Finally, this year I’m doing the 100 day project. What’s that? You choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and share your process on social media. The organizers define creative widely, but I chose to make 4 by 4 inch collages from my paper scraps and stamps. Why? I already had all the materials needed, the size makes it doable, and it’s a chance for more composition practice.
Since February 22, the official start date, I have made 16 small collages. Sometimes I made two in a day as I had all the supplies out, and then skipped the next day. I tried to spend no more than 15 minutes on each, and I think my creating times average that. Some days it took 5 minutes. Other days I mucked about for 30 minutes.
The first five days my compositions were all over the place. Then, a friend said one looked like a landscape, so after that I confined my compositions to landscapes. Of course I may change the parameters again, but for now I am in a landscape groove.
Days 1 through 5
Days 6 through 9
Days 10 through 16
As I’ve settled into the project I’ve learned that some of my papers don’t take stamping ink well. I’ve expanded my definition of stamping to include stenciling, and am using found materials, such as bubble wrap and the edge of corrugated cardboard, for some stamps.
I see I use a lot of blues and aquas, and am fond of orange/blue combinations. Try as I might, subdued and neutral palettes just don’t happen. I end up throwing in a bright or two. For shapes, I seem to like circles, though that may reflect my determination to use a circle paper cutter I bought. Other shapes used depend on my paper scraps. I try not to change them too much. I had hoped to used more of the painted/printed tissue paper I have, but so far it hasn’t worked out that way.
I’m curious to see how the remaining 84 turn out, and what swerves the project may take. I must say that the limitations are freeing as they cut down on dithering. If you want to see what others are doing, check out #the100dayproject on Instagram.
I have packed an art project every time we’ve spent a few winter weeks in Florida. Last year it was assorted fabric strips and my sewing machine that produced four small quilts. Years before that I took hand stitching projects that resulted in the embroidered squares of “Every Which Way” and “Torii Traces.”
“Torii Traces” 2016
To change it up on this trip I took materials for making collages. Of course I had the exciting task of sewing down all those wool felt squares, but that was mindless work. Because I didn’t want to harm the furnishings at my in-laws’ condo I packed only paper scraps, scissors, board books (to use as sketchbooks,) and a glue stick. The paper scraps contained a lot of text, either whole phrases or words, or single letters. A limited number of raw materials really helps focus my mind.
I produced three board books of collages. That isn’t so impressive when I tell you the largest book measures 7.5 by 6 inches. Here’s a sample of my results, grouped by ones I love, I like, and meh.
I had prepped redacted text from an old book.A lot of text, but yellow dominates.First time to include flowers.Here I combined part of a subway map, a brochure for Fallingwater, a page from a old German dictionary, and some Asian text.The worst of the bunch. I am redoing it, but it’s never going to be great.
Since my return to Ohio I have continued to work in other board books in addition to revising my work from Florida, and can finally show off filled sketchbooks.
As the weather reports become dire and more and more local closings are announced in anticipation of cold, snowy conditions, I sit in front of my sewing machine and sew a warm, sunny, colorful village.
Some years ago my husband traveled to Mexico and brought back a book that included pictures of the city of Guanajuato. I loved the hillside jumble of colorful buildings and always meant to make a quilt of it.
Years passed until I was cleaning out my silk scraps at the start of this month and thought of that town. The days were growing shorter, the temperatures were dropping, and I was ready for a fantasy happy place.
First, I drew a rough sketch of my town.
Then I pretty much ignored it. I just had to play with building outlines and the level of detail I wanted. My silk scraps are fused to a backing, so they are bulky and not good for fine detail.
I prepared a foundation of canvas and fusible fleece and laid my raw edge bits directly on that after I sewed on some doors and windows. I played with arrangements a bit on my design wall and then began to sew the pieces down with a short zigzag stitch.
Right now about two-thirds of the pieces are sewn. Once all of them are secured I will go back and add more detail with stitching. None of this is fine workmanship. It’s slapdash with fraying silk and crooked buildings. It certainly wouldn’t pass a building code inspection. And I don’t care. I can feel the sun on my face and think of buying a gelato at a little store.
