Collaborating

The first person on my Make Me A Quilt list is Elaine M. I asked Elaine: if you have a particular piece from my past series or anything non-series-wise that appeals, let me know.
She replied:

I love these a lot: October Gift and Desert sky, the Urban Landscapes series and the Streets and Rivers Series

 

I'd like to know what else you would like from this list:

 

1. choices of size (with price based on size)

I want this to hang in my bedroom. I have several pieces that are 18" wide by 22" long and would like to get another one in that size range

2. orientation: portrait

 3. color scheme: some periwinkle blue and rust/cheddar orange with anything else you want

there really isn't a color I don't like

vivid and earthy are my favs, not all dark and no pastel

 

4. surface treatments

hand and machine quilting. I like when you extend the lines in the image and wander about

5. imagery: abstract, botanical, geometric, atmospheric

I like all of these

 6. fused or pieced. no hand applique.

either

I really want this to be your work so I hope I haven't been too specific.

 

So that is where we began.

Next I brought out my fabrics in search of the perfect periwinkle blue.

 

I pulled out everything that could be possibly be considered periwinkle, a very elusive color. I love it myself, so I can understand the eagerness to have it be a feature color in your quilt. I think it tends to look on the gray side until something very contrasting is juxtaposed. To dye periwinkle, a life long goal of mine, one must add a touch of fuchsia to the dye mix which then causes texture to form due to the quick action of the pink vs. the slow action of the blue. So mostly I can't get the solid that I want.

I do want to include some of these textured pieces, and have loads and loads of warm orangey colors to contrast.

From this point I began to design in my head and have several ideas which I will try out today. I'll work on this for a few hours and see how far I get. Stay tuned.

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BTW, thanks for all your enthusiastic response. I now have a list of 25 participants. I hope everyone can be patient!

 

 

Susan's Jacket

 
Some bathroom shots of me in Susan's just finished jacket. I am loving this combination of Araucania Nature Wool Multi and Lion Brand Amazing (Strawberry Fields colorway). Just enough color to make it interesting and not garish. The fabric is light and would you believe FLUFFY? Yes. Love how it hangs closed with no fasteners!



I have the sleeves pinned up in the second shot, which always looks dopey, but I wanted to show the body.



Susan lives in Las Vegas, and I have heard the desert gets rather cool in the fall and winter, so this will go a long way towards keeping her warm and snuggly.
I've begun Joan S's jacket which is Malabrigo Rios merino and Debbie Bliss Fez, merino and 15% camel. Yummy, so yummy to knit.

I am on my way into town to pick up the new bathroom sink for Dave. And then I am having lunch with my friend and fellow art quilter Mary.

Tomorrow I will let you in on the art quilt collaboration with the first person on my Make Me a Quilt List:  Elaine.
The list is still open, but I will need your email address or I can't contact you. So email me, fibermania at g mail dot com if you want to be added. I don't see any reason to stop adding names, since each person is giving me a real REASON to make a quilt!
BTW I have been getting lots of questions on my worktable. Here it is. Mine came with wheels I believe...or I got some at Ace hardware...can't remember.

Small but Efficient

It was a big furniture moving day, and we even enlisted Dave's friend Paul who we coerced into going upstairs with tables and downstairs with mattresses and bed frames. I didn't have to do any heavy lifting.
Once everything was in the room, I moved the pieces around several times in search of the perfect working arrangement and decided on this configuration. It could still change, once I get going. I am only using one extension cord and one power strip, which I think is a minor miracle.


The big white table is where I layout all the fused fabrics, and then I can see what I need. I'll be bringing that very big, very full Rubbermaid bin of fuses fabrics up tomorrow. On my worktable I have a big Teflon sheet and my small cutting mat. The table itself is padding for pressing. My iron will plug into the socket on my right and the tall shelves of fabric behind me are merely decorative (ha!) or unfused at the moment. My design wall is adjacent, where I might pin up a work in progress, but more likely is where I would photograph a finished work. I have two chairs on wheels and in the adjacent room I have my comfy chair and ottoman, and the tv. My stereo gets good reception in the loft and I listen to radio when I work, rather than watch tv.


