Posts Tagged ‘decision making’

Sample Making Satisfaction

Friday, November 13th, 2020

I have in mind something about 2m wide by about 95cm high, which is largish for me, and with the hand stitching that’s on my mind just now, I’ve been thinking of how to apply large areas of colour – well there’s paint of course …

I’m always inclined to set personal challenges to somehow use stuff already in the house, much of which I bought years ago on some whim or faded intention.  A few years ago I bought several metres of slightly dusty white cheesecloth in an old downtown store – I’ve asked myself a few times since what on earth I was thinking.  The other day from somewhere came the idea that I could paint or spray it, and thought it would go well with what I have in mind (see previous post)  I just happened to have a new can of gold spray paint, it was a nice day, so I cut off 3m x ~50cm, took it outside, and emptied the whole can on it.  Outside, with the fabric folded over so spray passing through the holes would get picked up as it moved through, with re-folding periodically, I regard that as a successful move… though I forgot about an aprin so njow have a new painting shirt, and managed to get some drips on my foot amazingly missing my sandle, and a few drops on the ceramic patio tiles, which didn’t cause any angst anywhere.

Gold gauze and a sandy coloured waxed string machine appliqued with invisible nylon thread to secure the edge, which was then hand stitched with one of my many gold threads.

I suppose I fiddled around for at least an hour, ironing the gauze, and trying several ways to stitch it down, none of which I was happy with until this combo,  so it ticks all the boxes –

  • I can invisible machine applique large sections of this gold gauze, and the edge will not fray and become unstable as I stitch and handle the rest of the piece
  • The effect of this gold gauze is earthy, not brassy – very pleasing.
  • In addition to the horizontal strips I at first tagged it for, I now know I can use it for other shapes that would fray even more on handling if not fo my technical breakthrough.
  • I have a lot of this colour gold thread, but as it’s just the edge being oversewn, it will be much more economical with the feature thread than the oversewn strips on Pandemic Pattern (which did fray, and that was a chosen option, so AOK)

 

 

Jottings And Inspirations

Saturday, March 17th, 2018

I opened an almost-forgotten folder today, which led me down memory lane for a while, skimming through some writings by various members of a writer’s group I belonged to here some years ago.  I found fictional and autobiographical stories, and some poems including a couple of prayers; there was even a ‘Chapter 2’ of a book someone was apparently writing though I doubt it was ever completed, and there was no name on it.

Wanting to improve our writing skills, Pamela, Gerry, Mutt, Bertha, Sonya, Doris and I met regularly to discuss and critique material we’d each worked on in the preceding fortnight.  Among other things, Gerry Fairless (dec.) wrote An Appreciation in 2002 about our group which includes the following lines:  “A common aim – the urge to write/Brings us together, to excite/Each other and ourselves of  course/With our creative talent and resource.” Not brilliant perhaps, but certainly heartfelt.

One of the writings I re-read today was a poem by the late Mutt Gordon Fearing expressing her gratitude on having the gift of being able to paint.  It reminded me to stand in front of this little watercolour of hers that I pass by every day and love – “Thank you Lord for such a gift/May love of nature never cease./And whoever owns my works/Can feel in them your joy and peace.”

Watercolour Still Life, by Montevideo artist, Mutt Gordon Firing (dec.)

I have several of her watercolours, as I have always loved that medium.  Indeed, the first piece of art I ever bought was a landscape in watercolours when I was about 8 years of age.

And what  did I write and put forward to this group?  At that time I was writing short pieces for our children on early memories of my  own life, so they might understand the kind of mother they have 😉 and other articles on some of our family adventures and travels that included them.  I have been thinking I need to do more in this vein, and the grandkids, aged 15-21, are now old enough to be on the distribution list, too.  I’ve been a bit distracted from this purpose but feel ready to re-focus, and I’m no longer needing to write the great Australian novel – for me, I think short stories may be more ‘me’.

On what was apparently my first day as a member of the group, I asked the girls to critique a workshop description I was submitting to a conference organiser.  I sent it out by email to each member and each member came to the meeting with their comments on their printout.  My written introduction included “…but first, I need to come up with a snappy title: any of these?  I work a lot with lists for names of quilts, articles designs and so on, listing everything, serious or trivial, and letting them eliminate themselves one by one.”    I still use this method to come up with titles. Some of my better ideas included:

  • Scrap Quilts for Everyone,
  • New Fashioned Scrap Quilts,
  • Scraps of Skill (Required)
  • New Lives For Old Scraps
  • Tomorrow’s Traditions Today,
  • Cuttings From The Sewing Room Floor,
  • Today’s Scraps Tomorrow’s Heirlooms,
  • Scraps of Quality
  • Skillful Scraps,
  • Old Scraps New Quilts
  • Say It With Scraps,
  • Conceptual Scraps,
  • and I finally chose Hot Quilts From Cold Scraps, a workshop I have successfully taught many times now.

