Studio Girasole

Expanding

2011-10-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Some times things just pop into my head at the strangest times. I'm used to having lingering dreams about quilts I want to create. Sometimes I dream that they are already complete and hanging. I've already had a solo show in my dreams. It was bitchin'!

Yesterday I was just hanging out on my day off, minding my own business when along comes this image into my mind of a huge dragon. Boom, there it is. So I set about drawing it. It's nowhere near complete but after giving it a day I think this idea is a keeper. Fits in with my other illustrated figures; mermaids, medusa, fairy tale wolves and now a dragon. I'm seeing it big too, like the others - almost square but not, probably about 6.5' x 8'. I've just expanded to 4 solid quilts in the works; the beginning of my body of work. We all know that 10 is the magic number. It's a start. No, come to think of it, I'm right in the midst not the start. Feeling good about that.

Mermaids is coming along well. I'm plodding along like a snail but making progress. We flung ourselves into the fourth and busiest quarter at work. I'm setting out Christmas shelves daily, lifting heavy boxes, dragging wooden shelves all over the place. Coming home exhausted. But in the studio I'm plodding, at least an hour a day. I aim to stitch all the pieces on "Mermaids," draw out the quilting lines and then start putting together "Medusa." Once I have the three quilts all set up, I'll concentrate on the quilting. Hopefully this will keep my stitching similar from one to another of the quilts. Tomorrow I have a whole day to play in the studio. :)

2011-09-30T14:59:00.000-07:00

SOLD
to Michele Lea of Ohio
$150.00

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I am overjoyed to learn that my donation to SAQA's Benefit Auction has sold today for $150.00. My concern that no one really knows who I am or the quality of my work yet was niggling at me. I was thinking that it would be one of the ones left at the end for them to send back to me. I'm happy that it did not go that way. Thank you Michele, and I hope that you enjoy this piece in your home or studio!

There are still some wonderful quilts to buy. You may want to check them out at SAQA.com. Two days left!

Visuals

2011-09-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Visuals have been hard these past few weeks. Either they are disappointing like these of my new neighbor's house going up or they are impossible like the ones below which really show nothing of what is happening with "Mermaids" but are the only things I can show. I'm living with gallons of frustration. Each and every day this late summer has started at 6:30am with noise, i.e. chainsaws cutting trees and that sickening snap of the life of a tree followed by the resounding thud when it hits the ground, bulldozers and dump trucks complete with the wafts of sand blowing into my house on clouds of diesel exhaust, and now compressors and the constancy of nail guns. Not only are my nerves shot but I landed in the ER two weeks ago with breathing problems which they labeled bronchitis but I know it is being caused by the caustic cocktail of sand and diesel.
One day last week I was talking to my boss on the phone (I was out of work on a 'vacation', unable to really do my job well with breathing problems) and staring out over my deck into the back yard when I see two little dogs chase each other through my yard with a teenage girl in hot pursuit. My new neighbors. Trapped inside a hot house, (can't open the windows or sliders) looking at this scenario made me madder than a wet hen! We bought this place for it's privacy and quiet, knowing that the land next to us was up for sale but thinking that no one in their right mind would pay the $275 thousand he was asking for it and then have to sink hundreds of thousands more into clearing and building. Surprise to us! Tony has been looking at the real estate listings. He wants to move again but I don't know if I have it in me to pack it all up and start over. All I really know for certain is that the visuals directly outside my studio are making me sick - literally.
I haven't been posting a lot here because I just can't show what is going on with my work if I want to try for the next Quilt National. It's killing me because things are shaping up nicely and looking amazing. Above are the two hand dyes I chose to flesh out the skin of the two mermaids. Took me the longest time trying to settle on the exact placement of the tissue pattern. I spent hours looking to get the shades and blotches in the right place. The choice of color here really makes them look other-worldly. Above these base fabrics I have layered others to flesh in depth, but they are subtle and from a distance these two read as the main characters.
These fabrics comprise the major part of the fish tail of the mermaids. I stumbled on the fern fabric in a sale on one of my favorite online haunts and it is so perfect for that tail that I couldn't have done better if I spent two years looking through fabrics. Finding another which felt just as perfect was not easy. They are on the quilt now complete with their tail fins. Hair is coming next. I've decided how I am going to quilt this one too. I am mapping out the patterns of the stitching on my cartoon and will be using chalk pencils to actually draw out the patterns so I don't get too carried away and make a mess. Going to have to work with small sections at a time as the chalk wears off easily.

Looking at this becoming, up on my design wall is exciting and it is keeping me going. I can now really see what my mind's eye was visualizing. With this being the first really big venture for me, I am just loving it. It's taking twice as long as I thought it would, but I don't care. It's coming from my heart and soul. A slow steady flow. Turtles always win the race anyway.

As I look to my goals for my next year, especially within the Visioning Project, I think I am going to expect a little less in the "timing" of my pieces and more in the "development" of them. I am my best when I am working steadily without looking at the clock or at dates. This doesn't mean I won't be setting goals, it just means they won't have time limits. My goal has to be to just keep myself steadily working. Eventually they will all make their way out of me into the pieces I feel already exist in my mind but need to be fleshed out in fabric. Ultimately the goal of having a body of quality work with which I can begin to show, is the one true goal I am working towards. I am enjoying the process. I just wish I could share the visuals. All in due time.

A Trip To Lowell

2011-08-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

Well there it is, the post card announcement of the art quilt show "The Sea." I went up to Lowell yesterday to see it. As the regional meeting for SAQA was held there, I raced out of the house quickly to get there by 10am. It's about and hour and 45 minutes away. The racing part is responsible for me forgetting to bring my camera as the battery was charging in the kitchen. What a day to forget the camera! Not only was there the one show but others all over the city and the trunk show for SAQA was in attendance at the meeting.

I was very impressed with the quality of the work hanging at the Brush. When you walked in there were two gallery walls, left and right with quilts greeting you. The one to the right had two quilts by Betty Busby which were phenomenal. Betty's quilt is the one chosen for the post card above. I just couldn't pull my eyes off them. With her two was a quilt called Loggerhead by Gay Young Ousley. Gay's quilt was rich in texture, a tortoise swimming in the sea. These three quilts made such a commanding presence as you walked in. There were so many wonderful quilts, that I wished I had brought the camera. As I was wandering from quilt to quilt it began eating at me that I had wanted to try to enter this show with "Mermaids." But there was no way I could get it done in time for the deadline. It would have looked wonderful there amongst the other sea inspired quilts. I left with a renewed urgency to get it moving faster and with more attention to detail.

I did bring it with me for show and tell at the regional meeting. I wanted to see if it was interesting at all to the other quilters. After all it is just a wave. I got some well needed feedback, especially from Linda Dunn, who told me she was wowed by the wave alone and was concerned about the addition of the mermaids. I instantly got it. Most artist renditions of mermaids are a bit tacky, dripping with shells and seaweed hair. I am steering clear of this type of rendition in creating what is in my mind for this illustration. While thinking about it on the way home, I honed the image I had of them even more coming up with the final title of this piece in my head, "Beneath the Deep." I see the mermaids as what they are in folklore, specter-like sirens, other-worldly in existence but alluring to men. Their tails are fish-like and their bodies voluptuous but not human. They're more to be feared than anything like a great white shark would instill fear in a swimmer. As forcefully beautiful as the wave is, the sirens will be equally as ominous. This is the story I am telling with this quilt.
On the way out of the Brush I looked at some local artist's wares outside in booths. I bought some wonderful hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns to use on the mermaid quilt. They will be couched over the wave to create swirls of movement. I'm really exited about the embellishments that I have set aside to make the water come to life with movement.

Back to reality at home, I hung a stained glass piece I found at the Brush in my studio window to distract me from the disturbances of what is happening in our neighbor's yard.

This has now become my view. The flowers just visible to the right of the window are the left portion of the Butterfly Garden. The only thing I can see as a positive is that the garden will get more sun. Soon we will be planting cypress all along the edge of what once was the woods to try to regain some of our privacy.

Vacation Bonus!

2011-08-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

Look what I found going through a listing of activities for the weekend of August 5th and 6th. Tony and I went to Cape Cod for a mini vacation this past week. When looking for fun things to do I noticed a quilt show in Harwich, about 20 minutes from where we were staying. They named it "Sew Many Pearls! 2011" and it was sponsored by the Bayberry Quilters of Cape Cod. All the usual venders were present, local quilt shops, long arm demos, Pfaff, Bernina, and Viking, and even a button Godess "Dusty's Vintage Buttons - Tablecloths - Trim." I had lots of fun with the buttons. $30.00 worth of fun!

"Revelle" by Maggie Walker, hand pieced, appliqued and quilted.

All the quilts on display were from members of the quilt guild. The first room I went into had a long grouping of quilts, some Hawaiian, some traditional and some like the one above. There were about 15 in a row. As I was gushing about how much fun the chickens were a woman told me that all the quilts in the row were done by the same woman and introduced me to a rather elderly woman. I hope I'm quilting when I'm her age!
Most of the quilts were of the traditional ilk. They were just lovely. Above is a sampling of the 200 quilts in the show.

"Through Spencer's Eyes" by Julie Lariviere, machine pieced and quilted.

I just can't resist colorful quilts and this one caught my eye right away. There is enough diversity in the blocks of this quilt and the randomness of the arrangement that it captures your eye and doesn't let it go. Below is a detail.

"Endangered Species Tiger" by Barbara Delphos

A Rob Appell design with multiple irregular shapes. She used echo quilting to enhance features and to add dimension. Machine quilted, appliqued and quilted. I just loved all the contrast and stepping back from this one makes it look so alive.

Another one of my favorites in the show was called "Mom" by Paula Tuano. She worked in whites, greys and blacks to transform an old photograph of her mother on her wedding day in April of 1942. The puddle of a train was free form at the bottom of the quilt. They had it mounted from the ceiling and hung very high. It was so high up that I could not get a good picture of it. It was very intricate and extremely creative. Loved it!

What a great surprise on my vacation. I love those kinds of surprises.

Not these!

Upon returning home from the Cape it was clear that even though we were not there to hear it a tree or twenty fell in the woods! We talked to the workmen to find out that the owners were bringing the driveway along our property line, in 300ft, like our driveway. Then they would situate their septic system, the house behind and the yard behind that. They were felling the whole 600ft. Their house will be situated just behind my bank of studio windows and the woods behind my lovely butterfly garden are ripped out to leave a gaping hole of emptiness behind it.

Tony and I did some research into privacy plantings. The quickest growing plant is the Leyland Cypress and we will be putting in a lot of them to try to patch up the holes in our privacy. There are huge piles of logs and branches all over their property. It really is such a shame that this has to happen when there are an abundance of homes already built and on the market all over RI and even at rock bottom prices due to the economy. I'll tell you it is going to be really hard warming up to these neighbors when I already despise the first thing they have done.

The End of Privacy As We Know It

2011-08-03T05:49:00.000-07:00

This is the entry into our beautiful home in the country in Rhode Island. We bought this home five years ago in an attempt to get away from the noise and bustle of the city, having lived in Providence on the east side for years and Mount Pleasant across from the High School for five years. Our neighbors were always too close, too loud and way too visible for our liking.
This wing of the house is on the left side and houses all the bedrooms. Bedrooms are usually where you want the most privacy.
Next to that wing you can see our yard delineated by the mown lawn. Beyond that are the woods from the vacant lot next door. The previous owners of our home owned this piece of land, 160 feet wide, situated between us and the Browns property. We knew they had the land on the market and were asking an exorbitant price for it. We couldn't afford their asking price, nor could the Browns. We never thought he'd sell due to his greed, his immovable desire to get his price for the land.
Take a good look. All this will be gone in the matter of a few weeks as someone has bought the land and they are clearing and building a house on it. The deer, turkeys, hawks, rabbits, fox, and coyotes better have a back up plan because they will no longer be able to use this piece of land to live, or cut through to the deeper woods behind us.
If you take a really close look you can see the yellow 'dozer sitting at the entrance which they just cut out of the hundreds of years old wall fronting the property. And of course, you can't hear them felling the trees with their chainsaws which is happening as I type. I'm hearing the trees go down one by one. We have no idea if they will leave any on the border of our properties. All the trees are on their side of the line. I'm having this uncontrollable panic-filled need to call a nursery and order about 50 junipers or arbor vitaes to line the edge of our land for privacy!

And then of course is the yet unspoken issue of the new neighbors, who we have no idea who they are, and there being people living too close again, too noisy, too visible, too loud. I really don't want to move again. I love my new kitchen, all the wonderful windows and sliders and my sunny and large studio, which will now probably look out onto their back deck only about 25 feet away.

More buzzing noise - another tree down. Oh, how I wish someone would just make it all a bad dream so I could wake up.

BEES!

2011-07-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

They buzz around the garden all summer long. Big and little, bumbles and honey bees. Above is a large bumble having a feast on my catmint. I took a short walk with the dog today and was scoping out the action around my coneflowers. Two different types of bees, a swallowtail butterfly and two smaller butterflies, one with a double set of wings. As I love the flowers, so do I love the critters.
Above is a detail from a quilt I did in 2009 called "Lions, Tigers, and Bees." The bee was an integral part of the composition. There were bee buttons scattered around the border too.
Several years ago I felt a strong desire to create a bee themed quilt. I found a honeycomb fabric that spurned me on and I bought over 2 yards of it.

