Finishes

I finished Color Prints #4 this morning.  

It is not as warped as it looks, but it is narrower at the bottom.  

:P

I might have to turn it upside down and see how that looks.

I thought I might like Color Prints #1 better if I oriented it vertically.

I do.

A little. 

In my 2013 wrap-up I didn't show finished versions of these three Nancy Crow exercises.

I finished the tops last fall sometime.

This was the first day, a black & white strip piecing exercise.

I added the green at a time when I thought I would enter it in a guild challenge.

The challenge was a quilt using only black, white and one other color.

I think this was the second day.  

Two exercises using bright plus black. 

First one was just "be big and bold."

This is about 42" square.

The second one was to make it "Busy." 

Really Busy.

So I called this one Busy Signal.  

It's about 15" square.

Color Prints #4 - Work in Progress

I've been working mostly in brief snippets of time on my latest piece in the Color Prints series.  I make great progress when I capture even an hour of uninterrupted time, so I'm sure I'll finish piecing this by the end of the year, but I still beat myself up over not putting in enough time.  Enough of that.

I am really liking this piece. This one evolved out of the top "vignette" (that's what I am calling the individual pieces I create then combine in these pieces).  

It once again features orange!  I am no longer surprised by that.  Sometimes its so much easier to see what a piece needs when you get the distance of a photograph on a blog post.  I see clearly that (at least in my opinion) it needs to have the top piece moved over to the right side to offset it from the central one.  And then something with lavender has to happen up there.

I am thinking it's about time to get back in touch with Lisa Call and implement the unused private lessons time that I pre-purchased from her.  Up until now I didn't really know what to use it on, but now I am liking this direction enough to pursue it.  it is my intention to complete three more of these before I go to Nancy Crow's class, which is now ONLY about two and a half months away!  ACK!

I feel a twinge of guilt contacting Lisa since she just posted on FB about how happy she is to have finished up teaching and is now ready for Studio time!  Oh well, I was waiting partly because I knew she was so busy teaching.

...and a rejection

I received a rejection on the submittal of Tipping Point that I mentioned a few posts back.  I was disappointed but not surprised.

Onward - back to the studio tonight.  I have not had much free time with family in town, and spent the studio time I did have trying to finish another grandchild's quilt.

No more excuses.  Color Prints #4 is in pieces on the wall and calling out to me.

Color Prints #3 Top Finished

I ended up ripping apart this piece and starting over.  There was enough there that I didn't want to just discard or recycle it, so I reworked it.  I still don't like it as much at #1 but it is much better.  This is a blurry iPhone photo because I thought it would be easier than plugging in the camera and cord.  Not.  Grr.  Anyway:

Color Prints #3 Updated

Color Prints #3 Original

There was a sense of weaving in the original, which got lost.  I liked the way the blue seemed to go over and under the lavender stripes, and also under the yellow bar.  But otherwise it was pretty clunky.  The new version seems more harmonious, although that little purple ledge sticking out beyond the purple bar is sort of annoying.

I need to develop some consistency to naming pieces, too. I called the "first" one in this series #8, because I had considered using the series title "Color Prints" for all the "Golden Mean" quilts, (4 golden means and three partials =7).  But then I decided that made no sense, since they didn't have prints in them.  Not to mention that I forget the first Color Print, which was "Are You Crazy?"   I'll get there, someday.

Visioning Project Year End Summary

Here's the post from our Visioning Project site where I summed up my success at meeting my goals:  

Here it is the middle of September. How did that happen?  If I had to sum up my success over the past year, I’d say really good, considering!   Without going into irrelevant detail, the “considering” involved an unexpected family illness that had me away from home more than expected, but all is well now.

There is something exciting and motivating about the “Back to School” feeling that hits me every September.  The evenings are darker and wetter and much more conducive to moving from the garden to the studio.    As I look back on successes and failures, it’s not too surprising. Too many distractions, not enough studio time.  I need to be flexible but diligent about my studio time.  I need to learn to say  ‘no’ to more things in order to say yes to the studio.   I could probably blame Pinterest for a big chunk of lost studio time.   It really does suck me in.  I justify it to myself in saying that I’m just learning about art and art quilting, and I learn a lot from looking at other quilts, but at some point I need to “just do it,” not think about it. 

But on a positive note, here’s what I accomplished between September  2012 and September 2013.  I hope to post my 2013-14 goals in the next week or so.

GOALS MET: 

I think I met my general goals, which were deliberately pretty vague:

·                     Learn everything I possibly can about composition and color. In addition to the formal learning I discuss below, I read several books about color, abstraction and as much as I could find about composition.  I also read some blogs and other informational internet sites.

"Strip Piecing #8"

·                     Find my "voice," or at least keep searching for it.

I can’t say it’s totally clear but I do know that I've found something that makes my heart sing.  That’s a funny term, but there is just this amazing feeling I get when I’m in that creative zone.  Heart songs are the opposite of heartaches, I guess.  This most recent piece I've done is an example.

·                     Continue to hone technical skills.

I think I did well on this too.  In addition to my art quilts I spent some time creating paper pieced stars and worked on about a dozen Dear Jane blocks.  Both helped me to be more precise when needed.  I don’t ever see my work evolving into something that requires a lot of precision sewing, but I think an artist needs every tool available and improvisation and spontaneity are not excuses to be sloppy.  I know that in my last two pieces I've done a lot more of ripping and redoing work that was not sewed to my standard, so I’d say I've improved in that area.

