Leaves

Heuchera, Heucherella, Tiarella

Hosta, ferns and Coleus

Nearing the Finish Line

Hurray! Instead of a black box in the ceiling, covering an old stovepipe hole, we have a can light! What a tremendous difference that makes to this dark corner. The ceiling patching will be sanded today and the light's trim will be added and then we can begin painting.

I asked Dave to shop for a lightweight ladder that could reach the gallery rail so I could easily move my artwork around at whim. He came home with a super Jim Dandy ladder that has nine or ten functions, which is great but it weighs two tons. We have to lift it together, which means no whim-art moving for me, solo.

Still it will be wonderful when we want to change a light bulb.

The room is so lovely and bright now, even with fewer fixtures than I plan use. I have three pendant lights that go on the track, for over my desk, sewing table and art table. I will put them on the track when the room is arranged...as if one arrangement ever is enough.

I also have changed out the fixture and mirror in the bathroom. Here is the new stuff and

this is what used to be here.

I never once had that fake flower garland up. This shot was taken when we first saw the house. So much better and brighter. And now I can see how not clean that sink was. It is NOW.

Split Crosses

Split Crosses

Hand dyed cotton, fused, machine quilted. 67.5x46” September 2005

 

I found this lost post about this particular quilt and it says it all:

I began thinking about my next quilt. Yesterday I had a long email conversation with my friend Tommy about her work in a series. She sent me a jpeg of her wonderful new piece and it stymies me how one can make so many wonderful pieces from one single idea. She and I discussed my miserable failures previous series of Crosses and how disappointed and discouraged I felt about them. She noted that there was certainly nothing wrong with the concept I was using, but that the fabric choices were obviously the problem. True true true. I was substituting my fabu colors for those that I imagined to be artier and more ‘sophisticated’. Black and more black and then black mixed into the dyes to make them darker, hence more ‘mature’.

Dave thinks those quilts are scary, and he starts humming the Phantom of the Opera whenever they are discussed.

So Tommy said this:

What I don't like AT ALL is your color and because of the texture of the color, it's creepy in 29 crosses and Black Cross.  I think you should go on and on with that series but use different color; use Melody color.  I personally like Split Crosses alot, which I told you on a couple occasions but you just banged it down.  I know that we all have our own taste, but there is a universal liking in the colors you choose, when you are not trying to reinvent yourself.  Go with what feels right to you.  Don't try to do something that you aren't.

Now that is a good thing for me to hear. Or read I mean. So I determined that I would revisit this series and use my fave colors and try to see if it would work.

Everything All At Once

Previously on Life at the Chalet: We found Dave's big mulch project underway. A small earthen bridge separates the far hill from the area which is getting the mulch treatment. When things get dull Dave announces "I'm going to get more mulch". This sometimes happens twice a day. Recently he has found that the new old truck, Ugly Betty, can nimbly cross this earthen bridge making for easy unloading of the mulch directly at its final destination.

Something like rain can stall this process, and we have had plenty. His last load of mulch had to sit overnight in the unloading zone and the rains continued overnight. Yesterday he was able to unload, and then asked for my help backing out over the bridge.

O dear.

The bridge is all hard clay when it is dry, which it was not. He backed up and slid off the edge just about tipping into the pond. Just about. I left the scene and my studio work crew of three took it from there. I couldn't watch. Eventually, of course he got aright and all is well.

The crown molding and picture rail are installed, and caulked and fingerprinted. Those will wash off. I am THRILLED!!!

No more sconces. Hurray.

And a special treat awaits me. This was the opening for the stove pipe from the previous owner's woodburning stove. Now it will be a recessed spotlight over the gas fireplace mantel. Swoon.

I love having workmen in my house, at my command.

July Blue Sky --1993

July Blue Sky  29.75x52.5” 1993

Hand dyed cottons, silks, commercial fabrics, including lame, batiks and decorator metallic prints. Thread schnibbles, and twin needle stitchery, machine pieced and machine quilted.

  

This quilt pretty much held the kitchen sink. Everything that could be done (in those days) was done to this piece. I made fabric from thread shreds, placed on a base fabric and stitched (to death) over it. Then I cut it up and pieced it with other fabrics. The sky was dyed as an experiment, and the ‘houses’ at the top were pieced and then appliquéd over that sky fabric.

Another example of what one does on the way to finding one’s own style. Sometimes the only way to discover it is to try everything, and toss out what doesn’t work.

This is the picture hanging hook I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The rail pictured here is my old system. The new one will be hooked to a lip on the rail tucked under the crown molding. Hard to imagine, but just wait til midweek and I will have the finished product to show.

What goes on here?

Dave is removing every speck of grass by covering it with cardboard and wood chips. Why? Because it isn't really grass, it is crabgrass and weeds and more weeds. The big picture, the master plan is to have many raised beds with paths in between, now that we know the fast and easy way to make them. It will look so much better with lots of perennials and veggies in the future beds. And in the meantime we are adding to the measley 1/4" of top soil that is here. And eliminating the LAWN AND LAWN MAINTENANCE.