I was happy to see my sewing table just fit nicely in the nook between the upright beam and the railing. I only need to sew when the quilt top is finally fused and then I can move that table away from the railing and more into the room. Everything is scootable with either wheels or furniture moving discs.

I have bed risers under the legs of the white table, and have adjusted the height of my worktable to just a scooch higher to condense the space. Not visible is the convenient bathroom and the stairway, and the door to the loft bedroom. We moved the bed that was in this space into that bedroom, taking away the previous bed. It was all musical furniture today.
My only real need is better lighting which is to come when the remodeling begins. I may make the electrician do that first. I must get rid of the floor lamps and hope the new ceiling fixtures will flood the place with light.
There is more to come upstairs for the painting studio but it will all go in the adjacent bedroom. All my paint, big canvases, and the easels will fit in there. And good lighting will be installed too. There is a indoor balcony off that room, that can store stuff, and we have an attic closet that I will use to store my yarn overflow. When the remodeling is done, this entire loftspace will be my art rooms. Pretty neat!

PS: Attention Ann from MD and Maggie from AZ, you can still get on the Make Me a Quilt List, if you send me your email address. Otherwise I can't find you!

 

The Make Me a Quilt List

I am constantly amazed by you Dear Readers. First of all that you continue to visit my blog, and second that you responded so quickly and excitedly to my idea about taking orders for small works. Why didn't I think of this years ago?

After one day I have amassed a list of folks who asked to be recipients of one of my pieces, made in the near (I hope) future in the soon to be configured loft studio. I say soon, but just yesterday I heard that construction will not begin for three more weeks!

3 WEEKS!

 

So, I am going to try and work out a space where I can find my fabric, set up my machine, and start doing something soon.

In the interim, I did compile the list but have one pretty significant problem. I must have email addresses for everyone. If you see your name on this list without 'have email', please email me, or I will not be able to contact you. I'm at fibermania at G mail dot com.

 

Elaine M have email
pklaw  have email

Patte have email

Donaleen have email

Bonnie Miller have email

Carol

Melissa

Fernande of Luxquilt  have email

Jessica P.

Livin' La Buena Vida en SMA

Georgina

Claire O'Connor have email

Karen in Iowa

Cindy Griselda have email

 

As mentioned yesterday, I was trying to come up with either a new technique or a new approach to making art quilts. Something that would trigger new ideas and I do think I have found something:

 

I don't think I want to do any new technique, as I have tried just about everything that ever interested me in the past, but I do think I have an idea for a new approach.
When I start a new piece there are so many choices, and it seems to me that instituting some parameters might just help narrow those down.

For example:

1. choices of size (with price based on size)
2. orientation: horizontal, vertical, square
3. color scheme: pastel, high contrast, dark and murky, neutrals, vivid, earthy
4. surface treatments such as hand quilting, fancy machine quilting, hand or machine embroidery, embellishments or stamping/paint (no beading!)
5. imagery: abstract, botanical, geometric, atmospheric
6. fused or pieced. no hand applique.

Since I have the future recipients on a list already I thought I would allow them to choose the parameters. I never like to do commissions but I could think of this as a collaboration. That way they kinda get what they kinda want and I would have an idea of what direction to head. The final work would still be a surprise to us both, but input would be wonderful.

As you know I do (or did) work pretty fast so this could continue after this list is complete, but first I have to set up some sort of interim workspace. Then I will go down the list and ask for your input, so be prepared to make some choices.
THIS WILL BE SO FUN!



On Hold

Everything is packed up and waiting for the renovation to begin. I can't fuse or sew, and I can't paint, so I am content with knitting in the interim.
However, something interesting is happening in my head. I am relieved not to have to make art for the moment. And the relief is WONDERFUL. On the other hand, I am really wanting to make art, a feeling which has been absent for some time.