This past weekend was a family outing. My four female first cousins on my Dad's side of the family and I got together at my house for a girl's weekend. We really haven't done much together since we were young and the two cousins on each end of the age spectrum haven't really gotten together at all. It was such a fun time for all of us. In the process of reacquainting ourselves we found out that cousin Judi was a beekeeper. She had to give up her bees in the last year as her husband, Bob, started to become severely allergic to the stings due to his medication. The last sting landed him in the hospital. Very sadly the bees had to be relocated. But she still has jars of the honey, which we all got and little pots of hand cream made from the wax. A solid reminder of her joy tending her bees.
I've been slathering her honey on my toast each morning since she gave me the honey and all this honey has brought me to thinking about bees and quilts. The two pictures above and the one below are the start of a mini quilt. It's only 12" x 12". My inspiration from Judi's bees has led to a little exploration. While taking me a bit from the Mermaids I need to continue, it's a welcome diversion and a little something to practice the quality of my stitches on after the many weeks of working, cleaning house and gardening which have derailed my momentum in the studio.
Before I'm done it will have a lot more bees buzzing around. Shouldn't take too long to pop out. Just have to love that honeycomb fabric! Got to go find some wing fabric and have some more toast with honey.

Cleaning & Organizing

2011-07-13T20:50:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while it just becomes evident that some reorganization and cleaning have to happen - even in the studio. Years of Fiber Arts magazines fill two of the magazine boxes above. Sadly they will be a fixed collection as Fiber Arts is no longer being published. My subscription goes back to 1997. I love looking over old issues for inspiration every so often. I had magazines in stacks all over the studio. They needed rounding up!
I love having a large area of bulletin board so I can keep track of all the odds and ends that I collect. However, these two have been propped up sitting on the end of my work table since I moved into the studio. Only one of them had a wire on it, so I had to put wire on the other in the same place and with the same length so that when they were hung separately they would hang evenly, together. You can see why they have been sitting for years untouched. I finally tackled it and they now hang on the wall. Not only do I have a few more inches to my table, but they won't ever be knocked off into the abyss behind the table ever again. :)
Above, the old verticals hang over the slider onto the deck. These verticals have been the bane of my existence since we moved in. The bottoms were connected by chains which rattled when moved, and were dirty and warped, hanging unevenly. Below, bye-bye, verticals - hello, sheers. The sheers look lovely, flowing and light. In the winter they will get switched out with curtains lined with energy efficient fabric.
We have three large windows, 80" wide and two sliders on either end of the studio. That's five curtain rods and 10 curtain panels. This was a big project, still not complete but I have all the things I need. All I have to do is add some time and sweat.

And so long as I am in the cleaning and organizing mood, I took on the spare bedroom which was our daughter, Andie's room up until January when she took an apartment of her own. I'm having family come for a weekend in two weeks, so I needed to get it finished. While only a 10' x 11' room, the bright windows, pastel yellow and open bed frame help it feel bigger. No I did not make the quilt on the bed. I had one of my pieces on the wall above the bed but sold it. I'll have to make something fun to grace the wall.
While cleaning this morning I looked out into the yard to find a brood of turkeys. There were three adult females with 6 babies, two of which were still very small. They let me get pretty close with my camera. One of the moms let go with a shake of dust and dirt and stretched her tail feathers for me, giving me a bit of the typical turkey tailfan. Then off they went slowly into the underbrush. This house has been a constant drain in upkeep of both two acres of yard and a 1980's style home needing some love and updating, but sometimes the perks are just so wonderful. I have a great studio where I can watch turkeys strut across the yard with their babies. Who could ask for more.

Girasole

2011-06-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

Girasole
11 1/2" x 11 1/2"
completed 6/24/2011
silk & cotton batiks fused and stitched by machine, embellished with buttons & beads

Even though it was a rather sleepy, gray day, I finished "Girasole" for the SAQA auction. Now all I have to do is get it mailed to New Mexico by next Saturday.

Reading Jane

2011-06-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

I like to spend a bit of my time surfing around the information highway and reading in the morning. It's like going to school - you learn things. Often I will find some inspiration that will spark the energy for my day. I was checking out the new posts from the blogs I love following and I found the profound body of a lecture by Jane Dunnewold called "What Matters?" I copied it and saved it for future reading. It is deep reading and has so many sparks to fuel the fire of thought that one morning is not enough. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is struggling at all with the "why's" of life. It is written from the perspective of the artist but cuts across all that is human.

I have copied an excerpt below which reads like a checklist of qualities which one would employ to develop a sense of community. I was drawn in to it's functionality and it resonates with my internal search for finding my community.

"If we see the good in cultivating community, sharing our gifts, being with people who love what we love, then there are qualities we can foster that will make the experience richer:
These properties create a fertile environment where certain capacities can grow -
Kindness
Generosity, which is making an offer for its own sake, not for its exchange value
Cooperation - For me to win, you must win.
Statesmanship - setting aside person preferences for the group good.
Forgiveness, which signals a new beginning, and choosing to stay in present time.
An acceptance of imperfection - recognizing that our gifts are intertwined with our limitations and being willing to deal with it, without passing judgment.
Mystery - which creates space for what is unknowable in life, and honors it.

When we work intentionally to foster the above properties and capacities in the community we are part of, we open the way to a life of satisfaction and creativity."

http://www.existentialneighborhood.blogspot.com/

There is so much more of her lecture that would spark deep internal questioning and thought. I highly recommend reading and re-reading it to anyone who is searching for internal development and clarity. Thank you Jane, for publishing your lecture and if I ever see you listed as a key speaker in the future, you can be sure I will be in the audience.

Scottish Thistle

2011-06-17T20:12:00.000-07:00

You never can tell where inspiration will hit you. Every day I pass this spot on the way to get a coffee before getting into work. There is a median strip in a busy access road to a shopping center with a boatload of the real thing - the Scottish Thistle.
I've had puny, weedy thistles growing by accident in my gardens before, but they produce, tiny, uninspired weedy thistles. And I pull them out, very carefully. But a week ago I noticed these babies forming their massive thistle flowers. I knew I just had to take my little camera to work soon to take some shots.
The head on this flower is about 3" in diameter, and the spikes on the leaves and stems are brutal. It was, however, worth spilling a little blood to get these shots and I am looking forward to drawing them.

Falling in love in the garden, once again

2011-06-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

My gardens are bursting with color, shape, line and design. Above is a mandevilla which I usually buy in it's common shade of pink. But I was loving the smaller pure red blooms of this strain.
As the flowers prepare to open they create such a lovely shape, star-like. Whenever I see shapes in nature I am reminded of Jane Sassaman, who is a master at drawing her graphic shapes from nature.
Caught in his frenzy of pollen gathering, this bee, one of many, will spend hours hovering in the cat mint. They just love it and will return daily as long as the flowers are blooming.
Canterbury Bells are steeped in my memory as one of the many floral remembrances I have of the gardens around my home as a child. They are such a sunny, happy flower. I just can't help but love them.
But this year I am truly in love. Foxglove is just the most stunningly gorgeous flower. It's shape is sensuous with it's gentle sweep, it's colors vibrant and subtle at the same time and the spots are just mesmerizing.
I feel the seed of a new quilt forming in my head. My mind works, oh so much faster than my hands can.

Just a mention of the SAQA auction which I am sending a piece into. For information follow the link.

Studio Art Quilt Associates' Auction begins on Monday, September 12th at 2:00 pm EST and conclude on Sunday, October 2 at 2:00 pm EST. Price points are: $750, $550, $350, $250, $150 and $75. The funds raised through the Auction are critical to supporting SAQA's exhibitions, catalogs and outreach programs.

For more information on SAQA and what we are all about: www.SAQA.com

2011-06-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

It was a lovely June day today, fair amounts of sun, a light breeze, flowers blooming and lots of time for the studio. Just the way I like it! A couple of days of windy weather have wreaked havoc on my peonies. I just don't know what Mother Nature has against peonies. It's usually soaking rains that destroy them not wind but I can't remember a season where they haven't been wreaked by some errant weather. I had to hold these blooms up to shoot them. I just love this one, white with a touch of red in the center. They grow to be so big.
And this magenta one is the one that was started by my father's mother so very many years ago. My mom took a cutting from it and I took a cutting from my mom. I have transplanted it to three different homes.
I started my day in the studio by petaling out the top sunflower and stitching it down.
I then moved to stitching down the centers of the sunflowers.
And this is my progress for the day. I need to stitch around the front, lower sunflower petals before putting in the petals of the third and last sunflower. Almost done. Should be done with the stitching in a few days. Then I can get into beading it. Very productive and pleasant day in the studio.

SAQA Auction Piece

2011-06-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

It's a bit blurry but you get the idea. My little digital camera is full. I need to go back and purge some pictures. The piece above is the drawing for my SAQA auction piece. I need to bang it out so I can get it off to them by July 2. The name of it is "Girasole" (sunflower in Italian, and also the name of my studio.)
Girasole is 12" x 12" and is being constructed of a silk background, cotton batik backing, poly fil and batik cotton piecing. I will also embellish with buttons and beads when through with the sewing. It's a start and I will keep you posted.

Memorial Day Musings

2011-05-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

In May I always think primarily about my mother, Agnes Paterson Wilson Membrino, always called Nancy. She was married in May, the iris that she loved to grow are always blooming in May, and she died nine years ago May 6th. It is fitting that as I was digging around in the garden today, Memorial Day, that I be thinking about her.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1919, she, her parents and two of her sisters packed all their belongings and took a steamer to the US. My grandfather, George Findlay Wilson was one of 11 young men who pooled their savings to buy a ranch in Ukiah, California. My mom was a towheaded California girl, living her early years running through the grasses and climbing cherry trees on the ranch. In her 14th year her father died of cancer and she, her mother and sisters moved outside of San Francisco. She went to Mount Tamalpias High School and dreamed of learning to fly an airplane. Engaged to a young man and pilot named Woody, she planned to follow him to Montana to settle and start a shuttle service with him into the wild. Woody never made it back from the war.

Mom and Dad, Alfred Joseph Membrino, met at a dance hall in San Francisco. He was stationed in Hawaii, in the Air Force, after Pearl Harbor and was an decoder and personal secretary for a hot-shot general nicknamed Red. Nan and Al were married back in his hometown of Fitchburg, MA, in 1946, and Mom had left the west coast forever.

One bit of glue for them was their mutual love of gardening. After I was born in 1956 my parents made plans to build a house up the street from my father's parents. When I was 5 we moved into it. It was a modest but modern appointed home with gardens surrounding it. I learned all about what plants looked like in every season, how to fertilize them, when to prune, and how to weed. We never bought vegetables at the market and until I went to college I had never had vegetables out of a can. Mom spent her summer days between caring for her 50 foot x 50 foot patch of bearded iris, the other flower gardens and canning and preserving the fruits of my Dad's huge vegetable garden. The last year of Dad's life he had planted 250 tomato plants alone, as well as every other vegetable you can think of. Do you have any idea how many tomatoes you get from that many plants? Hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Mom learned how to cook the best tomato sauce from her husband's mother and with the home grown tomatoes, it was a knock out.

Dad died in 1979 from cancer. My father's willing and wonderful smile is something I try to emulate every day of my life. He was a fair and honest man with a great sense of humor and a strong sense of family. Having lost all his hair in his thirties to a hair loss disease, he lived most of his adult life with a bald head. It was his trademark. He had a comb that was solid plastic before the tines were cut out and he would whip it out at gatherings to "comb" his head to the laughter of all around. For most of my adult life, I have missed the company of my father, similar to my mother's experience losing her dad so young. For at least a year after my dad died, I don't think my mother did much of anything. Her gardens were a bit unkempt and dad's vegetable garden never did get planted again.

Then all of a sudden a change came over her and she decided to live her life with gusto. She sold the house in Fitchburg, moving permanently into our summer home on Cape Cod. As well as being a pilot wanna-be, she had always wanted to paint. While setting aside the dream of flight, she began painting watercolors of her beloved iris, a few of which she had transplanted to the Cape house. Her garden there was a condensed version of all the flowers she loved: iris, peonies, delphinium, roses, daisies; a real cottage garden straight out of an English postcard, surrounding a shaker clad Cape style home. She painted and sold her paintings for probably near 20 years. Late onset diabetes knocked on her door not long after she turned 60, but she handled it carefully and so well that only in her later years was it a problem. Mom lost her eyesight in her late seventies and moved in with me for the last four years of her life. Death slowly took chunks out of her until there was so little of her left that it was alarming.

However, on the day that she died, I sat talking to her and her nurse as she told the nurse about one of her "ranch" stories. She lucidly spoke with twinkling eyes of climbing the cherry tree when she was only 3 or 4 because she just loved cherries. Anyone who has a cherry tree knows that the fruit grows high in the top canopy of the tree. Ladders are usually employed to pick them. She had been warned by her mother to stay out of the tree, but fell prey to her desires and climbed high into it anyway. Betty, her eldest sister, started yelling for her mother to get Nancy out of the tree so she started grabbing every cherry she could get her hands on, shoving them in her mouth and swallowing, pits, stems and all. Laughingly she recalled that she was pooping stems and pits for days after. I had never heard that story told before as I had heard so many others.

As I remember my mom, I can recall so many wonderful memories. I have the remainder of her paintings, some lovingly displayed in my home. I have her drawings, her photos, her and dad's love letters (which I have never read), her high school scrap books, her favorite jewelry and so many other things with which to remember. Yet there are times when I just wonder about the things I will never know, the stories she never told, the pictures of people from a long time ago who I don't know or recognize. Today as I trimmed the bearded iris which have bloomed and past, I remembered how she would spend her summer cutting back the leaves to force the plant to grow it's roots and not it's leaves. I know this because of her. The iris that bloomed are from cuttings of her iris roots. The magenta peony in my garden which is budded and ready to burst open is a transplant from her Cape garden, which is a transplant from the Fitchburg garden, which is a transplant from my Grandmother's garden. This Memorial Day and every one I am blessed to have in the future will be filled with happy memories of those whose lives touched mine in such a profound way.