My lights are installed, but not quite right yet. The bulbs I originally bought were Daylight bulbs, 40 watt with 5000K output. Not bright enough. So back to Lowe's we went and got 6500K bulbs which make a big difference, and will be even better when the room is not beige. The patches in the wall were the sconces were have been covered with spackle and are white which showed us how really dark the beige is. Seems like a dark gray was added into the paint and it is nasty dark. I am sure when the whole ceiling and walls are white I will have my blaring, mood changing new life promoting brightness.

The crown molding will add that touch of glamour to the walls and also hide the majority of these metal rails.

These are new Rubbermaid versions of hanging rails for shelving. Only one lip on the bottom of the rail, which is a great improvement over the Closetmaid version, imho which had lips on both top and bottom. Why does this matter? We plan on hanging the rails and covering 80% of them with crown molding exposing only the lip at the bottom. This will be my hanging system. Picture hanging hooks, fish line and voila, no nails in the wall for my revolving art exhibit.

Shall I have a party to celebrate my new studio when it's finished? I am seriously considering it.

Sign up here.

Heart Collection

Heart Collection

Hand dyed and commercial cottons, fused, hand embroidered, machine quilted. 15” square $250

I managed to squeeze in a new piece this week while getting my studio ready for the remake. I wanted an all red theme, but found that true red is just one color.  Kinda not enough, so I added pinks, oranges, and purple-y pinks to the mix.

The other day I was asked if I fuse onto a background anymore, like I did in earlier quilts. No is the answer. Mostly because I know I want the fewest layers to embroider through.

I cut the hearts and their background pieces and fuse them onto the release paper from the Wonder-Under and then cut small shapes of background fabric to slip into the empty spot. The hearts have nothing behind them either. That fabric was also cut away before fusing. The leftover orange print heart was used in another spot in the piece.

What looks like scotch tape is just pink fabric cut to look like tape and fused into place.

The remake crew arrived early yesterday and those ugly fans are gone and half the sconces left with them.

 

 

 

I am soooo excited. The first of four track lights are installed and look wonderful. I have 15 spots and need a few more, so I can have six lights per track. The center fluorescents are up but the bulbs aren’t in yet. I will have blazing light for creating. I am also getting crown molding and a hanging system installed. And more outlets. One can never have too many outlets.

PS. The walls and ceiling will be repainted with a less shiny coat of WHITE.

Twenty-Nine Crosses

Twenty-Nine Crosses

Hand dyed cottons, fused, machine quilted. 59.5x41.5” 2005?

Yesterday there was discussion about whether I would go back into a work to rework it. I don’t.

What I do is make a new piece. It makes more sense to me to start fresh and redesign, rather than rework.

This piece was designed with more contrast between the elements making it easier to see the cross shapes. I worked in panels, drawing the cross shapes on each panel and cutting them out and adding the backgrounds afterwards. I still wanted that random look of chunks of carved rock, fitting into each other like stacked stone ala Machu Picchu. This quilt was made from just two large pieces of hand dyed fabrics.

Black Cross

Black Cross

Hand Dyed Cottons, fused, machine quilted 47x40” Date unknown.

I was unable to find a date associated with this quilt and the Cross series which will be posted over the next couple of days. It had to be since 2004 until now, but nothing exists in my blog entries showing it. I may have deleted those posts.

I loved this fabric and thought that it would be great in a quilt. This quilt was made from one large piece of multi-colored fabric. I had an idea for pre-historic cross shapes, as though they were carved from great chunks of stone and wedged together like the great walls of Machu Picchu in Peru. I thought it was a great leap forward for me, not my usual type of work. But it met with great spans of silence. I kept working in the series with the hope that the next one would be greeted with more enthusiasm.

Comment: BethB raised an interesting question that I would love to hear your thoughts on. Do you ever go back into a piece & do more alterations (stitch, paint, etc.) or do you simply let the work stand and move on to the next piece? If you do decide to alter, is there deliberate thought with it or do you go with your gut & experiment?

Answer: I don't go back and rework a finished piece. Especially one like this. I was going for bold simplicity and adding stuff to that would have defeated the purpose. I don't believe that adding embellishments or paint or beads or whatever (what I call gooping it up) to a piece can fix a design. It usually screams "I am trying to fix a bad design". If the design is good, it doesn't need alterations, and if it is bad, alterations won't help.

The Lumberjack Plays the Piano

The Lumberjack Plays the Piano

Hand dyed, hand stamped and commercial cottons, machine pieced, machine quilted. 40x37” 1994

As I recall, I had started holding classes at my house and was teaching improvisational piecing, and some elementary surface design class, like stamping. I made a stamp from Styrofoam and printed the red border and the thick and thin black on white. I think I used a ink syringe to do the skinny black on white lines below the diagonal piecing. There were also some commercial black and white prints in the mix too. At the time I was using a lot of prints, as it was suggested that if I used only hand dyed fabrics my classes wouldn’t appeal to the average quilter.

