Our small ZOOm art group got together again this week, and I made some good progress on the fabric and paint thingee.
This almost-square piece of grey-and-silver fabric got painted with swirls, and then stitched with blue, white and oranges to follow the swirls.
Once I felt there were enough swirls, I found some quilt batting and some nice patterned fabric for the lining. This fabric, which I am very fond of, is up-cycled from a pair of pajamas.
I decided to use the same embroidery thread and quilt along the painted and embroidered lines, just enough to hold all the layers together. I love how textured and nubbly it is!
Now I just need to sew the side seams and put in a zipper to make a useful, beautiful padded sack.
I was feeling pretty good about the shape of my highlands, mountains and shorelines on my French map quilt. Auntie Bridgett admired the lay out, then asked, “Are you going to put anything else on it? Like cities?”
Oh. Yeah. Knowing that most cities in Europe are on rivers, I decided to put in the rivers first.
So, using Googlemaps and blue yarn, I began to lay out my rivers. I’m only putting in the main rivers for now, so you can see (from upper right, going clockwise) the Meuse, the Rhine, the Rhône, the Garonne, the Dordogne, the Charante, the Loire, and the Seine.
Once the rivers were laid down, I felt more confident about the placement of the cities. Paris, Vernon, Rouen and Honfleur along the Seine,
Orléans, Tours, Angers and Nantes along the Loire,
and Lyon, Avignon, Aix and Marseilles along the Rhône.
So now, everything is laid down. But NOTHING is attached yet. If I lift the green hexagon, it all falls off. That’s the next step, and it may take a few days. Be patient with me.
Yes, I have made progress! Once I got the shorelines figured out, everything starting making sense.
I kept looking at my patterns for the Grand Massif, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and they were just …. Clunky. They made the whole eastern side of the country look like a mountain range, which just isn’t the case.
As you can see….
So I pulled up different topographical maps of France to see how I might make them better. Certainly more accurate, and maybe just a little prettier.
My process isn’t artistic, or even scientific. I glue sheets of scrap paper together and start cutting, staring and trimming until I get a shape I like.
This took a good part of the morning, because there is a lot of cutting, placing, staring, and walking away for a while. During the walking away parts I vacuumed, went shopping, and watched the Olympic Triathlon on YouTube.
And when I got a pattern that was closer to the shape of the Massif, I laughed out loud. Un Escargot!!! That is, a snail.
I like that a lot. Escargot are one of the classic French dishes. Snails are also raised all over France for it, and it is one of Auntie Bridgett’s indulgences when we visit there.
So I chuckled and pinned the patterns down, carefully trimming the lumpy shapes out of the purple fabric. The highest peaks of the Pyrenees and the Alps will be shown in red.
Et voilà! The big shapes are taken care of.
But there is one more detail hanging over my head.
I have this half yard of black fabric that I haven’t used yet. It is part of the color palette, and I think it will give the map some depth and drama. I intended it to be mountains, but it looked like a big black hole. I think it would be better as a detail, a curve or a line rather than a blob.
So now I get to stare at this for a while, and figure out what comes next.
As you can tell, I’ve become a little obsessed with this French map quilt.
I’ve never made anything like it, and the examples I’ve found on the internet aren’t anything like I’m trying for, so I am in untested waters.
Quite literally, because it is the shorelines that are giving me the heeby-jeebies. I am trimming, staring, and questioning myself at every step.
After Auntie Bridgett pointed out that for the shoreline to look right it would need water, I headed down to Joann fabric to fetch some blue. And she was right (as she so often is). The shorelines of France curve in, so they fit well inside my hexagonal outline. But what shape should the waves be? Classic pointy? Or smoothly waving?
Since this is an interpretation of a map, we are imagining it from above, and the pointy wave shape is what we see from alongside the waves.
So I am going to go with the smoothly waving style, and will add some embroidered lines of white and blue to show the texture and movement of the waves hitting the shore.
So, after more than a week of “The Artistic Process”, I have three of my six edges (those with shorelines) figured out. Next, I’ll wrestle with mountains.
In search of fabric for my France map quilt, I took the # 75 bus to the #72 to Bolt Fabric the other day. It’s a quick trip, and nice to see new neighborhoods.
Bolt didn’t disappoint! I found the palette I had chosen in solid cottons, which will be good for appliqué-ing and embroidering as the project moves along. I got the fabric home and washed it.
And now I need to decide on the style of the map. The main body will be green, the lower mountains purple, and the peaks of the Alps and Pyrenees will be red. Coastlines will be a soft peach. Am I sure? Maybe.
With my five colors, it will not be a ‘realistic’ map. It will be modern, abstract, more …. stylized. But what style?
I’m wrestling with that, in one of my favorite stages of creation, the “creative problem”.
My goal at this point is to let each stage sit long enough, and look at it often enough, so I don’t get ahead of myself.
So far the only cutting I’ve done is to make the basic green hexagon shape. The rest will come, I’m sure.
