Color Inspiration

You never know where or when something around you will inspire you.

Julie and I found these gorgeous reddish orange tiles on the subway in Boston.

"Oh," you say, "those are just plain ordinary subway tiles. There's nothing exceptional about them."

Oh really?

Fun!

In addition to lots of quilt-related fun, Julie and I toured the Zimmerman House in Manchester NH. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Julie had already visited two other Wright houses, but she said this one was a lot different from the others.  This is the view from the driveway as you enter the property.

(The house is situated diagonally on a square lot.)

This is the view of the house from the beautifully landscaped garden.

 This is a selfie of Julie and I. When I picked her up at the hotel that morning she took one look at me and said, "I guess we both got the pink memo!"

I made the year numbers for the signature panel on the back of our quilt.

Julie & Lynne

O.M.G., did Julie and I have a good time together! We looked at quilts, talked about quilts, shopped for fabric to make quilts, took pictures of quilts and even made a quilt together. This is part of a signature panel for the back of this quilt:

Julie and I hadn't trimmed the quilt before we took these photos.

I showed Julie how to make a bird, then she made two more on her own. She thought they were great fun and said she'd made more when she got home.

Julie made the reddish bird on the left, and mine is the blue one. (Julie is taller than me in real life too.)


Julie and I "shopped in my stash" to find fabrics to use as the backing. They'll be mostly black with other colors, and the name panel above. I have to make the year, 2014, to add to the panel.

Clare, you were right! Julie and I had to sew together. We did, and we had a ball!

Missing U Finish

The Missing U blocks have been assembled into a flimsy. It's about 66 x 83 inches or so. It has been renamed "From Manchester to Memphis" as it will be going home with Julie. I'm happy with it.

Guess what Julie and I did yesterday?  We went to my favorite quilt shop for some retail therapy.  How much retail therapy?  We were there for three hours and we both carried shopping bags filled with fabric when we left. I showed off the Crayons quilts and left the Bright Crayons to be hung on display.

Then we went to lunch.

Julie will lend me her new quilt to show my students in July, so she brought it with her. Julie likes to take photos of her quilts in interesting settings, so on the drive home we found a lovely park for a photo shoot.

The Mashed Potato Crayons is really a pretty quilt, when it isn't overshadowed by its bolder cousins.

Black quilts are notoriously hard to photograph, but I think Julie and I finally got a good one of the Black Crayons. You can even see the quilting in this photo. (What you can't see is me standing on the park bench, holding the quilt up!)

Quilts and Color in Boston

"Magnificent Freaking Quilts" is exactly correct. Those quilts in the Quilts and Color show at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston are amazing. They are SPECTACULAR.

Julie and I had a lot of fun with the sock kitty Millie, but these quilts were beyond anything we expected.

Sure, you say. I've got the catalog. I have pictures of the quilts in the show. I don't need to go to Boston. See this quilt below... an Irish Chain. No big deal, right?

You would be dead wrong. The pictures don't do these quilts justice. Forget about looking at the detailed quilting stitches. IN PERSON, these colors VIBRATE.

In person, these quilts SHIMMER. It was absolutely astonishing. And it has nothing to do with the intensity of the colors. It had to do with the way the colors affected each other. And this cannot be captured in a photograph. This effect happens in your eyes. Even Millie was agog.

Take this basket quilt, for example. Pretty standard stuff, right? When I saw this in the catalog, I just turned the page. Bo-ring, I thought. But then I saw it in person.

This quilt is made of SATIN, which means it really, literally, shimmers. It was an absolute knockout, and one of my favorites in the entire show.

All this in the first room! I have a lot to tell you, but today is a busy day so I'll show you more another day. If you want to read a review of the show, check out this rave from the Boston Globe.

And if you love quilts, you owe it to yourself to get to Boston to see this show. I am not joking. It is that good.

Julie's Here!