I was emailing back and forth with my friend and fellow art quilter Mary, and she has been so excited of late, just having returned from Arrowmont,  and wants to play art quilts with me. Yay! But I said I need a kick start, some reason to make art quilts again. (I am done making bed quilts for a while, since I find them piling up in the limited closet space I have.) So Mary suggested/challenged me to make something small, using techniques or approaches that I have never ever used before. Try something totally new.
Hmmmm. What haven't I tried? There are lots of things I haven't done, mostly because I couldn't get excited about doing them. So those things won't work. Nope it has to be something that I would get excited about and that is what I want to find.
And I would love to have this challenge be like what I am doing with the jackets I am knitting. It would be great to have a list of folks who want an art quilt (for a meager price, heh, heh) that would set me on a weekly goal of fulfilling 'orders'.
I'll think on this for a time, whilst I wait for the studio space to become available again, and not scattered all over the non-remodeling rooms.

 

Before and Afters

Tony poses in his French Foreign Legion stance. When he runs, which is ALWAYS, his ears flap and usually one gets stuck in the thrown back position. Very debonair.


I took an early morning walk, taking pictures of the late August garden to remind myself in the spring about what was a success and what needs changing. Above is an early view of the house, April 2008 when we still had a yard...with something resembling grass and just a border of woodchips. Now it is majorly garden, no grass and lots more woodchips.
Seven redbuds and five arborvitaes line the pond and six huge ornamental grasses fill in the empty spaces. We now have the deck and the tiny burning bushes planted to disguise the AC unit are now mature.






The pond is low even tho we've had constant rains this summer. But in this shot from 2008, it is a bit higher.  Dave was adding rock around the edge to keep the banks from eroding. It certainly did the trick.
Speaking of erosion, this area that we call the dam was all clay and we added store-bought black mulch to cover it and then planted liriope. What a joke. I thought it might fill in. Not like the English ivy, which certainly has. No erosion to worry about now.


Dave just left to get more mulch before it gets too hot. No rain today...they say.
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We have moved almost everything out of my old studio and into the living room or the loft and none of it is usable for the duration of the remodeling. I confine myself to my chair in the bedroom, watching Netflix on my laptop or HGTV for the highs of the great room reveals at the end of shows.  Hopefully I will hear from our contractor about the starting date, which I pray is Monday, but who knows? In the meantime I can continue to knit and read, but not much else. I am picking out paint, light fixtures, and possibly new 'old fart chairs'. I'd like to get Dave to reduce the amount of mismatched furniture he has collected in his current room, but I must be patient.
Patience is the watchword for the duration.

Sweaty Before Seven

I woke up earlier than usual, charged with a mission: clear out the old studio so the renovators can get started early next week. All my stuff needed to be moved out, and when Dave woke up I enlisted his help to move tables and chairs so I could unload the Wall o'Wool onto the cutting table. We still need to bring the rest of the furniture out of there, but Dave had other things to do, so it can wait til tomorrow.


Having accomplished what I could on my own, I decided today was design wall moving day. First, remove the batting cover, and all the zillions of pins still stuck into the foam.
My loft studio has much shorter walls, so I cut off 18" from the Styrofoam boards and then brought them upstairs. I knew I could hang the boards from the existing hanging system I had installed six years ago. To reinforce the Styrofoam boards, I taped big washers on the front and back and then pierced the tape with fishing line to use as a hanger. Picture hanging hooks completed the task.


There is an outlet which I will no doubt put to use, so it cannot be covered by the design wall. I saw a great hint some time ago on Pinterest. I used dabs of gel toothpaste to mark the outlet, then pressed the back of the foam board onto it and after removing it, I saw exactly where I would need to cut out my rectangular hole for the outlet. It worked like a charm. Then I pinned on the batting and cut away the space, pinning it back to reveal the outlet.



The batting-covered, shortened design wall is in place and is ample size for my future works. The bed and chair/ottoman will be leaving this space, as soon as the other room empties out. And two more tables will be filling this space. To say I am eager to arrange this into my new studio is an understatement. I am patient, and am focusing on designing Dave's new boudoir and bath, not to mention my walk in closet.
Here's how that demolition is going;

 

O my!