I love learning new things, and this week I have been all about Slow Stiching. This is a new name for combining old hand sewing techniques like embroidery and quilting, and I am loving it.
I have got a project set up to do on my flight to Denmark, but I want to make sure I know the ins and outs before I start it at 30,000 feet.
So I am practicing! I am making a 30 inch long, 3 inch wide strip, quilted, appliquéd and embroidered. I am not sure what I will use it for, but something will come to me. Wall decoration? Head band? Ridiculously long book mark?
Anyway, I am enjoying the act of embroidering, playing with colors and patterns, and feeling the textures grow under my fingers. There may also be buttons, beads, and other goodies as I go along.
I am learning how this sort of project works. A few things I have learned:
*** Keep about half an inch of overlap so there are no gaps between patches.
*** Use a single strand of thread of a light color to sew patches down if you plan on adding more layers of stitching, so it doesn’t distract from the patch.
This is how it is looking so far, on the front….
And on the back.
Maybe I’ll bring this one along with me, and we’ll figure out what to do with it!
Back in March, I got some books about Sister Corita Kent for my birthday. As you might suspect, Corita was a Catholic nun. She was also an artist and teacher at the progressive (as far as Catholic institutions go) Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles back in the 1960s.
I will not attempt a detailed biography here. There are dozens in print and online, by folks who have done their research.
What I want to talk about is how some of Corita’s “Ten Rules’ have affected me and my art.
Number 4. Consider everything an experiment.
I know Crazy Quilts are an OLD thing, but mine is a NEW thing, at least to me. Combining piecing, embroidery, beading and quilting in one totally original creation big enough for two people to snuggle under was a seven month expeiment. It worked out pretty well.
Number 6. There are no mistakes. There is no win and no fail.
This is comforting to me, after years in the classroom where I dreaded making mistakes in front of my students. Knowing I can learn from everything makes me braver.
Number 7. The only rule is the work. It is people who do all the work all the time that figure things out.
For the past few years, with help from Auntie Bridgett and Ruthie Inman, I have been reading, thinking and experimenting with art. The stitches in my Crazy Quilt were an experiment. Laying down layers of collage, then tissue, then ink. Three dimensional constructions covered in paper mosaics… all experiments. I like some better than others, but I learned from them all.
And, as Sister Corita promised, I am figuring things out.
On Friday, Auntie Bridgett and I went up to the Portland Expo Center to see the Annual Quilt show put on by the Northwest Quilters Inc..
The weather was warm and sunny, so we took transit.
The number 75 took us north and through a lot of neighborhoods we had never seen before. It then headed west through the Kenton neighborhood and past the Paul Bunyun Statue. After about 30 minutes it let us off at the Yellow Train Line station on Lombard Street, and we caught the train to the Expo.
The Quilt show was an amazing combination of the art and craft of quilting and the business of selling sewing machines, quilting supplies, and sewing kits.
I was very impressed not with just the skill and care shown in piecing the quilts, but with the originality in techniques and subjects.
There was even a wonderful, small, old, Crazy Quilt, which was the one piece I would have brought home if I could.
I will tell you about the rest of the adventure tomorrow!
Well, the Crazy quilt is all done, washed, and ready to be used.
Of course, it couldn’t get finished simply or easily; it had to make me a little crazy first. You know how it is when your Mom tries to cut your bangs and she cuts one part too short, and then has to cut the rest to match? There was some of that.
I had planned on a wide plum-colored edge to frame the quilt top, but I cut too much off one side, had to cut the others to match, and got a really narrow frame instead. It was accidentally perfect, and I love it!
I sewed the finishing seam in the machine, careful to keep the edges smooth and even. To finish it off, I gave it a gentle wash in the bathtub and then a tumble dry.
It developed that lovely quilty crinkle that I love so much.
I am very happy to have made a pretty, useful thing. It is also a memory quilt, because it has fabrics from Auntie Katie, Auntie Bridgett, my friend Charlotte, and projects I made for lots of other folks. It even has some embroidery by Kestrel and Katie.
We had fun on Easter, but not much of it shows in pictures. I’ll show what I have and tell the rest.
Easter Day was sunny and warm (almost too warm, for some), and we got everything packed into the wagon and headed for Laurelhurst Park.
We found a table in the sun just above Firwood Lake. Someone had recently drawn a cute cartoon of a bunny jumping over an egg, with the words “In the name of the moon”. Very nice.
We enjoyed the sunshine and people watching until everyone else showed up.
Then the food came out, and we all had good bread Katie brought from Grand Central Bakery, turkey, cheeses, fruits, veggies and cookies.
We met some nice folks who name the ducks at the park, just like we name the trees! We may all get together and make a map of the park with all our silly information….wouldn’t that be fun?
As we were walking home, Jasper and Kestrel taught all the adults about a new kind of music, called “Vocaloid”. It is made with synthetically generated voices and sounds, mostly, like a video game. But I am always happy to learn something new, so we listened and chatted while I worked on the CrazyQuilt.
Having clever grandkids is like having clever kids! Always keeping me on my toes.
Dear Liza 