Monthly Archives: August 2012

Building backgrounds…

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I just finished teaching a 2-day class based on my quilt, The Ground, As Seen From Above. This class is very much about cutting organic lines, without a ruler. This is lots of fun once you get into it but it's very different if you've never cut without a ruler or measurements to follow.

On the first day my students constructed their backgrounds and they are all wonderful! Here is Karla's, a lovely mix of green and blue batiks:

Ground-Karla

And Susan's. I love the purples she used! 

Ground-2

Faye's quilt is a lot darker than it looks here, and a bit more wine-colored. I love the movement in it!

Ground-Faye

Hope's quilt is actually greener than it looks here, and it's very pretty. The light, open spaces are well-placed.

Ground-Hope

Kathy's quilt is fresh and happy, with a great mix of patterns:

Ground-5

I love the way Bonnie played with the open space in her quilt.

Ground-Bonnie

It was fun to see Christy working on her quilt – she looked so good in standing in front of it!

Ground-Christy

Christy's mom, Marilyn, worked in vertical strips. The areas of blue shine through:

Ground-Marilyn

Mary was deciding on the colors of her wheels when I took this photo – when last I checked she was liking the brown ones. She has a nice mix of textures and values going on:

Ground-Mary

Paula's inspiration is a New England fall and you can see it in her quilt:

Ground-Paula

Today we appliqued and it was another good day. I'm proud of how well everyone did!


What’s behind Door #2?

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I think there is a happy family behind Door #2! I know the new block looks way too big to fit with Door #1, but it gets trimmed to size after the applique is complete. 

DoorNumberTwo-04

I've made some progress since I last showed you the doors. The panels in the yellow doors are reverse appliqued and the 'stained glass' window over the door is stitched off the block. I needed to get the whole door and trim appliqued so that I could set the rest of the block together. I've designed these blocks so that they can be set together in one quilt or stand alone as individual quilts.

Here's a tip for stitching something like the window. Cut the underneath fabric bigger than it needs to be (in this case it's the floral print). Trace around the template onto the underneath fabric. Trace and cut out the smaller pieces. Finger-press them and sew them to the fabric like this…

Window_OffBlock-1 copy

Once the 'spokes' are sewn to the underneath fabric you can treat this as one piece and sew it in place. 

As I type this I'm taking a break from cutting leaves for the plants that go next to the door. I'm going out of town tomorrow to visit the Mississippi Valley Quilt Guild in Iowa and I really want to have some stitching to take with me. So now I'm going to get back to it!

FYI – You can click here to read about my class for Adventures In Italy where I will be teaching from the door patterns. My class is called Open A Door To Adventure.


Is it Art or art?

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Some years ago my very good friend, Karen Stone, showed me some of the wonderful paintings in her house. As I was ooohing and ahhhing, she told me that they came from antique stores and garage sales. They weren't 'Art' with a capital 'A'. They were paintings that had been painted by someone and that ended up owner-less, discarded. The thing is that she loved them (and so did I).

Since then I've bought a variety of discarded art paintings myself. This was my first one:

CamperPainting

(FYI – click on any image and it should open up larger.)

I absolutely love this painting. I took it to Kim and Neva at The Frame Team here in Sherman – the best picture framers I have ever met. Both of them are incredibly good at choosing the right frame for any project. What you see on this painting is a liner frame in green with a wider, cherry-colored outer frame. Perfect.

Neva and Kim have, over the years, collected similar works. They have a good eye and they get out more than I do. I was in their shop this week and had a chance to see, and photograph, these…

DiscardArtPile-02

The sailboat painting on the left is calling me. And then there are these…

DiscardArtPile-03

Look at the cow up close. Goodness gracious, I LOVE this cow (and I don't like cows all that much). The problem is that I have run out of walls!

Crazy-Eyed-Cow copy

FYI: Kim and Neva have an etsy shop (click here) where you can see much of what they have collected and have for sale. 

I recently bought one of their finds that we titled Nuclear Sunrise (this was before the cow came in, so to speak). I love it because of the colors in it. It is perfect in the spot above this green cabinet, which lives behind a door in our bedroom. We went with a smaller, less expensive frame for this one. It's a deep violet/raspberry that is really good with the colors in the painting.

NuclearSunrise-2

It's not a painting I see all the time, but it's an interesting surprise when I happen to be in a spot to see it. 

I could show you more of Kim and Neva's collection here but it's probably eaiser for you to go to their etsy pages. 

So back to the original question: Art or art? When I go to a museum and look at the art, I sometimes ask myself: If this was in a garage sale, would I buy it? Many expensive and respected works do not, for me, pass this test. Once I took that to heart, I find it much easier to find works that I love in the most unusual places.

I've also found that I have much more of a sense of the artist in these discarded paintings. Someone felt the need to express her or himself and they just did it, most likely without classes or training. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but that feeling of the artist is a large part of what makes these pieces more special to me.

The same thing is true in quilts. I find that I am personally very attracted to quirky quilts – and I am looking forward to working more quirkiness into my own quilts in the future. 

NOTE: if you go to Neva and Kim's etsy page, and if you fall in love with something but don't live here and you want it framed… if you do not have a good option where you live I can attest to the fact that they can choose the perfect frame for any of these pieces.