Talk, talk, talk…

You all know how much I love beading and when I was asked to give a little talk and demo, of course I said yes. I love talking about my passions as much as I love working with them.

But when I’m talking, I’m not working, so I don’t have anything new to show you.

At least, not quilt related. We had a dying tree get a big crack after a storm so we had to cut it down. I’ve been schlepping limbs and branches for 2 days! That’s just plain manual labor–nothing fun about it!

I’d much rather talk, talk, talk!

Always color…

My color decisions today involve beads. I’ve been slowly working on this piece, little bits at a time when I have a bit of time! It’s only about 16 x 20, but I’ve not been working on it very steadily.

I have my big rectangular dark beads on. I have my dark curvy lines. And then I have the pinky/orange/floral parts that I originally fell in love with. They’ve been totally ignored and now it’s decision time.

The flowers are subtle, but there, if you know what I mean.

These are the most clearly seen, quite pink, with just a touch of the orange on the right side.

These are almost completely pink with no orange nearby.

More very pink, no orange.

And a big swath of orange with no flowers.

I want to emphasize the flowers, pull in the orange flavor, but not overwhelm the subtlety of the flowers.

I started with the very lightest flower and used a gray/white bead.

Haven’t gotten too far, but I pulled these beads. I think I can achieve what I want with these…just don’t know how heavily I will cover the flowers with beads. I think a light touch is called for.

May not get this done for a while since it’s the “work-on-when-I-have-tiny-bits-of-time-piece” but I’ll post a picture of the completed beading. Then I have plans to add some hand stitching before the whole thing is done. Yep, little bits of time, but eventually it will get done!

I’m going to link this to Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday. I love to check out what everyone else is doing–you might, too!

I love wonky blocks!

My scrap project is now officially going to take forever and a day. And I don’t care! To make it match the picture in my head, I just cannot bring myself to square everything up and have it all neat and even. What that means in terms of construction is that there is no stacking and cutting of layers, no chain piecing, no shortcuts. But it’s all so much more unique when you customize every part of your work that it is just plain worth it!

Have you added wonkiness into your quilt life? I made a lot of crazy nine patch blocks and now I’m going to add some inserts into some of them. Just in case you haven’t tried inserts, here’s how I do it.

I’m using fairly wide strips for my inserts, because I don’t want to drive myself totally bonkers!

This block already had one insert and I’m going to add the striped one, also. The strip is one inch wide, so the finished insert is 1/2″ wide.

Simply slice your block where you want your insert to be.

I try to avoid seam intersections, but if you hit one, it’s not a very big deal. Sewing the left side first is what I usually do, lining up the edges, just as if it were a regular block. When you add the second side, you have choices.

Line up the edges again, as shown by the fat arrow, and sew. Don’t fret about lining up the other insert that’s already there or the block pieces. This is wonky and doesn’t need to match. Your second choice, shown by the skinny arrow, is to put the left edge of your presser foot closer to that first sewn seam. That makes your insert skinnier and by following the first seam line, your insert is straight, too. Or you can start with a skinnier insert piece…I don’t do that very often, but if you want to see great, skinny insert work, check out Kathy Loomis’ work at artwithaneedle.com She is awesome!

So, back to my fat inserts…I press the seams towards the insert.

That fills up the insert with fabric and you don’t end up with a big sinkhole in your block. See–nice and full and fluffy and the orange strip even accidentally matched!

Notice that I have not squared up the edges of the block. I save that part until I am actually joining my blocks. That way I can put off the final size decision a bit longer. Procrastination works well for me when I’m doing wonky stuff!

So this is what I’ll be doing for the forseeable future. I’ll try not to bore you with updates about doing the same thing over and over–I’ll save the next post about this piece until it’s done. I just want to encourage you to find something you can cut into without a heart attack and do something wonky, too. Quilting is supposed to be fun and this is lots of fun for me!

I’m happy to have something to share on Nina-Marie’s blog this week. Check out all the cool blog link-ups.

Design Time Again

My scrap project from my recent quilt retreat went up on the design wall today. I took a good, long look at it and decided that I wanted to proceed with it. I like it.

