2021 Begins

At the start of each year I always wonder what I”ll make. Sometimes I have specific projects in mind; other times I am at the mercy of my whims. So far in 2021 I have worked on my January lines challenge and have completed two quilts conceived in 2020. For me it’s helpful to have carryover work so I don’t face the dreaded blank design wall.

Right now my design wall features a long stalled project that I have finally had a breakthrough on, thanks to Jane Dunnewold’s lecture series. I’m not ready to talk about or show it yet, so today I will focus on my two made mostly with scraps pieces, “High Summer” and “A Thin Blue Line.” Both are abstract color studies that I hope evoke a mood.

“High Summer” 25″ by 36.5″

About three-fourths of “High Summer” is made of fabric I’ve painted, constructed, or dyed. The rest is commercial fabric, including a chunk of Marcia Derse fabric in the lower left corner. I wanted to capture the deeper greens and sun soaked reflections of mid summer.

“A Thin Blue Line” 27″ by 33″

While Summer came together quickly, Line was subject to lots of changes after I thought it was done. Two days after declaring it finished I’d look at it and decide something wasn’t right. I’m still not satisfied with it, but I’ve done what I can after quilting and facing it. Yes, I was painting over areas as it hung on my wall, and I lopped off a few inches as I sewed on the facing. I wanted to create a spare piece with breathing room (why I thought that was possible with all the orange and pink is a mystery) and an illusion of depth, but I’ve managed to fussy it up. I hope the double blue line I quilted shows.

As an antidote to all that riotous color I put together a 12 inch square piece from the kind of neutrals Japanese quilters often use. I used a prompt from the SAQA seminar on color, which asks you to make same size pieces in colors you never use and in your usual colors. I didn’t bother with the latter as I think the pieces above cover my usual colors.

“Quiet Color” 12″ square

It killed me to make this. Humans have spent centuries searching out and perfecting rich, deep colors, so why shouldn’t I take advantage of all their work. A friend told me it was zen-like, certainly a quality I don’t possess.

As per usual, I’m linking to Off the Wall Friday.

Artistic Endeavors – Known and Unknown

Recently I spent time with an online exhibit called Known and Unknown Quilt Stories put together by the Quilt Alliance. To quote from the website:

Documentation, or the lack thereof, is at the heart of the over 30 quilts in Known and Unknown. And it’s also the heart of what the Quilt Alliance does. Without documentation, the stories behind countless quilts are lost to us. But with documentation, we can honor and remember the diverse voices and perspectives in quiltmaking.

The exhibit’s quilts range from art quilts to rescued quilts spattered with paint. For each quilt featured there’s a short interview with its maker or current owner, and links to additional resources related to the type of quilt featured. Some quilt makers put their names front and center on their work; other quilts can only be ascribed to anonymous. Still other makers can be known through the stories of their quilts’ current owners.

For example, quilter Nellie Mae Johnson put a Native American spin with braids and moccasins on the classic Sunbonnet Sue block in her quilt Little Women.

Little Women by Nellie Mae Johnson

The interview by Nellie’s granddaughter Gwen Westerman (who is a quilter) reveals the quilt was made for her high school graduation out of fabrics from her home made clothing. All Nellie’s quilts were meant to be used, and this one has the holes and lumpy batting to prove it.

There are many stories in Quilters Save Our Stories, but I gather you can add your quilt story to the project. The website has lots of tips for telling and filming your quilt’s story.

The Quilt Alliance also has a podcast called Running Stitch, now in its second season.

Mail Call

The pandemic has heightened my anticipation of mail. No more store browsing for me. I dash in, list in hand, and grab what I need. It reminds me of the name of a South Dakota convenience store I once passed, the Whoa ‘n Go.

The internet is all well and good for classes, resources, and keeping in touch, but I miss actually handling items. So, I look forward to brown paper packages wrapped up in string, or the modern equivalent of them. Recently I’ve received two packages that made their way to me in spite of USPS difficulties. (Three day delivery is a fantasy right now.)

First, my blogging friend Ann Scott raffled off four fabric artist postcards, and I was the lucky winner. Ann created the cards as part of the postcard class she teaches. You can follow her blog and her YouTube channel.

Second, Spoonflower ran a 50% off fat quarters sale and since I am unable to pass up a sale I had to have several of my Photoshop edited pictures printed. The price worked out to about $5 each. Most are on cotton, and I may cut them up or use them whole.

A barrel used as an outdoor fireplace

A peeling barn door in Pennsylvania

Weird microscopic thing, color totally changed

Dried reeds with several color filters

Winter sunrise through a screen

I had more printed which I’m not showing as I don’t want to give you any more reason to question whether my sanity has been affected by our current situation. Well, of course it has, but as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone, who cares?

