Square Dance 30" x 36"

Square Dance is quilted, finished, mounted and ready to be delivered to the show next weekend.  I didn’t use the extra red squares I made but three of them found their way into 自乗 (Squared in Japanese–according to the Google Translator).

自乗 22" x 32"

These are the black/red/white and the beige squares that I cut up and combined.  The background and border are kimono fabric I bought 12-15 years ago (for what I don’t remember).   Seemed to fit the look of the piece.  What is interesting is that the characters

自乗

and the blocks seem to resemble each other.

That’s five pieces stared and finished in January!   A record for me I think.  The first three are have been named Calliope, Lights on the Midway, and Fun House Mirror for the Winter Carnival show that opens tonight at the Charlevoix Circle of Arts and the two above will hang in Squared and Squared Again at the Jordan River Art Center.

Now I can concentrate on my pieces for the “Squared and Squared Again” challenge.  After looking at it on the design wall I decided that the red, purple & green were too balanced:

So I made more squares to give red the dominant role.   The background is quilted and the squares are sewn to it.   I will be doing minimal stitching onf the squares becaue of all the layers.  But now I have to decide if I like it this way:

Or with the little squares (pinned for now) and if I like the little squares are red and brown the most effective colors?  How much red is too much?  Would green and brown be a better combo?

What do you think?

Rayna Gillman suggested that I cut them up & combine them.  I’ve been working on quilting two of the pieces and needed a play break so I grabbed the rotary cutter and chopped away.  I added a few new fabrics.  I like these much better:

Played with the layout  yesterday, adding two open squares to connect the closed squares.  Left it up on the design wall and came back this morning and added another open square and several 2 inch brown square.  It looks like a dance….a square dance.

Checked the values by looking at it in black and white.  I think I’m ready to commit.  But I will give it a day or so on the design wall.  In the meantime back to the neutral and black & white blocks.  I’m going to take Rayna’s advice and chop them up and combine them.  Would love to use them in the companion piece.

Initially thought about doing something in neutrals.  I have no idea where  that idea came from but I wasn’t all that happy with the blocks:

So they will go into the box to  be used as parts. At least  it was a worthwhile exercise.

Next I tried black & white:

Then black and white with red:

But wasn’t crazy about either of these.  Most of these will get cut up & re-used and that’s OK.

I liked the red fabrics in my box so I started to play with red, which led to playing with purple and then yellow green:

The larger blocks finish to 8″ and the smaller to 4″.   I’m auditioning backgrounds and will probably add some open squares (brown?) to tie the composition together.  Playing with these bright colors is like opening a fresh box of crayons.

Weekend tasks pulled me away for a few days and it was fun to come back to the free-pieced blocks.  More adding, subtracting, slashing and recombining.  Lots of energy here.  And surprise! I think I like the batik background that didn’t make the cut as the background  for an earlier block (before I slashed it):

still too busy

Moving the less busy area to the center seems to be the key. The trick will be cutting the background carefully so I can piece it to look remotely like it does pinned up.  I will lose some of the pattern in the seams.  Still, I want to piece it rather than applique.

In the meantime I will follow more of Rayna’s advice and let it sit on the design wall for a couple of days to make sure I still love it.

And do these look like a series to me?

This process (aka play, aka therapy)  is highly addictive.   Delving back into Rayna’s book I decided that I needed to add some black & white fabrics to the mix.  While digging I stumbled upon a  piece of mudcloth I’ve had forever–wow–that’s fun!  Made another strip set and stepped a little further out of my comfort zone with some aqua and brighter colors.   And I like it.

One chapter in Rayna’s book is titled “add, subtract, multiply and divide“.  She says:

The improvisational of cutting, sewing, slicing, recutting, taking apart and putting together pieces of fabric comes down to these three simple term.

The next chapter is “fearless color” where the theme is anything goes.

The block I was not terribly happy with became my guinea pig.  I would play with it until I was happier.

So I got out some more colors, took my rotary cutter to it and now I have six blocks I like a lot better.

Can you even find the old boring flock in these?  I can hardly find it myself.

I feel like I’ve recaptured by love of bright colors that figured so much into the dolls I made a long time ago.  Even though I am disappointed that I will not have a show this spring I now believe that maybe I was meant to take a break from deadlines to play and explore.

Stay tuned to see what I do with the blocks.

What's left of my first strip set

2011 didn’t end on a very positive note.  I found out that the show I had been preparing for was no longer on the gallery schedule.  It had fallen through the cracks when the curator I was working with left.  And I had assumed everything was set when it was not.  So after a little pity party I realized that I was no longer working under a deadline and I could take some time to play.  Coincidentally I had just received my copy of Rayna Gillman’s new book “Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts”.  I love Rayna’s first book “Create Your Own Hand-Painted Cloth” so I was really looking forward to her new book.