About 25 inches wide by 21 inches high
For lovely, textured quilts of buildings and towns check out Hilde Morin’s work. For a book about an Italian town I had in the back of my mind as I developed my quilt, read Jess Walter’s “Beautiful Ruins.”
Thanks to Drew Steinbrecher’s free online class I have a growing collection of sketch books made from children’s board books. In the past I started sketch books, but didn’t keep up with them. If you ever started a daily exercise program on January 1, found it became weekly by January 20, and maybe every three weeks by February 5, you know the process.
Drew uses his gel prints, gluing them directly on the book pages, but almost any material, paint, or drawing tool can be used as long as you gesso the pages first. Why board books? Because they’re thick cardboard the pages don’t buckle and warp with glue, and they are cheap second hand finds. Library book sales, online auctions, and yard sales are potential sources of inexpensive used ones.
I got this stack from my local library.
I won’t linger on the technical details as Drew covers them thoroughly, but so far I’ve finished two books and am almost done with a third. My leaf gel prints filled up one book by themselves.
It’s fun to make covers for my books.
Tickets and pamphlets from my trip to Spain combined with paper scraps are featured here. The grid paper lined an envelope our credit card company mailed us.
Magazine pages and collage leftovers
I start a fresh page or add to an existing one whenever I get stuck on my current quilting struggle, and find creating something in 30 minutes or less with paper and a glue stick boosts my mood. Then I’m able to return to the slog in a better frame of mind.
I have one more piece left to quilt, and it’s a doozy quilting-wise. I am enamored of circles and can get carried away when I put them on quilts, not remembering that I will have to quilt them. Of course, that’s not a problem if I take the easy path of straight line quilting.
For “Happy Accidents” I decided to feature circles in the quilting, so easy isn’t likely. It measures 29 by 45 inches,which sounds quite doable until you shove the quilt around 360 degrees a few times. And I plan to emphasize some curves with heavy threads.
Here’s the top after some refinements with Neocolor II pastels.
Color isn’t true.
The copy is pink because my printer’s cyan ink jets were clogged.
Another issue I face is the difficulty of marking the quilting pattern with eraseable markers or pens. Some of the fabric won’t take marks well and the paper resists everything. I may need to make quilting templates with freezer paper and iron them on.
I’ve chosen several threads in different weights so I will be changing colors frequently.
That leads to the last issue (I hope.) I have matched my quilting thread so well I can’t see the previous stitching in the paper areas, where I need to eyeball the new lines from the previous ones, as I can’t mark the paper. Whee!
I’m still coughing my head off, but I am now able to follow a train of thought for more than five minutes. That means I am becoming reacquainted with my sewing machine. Since I have had no artistic breakthroughs for new work I am quilting the pieces gathering dust in the fabric closet.
Under the needle this week is “The Left Coast.” I wrote about designing it, but now I am trying to add texture with quilting. I gathered about 15 spools of thread to use and began with walking foot quilting. The past two days have been all FMQ. To make the process simpler I am using Superior Thread monopoly pre-wound bobbins. It’s wonderful not to have to change bobbins when I change thread color, but the stuff is hard to see and a pain to rip out.
I have added a bit of red to the sky and water to give a sunset effect, and some white for waves. I haven’t yet sewed on the islands as it’s hard to sew around them. If I add them it will be after the rest of the quilting is done.
Quilted but without islands.
Two different arrangements of islands.
Detail of water
Detail of cliffs in foreground.
I’m still uncertain about the islands, but prefer the second arrangement above to the first. If I use them I will need to add some whitewater around their edges. Time on the wall may benefit my decision making process. In the meantime, I have pressed a variety of leaves to use with my gel plate.
About a year ago I began a project that involved unlabeled family photos. I envisioned a three part series featuring groups of people, women, and children; all with no identifying names. After finishing one with groups of people I stopped working on the series as I hit a mental block. I just couldn’t make them into art quilts, and the colors were very muted. That was understandable as I was working with old linens. However, I wasn’t ready to take on a huge amount of embroidery to add color, and I wanted to keep the vintage theme.
All I know is that the people in the photos lived in Ireland or Manitoba.
