Eye Candy

One of the great things about having out-of-town company is that you take them to see things that you wouldn't see done otherwise.  My sister was here this week and we did all kinds of things that I wouldn't have taken the time to do.  We went to the Joseph Manigault House in downtown Charleston.  And what a wonderful gem that is--from the general shape of the house itself to the exquisite detail of the beautiful sweeping staircase  in the central hall.  Unfortunately, my camera wasn't behaving so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that it is well worth the trip. 

I did, however, get my camera working when we visited the South Carolina Artisan Center in Walterboro, SC.  This is a gallery filled with work of artists from throughout the state.  As we pulled into the driveway, the first thing we saw was this incredible metallic tree sculpture and then, just a few step further along, was another tree--this time a palmetto.  The Artisan Center is located in an old house that is composed of small rooms that seem to meander from a large central showroom.  It was fun to wander around at a leisurely pace and let the surprises hidden in each room unfold of their own accord.

In my former life, I was a potter for fifteen years, so I went to a LOT of craft shows and it was always wonderful to walk through the show and experience all of the unique creativity that seem to be saturating the very air around me.  And I believe it to be true that when you are surrounded by the creative force, you, too, become more creative.  It doesn't have to be in your particular medium--the energy is there.   You can see from my photos that there were many different mediums represented and it's always a

mazing to me to see how an artist can take a very simple material and end up with something truly extraordinary.  I was particularly entranced by some of the baskets as I used to make them myself.  The ones in this picture were transformed into another purpose by adding the turned wooden necks--baskets becoming vases.  And each one of them had a different weaving pattern.  There were other baskets, also--some of the traditional sweet grass baskets and others that started off as fired clay pieces with basket weaving added to complete them.

 Everywhere I looked, there was something that caught my eye--angels painted on wood, fish made from cut tree branches, dyed and painted fabric, trinket collages, fabric embellishment, paintings--and on and on.  Fine craft art is alive and well in South Carolina.  We need to seek it out and relish in its power to renew our spirits and to connect our hearts to the bubbling well of creativity that lies within each of us.  It's more than just eye candy.

It's Beginning To Look A Little Like Christmas

For the last few years, most of my time has been spent in designing and making quilts.  It has been--and continues to be--something that feeds my spirit and enriches my life.  I would hate it if I couldn't do it.  But, you know, sometimes you just want to do something a little different.  When I learned that my friends Corky, Janice and Cindy were going to head up to Accent Sewing in Murrell's Inlet to embroider this 20" high Santa, well, I was interested in going also.  I've done a fair amount embroidery but never a design with multiple hoopings (9, as it turned out). The thing that's pretty challenging in doing an embroidery with multiple hoopings is the need for accuracy--and patience.  You can't just slap the fabric into a hoop and expect it to turn out right.  You actually have to measure--which is sort of difficult sometimes for an "eyeballer" like me.  It was time to change my ways.

 Before we could begin our class, we had to buy supplies.  Accent Sewing is a Bernina dealership--a REALLY good dealership--and they were well-stocked with anything we might need (and some things that we didn't strictly NEED but seemed to jump right into our shopping bags.  Here are Corky and Janice discussing the merits of a set of designs for another quilt.  With a 25% discount on embroidery designs that day, it was hard to resist.  (I succumbed a little myself).

I wish I could say that we just breezed through our embroidery on Santa.  It was, after all, mostly applique which meant there wasn't nearly as much stitching as in a regular embroidery design.   There was, as it turned out, a LOT of angst in between the beginning and the end and you can see the elation  on Janice's face as she and Corky held up their Santas for the camera.  FINALLY.  And the next two pictures are of a little closer view.

 

 And where, you might ask, is mine?  Well, as you can see in the picture on the right, I encountered a problem early in the process.  Things went along pretty good until I got to Santa's red pants legs.  At that point, the thread kept getting jammed up in the bobbin case and no amount of fiddling around was successful.  After a while, Bob-the owner and mechanic extraordinaire--called a halt to the process and decided to give my machine the once-over.  Which meant I was through for the day.  Things did work out though.  He fixed the problem and I embroidered my Santa a couple of days later. 

I think he turned out pretty good.  And I've included a close-up of his face so you can see the detail.  We all agreed that we would like to make another one sometime--but not this year.  I think we've had enough "Ho, Ho, Ho" to last us for a while.  But, in the meantime, I might have a design that would look good on a hand towel and another that would jazz up a sweatshirt and one that would maybe go on a bag of goodies . . .

I'm So Disgusted!

Well, I thought I was doing the right thing.  I went to a craft show yesterday and took my camera so I could share pictures of the beautiful things I saw.  Well, I saw some beautiful things--even bought a couple--but completely forgot to take pictures!
So--today I went to another craft show and took my camera AND remembered to take pictures.  But there was just one problem--I had the camera on the wrong settings and took videos rather than pictures. (I guess I know how to take a video now).  Again, there were some lovely and different crafts but, unfortunately, a picture truly is worth a thousand words.  I can tell you all about a potter's work that had sweet grass weavings combined with the clay to make a truly unique work of art, but without the pictures . . .

