Studio Soundtrack

I'll be writing a post or two before long on several small and a couple of large new projects that have been occupying me in the last month or so, but in the meantime, here's a post about music for the studio.  Some years back, I took a workshop with Katie Pasquini Masopust, who suggested that having music playing in the studio could be a help in generating a creative flow, so long as it was music without words. I don't have music on all the time, but I do find it helpful in the way she suggested. I like using Pandora for this background music, as I can select a "station" based on a particular musician, and then get a stream of that musician plus others who are similar. My favorite stations, in approximate order of how often I choose them are: Keith Jarrett, Eric Satie, Bill Evans, Tord Gustavsen Trio, Federico Mompou, Ken Bonfield, Sandy Bull, Dave Bruebeck, Leo Kottke, Taylor Eigsti (a new find, through one of my jazz stations on Pandora). There are other times in the studio where I'm doing something mindless (repetitive cutting of pieces, simple straight stitching or machine quilting); at these times I like to listen to popular music with lyrics. My most frequently chosen stations for this are Carole King (great variety included in this station), Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, and sometimes Willie Nelson.

Earlier this week, I was sewing at a friend's apartment (I keep a small machine there, so it's easy for us to work together), and I realized that she would enjoy using Pandora instead of the old boom box with cassettes that she has. I showed her how to get it set up and how to choose stations. For one of the stations, she chose "50s Rock 'n' Roll Radio," and we started listening to it. We were amazed--the soundtrack of our youth, every song familiar. (We both graduated from high school in 1965.)  I listened to it again today for about 20 minutes, while finishing up some quilting.  I could sing the chorus on every song that came up--Twist and Shout, At the Hop, Earth Angel, Do the Locomotion, Big Girls Don't Cry, Blue Moon, Splish Splash, Under the Boardwalk, Rock around the Clock, etc.  Long-term memory is really quite amazing.

Details

Having finished the blue section of "Shelter," I'm taking a break, and have made a half-dozen coasters, 4x4," piecing leftovers from the strip-pieced strata, and adding in an accent color. These make up quickly, especially if I sew just one line of stitching around the edge, rather than quilting lines inside the square. I didn't think to take a photo of version #1, where I had sewn a continuous row of navy blue stitching around the edge of the coaster. The blue stitching across the red/orange stripe was distracting. "But it's just a coaster," I told myself. But I also kept noticing the blue stitches interrupting the contrasting stripe. So, the next coasters I sewed a start-and-stop line, thinking I would leave the earlier ones as they were. In the end, I ripped out the stitches in the earlier ones, and re-did them. Better. At a retreat this winter, Bill Kerr of FunQuilts gave a talk about the importance of details--to carry out one's work into the smallest detail. The point seemed somewhat obvious, but in these past months I've felt the influence of the talk a number of times--pushing me to consider a detail that I was tempted to skip over. Now, these coasters are far from perfect; they tend to have dips or bulges on one side or another, not easy to control for. That I'll live with, but the element of contrast was too important to mess up. . . even for a coaster.
Here's another one. A quieter contrast--I like this one a lot. I just finished reading a collection of essays by the composer Roger Sessions, Questions about Music. (Not a usual subject of reading for me, but I'm participating in my public library's summer reading program, which challenges you to read a book in eight different categories over a period of six weeks; music is one of the categories.) The book includes two essays on composing; lots of analogies to the process of creating a work of art. For example, he talks about a composition being built on elements of association and contrast. I tend to be drawn to fabrics closely associated with each other, and have to push myself to bring in the element of contrast of value and hue.