A week ago I hauled out the remaining women and children photos and set to work on developing visually pleasing layouts. I realized that these won’t be art quilts, but are more fabric scrapbook pages. Once I made my peace with that I was able to find a way forward.
The women piece features a wallpaper sample, a linen napkin, pillowcase ends, a hankie, lace, old photos, and crocheted pins.
I had done natural dying on the old pillowcase some years ago, so I was stuck with the muck green color. The central photo may be one of my mother’s cousins. I know it’s not as old as the surrounding photos, which were probably taken in Ireland. The original of the stern matron has the name of a photographer in Letterkenny, Donegal, at the bottom. The crocheted pins were made by a friend of my parents, while the flower filled oval came from a scrap I was given.
I’m not thrilled with how dark some of the photos are, but I don’t have the originals to scan in and edit.
While I still have some hand tacking of edges to do, in my book the women are done.
I can’t say the same for the children. The photos are a mix of studio portraits and casual snapshots. The latter are under or over exposed, but again I don’t have the negatives. The fabrics here are another linen napkin, an embroidered small pillowcase given to me by a friend, hand knit mittens and a hand embroidered bib that may have been made for me. There’s no one left I can ask.
I think it needs an edge treatment but I have nothing suitable.
So, one will go back in my undone pile, while two will go in the completed pile. These aren’t works to be entered in a show. For one thing, shipping would be difficult as they can’t be rolled up or folded. For another, they aren’t works of art, but family mementos. Maybe I can convince one of my cousins they are perfect for their family photo wall.
My version of tweaking involves my design wall, not meth, just so you know. Since last week I have been futzing with minor revisions to “The Left Coast” and a shaggy improv piece inspired by fabric designed by Katie Pasquini Masopust. Both works have spent time on the design wall, as I drop by to squint at them, add/subtract bits of fabric, and take a photo. This process was repeated several times each day. My husband calls it “staring at the wall.”
First, thanks for all the comments on “The Left Coast.” I really wasn’t trolling for compliments, but I appreciate all your kind words. I also appreciate the thoughtful comments as to how it could be made even better. Since I don’t want to disassemble the piece I will leave some ideas to apply to any other version I make. I’ve been playing with other ideas, especially the notion of adding something to the upper right hand side, the sky/water area. Since there are many rock formations off of Big Sur I decided to add some to my work. You’d think it would be a simple thing, but I’ve tried several permutations of color, shape, number and position.
“The Left Coast” with rocks
“The Left Coast” original
I know there are color variations between the above photos. Time of day makes a big difference in how this piece photographs, which is actually an unintentional reflection of the Big Sur itself. I’d love to get your reactions to the rock additions as I’ve looked at it so long I can’t tell whether it’s better or not.
The improv piece has two starting points; the fabric and the backside of a failed mixed media piece.
“Square Dance” fabric
The mixed media piece featured hand painted and printed fabric, but it was awkward and just didn’t work. As I balled it up to throw in the trash I looked at the backside and decided I liked it better than the front. Between the lively fabric and the backside of failure I decided to make a wrong side out piece, where the seam allowances would be on top. Further, I decided to sew raw edge fabric bits onto the whole thing. Since my blog is about the good, the bad, and the ugly, I’ll show you what resulted.
Part of my tweaking has involved pulling off fabric bits as I went overboard with them. After I reached the stage above I decided that major surgery was needed.
The above photo cropped to eliminate the right side.
I think I crammed too much into the space so it comes across as Fibber Magee’s closet. I’m not so old I remember the show, but my father used to tell me about it. Instead I’ll create two quilts. The right hand side will become a table runner with fabrics added to the ends. The left hand side will become an experiment with decorative stitching and any embellishments I can scrounge. It’s already a mess, so what the heck.
I would love to find discussions that address my current artistic quandary: at what point do you want to/should you defer to the opinions of others when they have a very different take on your work than your own? I refer specifically to work you feel much more positively about than others do. And you respect the opinions of these others.
Case in point, my current piece that I’ve named “The Left Coast.” It is based on my memories of Big Sur in California, though it’s meant to be evocative rather than representative. I chose to focus on the cliffs rather than the ocean.
