Street Cred

Dear Melody,
I am loving your new "street" series. But I am wondering...are you thinking of these as color studies for something bigger? Or you're making them just because they're fun?

Where do you see these going, or do you think about that?

I notice that in these small pieces, you've incorporated the "stacks" construction you've emphasized before, plus the strip sets...sort of a synthesis of things you've been exploring for a while. But (maybe because i have a hard time staying small) I'm wondering whether you're planning to go bigger with this idea?

I really love what you're doing with these.

Diane

Dear Diane,

So glad you asked. In November and December of last year when I took a quilting hiatus, I was really ready to throw in the towel with quilting. But I didn't feel I could announce that because I have tons of teaching scheduled and it wouldn't do to have a teacher who hated everything she was making and never wanted to make another quilt as long as she lived. I am very dramatic.

I quit quilting in my mind, and went on to paint and have a lot of fun and got a modicum of success under my belt and it melted my angst and when the end came and I had to go back to work at quilting, I had discovered something that changed my mind.

I found my voice, my niche, my style, my unique Mel-ness. In painting, I learned how to work in a series that really worked for me. And I found I could translate that into my quilts and proceeded to do that very thing.

And it only took 25 years!

Staying in this size has provided me with a short time frame, preventing fussing, and a finiteness of scale that encourages better design. At this size even the most precious fabrics can be used with abandon. ( And I intend to use some precious fabrics any minute now).
I am keeping to a few signature elements, but limiting them in each piece. These are strips, dots and chunks of glowing colors, meaning fabrics where the dye shifts color and seems to light up.

The hand work is important as the line element. In my painting I discovered that I needed to include lines that referenced the drawing which preceeded the paint. In the quilts I also need to include that line or it doesn't look finished. The hand stitching provides the personal touch.

Color can be a double edged sword. Some of my designs had lost power because of a disorganized use of color. Now finally I feel that I am in command. I have discovered harmony! There is enough 'all color, all the time' in my work and to limit myself to a single hue and all its variations has opened up a huge new world for me. Now I am scrounging my stash for pale variants and deep dark versions too.

I have chosen to keep to this size as a constant, and that has helped me learn what it is that I am doing. I am sticking them up on my wall and having a fantasy gallery show. I may make some in an 18" format when I am finished with this series. Who knows? I have not needed to make them larger because I am not entering them in regular quilt shows, which is part of the angst that made me want to give up quilting last year.
I have lost interest in quilting for competition's sake.
I only want to make stuff that amuses me and makes me happy. I wanna enjoy the process and feel that what I make is an end in itself.

On the other hand, I feel that working small can lead to discovering ways to make bigger quilts better. Any of the pieces that I made in this format could be enlarged to 48" squarish with little effort. But that doesn't mean that they need to be, either. The intimacy of scale has a different value, and since I travel with my work, it sure helps that is doesn't weigh as much as a four foot quilt would!

Since I "quit quilting" and just started having fun again, I am reminded of what got me into quilting in the first place, and I am hoping to bring a little more fun into my classes and less stress on what the contests demand.

Thank you for asking and for giving me an opportunity to explain my motivations.

Limon Lane

Limon Lane
Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted, ~12" squarish

Late, but with a good excuse

I had to knit. I knit all day. I made a sock. I had to knit.

I was gifted with two huge boxes of yarn, knitting books and superfantastic wonderful needles, and it was in the midst of all this bounty that I was having a passion for quilting.

So I stepped out of my studio, grabbed a skein of Sophie's Toes sock yarn from the new goodies and dove in. I watch daytime tv with Dave and had a wonderful time.
Then I got up this morning with nothing new to blog, so at 6 am I started this:

Limon Lane

Hand dyed cottons, fused onto batting, no quilting and no backing yet. I am spending the day out, and will have to finish this later.

Tangerine Trail

Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted. ~12" squarish

I just had to add a teeny bit of purple for contrast. It's OK. I am the boss of my art.

Strawberry Street

Strawberry Street
Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted. ~12" squarish

This fairly reeks of Valentine's Day, eh? Minus the hearts.

The Street Series, so far!

Blueberry Hill

Blueberry Hill
Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted. ~12" square

While I dye a lot of blue fabric, hardly any of it makes it way into my work. I usually use turquoise instead, and there is a bunch of it here too. But I had this shaded dark blue that makes this piece, imho.
Thanks for all the encouraging comments. I hope many of you are considering working in a small format. It is so fun! 