New Directions, 2000,  96cm  x  84cm

It was doubly pleasant to share some of these blasts from the past with former member Doris MacGibbon, who just happens to be visiting from New Zealand this week and staying here with her husband.  We’re all having a ball, talking all the time of course and covering so much ground  face to face 🙂

Bungle Bungles + Glitter

Saturday, August 15th, 2015

With the ghastly weather this week I’ve been able to put some serious time into this next work in the Bungle Bungles series – adding gold painted dots to the pieced shapes, of what will be #7.BB 7 blog_edited-1

This only a small section of it, of course, maybe 25cm square, but the piecing’s almost all done.  There’s more paint needed in places, then it will be ready to layer and quilt. I’m tossing up whether to hand or machine quilt this time, but will have decided by the time I get there.  I have the next one in mind …

An Update on Motivations

Friday, July 17th, 2015

In the past day or so I followed another quiltmaker’s link to her blog about what she has been making recently – a site I’ve been to a number of times, and left a comment to the effect “I see what you’ve done, but what’s your motivation?”   Her response was that she didn’t think people would want to read about why she uses the materials and subject matter she does.  I really differ, and though I thought  her response a bit vague, with a principal rationale she gave as it being play, I appreciated her answering.  Yes,  I do like to read about what motivates people; after all, we all have different reasons for doing what we do, and, we could use other ways to express ourselves – painting, ceramics, writing a book or making movies, whatever. The artist in each of us is responding to a unique vision of the world around us.  Well that’s my view anyway – and I wrote back to her, in part –

The making, the sewing and assembling, is different for each of us, and leads to distinctive styles – but that is still different from the why behind it.  …. For myself, a lot of my work, including my Ebb & Flow quilts, or the works in my Tracks series (galleries on my website)  expresses what I see as a major theme in the world about me – that everything is in a process of change as long as your time scale is long enough – and that change over time brings people into and takes them out of our lives; change can affect health, wealth, geographical location, and of course we ourselves change through age and may even change emotionally as we move through time.  My vision is explored via abstract arrangements of lines, shapes and textures in fabric and thread; I don’t do anything pictorial/representational. Well my current series is as representational is it might get ….

Then I checked my own blog, and found it is a long time since I wrote about my own motivations!…. and if the above artist or any new reader was checking they might be wondering – so let me say a few words in general about all the textile art I have done –

For more than 30 years my original works have been inspired by landscape structures, processes and resulting patterning of textures.  Since childhood I have been fascinated by natural forces and the roles they play in shaping the landscape.  I studied geography and geomorphology at university. Since marrying a geologist in the late ’60’s, I’ve found myself living in a variety of different landscapes: coastal and Outback Australia, central western USA, littoral and urban Uruguay, all of which have influenced my work.   Regarding Landscape as a metaphor for Life is taking me in new directions.

I am currently exploring a landscape known as The Bungle Bungles or as the Aboriginal people have always called it, Purnululu.  It’s a large, deeply eroded sandstone and karst range in the Kimberley region of NW Australia.  In almost 20 years of Outback living, much of it up north, I still have not yet been there – but it is one of those iconic places Australians want to go, and I hope to one day. Iconic it may be, but it is also mysterious, and I wanted to use it as the subject of an art quilt competition I was entering at the time. I have become further intrigued with it and there are still several more ways I want to explore how I feel about this huge mass of rocks that stand arising out of plains like a group of sentinels.

While reading of the WA Government’s application document for the Bungle Bungles / Purnululu to go on the World Heritage List, I came across this comment by the writers –

“Religious beliefs, places of spiritual significance, stories and paintings
associating ancestral beings with the landscape, kinship connections and language
identification are all essential to the connection between people and place in Purnululu,
providing traditional owners then, as now, with a guide to living and being.”

This rather convoluted long sentence,  and other reading, have really focused my mind on this place, and at the moment I feel it could take me until the end of the year or beyond to exhaust the topic – a bit like a series of paintings on haystacks or waterlily ponds,  I guess.  While racking my brains for a suitable title, as I normally do I compiled a list of words I associate with my subject, and it includes these :-  age-old, timeworn, massif, massive,  keeper, emblematic, timeless, seasonal sculpture, silent, presence, overwhelming, mysterious …   And some titles I considered were/are Dreamtracks, Sentinels,  Ancient Keepers, Guardians.  The entry into the art competition that started all this I called ‘Dreamtracks’, and I may continue naming the series this with the addition of 2,3 etc., but I’m not sure if the one I am working on now will really be suited by this title, or not – I’ll wait and see when the quilting’s done.

BungleBungles 6

 

The Bungle Bungles Series Continued…

Thursday, July 16th, 2015

Kimberley Dreaming choices made, layered_edited-1

So the question I was considering in the last post was whether to go with the plain fabric domes or the one colour with the black/gold pinspot  – see the top part of this collaged image.   I decided to go with the one colour with gold pinspot.  There’s a panel of gold pinspot below the shapes, and then more black. I’ve layered and begun quilting, and while I do this bit, I am considering whether the previous one in the series, now bound and fitted with sleeves, needs gold dots or not – because, once started, there will  be no going back … that gold paint is  really permanent!

 

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