Now come the design questions that I think about right from the beginning, though many of them don’t need an answer until much further into the project.

What size do I want this piece to be? Do I want a real bed quilt or am I thinking more in terms of a wall quilt or a couch throw? On the design board right now it’s about 63″ square. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want it to end up square, but with this design, it will look fine to add more length at the top and easy to do with my planned white background.

Okay-next question…before I make any cuts or sew any seams, I have to decide if I want to square up my blocks, to a common size for each level.

Do I want to add more inserts to the largest blocks? Do I want to join blocks with uniform strips or more wonkiness?

Straight and square seems too easy and somehow like cheating! But wonky stuff is going to be much harder to do. How much work do I want to put into this easy scrap project? Hmmm…..sounds like these are my first decisions.

Time to step away from the design wall and THINK before I do something I’ll regret.

Wacky Quilters Today

Yes, I know, the group is really the Knot Even Quilters, but I still think of our beginnings when we were a tiny group doing wacky work! Not many people in the area were interested in art quilts, so we were really the oddballs. I’m not saying that we aren’t still oddballs, but there is a lot more interest in art quilting now.

We have been trying to inform ourselves of design principles and apply them to our work. Today we did a black and white exercise, to use just those colors, mostly lines, some shapes and curves and make designs. No color distractions.

I didn’t take pictures of everyone’s finished projects…just a couple, but I love the exercise!

So I took my black and white as far as I could…at least as far as I had fabric cut for! I happened to have 8 fat eighths of white, and I decided to just make them all up with black.

As I was making them, I decided that it was an 8 Day Week, either a series of little pieces or a set of ‘blocks’ for a larger piece. I’m fantasizing about what else I might want to do with them. Like screen print a design or pattern over the top of each one, in a single color or a different color for each one. Or add an identical ‘something’ to each one, maybe a fancy bead or a colored shape or perhaps the same type of stitching…for a simple little design exercise, this has given me a wealth of ideas.

It was a happy wacky quilters day!

Planned Play

Whenever I experiment with something new in the studio, I refer to it as playing. Today was open studio at USArtquest and I knew that it was going to be one big experiment for me, so definitely a play day. However, I had a plan for what I wanted to learn more about…paint on fabric.

Duplicating an earlier effort, just to see if I could!

Stencil, stamp and fine liner design–things that I don’t have much experience with and really wanted to explore in greater depth. But there are always so many distractions when working in a small space with lots of other artists…it’s hard to concentrate on your own work when you want to see what everyone else is doing. I’m feeling pretty proud of myself–I did a bit of all that I wanted, but look what else I  saw…

Kat Campau was one of the artists working today and she brought in black and white drawn and stitched funky animals and worked on painting them. They turned out so cool! It’s one of those ideas that you say, “I wish I had thought of that!”

Someone else was working with a Gelli Plate when Sue came bouncing in with some brand new, just-came-in-the-mail stamps! They put them to use right away and came up with some great prints, but of course I didn’t get pictures of those. However, I did manage to take pics of the stamps themselves and I really like them. Large, soft acrylic and interesting designs…

There are some pieces of fabric drying right now that I can’t wait to see. I did some more paint in a bag, lots of water and soft colors on most of them. Added some stamps to other previously painted fabrics and I’ll show you what I get tomorrow! Just the thought of two play days in a row is going to my head…hasn’t happened in way too long. Woooo-hooooo!

Artsy/Craftsy ADHD

Artsy/Craftsy ADHD. Yep, that’s what I’ve diagnosed myself with. I’ve been on vacation and only brought some beading with me. No sewing, knitting, painting or other projects to keep my hands busy. And it’s been boring. That led me to realize that I function at home by jumping from one thing to another on a daily basis. While I wait for paint to dry, I quilt. When I’m not sure in which direction I want to quilt, I piece. When I’m tired of piecing, I knit or bead…there are always a variety of things going on in my studio. Being able to jump from one to another keeps me from ever being bored.

