Paint!!

Here's how to spend hours having fun today. Go to this site and paint a painting.

This is the one I made and if you click here you will see it better, or in action as it was painted.


Make your own and click on See it in the Gallery button and feel like a master!

reEvaluating Drawings

These are two drawings done years ago, from one of my old sketchbooks.

The one above was drawn while looking at the bottom of a head of garlic. Take a look at a head of garlic and see the shapes at the root end. They are round and have a texture and look very interesting, at least to me. I changed the bulb into some sort underwater creature, and from there I made a quilt which I called Medusa. I blogged it a while ago.

This is a magnolia blossom. I never made a quilt out of this drawing, but I have always loved it.

So what is this about? I have been turning drawing around in my head and thinking about what I could do with it. Since I have been an avid quilter since 1981 I have been using my drawings as jumping off points for quilts. They had no intrinsic value other than a plan. How I insulted them!

Now I am reconsidering their importance.

Either of these two would or could be made into finished works. On paper or canvas, or as I did already for the top one, into fabric.

The thing about drawings is that there is no color, which is both good and bad. I love the line quality, or the 'hand', and wish that translated more directly into the edges of the cut fabrics. But the color takes over when I make them into quilts and they are altered so much that they are totally removed from that elegant drawn line.

And another thing I just realized...These drawings are ABSTRACT, which I never acknowledged before. Yes! A good thing for me to say out loud. Not exact replicas of the originals subjects. What that means to me is that I have added something from myself into the drawing, an interpretation, a point of view, something original. That has BIG VALUE.

Attitude Adjustment

My visit with Tommy was satisfying and very relaxing. We gabbed and watched Project Runway and I sat on my butt for two days. Not like I didn't get anything done, since my fingers were very busy. We both knit like fiends. Since the weather was robustly raining we nixed any ideas of leaving the comfort of the old fart chairs.

When I say 'satisfying' I mean, I got to say stuff that I have been thinking and she listened. It is so important to be heard sometimes. Many of my relationships require that I have the answers, and there are many times when I don't and it means that I have to expose my doubts and fears to someone who will not judge and will not try to 'fix' the things I am considering dilemmas.

I feel better.

This book arrived while I was away and I am hoping it will illuminate some artistic concepts for me that I have been struggling with for sometime. My camera is always at the ready and so I don't sketch as much as I once did.

I have been thinking that I should reinvigorate my drawing practices again, since there is a thread of this sort of thing happening on many blogs. What if drawing became my art again? What if I changed my attitudes about drawing and expanded my approach to this part of the art world? What if this gave me a different process and product that I could express myself with? I need a bit of a challenge, and I am hoping it is just around the corner.

Rain and More Rain

Lake Michigan rolls in the waves as though it were in a big hurry.

Puddles are forming mini lakes. It feels great to be indoors and dry.

Before I left for my visit to Tommy's I had to use up some leftover dyes.

Last year I found these cocktail shakers at Joann's and thought they would make perfect dye bottles. The lids come off, but I keep them on when I pour out the dyes. They hold about 24 ounces. There are a few bottles missing from this photo, but I generally use 13 of these, in rainbow order. They are not squeeze bottles which is much easier on the hands.

When I have leftover dye, I just make textured solids in these Gladware containers, presoaking the fabric in soda ash and pouring the dye on. I let them sit and wash them out later, even days later, as will be the case for this batch.


They will join the collection.

Tommy and I have the day planned. We will continue watching the dvds of Project Runway which is fabulous. I am late to the party, but catching up quickly with season one. I will rent the second season from Netflix and watch it at home. Tommy tivo'd Dancing with the Stars which premiered last night, so that is on the schedule too.

This is how to relax...although I did bring my knitting and will try to watch and pay attention to knitting at the same time.

Sites to See

I am happy to announce that David Walker has decided to join the blogosphere. See his new blog here.

And my darling sister Brooke has finished another wonderful piece which is posted here.

I am packing my bags for a short trip to visit Tommy for a coupla days of gabbing, knitting, maybe biking and definitely dvd watching. I will bring my camera, but no fabric. We are having a no quilt visit.

