when to abandon, finish, or begin again

How do you know when to abandon a piece? Or, if the decision is to spare an unliked work, how do you go about finding the will to finish it?

borrrrrrrrrrr-ing!

Shooting this little quilt out of focus and cock-eyed accurately captures my lack of affection for it. Initially, I set out to ‘improve’ it by continuing to applique scraps — applying some sheers for additional interest and a variety of teeny chips of geometric prints to suggest more windows. However, the backing fabric is a polished cotton (and I suspect designed for outdoor use) and it became evil to try and stitch through.

So! I cut it up.

more interesting already

Cutting up a quilt otherwise designated for the garbage doesn’t take much nerve, particularly when you haven’t spent all that much time on it the first place. Now I am committed to finishing it and will use one of the Berninas to do so (sparing the thumbs is generally a good practice!)

So — NOTE TO SELF — prior to abandoning a piece, you can:

One – cut it up, rearrange it (if necessary or fun, cut up TWO quilts and mix and match). (DONE)

Two – Using a zig-zag stitch, butt edges together and unite them. (DONE)

Three — Add additional scraps to surface, in my case more rooves, windows, and a red hot sun.  (IN PROGRESS).

Four – bind or not. I’m a lot less compulsive about the need for a traditional binding.

Who knows? Maybe this little Summer Village will usher in a whole slew of Finished Things.

For the first time EVER I am viewing the prospect of a period in which I limit myself to the task of finishing in-progress pieces as something appealing — as a source of freedom, even.

Funny isn’t it? How something that for years (finishing, finishing and focusing on finishing) has seemed nothing but an exercise in the SuperEgo — dull, lacking in spark, with an oppressive need for semi-accuracy — can suddenly carry a whiff of delight?

Perhaps this is a testament to the weight of things undone.

And perhaps this new stance on finishing is an indicator of just how toxic the process of selling your work can be. In most of the previous ten years, finishing a piece was synonymous with readying it for sale. That’s a big “UGH” all on its own, and it must have carried a large enough spread of contamination to pollute the process of finishing.

actually, many quilts were completed to give away as gifts!

Just wondering. Didn’t mean to sound SO incredibly down on selling.

Holly Fair, Cambridge, Mass. — one of the very first craft fairs I did

Can you imagine a whole wall of Global Warming quilts (mostly pieced already) backed and quilted and edges finished in some manner?! The Witness quilts (two of them, I think) — bound and complete? The Middle Passage quilts resolved (remember? I dunked two of them into the indigo vat, which kind of stopped me short) — bound and quilted as well?!! A couple of baby blankets, quilted and bound, if only to donate them to Children’s Hospital (because there are some – uh-oh – bumps that I won’t be able to quilt out).

adding tornadoes and rain to Global Warming WIP

First step I suppose would be to make a list.  Isn’t that often the First Step? I’m willing to wager that I have more than 25 quilts in progress.

We shall see. We shall see.

On another note — Hope everyone had a Happy Father’s Day!!

We did. First, with a visit to my sister in Salem (we ate hot dogs next to her alley-sidewalk garden) and then with a meal at our kitchen table together (a rarity these days). K. wasn’t even supposed to back from China yet, but his meetings wrapped up early. So being altogether was treat enough, but then C. brought dinner from the supermarket where he works and I made Fallen Chocolate Cakes (only 3 Tbs of flour!) which we ate with vanilla ice cream, and in my case, a fair amount of moaning. D. gave his father one of his best B&W prints of the mountains that he photographed (on film!) during our recent trip to Arizona.

print and pinhead

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teach what you want to learn

simplest components from African mask (see last picture, below)

We’ve all heard that right?  We teach what we most want to learn.

On the eve of teaching another class at The Boston Center for the Arts, I ought to be asking, then, “What is it that I want to learn right now?”

Hmmmmm. How to take a motif, maybe, and ‘go deeper’ with it (whatever that means). But I know what that means.

making faces

Or here’s a corollary: we give the advice we need to follow. This is extremely useful for me personally, because two of the people I routinely give advice to are Oppositional, with a capital “O”. Sometimes all I can do, is turn it around.

What advice have you given recently? Don’t fudge it by scanning memory for advice you WANT to hear. I recommend just thinking of the last three things, the most recent things, you have said to someone… in an effort to be helpful.

