Fabric!

 

After every big project, it's only normal for there to be a letdown. I've had two big highs lately - the renovation of my bathroom and Julie's visit - and I'm experiencing the letdown. I can't seem to get much of anything going. Or I can start, but I can't seem to generate the steam to continue any one project.

Let's face it, I've expended a LOT of energy in the first part of the year and I've run out of "gas." I need time to recharge. So I've been doing a lot of resting, reading (more on that in a bit) and not too much else.

I did, however, do a little bit of fabric shopping. I've got a pink bird quilt I'll need backing and borders and binding for, and there was a sale...

I told you I was reading. Victoria Finlay has written several books - about color (the history of pigments, not how to use it), jewels and now fabric. I'm very much enjoying the journey.

I may not be doing much sewing, but I have been doing a lot of THINKING. I want to update my tutorial about using fabrics - Making Your Fabric Work For You (aka MYFWFU). I know everybody thinks color is the most important thing, but I think if you know how to use fabric, with all the print and pattern, then you can get a lot more bang for your buck. A lot of it is how you see your fabrics (Julie and I had a very illuminating text exchange this week about that) and I want to expand and improve that idea, so I have been doing a lot of THINKING about what I need to say and how I want to say it. Don't hold your breath, it's going to take a while.

Lastly, I really have to write the Story of Millie, and how she changed my life. Many of you know the whole story, but a lot of you don't. Millie's story is amazing, and I want to tell it. If it wasn't for Millie, you wouldn't be here. So I have to think about that. Millie's blog is still up, and if you have a lot of free time, you can start at the beginning and read forward. I promise you will be astonished, that you will laugh and cry. It starts in August 2006 and ends in February 2022. In between is The Cat of a Lifetime.

When Lynne Meets Julie

I "met" Julie sometime between 2007 and 2008 while we both participated in Tonya Ricucci's online class of free pieced letters. I had never had a quilt quilted, and it was Julie who recommended Chris Ballard to quilt the quilt of mine that is featured in Tonya's book.

Julie and I both have words on the cover of Tonya's book. Mine is GROW...

Julie made the word LEAP.

We became buddies online commenting on each other's work making letters, and she ordered a kitty quilt in August of 2008. I remember that particularly, because I received her request the day after the death of my goddaughter Violette.

We began to communicate directly. Emails flew back and forth with regularity.
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Selvage quilts became popular at that time, and I made a few tote bags with them. Julie asked if I would make one for her in the spring of 2010.

We must have been getting really friendly, because Julie sent me this quilt for my birthday that year. Around the same time, we decided to do a quilt swap. I had made two Rules quilts, one as a mini swap with a friend in Australia, the other with Tonya herself. Julie wanted a Rules quilt too, but she wanted extras - asterisks, butterflies, and the way I used multiple fabrics in each letter.

The result was the quilt, "No Rules For Julie." It has everything she asked for. I held nothing back. I went all out. Originally I had expected the quilt to take me a week, but I had earlier that summer discovered the magic of using the prints in the fabrics to do what Wanda Hansen describes as "the heavy lifting."

Each letter took much longer the new way. I worked on the letters when I was on vacation one week in July (Wimbledon was on TV that week, and it was the year of John Isner's historic three day match.) At the end of five full days of work, I had only made 33 letters. That's six letters A DAY! I worked ALL DAY, EVERY DAY!

It took me a full month to complete the top. I even put myself in the quilt - that orange bird, I told Julie (who had said she was not particularly fond of orange) was her "noisy friend from New Hampshire."

The quilt is one of my very best, and hangs proudly in the foyer of Julie's house. Originally planned to hang in her studio, that all changed when her husband Larry first saw the quilt. "He looked, and looked, and looked..." I remember Julie telling me. "He never does that." He was disappointed when she told him the quilt was going to hang in her studio, and changed the location.

When the quilt was finished, I brought it over to show my Mom. She was very quiet for a few minutes as she took it all in. Then, "F**k." [yes, mom said THAT four letter word.]

"F**k"  another pause. She shook her head.

"F**k". Then she sighed and looked up at me. "Is she worth it?"

"Yes, Ma, she is."


And today, even more so. Julie is my very best friend.

What I Will and Won't Do

Yesterday, what I didn't show you was this photo. I didn't show you because I didn't like it. Readers told me they liked the beige.

Well that's nice, but it just doesn't work. For one thing, do you think that beige looks strong enough to hold up that barn? Nope, it "reads" as a hole." It is too wimpy. See that window over on the left? Does it look like the background? Like you are looking THROUGH something? It does not. The beige is too insubstantial and not strong enough. Not physically strong to appear to be sitting on the ground and supporting the roof and other elements. It looks flimsy. You can disagree all you want. You will still be wrong. Don't bother trying to convince me otherwise.

It's kinda funny. I tell folks that I have no interest whatsoever in making pictorial quilts because dammit, if I want a picture I will paint one. Because, yeah, I can do that. And I know how to draw too. (See the photo of one of my drawings on this page if you don't believe me.) So I balance a fine line when I choose to interpret a real barn in fabric. Intellectually I know it won't match what's in my head, but when what comes out in fabric doesn't match reality some part of me rebels.

I will tell you that I have no interest in making a 100% accurate representation of my brother's barn. And yet, I want to come close, but I don't want this barn to look like it came out of a kid's coloring book. (I like to think I'm more sophisticated than that.)

It occurs to me that I have never spoken about two (ok, three) absolute rules in my quilts that I always follow.