I was just “okay” with the specific goals – B- or C+ maybe?

• Work Work Work! Put in the time.  Well, I did the best I could. Life happens, and a full time job doesn't help, but I did develop a routine that at times worked very well – getting up earlier I the morning in order to put in as much as 1.5 hours – ideally between 7:15 – 8:45.  This was a major effort for someone who is definitely NOT a morning person.  I have to work at streamlining the morning to NOT touch the computer, shower and dress right away and take my coffee to the studio.   After the intensity of the first two classes in September, October and November, I was brain dead an in the midst of the holidays.  I ended up piecing a cute bed quilt for my granddaughter, just to do something mindless.  That was against my resolution to NOT do functional sewing project, but each grandchild needs a quilt!  And there are two more waiting.  I got back to getting things ready to show at the Crow Workshops in January and February, that was when I finished up the WIS tops.  Then there was another big brain-dead lull between finishing the workshops in mid March, going on vacation for two weeks, then spending two more weeks with my brother after an illness in May and June.  It was only in August and September that I got back in to the creative mindset and finished my last two pieces. 

• Focus on working In a series, and complete at least five major pieces in one series. Well, what does “major” mean? I produced either 4 or 7 pieces in the Series workshop, and have completed two more since then.  I guess that could qualify. 

• Enter a piece in "Perspectives, Fantasy & Reality" Entry Deadline in November 2012

"Tipping Point" in the Whatcom Museum

I did not do this. The “Maps” theme is one I love, but not one I have worked on and since I was doing the Working in a Series workshop at the time, there wasn’t enough time for both.  I did push myself to do something for a SAQA call (Text Messages) which was also outside of my “strip piecing comfort zone” but also something I’m really interested in exploring. It wasn’t accepted, but I didn’t really expect it would be.  On a positive note, I did make a quilt for an open call at our local art museum on the theme of climate change.  Even though I knew they accepted anything and everything, it was still a thrill to see my work in the art museum.

• Have five new quilt tops ready for the Nancy Crow workshop, in addition to the two that were started earlier this year. I guess I had five new ones done, the ones from the Series workshop. I felt more like they were “studies” than finished works of art, but at least I had something to show.

 MORE DETAILS:

1.  Completed the Working in a Series Workshop with Lisa Call – and seven quilt tops (Was supposed to be five, but I decided the unfinished #5 would remain in three pieces, hence #5, 6, and 7.  How’s that for lemonade out of lemons??)   I really enjoyed the class, and Lisa is very organized, and experienced.  The biggest thing that came out of it was the experience of working intensely in the studio on a regular basis, and how rewarding it is to produce work when you commit time to doing it!

2.  Completed the Color in Art class, which included color theory which was not new to me, but good to review, and learning to mix colors with oil paint. I would never have done this on my own, but I LOVED it.  You become much more aware of how colors change and relate to each other when you are creating them yourself.   I am fascinated by the Albers “Interaction of Color” studies, and hope to experiment with some of them in fabric soon.

3.  Completed two weeks of workshops with Nancy Crow –“Improvisations – Let’s Experiment!” and “Lines, Curves, Circles & Figure Ground.”  There is nothing to compare with a Nancy Crow workshop, except maybe architecture school.  It is intense, emotional, and you learn more than you ever imagined you could.  Nancy claims her one-week workshops are the equivalent of a semester class in art school, and I really believe it.

One thing I am torn about in the coming year, is how much to continue making quilt tops, and how much time to spend on quilting itself.  Nancy Crow puts a big emphasis on producing lots of quilt tops as pieced studies, and less emphasis on finishing them.  I know they will not all be worthy, but I think I really need the free motion quilting practice, so I intend to quilt them all, even if they just turn into practice pieces.  That in mind, I am working backwards from the ugliest ones first, so the most amateur work is there, not on the ones I love.  Does that sound goofy? 

I need to mull over my goals for the coming year a little bit more, but I know they will include holding myself more responsible for posting here, and commenting on others posts. 

Color Prints #3

I've been working on another piece in what I'm calling the Color Prints series.  It came together fairly quickly, but it's just not working for me. Especially the yellow.   I debated just calling it done an moving on, but I think it can be rescued.  After discussing it with a friend/mentor we came up with the idea of making it into two pieces.  Either half of it seems to have potential, it just doesn't work all together.

I may just let it marinate on the wall for awhile and move on to something else.  Or I may try splitting it...

One Week

Are You Crazy?!?

First I loved it, then I hated it, then it started to get more interesting again.   As it came together I understood why people probably don’t intuitively piece a bunch of blocks then try to put them into a traditional quilt format.  With matching corners.  But it’s sort of fun.    I don’t know why I always go overboard on color. And complexity.  But I do.

I enjoyed the process of putting this together more or less intuitively.  But probably more happy with the fact that I was able to work quickly - quickly for me, anyway - without too much diddling and fiddling.  I tried something, and if it worked relatively okay I went forward with it.  
In the end it's too mish-mashy and overwhelming.  Too much screaming color.  Although it's not quite as screaming as it seems in the photo.  I think all that color terrified my camera.   Too much busy-ness.  The orange strips are too much orange in one place.  The striped log cabins in the center are too sloppy and overwhelming...  

I should have been more precise with the striped pieces.  They are all lumpy and crooked.  

But hey, it's something, and it's done, and its time to move on.  But... what if I put a couple stripes into the orange strips...?