Thinking...

Just because I've been on vacation doesn't mean I'm not thinking about quilts.

I didn't bring my sketchbook, so I had to do these sketches on the back of my flight itinerary.

So even though I was still jet-lagged, I had to get into the sewing room to play with this idea. I'm not sure if this idea is worthwhile, but a week without working in the studio is just a tiny bit stressful.

I think this is the best picture of the whole vacation. My son started the car so he could get the air conditioner going, and my granddaughter had some fun.

A Cool Hack

I wanted to make sure the mini square inside a square blocks were the right size, so I figured out a neat "hack."

I made the outer square bigger than needed.

I taped a couple of rulers together so they would be the width of what I wanted, then I "outlined" the area of the inside square.

This had the added benefit of allowing me to check several measurements at once.

Just because instructions may tell you do to something one way, you should give yourself permission to do it in a way that works for you as long as the end result is the desired one.

I have deliberately NOT told you WHAT this refers to, or given you specific instructions to recreate it because the point of this post is to get you to THINK about how you work and how YOU can use the tools you already have to make a task easier.

Changed My Mind Again

If there is one thing I have learned in my creative life it's that if I am not sure about something I am doing, I should stop and let it sit.

This does NOT mean "put it in a drawer and let it become a UFO", oh no! It means I put whatever it is I am working on where I can see it BUT NOT where I can do anything about it. It's important to have to LOOK at it and NOT touch it. I need it to haunt me, to get under my skin, to imprint itself on my brain so when I am not thinking my brain will figure it out for me.

I was not really 100% convinced about the binding for the Sparkling Winkel quilt. So in the spirit of not-doing-anything-that-could-be-bad-or-mediocre, I decided to do a little bit more to clean up the studio. 

Since I had picked up two quilts from Janet Lee over the weekend, I had the excess backing fabric lying around.

 Hmmm... might you see where this is going?

I have enough fabric that I can just cut the binding and sew it onto the quilt to make it look like the backing is rolling over onto the front. From the back, the binding would be invisible, and since when you are cuddled up in a quilt the edges flop over anyway...  And I liked the idea that all the colors on the front of the quilt would surround it. It's darker than the light blue, and I find that doesn't bother me at all. The fabric has a lot of bounce and energy that is consistent with the front of the quilt. I think it's cool and fun.

Yeah I know what I said last time, but I changed my mind. I said there were no wrong answers, and that means there are a lot of good ones. I think this is one of them.

The Next Thing

I'm going to take a few days off. Christmas is coming, and I want to relax a bit and plan the next thing. There are a few things I have to do, like prepare the backings for the Holiday Quilt, the Sparkling Winkel Quilt and the Dark Majesty Quilt. Mostly I want to relax, lounge on the couch and read a few books, take it easy. Year End is always busy at work, and I don't want to stress myself out. I also bought a new laptop since my current one is running out of hard drive space, and getting slower and slower. I have to set up the new one, and I don't want it to be "work." I want to take my time about it.

I will be making another Scrap Slab Triangle quilt, and this time I want to play a bit more with the black and white side triangles. I want them to do a bit more work instead of sinking into the background. We'll see how that goes. I won't get started on that until January.

I also want to do some thinking.

I'm thinking about the next tutorial. Or I should say tutorials, plural, because what I have in mind is going to be rather complicated.

I'm thinking of doing a series of tutorials about free pieced letters, how I make them, and how I make them unique. Sure I've posted LOTS of pictures about them over the years, but this will be everything I have to say about them in one place.

I want to talk about not only how to make the letters, but how to make them special and give them some pizzazz. At some point I'll talk about getting them the same size and lining them up.

I also want to talk about "kerning" which is the space between them,

and all the other little things nobody tells you that can make all the difference in the world, like when to go cuckoo, like the second A in the word SALAD, above.

I can already tell you it will not be ONE tutorial. Right now I see at least five - because to me there are five groups of letters - and they are grouped based on their construction. I'll take one group at a time. There's a lot to say, and I can't fit all the things I can do with 26 upper case letters and the 12 or 15 or so lower case letters (the ones that aren't merely smaller version of their upper case relatives) in 20 MB of space, which is the size limit of file that can be uploaded to Etsy. So that's rolling around in my head.

I won't start writing the tutes until I know more about what I want to say, so don't you all start asking me questions about them just yet. Except that, yes, at least five, probably as many as 8 tutorials, and they will be sold separately.

I'm also thinking about getting you all taking pictures of things that grab your attention and using those pictures as colors stories or inspiration for your quilts. I'm THINKING about that because I have to figure out how to EXPLAIN something to you that I do without even being aware of it.

And EVERYBODY wants me to write a tutorial about using COLOR and dammit, if I can figure out a way to do it that makes it easy then I will do it, but really I think knowing how to use the fabric you already own is a better use of your time, and I already did that.