I do have one picture for you though.  While I was there, I bought two small purses from my friend Dotty Roberts.  She is a wonderful fabric artist who makes hand-dyed fabrics and then adds other elements--which increases the dynamic quality to her work.  And these are the purses:  Aren't they beautiful?  I think the purse on the left had decolorant used to make white areas and then she used fancy stitching within that space.  And then she used some metallic thread on the solid areas.  The purse on the right has several different techniques--I think some stamping and beadwork and another technique before the stamping.  I was going to give them as Christmas presents BUT I'm becoming quite attached to them.  They may have to stay with me.

Age of Reason

My granddaughter Kate celebrated her 18th birthday today.  It made me think back to my own 18th birthday--which was, after all, only yesterday.  Our world is so different now that sometimes I feel as if I'm living on a different planet.  Some things are better, many things are not.  However, I do think that an eighteenth birthday is still special.  It is the official beginning of young adulthood.  College is close and the nest begins to feel a little tight.  My granddaughter is so busy that her family birthday party had to be fitted in at 10:30 this morning.  She had to start early to make the most of her once-in-a-lifetime day!

Anyway, we knew that she really just wanted money (wouldn't we all like a little more?)  But I couldn't stand to just hand her over an envelope.  So I made her a little cosmetic bag.

I saw the project in the latest issue of Stitch magazine.  It appealed to me because every young woman needs something to put her cosmetics in and it so happened that I already had on hand the fusible vinyl that the pattern called for.  I am a pretty experienced stitcher so I really didn't have any problems with the construction; however, I did feel that it could pose a problem for people who depend on graphics to help them to understand the written word.  There was only one illustration for the entire pattern and I thought that there needed to be at least two more.
The other problem was one of my own making.  The iron-on vinyl didn't add as much heft to the bag as I thought it would and I used a batik as the main fabric.  As a result, I ended up with a somewhat flimsy bag. The pattern called for a paper zipper (whatever that is) but I used a regular non-metal one and it worked fine.  I downloaded an embroidery design from Embroidery Library (Paisley Dragonfly Circle) and was very pleased with the way it sewed out.
But I was most pleased with the fact that Kate loved it and immediately used it to stuff all of the money she got for her birthday in it.

One Color Quilt Challenge

Our art group just completed a challenge in which we made quilts that used only one color--although we could use as many shades of that color as we wanted.  I chose green as my color (which I JUST read on the internet is considered the color of LOVE.  Hmmm.)

This design came to me as I was waiting for my husband who was in the operating room having a pacemaker implanted.  I couldn't focus on reading anything but the pencil had a mind of its own.  The really weird thing about it was that the quilt design included foundation piecing--which is not something that I would normally choose to do of my own free will.  I have to cut HUGE chunks of fabrics to do foundation piecing because I just don't get it.  I'm always ending up with open spaces in the design because the piece I cut wasn't the right shape--or something.  The solution?  Cut a piece large enough that there's no way it can't work (and even then sometimes I have to rip out and do over).  It's something to do with seeing backwards and my brain just doesn't cooperate.  So, it was quite a surprise when I came up with this design.
At any rate, I finished it and it was fun doing it although I ultimately had to applique fabric on top of some of the foundation pieced fabric because there wasn't enough contrast in my original choices.  Applique on top?  You betcha--no way was I going to rip out more paper piecing and start over,  Uh uh.

A New Class

When I have been teaching classes, so many students have asked me if I would teach them how to freemotion quilt the way I've done it on my own quilts.  Well, my answer has always been, "The way you can do that is to practice, practice, practice.  And maybe have a sip or two of wine before you start!  And nice music doesn't hurt either."  I know that although that is true, one does need to have a point from which to begin.  So I've designed a class to get students started on adding feathers to their repertoire and it is called Adding Freemotion Feathers To Your Bag Of Stitches.  In making samples for the classes, I played around with several motifs and narrowed it down to two styles and then to one finished sample.  This particular sample is quilted with 100 weight silk thread , a #60 microtex needle and 60 weight thread in the bobbin.  There are, of course, various exercises leading up to the finished sample.

So many quilters seem to think that adding feathers to their quilts is difficult and I hope to show them that it just takes practice and the correct thread, needles, tension and an adventurous attitude. 

Separated At Birth?

No, I'm not a twin and no, I wasn't separated at birth from anyone--at least I don't think so.  But I had the most amazing experience when my two cousins came to visit last week.  Le, the cousin on the left lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annie, the cousin on the right lives in Santa Cruz, California.  (You could see a little more family resemblance if I were wearing my actual hair color!).  I have seen Annie a couple of times in the last few years, but I haven't seen Le since I was 12 years old.  Annie and I had gotten along so well when she did visit me before that she felt that she should really make it possible for Le and me to reconnect as Le is a quilt artist and has many of the same interests.  I am usually nervous in situations that involve the unknown but, strangely enough, I was excited--in a good way.  And when they came down the ramp at the airport it was as if I had just seen both of them yesterday.  There was an immediate recognition of kindred spirits.  So, although we weren't separated at birth and we aren't twins (however, Le does have a twin sister), there seems to be some kind of genetic, cellular link that has transcended time and distance.  I truly think of them as my sisters of the heart.

