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Thanks!
Janis

Excursion to Lowell

I've been having problems posting any pictures here on my blog, which is why I haven't posted at all for awhile.  Sorry 'bout that.  If anyone else is experiencing this please LMK, especially if you know how to fix it.


Anyhooo... some nots on last Saturday's excursion to Lowell! Our small group of 6 fiber artists met at the Lowell Studio Lofts on Western Avenue.


 Tarja Cockell is one of our small group members and she has a studio there where you can see some of her beautiful work!  She's a vibrant, talented, local artist! Check her out at the next Open House  in March.


 I also got to meet some other fiber artists who are members of  Lowell Fiber Studio , one of whom was Linda Dunn, another incredibly talented local!


They are both in the same building, but it's a huge space, so if you're going to see them, Tarja is in Studio A 412, and Linda is in A Studio 512,  just one floor up.


Meanwhile I'm still involved in classwork in Pam Allen's online class.  Let's try it this way linking to Picasa: Here's another recent small art quilt that I made for the class I've been in, using only black and white fabric - no greys - you have to make your greys by way of illusion.

A Class With Pamela Allen!

My days have been pretty busy here between printing and art quilting. My Year of the Horse prints are drying and will show them here after they're off and running and corralled at their new destinations with members of The Baren.

But there's been lots of art quilting fun! I'm taking an online class with one of my favorite art quilter's, Pamela Allen.  She has a new Etsy site that's worth a trip over to see at https://www.etsy.com/shop/Pamelart.

It's a very exciting class that's a constant challenge, with new lessons every day. It's called ABOUT CONTRAST and  nothing is quite finished yet but I can show the beginning stages.

I started out cutting and laying in some of the basic shapes and realized before long that I needed a lot of different values of B&W fabric - more than I had.  So, up I went and printed up some new fabric with old hand-carved soft block....and as you can see below, it worked!

The entire foreground is my hand made on the fly fabric as well as the back of the chair on the left.

Finally, the top is finished with the "piecing" of it...it's actually fused on so it's really a fabric collage.  To finish it I will Free Motion Quilt it and then go in with some hand embroidery before  binding it in some way.  I'll probably stretch it onto some stretcher strips.   And I'm on to the next!

Putting Our Best Foot Forward

Once again, we proceed into the future in a new calendar year.  It never ceases to motivate me to take stock and look with fresh eyes at the path that I'm on.  Do I want to make any changes?  Do I want to shift any gears?  Am I satisfied with how how I'm handling things? What improvements do I want to make?

Last night I looked back and found that I had finished 20 quilts!  I was astounded at the count!  It's true that some of them were only about 8 to 10 inches, but only a few. Four of them were full sized quilts with backs that were up to the challenge of serving as fully reversible.  So, I'm pretty pleased with my level of productivity and did, indeed, succeed at my main goal going into 2013, both in terms of quantity and quality. I learned a tremendous amount and grew pretty ably into my own voice!

I still have a distance to go at a few unmet goals.  I'm slowly working on my 100 small quilts but toward that end I did create over 100 new digital images (!) to get my digital skills up to par (which still needs work) and to start a new library of my own digital images to use in my art.

This year, I will create my own website.  Although I've been slowly working at getting it together, I'm going to pick up the pace and throw myself into it. An important measure of success for me in the coming year will be to sell some of these products I've been laboring on.  Hence, the website is a critical component of the coming year's efforts.

I have a zillion ideas floating in and out of my head.  I never know which ones will land and demand attention, but I've already invested some time into digital art. This is one of these photos that has already sprouted some wings and you should see transformed into fiber this year.

Happy New Year to all of you who listen to me, watch my progress and take the time to comment on what I'm doing here.  Thank you for your participation and support! May we all put our best foot forward and reap the rewards that come of it!

Last Finish of 2013

Last finish of the year - winding down 2013 attempting to finish so many things!

 

  I've been at this one for over a month and it's finally finished and bound with a facing on the back.  Full size is 41.5" X 32.5", but these are smaller detail shots.

 

Hand dyed shibori on cotton. Machine quilted and hand embroidered with running stitches.

Hand dyed and batik.

Sections hand painted with Jacquard fabric paint, embellished with hand carved designs.
 

Goodbye to a year that had its fill of grief and sorrow, but also had many good times and a lot of persistent labor on and progress in my art!

 

I started off the year with a carving that foretold the focus of the rest of the year.

 

This year I entered my first submissions to a SAQA quilt show and was accepted by the curator !