And for those of you visiting from Millie's blog because she is officially semi-retired from blogging, and want to find out how she is doing, she is just fine, as you can see.

I Am a Painter at Heart

The CEO of my company thinks I make quilts, but forgets I am an Artist at heart. He keeps telling me that when I retire I'm going to make quilts, which I find hilarious.

Why?

Because he's never asked. That's his assumption based on what he knows. He's wrong.

What I truly love, almost more than anything else, is pushing paint around with a brush. Oil paint. The kind that takes a half hour to set up, and a half hour to clean up, and demands its own ventilated space. Which I stopped doing because I didn't have the space, and I had an inquisitive cat who kept walking across my palette. You think I'm joking?

That was Gizzy, the cat who came before.

Anyway, the painting at the top of this post is an unfinished one of mine from probably 25 years ago.  Why post it now?

Because I have to remind myself sometimes, that at heart, I am an Artist first, quilter second. I don't draw because I have arthritis in my hand, but I really can draw. And just because I don't have the time or the space or the ventilation, I don't paint, but it doesn't mean I don't know how. I'm pretty good at that too. Knowing how to draw and how to paint really helps me in my quiltmaking, and not just in the ways you think (knowing color and value, etc.).

It's knowing when it's not working, when it needs to be scrapped and begun again. Or ripped out and redone. It's NOT working when it's not working and THINKING about what's WRONG and how to make it RIGHT. It's being PERSISTENT, and STUBBORN and not being afraid of what anybody else thinks. It's knowing when it's GOOD and to LEAVE IT ALONE and not overwork it (the top of the chair), and when it's beyond work, like the left side of the towel.

My problem in the painting above, since I know you are wondering, is that at the time I couldn't decide what it was. I was trying to paint using two techniques that didn't really go together - alla prima painting (all at once) and glazing (layers of thin transparent colors to build up a rich tone.) I'll leave you to figure out which parts are which, and which areas "work" and which don't. Parts of the painting are really terrific, the others, not so much.

It hangs in my living room because I like it, despite its faults.

I was just thinking...

Pat left a comment yesterday. She said, "I haven't moved for thirty years and expect to do so next year so I'm really watching your progress with interest."

This post isn't quilt related, but I had to have some kind of photo. Fortunately Millie volunteered to pose.

 Well Pat, I have something to tell you. START NOW! If you've lived in your current home for over 30 years I guarantee you have more stuff than you think you do. Start with one room, and go through every single thing. Every closet, every drawer, every box. Don't just rearrange. PURGE! If you haven't used it in over a year, get rid of it. If it's torn, worn, out-of-date, or it doesn't fit, get rid of it. You don't have to throw it away, you can donate it to Goodwill or your local Homes in Transition. But don't set it aside "for now."  In my experience, "for now" becomes "forever."

It's a whole lot easier to do all this when you aren't up against a deadline.

You all know I'm moving, but what you didn't know is that I've been on a de-cluttering mission for over two years. By the time I started packing four weeks ago, I knew that if it was in my home, it was coming. All I had to do was pack it, I didn't have to think about it.

So Pat, get going. Set a deadline, make a plan, make a schedule, and follow through.

Is it work? You bet.  Is it easy? Hell no. Is it (was it) worth it?  Ask me next week, but so far the answer is yes. Having done all the de-cluttering ahead of time has taken a lot of the stress out of it.

Back to the Black Box

I tell my coworkers that I do my best thinking when I'm not thinking.  The left-brained bean counters look at me cross-eyed, but the design engineers totally get it. There's lots of evidence that the subconscious really gets going when the conscious mind shuts down for one reason or another (fatigue, almost asleep, or during a monotonous task). The conscious mind is a kind of built-in critic. When it's otherwise engaged, the subconscious ideas get a chance to take over, so to speak.

So it was after my class on Saturday. I was totally exhausted, totally wiped out, but I don't often get the opportunity to shop at QT (since it's a 40 minute drive from my house), so I wanted to check out the luscious fabrics. I was looking around, not for anything in particular, when this lovely dark presented itself. 

I had originally conceived the Black box as being lit by a spotlight, with the top part of the quilt in the dark.  But I set that idea aside because I wasn't sure how I could get a transition from dark to light to "work." I didn't like what I had come up with, so when my subconscious said, MAKE IT DARK, I was in no position to argue.

Regular readers will know of my long-standing disdain for the color brown. But I've made quilts with white backgrounds, and quilts with black backgrounds. Been there done that.  Besides, this brown batik has some lovely colored bits I thought would set off the lighter, "Before you can think" words.  So I bought some.

Last night, although I should have been doing the dishes and a bit of grocery shopping, or folding the laundry or (gasp!) balancing the checkbook... I went into the studio and did a bit of sewing.

When my students asked me, on Saturday, "How do you do it? How do you have a full time job, make quilts, write a blog and teach?" My answer was, "The housework goes straight to hell."

I guess it's gonna be there for a while.