Back to Shelter

I put in a lot of work on "Shelter" in the winter and spring, to get to the point where I could roughly join the four tiers and show the quilt as part of the talk I gave in late April on "From Study to Studio: Meaning and Motivation in Scholarship and Art." (Here's a post where you can see what it looked like then, and where I explain problems that remained.) After the talk, I needed a break from the quilt. I also knew that I would be getting together in early June with quilting friends from the Chicago area, and that they could help me think through the problems. And they did! With their help I made a decision about what to do with the bottom right corner, and they also pointed out a couple of areas in the piecing that could use some adjusting.

Having spent some time clearing out the studio, and doing the easy-piecing of the four-patch posie quilt, I finally felt ready last week to put "Shelter" back up on the design wall. I pieced some additional orange-red to fix the bottom-right corner, fixed the piecing spots, and am now doing the final hand appliqué (photo above shows a basted part that I am now sewing down). I have some of the turquoise section, most of the black section, and the small added orange-red section still to go (the rest was completed before). This is my favorite part of the process, as I get to sit quietly with the colors.

The challenges remaining will be: 1) final joining of the four tiers (though I have some confidence on this, having done the rough join before my talk) and 2) quilting. I've purchased a low-loft ("Request") cotton batting. Quilting will be minimal--just enough to hold the layers together and to add depth to the piece. It would be easier to machine-quilt, as there is a layer of interfacing/stabilizer throughout the quilt, as well as multiple layers of fabric in many places. But my feelings about the quilt lead me to hand-quilting. My plan is to begin with hand-quilting, but if it is just too difficult, to fall back on machine-quilting. (I considered hand-tieing the quilt, but I think that would be the wrong look, even with the ties on the back.)

benefits of running out of a fabric

Here's the completed top for the "four-patch stacked posie" pattern (by HD Designs). When I was purchasing fabric for the frames, sashing, and cornerstones, I just estimated the yardage. Turned out I was short on the yellow/gold for the framing of the blocks, and the fabric store is 150 miles away. I had some other fabric that was close enough to work, but I thought I'd try out some assorted reds that I had on hand for the rest of the frames. I'm glad I ran out of the first fabric! I think the combination gives the top more interest. A couple of closeups:

A fabric stone collage

Time to catch up, now that teaching and the art class I was taking are both finished for the year. The collage of cut up images of stones that I did for the art class (last post) led to the fabric collage above, made from cutting up "stonescapes" I did a while ago, appliquéing hand-painted fabric onto linen. (You can see one such piece at the top of this post.) The collage is about 8" x 10." I think this is possibly a good direction to go in, accomplishing more abstraction for stone imagery. I'd like to try more pieces like this, possibly piecing them together into something much larger. But I can't go further on this until I paint some more fabric, one of the things on my list for the summer. I also realize that instead of being limited to the one or two appropriate colors of linen that I can readily find commercially, I can dye the linen myself. So that's on the list too, as well as dyeing cotton yardage in a number of colors to have available for a couple of other projects. But first I'm finishing up a simple patchwork quilt that I started as a side treat while grading papers last month, and I'm basting up a small quilt for a hand-quilting project, as I don't have anything right now for those moments when I just want to sit and hand-quilt.

The most daunting summer project is to finish up "Shelter." This will go back up on the design wall before long.

Here are some of the blocks for the patchwork quilt (pattern by HD Designs, "4-Patch Stacked Posies"):

All made from this fabric:

New direction - stone collage

Having put aside "Shelter" for a while, I sorted through other projects that have been in the closet, looking for those that would be good to work on in the context of the art class that I am currently taking ("Drawing in the Expanded Field"). One of the assignment options in the class was to take a found image (like a photograph) and change the size and manipulate it into something new. For this piece (12x18), I photocopied photos of stones, enlarged them, and then cut them up into angular pieces, but with each piece having some kind of curved line on it; then I glued the pieces onto gray paper. I like it. I can also see doing something similar with fabric. In fact, this collage method--and even the shape of the cut pieces--is very similar to the colored panel on the left side of the "Loss" quilt. But my teacher is encouraging me to keep experimenting with paper before moving to fabric--to facilitate rapid testing of a lot of options.

