Mica’s Quilt

Okay, so my adorable little niece, , was born December 9, 2010. Well, actually, she is my great-niece – the daughter of my sister and partner in artistic chaos, Teresa. I had every intention of having made a quilt for her by the time she arrived to face the world, but as is so often the case, circumstances disagreed and bossed my timeline quite around!

You see the fabric I am using is Liz Scott’s Sugar Pop by Moda. And incidentally, this line is a bit out of my comfort zone – which is exactly one of the reasons I chose it. It is way brighter a palate to which I am usually drawn and quite a bit busier than I have chosen to work with before. But it just called to me when I considered my niece, Farrell, and how “now” she and her sister, Jessica, both seem to me!

Anyway, I ordered this fabric from one of my favorite online sources and since it is a little different than a conventional store there are always different buys being added to temp us! Being the cheap frugal person I am, I tend to let some buys sit for a while as I’m bulking up my order so as to avoid paying excessive shipping by doing it piecemeal. Add to that that there happened to be some delays in getting this particular item in and, well, I ended up just getting my fabric for this quilt a few days ago! Mica is already almost four months old!! Oh, well.

I’m using Tracey Jacobsen’s Bricks In Bloom as inspiration. I was glancing through the Moda Bake Shop one day many moons ago and just almost fell over when I saw this adorable baby quilt! Cute! Cute! Cute! I just knew then that I had to make this (or, you know, similar) for my sweet niece’s new baby due in about another month…ehem.

It, like the fabric, just seemed so cute and fresh and unique that I was immediately convinced it would be perfect. Thing is, I had the opportunity to buy layer cakes instead of fat quarters which Tracey used in her original, but I wasn’t daunted in the least! I ordered ‘em up and waited. And waited. Now the wait is over and I’m so excited to get going on this project!

I’ll update as I progress. And I do feel a little better about the timeline of this quilt verses my oldest daughter’s high school graduation quilt. She has yet to get it and she graduated in 2006. I know that seems bad, but frame it in light of the progress I’ve made in shifting away from being a “paranoid planner” to being a “daring doer” and it’s pretty encouraging!! I seem to be getting over a fear of “messing it up” or not doing it “perfectly” that has had the tendency to paralyze my progress, so I’m considering it a win!

Oh, yeah, that daughter? She’s the one I just posted about a few weeks ago who is going to have her own baby in a few months…seems like I have another quilt to plan! : )

Get Creative!

Penny

Inspiration!

Wow! I just found a wonderful blog, Sew Many Ways, that I know will serve as great inspiration as I work toward setting up my studio in the sunspace area of our underground house! I have even added Karen’s button over to the right as I know I’ll be visiting often and I encourage you to, also!

Other news on the homefront – the chicks arrived and are doing well. I love this time of year! Life is everywhere just waiting to, even asking to be interacted with!

My husband and three of my daughters took a trip over to the Wye Mountain Daffodil Festival this year for the very first time and it was just beautiful! We had so much fun enjoying the flowers and each other, at times all taking pictures of each other taking pictures! I can see us going back for more through the years, but to get started on creating our own little daffodil haven, my daughter and I both purchased five kind of ordinary daffodil bulbs and 15 pretty cool little daffodils named Black Narcissus. No, they are not black, so maybe it was Mr. Black who discovered them or maybe even bred them, I really don’t know.

Anyway, we’ll get them planted along with the ten new trees we get yearly from the Arbor Day Foundation and enjoy them along with all the wonderful vegetables that are sprouting, both in the house under the grow lights and in the gardens outside!

Did I mention that I love this time of year? I get to get creative outside with living things and that always inspires me to dream up new art projects. Oh, speaking of nature inspiring art projects, I just sent off my artist trading card for the ATC Swap hosted by Lisa Fulmer of lisalizalou.blogspot.com.  This is my first time to participate and I had fun using some organically homegrown cotton – still with seeds in – as the center of a felted cotton boll. The theme for March was “Au Naturel” and it was cool to get to incorporate my love of growing things, my love of fiber and my love of art into a nifty little 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ ATC and ship it off to hopefully brighten someone’s day. I know I’m anxious to get the one back that Lisa will pair me with!

Til next time, I wish you many wonderful Spring hours in the warm sun taking advantage of all the inspiration of Creation!

Let’s Go Create!

Penny

Exciting news!

Since I last posted I have found out that I’m going to be a grandma! Hooray! I’m so excited by this news! Not that I don’t already have a full plate…

I am in the process of getting my camera up and running (hopefully making the blogging much more interesting!), getting the garden started for this year, getting the kids through the end of the school year (including prepped for end of the year testing), moving and re-organizing my studio, preparing for the new batch of chicks due in about a week, getting the round pen built so we can transform the pasture ornaments into competition-ready champions (ha! I’m so lying about the competition part!) and blah, blah blah….everybody has a plate full of something!