1. Use the fabric as it is. Which means I will use fabric I can buy somewhere. I can fussy cut it or use the wrong side, but I will not dye it or otherwise tinker with it. That makes it all the more challenging. If I run out of something, I will search through my stash to find something else that can work as well in its place, not whine that I can't finish because I need more of the exact same fabric.

2. I will not paint or dye my own fabric. Why? Because, what the fart? If I want to paint, I'm gonna PAINT!

(begin rant)
 Frankly, I feel that a perfect patchwork pictorial or painted quilt is a misapplication of the medium. What that means is that I think it's a waste of time and materials. Because if you want a picture, paint one. I cannot tell you how many pictorial quilts I see (and many have prize ribbons hanging from them) that have bad drawing mistakes. Mistakes in proportion, in shading and composition. Bad, bad, bad. And I am not impressed with a quilt that has been traced from a photo, hand colored and quilted. Again, so what? Don't bother arguing with me about this either.
(end rant)

3. Patchwork only. No applique, no embellishments. Frankly, limiting myself to patchwork is more challenging, more technically demanding and more interesting. I love the Baroque style, but I hate the Rococo. If you can tell the difference, then you'll understand. Applique and embellishments are just too much. Yeah, I know I go overboard with ideas, but I don't go overboard with frou-frou busy junk all over my quilts. (My apologies to all you talented applique artists out there. You do great stuff, but it just isn't my thing.)

4. I quilt by check, which means somebody else quilts my quilts. Which means they do what I want. My patchwork is the STAR OF MY SHOW. I don't want somebody else to muck it up with cutesy crap. I do not ever want anybody to look at one of my quilts, and think the quilting is the best thing on it. That's like saying the frame is better than the painting in it. So "threadwork" is a no-no in my quilts. Are you making a quilt or doing embroidery? Make up your mind. They both don't belong in the same place.
(Yeah, I know this is four. I can count. I'm an artist, not a bean counter.)

Opiniontated little sh*t, aren't I?  Yeah, I know.

So where does that leave my barn? Well, this is what I am currently leaning toward...

.
here is a closeup

and that comes from this...

Yup, I cut 1-1/2" crosswise strips of this fabric and then sewed them so the stripes did not align.

I originally planned to use this as the shingles on the wall above the barn door, but they were too busy for an area that needed to be dark.

This is the kind of thing I keep talking about in my Make Your Fabric Work For You tutorial,
how to pay attention to what your fabrics can do for you by looking at them in fresh ways. Like I tell my students, "don't be so literal" when choosing fabrics for your barn block. Just because you see fabric that looks like siding doesn't mean you can ONLY use it as siding or fencing. Stripes and ruler fabrics can work just as well.

WELL!! I certainly didn't know ALL THAT was coming when I sat down to write about where I am in this barn block. You'll see more, because my self-imposed deadline is to have this barn block panel finished to show at the next Build A Barn class at Quilted Threads in Henniker NH on July 22. That class is sold out, and there is a waiting list for another class that will be scheduled later.


But hey, you'll get to see all the steps from now until I get something I like, and as usual, I'll tell you what I am thinking, and how (and why) I get from point A to point B (and B-yond).

(I love a good pun.)

MYFWFU Tutorial on Sale at Etsy!

It's Official!

My new tutorial, "Making Your Fabric Work For You" is ready and for sale at my Etsy shop, here.

It's available for ten US dollars and is an immediate download, so you can get started right away. I'm very excited. I hope you like it!

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I had help from my friends Julie Sefton and Allison Tom who proofread and helped me edit the tutorial and transform it from a bunch of pictures with no text into what it is today. Together we refined, rearranged and re-rearranged everything in it so it was much more cohesive and thorough. We even added 17 pages!

Allison is a beginner quilter, and her questions often made me realize (as my friend the Selvage Fairy put it once) "there are things that you know that you don't even know that you know." In other words, Allison put me right on the spot. "Well on page X," she wrote to me one day, "you say this. But on page Y, you say the opposite. Which is it?" Um.

Allison lives in Vancouver, and I am across the continent in New England. We spent at least four hours on the telephone talking about this. Julie is an experienced quilter, and knew where I was going with this, but Allison's questions really made me focus. I sent her the original presentation without any text. Two days later I sent her the presentation after I added the running commentary I usually give when I presented it to a class.  "I learned so much from looking at the pictures," Allison wrote back later,  "But with the text I learned three times as much."

After I had finished the tute, and was preparing the marketing photos and blurbs, Allison asked if she could write a few words.  Here they are:

"I asked Lynne if I could write a brief paragraph about this new tute for her blog. I'm the beginning quilter who's been editing and commenting on the "Making Your Fabric Work For You" tutorial.  (I worked on the Liberated Birds too!)

"Now, I've been reading Lynne's blog for well over a year and have read many old posts too.  The day by day discussions of the challenges of these wonderful quilts captivated me.  There was so much to learn just following the blog.  But the tutorial has serious value added.  Of course, lots of information that's liberally sprinkled through the blog is pulled together here and presented in an orderly manner.  Conversations that started in the blog or in her classes are completed and filled out. 

"But Lynne never stops at "that'll do," as we all can see every day. She's created new slides and new text and the result is a careful, step by step exploration of her strategies to explore and use her fabrics to create those beautiful combinations; to make you look and look and look; and, of course to tell a joke or two along the way.  This is a great investment in learning to see fabric, color and pattern and to create more beautiful quilts."

Thanks Allison. I know damn well I couldn't have said it better.

:-)