Week in Review 2016 - 02/05

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Eight different ratios of
fuchsia and black (top 4) and
basic blue and black (lower 4)
were used to achieve this color run.

Kaboom! Some days I wake up and realize that I am facing a day of competing demands that feel like a series of Herculean tasks. How will I ever make it through? This can be especially difficult because it is easy for me to drift into "research" that branches from one investigation to another until I realize not only haven't I solved the problem I was researching, I have lost track of time and am barely aware of what I was trying to work out in the first place. So was the case this morning when I thought that I would just take a peek at the final lesson of my Basic Dyeing for Quiltmakers class. Big mistake. I was down the rabbit hole trying to figure out how to analyze the percentage of cyan, magenta, yellow and black (doable in Photoshop and recommended by Elizabeth Barton, our teacher) but NOT doable in Photoshop Elements that only analyzes color with a percentage of red, green and blue. I won't bore you with just how far afield I went with this. I did discover a really cool way to select a palette of any number of colors from 1 - 256 from a photograph - just not how to break down those colors into their turquoise, sun yellow, fuchsia and black blends. Poor Elizabeth. I must be a thorn in her side, seems I am always the one raising my hand in our virtual classroom for clarifications, fixes and workarounds. I've already fired off my first question of the day.

Complementary colors (opposite colors on a color
wheel) were used to dye this run.

The good news, as you can see from all the pictures, is that I managed to finish last week's lesson. There were many assignments, including dyeing neutrals, shades, over-dyeing and even painting with dye. It was a very full week as you can see by my list of accomplishments:


1) Work on Deep Waters - (Due March 15) - Done!

Deep Waters after cropping with the facing pinned to the
backside. You can see the pins from the front, too.

What a disaster, but with a reasonably happy ending, this piece has proven to be. The white caps I added to the water virtually destroyed the piece. I did my best to stay OPEN (word for the year) to various solutions. I tried picking the stitches out. The stitch work was too intense and the stitches too tiny to do this even in good light with strong magnification. I tried appliquéing over the stitch work. Then stitching over the appliqués. Better, but my whole cloth piece looked patched. Finally, I just cut the bottom 2/3 or the quilt off. Not bad.

Fun with free motion quilting.
There is something so compelling in
a curved line quilting motif.

2) Free motion quilting practice. - Done!

It has been a while since I just sat down at the machine and doodled a free motion quilting design for fun and frankly, stress relief. This design is one from the second year of Whirls 'n Swirls motifs. I've called it Feathered Pods.

3 Do some surface design work - Done!

I managed to dye my way through 5 yards of 60" wide fabric in a single week.

I opted to over dye turquoise. The
original color of the cloth runs
across the top. That same color was
over dyed with black, basic blue,
fuchsia, orange and yellow.

4) Beware of when I find myself shutting down and find a way to stay open. - Done!

I was extremely upset by the disaster I was making of Deep Waters. It took great courage and conviction, but I managed to stay open to the idea that it was salvable. 
I am going to have to stay open to a week where my schedule is unpredictable. I have jury duty starting on Monday. In Wisconsin, where I live, this means calling in daily for a week to determine whether I need to head to the courthouse the following morning. If I manage to have any days at home, here is what I plan to do:

One of the fabrics I hand painted with
dye. This assignment was to use
the dye solution as is versus
thickening it. This is a bit like
painting with colored water - only
broad brush techniques are easy to achieve.

1)  Finish Deep Waters  by hand stitching the facing and adding a sleeve - (Due March 15)

The good news is that I can do this at the courthouse or at home!

2) Free motion quilting practice.



3 Do some surface design work


4) Beware of when I find myself shutting down and find a way to stay open.

I am now linking up to two blogs on Fridays. The first is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays and the second is Free Motion Mavericks.

