Purple Lilac

The purple lilac is the state flower of New Hampshire, and they are in bloom now. These came from my back yard and are currently filling my house with their wonderful fragrance.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day.

This is my Mom and her DH along with my quilt, Laughing Out Loud. It's really cool to have a Mom who totally "gets" you.

What If?

A few weeks ago I mentioned that if it hadn't been for my cat Millie, I wouldn't be a quilt blogger. I wouldn't have met my friend Helen, who lives in Australia. Back in 2010 Helen and I did a private quilt swap. I sent her this, which got me started on a series of Rules quilts.

Well, Helen wrote to me the other day asking where in the US I lived. (Helen and I figured out we live 14,500 miles away from each other.)

I live in the Northeast, an hour's drive north of Boston MA.

Helen wrote that she and her family were considering a trip to Disneyland and wondered if I were close by so we could visit.  As you can see from the photo above, I don't live anywhere near either Disney park.

However, if Helen is going to travel 11,500 miles to visit the US, I am more than willing to travel 3,000 miles to meet her.  We don't know if this is going to happen, because the timing of the trip is a big factor, but I hope we can pull it off.

Like I said, you never know what can happen if you step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

**OKAY! I screwed up. Disneyland is in California and Walt Disney World is in Florida. I made the little labels wrong.  My son lives in LA so traveling across the US to meet my friend in California is not a bad deal since I get to visit my son at the same time. And seriously folks,  if Helen and her family are willing to travel 11,000 miles to California, I am not going to ask them to travel any farther to Florida.

Not Quilty

This is all the sewing I've done in the last week. It's a curtain on the porch door in the hallway of my building.  The last one was all faded, dusty and dry. Now it makes me smile whenever I walk by it.

The rest of the weekend was spent cleaning and doing normal boring junk, like cleaning out the freezer. It's amazing how much better I felt after that was done.

I also planted some pansies and wave petunias in pots and set them on the porch so I could see them from my dining room.

It's going to continue to be a non-sewing week. My office desk is piled high with paper, and that has got to go.

Better Letters

Creativity is a funny thing. There is always a bit of a letdown after the completion of a big project. Most creative people already know what project they'll work on next, but starting can be a bit difficult. We -know- we should be doing it, but we tend to procrastinate. We do other things, like clean the studio, but mostly we putter around, avoiding the thing we know we should be doing.

One of my bosses put his finger on it years ago when he asked me "Have you started that new drawing yet? I think you have to get going. When you're not drawing you get snarky."  I liked this guy, and he had verbalized something I hadn't been aware of. I was happiest when I was creating.

I'm not happy with the low contrast letters and have to drag myself into the studio to work on them. When I do work on them, I don't work consistently or well. I putter. I dilly-dally.

I knew I was getting into that snarky place when even the lovely weather we had on Sunday didn't make me feel good. Another big clue was when I found myself rewriting a section of my book in my head as I was driving to work the other morning.

So last night I did NOT go into the sewing studio. Instead I collected my nicely printed pages, sat down in the big recliner (so Millie could sit next to me), and started editing. Since I finished the first draft, I read William Zinsser's book On Writing Well. Now I am putting his advice to work, striking out excessive words, many useless adjectives and adverbs. (See that crossed out "many"? Zinsser says it's unnecessary, and he's right.)

I woke up this morning much happier and in a better mood.  I'm actually feeling almost gleeful!



P.S. Thank you Mr Zinsser, and you too, Mr King.

Inspiration

When I was in Art School I spent a lot of time in the art section of the library pulling one book after another off the shelves, discovering artists. In this way I discovered Frank Stella. He's an American painter, born in New England in 1936. When I discovered him around 1974, I was entranced. If you do a Google images search on Stella, you will be presented with hundreds of images of his work. You can see some other images here, here, here, here, and here.

This painting, which is ten feet in diameter (3.048 m) now hangs in my local art museum, the Currier Museum of Art.

As soon as I found out it was there, (or more to the point, here),

I went over to check it out in person. I was not disappointed. 

So what does this have to do with quiltmaking, aside from the fact that I'm always harping on you to get out to your local art museum regularly and look around?

Go on over to the sidebar and read the "About Me" section. Notice how I write "I love working with abstract shapes and color," and "I love the graphic quality of quilts." Now go back and look at Sinjerli, Variation 1 (the painting).

Yeah.

Because I am always interested in how we get from A to B, I wondered if what it is I like best about quilts was directly influenced by Frank Stella's paintings, since I didn't start making quilts until 1977.

That's a very interesting idea. I am going to have to think about it.

Almost There

I was watching the finale of Project Runway Season 11, so I wasn't sewing as busily as I might have been otherwise. I need to replace that "I" in "IN" and I have to make an X, but I already know what fabrics I will use for that.