FYI. I never allow myself a break from my quilt career. Even if I don't make something every moment, I am thinking about what I am working on, or what I will make next time. But last night, at cocktail time with Dave, I mentioned that I had taken a day off and felt guilty.

Is this weird to you? It is to me. I am like a light switch, all on or all off. Where is that dimmer switch? Since I am married to a retired guy, life has taken on a different pace. I feel a pull to be with him more, and to work less. These are the good days. But what is less? How do I moderate?

I am going to contemplate this with Tommy who while she is an artist, is not interested in getting involved with the professional aspects of teaching etc. She manages to have an artist's life without the pressure. I will sit at her feet and learn.

My Mitered Square Affair

In case it isn't obvious I love lots of color close together. So when I first saw mitered square knits I went nutso.

A lot of Koigu yarn

It was at Houston Quilt Festival the last year I worked in our Artfabrik booth, maybe 2001 or 2002. The booth next to ours was a yarn shop, with sweaters that had multiple yarns in these patchwork configurations designed by Horst Schulz. I also wandered into another yarn booth with more mitered square samples on display. There must have been something in the air that year as I had been knitting a sweater to pass the time, and already had yarn and needles with me, so a foundation had been laid.

Then another strange thing happened...I won 1st and 3rd place in small art, and sold a big quilt in the Husqvarna exhibit and won a top of the line sewing machine.

Prize money to spend!

The yarn people got a lot of it that year.

And when we got home we took a sweater class and I got to pick the project, so it should come as no surprise that I chose the San Francisco Shirttail sweater

The technique allows many different weights to be used in each module and it doesn't seem to matter, size or shapewise. It all works.

I continued to buy yarns in variegated shades so I could pack as much color as possible into my work. And more books. I got both of the Horst Schulz books, and went on to buy everything connected to the concept of mitered squares. This sweater is from Dazzling Knits.

These next three are variations from Just One More Row.com

Hand dyed Cotton, rayon, poly, silk, everything, even eyelash went into this one.


Again from Dazzling Knits.

More and more books came out on the subject and I got them all. Just do a search for modular knitting on Amazon and you will see tons of books on the topic.

St. Mel the Mitered

While not a square, this is considered a module and as in knit one module at a time. I learned after I invested in the yarn in the very top picture that one picks up and knits rather than makes a module and sews it to the next one. I learned that a little too late for the coat I had started making with all that Koigu yarn. It was frustration to the max to be making teeny one inch squares of knitting and then sewing them to other squares, FOREVER.

So I put that away until yesterday when I decided to look at the project again. Most of the coat back was done, and now that I know the right way to do this, I know it wouldn't look right to pick it up and finish it correctly. There are hundreds of seams which distort the piece differently than the correct way I would be knitting it now. So I took off the sleeves and finished off the lengths of what was started, and will make the two pieces into decorative pillows for my living room. I feel better about that learning experience now.

Speaking of color...

Don't cringe, it doesn't hurt.
Thank you all for your kind comments on my injury. I so appreciate it.

The Rookie


Dave and I have been playing catch all this week. He bought me a Mizuno first baseman's mitt at a garage sale, and he has a really well broken-in Wilson. He is a great pitcher, and played ball all his life, making the all star ranks innumerable times. He played in the World Series of over 40 guys twice in Arizona. I saw him hit a grand slam once and be the hero of the game.

Collect this card

So when he asked me to catch a few with him, I knew I would be learning from the master.

I did pretty well for an old babe, and caused him to laugh deeper and harder than he had in a long time. We both laughed, really. I listened to his advice and promptly did the opposite. I tried to not look scared when the ball came right at me. Most of the time I caught it. I am such a girl.

But today I was trying to decide to hold my mitt up or sideways and was beaned.

Drama Queen

I went down like a ton of bricks. It stung. I laid there on the grass hoping it would pass quickly as it had yesterday when I was beaned the first time. I have a big target. Dave felt terrible, but really it was nothing, I thought, until I removed my hand and saw all the blood. eeeoouuuwww.

Don't look if you're squeemish. I did not do this in Photoshop.

We applied an ice pack and some Merlot and I felt a lot better.

Dave says I am a real ball player now.