While they were here, I was definitely a tourist in my own town and went many places that I never take the time to do ordinarily.  We wandered around the streets of Charleston, gawking at things that tourists do; we went to the Heyward-Washington house and saw some beautiful, priceless period furniture; we went to an incredible jazz concert; we walked through the old market--and the list goes on.  The weather was perfect for everything outdoors.  We even watched an outdoor wedding in a local park (talk about voyourism!).

But one of the magical things that was part of this visit was the art we saw everywhere we went.  This week I have been doing sort of a word study on "creativity"--looking at quotes related to making creativity a consistent part of my life.  One of the quotes I came across was by philosopher, George Kneller .  He said, "To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."  And that is exactly what we did last week.  We looked at cobblestones on the streets of Charleston, we took picture after picture of the gorgeous ironwork on gates (including the famous Sword Gate).  We went to the incredible Angel Oak on Johns Island and marveled at its magnificence and we saw this beautiful little flower in my aunt's yard--and on the way there, we saw a huge piece of floral art made from old paint cans..  We went to Charlestowne Landing with my art group and looked at tree bark and old fortifications and they even came with me to the Tri-County Fair to judge the quilt show there.  Everywhere we went, we went with enthusiasm and we saw beauty (and potential quilts).  I think that I truly looked at things "afresh" and much of what made that possible was that I was sharing these experiences with others who also look at things in an artful, unhurried way.  The things that I had taken for granted came alive and enriched my life.  And as I look at these pictures I also am carrying with me the joy, love and downright fun I had with my two so very special cousins.

A Welcome Change

Since moving back to Charleston--in the middle of the hottest summer ever--I have been looking at my walls.  When we remodeled this house, I kept the colors neutral so that everything would go with it and, I think, keeping my options open in case we decided to put the house up for sale--which we did.
Well, it didn't sell; we are back--and I've been looking at the walls.  And there is no time like the present, when company is coming and you want to spiff up the place to make a change.  I started small--my office/guest room but, believe me, it was a BIG change.

When I showed my husband the paint chip, I could see that he was trying to maintain a neutral appearance as he no doubt thought that I was losing my everlovin' mind.  BUT, since I'M the painter in the house, I get to choose the colors that go onto the walls.  That's fair, isn't it?  Well, that's the way it is anyway.  I know that chartreuse isn't exactly what one would normally call a "neutral" color, but surely the purple that has joined it calms the whole thing down, doesn't it?  Well, maybe not, but it makes me happy and I've decided that that is what is going to determine ALL of the colors that land on my walls.

And, of course, after I finished with the walls, I needed to add a little decor to tie things together.  I already had made the quilts, but I made pillow cases to match and then delved into my stash of orphan blocks and came up with supplies to make two decorative pillows and a wallhanging.  Several years ago, my friend Rita spurred me on to start a memory quilt--which never made it to completion. But I was really happy with the block with entwined wedding rings that I made to commemorate my wedding and now it is happily hanging on the wall as a finished little quilt.  And one of the pillows represents my love of gardening with machine embroidered vegetables and the saying, "2 Percent Inspiration, 98 Percent Perspiration (pretty accurate, I think).
Well, that's all the painting for a while--except that I'm contemplating adding a little something "extra" to the walls.  (My husband is rolling his eyes over that, too, but he's a good sport.)  I'll let you see it when it's done.

From Junk To Transcendental Masterpiece

This past week has been an amazing one for me in which I spent five days with two cousins--one of which I hadn't seen since I was twelve years old!  We spent a lot of time looking at things in an artful way and sharing our hearts with each other.  I will get into much of that in a later blog; however, today I want to tell about an installation I saw this morning in the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston.  I had read about it in a flyer and then the newspaper had a sizable article on it, so . . .I decided that I really shouldn't miss it (especially since I was still in the groove after five days of looking at artful things!)

 The installation was a Bottlecap Mandala by Bryant Holsenbeck, an environmental artist from Durham, NC.  Back in the day, when I was a potter, I used to see her at Craft Shows with her handmade baskets--but this was on a MUCH larger scale--20 feet in diameter.  The entire mandala is made from recycled trash and is arranged artfully to create a thing of beauty and inspiration.  It is also created in an effort to demonstrate just how much detritus we leave in our wake on a daily basis.

The first photo is the view of the entire mandala from the third story of the building.  It looks quite small in this photo, but, remember, it is quite large.  As you look at the pictures from the floor level, you can identify some of the recycled items that make up the structure-- beer bottle caps, bread loaf closures, powdered ink bottles, milk bottle tops, pickle bottle tops.  And notice the layers of tops that form a three dimensional element.  The installation was quite thought provoking in terms of all the waste we create and how we  deal with it as a society.  But it was also very inspiring to see what we can do with this trash when we set our minds to it.  If you're in Charleston before the installation closes on November 19th, stop in a take a look.  It's well worth the effort.