 

I also showed at the Boston Modern Quilt Guild Exhibit at the LQF 2013.

 

We've wound down a group of book artists who finished our second collaborative book, this year was a fiber art book.  You can see my finished book here, although I still can't publish all of the pages just yet.

 

I've submitted a small art quilt that will travel with the SAQA Trunk Show during 2014.

 

I finished a quilt for my grandson Jack that I still haven't taken a finished picture of!  And for Josh.

 

I started a new small, private group of local art quilters which has turned out to be a fabulous collection of talented women, all doing their own unique fiber art. Collectively we have some high hopes for our future!

 

I HAVE BEEN BUSY!  And that's just some of the highlights and I've been sitting around on this computer still in my bathrobe for waaayyy too long. 

 

I better start preparing my New Year's Eve Dinner.  On the menu: Ceasar Salad,  Onion Soup, Beef Empanadas, and Fruit Salad with Gingerbread Cookies for dessert! 

 

 

 

"The Lake"

I keep thinking I need to find some new places to photograph but I  find myself drawn back to "The Lake" over and over again.   It never loses its appeal.  It's always ready to smile for the camera - not shy at all.  It just stands there looking back at me.  Why do I think I need to go somewhere else when this place always has the ability to capture your imagination, to make you stand there gaping at its natural beauty and aura despite all of its commonplaceness. I'm on my way to somewhere and suddenly the place calls to me, "Stop!" and I park and pull out my camera. Gotchya!

Historical quilts on exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

In the spirit of celebration, I share with you:

Historical quilts on exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

A Rippling Quilt

I've been working on an abstract piece that has a lot of quilting going on in  straight lines across the width of the quilt, both handwork and machine stitching.  There's also a variety of fabrics into the mix on this one, some are pretty thick pieces of hand painted fabric, some burlap and white cotton are commercial fabrics, the rest are hand dyed fabrics I made months ago.

When I finished I noticed that there was enough rippling happening to disturb me because it would keep it from hanging flat.  So, I went onto the SAQA list group and asked for some advice.  It turned out there's one way to avoid it that I learned - stitch only in one direction!  Allright!  For the next time.  But there were a few good options to straighten it out after the fact as well.  I tried the path of least resistance first - the simplest method was to "block" it.  And it worked  - hooray!  Easy, too.  Just took a lot of time to put that many pins into it.  If I hadn't just picked up a new box of pins, I would have had to run out to get them - lucky me and my impulse to buy these little accoutrements to the quilting habit.

Here it is all pinned up and drying:

I still have to bind or face it and I may have to do it again afterwards but that's not a problem - it will lay flat when it's finished.

Serendipity Study One

Believe it or not, it took me the entire day yesterday to make this little 10" X 7" art quilt.  I started with a gelatin print I made a few months ago. First, I made the stencil and it went from there.

Gelatin Print

 I traced my stencil onto parchment paper, reversed it, went over the image again in pencil, adhered it to fabric that was adhered to Misty Fuse, cut it out after it cooled down. Same technique for each of the shapes.  Ironed each piece onto white cotton then free motion quilted it between batting and backing. I then "faced" it to finish:  facing tutorial.

Art Quilt - fused raw edge.

Close Up of art quilt.

Pineapple Drawing

After  a nap yesterday, I finished my pineapple drawing.  Now, I'm trying to figure out how to use Photoshop to select just the image and place the top on top of the bottom - Grrrrr.... I figured out how to select the pixels with the quick lasso wand but not how to save it.

At the Drawing Board

So many things on my To Do List! I've been working on 3 different quilts and starting another in my head now.  All I've done so far on it is to begin a drawing.  My attention span for drawing seems so limited these days.  I used to spend hours on a drawing with no problem, but I have to do it in stages now.  Here's a pic of what I accomplished today so far...out of practice!  But good enough to turn into a template for a quilt element.

I guess that's why zentangling has been my favored form of drawing in the past few months. I often do my zentangles in bed and find myself sitting up in bed sound asleep, pen in hand, with ink on my sheets!

 

This might explain my nightmare!

 

Other times I sketch possible free motion quilting designs:

 

Then again, they may become more zentangles:

 

 



                                            

Multi-block Acorn and Oak Leaf Print

This is a multi-block print I made a short while ago.  All of the stages are here except the acorn which was the last to be added.

Seeking order out of the chaos.

I've been feeling my way through my life one foot in front of the other, sometimes dragging myself into the next moment.  I thank the gods and goddesses for my art that focuses me on making some semblance of order out of the chaos.  Here's a detail of a piece I've been working on -
 It needs a hawk or two.

