The Grid Forgets Itself

 "the grid forgets itself"

10"x10" mounted


SOLD












closer

Something made me put down the needle and take this one to the mummification chamber for finishing. The sun is playing peekaboo through late afternoon clouds so this is a quick shot..kinda strong on the blues but I didn't want to tinker with it.

Winter afternoon light

As if I needed another path to follow, a new piece has sprung into being. I'm still shuffling the spots around.

The afternoon light over my shoulder in this new chair has rekindled my flagging interest in this piece. Under the fluorescent lights of the office I was getting mighty bored with all that gray kantha stitching. New things have been revealed.  And here are two other pieces in progress, one barely thought through and the other one about to be let go. Catch & Release.

steeping

For the first time in ages I am dwelling on my work. It's a total luxury to be able to have it with me at all while I'm at the office. I pin the piece up on the wall of my cube and just look at while I'm taking calls and think about what's going on with it. Then, between calls, I can cut, adjust and stitch, slowly. thoughtfully. only this time I'm not thinking all that much about process or technique. With this kind of time on my hands what could be simpler than honoring the grid and attending to good design elements, each one a wayward and willful sheep? I'm thinking about the cloth and the spirits in it as if possessed. The ground, of course, these antique damask tablecloths that I have rescued from rag bags and dyed, are each full of mystery and history. They came to me mostly white but I feel as if the colors that I have given them reflect something of the character of their lives and service. Some are worn through in places, evidence of what? Years of happy Sunday family gatherings? Years of straight laced enslavement to social requirements? Was this tablecloth washed, ironed, folded and fussed over by a young, Irish immigrant girl brought to New England as an indentured servant before the turn of the century? Did this tablecloth cost more than her family could earn in a year? Did her heart ache as she stood back and watched dinner guests spill wine and gravy on it without a thought? The grid elements are refugees too, all snips and bits taken from here and there. The black here is a messy-when-cut expensive linen taken from a pair of designer label slacks that were incredibly a size 2. Not much fabric here. Each piece of cloth I'm handling is speaking to me of it's origin, it's use, it's history. I hope the finished pieces will convey the fabric's wishes as much as my own.

Laid Low

I have been knocked flat by some sort of domestic Montezuma's revenge. You don't want the details but there is no good way to lose ten pounds in two days. Now that I can sit up for fifteen minutes on a chair that is not porcelain and have the energy to thread a needle and pull a stitch, I've started work on what will be a very slow cloth. Something about the scope of my design mind has contracted but things that might have died on paper will get a second chance in cloth and thread.

what's on the burners

No, that's not a cat in a basket, it's a picture of a cat in a basket that I printed on muslin three or four years ago with Bubble Jet Set. Something about the whole process left me cold and the printed fabrics found their way into the scrap tub. I'm still sorting through things and found myself building a pile of playmate fabrics around this print of Karma. I've started a slow cloth for myself. Something to hold and work on during the morning chill. I'm going to try some embroidery on it down the line. This dyed scrap will be incorporated into it. It's from a long ago find on the public beach on Naragansett, Rhode Island. The weather here in GA holds perfect and I put a batch of fabric into the soda ash pot yesterday. Once it warms up this afternoon I'm going to be dyeing a small batch of fabrics for some new directions. Got to get that Carnegie entry rounded up too.

almost home

Jimmy was sort of half sprung from the hospital today. The medical doctor cleared him to leave pending the surgeon's approval but the surgeon was too busy running through the halls with a chain saw. He finally popped by after I had gone home promising to spring my man in the morning. I nipped out in the middle of the afternoon to come home and see what had become of a batch of damasks that I had pushed into a stew of soda ash the day before Jim's surgery just about a week ago. What was I thinking? When I opened up the container I half expected 20 gallons of mush but the cloth seemed OK so I went ahead and sugar dyed it all. I have a "what if" in mind for some of this fabric. Nothing fully formed, just a notion. I was busy elsewhere so daily life has taken a back seat. My pool has been sadly neglected this past week and all manner of strange things just came out of the skimmer and dip net. I just hope I can get back in the water to do the real cleaning. The water has cooled down a lot and hurricane Fay will be drenching us in a day or so.