Plum Plaza

Plum Plaza
Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted, ~12" squarish

I have had a few questions about the hand work. I am using #8 pearl cotton and whatever embroidery needle will fit the thread. My big trick is to hand stitch on the top and batting before the backing fabric is attached. That way no knots are visible on the final product, and I only have to go through two layers. After the backing is added, then I will machine quilt through all three layers.

It turns out that most of the previous pieces in this series are less than 12" so I will have to amend those measurements.
For the first time in ages I feel really happy with this work. I feel like I have completely stopped jumping through hoops and am just enjoying myself in the studio.

Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Papaya Parkway

Papaya Parkway
Hand dyed cotton, fused, hand and machine quilted, 12" squarish

It's all become to clear to me, again. The limited color palette is my Big New Thing. Suddenly there is clarity and a sense of it all coming together. Plus I am using value in a different way. Low contrast. Heavens! Can this be true?

Note the light area with the very light striping. Right here.
O so subtle. Well, needless to say it took me long enough to get this concept. But learning it has been fun. Since I am working small it is easier to discover this sort of thing, without the massive amounts of time a larger piece would take.

Banana Boulevard

Banana Boulevard
Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted. 12" squarish

For my next trick, a yellow themed quilt. OK so there is a lot of green in there. But major yellow parts really. And the bananas I bought yesterday were just these colors.

Cherry Street

Cherry Street
Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted
12" squareish

I was inspired by the coloration of the strip on the left. The dye made this curvy form and I had to be begin with that section and find fabrics that coordinated with it.


The dye in the strip moved from fuchsia to red to orange to yellow, and I found those colors in large supply in my stash. I wanted to make another Grape Street layout and since I have only photos of it now, I had to print out a copy as a reference. It is much easier to start from scratch than to try to copy a picture.

I've got a month

This is a good block of time to get something constructive done. I am planning on using my time wisely, since it is limited. When the kitchen is a mess, instead of fretting and whining, I tell myself to just give it a ten minute cleanup, and it is amazing what can be accomplished with a short burst of attention. I think this will work for me in the studio too. Not cleaning up, but making new work.
I recorded the process of making Grape Street and need to do more like this, keeping to a limited color scheme and size.
I really liked this quilt the best of the four that I brought with me to California, and was happy that it met with the approval of its eventually collector. Now that it is gone, I am even more intent on making similar pieces. Working in a series like this is my goal.

I will mix hand and machine stitching and try and finish a piece each day. Hey, if my sister Brooke can announce a goal like hers, then surely I must too. She is making larger pieces, one a week, which are just wonderful.
I am imagining a gallery wall hung with just my foot square pieces, one right after the other, in the order they were made. Later if that works, I will do a gallery wall of 18" square pieces.

Grape Street
As long as I am fantasizing, wouldn't it be nice to have a sister's quilt show with both of our works in it? I don't mean to pressure Brooke, but her work is definitely making me want to rise to the occasion.

 

The difference between art quilts and everything else

As a card carrying art quilter I feel that art quilts are a step away from the traditional bed quilt, in that they are meant to hang on the wall. This is an opinion. It is an opinion shared by all my girlfriends, thus proving its inherent truthfulness.

If an art piece hangs on the wall, it means that we aren’t interested in it being sturdy or washable. We don’t care if stuff is glued on. We don’t care if some of the materials involved in its construction don’t actually fall into the category of fabric. We don’t care about much except that it is ART.

So what is ART?

Art is something made by an artist, who knows what art is when she makes it, so don’t argue. If I say it’s art, then it is art. I am an artist and I have a stinkin’ diploma around here somewhere to prove it.

However there is a difference between good art and bad art. It is possible to make bad art even if you are a good artist. Sometimes you mean to make it bad, just for the fun of it. When you have bad-art-making-intentions, the finished product is then called tongue-in-cheek or satirical, thus making even the bad art, good art!
Some people with good taste love the bad art, knowing it was made with a wink and a nudge. Some people with bad taste love the bad art because they don’t know any better and have no understanding of the perversity of the artist and her superior attitude to the people with the bad taste.

Sometimes the artist makes an artwork that is ugly. This means that the artist is not afraid of criticism. This means that the artist knows how to express herself more about life or pain or struggle than the average non-artist person. (note to self: Manolo the Shoeblogger is creeping into your writing voice).
This also means that the artist does not care that she is losing the audience’s interest and soon the only ones looking at her art are failed art history majors now employed by dull and boring art journals.