Julie's flight was delayed two and a half hours yesterday. While she waited in Atlanta, she got a manicure. I made a trip to the local chocolatier to buy her some of the famous Evil Little Chocolates

Julie brought me some gifts. Two small pins, the 2015 Engagement calendar featuring her quilt, See Rock City, and the most adorable Christmas ornament ever - a See Rock City mini birdhouse.

We toured the company where I work so she could see our conference room and I also brought her out to the manufacturing floor so she could get a better understanding of the items we make. Then we went to my house and I cooked dinner.

Today we are off to see those "magnificent freaking quilts."

Countdown..

1. Clean the House. CHECK
2. Laundry.  CHECK
3. Prepare menus. CHECK
4. Groceries. CHECK
5. Order tickets for Quilts and Color show at MFA Boston. CHECK

6. Fill car with gas. CHECK
7. Get the car washed. CHECK
8. Vacuum studio CHECK
9. Print bus tickets for trip to Boston. CHECK
10. Figure out how to get to Tosci's from the MFA. CHECK
11. Make reservations for Zimmerman House tour. (The Zimmerman House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) CHECK
12. Millie performs QA check on Julie's new quilt.  CHECK

Millie's comment about Julie's quilt? "Mine."

13. Determine hours for Valley Cemetery. CHECK
14. Clear tables in sewing room (to do Thursday morning)
15. Plan visit to Quilted Threads on Saturday. CHECK
16. Make list of all possible places to get terrific ice cream. CHECK
17. Turn OFF alarm clock! CHECK
18. Do weekly bookkeeping and pay bills CHECK
19. Forget about work, housework, alarm clocks, diets, fabric budgets. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK, CHECK and CHECK.

20. Meet Julie at the airport. (Counting the minutes)
21. Have fun. CHECK!

Why?

I don't make quilts for the usual reasons, if there is any such a thing as a "usual" reason. Sure I make quilts for people I love, but the other quilts, the word quilts, those I make for me because I have an idea I want to push around.

It just so happens that the ideas I push around end up in fabric. I have arthritis in my hand, so I can't draw because it hurts to hold a pencil for two hours. It's also one of the reasons I don't paint.  I love fabric, I love to sew, I love color and I love solving puzzles. I can do all those things with fabric.

I love breaking the rules in such a way as to reinforce those rules at the same time. I love making you look. I love to fool you, to trick you, to make you get closer, to make you LOOK, to make you discover.

When I tell my students that one of my goals of my quilts is to reach out and grab the viewer by the shoulders, pull them close and say "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" I am not joking. I want more than the five second glance. I want more than the "oh look that's a --------- pattern / design in -------- color scheme. I can / did / know how to do that." I want my quilts to be the "greedy little songbird," the diva, the star of the show.

I want to knock your socks off.

Where I differ from most quilters is my Art training. Not that I learned design, color, balance and all of that. It's that I come from a place where if it isn't working you erase, and start again. You are OBLIGATED to start again. I come from a place where the emotional response of the viewer is more important than good technique. I come from a place where a great piece of Art cannot be quantified by the number of stitches per inch or how square or flat a quilt lies. In my world, the quilt police are burned at the stake ignored.

In my world, the nicely executed piece in a ubiquitous color scheme isn't given a second glance because it has nothing unique to recommend it. In my world a quilt made with ten thousand pieces is a yawner. So what? Big deal. Who cares? Who wants to make a quilt look like it was made by a machine?

There are lots of "pretty" quilts out there and they each have their purpose, and that's great, but that's not what I am after. I want more than "just" pretty. (There are lots of pretty paintings out there too, and I'm not in love with those either.)

When folks tell me my quilts are "cute," I have to restrain myself from rolling my eyes, although I've come to realize most viewers have no vocabulary for the kind of work that I do. I've come to appreciate the long pause, the silence, the soft "wow."