I began with a drawing that I turned into templates after enlarging it with the old fashioned grid method. Then I went through my stock of hand dyed fabric.
You can see my high level math as I worked out the grid.
I had a subtle set of gray/purples from Vicki Welsh (she calls it thistle) that I thought would work well. Other gradients dyed by her and batiks completed my choices for the cliffs. The sky/water was more vexing. I tried three different blue and purple gradients, all of which overpowered the cliffs. I resorted to a pastel batik (no idea where I got it, maybe Lunn Fabrics?) that I spent a lot of time recoloring with Neocolor II pastel crayons. At one point I decided the piece was turning into a painting.
Original fabric.
The piece is now sandwiched for quilting. I am using a pieced top I could never get to work right for the backing. It’s part of my use it up campaign.
I have made at least three attempts to redeem it, but lack the energy to try again.
I suspect time will be the ultimate arbiter of whether “The Left Coast” is good art or variations on a bruise. It may be my opinion is like loving a man that all your friends say is bad news. When hindsight shows he was a jerk and it’s a good thing you didn’t marry him, your friends were right. Luckily, the quilt is just fabric and the consequences of misjudging its worth are minimal.
Bloomin’ is defined as “just a casual swear word” by The Urban Dictionary, and I used a few while quilting Rhody. As I recounted in an earlier post, I have been developing an impressionistic floral piece made with fabrics I had dyed, painted, and printed.
My original plan called for an undulating circular walking foot quilting design in several thread colors. Then, I decided to create the illusion of leaves around the edges. I had already reached the limits of walking foot quilting on the circular part, so I knew FMQ was the only way I could do leaves.
It turned out there was a lot more edge area to quilt than I had thought, so the FMQ went on for a few days, to allow my shoulders and temper time to recover. I tried several thread colors and weights to emphasize the leaves more, but I declared it was good enough when I found myself quilting the same leaves more than twice. Of course I managed to catch a bit of the excess backing fabric in the quilting, but the facing will cover that up. Only you and I will know about it.
I used seed stitch and french knots to give the flower center texture. It was backed with fusible fleece and satin stitched to the already quilted top.
“Rhody” about 33″ wide by 37″ high
Here are detail shots, plus a view of the back. As always, the back was made with whatever fabrics I had that were large enough. I pay attention to nice backs for working quilts, but not for wall art.
Of course the really boring chores – facing and hanging sleeve – remain. The fabrics are measured and cut, but sewing them on will await a time when I get stuck on my next new project and need thinking time.
The Snarky Quilter 
Sixteen Days In
Finally, this year I’m doing the 100 day project. What’s that? You choose a creative project, do it every single day for 100 days, and share your process on social media. The organizers define creative widely, but I chose to make 4 by 4 inch collages from my paper scraps and stamps. Why? I already had all the materials needed, the size makes it doable, and it’s a chance for more composition practice.
Since February 22, the official start date, I have made 16 small collages. Sometimes I made two in a day as I had all the supplies out, and then skipped the next day. I tried to spend no more than 15 minutes on each, and I think my creating times average that. Some days it took 5 minutes. Other days I mucked about for 30 minutes.
The first five days my compositions were all over the place. Then, a friend said one looked like a landscape, so after that I confined my compositions to landscapes. Of course I may change the parameters again, but for now I am in a landscape groove.
As I’ve settled into the project I’ve learned that some of my papers don’t take stamping ink well. I’ve expanded my definition of stamping to include stenciling, and am using found materials, such as bubble wrap and the edge of corrugated cardboard, for some stamps.
I see I use a lot of blues and aquas, and am fond of orange/blue combinations. Try as I might, subdued and neutral palettes just don’t happen. I end up throwing in a bright or two. For shapes, I seem to like circles, though that may reflect my determination to use a circle paper cutter I bought. Other shapes used depend on my paper scraps. I try not to change them too much. I had hoped to used more of the painted/printed tissue paper I have, but so far it hasn’t worked out that way.
I’m curious to see how the remaining 84 turn out, and what swerves the project may take. I must say that the limitations are freeing as they cut down on dithering. If you want to see what others are doing, check out #the100dayproject on Instagram.
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Tagged as 100 day project, collage, landscapes