I have been wanting to continue my work with images of stones, but to somehow get to a more abstract level. This is one direction that will take me there.

Shelter basted up

The pressure was on to get the four tiers of "Shelter" put together in time for the talk I gave on Friday, "Study to Studio: Meaning and Motivation in Scholarship and Art." Here they are, roughly basted and pinned together, and the 4 edges also just basted under. (This is the top only.) Things that still need thinking about:

• the exact curves of the big joins--this is the easiest thing to fix up;
• the grey fabric worked into the black--this may need to go, also not hard to fix;
• the bottom right corner--big design flaw. Why did I make the black tier span both bottom and right edges? I think I did it to lessen reference to a kind of rainbow. But I did the final drawing in pencil only, on white paper. I didn't do a small final maquette with fabrics based on that drawing. Sigh. This will be more difficult to fix. I could do a quick fix by folding in the right side about 8 inches:
  

But this results in a vertical composition, not what I had in mind, and the shape of the black tier is too uniform. I think I will probably have to re-work the tiers to get to a composition where the black tier ends only on the bottom. I'm going to put this aside until June, when I'm getting together with my Design Camp friends in Chicago for a day of talking about our work in progress. I know I will get helpful feedback then. And putting it away for a while will help me see things more clearly myself.

A new foray: here are beginning sketches and some paper trials for another project, combining some old ideas I've had "in storage" with new ideas and methods from the drawing class I'm taking.

Next I'll do some trials with various sizes/colors/techniques, moving into fabric.

Shelter, a class, some writing, a workshop

While I work on constructing the black tier of shelter, I'm also doing some hand-sewing on the other tiers, doing final stitching and taking out basting. I've enjoyed looking at these pieces up close again as I sew.
And here's the black in progress. It's coming along quite well.

Progress is a little slowed by the start of a new term of teaching, with some other things on my plate as well. I'm taking a drawing class at the college, one that focuses on the legacy of minimalist, abstract drawing (like Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, Sol Lewitt) rather than representational, figural drawing. I love these artists, and I think this kind of drawing will help my development in quilting. We'll see.

I'm also working on a presentation I'll be giving at the college in late April, "From Study to Studio," describing/explaining my turn from scholarship to art. I've talked about this to an audience of quilters before, but not to my colleagues at the college.

In June I'll be attending a workshop by Terry Jarrard-Dimond, "What If? Building Pathways to Creative Work." This is being offered at a new workshop venue in Ann Arbor, Michigan, modeled on the structure of workshops at Nancy Crow's Barn, but one day shorter (so a little less expensive), and with a greater variety of types of workshops: http://www.buddingartideas.com/workshops.html. There are a number of fiber arts workshops (including a Susan Shie workshop in October on “Diary Quilt Paintings" that I wish I could go to). There are also watercolor, pastel, oil, encaustic, and other things being taught. Anyway, you might take a look--they've asked participants to spread the word, to help them fill this inaugural set of workshops.

Stones-from commercial fabric

In between the painstaking work of piecing the black tier of Shelter, I've worked on this simple quilt top, made from the pile of stone-looking commercial fabric I bought a couple of years ago, when I thought I would be using it for appliqued stones. In a previous post, I described what I eventually did with all the background fabric I had cut up for that project (along with some images of the trial applique blocks that I abandoned). And now this was a way to use the "stone" fabric. (The top is 56 x 73", with each block the size of a brick.) I'm not sure if the stripey black/gray blocks are a mistake, or if they liven it up a bit.

After I thought of doing blocks the size/shape of bricks, I had fun looking up "brick patterns" in a Google image search--certainly many other possibilities adaptable to quilting.