My son, who grew up in a family of artists and literally went to art shows every other week from the time he was two weeks old until he graduated from college in his early 20's, looked at one of my quilts in progress and said, "Mom, did you line this lady up so her hat was above the tops of the other letters? Because it looks like it's the dot on the letter "i."

Yes my darling.

"Wow, Mom," he said later, "These two MISS words. If you look quick you think they are made of exactly the same fabrics in each letter. But they're not. They're close, but they're different. You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

Indeed I did.

"Mom, those fabrics in that bland Crayons quilt. Did you pick them so they'd almost disappear? Did you do that on purpose?"

You bet.

"Why? You hate those bland colors."

Well everybody was making these "low volume" quilts and I was getting awfully sick of them. Like if it's low-volume it's more special. So I wanted to make a low-volume quilt of my own, and I wanted to make it with letters, mostly to show that it could be done. The thing that took the most time was figuring out what it should say, because I definitely wanted something that would be OPPOSITE of low volume. I wanted to make a low volume quilt that said, STICK IT! Yes, I wanted it to do two opposing things at the same time. And what could be MORE anti low-volume than something that said, "HEY BOZO! USE ALL THE CRAYONS!" We ALL have a complete set of magic crayons in our lives, and we need to use them ALL, and not just hide behind the ones that are "socially acceptable."

"You know what I like about the "USE ALL" in the Bright Crayons, Mom? I like that the letters start out tall, and get progressively shorter, then they grow again. And then on the bottom, you do the reverse. They each float higher, then settle down, making an arc. You did that on purpose, I know. It looks cool."

"Mom, you think about EVERY little thing? The shape, the placement, the negative space, the way one fabric element blends into another one next to it. You think about ALL of that?"

Yes dear. If it's in the quilt it's no accident.

"It's funny Mom. The Bright Crayons. It's bright, and happy, but at the same time it's kind of boring. So why did you make that one?"

Because I HATED the beige one so much I just HAD to make a bright one to cheer myself up, and to prove a point.

"What point?"

The Black Crayons. You have to work harder to see them. They are still low-contrast, just in reverse. But because you don't usually see black quilts like that, it makes you look, it draws you in. The great graphic artist Milton Glaser made a poster once called "Looking is not Seeing," and it broke every rule of posters. It was mostly black and dark colors. You couldn't read it from a distance. You had to get close, but that was the point. To figure it out, you had to give it more than the five seconds or less that we usually spend looking at something. It's exactly the same premise as the Mashed Potato beige crayons, but I've turned the idea on it's head.

"So okay, where did the Black and White Crayons come from?"

I wanted to do a black and white words quilt for a long time, and I really wanted to play with how you didn't necessarily need a fabric that had color from one edge to the other to "read" as a letter. To reduce that idea to it's simplest, most basic element, I had to eliminate color altogether, and use the strongest contrast there is, the Light/Dark contrast of Black and White. And I wanted to play with the idea that even the same black and white print could look different on a black background as on a light one. I wanted to play with that duality, that one wasn't complete without the other. So I knew I wanted to divide the words in half somehow, but I couldn't work it out.  You see, I was stuck with the idea of dividing the words in half horizontally. The words wouldn't be very legible that way, and if I'm going to make a quilt with words in it, you have to be able to read it.

"How'd you figure it out?"

Like I usually do. I set the idea aside and didn't worry about it. I knew it would come to me eventually. But it's the first time an idea for a quilt ever came to me in a dream.

"Really? I mean, Mom. Really? In a dream?"

Yes honey, cross my heart and hope to die. In a dream.  And I'm really pleased with it, because it shows what you can do when you have limited options. You have to pull out all the stops. You have to really get creative. Two colors and I can still tweak the phrase so that it means something. Use ALL the colors in the box, even if you have only two. And even though I give them only black and white, which aren't really considered colors at all, I get folks to THINK about all colors, about ALL options, and about pushing an idea around and not stopping at the first, obvious idea. Because obvious can be boring.

"I love you Mom. You rock."