The quilting is mostly stitch in the ditch and some curly outline quilting around the shapes in the dyed parts. And it has a real binding!

In those days it was quite a leap for me to be just piecing and assembling a quilt randomly like this.

Reviewing Archived Works

 

Spring Sprouts

Hand dyed cottons, fused, machine embroidered and machine quilted. 56x49” 1995

       

OK here’s the story of this quilt.

I had just had success with Hot Fun (in the Summertime) at the American Quilter’s Society Show. It won a purchase prize and it was suggested that I continue with the theme of the four seasons. Of course I wanted to please the prospective buyer and went ahead with Spring. He (no names here) was under impressed and told me so. It was a kick in the gut. I did enter it in a few shows and it won like a third and then a first, but it was too late. It had a black mark in my mind after that. It just shows how thin skinned  I was back then. Today I would have 1. not made it for him. 2. not cared if he liked it or not. 3. ignored the suggestion in the first place.

Now as I look at it, I am amazed at the amount of work I put into the piece. All that embroidery, and quilting. eek. Obviously I don’t do anything like that now. Phew!

Technically, the top was completely embroidered before making the sandwich, and I used a Janome 6500, with lots of tear away stabilizer under the hoop. Yes. I hooped the fabric as I stitched. The stitching on the word Spring is called the Long Stitch, which I used to teach. It requires a base fabric cut to the shape to be embroidered, fused into place and then free motion stitched, moving the hoop back and forth as each stitch is made. It requires developing a rhythm to do this smoothly.

Re-Storing the Quilts

We have lived here since July 2007 and finally, yes finally I have gotten around to storing the quilts in the house, and out of the garage. I had a pretty much empty clothes closet (can you believe it?) and lots of skirt hangers and it just now occured to me to use them to hang the quilts so I can actually find one when I need it. There are just 42 quilts pictured here, because I ran out of skirt hangers!

I am only hanging the larger pieces, with 65" being the longest side this space could accomodate.

I have a ton more to sort through and of course there are more on beds or under beds and stored at a gallery, and a few more in Rubbermaids. Soon I will be able to display some on my studio wall.

As I was unrolling the stored works I discovered pieces that I had completely forgotten. And that is the problem with storing quilts in rolls, the quilts inside can't be seen. To my surprise I have lots of quilts that are pieced and totally hand quilted! By me! Now that I can see where specific pieces are, I can offer quilt guilds my work as special exhibits for their quilt shows.

Another thing I plan to do is to take good digitals of some of the earlier works that have only slides as documentation. I will be posting a quilt a day when I start this process.

It is such a relief to finally get a handle on the work here. 28 years of quilting!

Starting the Studio Remake

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After a season of having this armoire in the studio I decided it could go into the hallway where all the other closets are. So I unloaded it and Dave and I moved it into the hall where it fits perfectly.

Three closets all full of my junk. Tsk Tsk Tsk. But this makes everything currently in the studio moveable, and it needs to be before the lights are installed.

The electrician came yesterday to see the place and make an estimate on the work I want done. We talked about making gallery walls and figured out a great idea for a hanging system. Since the walls are 9 feet high I thought crown molding would be possible and somehow a rail could be attached to hang hooks for the quilts and paintings.

Here's the plan.

This is the track or rail of a shelf hanging system from Closet-Maid. We are going to attach these tracks at the top of the wall and cover the top part with the woodwork, leaving the bottom part, the lip exposed. This will be the part that hooks will fit to use as hangers. I use 30 lb. test nylon fishing line to attach to the quilt rods, and paintings.

Colleen's Cabin

My pal from Illinois, Colleen, (via Huntsville AL for the last 10 years) has moved to my neck of the woods! This is a panaramic shot of one of the ponds at her place. I saw a fish and a turtle in it while I was visiting and I am sure I will return to count more fish. Somebody has to keep track.

This is her new home, a darling cabin complete with all you would need to live happily ever after, including cable and high speed internet. Isn't it funny what we absolutely cannot do without? She has a view of green from every window, and a lush forest right behind the house.

Doesn't she look totally happy?

Her place features two lakes, a swimming pool and a pavilion which we scouted out as a meeting place for like-minded creative folks. Colleen is a very very talented fiber artist.

Although she has only been moved in for less than a week I HAD to see the place. One of my favorite things is this daybed with quilt and pillows. I think I may have to copy this idea for my new studio set up. I love pillows on things, and while it drives my DH nutty, I think I can have this for myself. Plus it gives me a reason and a place for making new bed quilts. As if I need a reason.

Speaking of the studio, today the electrician, aka My New Best Friend, arrives to take stock of my proposed design. All my lights are here already so that will aid in his assessment. I feel wall painting is in my future too.

All White.