Not so much on vacation…

I was able to do a workshop for the Cabin Fever Quilt Guild this weekend. It felt so good to be working with fabric after more than a week away from my ADHD studio activities. The ladies were super and, as always, each project is totally unique. Also, as usual, I don’t try to report their names and connect them to their projects because I always goof up when I try to do that. I apologize if I missed anyone! I will just leave you with glimpses of their projects on their design walls. Hope you can enjoy with me the beauty of their choices and their work.

Giveaway again!

Wow! When I opened up the program to start a new post, it told me that I have written 425 posts. Those nice, even numbers make me feel like I should celebrate and the best celebration is always a giveaway. I don’t know what it will be right now, but I will by the end of the post!

In the meantime, I’m back to making decisions about how to finish those little samples for my beading class. Much closer to final decisions, though. The little red and white one is going to be mounted on a white (painted) canvas. It’s 8 x 10. Shall I leave it plain white or add a strip of the cording I used on the edge of the piece?

And then we’re back to the purple flowers…also being mounted on a stretched canvas. One of the things I like to do is cover the canvas with fabric when I mount a quilt, rather than paint it. In this case, I tried out color with fabric at hand. Still don’t know if that’s what I want or just paint!

Can’t see the fabric well in this one, but it’s a sheer, close to the green color in the flower part.

Now that I see this one on screen, I can eliminate this fabric.

I like this one best, but don’t know if I want this fabric or just this color of paint.

This is another sheer and I think it may dull down rather than flatter the flowers.

So, I’ll ask your opinions again because I sure would like to finish up these two little things!

Now, back to the giveaway…I have some lovely hand dyed fabric and I’m willing to part with 3 fat quarters, if you are willing to take it sight unseen! How’s that for a nice little mystery gift? A comment gets you a chance at it!

Mixed Media Weekend

I’m the program chair for my local guild and this weekend was my first “duty weekend.” Our guild has a workshop on Friday, a lecture at our Saturday meeting and a workshop on Sunday. My responsibilities on the guild weekends include making sure the instructor gets to the right place at the right time, gets fed, gets help with anything she might need. I decided that for this first one I would not try to take the workshops, too! That was a good decision.

The guild meeting also gave me a chance to work on making powerpoint presentations. I’m not too experienced there, but I made one for our summer program and one to present all of this year’s workshop instructors. I was more nervous about that than anything and they worked just like they were supposed to…whew!!

Workshop fun…

Our instructor was Sherry Peterson of SLKP Designs.

During class I had time to work on my own stuff so I got a big backlog of paperwork type stuff done. It feels good to be caught up with that.

Chatted with the woman who photographed our quilt show and she sent me some shots of one of my quilts…the quilt I love the most because it’s a beaded piece. So happy to have her good photos!

See what I mean about a mixed media weekend, though. A little bit of everything.

I even had time to work on another sample piece for my upcoming beading class. Almost done…

This has been fun–like a 3 day retreat–and I get to do it 5 times more this year. There is a lot of work that goes into coordinating everything, but our guild has been doing this a long time so the template for how everything works is very well set.

However, when Monday comes, I’ll be glad to get back to my own little studio!

My brain hurts…

I took a beading class today. I was asked why I was taking a beading class and my reply was simple–I don’t know enough and I want to learn more. I do know lots of basic beading stuff, but there is just so much more to learn and do with beads. In fact, I learned so much in this one day that my brain hurts!

We were taught by Linda Lindsey of Square Rose LLC and she was fabulous! Totally organized and presented the information in a very logical sequence. And fun things happened all along the way!

This is one of the sampler pieces that Linda brought us…and we marveled at it!

My tablemate got organized and ready to work right away!

We learned stacks–aren’t those cute mushrooms?

We learned lines and corners and curves and couching and lazy stitch and picot stitch and humps, bumps and globs! THEN we took a deep breath and learned a few more things! We embellished lines with picots, ruffles, zigzags, candy cane loops, and then more loops were mentioned! Whew!

We only had time to touch on a few other things, but we got homework! Homework! Can you believe it? We have one more class and I can’t wait. There is so much more to this beading stuff than I ever thought there was! I was addicted before this class but the possibilities that we were shown today just blew me away!

I’m so looking forward to this class and my brain is very full. I’m thinking it explode by the end of the next class, but it will be SOOOOOO worth it.