Diversions

I really admire those artists who have a solid focus.  Every time you visit their blogs, you know what you will find as they make progress on their painting or stitching or sketching.  They dig in deep and develop their ideas fully.

I, on the other hand, find it impossible to focus.  I've come to realize that I need to both stitch and paint.  They occupy different areas of my brain.  They take entirely different energies and fit my mood at different times of the day.  It's not like if I wasn't stitching in the evening, I'd be painting.  They aren't interchangeable.

When I was away at my artist retreat last year, I had all the time I always dreamed of to work on my art.  I thought I'd get in a good 8 hours of painting every day, then maybe stitch a bit in the evening.  But I soon found out that I can only paint for about 2 hours straight before I hit a wall.

I loved the set up of the residency where I lived and worked in one open room.  After I finished painting, I would sit in a chair by the window stitching, but was always able to glance up and see my painting on the easel.  Maybe it's like taking a walk, or taking a shower, when you are trying to solve a problem, and the answer comes to you without effort.  While I was sitting there stitching, I often found what I needed to do next on my painting.

But sometimes I seem to just enjoy the diversion of an entirely new project.  When I saw the wonderful work by Rosemary Hoffenberg,  I was off in a new direction.  This piece in particular grabbed me.

 I couldn't figure out how she made those wonderful circle and oval shapes, especially after I read that they were pieced!  Fused I could see, even some applique, but pieced!  I had to experiment just to try to see how she did it.  I had some randomly pieced scraps lying around that I used as a starting point and started joining and cutting and repiecing.  I don't have much practice with curved piecing, and that was a huge challenge.  My experiments are very clunky compared to Rosemary's, but I did have fun with the randomness of the circles.

Will I ever do anything with them?  Doubtful.  But I did enjoy the afternoon diversion.

2017 Daily Stitch Project

Here's how my brain works:  my 2017 stitch project was inspired by these gorgeous silk threads that I found at an estate sale.  I thought it would be fun to focus almost entirely on stitch and mark making this year for my daily project, not adding too much fabric into the mix.  

But by the time I started stitching, I forgot all about those great silk threads.  I started Jan. by stitching with black and white, adding bits of red fabric here and there.  I'm perfectly happy with that, but I am going to break out the silk threads for Feb.

 Unlike my 2016 project that was done in individual components each day, this one is one continual piece per month.  Each day's stitching will be on a linen background 2"x30", so I estimate I need to fill up roughly an inch a day, not too much.

2016 focused on the shifts in seasons.  For 2017, I want to work intuitively with how each day feels to me, still keeping it abstract.  It might be weather related, but it also might be mood based.  I can see looking back where the especially chaotic, darker moments hit and where I felt more hopeful.

I'm finding some new challenges with this project.  I have to take more of a leap of faith that it will all hold together in the end.  I'm not sure if I want to go back at the end of each month and do a little unifying to make it hold together aesthetically, or just let it remain a random joining of days.  I'm also not sure how well it will hold together as a whole year at the end.  I already want to switch to cool grays, blues, lavendars for Feb, but those seem jarring after Jan.  Do I want to try to integrate them, or not worry about it?  Right now, I'm happily stitching and will see how it evolves.

A Fresh Start

Well there's quite a mess to clean up when you haven't blogged for 3 years!  Guess I'll just plunge right in.  I've been needing some time to fully focus on the process of making with little concern for product.  As soon as showing my work is anywhere in the back of my mind, it's impossible not to think about the final product.  It's been a nice, long three year period of exploring in paint and stitch for me, but I have missed blogging, especially at the end of each year.  I miss having a visual record and seeing my thoughts as pieces develop when I share my work.  I also miss having deadlines to push me to finish things.

I thought about starting a fresh blog, but it seems appropriate to continue from my last post here--Dorothy Caldwell's workshop--since that formed much of my current direction, as did an abstract painting workshop with Steven Aimone, more on that later.  

My focus has narrowed some over the last couple years to pretty much entirely abstract work, but still in both paint and stitch.  I'll be playing some catch up here and blending in projects from the last few years along with current work.

One of my favorite projects last year was my daily stitch project.  Each day I hand stitched small, fabric collages that represented the day.  The piece above is my Jan. 2016 pile.  Here are a few of the individual pieces:

The colors and textures were largely influenced by the season, and they shift throughout the year.  I'm still finishing the months I got behind on, so daily stitching is used quite loosely.  I'm not sure if they will be joined together or if I will keep them in monthly bundles.  Right now I'm really liking how they join in long verticals.

What If?

One of my favorite blogs to follow is Jude Hill's Spirit Cloth.  Jude does the most amazing work, every bit of it by hand.  She develops rich, textured quilts that tell stories, and every stitch seems to come from her soul.  Her involved pieces take over a year to complete and contain a myriad of experiments along the way.   She refers to them as "Slow Cloth."

Part of Jude's process involves asking "What If."  What if she changed  a piece in some small way to take it in a new direction?  She keeps a separate blog that records each of these "What If" experiments.  When she invited readers to participate in a "What If" challenge, I couldn't resist joining.  Using the Crazy Quilt as a starting place, Jude asked readers to reimagine it in their own style or techniques they are currently exploring.

To me the two main components of a crazy quilt are the irregularly pieced background and the rich, often elaborately detailed, embellishments.   I asked, What If I used a variety of marks for my pieced area, all in black and white.   And following my latest interest in couching fabric,  What If the only embellishments were couched fabric with raw edges?

Here's my first "What If" piece:

I ended up adding a bit of fine line embroidery for an accent.

The great thing is that piece led to more "What Ifs."  The first being, what if I work bigger than a 6" square, so I can try more on one piece.    I've been experimenting with making black and white marks on fabric to prepare for the next "What If".

I love the finer marks on the left.  They were made with Sharpie Poster Paint and are lightly gray like chalk on a chalkboard.  The marks on the right were Jacquard fabric paint, which turn out a rich white.

I tried a variety of inks which weren't strong enough and evaporated into the cloth.  I got this fabulous orange color below from discharging with a bleach pen.  The fabric was a cotton blend:

But when I tried the same discharge method on a piece of 100% cotton, the result was very different.  The bleach spread and I ended up with gray ghost images.

I can see lots of potential to add embroidery on top of them.

You can see other examples of the Crazy Quilt Revisited What If's here.