Thus the artist will die happy knowing that her art will be force fed to graduate art students and be the subject of some tiresome cocktail discussions between people who are trying to impress others as erudite, educated snobs; a very sad seduction effort.

But really, who gives a damn about ugly art? Only those who want to look like they know something that you don’t. And we all know that those people know nothing, but are easily tricked by the artist who is cunning enough to make ugly art. She is a smarty.

In the end, all the art is ending up being good. Even sweet sugary little quilts with hearts on them. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

All of these pictures were shot lying flat, so I apologize for the distortions.

Email from Dave

While I am here in California I asked Dave to send me pictures of what he is up to at home ALONE. These are his posts. And his creative spelling...

Hi Mel, This is the fruit salad I made with sliced oranges, pears, and bananas sprinkled with lime juice and then powdered with cinnamon andsugar.Didn't get to show the cinnamon and sugar because I put it on at thelast minute. But it made the fruit burst with flavor. Minny individualsalads of fresh greens, sliced carrots, white chedder, parmesian, and pastrami. Coated in raspberry hazelnut vinaigrette dressing gave it acrisp, clean and refreshing zing.
The wine started the festivities and the ice cream summoned it'sclosing. I think we killed the box and I know for sure we killed thewine. When we finished we found ourselves stretched out in therecliners nodding off while drooling over Giada ( De Laurentiis from the Food Network) making beef shortribs. Grrrrrrrr short ribs!Good thing I will be able to offset this intake of pure decadence bypedaling my sins away. Does that apply to the sins of lust?


I forgot to mention, there was also a loaf of french bread that I heated up in the oven and served with a quarter pound of butter that was heated up along side of the bread. I forgot about the butter being in the oven so when I retrieved it there was not a stick of butter shape but instead there was this beautiful puddle of dairyness. Well good thing we were well trained and hungry and had the good sense to just sop up that velvety stuff using what we had at our disposal. The hot, soft, french staff of life, crunchy bread can hold more than three times it's weight in liquid dairy gold. And our stomach's can hold more than five times their weight and size when force fed those ingredients. Amazing eh? Burp.

Do you think this will be enough for the Bear's game on Sunday? Notshown is more ice cream, pretzels, tortilla chips and a bunch morewine. Suicide by consumption seems like such a better way to go thanletting things take their natural course. I wonder how big I can getbefore I go poof?
The solution...

Off I go into the wild blue yonder

My bags are packed and I am ready to go, out to the airport for Road to California. My mind is full of song lyrics. California here I come, it never rains in California, California dreamin' etc. etc.
See you later,
Mel

Last Minute-itus

The Heartbeat Sweater

After packing, the most important thing to do before a trip is to decide on my travel project. I have a long couple of flights to California tomorrow and mostly everything is packed, except my clothes. So the thing I am focusing on, is not "What will I wear in California 60 degree weather?" but what will I knit?

This little pattern is great, with it's central mitered design, and it can be made in any size yarn, with needles of my choice. This is so appealing to me, the optional-ness of it all.

I need a lightweight yarn if I want to pack a lot of it, like 1300 yards, so I went for stash items like this Koigu. I have a lot of different colors, which will probably make the sweater look pretty darn busy, since none of them will be the same. So?

The same goes for this heavier yarn, Noro Kureyon, which I have enough for the whole project, stashwise, but it is much bigger in the suitcase. I have actually begun this sweater four times, but ripped out the entire back (four hours of knitting) when I decided that I didn't like the way another yarn was pooling. (Knitting jargon for large globs of one color in the wrong place).

In my enthusiasm for getting this pattern under my belt before I leave, I have been knitting my arm into injury and must lay off ALL DAY TODAY if I am to forestall boredom at the airport tomorrow.

If the pain is still bad by tomorrow, I will have to read The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain, one of my fave authors. His food oriented show on the Travel Channel is one I watch when Studio 60 isn't on.

Before I leave I feel I must provide sustenance for Dave, so Sunday I made four batches of our fave bread which I baked up yesterday. I love this bread as it requires no kneading, hence the name, No Knead Bread. I will put the recipe in the sidebar.

We had to have some of the whole wheat loaf before the camera could be whipped out.