I read the book straight through and the one thing than kept coming through was that there were no mistakes, just opportunities.  Definitely an attitude I want to work on.  I’ve always found non-representational art to be a challenge.  I’m drawn to it but in the past have been less than happy with my attempts.

Following Rayna’s instructions I got out my box of my own hand-dyes, including the over dyes that still didn’t correct the problem, my screen prints, my own batik, block printing, etc.   All the stuff that was so much fun to do but the finished fabric just didn’t fit into my palette for my nature inspired work.  And there is rather a lot of it.    I grabbed some other fabrics–batiks and prints, and a few practice blocks and started to cut it all up.  What fun.

The first challenge was putting away my ruler.  I have worked with strip sets quite often (look at my masthead image) and for the past couple years have used a lot of insertion technique in my backgrounds.  But always with a ruler and the results were very geometric.  Cutting free was the first freeing technique.  I had never tried curved piecing (I was never a traditional quilter so I missed out on some of the techniques) but Rayna’s technique was easy to follow especially when she assured me that a 1/4″ seam allowance was not a requirement!  I had a blast with my first strip set.

First block pinned to a screen print

I’m not sure how much I like the first block.  I like the colors.  I have put it away for now to be part of something else. And the unsuccessful screen print will like be part of it too.

The second block was another story.  I loved it and went on to finish it–its quilted and stretched on a frame:

Untitled 24" x 16"

I made some of what Rayna calls traditional strip sets.   Here’s a couple of them:

They’ll come in handy.

I started on another set of blocks.  Then tried out some potential backgrounds:

on strip set

The strip set wasn’t doing anything for it so I tried a batik  that had the same feel:

still too busy

Not only was it too busy but I realized the blocks were too balanced and …..boring!   So I chopped it!

still too dark

This background is better but its just too dark for me.

This works for me.

I liked this one better.  Glad I am using the camera to see what I like.

Ready to quilt?

Now it is pieced and on the design wall while I decide whether or not it is done.  I can always slice it again.  And I need to consider how I am going to stitch.

Can you tell I am having fun?  Gotta run.  Need to pick up some plastic boxes to organize my scraps and set. Get Rayna’s book & find out why!

Like to play with fiber? Our newest product is going to contain a ton of fun new fibers and surfaces and we are looking for your creative ideas for how to use them. Things like silk cocoons, roving, bamboo batting, fusible web, and more. Email us today if you want to play!

It sounded like fun.  I signed up to try it and received a package of fun fibers, just like they said.  I decided to incorporate them in a silk evening bag.

Here are a couple of detail shots:

And the purse opened up to show the pretty lining.

We recently got permission to show our projects now that C & T has announced the new Artful Fiber product.

Its been a long time since I have posted a finished work.  But I’ve been working.  I made two prototype bags, both of which were donated to the hospital foundation holiday fundraiser.   I made a really nice taffeta flower for the black evening bag then forgot to take another photo.

This one is made from an UFO.  I added more buttons and some beads and, yes, donated it without taking another photo!

I’ve been working on art as well.  I have three pieces underway.  One  is nearly finished but I cannot share until May when the article is published.  I hope to have the others finished by the end of the month.

This week I had the privilege of teaching a fabric art workshop with the 7th grade class at St. Francis school in Petoskey.  I spent three class periods with the group of 20 students.   Each student had a 12 x 12 foamcore design board and a bag to hold scraps and supplies so it was easy for the students to keep their materials  together.  We used fusible fleece for a base and the students had fusible web to attach their design pieces.

Learning to fuse the fabric was easier for some than others.  I had to rescue a gunked-up iron more than once but fortunately no artwork was damaged.

I presented the first exercise from the Art Quilts 101 workshop that I’ve been teaching.  We talked about texture as an element of design–both actual texture and visual texture.  Luckily we  had a wide range of fabrics for the students to choose from including a lot of home dec fabric with good texture and the kids made some great choices.  One young man made particularly good use of the marbled fabric for his fish and chose a whimsical print for the seaweed:

This young man chose a bold background and kept his composition elements very simple:

We had beads, buttons and trims for embellishment on the third day.  Many of the girls got excited about embellishing and did so with some flair. This young lady spent a lot of time selecting her fabrics and her beads; I think her selection of a bold print for her vase shows she’s not at all timid about her art:

These simple flowers standout against the rich, silky background:

Another embellished composition; the artist was just getting into weaving with the fabric strips when we had to finish up. I think she is onto a good thing:

It was a very busy three days, setting up the art classroom for the activity and then putting it all away so it wouldn’t be in the art teacher’s way.  The kids were great about clean-up and got to work each day with impressive diligence.  There was a lot of energy in the room and the boys were just as engaged as the girls.

I brought the finished pieces home, squared them up and zigzagged the edges.  There were a few I would have loved to quilt. I hope they are as pleased with their final compositions as I am when they get them back on Monday.

I am going to show some of these images the next month when I teach Art Quilts to adults.