Speaking of fun, I spent last evening with the mother of my yet-to-be-born grandbaby – my oldest baby – working on an assignment she has due soon in her printmaking class. She is a semester or so away from graduation with an art degree from the local university and I had never done any print making so we got together in her garage and made some nifty prints of an incredibly cool design she carved from linoleum. She has promised me one of the first editions to frame. It will look fabulous in the aforementioned new studio space.

When I get the camera going, I’ll let you have a peek!

Go Create Something!

Penny

Contribution in Art: More than just another “thing”

Have you ever wandered through a flea market?  An antique store?  A thrift store?  Surely you have.

No doubt we’ve all looked at, touched, fondled, backed away from, carried around and even purchased some of the millions of items to be found in these very venues.  Add to that the many art and craft establishments, craft fairs, and community events with crafters on-site proudly displaying and peddling their creations.  Then, of course, there are specialty shops, as well as box stores large and small, and internet sites galore where one can find anything to be imagined and many unimaginable items, too.  It can truly stymie the mind to consider the plethora of things available everywhere – from unique and hand-made to vanilla and mass-produced.

So it might beg the question, “Why make more?  Why produce?  Why create anything else and add to the world inventory of ‘things’?”  Oh my, please never let yourself say, “Well, I’m not going to (fill in the blank) because somebody has already done it.”  Just cast that thought aside and dive into whatever your project might be!

Why create anything else?  The answer is a simple one, but has profound implications.  To create something, to contribute a piece of art to the world — in whatever fashion — is to offer a piece of oneself.  It reveals a bit of our own nature that is shared with others — whether it be in candid and obvious ways, or riddled with obfuscation.  Sometimes only those who know us well could guess the part of ourselves we offer in a piece.  Sometimes even those who know us well may lift a brow and shrug a shoulder, but our offer none-the-less stands in the piece we create.

In short, we share with others through creation.  We connect.  We contribute.  We are more than the sum of our parts, and we share that with others.

Our contribution through needlework, pottery, woodworking, brushwork, wire and metalwork, cooking and baking, sculpting, photography, and so on and so on, is our personal extension of ourselves to those around us.  It helps us connect to others and others connect to us.  So nice.  Plus, it’s just downright fun and satisfying.

I recently walked through an antique store and then a flea market, and I was struck by the variety of … well, everything … around me.  I was particularly drawn to the older pieces that seemed unique and handmade.  I wished I could converse with the pieces to find out who the maker was and under what circumstances they were created.  Where had they been?  Who had owned them before they found their way to my hands in this shop?

I encourage everyone to always date and put an identifying mark on your pieces of art, if at all possible.  Those to whom you give your works will appreciate them even more; those who inherit them will cherish the knowledge and pass it down with the artwork; and those who purchase and ultimately hand-down the items will have a basis for knowing whom to think of and appreciate for the contribution to their lives.

When we create, we should do so without a thought of what is already out there — at least not letting what is already out there stop us from our project goals.  There is always room for more, and your or my contribution will certainly be more than just another ”thing!”  Fancy that!

Now, go create something and I will, too!

Teresa

Creative Works – Planned or Prompted?

Slowly the form takes shape. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the piece of art begins to take on a life of its own.  “Hey, that looks like [fill in the blank]!  Cool!”

So many times in my life I have closed my eyes, picked up tools and materials … and just let my hands work.  Where was the plan?  What was I making?  How was I going to do it?  I hadn’t a clue.  Rather, I was following a deep, inner, fiery compulsion to “create.”  What the outcome would be, I knew not.

Some people are methodical and, dare I say out of admiration, responsible, in their approach to creating artwork.  With investigation, knowledge, practiced skill and a plan, they forge forward — stitch-by-stitch, stroke-by-stroke, nail-by-nail — developing a well-imagined, pre-conceived piece that satisfies the soul once completed.  The finished work can be gratifyingly placed side-by-side with the design and the two are practically identical in shape, form, color and materials.  Nice.  Kudos to all who are able to follow the steady path of planned-creation-by-design.

Others, like me, take a more daring and whimsical approach, often-times not knowing what in the world will emerge from the time and effort invested — and many times ending up with nothing but chaos and clutter around our ears and toes.  Yet, to recognize the identity of something only after it begins to emerge can be thrilling.  Daring and risky, yes (for time and expense of materials is not free) … but fun and exciting, indeed, when something unexpected takes shape and claims a foothold in the world as a blindly-prompted-production — yes, a piece of unique artwork!

This laissez-faire model of creation has its pros and cons, to be sure.  The freedom to watch a piece of work develop into a surprising form impels the artist to dabble in a multitude of materials with a variety of tools — no holds barred in form or function.  Even using a pattern or plan as a base, I tend to put in extra stitches or add more embellishments or use different materials.  This is all just plain fun.