Week in Review 2016 - 01/29

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Elizabeth Barton, my instructor for
Basic Dyeing for Quiltmakers,
encourages her students to keep a
record, much a like a recipe book,
of how we achieved the various colors
we dyed, so that if we need more we
can dye more. Apparently the Strong
Orange dye has been reformulated
because most of the students had
the same results I had - too much
orange in their red. The good news is
that once you know what you will
get you can make adjustments next time
if needed.

It has been a difficult week. The kind where I just want to throw up my hands and give up. I don't. That isn't my nature. I just keep pushing through hoping that my efforts will eventually pay off. What would we do without hope? It is our salvation, as the myth of Pandora's Box proves.

I've been ruminating about two books I read (actually listened to) recently along with the one that is currently downloaded on my iPod Touch. Why did all three books captivate me? At first glance they appear to have nothing in common. Then, bam, it hit me as I wrote the opening paragraph to this blog, the unifying theme is hope.

The books that have me in a reflective mood are, Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson, Left Neglected, by Lisa Genova and I Will Always Write You Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives, by Martin Ganda and Caitlin Alifirenka. The first book examines how life would be different if the central character were to die at different points of her life and start over. It is set primarily during the period just before WWI through WWII. The second book is set in the present. It addresses the question of what would happen when a wife, mother of three young children with a high powered career must fight her way back from a brain injury that results in syndrome called left neglected. As someone who is dependent on my sight to create my art, the idea of not being aware or able to see anything to my left (how left neglected manifests itself) was morbidly fascinating. Finally, and perhaps the most captivating of all is I Will Always Write You Back. This is the true story of a young girl from Hatfield, Pennsylvania and  a young boy from a slums in Zimbabwe, who start a pen pal  relationship through their mutual schools. Not only are their letters shared in the book, but with each letter comes their adult reflections on what they opted to share, what they held back and what it was like to live their two very, very different lives.

The result of my personal
experiment. I wanted
to see if I could achieve
a gradation of dappled
vegetation green. I did!

Just writing about these books puts my own fretting and upsets in perspective. I am ready to trudge on. Here is just a hint of how my week went:

1) Work on Deep Waters - (Due March 15) - Done!

I am not a happy camper. I really don't like how the white caps turned out. I tried removing the most offensive one. Not possible. Tried covering it with a fused patch and adding stitching. Better visually, but not there yet. I am staying OPEN (this year's word/mantra) to a miracle solution next week.
2) Free motion quilting practice. - Done!

I thread painted and free motion quilted white caps on Deep Waters.
3 Do some surface design work - Done!

This week the assignments were to finish dyeing the remaining colors in the color wheel and to do an experiment. The experiment was the highlight of my week. My hypothesis was that I could achieve a vegetation green range with dappled light if I combined yellow and black, then diluted the dye solution for each progressive step while simultaneously slightly increasing the yellow in the yellow to black ratio. The result is proof positive that it worked. 
4) Beware of when I find myself shutting down and find a way to stay open.

I can just imagine Linda McLaughlin
working her magic with stitch and
leaf shape on this fabric.

I was asked to attend a morning coffee and conversation group by my yoga teacher, a true Renaissance woman who is a talented artist, musician and writer. It meets on the best day of the week for me and the time commitment is only 90 minutes. Still I was resistant. How could I squeeze one more thing into an overpacked schedule. Sometimes you just have to say yes and do it. I did.
How will making the conscientious effort to stay open impact next week? Hopefully, I will be open to my muse sufficiently to pick up possible solutions for my Deep Water piece and then have the courage to follow through. I can always start with some free motion quilting practice or do some dyeing. Both get me into the studio and started on the following agenda:

1) Work on Deep Waters - (Due March 15)

2) Free motion quilting practice.

3 Do some surface design work

4) Beware of when I find myself shutting down and find a way to stay open.


I am now linking up to two blogs on Fridays. The first is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays and the second is Free Motion Mavericks.

Week in Review 2016 - 01/22

Deep Waters will finish at
19" x 38"
I plan to add my more quilted
and/or thread-painted white caps.

