed out, it's not worth eating.

For some reason (maybe there's a warp in the space time continuum) but things have been jumping out of my hands for the last week. Today, a spool of thread leapt across my sewing table and down the hall way. Friday, a bowl jumped into two mugs and knocked them onto the counter and then to the floor. A million pieces. And the list goes on. I'm glad I'm not carrying a baby around!

It's been a long day. I planned to work all day, but I found out that a big fabric store not too far away is having a liquidation sale. I bought more than 22 yards of fabric (he was very generous with ends of bolts) 10 spools of thread (6 metallic, more about which later) and 6 small rotary cutter blades for less than $100. Including tax. I can't dye fabric any more, and I'm not patient enough to paint it, so I use commercial fabrics a lot. This was a good opportunity for me to get some monochromatic pieces with texture, and the like. I loaded up the cart, and then went back through it to cull the bolts I really didn't need.
So here's what I bought.

That shiny piece on the end is silver tissue lame. I know, it's really hard to work with, but it will make cool purses.

The thread is Coats and Clark, and it works well. A lot better than Sulky metallics.

Then I tried to finish one little piece, just one! But the thread broke, I lost my place in the quilting (black on black, always a bad idea.) I don't know how many time I ripped stuff out, and I'm not that particular! But I persevered, and finally quit to go to yoga. Which I discovered I wasn't signed up for, after I drove through rush hour traffic. But enough people didn't show up so I got in, in the end.

Tomorrow is another day.

Here is a quote from Nancy Crow's new book: Nancy Crow, by Nancy Crow. It shows her work and has exerpts from her creative journal. Anyway, this one appeals to me because my husband thinks I over-react when he interupts me.



He gets really put out with me for being impatient, so Cathy sent me the quote. I showed it to my husband this morning, and he was not amused. But at least he knows now that it's not just me. I'm not sure what good that will do me, but . . .

New Drawing

My brother and I are encouraging each other to draw more. He sent me a drawing that he did of his workshop, and this is the drawing I'm going to send to him tomorrow. It's graphite, of a child's rocker that belonged to our Great Aunt Kitty. I see some things I need to correct, but over all I'm pleased with it. I think that the proportions are pretty close to correct, and I've made great progress in the use of perspective. Understanding perspective has been one of my goals for the year, and I have a long way to go, but not as far as I had to go 6 months ago!

Diane Rehm Show on Art Quilts

Diane Rehm had as her guest today a woman name Gayle Pritchard, who has written a book called "Uncommon Threads: Ohio's Art Quilt Revolution. I thought they'd actually talk about the art quilt movement.

Very little was said about art quilts. Penny McMorris was mentioned twice and Nancy Crow once. QSDS, zero. I don't remember any other art quilters mentioned. Oh, someone mentioned David Walker. I suppose the show sort of has to follow the lead of the callers, and they were all of the "my grandmother used to quilt" variety. I was so disappointed. I really thought there would be something substantive; that show is usually pretty good. They actually talked about t-shirt quilts and Holly Hobbie quilts, which are fine, but hardly fit the "art quilt" category. There was a little chat about Gees Bend, but even then, those quilts don't meet the author's (not my) definition of art: something made purposefully to express a concept. Pritchard also implied that only people with formal art degrees can be artists, and Diane said that she thinks all quilts are art. The discussion perpetuated the image of old women sitting around a frame. One caller even mentioned coffee cans for the women who dipped snuff. That image is about as far from most contemporary quilting, traditional or original, as it could get.

Makes me mad. If the guest had been a painter, you can bet the "my grandmother used to paint" calls would have been rejected.