I’m always telling certain people to be more organized, or more responsible (and yes, yes, that applies here) but here’s the most recent thing offered:  yesterday, I suggested to someone that she partner written memoir passages that are painful with those that are joyful, so that the juxtaposition told a story, on top of those told in the passages and, possibly, to make it bearable to write the really tough stuff.  My idea for her was that a one-two step like that had the potential to turn into a dance, given sufficient air and trust.  So? Trust. Give work air? Partner the ‘uck’ with the ‘yahoo’? That’s probably pretty good advice for me right now.

building from the bottom up

Little changes make big differences

eye lid adjustment

looking askance

add patterns!

Tomorrow’s adult class will be ‘more sophisticated’.

two sections (top and bottom) that may or may not belong together

But, I’m wondering, maybe the more you break a thing down, the more complex it becomes. This I have seen time and time again in the manner of Jude Hill‘s designs and thoughts and cloths… the simpler she makes it, the more avenues spin off in every direction.

So maybe for the adults, I should make it EVEN SIMPLER!

Female kifwebe mask, late 19th or early 20th century. Unknown Songye artist. Democratic Republic of the Congo

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Widen the lens – how?

side porch

Always, the unconscious is present, making this or that comment in our days, usually quite a bit ahead of our awareness. That’s part of the mystery, the fun, and the intrigue of making art.

But this picture made me wonder if there weren’t ways to build in a practice of less-conscious captures?

I mean something more than accepting that scrap of fabric that fell from somewhere and landed on a quilt, begging for inclusion. And I mean more than embracing a wicked mistake and owning it as part of a now-changed design.

I mean consciously building in a more random catalog. Anybody have any ideas about how to do this? Does anyone do this already (that they know of)? I’d love to hear.

The umbrella picture struck me because I shot it after composing a series of careful studies of the unfurling, magnificent hosta that line our sidewalk. I composed the way I usually do and had some thread of text forming in my head (something about the glory of spring and the changing tides of opinion — in this case regarding hosta — a pedestrian plant that I used to dislike, but now appreciate for its reliability and willingness to endure all kinds of stress — from rabbit-dining to cold shocks, mashing, and even clips by the lawn mower). As an afterthought, I snapped this dappled light and wet umbrella on my way in the door.

I liked this picture so much more than any of the careful shots, that I had to wonder what else I am missing by pointing my lens in predictable directions.  The rake with its signs of recent bed-clearing, the umbrella still wet with a spring rain, and most of all, the dappled  light… these elements collectively said “SPRING” better than my careful compositions. What ELSE am I missing by pointing my lens in ‘pretty’ directions? By deciding in advance what constitutes an image of something, in this case — spring?

And speaking of spring, here are some more shots of my neighborhood and front yard.

a snobby conflict about flamingos years ago led many in Newton to adorn their yards with them

our front yard – these pansies have suffered in the recent cold

one of my favorite nearby gardens

another beautiful garden on Oxford Road

On the route where these pictures were taken I found a lovely hole-ridden grey piece of something – I don’t want to gross anyone out, but it is probably a piece of Kleenex.

found object has become a ‘house’ quilt

More on that tomorrow! But here is a sneak peek:

light coming through

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“Steal Like An Artist”

select subject and materials

The book “Steal Like an Artist” is a great and inspiring volume. You can read it in an hour and a half, and should, many times.

Here are a few of artist/author Austin Kleon’s liberating and clarifying concepts:

1. “Nobody is born with a style or a voice… We learn by copying.”
2. Copy your heroes.
3. Copy from more than one source.
4. “You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes.”

In that vein, today I celebrate a cloth face put together in preparation for an upcoming children’s quilting workshop that I’ll be teaching at the Boston Center for the Arts.*  This exercise served two purposes. One, it acquainted me with the project on the tactile level – obviously important when teaching. Two, it gave me a chance to express something, so there is less chance I will insert myself into my students’ work – always a peril for teachers, particularly of young people.

tacking ear down

So, from whom do I steal here? At least three artists.