The garden above is the first garden I planted when Tony and I moved into our home in Smithfield. It was a mound of grasses and weeds when we first got there. I got out my dad's pitchfork and dug the whole thing with a bit of help from my son Peter Wilson, aptly named for his grandmother's family. Three years later it has mellowed. The peonies are loving all the compost I lavish on them, as my mother instructed, and the Siberian iris are in full bloom right now. Edged by creeping flox and large stones, this garden is a nod to my mother's garden. If not for the rabbits it would also sport delphinium and daisies. Some days I just like gazing at it searching for the tiny fairies who keep it and finding instead my mother's smile.

Followers

2011-05-29T22:13:00.000-07:00

I'm truly terrible at anything technical. How I ever got this blog to look this good is a mystery. Through no help on my part my followers have reappeared. Yay! Welcome back followers and thank you all for following.

2011-05-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

I seem to have lost all my followers. I think it may be a blogspot glitch. It's taken me two years to figure out how to use this technology. It may take me two more to figure out how to get my followers back. I thank all 17 of you for following me, I did not, repeat NOT delete you.

SAQA Conference in Denver, Colorado

2011-05-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

May 19 through May 22 I spent in Denver, Colorado on a whirlwind of events making up the latest SAQA Conference. As I have just joined SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) in September of 2010 this was all new to me. I arrived into Denver via the Denver International Airport at around 12:30pm, Denver time. I had arranged for a shuttle trip to get me into the city and it was there that my first adventures began. Two women traveling from Connecticut for the conference were on my flight and on the shuttle with me. I ended up having a wonderful luncheon with them in the hotel tavern, talking about quilts, exhibiting, and SAQA. Thanks to Cathy Smith, Rita Hannafin, and Marianne Williamson for being such wonderful company and ushering me into the fold.

Thursday night's festivities were so much fun. The evening started with "speed dating" SAQA style. 10 or 11 people seated at a large round table took turns passing their business cards and speaking about themselves and their art for 2 minutes each. With three sessions of this we all met at least 30 people. I ended up coming home with a bag full of business cards and have spent the last few days checking out websites, blogs and online galleries. Immediately following the "dating" session was a reception for the SAQA trunk show. 12" x 12" pieces from at least 50 artists were identically matted and mounted on large boards to create a show of incredibly unique and visually exciting "mini" works of art. It was a knock out! My picture above is of people milling about in the foyer where you can see the boards with all the pieces mounted.

Friday was a jam packed day of getting to know people, listening to speakers and going to workshops. The first panel of the day was Deidre Adams, Carol Watkins and Charlotte Ziebarth, all very accomplished Denver artists. I was riveted by their descriptions of their processes, work habits, and the photos of their art. Each of them likes to work with a mid-range size of about 36" x 40", Charlotte saying she was challenged to work in a smaller format for SAQA's trunk show. On average they each produce 10 works, more or less, a year. I really am in awe of each of them and find them to be incredible models of success for someone like myself who is beginning the journey.

My workshops for the day were with Carol Larson and Dr. Monica Dixon. Carol was so informative that I made pages and pages of notes of what to and what not to do when submitting an entry for an exhibition. Monica's workshop was filled with the energy she exudes. I came away wanting some of what she was having. Her workshop was about fueling the creative fire, and I felt very energized to make some changes after her hour session. The keynote speaker at our luncheon was Luana Rubin, owner of E-Quilter.com, one of my favorite haunts for finding the best fabrics. She is leading quite an adventuresome life and I found her talk full of inspiration.
One might think that the day might have ended there. Not on your life. Thanks to Judy Warner who signed me up for a ride out to Golden to see three exhibits. Those of us who flew in and were without rental cars had to get hooked up with a ride. Golden, pictured above is a quaintly western town surrounted by mountains and buttes. I hopped into a car with Del Thomas of California. She had driven out in two days for the conference. We had some fun navigating a navigation system as Del was about as clueless as the rest of us as to where we were going. But she did a marvelous job at getting us there. Our first stop was the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. What a wonderful show! My favorites were pieces by Lea McComas, Christine Broer and Gay Lasher. They had prepared a great little feast as well, not your usual cheese and crackers. We did a few circles around and finally found the second show, "Sidelines," a powerfully constructed show meant to pull at your emotional strings. Pieces by Annie Helmericks-Louder, Kathy Nida and Regina Benson resonated with me. I ended up buying the show catalog. The last leg of our trip brought us back into Denver to the Ice Cube Gallery. Carol Ann Waugh's one woman show was breathtaking. We even got a tour of her studio which is behind the gallery.
Here are my three car-mates outside the Ice Cube Gallery. It was a wonderful night of fun!
On Saturday, we started all over again with so much information. I thought my head would explode by the end of the day. The first panel of the day was on working 3-D. The panelists were Susan Else, Mary Beth Bellah, Carolyn Crump and Jull Rumoshosky Werner. Carolyn's elephant was amazing and she got a few laughs talking about the challenges of working with large sculptural forms. My workshops for the day were with Gregory Case, learning how to shoot photos well of your work, and with Valarie Poitier, learning how to professionally promote yourself. Valarie is pictured above at the beginning of her session which was a very "hands on" workshop. Nancy Bavor talked that afternoon about archiving your work, something I must admit I have never thought about.
While all this was going on, the best part of the weekend was what was happening within the structure of it. We were all having a great deal of fun learning, but even more so we were making fast friends. I am pictured above with Judy Warner on the left and Jean Judd on the right. I always get home and wish I had taken more pictures. Missing in the snapshots are Dawn Browning and Margaret Blank who are part of the Visioning Project with me.
Thankfully I have at least one photo of the whole visioning crew, including it's creator, Lisa Chipetine, third from the left in the back row. It was so nice talking to all these friends for the first time in person and not through the computer.
After a grueling flight home on Sunday, with a three hour layover in Detroit, I sat down to mull over the experience. I bought three SAQA books, two of which are above, which I find incredibly inspiring. I was lucky for once and came home with one of the door prizes at Saturday's banquet of two lovely pieces of Lunn Batiks. It seems that the security at the airport absconded with my three complimentary pots of fabric paint that were packed in my boarded suitcase. I guess they thought fabric paint is a dangerous substance. But I came away with so much more. I have new friends, a wealth of information, and a jump-start to my ambition to be the artist I strive to be. I can't wait for next year in Pennsylvania.

Blue Mystique

2011-04-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Isn't this just the most beautiful color orchid! It's a gift from my husband, Tony, for my birthday which is today. I love having a birthday in the spring as it's my favorite time of year. Everything in the garden starts to green up and grow. After such a harsh winter so full of snow, it's just wonderful having a spring finally. Still a bit cool here though so my attention falls to my indoor flowers, especially this new beauty.
I have such good luck with orchids bought reasonably at the Home Depot. The blue orchid is named Blue Mystique. Since they are so cheap, I'm always able to get new ones and I have them all over my house. The one below is a usual coloration for an orchid. This is also a gift from Tony. I have the same color orchid I bought last year in my kitchen and it has rebloomed this year but with fewer flowers.
Having flowers in the house is so inspirational to me when it comes to finding my artists heart. Cut flowers are lovely for such a short time, so I really have loved having the orchids growing in my home. The bright magenta one below is a miniature orchid I picked up last year at HD. It sits in the west exposure window of my kitchen above my sink, catching a lot of steam from cooking and cleaning and just the right amount of sun. I was thrilled to see such a lovely show of flowers again this year. It has a sister miniature sitting next to it which has a yellow flower that is sending up a shoot with buds. Just about the time that the flowers fall off of the magenta one, the yellow one will be blooming.
To update my progress on Mermaids, I have been stitching the wave. It is so frustrating pulling and pushing this large quilt through the space on my Bernina, that I am actually considering getting a new machine. This sounds like blasphemy to me as I have loved my current machine for years. I have created pieces as large as 4 feet in one direction before but usually smaller in the other direction, either 2 or 3 feet. They are not easy either but by comparison to my 4 x 6 foot Mermaids, they were relatively easy. Most of my work has been on the smallish side up to this point, so I am getting a real education in how to deal with large quilts. My plans for quilts in the near future include many more large quilts, in the range of 4 x 6 or even larger.

I have loved my Bernina because of it's perfectly consistent and beautiful satin stitch, which is an essential part of the look and construction of my style. This makes it difficult considering a different machine as it would need not only to have a longer arm but a consistently perfect satin stitch. I have been thinking about a Janome but I haven't done any real research yet. I would welcome any suggestions, or opinions on machines from my fellow quilters. I guess that my birthday wish is for a sewing machine that meets all my needs!

As I am almost finished with the wave's satin stitching which holds all the pieces on to the backing and quilts them to the piece, I will be shifting focus to the two mermaids soon. The mermaids get fused and stitched over the existing wave. The wave is a commanding presence and is just beautiful. I don't want to destroy it by choosing poor fabric choices for the mermaids. I need for it all to flow visually and this is my next hurdle. I'm excited by the prospect and eager to start in.

Another thing which is on my mind is my trip to Denver, rapidly coming up in a month's time. I'm excited about meeting the women I have been talking with in the Visioning Project and about learning new things and discussing my craft. Not real happy about all the issues the airlines have been having lately. I am flying out and as always a bit nervous about that. I do love a good adventure though, and I'm about to have one!

The Wave Comes to Life

2011-04-04T19:48:00.000-07:00

I love how I start in on a quilt with an clear and planned idea of where I'm headed and end up in a slightly different place. This is the joy of art. The colors are chosen, the wave is cut and ironed and I have started stitching it down. Looking at the fabrics I lined up to use, especially knowing which were my expected favorites, I'm enjoying looking at which ones were and weren't used. The wave has a life of it's own. I used lots of fabrics with dots and "bubbles." The wave grows from the darkest, most saturated and even muddy teals up through mid-hues and into lighter, clear-color blues and aquas. It really has the look and feel of water, a cresting, Japanese inspired wave. I pulled it up out of years of summers on Cape Cod - my Mom and Dad's summer home and finally the site of my Mother's retirement. I have spent countless hours watching the ocean move, and spill. And now that I needed to create a wave, it came mostly from feeling; the smell of salt air, the glint of sun reflecting off a breaker, the feel of sand between my toes.

Sewing is a challenge, even though most of it so far is just long straight lines from left to right and back again. My Bernina, which I love for the constancy of it's satin stitch has a rather short arm. I am rolling and unrolling like crazy. It's a bit of a challenge! As I look at the wave on my work wall or taking up almost all of my work table, I am overwhelmed by how big it is.
I'm not even going to think of the mermaids until all my wave stitching is done. Then I will drop them in on top.

Last night I got an unsolicited and very unusual complement from my husband. He is trained in art and is a jeweler by trade. He loves extreme realism in paintings and sculpture. His own drawings and paintings were exercises in extreme realism. He respects my work, but does not really have an affinity for it. He does have a good eye though, and his comment was that he thinks I am finally working on "a prize winner," as he put it. Put a smile on my face. I think he's on to something though. I am finally working from within to create this piece using everything I have come to learn about art; color, line, composition, repetition, etc. and blending these with as much of my heart and soul as I can muster.

I am working as much as I can after work on my day shifts - just trying to plug away at this to get it done in time to photograph it for entry by June 15. I must be out of my mind! Been thinking about how to use what I am learning with "Mermaids" in the next one, "Medusa." I have been collecting fabrics for "Medusa" too. Always thinking ahead! I just picked up a black and white snake scale print. I'll be hand painting over it to create stripes and diamonds on the snake skin. I'm looking forward to doing this. But for now, I have a quilt to finish and very little time to do it! Back to the sewing machine!

Quick Update

2011-03-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

Spent the day working on Mermaids. It took quite a while to cut the backing and batting for this one. It is pretty big and I like to have a good 6 inches all around as an extra safety net to offset take-up with the quilting. It is quite a challenge also to figure which pieces go down under others.

I still do not have my sky fabric in hand. I actually called the company today but only got a message machine. Something's got to be up as they sent it Priority Mail and it was 8 days ago that I received a confirmation email. The sky fabric is key to getting things really going. It is the backing for the top two thirds of the quilt. I only have one night shift this week and Friday is a day off. Hopefully I'll get the fabric tomorrow and I will be working a couple of hours each night I work day shift.

An Adventure

2011-03-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

OK, so I wasn't planning this, I just read one of my e-mails from SAQA about a regional meeting at the NE Quilt Museum....and I had the day off. I hadn't been able to catch the opening of the quilt show, "No Holds Barred," and I wanted to take a look at all the wonderful quilts. It takes a good hour and a half to get there on the highway, so I intended to make a day of it.
I expected the museum to be open by 9am. The SAQA meeting was to begin at 10am. I got there 45 minutes early. So I walked around a bit in downtown Lowell. The museum is right across the street from a locomotive museum. They refurbished this baby and it's a permanent "sculpture" set by a stream and next to the old rails.
It boggles my mind that someone actually thought to build something as complex as an engine to pull cars full of people and products. And here I am playing with my computer and stitching together pieces of fabric. The museum opened at 10 and I settled in to the meeting upstairs. Met some wonderful people and got inspired by their work. It seems that the MA/RI region needs to expand a bit in Little Rhodie. I think that would be a really good thing. There was one other woman in attendance from RI, Allison from Barrington. Perhaps the two of us can get our heads together and get something moving here. We aren't the only two art quilters in RI I'm sure. The quilts, as always, were amazing and ever inspiring! There is a lot of talent in this corner of New England.