Last Fling (for now) - storm light

The thunder is rocking and rolling from the west and the trees are shaking out weeks of dry leaves everywhere. We haven't had serious rain in over a week of 95 degree days. It's time. I had to try to get a shot of this one before I start dragging it around everywhere blankey-style, doing the hand stitching on it. Can't exactly call it quilting if there are only two layers but there you have it. Now, if only the power doesn't go out!

Last Fling (for now)

Sometimes you just lose focus, or maybe you never had it, and you were just going through the motions. I've recalled that going through the motions is how to keep one's head above the water.

another start

I skipped adding the hand appliquéd elements to the second one in favor of letting the focus fall on the rusted fabric but decided I needed to come back to the hand appliqué and take more time with the design of each block. Stop hurrying. Stop time. I made a big selection of colors and loaded up the basket so they would be at my fingertips. I have another idea for the monkey teeth this time also. The Summer Lightness is catching on. Look where Margaret is taking it.

I've zeroed in on what's drawn me to those Blues in the previous post and making me quietly repeat my quilter's prayer. It's this spectacular painting by a young painter living in Halifax, Nova Scotia,Ambera Wellmann. I keep staring at it an wondering what it's making me feel. Something I can't put my finger on. Art with deep emotional content has been pulling me in lately at every turn and making me realize that I want this from my own work and have no idea how to capture it beyond obvious moodiness. I turn away from the anxieties of reality to times past both real and imagined with escape in every stitch. Instigated by Jude's wondrous Fling, I've tried to escape the heat with my own version, A Summer Garden. Dye junkie that I am, you cannot imagine what it took for me to come up with some white fabric for this. It's only 45" square and I'm fresh out.

what's afoot

This is the third in the Environmental Apocalypse series. No titles yet but lots about forgotten highways. America's love affair with the open road is in for rude awakening. Finally, the Three Blind Owlets can see! This one is a companion piece to "Freida Brings Home the Bacon" I've been following this Barn Owl family on a web cam from CA , not quite obsessively this year. Still, last night I dreamed this crew was experimenting with cigar smoking.

No Spring in Georgia

Anyone who's read my blog for any length of time knows that my time of year has arrived. I don't care if that water is only 60 degrees, I will be in it tomorrow afternoon. Maybe Friday. This is one of those quilted bags that have gotten so trendy and overpriced. I just don't understand how something that I bought for half price in the grocery store (because no one else wanted a bright yellow quilted mini duffle) got to be such a hot fashion accessory. This poor bag has spent most of it's life being mauled by the TSA or housing a sleeping cat. It was pretty tired looking so I broke out the scrap bowl and starting making it over bit by bit. I hope it will be fit to travel again soon.

Mudcats final

For the moment, this series of raw edge, hand stitched pieces has run it's course. Now I have to make myself finish them so they don't languish in UFO land. Too much fun to waste. I think I'm going to cover a large(30"x30") pillow with this one. Eeww, actually sewing? I have a ton of administrative work to get through; pieces to ship, new fabrics to post for sale, entries to finish and mail, and that power point presentation looming...all with Spring fever lulling me senseless. Yesterday afternoon I sat outside on the deck painting fabric and listening to the frogs and owls telling tales - a perfect day.

FIBERcrack!

The making of it anyway! After I get home from the office today I'm going to be incommunicado for a while. I forgot how much fun magik-making was. left - Worlds Away 25"x18" below - Mystic Cheerioz 17"x23"

Fizzy Fat Quarters

I returned to the studio last night and started rummaging through all the wonderful commercial cottons I was recently gifted with. My intention for these fabrics is to transform them any way I can. These two fat quarters have been discharged and then hand painted with textile paint with some iridescent powder mixed in for sparks. They've been heat set and I don't really want to see if they are wash fast since my intention is to use them only for Art pieces that will never be washed or dried. The base fabrics are all excellent quality cotton that you will probably recognize if you look hard enough. As these accumulate and strike my fancy (or not) I will start moving them over to Like Hotcakes! where they will be for sale.