This is high praise.

A Knitting Challenge

This is a sweater that my friend Tommy saw at a store and blogged, and which I found on the Anthropologie website. She liked it but didn't buy it because it is outrageously priced at $348. It's not like there is only one available in the world. I looked closely at it and thought I could tell what the designer had done to make that bottom part flair a little. I think it is only three rows of knit and then two rows of garter. The flair comes from the fact that the knit stitch is taller than the purl stitch and would stretch out when blocked.

I looked closely at the change in the stitching in the yoke, which looked to me like it may have been plain old garter stitch. The garter stitch is quite stretchy and would probably pull in the bodice part and make it fit closer at the yoke.

So I told Tommy that I would make a doll size sample and see if it would work. I think it did!

I used Regia sock yarn leftovers and size 2 needles. For the bodice I did three rows of stockinette (knit) and then two rows of garter. I blocked it quickly by a spritz of water and a hot iron. Sock yarn is superwash and can handle this abuse.

In my haste I forgot to twist the yarn here as I changed yarns and that left a little hole.

And now that I have done this illustration (Thank you Photoshop Elements!) I will frog this sample. And begin a real knit project.

Historic Folkloric

Trip Around the World

by Melody Johnson, 1985

Various commerical cottons, machine pieced and hand quilted. Queen size.

O yes, I have a past. I dug this old beauty out of the archives to put on Dave's bed to make his room more manly. He was delighted to see this golden oldie again. This is my last hand quilted quilt.

I was into Philomena Wiechec's Celtic designs back then. This is quilted in contrasting threads, lest you miss the design from ten feet away. Only the borders have this design, the rest is just a straight diagonal line.
This Trip Around the World quilt marked the end of my interest in quilting.

I quit mid-quilt.

I kid you not. One day I woke up with this overwhelming feeling that I was nuts to be taking perfectly good fabric, and cutting it up into pieces and then sewing it all back together again. I did my usual dramatic thing, and packed up all my fabric and quilt supplies and gave them all away...to my mother. OK, so that wasn't too far away, but at the time, I didn't know anyone else who quilted.

Then I got a job in an office. ( Well, I was nuts after all).

Six months passed and nothing. I made some clothes for work. That was the extent of my creativity for that period in my life. I was miserable. This was 1984. I had only been a quilter for three years.

Then one day my mother called me up and invited me to a luncheon held by some quilt people which featured Mary Ellen Hopkins as the speaker. I confused her with Marsha McCloskey whose name I had seen in a pattern book at the fabric store, so I agreed.

Mary Ellen had a wreckless approach to quilting that shook me to the core. Her lecture was "It's OK if you sit on my quilt" and that meant that her quilts were not precious. And that they were fun to make, and fast to make and easy to make and machine quilted. Colors didn't have to match, and pieces could be LARGE like 5 inch squares or triangles, which meant that the quilt top was executed in a day or two, and cut with a ROTARY CUTTER which was pretty new to me.

She showed quilt after quilt and told the huge audience how to make them. This was totally understandable when you saw them in the flesh.

And she was hysterically funny!

There was a break for lunch and I could barely sit still. I was chompin' at the bit to get my fabric back.

After lunch I was so excited that I stood up for the rest of the afternoon. She was making quilting into Show Business and I knew this was what I was going to do with my life from then on.

That meant getting my fabric back from my mother, which I did that very day.

And I bought Mary Ellen's book (which I finally gave away yesterday) and dove into making several of her designs for bed quilts. I did my first machine quilting and it wasn't too awful, but it wasn't too easy either, as I had a TERRIBLE machine, which had a throat plate cover instead of droppable feed dogs.

And I proceeded to focus on becoming a famous quilter. It was my daily mantra: I wanna be a famous quilter. I drove my husband nuts.

I tried everything, and made a ton of stuff, and found a quilt guild and had 11 quilts ready for the first show I entered. I realized that I needed to make things that no one else had designed, and that led me to fusing, since my ideas were difficult to impossible to do by any other method.

And I went back and finished the big ol' Trip Around the World quilt.