The downside is that many, many times the piece goes south and never gives birth to anything that would be recognizable to even the most imaginative soul.  I don’t mind abstract … but flubs just simply don’t count!  So, there goes the time, the effort, the materials, the patience … yikes.  It can be frustrating if piece-after-piece just never become identifiable as anything akin to art.

Bob Ross, the genius painter, coined the phrase “happy accident” for when something during the creative process would side-step planning and just sing its own song.  “Oh, look, there is a rock hiding in the brush.”  “Hey, that tree wanted to bend this way and now has 16 songbirds nesting in that blob of paint that errantly came off the brush during that stroke.  Happy accident!”

I love his philosophy.  I love “happy accidents” and making do with what happens during the creative process.  I love being inspired by each stitch and stroke and mark.  I love seeing what emerges from the raw materials at the same time the world around me sees it — no plan, just each step prompted by the previous one.

I also yearn to have the self-discipline to follow patterns as-is, to honor the creative plans of others.  I wish I could be a little more of a planner so I would have more successes and more production.  I want to be able to duplicate many of the things I have done, but can’t because there was no plan, no pattern, and each effort to make it again results in yet a different version of the same happy accident.  No two peas-in-a-pod here … or rarely, anyway.

I am inspired by my sisters, Penny and LaDayne, who can approach artwork well both ways.  They follow plans with stunning precision, always producing fine pieces of which the designer would no doubt be proud to put in his or her own collection.  They are also very imaginative and create beautifully impromptu and unplanned pieces that delight – though they don’t give themselves enough credit for this side of their artistic nature.  I’m learning from their example to be more disciplined, and perhaps my spontaneous nature and approach to creating artwork has a slight influence on them, too.

What about you?  Planned or prompted?  What is your preference?  What is your penchant?  What is your goal?

Let it happpen, and have fun in art!

Teresa

Progress

Progress is always a good thing. Making it can be hard, but what worth doing is not? Not much.

I’m doing pretty well on working out in real life the decisions I came to in my self pep talk from days ago. Yesterday, I pulled out an old project that had had me stumped for a while and decided to do something drastic.

This project is a pretty important one, too. It is the quilt that was supposed to be for my first baby’s high school graduation. It is an applique that I started using Steam a Seam 2 and the further I got into it, the less satisfied I was with it. It got to the point of disgust and that’s when I did the self-imprisoning deed. I put in on a shelf and let several years go by, not quite knowing how to fix the problem.

Well, truth be told, the problem would not be fixed. It’s not the amount of time or the amount of effort it was going to take to make it work that was holding me back. It was that the fusible was just wrong for this particular project. Well, guess who finally grew up enough to have the guts to just get over all the time and effort – not to mention materials – I had already invested in this quilt and just MAKE THE MOVE?

Me.

It was me! I’m so proud of myself!! I laid it out on the floor, looked at it one last time and with the resolve and determination that it’s going to take to make this new venture of becoming a (real) “artist” work, I cut that sucker up! I used the border to cut into practice blocks on which I will march toward perfecting my free motion quilting, and the applique that I had already done? I THREW IT AWAY!!

I mean why in the world not?? It was stiff enough to use as the side of a fairly substantial building, so what I ever could have used it for besides a guilt-inducing condemnation of myself every time I thought of it is beyond me.

It’s been an extremely freeing thing to do, this revisiting of UFOs and exercising a ruthless culling of projects that have served as anchors to my creative soul. I’m ready to shed the weight of guilt and failure and start swimming in fresh creativity!

I would so encourage you to do the same thing with any old projects that are haunting you. Just make the move to either repurpose them or just get rid of them! Come on!

Let’s Go Create!

Penny

Contemplative moment

So Teresa and I had our regular Wednesday night pow-wow at the local pizza joint this week and we had to admit we were a little behind on our self-assigned goal of each having completed five new things in an attempt to build a suitable inventory to jump into the Etsy game.

That is our goal – or one of them anyway. We are slowly but surely pushing things into place to make the move, block by stubborn block.

Things are looking good, but as I was trudging to the house through the snow this morning on my way back from feeding the horses, rabbits and chickens, I sort of had to have a self-to-self reality check. You see, I have this problem – I want to do EVERYTHING creative and crafty! I am my own worst enemy when it comes to making a decision about what to work on and then working on that one project until completion. It stems from loving almost every craft I have ever tried. And all I have to do is get one glance at a new creative art form and I’m already on my way to the store to get the tools I need for this new endeavor (we call this the “tinker factor.”)

So today, as I dragged my boots through the frozen fluff, I chided myself and told myself that I need to quit looking at the next new thing to do and focus on actually producing some pieces in the media that I already have a handle on. At least for a while!

We’ll see how obedient I turn out to be! : )

Let’s Go Create!

Penny