After the meeting I tagged along with a group for lunch. The food was delicious but of course, the conversation is what made the afternoon so much fun. Thanks to all who made me feel so included on my first excursion into the world of SAQA, Valarie and her lovely family, Celeste, Valerie, Michele, Judy and Judy. It was such a fun day.
And when I got home, lo and behold, packages with yummy fabrics, a Quilting Arts magazine, the backing fabric I have been waiting for, (but no sky yet), added to my museum acquisitions of a few fat quarters and some info on upcoming shows and quilt festivals. What a lovely day. Tomorrow, after work, I look forward to hitting my machine in a big way!

Laundry

2011-03-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is one part of quilting that I really don't like. Washing and ironing all the fabrics before cutting. Since I am a bit stuck waiting until my backing and sky fabrics get here in the mail, I decided to get a head start on the washing. Above are the mermaid colors going into one wash, and below are all the wave colors getting washed together. One thing that is good is that if any of them release a bit of dye, being batiks no one will ever know.
I have reworked the cartoon twice since last night. I am really happy with the movements of the water now. They were a bit forced before. I can tell you that the drawing itself is of two mermaids swimming within a large, breaking wave. There is a lot of movement and depth. I hope I can pull it off with the colors I choose. My brain gets so ahead of my hands though. I can already see how it will be finished, the quilting, the beading, the contrasts and the many intricate patterns on the fabrics. One of my "things" is to use very busy fabrics, next to each other with the colors playing off each other. I am just loving some of my fabrics for this one. In the picture on top, I will be using a piece I bought over 5 years ago. It's the one with the seashells on it, and I will be using it for the tail of one of the mermaids. In the second picture, some of my favorites are the navy blue with the coral on it and there is a piece hiding a bit on the far right which is very intricately drawn with dots and teardrops. The later is a piece I recently found on line at Hancock's with a whole grouping of other "friends." I could literally spend a fortune on batik fabric.

Well, I need to put the first wash into the dryer now and get the second load going. A woman's work is never done!

Mermaids Begins

2011-03-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

While I will be talking much about how this is going, these are the only pictures you will see of Mermaids until it is done and I know whether or not it is accepted in a show. I was just perusing my latest Fiberarts magazine when I found a call to entry for a show in Lowell, MA whose theme is the sea. Hmmmm........ I would have until June 15 to finish this one and get them an entry. I'm going to try, anyway. Above are my choices for lights, medium and dark tones for the water.
Violets, yellows and greens comprise the spectrum for the mermaids themselves.
...and here it all is sitting on my work table. I'm only missing one key piece. My sky. I just can't seem to find just the right mix of pale blue, pink, yellow, peach and gray. Still searching all my fabric haunts for that one key piece.

The cartoon was completed for this one a while ago, but I am tweeking some of the lines. I need for it to seem very fluid and not stiff at all. The size is so large that I need to put it sideways on my table and it's width exceeds the width of my work wall by about 18". Nevertheless, I am very excited about this being a challenge to finish in time for a show. We'll see how it goes. I am still hand stitching the wolf at night. Once he is done I will have to shift gears to "Mermaids" almost all of my spare time to get it done. Wish me luck!

As a post script to this post, I have found a wonderful backing fabric, 108" wide and I think I have found my sky. Thanks to Hancock's of Padukah and Seawatch Fabrics! I'll be watching my mailbox for the next few days.

Millions of pins!

2011-03-02T17:36:00.000-08:00

Finally got some time in the studio. Pinning the beast was a beast! Some areas like the spiky neck hair was impossible to turn the muslin underneath, so I ended up cutting it away. I need to be careful with the satin stitching that it is tight enough to cover any white threads showing from the muslin.
Not only was the beast a beast, but the tree had it's issues too. It took a long time to get the pieces fitting into each other properly. The tree is now ironed down to the background up to the area where it starts branching out.
My next step is to hand baste all around the wolf so that he stays put when I start to stitch. I need to buy more safety pins to assure that the backing does not slip when I start stitching. I'll be stitching him in very soon!

Progress on Wolf

2011-02-14T08:12:00.000-08:00

Just some quick pics before I go to work. Above, the stitching within the wolf is done.
I cut two layers of thin poly batting in the shape of the wolf.
Now I have to roll the muslin edges, iron them and pin the wolf to the background to sew it down. Some areas are impossible to roll the muslin, so I will cut it away before stitching, like the nostril area above. Wednesday I have a full day in the studio and I will be continuing this. Happy Valentine's Day to all.

Stitching Wolfie

2011-02-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

New lithium batteries made such a difference in the speed of the shutter today. Not quite so much blur. Above is a shot of the wolf's face before I started stitching.
I decided on a palate of golds, rusts, reds and teals for the thread colors. I used a gold to outline the snout/eye socket. Some of the other colors are laying on top of the wolf.
I pulled a real good one with the inner parts of the ears today. Apparently the wool in this area is a wool/silk blend and it did not like the setting of my iron. I burnt the left ear; had to take the piece out (of course, after it had been stitched in by the rust thread) and replace it with another, restitching the rust line and making it fatter to catch the ear fabric. Every quilt just seems to have some kind of issue. It's never totally smooth sailing!
I got a lot done today. There are only a few areas left to stitch. Then I'll be cutting some batting to fit under it and working the edges to hide the 1/4" of muslin. In some areas I will have to cut it, others I can fold it under, iron and satin stitch over it. This will help to give the edge some substance making for a thick satin seam.

I might be able to work a few stitches in the next three days as I am working day shifts and home between 5:30 and 6:30pm. But I don't have another whole day until Sunday. I'm really feeling energetic and full of creative juices with this quilt. Wish I had more time to work on it.

There is a Wolf

2011-02-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

With the sample wolf cut, I felt OK about setting out to cut the full sized wolf. Every quilt I do has it's similarities in how I put it all together, but there are always a few problems to solve in how to get from point A to point B. I want the wolf to have some extra padding, to give him a little 3D, jump right out of the quilt, feel. Stitching each piece to the backing would not allow me to do this. So I decided to stitch the wolf to a piece of muslin first so that I could cut some padding to go under the whole wolf. I will then stitch around the edges to sew the wolf to the backing. Hand or machine quilting will then define areas of the wolf.
I started yesterday before going to work with the navy wool. I drew patterns as I usually do from tissue to cut the three pieces out. Fusing large blocks of fabric with Wonder Under makes cutting easier to control with the paper backing still on. I was pleased with the accuracy of the cut pieces. Yesterday I also got the muslin cut and the pattern pieces all drawn on the tissue.
OK, these aren't the best photos I have ever taken. My little digital camera uses lithium batteries. They don't last long and obviously I need some new ones. All the pieces for the wolf got cut today and I fused them to the muslin. Once the inner stitching is done I will cut the muslin to the outside edges of the wool to prepare to stitch the whole to the backing. After fusing, I couldn't resist the urge to see how it looked on the backing with the tree in place. I pinned it to the quilt on the work wall and took a whole lot of pictures, which came out awful - thanks to my waning batteries. Above and below are the best of those photos.
Generally I am pleased with the progress. Tomorrow, another day off work, I will be experimenting with thread color on my sample. I am thinking that I will be choosing bright colors to liven up the dullness of the wools. I like the lines of the wolf a lot and I have some fun ideas of how to use those lines to create some excitement with wolfie. I'm going to buy some new lithiums tomorrow morning so I will be taking more shots tomorrow night.

Tree Piecing

2011-02-02T18:11:00.000-08:00

Started working on the colors for the tree running through Peter and the Wolf. Above are the first cuttings for the tree pinned to the background colors. Below is a detail of the tree. It shows the patterning well but the colors are not accurate at all. I love piecing trees. They are so much fun and so beautiful.

The tree will be stitched on top of the wolf as it cuts through the wolf. Actually the wolf is circling the tree hunting down the bird, just out of it's reach. So my next project is to take my sample of the wolf, decide for certain on the fabrics and start to cut them. They will be stitched on a piece of muslin so that I can pad the wolf, making him stick out a bit in relief.
Above is the final shot of the tree, all the colors are as I want them. They are just pinned in place but the wonder under is on the back of each one. Once the wolf is fleshed out, stitched and ready to place on the background, I can iron down the tree and stitch it in.

My next three days are 8 hour days at work so I won't get to sew much until next week. Well unless we get another storm with a foot or more of snow. As much as I hate the snow right about now, another snow day in the studio would be fun.

Five Illustration Quilts

2011-01-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a while but I have been somewhat active with the artwork. I'll try to be better at posting from this point on. One of my new years resolutions came early, in October. That is to do what I can to step up my commitment to my art. I joined SAQA, the National Quilt Association and the International Quilt Association as well as my local group here in Narragansett. I am still waiting for a spot in the Narragansett group, as space is limited.

After joining SAQA, I jumped at one of their active programs; the Visioning Project. Within a year's time, from Sept. of one year to Sept. of the next, those who join choose a goal and commit to reaching it in a year. Others within the project are free to see your progress and help by commenting and supporting your progress. I committed to the goal of creating 5 major connected pieces of art which will be worthy of acceptance into a major show. As I hope to follow that up with actually applying to some of these shows, I have to keep photos of the ones I wish to show, out of my blog and my SAQA wiki pages.I can't keep all progress out of my blog, or there will be no reason for a blog. So I have come up with a compromise on the photos. One of the five new pieces is a remake of a piece near and dear to my heart, my first art quilt, an illustration from Peter and the Wolf. I will show progress on this one only as I move along. While talking of my progress on the others, I can't show you any of the images. The five new quilts will be, "Peter and the Wolf", "Mermaids", "Medusa", "Alice and the Cheshire Cat", and "Peter's World" another remake of what was started and shown here in earlier posts. All my drawings have been redrawn or drawn out for the first time and the cartoons for them are done and ready to flesh out. The smallest pieces are Alice and Wolf which are in the 3'x4' range.

Above and below are two photos of a small sample done of the wolf so that I can get a feel for the fabrics I choose. The wolf is being fleshed out of wool, very expensive fabrics which I have limited quantities of. Thus the need to sample first. Above is my first attempt. Unhappy with some of the fabric choices I altered them for the second photo. This is the one I will use to create the larger wolf. The line drawing at the beginning of the post is the drawing of the wolf and the tree without Peter or the bird who have been drawn separately.
For those of you still checking out my blog, thanks for your loyalty. I will try to post more regularly as I get into the swing of things with these quilts.

Stitching in Newport

2010-09-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

Here I am in front of the Perry Mill Building, behind the 'Wave' statue in Newport, doing my thing. My daughter Andrea and I arrived right on time and we got set up fast. I created from 2-6pm on the plaza. By 3pm the wind really started to pick up a bit as we were not far from the docks. What we couldn't pin down, we weighted down.
I brought along a few things for people to look at and touch. The "Masters" book was one of a sampling of books I brought for people to look at. A few people had never seen art quilts before. My photos brought lots of attention from the kids who walked by, as I explained how they were quilts made by kids in school art class. The piece above sparked lots of interest. It's called 'Alfred's Garden' and was made in a workshop with Susan Shie. This is a very personal piece which connects to a love of gardening, passed from my father to myself, and a very wonderful reminder of a once in a lifetime experience with a master quilt artist.
My handy little traveling Sunbeam iron has been through just about everything and it is still working wonders. This is a studio iron only, as often bits of fusible web get onto the plate. Several people asked about the process of using fusible web. Some people find that it makes the quilts stiff and therefore don't use it, but I like the stiffness. It gives stability to the piece especially when finished and hanging. It is a bit of a challenge to embroider through it though as I will be remembering as I sew in all the cactus pickers.
So this is what my set up looked like. I brought along some finished pieces to illustrate in a visual way what finishing a piece looks like. A few people asked about how I would finish the piece I was working on. Well, if you are reading here, you know that here is where you will find out what happens to the one with the adobe and the prickly pear cactus.
We had to get a little creative on finding a way to hang the finished quilts. Next to the quilt is my plaza mate, a young knitter and spinner. This was only the first year for the people at Newport Bay Club to organize their Arts on the Plaza series. The coordinator, Bobby Oliveira, is looking to expand his idea next year to providing metal rigs to hang artwork, and possibly including musicians. All changes to the format have to be approved by the city of Newport zoning department. A special thanks to Bobby for the invite. It was a special day and an adventure. To the many of you who picked up my artist cards today and are reading this blog now, welcome.
Here is my progress for the day. I was able to iron down and sew all the cactus pieces including two of the five cactus flowers. I really have only small details left, the windows on the doors, the posts and their shadows, and three more cactus flowers. Then I can start planning the quilting, embroidery and the borders.
OK, what year is this? As we were packing up for the day my daughter noticed this restored 'Woody' rolling slowly up in traffic. My uncle Charley had one just like it years ago, minus the two surf boards, of course. A rolling antique, how cool is this! A fittingly fun way to end a lovely day in the city of Newport.

New quilt taking form: Prickly Pear and Adobe

2010-09-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

Every new quilt has to start with a layout drawing. Above is my final drawing in marker ready for me to trace each shape and cut them out. Each fabric has to be prepared with iron-on adhesive first so it can be ironed in place on the quilt.
You can get a pretty good glimpse of how this one is shaping up with the picture above. I have loved the photo this is taken from for several years. When I first saw this building, in the late afternoon, I just knew that I would want to render it into artwork. The long shadows on the adobe make for a very dramatic look. The adobe pieces are already ironed onto the background of two pieces of dupioni silk, teal and rust. Tomorrow morning, before going into work for 1pm, I will attempt to sew down all the adobe pieces so that on Saturday I will have the freedom to add on all the other pieces over the top of them.
Sorry about the blurriness, but in the above picture you can get an idea of the patterning of each of the fabrics. The cactus fabrics all have a lot of blended color in them, which I just love, and I am pleased with the overall hint of lavender. For the most part the adobe is kind of monotone bland, with the exception of the sunflower print on the largest panel. Had to get my "girasole" (sunflower in Italian) in there somewhere. I still have the yellow flowers to cut and the posts which stick out of the adobe walls. They are, of course, what help to define the adobe, southwestern, style.