Juicy bits

Okay - here's what excites me about dyeing my own fabric. This black is just like most black horses - from a distance they look inky. Step up close to pat a flank and you discover that their color is more likely a layer of dark brown, rusts, with black dusted over the top. In this instance, iridescent paint too. Behind that one is one of the two rusted pieces that came out so well. The teal damask has an overlay of iridescence too.Impossible to photograph but still gorgeous.

Then again there's a fool at every party!

harken back to days of yore

The recent acquisition of a ton of beautiful cotton prints has me thinking about the genuine blankets that I have made in the past. As with most quilters, my very first quilt was for my first child. Colin will be 28 in a few months. This blankie was used daily as much for dragging around as sleeping under and so was machine washed and dried almost every other day (for about three years) out of necessity. To this day, I'm impressed at how well it held up. Nine months is a long time to fiddle with one project. The only exposure to quilts I had then was casually examining a few dusty relics in antique stores. Even then they were undervalued. I think I took a book off the shelf in the library and put it back. No one in my family quilted. I was on my own with my own ideas about how a quilt was built. I saw it as a building process even then. The fabrics were all special except for the pink backing. I just can't remember where I got it but I know I chose pink to hedge our bets - this was before you could easily know the sex of your child before it was born. The rest of the fabrics were all family treasures in my eyes.Even then I was a fiber hoarder. The pale blue came from one of my favorite dresses back in sixth grade. The light brown print was a shirt that my husband wore when he was very young. The orange, green and yellow print came from a Mumu that my Aunt Jo brought me from Hawaii and the dark batik was a hand-me down maternity blouse given me my own of my longtime friends, Hilary. I can still picture her wearing it. She's a grandma now. I cut each two inch square by hand using a cardboard template and a pair of paper scissors. Once I had piles of squares, I decided that the design possibilities would be improved if I cut each square diagonally. Then came weeks of puzzle shuffling and then the hand stitching began in earnest. It's all hand pieced and was originally tied with cotton floss in the middle of each unit but in early use the knots weren't holding up so I went back and hand quilted inside each and every triangle. What else should one do while watching your baby grow?

FOF08 - Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx- day 1

All right folks - daylight's awastin'. I know my awfully early ways aggravated my immediate neighbors at FOF last year but for me, sleeping in is not an option. As I begin my own studio week, one of the things I'll appreciate is having my assistants close at hand. If I can get the Black dye the way I want it, I will be making some cloth in Karma's honor. Such pretty patterns. I did this yardage last night while watching the Braves home opening game. No idea what becomes of Sharpie markings through the rest of the dye/discharge process but I'll find out. The first order of business this morning will be making a big tub of soda ash solution. We are expecting thunderstorms here all day so I'll be inside working the soy wax at the kitchen table. There is also a bundle of cloth, vinegar and rusty frying pans outside that has to be opened and inspected. Is color taking a back seat this year? I dont' think so. Although I have been in a black/grey state of mind for a spell, I'm counting on the dyes to bring me back to myself. C0lor mixing begins later today! Thunder and lightning be damned.

the deconstructed

(mood enhancer just added) I took those shirts apart yesterday and when I was finished I wondered what I would do with the pile of collars, cuffs and plackets . These little headless creatures are not quite what I had in mind. These are benign and silly looking compared to the scary things that I keep seeing in the corner of my mind since Jim showed me this silly thing. At least I got it out of my system before I put all the rest of that great seersucker together. Now I'm I'm sure I'm going to have to do something to it - as yardage goes it's pretty boring. No wonder they put the shirts in the Goodwill box!