Boot Camp at the Barn

Wow, the summer flew by so fast!  The weather was amazing here in Bellingham.  Typically we get nice weather for a month or so, with rain interspersed here and there.  This year it was sunny literally every day except one, and quite a bit warmer than usual.

That made for some chaos in the garden, but lots of produce too!

Summer Bounty

And now I have just returned from "The Barn."  If you're an art quilter you probably know that "The Barn" is where Nancy Crow works and teaches.  It felt like a pilgrimage, visiting a significant spiritual site you have previously known of only through word of mouth. It was fun seeing Nancy in her native "habitat."   It's a beautiful facility and the food - provided by Margaret Boys Wolf - is fantastic.  Every lunch and dinner, plus a mid-day snack is ready and waiting for you to sit down and eat.  How spoiled I felt!

This is the only meal I remembered to photograph before eating

The class I took at the barn was Design Boot Camp, with Terry Jarrard-Dimond.  It was wonderful to meet her after following her via her blog for quite awhile. I knew as soon as I saw the announcement of the class that I would have to take it.  I feel very strongly that if I can learn good design/composition, everything else will follow.

Here's a photo that she posted on her blog, of me hard at work. On the wall, you can see the beginning of a piece that I am very excited about.

The assignment was to make sketches from a wire "sculpture" that we created, and then to develop them, or parts of them, into compositions.

Here's a view of my sculpture

And a view of the artwork in progress

Now, I just need to get back into the studio and work on it! 

Improv Squares

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been playing with all the leftover fabric that was created during Rockers #4.  It's hard to re-file weird shaped pieces, but there was too much, and the pieces were too big to just put in the scrap bin.

I started sewing together random pieces.  They were interesting, but I felt like just combining them completely free-form was resulting in weird random shapes.  I would like to do large free-form abstracts, but it seemed like the parameters of this exercise - just using up scraps of eight colors - was not conducive to a good free form composition.  So I decided to make squares. I thought that would give the piece some structure.  The 6" squares seemed too small, but I had several of them, so I started also creating rectangles that would be approximately the size of two 6-inchers.

I'm still not sure how many of them want to be included in a piece.  At first I was thinking a square of  36 x 36, but that still seems pretty random.

I'm really liking how a simple 12 x 12 (really 11 x 11) combination looks.  Maybe there will be a variety.

Here's the wall with all the pieces I've made so far.
The top squares are not sewn yet.

I like this one, but the curve is to close to the edge.
It was remaining from the previous project.

Another possible keeper - close up.

 Making the simple squares would be quick, and done, but a lot more finishing work!

Here's the remaining pile.  Not sure how many more I will make.  They get more and more complicated as the scraps get smaller.  I already screwed up a few and had to recut, which also makes them more complicated,  Oh well.  I'm having fun.  Isn't that the point?

Rockers #4 Top Complete

I have not been much of a blogger lately.  I have not been too much of an artist, either.  It's summer!  It's the warmest, driest summer ever recorded in the northwest, and I'm trying to enjoy it.  The garden is thriving, but the orchard seems to be suffering from bad pruning (mine).  It's a learning experience, right?

But I did complete the top for Rockers #4, it was started just before the Sew In on August 2nd and completed the weekend of the 29th.   I got through about 75% with great ease and joy.  Always a bad sign.  The last bit was a struggle!

Here's how it started

Choosing colors for background

Got about halfway to here at the sew in, then continued the right side

And then the indecision hit.  I thought I had left plenty of fabric on the right side, but ended up regretting not making bigger pieces.  That orange shield shape was removed and recut three times.  It ended up back about where it started, at times it was much bigger.  I didn't take photographs, it was too frustrating.

The right is still weak.  I don't like how small the purple got.  And maybe there is too much of the rusty orange.  But there comes a point where you just have to say enough is enough and quit.  Time to move on.

Final version.

It's going to be in the 80's and wonderful today, but I think I'll take a little break in the studio now.  I have been playing with all the scraps and re-cut pieces from Rockers #4 and making little improv blocks.  It's fun.  

Dyed Fabric

Here's the completed result of my dying a couple weeks ago.  I am happy with the results, though surprised that they washed out this light.  As I mentioned in this post, I did it completely "seat of the pants."  Next time I will measure the ratio of dye powder to water in my dye concentrates.  I think I made them too weak.  But I don't have much dyed fabric so any color is a good color right now.

One interesting thing was the result of using some concentrates that had been sitting around for about 18 months.  There was some blue and some red, so I just dumped it all into a bin.  In the water it looked very dark.  But when they were washed not a lot of the dye bonded to the fabric, so lavender was the result.   So, I am not convinced about the "dye only keeps for a week or two, unless refrigerated" story.

Evolution of Rockers #3

After the "Final Rockers" post I changed it again, so I thought I'd post a summary of the evolution of the piece.  It's interesting that I can't tell what's wrong until I do it, then it seems so obvious.

This was the first "finished" version.  I did not like the large amount of yellow in the upper left.

In the revision I was more deliberate about making the three dark green parts
read as one figure and the lighter green be another figure.

I was still really annoyed by the curved piece of yellow because it didn't really relate to anything else in the piece.  I thought it would be okay because the figures are gently curved, but it just didn't work.  I couldn't keep staring at it, so I took it apart one more time...

So I bit the bullet, took the whole yellow curvy part out and inserted a piece of gray.
At that point, the yellow arm looked ridiculously long, so I shortened that as well.

It's always a question for me as to how long I keep improving.  As soon as you get rid of the thing that annoys you the most, the thing that was annoying you second-most steps in.  I'm learning there is a point where I can live with it and move on.  I try to quit then.  Unless its a huge important piece that I love an feel is worth the extra time.  But as I im in a mode of "make work, don't futz around," I try to move on.

While this blog post has been languishing waiting for me to take that last photo, I have nearly finished Rockers #4.  And the long awaited Magnum is still progressing.   Some photos coming soon!