One, Jude Hill. Jude is a master quilter whose techniques and philosophy I have been studying (and copying) for quite some time now. Her teaching style is completely geared to Number 4, above — in other words, she isn’t trying to show her students how to make work like hers. Rather, she is openly and consciously trying to get her students to SEE like she does. Philosophy and process instead of recipes. (her blog: Spirit Cloth on sidebar)

How is her influence present? This time, primarily in technique and a quality of attention:

1. The attention to the materials themselves (selecting fabrics with a nice hand, easily penetrable by a needle).
2. The use of invisible basting to adhere the layers.
3. Managing the layers by carefully inserting batting under face only.
4. Hand sewing some components together prior to basting the entire piece – eliminating need for numerous pins or glue.

assembling eye BEFORE all-over basting

Who else?  Susan Carlson – the wonderfully talented pictorial quilter from Maine, whose collage-style technique I learned in 2001.  Her influence:

1. An illustration approach to rendering the subject.
2. Building layers from the bottom up.
3. A liberal combination of patterns.

couching a single strand of satin cord

The third and perhaps most important artist:  the sculptor of the mask. Unknown. Gbi artist, Liberia, early twentieth century.

side by side – eyes not finished

I would like to try this again, because I missed on the proportions – that lovely length to the face and the broad, regal forehead got a little squashed in my version. I needle-sculpted the cheeks a little, but next time I would want to use color to add light around the nose and on one-half of the forehead.

Apropos of ‘missing’ (I don’t really like the final product all that much, in fact) – I’d like to add how critical being able to screw up and try again is for creative endeavor. My most favorite spokesman on this is Ken Robinson, the English education specialist. Clearly other people find him worth listening to as well — the last time I posted this link, it had been viewed 7MM times. It is up to 16MM views now!

All layers together, with some embellishment

*  I will be teaching “Patchwork Faces” – a workshop for children, on May 18, 2013 from 10:30 to 12:00. You can register here:

http://bcaonline.org/public-programs/families-connect.html

Then, on June 1, from 10:30 until 1:00, I will teach a class for adults called, “Sew What? Improv Quilting”

http://www.bcaonline.org/visualarts/mills-gallery/now-showing.html

Both class are offered through the Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont Street, Boston, MA
617-426-5000

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Glitches, patience, and white as an attitude

Please notice that I am not ranting.  I am not. Even though the tree and fence above could be a visual for me and our technology problems of late. Think: “Upgrade”.

The Black Screen of Death, which was not the Black Screen of Death really, but more like a Coma Interlude, occurred multiple times yesterday. Eventually the system restored itself each time, but not without freaking me out. “Walk away from the screen, Ma’am!  Walk AWAY from the screen!”  What choice did I have? Days of not posting here or for my online class have me feeling a tad crazed.  And now the taxes are REALLY, really due.

The good news? Scary glitches and slow processing are making learning a few simple tricks on the new Photoshop Elements seem like a piece of cake. And more good news: I managed to finish Schedule C this morning in spite of it all.

Back to quilting.  Less screen time invariably means more sewing, which is also good news, I might add.  Continuing with white, white, white for the Jude Hill class I’m taking over at Spirit Cloth has been productive. Interesting. Lots of white to share. But not now.  I took a small intermission from white to construct the little row of houses below.

The formulaic nature of this design means they are relaxing to make. And yet, each set is different enough from every other to stay interesting.

The tiniest chips of fabric can be employed for this project (“Oh-oh!” you say with dismay. “You mean I can’t throw them out?!!”)

This drawing came after the cloth construction. It gave me this fun idea of a multitude of paths running to and from the doors.

The original impulse for ground and sky fabrics lies just above the drawing, and here is where I want to suggest that this project — though full of pink, blue, rose, lavender, rust, and indigo — bears a relationship to white. If you can stand to — keep reading!

The ground is that wool challis I’ve talked about before. The sky is a piece of a vintage silk from a deconstructed handmade bodice.  The colors worked and they were the very first I chose. They were the INITIAL IMPULSE. The circuitous route back to the original choice got me thinking about white as a process or a state of mind.  Specifically, about white as pure expression.

I fiddled.  A Lonni Rossi broccoli fabric had potential but was rejected for being too literal and for adding visual clutter.

This shibori sky, suggestive of aurora borealis, was also too much.  Stars, also too literal.

This started the return back to the original choice.

Here, I shrunk the scale and added a moon. The moon stayed, but the scale was revised back to original premise.

Here I am back to the original sky, only now with the moon, and a much too busy foreground.  Departing miles from the original feel, it looked like I was trying way too hard and furthermore, the woven-strip foreground would have prevented stitching all those paths, and they intrigue me.

  Now, almost there.

And back.

So, what if “WHITE” is purity? What if ‘white’ is an original impulse? The original set of colors? The original thought? I’m not suggesting that refining ideas and radically departing from an initial idea are not essential and exciting ways to create.  I AM suggesting that there may be times when sticking with that First Thought (in this case a pairing of challis and silk) might be just right.  A way to honor an intuitive and spontaneous creation.

You can find more of these row house quilts here.

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