 

 



Quilt As You Go - The Process

I started this quilt out with blocks squared to 12 ".

Laid out on the table is a row being quilted, complete with top, batting and back.  More rows hang on the design wall behind it. When the quilting is completed on all rows, you can begin to assemble the rows into a whole quilt.

Below, 2 rows have been joined together and flipped to the backside:
Next, I trimmed back the layers on the left side.

 

Next I pulled out the batting and flattened it out.

 

 

 Then I used my long cutting edge to feel for the underlying edge and mark it by turning it on it's edge to mark out a line that's slightly perceptible. 

 

 

 Below, if you look closely you can see the line left behind to use as a cutting line.

 

Cut along that entire row. 

 

Sigh...this is not a perfect world we live in.  We need to be flexible to overcome some of the difficulties we encounter and in quilting, I think it’s key to success.  I’m sharing with you some pictures of what can go wrong in the Quilt As You Go process and one example of how I adjusted for my flaws.

It all seemed so right until I got to the end of the row and realized I had trimmed it too short on the left side!  Well what could I do?  I couldn’t add onto the piece I’d cut  - it would not look very good at all.  So I added another length on that side.



After that seam is sewn, I flipped it over and folded it together with the seam of the right side and sewed along the entire edge for another seam on that side.

 



 

You can put as many lines in as you want.

 

 

 Voila!

 

A Print for my Brother

The Hawk - God Of The Sky

A hawk that landed in a tree right outside our window and waited long enough for me to get  find my camera and capture this extraordinary event.

 

 

Saturday morning I lost my youngest and last surviving brother to suicide. Like so many of us, my relationship with both my brothers was difficult in so many ways, yet, we had deep familial bonds that always survived the painful struggles.

My sister, SIL and I were standing under trees across the street when the ME van carried him off'  We were so focused on the van that we did not see what was taking place above us all.  But after I was settled in at home, many hours later, my partner Bill, who was standing alone at the time, told me what he saw.  Flying above the "shed" that was my brother's man cave where he was found, was a very large red hawk circling around and around.  It took my breath away to hear this.  A bird has always made itself present when other relatives have passed on.  But never a hawk.  I was immediately struck with the thought that it was either my father come to lead his soul onward, or it was Larry's spirit finally freed from this earth and flying around in the sheer wonder of it.

 

 

I shared this with my sister-in-law, who then told me that when my brother, a mason, was building a wall beside his house, a monster of a hawk flew in and landed on the wall beside him. 

The hawk is a spiritual messenger, and upon a Google search, I just learned that according to Spirit Animals & Animal Totems ,  "In Ancient Egypt, the belief was that a hawk-headed spirit called “ba” would fly off a mummy to come back among the living as a hawk or swallow. The hawk symbolized a part of the soul that would be freed up after death and come back to the world of the living in the shape of a bird. It was also the animal of choice for the god Horus, god of the sky, who was represented with a hieroglyph depicting a falcon or hawk."

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was parking my car in the local supermarket when I nearly jumped out of my skin.  Something large and red caught my peripheral vision and I turned to see this huge hawk barrel into the wooded area beside the parking lot and disappear into a tree.  I was astounded to see this in such a busy place...who would think of a hawk hanging around the parking lot of the busiest place in town!  No one else seemed to notice it, though.  I appeared to be the only one standing outside my car with a jaw dropped to my knees dumbstruck.

This bird symbolizes a divine connection and acute observational and intuitive powers.  I'm going to be thinking about my newfound relationship with the hawk.  Perhaps the hawk is my new spirit totem who is trying to teach me something. 

 I'd very much like to think of my father and my brothers circling above with large strong wings reveling in their free and joyful nature! 



Autumn Cheer!

I'm delighted that my Montauk Daisies are in bloom!  It's their first year here and quite a lot of flowers for a first timer! Such a cheerful addition to the autumn garden.

 

Perennial bloomer Nipponanthemum nipponicum, a cousin of the chrysanthemum.

Just for a good chuckle, I had to share this little humerous tidbit - scroll down to the bottom of this site to see these incredible Mammo Grahms .

Autumn is here....

Autumn is here waving it's magic color wand over our landscape. 



Birch Leaves at Ipswich River Sanctuary

Turtle Moon Impressions: Another Share and a word about ego.

Turtle Moon Impressions: Another Share and a word about ego.: I subscribe to an artist's newsletter that I often get too busy to read but today I opened it up and it was so good I wanted to share it...