Thank you my darling. I love you too.

Four

I had a little time last night after dinner so I quickly hung up all four crayons quilts on the new fence.  They look pretty much like I expected them to, but I have them all at my house so that's not a surprise.

What did surprise me was just how hard to read the Mashed Potato Crayons are. It's easier when you are closer.

This photo really shows up the wonderful quilting by Chris on the Bright Crayons.

The bright crayons are lovely, but to me there is no mystery. The whole thing is very straightforward. The colors and fabrics echo the sentiment of the phrase. Nothing unexpected here.

I took these photos in a hurry, the light was fading and I didn't have any help. I think this one is slightly out of focus, and when I do these again I'll make an effort to get them closer together.  At any rate, I knew when I made it that the letters in the Black Crayons were wider overall, and that's one reason why the quilt is wider also.  (Truth: I trimmed too much from the right side of the Bright Crayons quilt by mistake. The air was positively BLUE when I realized what I had done. It annoys the heck out of me. And yes, I wish I had used a different BOB on the background of the Y in the Black Crayons.)

I deliberately changed the placement of the birds in each of the quilts. I don't like making two quilts the same (actually I am constitutionally incapable of making two that are exactly alike).

 When I sat back in a lawn chair to look at all four of them together, the thing that really hit me was how much I love the Black and White one above all the others. It's a lot more interesting to look at.

This photo also shows off Chris's amazing free motion quilting artistry.

Is It a Fence or What?

Last week I was chatting with my pal Julie about where I might find a place to hang all four Crayons quilts together so I could see them side-by-side in natural light against a neutral background.  I could have brought them to work and hung them on the country blue cubicle walls, but I wouldn't have been able to back far enough to see them straight on.

Julie suggested I find a playground with a big chain link fence and hang the quilts on the fence, using clothespins and clips.  There is a playground not far from my house with a fenced in tennis court, so that was an option.

Sometimes, however, serendipity takes over.

The parking area behind my house had a short fence on one side, as you can see on the left of this photo.  (That's my son and the Sunshine quilt I made for him, btw.)  This photo was taken almost five years ago, and the fence had deteriorated over the years, so I was not surprised when my landlady called a few weeks ago to tell me a new fence would be installed. I didn't think too much of it.

Until I got home last night to see a six foot tall stockade-style fence.

Julie, I hope you know what you and I are going to do when you get here next week!

Potential

The other day, while I was doing something that wasn't sewing, I had an idea.

So I had to give it a try.

I think this looks OK, but the "legs" are too long. The idea has potential, so I may tinker with it a bit more.

On the flimsy front, another idea bit the dust and needs a re-do. The butterflies will not be the top row. I do not want anything heavy at the top. I want some of these elements to "float" like bubbles in the air, so the lightest elements (lightest visually), the asterisk flowers, will be the top row.  The problem with this part of the butterfly row was they were all tilted too much in one direction. The two butterflies on the right will stay together, but the angle of the orange butterfly will change.

At least that's what I think right now. Come later tonight when I actually resew them together it might change.

Decisions, Decisions...

Hmm... This one?

Or this one?

I'm pretty sure I know which one I'll do.  It's a sample for the class on Birds, Butterflies, Asterisk flowers and Hearts I'll be teaching at Quilted Threads in July.

In other  BIG NEWS.... My best pal Julie will be visiting for a few days next week. We'll be going down to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to see  the Quilts and Color exhibit. We'll be talking about quilts and doing a little sightseeing. We'll also be eating good food, good ice cream and doing lots of gabbing. And of course we'll go fabric shopping at QT.  So I've got to get everything ready so I can enjoy my time off.

The Chicken Comes Home

My Chicken quilt arrived home yesterday from being quilted by Chris in Tennessee. The quilt itself was so busy we both agreed there was no room for fussy custom quilting. Chris selected an appropriate all over pattern for the quilt, and it's gorgeous.  I love it.

Millie does, too.