This may be the last post until Saturday night or Sunday. This is all tiring me out pretty badly, especially the working 8 hrs. a day part. I will take some pictures in Newport and I'll share them as soon as I can. Again, if you are inclined, and close enough to make a trip of it, I'd love to see you in Newport.

Kwik Update

2010-09-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

I spent the whole day working in the studio to prepare for Saturday. It was my last full day off before Newport. With two night shifts looming I was not expecting to get much done. I decided that because "Poppy Seeds" is so large, it often drags on the floor when I am sewing, I don't want to have it drag on the ground in Newport and I am leaving it home. I did a drawing drawn from a wonderful picture I took in Santa Fe a few years back of one of the museums in town and added drawings of my cactus. The background is prepared and I will be stitching down the first layer of pieces tonight and preparing all the others with "Wonder-Under" for my demo. I'll take pictures at the end of the night and post them with a review. I must say that I just love working with southwestern inspired colors, they are rich and hot. Just the way I like it!

All of my finished pieces are finally prepared to hang, with rods, pockets, name tags and loops for hanging. It's one of those tedious things that, while necessary, is just frustratingly time consuming. I'm just about packed, will finish doing so after I work on the cactus piece tonight. So, tonight, pictures.

"Poppy Seeds"

2010-09-17T22:25:00.001-07:00

Sitting down at the sewing machine at 11pm is not exactly what I was hoping for yesterday, but, *#@+ happens. Dinner was delicious. Anyway, I did get some work done. The lower left of the piece is looking pretty well stitched. There are two poppies and one iris in this area and I only have the smaller poppy left to stitch.
This is looking down at the lower corner area from the top. It's feeling good to see so much done. Below is a view of almost the whole quilt, from the vantage point of my stool. The ribbon border is a jacquard made by Laura Foster Nichols. Her ribbons are amazing and I have been saving this one for a long time for just the right quilt. This is it. I'd like to say that I will be working on this all weekend, but I don't really have a weekend. I'm working Saturday, Sunday and Monday. My next available time to put in some stitch time is Sunday after work. If I get anything done I will post some new pix.

"Poppy Seeds" - Today's Progress

2010-09-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

These leaves, while being very eye-catching and fun, are a pain to stitch around. I still have plenty to do but I did get this one done today. I was able to take the straight pins out and iron down the poppy over the leaves when I finished stitching the leaves.
Here I have almost finished the branch of leaves. You can see how the quilt is rolled to fit into the machine, as it is showing it's stuffing. It took me about 45 minutes to stitch one branch.
Don't know what is up with my little digital camera, but I have been getting a lot of blurry pix lately. With this group of leaves finished, I was able to iron down one of the last poppies.
This last poppy to get ironed is the biggest and most interesting. I was able to stitch some of it down as well as stitch part of the iris behind it so that this last branch of leaves which is in front of all the flowers could get ironed down too. I'm not looking forward to doing this branch because it is so large. What happens when I stitch something as intricate as this is that I must turn the whole quilt withing the confines of the machine arm opening in order to get the stitching going in the right direction. I roll, pull and push the quilt hundreds of times to get one branch done. I must have been nuts when I drew this one out!

I'm happy with what got done today, however I wish I was able to do more. Groceries, housework, dinner got in the way. My next full day off is Tuesday. I may get some time to work tomorrow night though, after work and dinner. I don't need to be to work on Saturday until 2pm, so a late night on Friday is possible.

Artist Statement Rack Cards

2010-09-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

Well I finally was able to finish my rack cards and they just came in the mail yesterday. Above is a picture of the front and the back side by side. Many thanks to Andrea for her assistance. My computer knowledge only goes so far. I have been working on stitching "Poppy Seeds" as often as I get a chance. A good sign that things are progressing well is that all pieces of fabric are ironed into place with iron-on adhesive. As some of the color blocks cross over others, the ones under must be stitched first before ironing those on top. I have only one of these areas left to stitch the pieces underneath before ironing it all down into place.

I'm thinking that it will be "Poppy Seeds" I will be working on while in Newport. I'm working on preparing another though, so that I have a choice of what to work on while I am there. This one already has a backing stitched and ready. It is a drawing of my cactus and it's beautiful yellow flowers. There is not as much detail in this one so it may be easier to show progression in four hours, that it would be with "Poppy Seeds". Four hours doesn't get me very far due to the intricate leaf patterns I am stitching around. I'm also feeling an itch to get started on a drawing I have of three crows in a tree. The crows around the property have been pretty verbal lately and they always remind me of fall. I would need to prepare the backing for this one though. I'll post my photos of my stitching today later tonight.

The Business of Art

2010-09-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

I must admit that the business end of being an artist is the least appealing to me. I have spent so much time thinking about how to get myself out there, that I'm sure the time would have been better spent stitching. My daughter, Andie, helped me get this business card done on-line for very little money and only a moderate amount of my time. I really needed something to bring with me to Newport in a couple of weeks, which people could take with them. Perhaps I will get a sale out of it.

The one thing which bothers me is that the studio info is getting published, in the name of promoting business. Handing these cards out as well as posting here, may help business, but it's a risk. One, I guess, that I have been hedging on but am now taking. If no one knows how to find Studio Girasole, then I will continue to be isolated. If you don't ever buy a lottery ticket, how can you ever expect to win the lottery.

I spent a good part of the day working on "Poppy Seeds", the name I have given to one of the quilts I have been working on for a while. I really want it done in two weeks. How that is going to happen? I don't know. But I am making every attempt. Grabbing every second on the machine, around my crazy schedule! I will take some pictures later towards the weekend and post them with some progress reports.

Weekend Inspiration

2010-08-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

A bit blurry, it's true. But the whole weekend was a wash like a rainy windshield. Tony and I took a weekend to decompress in one of our favorite areas, the outer parts of Cape Cod. I have a small digital camera which I use for downloading pics onto my computer. It takes lithium batteries, which do not last long. For most of my day, the batteries were running on low and causing too long of a shutter speed, creating nothing but blur. I erased most of my photos. Above is just a shot of a couple on Commercial St. in Provincetown. Flags were flying across Commercial St. from one end to the other because of a recent festival. Even in the rain it was festive.
The map is of the area in which we stayed. Our choice of motel is not far from the entrance to Marconi Beach, my favorite beach. The motel is on a large plot of land which abuts the bike path running through Wellfleet, so you can rent a bike for the day to go to the beach or to go the length of the path, which I believe goes down into Orleans at this point. Mother Nature just did not cooperate, however, and a brief visit to Marconi was all we could endure, with strong winds and a biting, cold mist, not to mention that sharks had been spotted in the waters off of Truro (the next township)feeding on seals. So we shopped. We started Sunday out with the flea market at the Wellfleet drive-in theater. The rain hadn't started to fall yet and we found lots of fun antiques to poke through. There are so many wonderful galleries in P-town. We spent hours looking in many of them. It is so inspirational to see the creativity of others. Our favorite gallery was Bowersock Gallery. You can check out the art at www.bowersockgallery.com. Another was a crafts gallery we found in Brewster on our way home following Rt. 6A down to the Bourne Bridge. Its name is The Spectrum and you can check them out at www.spectrumamerica.com.

I spoke to Bobby at the Newport Bay Club upon getting home last night. Firmed up plans to be in Newport quilting on the 25th of September. I have a lot of work to do to prepare for being there. More time in the studio and less time here!

2010-08-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

I just received a cold call from someone in Newport, RI offering me a spot in the Newport Bay Club sponsored show. Every Saturday during the summer and fall, artists set up on the plaza in Newport doing what it is that they do, paint, sculpt, throw pots and in my case, quilt, while the public walks through watching. They also offer spots to hang the artist's work in local shops for the duration.

I am considering it for Saturday, September 25th. It will be a lot of work, preparing and setting up, but I can't think of a better way to spend four hours on a Saturday afternoon. Everyone, please pray for clear and sunny weather for the 25th. And if you are in Newport, please come around to say hello. I will be posting more on this as the days go by.

2010-08-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

OMG! It has been forever. My job has indeed taken over my life as I now have gotten a second promotion and am working 37 to 40 hours every week. In one very special way this is a blessing. Full time workers get health insurance benefits! My health has improved. I have lost 25 lbs since January, my diet is better, and I am exercising fairly regularly. The focus of my "off" time has been on health these days, not art.

My gardens are just delightful this summer! Above and below are my spring iris, and a bud from the peonies that I just adore. The blooms from the peonies were so large they were 10" in diameter. The bee balm and the many coneflowers came back from last year doubling their size in the gardens to the glee of the many hummingbirds who frequented them. The blooms are already dieing off and the hummingbirds have moved on. However, I have a new pastime watching a huge family of native turkeys wander my and my neighbor's yards. We live on the edge of a large woodland area, so they have roamed down to our yards to feed all summer long. Two females had very large broods, which are presently mature enough to have their own broods. Yesterday, I noticed one of the more mature early spring babies with three of her own very tiny babies following her. I've tried to get some photos, but they aren't very happy about my intrusion into their space. I also, had a wren make a nest very close to the house inside my closed deck umbrella. The song of a wren is so joyful and the babies were truly a joy to watch as I was able to see them emerge and fly off to the trees with their mother. Mother Nature can be such a joy!
I recently took the photo below of one of my studio cats, Pete, formally named Peter Pan by my daughter, who actually owns the cat and two others. He is such a gorgeous cat and very well behaved. I find him to be such a sweet companion when I am working in the studio. He has plunked himself on top of my workspace, claiming the area for his own. My daughter, Andie, has recently decided that living at home doesn't suit her needs anymore, so she is looking for a place to move into with her boyfriend. At nearly 23 I guess it is about time for her to fly off on her own. But as I will miss Peter Pan in my studio, I will be missing Andrea much more.
With so little time to devote to my art these days, I am surmising that I will never get enough time to get "Peter's World" entered into a show. So I have decided to show some photos of what I have been up to. The photo below is of my son, Peter, posing on a bench at his Dad's house for me. I set him up the way I wanted the drawing to be, took several shots, and ended up with this one as my model for the drawing...

Peter is now 19 years old. He was 11 in this picture. As you can see, it takes me a long time to work through my projects!
Above and below are some detail shots of Peter's face. All the curves have been hand stitched and the smaller pieces in the face are reverse appliqued. I am leaving the body in large pieces to give myself some flexibility when stitching them down to the background of wicker and leaves. Its coming along, but slowly.
For those of you who like to buzz around to read and view other blogs, including mine, I have to apologize for such a long hiatus from writing. It has not been very "blog-like" to have taken so much time between posts. I will endeavor to be better about this. Thanks for reading and checking in on me. TTFN. Nancy

SPRING

2010-03-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

The snowdrops are just glorious these days. I was finally successful in capturing a shot of them today. It feels like 60 outside in the sun today. The bees were out in force buzzing around the snowdrops completely ignoring my presence, as if after a long winter they have much better things to attend to. If you look carefully in both of the snowdrop pictures you can see bees at work.
Clumps of snowdrops are now visible all over the yard. I have always loved them more than crocus and the owners of this property prior to us put in scads of them. I also have daffodils which I am sure are up, but they are in the most boggy places in my yard. We have just had a week of rain, which followed a week of snow showers. Needless to say, I need a good pair of garden rubbers before I venture to all of the gardens.
I just love looking closely at the ground in spring. So much is going on and you can see every little thing, pebbles to sprouts to bugs. Above is my 'silver mound' sprouting it's first spring leaves. They are such an interesting shape. Fun for drawing especially if you are looking to draw graphic representations of nature. My favorite model for such drawing is Jane Sassaman.
A flock of titmice are chitting just above where I shot this photo. This is a shot of one of my strongest foxglove perennials. There are several planted in the half moon garden in the shadier areas under the dogwood and close to the stone wall. As they start shooting up and blooming they create a beautiful vignette in peach and yellow from the other side of the wall.
And with any luck, the giant alliums which are companion planted with the foxglove will be blooming at about the same time bringing a touch of purple to the garden. I peeked under the large foxglove leaves to find allium shoots beneath. Yay!
I have a couple of these 'coral bells' planted in the half moon garden too, along the wall. 'coral bells' have the sweetest spikes of tiny flowers but it is the shade of these leaves that I love the most about these plants. They stay a reddish, pinky shade all summer and fall.
My garden walk ended today on my deck, as I took stock of winter's harsh weather. My poor cactus does this each year during the winter months. It looks like someone has sucked all the water out of it, as if it were half dead. As the weather warms, it's arms will start to plump up and rise to it's usual shape and with any luck by May I will be seeing the most beautiful yellow flowers. It has grown in the past three years to a decent sized plant and is living in a large pot in a protected and sunny spot on the deck. I hope I never have to repot it as it's tiny cactus needles are nasty. I decided that as it is not a native plant it had to be planted high in a pot to keep native animals away from it's nasty thorns. I'm sure the chipmunks and mice will be all the happier without noses full of thorns.

I have been steadily working on 'Peter's World' bit by bit, hand-stitching one piece at a time. It's going slow. But I am determined to finish it this year! It is my #1 priority and thus everything else has stopped but it in the studio. I must remain focused and this is why you haven't seen any artwork. By April I hope to have all the stitching done on Peter so I can start on the wicker settee.

So I'll just keep stitching and writing here about my garden until I get it finished and can move on to other things in the studio which I can share in pictures......