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

Sometimes saying no is saying yes. I think of myself as someone who is good at saying no, while wisely saying yes to opportunities that I feel have a strong shot at advancing my art and my art career. The difficulty of saying no, even to things that you have little interest in doing, is often the fear of being disliked or being seen as not pulling your weight. Who wants to be disliked or seen as shirker? Oh, the advantages of maturity, because the older I get the more I find myself chuckling over Rhett Butler telling Scarlet O'Hara, "Frankly dear, I don't give a damn." It was shocking language for the time - saying damn in a film just wasn't done.  It is still a little shocking to not give a damn about how one is perceived. I find myself at a point where when I say no, I do it with confidence. Life is too short, especially as the amount of life I have remaining is less than the life I have already lived, to give a damn about how I am perceived.

Isn't sun yellow luscious? I can never find the
bright yellows I need in commercial fabrics.
Now I can dye my own.

This week I was open to saying no. I did say say no. It was to an opportunity to lecture. In the past I would have made it happen. This time I knew it just wasn't worth cramming one more thing into my already abundant life. By saying no, I was saying yes to the choices I had already made. I felt empowered. 

The horizontal fabric in each color sequence is the one
done that involves constant stirring. The goal is to
achieve a solid fabric versus the more typical
mottled look customary with hand dyed fabrics.

Because I said no, I had time to work in the studio and do my dyeing lesson for the week. Here is how it went:

1) Work on Sea Fever, now renamed Deep Waters - (Due March 15)

- Done!

I also said no to the sea foam I have been working on. I love the foam, just don't like it for how the piece is coming together. The scale was completely off. Sigh. Perhaps it will work its way into a future piece. This piece is clearly a lake and not an ocean. It needs white caps, not sea foam.

2) Free motion quilting practice. - Done!

I'm not sure why the turquoise in the four vertical fabrics
didn't mottle more. I was disappointed. Still I ended
up with stunning, sunglass worthy turquoise to add
to my stash.

I decided to give Jenny Lyons's perfect quilt sandwich a try when quilting Deep Waters. I still don't have the spray she recommended for stiffening fabric, but spray starch works well enough for me. You have got to love a system that requires no pins or basting. Once the sandwich was fused together with Mistyfuse I was good to go.

3) Do some surface design work - Done!

The class I am taking, Basic Dyeing for Quiltmakers, makes sure that I do some surface design work every week. This time we focused on dyeing sun yellow, fuchsia and turquoise, the colors dyers use for the 3 basic primary colors. The method used was Deep Water Bucket Dyeing.  It is perhaps the most labor intense as you must stir the fabric for a total of 75 minutes. The result, when done correctly is a solid color versus the more mottled effect one achieves but letting the fabric sit in the dye. Only the darkest color of a gradation was done this way.

4) Beware of when I find myself shutting down and find a way to stay open. - Done!

A tiny detail from Deep Waters shows my
thread-painted vegetation and white caps.
I used two different variegated green
threads in the vegetation. I wanted to achieve
a sens of light and shadow.

It was clear that I was shutting down every time I thought of entering the studio and facing Sea Fever. It wasn't coming together. The sea foam just wasn't right. When I allowed myself to be open to changing from ocean to lake and scrapping the sea foam, I could feel myself opening up and the excitement about where the piece was heading switching from dread to Wow! 

It is going to be a busy week of dyeing (we are filling in the color wheel) and adding whitecaps to the lake in Deep Waters. I wonder what adventures I will be open to. I find that I can be at my most flexible when I have a plan. It is my way of priming the pump. Here is what I plan on doing, but I am opening to other possibilities as well.

1) Work on Deep Waters - (Due March 15)

2) Free motion quilting practice.

3 Do some surface design work

4) Beware of when I find myself shutting down and find a way to stay open.


I am now linking up to two blogs on Fridays. The first is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays and the second is Free Motion Mavericks.