Yeah, these fabrics don't sing for me, but it's always a good idea to step out of your "comfort zone" and experiment. You never know what'll happen. Sometimes something good will come of it.

Hey, if I hadn't stepped out of my comfort zone and started a blog for my cat Millie, I wouldn't be here.

Really.

Low Contrast Doesn't Have to Mean Boring

I'm not against low-contrast quilts. Julie has put together a lovely low-contrast flimsy she's called Beach Grass. You can see it here.

The center panel of this chessboard is relatively low-contrast. These two soft greens provide enough contrast for this checkerboard. The chessboard is livened up by the pink inner border. Without it, the piece would be less interesting.

Monochromatic quilts are by definition low-contrast. The Sunshine yellow quilt I made for my son has at least a dozen fabrics, with a few darker and lighter to liven up the surface and make it interesting.

Even the Red Sticks is a (relatively) low-contrast quilt. It's high "chroma" or "intensity" because red in an intense color, but check out the border - true low contrast.

My sister made this all-pink quilt for a little girl. Sure there are greens, purples and blues in it, but it's predominantly PINK and quite charming.

Here's another monochromatic quilt, in all blues. Nothing boring here. (My son said the quilt was heavy to hold up like that and I should HURRY UP and take the picture. That's why he doesn't look happy).

I keep using this word "interesting." It's because the eye likes contrast, and is attracted to areas of contrast - which define things. If it's all the same, the eye moves to something else. If it's got contrast, the eye stops to look around.

Low Volume, Low Key, Low Interest

For me most "low volume" quilts are so laid-back they're comatose.  There. I said it.  If you don't like it, I say (as the French do) "Tant pis."

To each his own poison. If it works for you, fine, but working with my "low volume" (or as I prefer to call them "low key") letters bores me to tears. In fact, they bore me so much, I'm not even going to fix that "a" in "Crayons."

(I sewed these two letters on the wrong seam and got "NO" instead of "ON". Sigh)

What I AM GOING TO DO, however, is have some fun with this.  I deliberately selected these fabrics because I wanted a snoozefest (Now there's a contradiction in terms!) The next version will be slightly snappier. The version after that will be somewhat more energetic, and so on, until the last version will be a real riot of over the top noise.

Heh!

I can't wait!


(Have I ever told you I think all artists are subversive by nature?)

The Black Box, finito.

The Black Box is finished, and hanging at Quilted Threads in Henniker NH, and it looks great. Here, finally, is a good picture of it. You should be able to enlarge this photo to see the details. This quilt is completely original, designed and sewn by me, Lynne Tyler. It is completely free pieced, made without patterns, templates or paper piecing.

Like all my quilts, this one is best seen in real life. Pictures don't do it justice. At QT it's hung on a wall so you can stand right in front of it and check it out. Chris did a terrific job quilting it. You can see more of her photos of the quilt here.

I'll be teaching classes on free pieced letters and free pieced houses at Quilted Threads this summer.

More Ideas

We visited Annmarie Gardens last week, and in the Art Room was this mosaic.

If you look closely you'll see it was made from recycled materials.

Yes, bottle caps, jar caps, yogurt covers and tin can lids.

Here's another view.

I liked the use of old paint cans as storage bins too.

It wasn't the only use of recycled materials that attracted my attention. I love these table parts.  These are definitely examples of out-of-the-box thinking.

HOME!!

As some of you know, I spent the last week in Maryland, visiting family.

I live in New Hampshire, and usually travel to Maryland on Amtrak. I board the Amtrak train in Boston.

I heard about the tragic events at the Boston Marathon as they happened and followed the news closely over the last few days. I did worry about getting home as I had to travel through Boston.

I am safely home, back in New Hampshire.

I traveled back on Thursday, and the large police presence when I got off the train at the Amtrak station in Boston last night would have aroused my curiosity had I not been so utterly exhausted and eager to get home. (By the time I got off the train photographs of the two "suspects" had been released.)  At any rate, today Amtrak service between New York and Boston has been temporarily suspended. Had I been trying to get home today I would have been stranded.

So for all of you who have been wondering, I am home, and I am fine.

And no, I didn't see Bonnie Hunter speaking locally last night.

Inspiration

Sometimes, it's just the color that hits you.  This is a dark blue-violet with violet, lime-y green, aqua and sort of a cerulean blue with red. There isn't a color scheme program on the planet that's going to select these colors because they aren't based on some "rule."  But it's a terrific color combination that can have a lot of sizzle.

Then again, now that I think of it, the colors remind me of this.

funny how that works.

Inspiration

I love checkerboards, so when I saw this building, I had to take a picture of it. I like the rhythm of the window and non-window areas.