2010-03-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

This sunbather is our dog, Tiger, as he looks longingly out the back sliders, wishing he could race around in the muddy woods chasing squirrels and chipmunks. I'm with him on that one. We both have spring fever, but spring is long in coming in New England, as has been proved by a week of snowy days. Thankfully the snow melts almost as soon as it hits the ground these days.

I have been a bit remiss in posting lately, however, life has been changing as it usually does. I am feeling better than in January, due to some diet changes and a cholesterol med which is slowly but decidedly taking my high number down. Days in the studio have been few, unfortunately, due to a promotion at work which has taken me up to 32hrs each week. It is good for our growing bills, but not very fulfilling for me, and those 32 hours are not the 'sittin' at the desk' type of hours. I have been exhausted.

I am hoping that as I settle into this new position, I will get more used to the flow of it and able to find more time in the studio.
Soon it will be time to get outside and into the gardens to prepare for the growing season. The shot above is of my 'butterfly garden', a woods to yard transition garden, heavily planted with perennials which attract butterflies. My euphorbia in the foreground is sprouting spring leaves already, but the general condition of the garden is still very boggy from melting snow and there is not much happening in the way of growth yet.
The 'Half-moon' garden is sprouting my favorite 'snow drops'. I tried to get a close-up shot of them poking through the leaves, but the camera kept focusing on the leaves. They are planted in large groupings under the dogwood and all around the half moon stone wall. As they start blooming I will attempt another photo session.
I am always amazed that sedum is one of the first garden perennials to sprout green leaves and one of the last to mature their flowers in the growing season. I have them everywhere as I love their display in the fall.
My last shot is of my poor allium bulbs. Seems they have wiggled their way up to the surface of the garden bed. They are the giant kind which sprout a head full of flower that is 4-5 inches in diameter. I guess I need to leave them alone until they have bloomed and then transplant them deeper. For now I am just happy to see them sprouting.

Well, it is 50 degrees today and sunny, so I think I will go back out and rake up some of the hundreds of twigs that have fallen this winter from our River Birch trees. They are messy trees! Wishing all my readers a happy spring, as I am sure some of you may be seeing more spring than I am up here in the NE. Later this evening we are celebrating an early St. Patty's Day with some Irish stew, colcannon, soda bread and Guiness. We can't afford to travel lately, so we are doing so in our cuisine. Have to go make Tiger a green bandana. Bye for now. N

2010-01-25T09:41:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have been following here, an update. I'm feeling OK, no more episodes sending me to the ER. I am waiting to hear from the insurance company confirming my coverage before running the stress test. So I sit each day praying that my arteries are clear enough not to bring a stroke before I get that test. I'm taking it easy. Lots of time to sew and to think.

As a result of my thinking I have decided that although a very pleasant part of life, it is better to curb a great deal of my computer time. It takes time away from my art. So I have canceled my twitter, flickr and facebook accounts until such time as I feel I can afford the time. I feel twisted about this decision because I have met so many wonderful associates this way. I will miss chatting with them and I am hoping that some of you will be reading this. I will continue here to blog as I have time and hopefully keep in touch with at least some of you here. I encourage your comments more so now, as it is a way of communicating with you.

On a brighter note, I have restarted my work on a piece called 'Peter's World.' It is a pictoral portrayal of my son at age 11 watering his morning glory plants which had grown so profuse as to completely cover a wicker settee. This is a very large piece which will top out in the range of 7'x8'. I am a little hesitant to put my progress in pictures here as I will want to enter this one in one of the bigger quilt shows. I'm not sure what the rules are about showing a work, in piece or in whole, before entering it for a show. The wicker settee is being drawn with resist on a beautiful hand died piece of cotton. Before I begin on it I will be doing many test runs, as I don't want to ruin the good fabric. Perhaps I can show you my progress on my testing. But I can at least talk about my progress. Peter is about half constructed. His face, hair, and upper body are completed in three sections which need to be sewn together. This week I am working on his shorts, legs and shoes. All my piecing is being done as applique and reverse applique by hand - tiny stitches. It is very tedious and hard on my eyes and hands, but very satisfying when completed.

Well I hope that I will be hearing from my followers and some others regularly. I regularly check out your blogs and will continue that because you are all so inspiring to me. With my son, Peter, as helper, I will be figuring out a website so that I can show my completed work. He has switched his major, bringing a smile to my heart, to ART. He is working towards learning graphic computer programming.

My love and appreciation to all my readers and to those who regularly chatted with me on twitter, flickr and facebook.

2010-01-05T10:27:00.000-08:00

Detail 'Blue Girl'

That's me today, blue girl. The new year is not starting off as planned. It's all a bit more challenging than expected.

Late into the night on new year's day I had an episode resembling a heart attack. I ended up inside a rescue headed towards the local hospital with a nitro pill under my tongue wondering what in God's name I was doing there. Several doctors and many tests later they discharged me from the hospital saying that it was not a heart attack but it indeed could be angina. I am at high risk for a heart attack or stroke. I have scheduled a stress test. Until then, I feel a bit like I'm hovering over a cliff waiting for someone to push.

I've been trying to keep calm, my blood pressure as normal as possible, and I have been doing absolutely nothing which could constitute strenuous activity. I've been sitting in my studio just looking around at all the stuff. Been thinking about what things will get finished in my life and what will be left behind. We always think we have so much time for all we want to do in life, until we are reminded of how quickly it could end. I am expecting that with modern medicine being so advanced that some crew of doctors will snip and sew their quilt of me and I will have more time to enjoy this life. But I really just don't know for sure. No one can.

I am, as always, very grateful for the life I lead, my family and the wonderful people in my life, the freedoms I enjoy. As long as I am able I will continue to do the things I must do, love, live and sew!

I'll be in touch as I am able.

2009-12-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve. It's traditionally a time to reflect. I am often of the ilk to be reflecting anyway. So here goes.

I started this blog this year because I was feeling like I was in a cocoon. Hoping to extend myself into the world to become a part of it, I set out to get some feedback on what I have been doing since 1996. It's been a positive experience from which I have gained a sense of comfort in my own skin. My followers and colleagues have been so supportive that I honestly feel that I am happy becoming a part of the world wide web.

This blog alone has helped to spurn me on to things I have been avoiding. Finishing 'Nancy's Garden' was a huge success in my ability to deal with the emotional baggage that often comes along with the art process. I'm not so afraid to face the art demons anymore. I have a few left to deal with and they are on my list of things I must get to this year. Fear of failing at experimentation is a whole other demon. I'm taking it on with a piece I started a few years back which entails a large area of discharging the drawing of a wicker bench. I've never tried to discharge such a large area and this one will be about 3' x 4'.

Hmm, I actually sold two pieces this year. Woo hoo! Wasn't really expecting that. Unlike so many of my colleagues who look to art as their primary source of income, art has always been just a means of expression and a form of joy. I cart my weary carcass into work for someone else to abuse so I can take home a regular paycheck and this allows me the freedom to complain about it regularly. This last statement I've not allowed to happen with the happy inner art core of me. The rest of the world can be brutal, but the art core must remain pure. One of my best friends in the art world quit doing what he does best in life because it was such a drag trying to make ends meet. I used to watch him dive full heart and soul into a piece he was creating only to see the piece come to life in his hands. This doesn't happen anymore for him. He sells real estate. He hasn't done any art for years now. To me, this is painfully sad. So I've tried hard not to let the two worlds intersect too much. Not putting demands on the sale of my work has let me keep my love of it. It's a bit of a juggle time-wise and sometimes, as has just happened in the fourth quarter of the year, art has to take a back seat for a while.

It keeps my heart wanting for more, though. Knowing that this has been so fulfilling for me this year, and has expanded the way I feel about my art, has given me what I didn't know I could have at this point. I am looking forward to the new year as one of expansion. I'm excited about new possibilities as I have never been before. And from this I know that some fun and soulful pieces will emerge.

I'd like to thank all of you for reading this blog. Thanks especially to those who have become followers and who regularly stop by and leave comments. Your comments help me to keep a perspective I may not otherwise have.

I am wishing all of you a happy and very fulfilling new year. May you all be productive and full of joy at doing so. From the wings of the angel who sits on my shoulder......may you all be blessed.

Peace, Joy & Happy New Year, Nancy

Christmas

2009-12-28T20:46:00.000-08:00

It has been such a busy holiday season this year. I have found myself working at not only one retail store this season but two, in order to help out. I'm used to working retail about 15 to 18 hours a week so my 30 to 40 hour weeks have been a bit tiring. November was the worst but it left me so tired that the month of December flew by in a dream state.

What time I have had at home has been filled with Christmas preparations and family time. As of today, Nick has gone home to Boston, Pete is visiting with his Dad now, Andie is starting the training for a new job and Brad is living in the city and back to his normal work schedule. Christmas 2009 is a memory. The tree is still up with all it's glorious lights and ornaments and I'm still munching cookies and sweets. But in a week it will be all packed away and I'll be on my yearly after-the-holidays diet. I have three more days of work in this quarter, then the first quarter of the new year begins and schedules change. I'll be back to 15 hours a week at work, leaving me long hours sewing.

My poor lonely studio. I keep dreaming of warm summer days past when I was working daily. Next week I should be able to pick up where I left off last summer. There are so many things going on in my head that I'm not sure where I'll start. I just know that I can't wait to start. Next Monday is the beginning of a long, snowy winter at Studio Girasole. I never thought I would ever be happy to see January linger. Hurray for winter!

As I have totally missed wishing you all a wonderful Christmas, let me not forget to wish you all a productive, joyful, happy new year!

Morning's Light

2009-12-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

Transformation in the back yard this morning after last night's snow

It's like piped butter cream frosting...

and the whole world has been transformed to angel's wings, lace tatting sparkling like glass prisms. Time stands still for minutes at a time.

2009-12-05T20:36:00.001-08:00

Dr Seuss tree

front walkway

magical first snowfall

Wanna Do

2009-12-02T16:00:00.000-08:00

It's still pretty busy at work, leaving me only little time to play in the studio. However the time I have had has been very enjoyable. Above is a sample sketch for a large quilt. I was inspired by the colors I used below for my block of the month. It still needs some work on composition and I may do the same sketch in several colorways before I decide.
One of my favorite things to do when I need inspiration and I don't have a lot of time in the studio, is to spend a few moments looking over the colors and patterns from my stash. I feel like a little kid again with a new box of crayons.
Sometimes I just like to pull them out and throw them together to see how they play off each other.

The colors and shapes of the beads sometimes spark and idea, a thought for some new creation.
Ultimately, it is still just about dreaming of January. With only a handful of hours a week to play, I can't get much done. But by the time January does come around, I surely won't have to spend any time thinking of things to do. My list of 'wanna do's keeps growing.

Dreaming of Stitching

2009-11-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

We should all be independently wealthy or have 'sugar daddies' so that we can do as we please. My art is relegated to dreaming and small accomplishments this time of year as I have to work for the bread on my table. Selling people stuff in a store just is not rewarding in any other way but to provide a paycheck.

So as not to appear too negative as to consume all my thoughts, I have been at least dreaming of all the projects I can't wait to get my hands on. Above is a piece that I did as a sister to 'Iris Dragon', which is completed. I never got to bead this beauty and I'm starting to plan where and how I will embellish it so that I can get it done.
I have been taking an hour or two on days when I am only working 4-6 hours, to quickly cut and paste ideas in my sketchbook.
Some are exciting, as I can see the possibilities and have just the right fabrics for the idea.
And others are just simply ideas that will probably never make their way into a finished quilt.
I always have things that I start but loose my inner direction on. So I put them away for a rainy day when I feel the inspiration. I love the desert Southwest and this was begun as a quilt connected to my travels there. I am feeling lots of cacti and seeing pieces of adobe walls.
It's a fairly long and narrow piece with a 5 inch border. I got these fabrics from the store I used to work at and when I first saw them I knew I would be using them for something. The center fabric is just bits of a map with routes in black and red. The border has vignettes of traveling icons with small maps that are named for the western states, such as TEXAS, UTAH, & NEW MEXICO.
My own cactus plant has afforded me tons of photos like this one to draw from. And the many pictures of homes and walls in Santa Fe that I took on my last trip there, are calling to me to be drawn. If I can just get some drawings done, perhaps the piecing can be done in bits and pieces before or after work.
And lastly, I did manage to get October's block of the month done. For a person who never does traditional patterns I found this to be a bit of a monster. But it's done and looks nice next to the September block. Still hand stitching 'Chlorophyll' and I should be able to put up a picture soon which shows the progress, which is painfully slow.

For those of you who read this and have situations which allow you endless studio hours, remember how lucky you are this Thanksgiving. Kiss your significant others often, embrace and bless your art donors and joyfully meet your teaching obligations with renewed energy. I will be thankful for my loving, healthy family, my hard working husband, the job which pays for the feast and my studio, filled with promise, which awaits my eager heart.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

2009-10-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Just a quick hello to my readers. Welcome Quilt Architect. I do so appreciate all my readers and often wonder why anyone bothers with my drivel at all. But thank you all.

I'd like to be able to say that I have been a busy bee but that is not the case. I have a day job which 9 months of the year is really a small part of my life. But in the last quarter of the year it becomes a monster - it's retail and holiday related. For Oct., Nov., and Dec. it will surely suck the life force out of me. But I need it to survive, so I put up with it. I am so looking forward to January and a rejuvenation of my creative energies.

I can and do some things in the studio for small periods of time. I am keeping up with the BOM with Sue and Terri, I'm still able to draw some and to do hand work at night, but my energy level keeps me from accomplishing much. My gardens are going into sleep mode. I have cleaned out all but one, moved the bird feeders closer to the house, and cleaned out all my deck pots but a couple. My mandevilla and hibiscus do not want to give up to the cold nights, so I still have a few blooms there. But even my cactus, above, has drooped in wait for the snow that will surely come.