This is a very large tumbling blocks pattern 60x80".
Hand quilted decorator cottons. My label was done in counted cross stitch and is dated 1983. What a hoot!

Adios Amigo

This is my dye rack. I have used this for like 15 years or so, since we found it at a Ben Franklin's that was going under. I got it for either $10 or $2o, who can remember? But it has served me well, lo these many years.

But really, it is always in the way. It has wheels and moves from the dyeroom to the studio to the downstairs kitchen to the deck and back, all the time wobbling and about to fall apart. If the rolls of fabric weren't so heavy, the wheels would pop right out and when it is empty they do just that. Annoying. I have tried like the dickens to figure out another way to have these rolls of fabric available somehow, from the ceiling or the wall but until I put Dave on the case, nothing came to me.

But Manly Man to the rescue. I had suggested the big hooks that we hang our bikes from in the garage, but the fabric weighs more than lightweight bikes... So he went to Ace Hardware and found eyehooks that have long shafts and screw into the studs. (I could barely write that sentence with out sighing deeply).

How nicely that rod fits in the hole.

The eyehook can hold 350 pounds which is way less than the 100 meters of cotton.

Two is better than one. I will use one for cotton and one for silk, which is currently on order.

It's so nice to have a man around the house. Notice the neat boxes of yarn behind him?

Here's the old rack about to depart from the premises. Today was garbage day and so I will be moving this baby out of the way for another week until they pick it up and take it away forever.

Phabulous Photoshop (how to included at bottom)

Glory

And then the picture this was taken from. I am learning how to play with Photoshop Elements and eventually will get bored with this new toy, but in the meantime, I hafta show what I can do.

How I did this:

I am really a novice and probably did everything the hard way, so if you are someone with more knowledge you will no doubt have a chuckle at my methods.

I used the Photoshop Elements Magic Eraser to remove the background from this image. I learned this from this tutorial video. The I think I may have made a new layer...this is where I got confused. Anyway there are effects and textures and this tutorial video showed me the one that I knew I had to use, which is of course the rainbow background in the photo above. I clicked on that and it filled in the background. O, I also had to add a drop shadow, which is my big new thing, everything gets a drop shadow!

My Hobbies

I have painted since I was a little girl, on and off. I taught myself to use oils from one of those Walter Foster paperback books. I thought painting in oils proved you were an artist. Ha! Well, I was only a kid. I did pretty good stuff, and wonder what landfill base it forms today.

My paintings were always representational and I aimed for realism. I got better at it the more I painted, handling the paint, figuring out how to glaze, etc. In the last year of my undergraduate degree I went to see an exhibit of Chuck Close's paintings at the old Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and that ended my interest in realism. Here is a painting of Kate Moss, as if we need to see anymore of her face...

You really can't get much better than this. Then to make matters worse, he devised an even more interesting looking result with pattern.

I LOVE these kinds of paintings. Did I mention they are huge?

Anyway, I quit painting then. Just quit. Got my painting degree, packed up my canvasses and started making my first quilt.

But I hated being a quitter. That's Q U I TT E R, not quilter. I love being a quilter. But still there is that need to paint in the old soul and so I gathered new supplies and huge primed canvasses (on sale at Joann's where I was already gathering yarn, O geesh) and got back into painting. You who read this blog have seen this happen this year, and last.

Well, I had to clean up my studio from this week's great giveaway mess and what to do with my canvasses?? I have a couple of finished paintings, in no way gems, and I have no place to put them, since they aren't wall worthy. They could be painted over, since I am striving to get something different than what I have painted on the first go round.

Learning means moving past the first several attempts, and I have learned it is often try try again before satisfying results appear.

So I have found a safe dry place for the canvas, under the stairs . Right next to the boxes of Christmas ornaments and the fake trees. It is just a teeny bit difficult to extract one canvas without moving a few other things first. You can bet that it will take more than a whim to get me to pull one out.

The same goes for the yarn that I neatly gathered into multiple Rubbermaid bins yesterday. I was going to sort them by type and content or color, but eventually I just threw on the lids and stacked them on the shelves.

The whole idea was to have a way to use these supplies easily and have a place to keep them protected and off the floor. I don't think I have conquered this challenge yet.