Line By Line

Temporal challenges to create art abound on social media: 100 days of postcards, 52 weeks of collages, a year of daily ambient temperatures, etc. I wanted to begin 2021 with some sort of daily art prompt, but I didn’t know how long I could keep it up. I settled on 31 days of lines.

Why line? Though it’s one of the basic elements of design, in quilts it is often addressed only through actual quilted stitches. Some would argue that every place where fabrics meet creates a line, and I see that. But I am after line for line’s sake. Lines can be straight/curved/geometric/contoured/crisp/soft-edged/continuous/broken/jagged/even/dotted/dashed/thick/thin/varied/raised/recessed, and I’m sure there are more permutations I haven’t even thought of.

Paul Klee

So far I’ve been able to make lines on paper or fabric every day this month, and some days I’ve done more than one piece. I even persuaded a friend to join me on the line, though she is working with paper only, at least so far.

I’ve marked on fabric a little more than paper, and I’ve marked with India ink, acrylic paint, printing ink, colored pencils, tissue paper, and machine stitching; and used conventional and unconventional tools, including a feather, to apply my marks. I also did a bit of photography and Photoshop editing.

Here are a few highlights.

Silk that’s scrunched up, ironed, and then rollered with printing ink. I did several of these. I plan to iron it flat.

Monoprinted base, covered with torn freezer paper, rollered with printing ink. I did lots of freezer paper lines on paper and fabric.

Monoprinted base with eyelash yarn as resist (right), ghost print of yarn on left.

Bleeding tissue paper over watercolor paper, sprayed with water. For some reason, the tissue strips acted as resists and the color bled onto the paper at the tissue paper edges. I used the removed tissue strips in other pieces.

Plastic template scrap traced several times and colored with pencils.

Torn marbleized paper glued to construction paper and connected with white pen lines.

Crinoline painted and drawn on, ironed, and sewed into tucks.

I have still more ideas for line making, and may set aside the final week of January to create a larger work from all my bits. Have you tried a multi-day challenge and, if so, have you stuck with it?

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

In The Rear-view Mirror

My husband and I were fortunate enough to be able to self-isolate for much of 2020, so we’ve remained untouched by the Corona virus. Self-isolation gave me lots of time to devote to my art, and I think I made good use of the time to explore different media. After all, I have been saving collage making material for many years. It became if not now, then when? I know many artists found themselves too distracted for sustained creative work, but art became my escape hatch from grim reality.

I was also fortunate to have a friend who was eager to try out some online classes and videos with me, and we shared our efforts with each other thanks to technology, as well as art supplies through porch drop offs. You can read about our different takes on a Jane Davies class here.

Of course I continued to make art quilts, and you can check out that work on the “My Quilts 2019 On” page of this blog. A few were major projects, but many were experiments in using scraps.

I’m not one to choose a word of the year, but my word for 2020 would have been adapt. I tried to play the hand I was dealt. Thank goodness for Jane Davies, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, and YouTube. With the help of these online guides I took up collage, acrylic painting, and monoprinting. I tried to combine all three in mixed media work.

I learned with “Fiddleheads” not to use canvas as my backing fabric as it is so hard to hand sew through. The matte medium on top of the paper didn’t help either. I had planned more handwork, but scrapped that notion in favor of markers. The work combines woven and non-woven fabrics, magazine pages, and mulberry papers.

“Fiddleheads”

“Take A Seat” started with chairs stenciled on fabric scraps. Then I stenciled on monoprints, and combined all the stenciled bits with fabric shaped like the profile of a chair.

“Take A Seat”

“Covid” was my attempt to use found and made paper images in a collage. I had saved photos of sunglasses ads for years. Those glamorous models got masked and covered up with the reality of the pandemic.

“Covid”

“Shadow” was an early collage made up of magazine images with a bit of marker line added. Thank goodness for my years of NYT Magazine page collecting.

“Shadow”

My untitled felt piece, backed with canvas, came about after a friend gave me her felted wool scraps. They were already backed with fusing. There’s a woven paper strip background in there, as well as shiny patterned dress fabric scraps.

felt, paper, and foiled fabric

A monoprint exchange with a friend led to a tribute to autumn. Felted wool, organza, and paper were given a boost with markers and embroidery.

“With A Little Help From My Friends”

I hope to continue mixed media explorations in 2021 and improve my integration of paper and fabric. I made lots of work I’m not including here as it shows what went wrong. Practice leads to better work, but you don’t want to wade through the beginner pieces unless you’re a masochist or closely related to me.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.