At least I am still dreaming of the art I want to create. This is good. And I will soon be myself again, listening to beautiful music in my studio and stitching to my hearts content as the snow blankets my gardens and stops all other activity outside Studio Girasole.

Fun With & Without Color

2009-10-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

I had a little fun in HP Image Zone with my nature photos. Took the color out of some to find the contrast and put it into others just to play with vivid colors. May print some out for transfer onto fabric. Fun Fun Fun!

2009-10-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

I took an hour to take a walk with my camera today because it was just so wonderfully warm. A balmy 60 in Rhode Island. I wanted to capture some of nature's best during this stunning season. I started in the driveway. We only have one maple on a lot full of oaks. It's a bit squeezed under the mighty oaks but the leaves still turn a brilliant red - just not all at once. A nice study for a future quilt.
Clusters of berries just captivate my eye. This sprig was hanging very near a nest. The elusive bird occupants scurried into the underbrush to avoid my stare. I didn't want to get too close for fear that they would not return.
This hedge is at least 50 feet long, planted between two neighbors' homes as a screen. There is nothing more dramatic in the fall than Burning Bush.
The needles of a white pine are so much fun up close. They create such a linear feel, I can't help but see stitching lines for a quilt when I look at them.

These and many more photos taken today will find themselves used creatively in drawings to come on cold and snowy days in winter. But for now, I'm just loving fall.

Comments

2009-10-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

Just a note to those loyal readers who have been unable to leave comments. I believe that the problem has been finally fixed. Fire away. I very much welcome your comments.

Studio Girasole

2009-10-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

Last week many of my internet friends working in the fiber arts showed pictures of their studios on their blogs. I found it so much fun to see the places that were the beginning spaces for so much exciting art. It was fun to imagine my friends in their spaces working diligently. Some of these were even videos with explanations of where their stashes and supplies were kept and how the storage spaces were made to order for each artist.

So I decided that maybe you might also like to know how I use my space to work. Above is a photo of my drawing table and my major work table behind it. My studio space takes up a little over half of a huge heated sunroom off the back of our house. There are three sets of windows like the one pictured along one long wall. At the ends of the room are two sets of sliders leading to two decks. Above is a slanting vaulted ceiling with three skylights. The room faces the southern exposure and is extremely sunny during the day. In the summer I always pull the blinds to offer a bit of shade and keep the temperature down.

My drawing table faces out the middle set of windows and my butterfly garden. This garden is full of the flowers I love to draw. Sometimes if it is too hot in the studio I just take myself out to the decks with a sketchbook and a lawn chair and draw near the gardens.
Most of the fabrics I use for my quilts are cottons and silks. I use a very deep and large armoire to house most of my fabrics, cottons arranged by color and silks on the second shelf left. Many of my specialty fabrics are in tubs on shelves in the basement. I also have three large containers arranged by color in the cabinets under my work table of scraps too small to fold, ultrasuede, tulle and organzas. The table cabinets also hold all my batting, fusible web, buttons, trims, ribbons, beads and some of my projects. There are four deep drawers in the cabinet which hold all the pins, scissors, and small tools. My threads are in plastic containers kept in a center shelf in the cabinet and also in the drawers of my sewing cabinet.
My workspace is such a wonderful piece of furniture. I used to work full time for a local chain of a fabric store. They closed doors a few years back about the same time we bought this house, so I purchased one of their cutting tables with the cabinets below. You can see that I have a retractable extension to the table which I fold down on occasion to make more room in the space but often I use this space to lay out my quilts and I cut closer to the wall. There is a metal cutting guide on the side closest to the wall which is great for cutting batting straight.

Above the table are two covered cork boards that I use as a place to pin up ideas, cards, photos and whatnots. On one of these boards I have a small piece that I bought from Susan Shie when taking her workshop. Her St. Quilta keeps watch over my space. In this photo you can see the second window that I sew in front of. My Bernina is housed in a standard sewing machine table under the window which also came from the unfortunate closing of the fabric store. To the far left you can just get a glimpse of my work board. It is an 8' x 4' piece of sound insulation covered twice over with white felt. I have yet to screw it into the wall because it is so heavy that it will take three of us to hold it and one to screw it to the wall. To it's left is one of the sliders.

Well, it was not as comprehensive a tour as some of the ones I saw last week but at least you get an idea of where the work I love to do comes from. For most of my time sewing my quilts I have not had the luxury of this room. In my first house, a tenement, I used part of my living space and the dining room table. My second house was a single family but I really didn't have any space for me there either. I used the dining table, which was at that time our major eating table. I had to put up and take down the machine every time I sewed. I got a lot of work done in both of these places and sometimes I wonder how in the world I did it. The two years that I owned my loft space were the most wonderful and expanding years for me to find the artist inside. They planted the seed within me for the desire to continue to value my work space in my life. So when Tony and I were looking for a new home outside the city, a place just for my studio was the most important priority to me.

As I get older, I wonder how long we are going to be able to stay here in this high maintenance home. My biggest fear is the possibility of losing my space again. But I try to take it a day at a time and each day I am in the studio, I consider it a true gift. It's late but I think I'll go sew in the studio now. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Autumn Color in the Garden

2009-10-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite fall combinations in the half-moon garden. Burning bush is in the forefront with an unusual coral bells behind.

There is nothing more transitional than sedum. This variety started out as a pale pink and daily is making the change to a deep crimson. I keep sedum growing all over the yard just for the pulse of color in the fall.

This hydrangea has doubled in size this year and has produced double the flower heads. They started out white and are deepening to a rosey pink.

As I take my walks through the autumn garden I am reminded of the cycles of life and death. It's time to start cutting down the dying summer growth from all the perennials and preparing them for winter frost and frozen earth. We are just surrounded by large oak trees and even though most of the leaves stay on the trees until spring sprouts push them off, we still have mountains of leaves and acorns. The chipmunks are absolutely crazy busy rounding up all the acorns.

We are starting to think of winter. The patio furniture has been stripped of it's pads, the umbrellas down, and the pots of flowers emptied. No more mandavillas or hibiscus, the cool nights have nipped the life out of them. My cactus, the one unusual plant that will survive the cold, has drooped and is starting to wilt. It has made it through two winters OK in it's large pot in a protected corner of the deck. A few more chores are left to do. The wood in the shed needs to come down to the garage for fires on those cold winter nights. The garden tools need to be cleaned and put in the shed until spring. The garage needs cleaning out so we can fit our cars inside to avoid the mountains of snow coming our way.

Likewise I am looking to my studio with different eyes. All the wonderful windows, sliders and skylights are like double edged swords in the winter. What sun we get will help to warm the room in the day, but also wick some of the warmth out at night and the glass is so cold. I need to make insulated curtains for the windows. When we moved here, the window treatments in the studio were vertical blinds. Unwilling to spend a lot of money, we just left them. They do nothing to help to insulate against the cold and need to be replaced. A huge task, it is daunting to me. As much as I love sitting at my machine for hours working on a quilt, I hate sitting at it to perform mundane chores like curtains.

With the coming of snow and after the holidays are over, there will be time to quilt long hours again. My day job will wane in hours, and there will be no garden chores to take my time. But I'll have to wear heavy sweaters and socks in order to stand the cool of the room. My machine gets more use in winter as it is warming to sit with a quilt on your lap stitching at a machine. There are a couple of juried shows that I would like to create work for. I will use the drawings I sketched this summer to develop pieces for them.

This shift in perspective, moving from the extroverted warmth of summer to the inner workings of winter is happening as I type. A slow shift inward.

There will be more here on this progression as time moves on.

Mish-mash

2009-10-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since I have blogged. Those who look to read often were probably disappointed to see the same old post. Sorry. With fall come increases in the hours I work my day job. I work as a retail sales goddess for a national card and gift store to remain unnamed. Their focus is to sell lots of stuff for upcoming holidays. They are in their peak season. And I am wishing it was still summer when I only had to work 12-15 hours a week. Unfortunately, I have to keep the job to pay some of the household bills. Not retired yet!

I have been taking time to sew as often as I can, I just can't devote the time I had a few months ago. Above is the September quilt square done for a block of the month club at Two Creative Studios. I am looking forward to the next months. I very seldom work traditional quilts but I do love to do them. This should be a very fun aside.
I found a pattern for a bee in an old magazine recently. I love bees as subjects for my drawings so I just had to make up a few squares. I'm going to make a few more up in different colorways. Not sure what I will do with them then. But I love the way they came out.
I've been hand stitching on 'Chlorophyll' too. Using embroidery floss to create the random stitches above. I'm not sure about the pale green floss. I think I might take it out and substitute another color. All the handwork is done on the border, so as soon as I finish this embroidery, I'll move on to some more machine quilting.

Again, I'm sorry to have taken such a long break from posting. I'll try harder to find more time for the blog. Thanks for reading.

Being Professional

2009-09-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

Wave I
17 1/2" x 24 1/2"
Begun 1999, Finished 2001
Mixed fabrics including hand dyed silk, Embroidery, Beads
Completely hand stitched

Lions, Tigers, and Bees
27" x 32"
Begun April 2006, Finished July 2006
Cotton, Silk, Ribbons, Buttons
Machine and hand stitched

These are two of the finished pieces I have recently put up photos of on my Facebook and Flickr sites. Today I became a true professional by selling both of them. They sold to the same patron. I will be spending my week packing them and getting them mailed out. I can't even begin to express the excitement that I am feeling. I'm over the moon.

Thinking about why one is an artist leads me to philosophize a bit. I create these works because I have to. They are within me and I have to let them out. I need to create in order to feel happy. It is just who I am. But I think all artists struggle with how their work is perceived by others, because we can't create in a cocoon. We create, and then we put it out there for everyone to see. We strive to show our work, and to sell it because we know that it is within the interaction of others that the work comes alive. It is no longer just your own perception, but also that of the beholder. Music needs to be heard, art needs to be seen. It is in this that the creation becomes 'whole'.

My excitement stems from knowing that for the first time ever, my work is being seen by people and ultimately it has in two cases communicated so deeply as to become the property of the viewer. Those of you who have been doing this for a while, may be smiling a bit. You may have sold many of your pieces in your artist lifetime. Lets face it, there are many who are making their living as artists. Selling is a necessity of existence. But I don't think it ever gets better than this. It's like a first kiss. Intense, scintillating, and unique to the moment and I am ever thankful for the experience.

Progress on 'Chlorophyll'

2009-09-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

I have been working on 'Chlorophyll' lately. The center leaves are all stitched down and their veins are stitched in too. Have been thinking about how to quilt and embellish already. I think that I want to hand quilt in the background with some embroidery thread. But no beads in the center of this one.
Andrea, my daughter with quite an eye for design, and I took some time last night playing with the fabrics in the stash. With her suggestion, I chose the border for color and also for the contrast of large to small pattern. We stepped back from the pinning and were wowed by it's movement and contribution. So here it is. I will be beading this border heavily. The bursts of the pattern remind me of fireworks and to me should be bright and sparkly. So I have an intense beading project on my hands. My next work is to hand sew the border to the background and to miter the corners. I will then move on to quilting the center background. More progress in days to come.

Comments

2009-09-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to my readers.

Welcome to my seven followers. Thanks for taking the time to view my blog. I have been having some trouble with some of the applications since I downloaded the background. I have sent off a few e-mails to the company who owns the rights to the background but have gotten no reply. On my end I have done everything I can think of to assure that you can leave comments, to absolutely no avail. I also cannot get the slideshow gadget to recognize my flickr photos. My 22 yr old daughter and I were up very late trying to get it to work. If I get frustrated enough, I am going to have to deep 6 the background. :(

If you have any comments, I welcome them on Twitter or Facebook. I am artgirlri at Twitter and you can look for me as a friend on Facebook by searching for Nancy Turbitt. One of the reasons for my doing this blog is to get some very needed feedback.

I have put a group of photos on Flickr which are a small finished portfolio. However, I am still learning about how to use Flickr. You can find me there as artgirlri.

Again thanks for your support. I will be in the studio all tomorrow and Friday, so there should be some progress posted by the end of the week.

9/11

2009-09-11T11:26:00.001-07:00

My Bernina was in need of a tune-up, so in late August, I took it to the local dealership. On the morning of September 11, I dropped my Mom at her daily adult care center and got on the highway going south to Warwick. It was then that I heard of the first plane hitting the tower in NYC. By the time I got to the store to get my machine, all the employees were standing in front of the TV in one of their workrooms. I joined them in disbelief.

I joined an entire nation, who now remember their experiences of that day. Pivotal and painful, we all knew that the world would never be the same again. Eight years later, I fear that we really haven't made much progress in the way of peace. I am always hopeful but there is a foreboding now that will not go away. At any time, any moment, it could all shatter; the quiet hum of safety. Let none of us forget that peace begins in our hearts, that life is fleeting, and that the world will turn no matter what happens.

As I sit at my Bernina this afternoon, I will let each stitch become a prayer for peace, for the pain and suffering of all the people who lost someone eight years ago to this tragedy, for those individuals who lost their lives and for those who would perpetuate this kind of violence again. For the later please, bless their souls with tolerance, compassion and wisdom and fill their hearts with love instead of hate. As I watch the leaves flutter on the trees outside my studio, and the tiny drops of rain fall like tears, I pray with hope.

Let none of us ever forget.

Feathers of Gold

2009-09-04T16:55:00.001-07:00

It is finally done. Begun in March of this year with a simple drawing of the sunflower and goldfinch, it really didn't start to take off until I found the goldfinch fabric to place in the corners. It finished off at 17 1/2" x 21 1/4" and is made primarily of cotton but with silk, beads, sequins and buttons. Stitching is done both by machine and by hand. It's formally named, 'Feathers of Gold'.

A New Quilt, 'Chlorophyll'

2009-09-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

I got this crazy idea. One of those that come to you in that time between sleep and wakefulness. I saw a branch of a tree turning into fabric, just as it grew. So I thought about it and later went out to 'prune' an oak leaf hydrangea. Above is the lowest leaf on the stem, therefore, the largest, pinned to fabric. Cutting was a challenge, as I wanted to keep as much of the true edge as I could. Used both my large scissors and my tiny ones.
Taking what was once three dimentional and visualizing it on a flat plane was a little harder this way than when I draw it out. While drawing, I am drawing with perspective, allowing for depth. This was just simply a placing of leaves, one on top of another to create a sense of depth. I snipped each leaf, pinned it to fabric and then cut it out. Next I placed it where the real leaf was, pinned and then moved to another leaf.

The end result is a grouping of leaves, straight from Mother Nature herself. The leaves are ironed as I usually do, under layers completely; as they will be first to be sewn, and upper layers; only partially ironed or not at all yet. My backing fabric is a fun print from one of Jane Sassaman's collections. It will wrap around to the front as the border. The background fabric is, as usual for me, silk shantung.

This was an exercise in spontaneity for me. I usually work in a much more controlled way. It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to sewing it.

2009-09-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the close-ups, the one above is the Lupine;January 2001 center section of 'Nancy's Garden.

Close-up of Iris; April 2001, part of 'Nancy's Garden'.

Close-up of Tiger Lily; March 2001, part of 'Nancy's Garden.'

The past few days have been busy ones, filled with the stuff of life. This Saturday I am taking my youngest child off to his first semester in college. He will only be 1 hour away at the University of Rhode Island, however, it has hit me a bit hard this summer that all of my kids are now grown and Tony and I will be empty-nesters. Andrea, 21, has helped by moving back home for a while to save some money so as to finish off her studies. But she is fiercely independent and we never see her even though she sleeps at home. My husband,Tony, owns his business and is working 15 to 18 hour days, so I have a lot of time on my hands. My day job is part time for the present, as RI has a 12% unemployment rate, and I lost my full time job at a local fabric store when they closed shop.

For the first time in many years, I actually have the time for my artwork. Our new house in Smithfield has provided me with the most wonderful of studio spaces; light, airy and spacious. From my years at the fabric store I have amassed quite a full collection of fabrics, just waiting to be used in quilt projects. For the most part I am ecstatic and full of creative energy that I am able to tap into daily. But there is this little annoying, pesky voice deep inside that is very resistant to change. That is the voice of the Mother, who feels a bit unneeded. It is a very strange time of life and most days I wonder how I got here so fast.

I also have an alternate voice who is looking ahead, whispering, "How much longer are you going to be able to see well enough to do your artwork?" or "What if your fingers succumb to nerve damage?" Will I ever get all the drawings worked into fabric? I really am not sure how many more years I will be doing this work. I am hoping that it is a long time, but one never really knows.

My Mother came to live with me in her late 70's because she could no longer see, due to macular degeneration. She was a watercolorist. I still remember her sitting at my kitchen table that first week, weeping for her lost lifestyle. She could no longer paint. She stayed with me for four years until her death at the age of 82. I think it was the hardest four years of her long life and she had lived through the Great Depression and my father dying at the age of 59.

Those of us who are solidly in middle age, have no real choice but to think about what may be coming our way. Such a strange time of life, a time to ponder with some wisdom, what has been and what may be. There is an urgency to my stitching that was never there before; an urgency fueled by intense desire.

Got to go sew...........

2009-08-31T21:54:00.000-07:00

As I struggle to take pictures of my work, here are a few more close-ups that have been successful. The first two photos are close-ups from 'Nancy's Garden', Rose;December 2000 & Sunflower;October 2000.

I decided to embellish Sunflower with some real sunflower petals. They were dried by myself, and sealed between adhesive clear plastic. While not as pleasing as I may have liked, they do bring a certain unique and fun quality to the piece.

Above is a close-up from a piece called 'Lions, Tigers and Bees' done in spring of 2006.

Within a day or two, I should be able to get pictures of the entire quilts. Should, being the operative word.

I have been embellishing 'Goldfinch' feverishly, as I really want to see it done. There is a lot of beading on this one. I don't always bead heavily, but for this one, I felt the desire. It will be posted by the end of this week, complete and named.

Closeups

2009-08-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

I'm working on getting a series of thumbnail pictures into a slide show for this blog to showcase the work I have completed over the years. Above is an airbrushed close-up of a whole cloth, 'Alfred's Garden', done at a workshop with Susan Shie in April 2001 and completed at home in May, 2001.

Above is a close-up from 'Nancy's Garden - May, 2001'. This is the piece which I recently finished and blogged about in an older post.

A
A close-up from 'Iris Dragon' - Finished November 2001'.

Above is another close-up from my second art quilt. 'Without' was done during the year 1997. The facial outlines are created by sandwiching cord between two layers of organza and hand couching them.

Above is another close-up from 'Nancy's Garden - November 2000'. I did several drawings during the years from 1997 through 2001 to fit within the theme of a garden series. Many have not been started as quilts, some were started but set aside. These drawings are quite special to me as they chronicle my family history, one of a love for gardening. As I am becoming more able to work, you will be seeing them emerge on these pages as well as the drawings I am doing currently.

More close-ups and shots of the whole pieces will be coming daily.

2009-08-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

One of my glorious sunflowers!

Here I am amongst the Providence streetside flowers which gave a name to my studio - Girasole, about 10 years ago.

Girasole

2009-08-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

For those who are reading this blog regularly, you may be startled to find a background today that was not here yesterday. Girasole is Italian for sunflower. When I first started my fabric quilting, I was living in my first house in Providence, where I lived for 25 years of my adult life. Being in the city, there was little room for gardens, so every space I could find was dug up and planted. The space between the sidewalk and the road on our busy city street was planted with sunflowers every year. Sunny, bright, happy and commanding flowers; they seemed to elevate our city existence. I got to be known as the sunflower lady.

My first studio was an investment into an old mill make-over downcity, named Monohassett Mills. I had a 1200 sq. ft. area on the first floor overlooking the Woonasquatucket Riverway and it was just the most glorious adventure I had ever had. In it's inception, I was faced with giving it a name. The sunflowers I was growing and drawing seemed to nod their heads in approval to the name of Girasole. Studio Girasole was born. I would like to take a minute to say that Monohassett was a gift from my dear Mom, who realized that a studio would be just the ticket for a middle aged, wanna-be artist. I will always be thankful for my mother's support and admire her for her vision and guts. It took over 4 years and many millions for the owners, a group of area artists, to finish the building. It was then, that I decided for financial reasons to sell my space back to them.

I continued sewing at home in the dining room, even though we moved across town to a smaller house. I remarried, and with my new husband bought a home in Smithfield with 2 acres of land to grow my sunflowers. I now have the most beautiful studio right at home. It's sunny with lots of big windows, skylights and sliders at both ends. I can see my sunflowers growing, and Studio Girasole is once again happily humming with activity.

I came upon this background while searching for something less boring than my plain white space. It spoke to me. So here it is to stay. I would like to apologize for my inability to figure out how to change the color of the text on my old posts. Until I can get my kids to help, I think I'm stuck with my previous color choices, which in some cases blend so well with the background that you can't read them. :( So sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks for reading my blog. Have a 'sunny' day!

2009-08-21T15:39:00.001-07:00

Been stitching leaves on 'Poppies and Iris' today. This is really anal work, have to take many breaks to give my eyes and hands a rest. Hats off to my Bernina for incredible even satin stitches even in it's old age. This quilt is going to take a long time to finish.

2009-08-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Taking some pictures today to serve as subjects for quilt drawings in the fall and winter. I like to keep a series of photo boxes full of my shots of my garden. Drawn by the intensity of the reds and pinks in the geraniums. Their leaves are so unusual and fun to draw.
I bought my pitchfork many moons ago from an artist who painted and refinished old garden tools to hang on walls. Well, I actually use mine, a bright yellow graces the handle and the shaft. Like the way the grasses fall over the flowers, cutting up the view. Shards of fabric punctuating the roundness of petals and flowers, brings to mind the cell of an idea for a future quilt.
Wow, the center flower just glows almost neon. The power of the sun. I have masses of sunny 'Susans', one of only few plants that will grow profusely under a river birch tree. Mother nature has done a wonderful job of watering her plants often this year. The Black-Eyed Susans are simply covered with bloom. I like how spidery they look when drawn.

This fellow doesn't know that he has found my 'butterfly garden', he just loves the Joe Pye Weed. This garden was amended by me when we first moved here. To the Joe Pye Weed, persicaria, hydrangea, I added bee balm, coneflower, butterfly bush and verbena, to name a few. There are over 25 different plants in this 5x15 foot border garden. Tony and I cleared an area next to the butterfly garden this summer. We are putting up a short retaining wall to hold back the bittersweet and poison ivy vines that creep over the woods towards the edge of our yard. We have several oak leaf hydrangeas to transplant into the back and we will have the fun of filling up this garden in the spring. I'll be choosing more plants that the birds and butterflies love, and that I love to draw.

I think I'll go draw some flowers!

Embellishing 'Goldfinch'

2009-08-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

It's time to decide on how to finish this one off. I've pulled out a couple of narrow ribbons which might add to the look. There are also some bird sequins and droplet 'seed' beads.

Like how the beads look scattered in the center of the sunflower.

I'm unsure about the ribbons. I like what the aqua one is doing to the colors. It's pulling the aqua from the leaves out to the border. I just don't know where to scatter the shiny birds.

I'll think on it tonight and start in earnest tomorrow.

2009-08-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

OK I'm not the fastest at computer lingo etc. I can sew, but putting this blog together is torture to me. However, I figured out how to add some inspirational music to the blog. My favorite inspirational music has always come from one place, Pat Metheny. To me he's the best jazz guitarist and composer that there is. A few years back I had the ultimate pleasure of meeting him on a break at the Newport Jazz Festival, thus the picture of me, all smiles. All kidding aside, have a listen, and you will get to see another side of where my artwork comes from.

2009-08-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

Just spending a little time thinking this evening before calling it a night. These are photos of one of my gardens from a few weeks ago. I dug this garden out completely this spring as it was full of the previous owners plant choices. While I have left some her larger plantings such as a couple of barberries and a large dogwood, I was uninspired by her use of mostly grasses to fill this spot. My favorite choice was to put in the bee balm, the red bloom in the front of the top photo. It's the hummingbird's favorite and therefore mine too.
The deck is right off of my studio, so in the hot days I find myself on the chairs in the shade of the deck taking in the beauty of growing things. Some days all I can manage in the heat is to sketch out here. Things are changing out here though, which I am seeing daily but don't really notice until I look at pictures. The nasturtiums are drying out with age and heat, the bee balm has past it's prime but another variety is blooming raspberry at it's base. My poor tomato plant has succumbed to blight. Time to take it out to the trash and scrub out the pot. Some of the plants I put in as fledgelings are actually blooming. Two coneflowers, a coconut lime and a double pink are in bloom. I can't help but think, though, that summer's prime is about over. The black-eyed-susans are in bloom too and the little field mice are coming inside. Sure signs that before long I will be cleaning the beds for winter.

While I welcome the cooler weather and the productivity I feel when it's more comfortable, I'm a little saddened every year to see summer go. The leaves turning are beautiful, fall skies are the most beautiful color of blue. Autumn is lovely. But.........I just love summer. I think I need to savor these last few weeks by filling my time with every summer activity that I love. I raise a glass of lemonade to toast the summer of 2009. Cheers!

Machine Sewing

2009-08-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Since 'Goldfinch' needs only hand stitching to finish it, it's time to find something else to sew by machine. Not wanting to start one of the new drawings yet, I found an older quilt, started this winter, to finish up on the machine stitching. The way I piece and sew quilts is somewhat unique to my needs. I would be lost without 'Wonder Under' fusible web. Each color piece I use is backed with fusible web. I lay all the pieces out on my large work table on their background using straight pins to keep them in place. If I need to change something, it's done at this point. I take a look and decide if some fabrics need to be sewn under others. These are the first to get sewn down.
Ironing can be tricky because not every piece gets ironed at the same time. Above is an area of leaves that was ironed down first and will be one of the first to be stitched. I have to use lots of safety pins to keep my background from slipping and bunching. Stitching at this point entails using a tight satin stitch to edge the piece entirely. This way I don't have to deal with rolling the edges to avoid a rough edge.
Often I will have only small areas ironed as I start to stitch. The rest of them remained pinned with straight pins. It is such a welcome part of the process when I have progressed far enough to remove all the straight pins and iron all that's left. I am always getting stabbed as I sew.
I often leave flaps of fabric unironed so that I can pull them back, as above, to sew the piece underneath. With large quilts such as this one, the more you can iron first the better. I will inevitably look up from sewing to see one of my cats running away with a fallen piece that has not yet been ironed down.

My next move on this piece is to continue sewing down the fabric pieces, moving the safety pins as needed and ironing as needed until the top is entirely sewed down. I don't really name the pieces until they're done. Just as my last one was called 'Goldfinch' for obvious reasons, this one will be called 'Poppies & Iris' for the purpose of identification for now. Both 'Goldfinch' and 'Poppies & Iris' will get new, and hopefully fun names when they are done.

I'll be posting my progress on this piece as I go. So for now, I'm off to a date with my Bernina!

Children & Quilts

2009-08-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

As I was investigating the other day, I came upon another blog asking it's readers to talk about what it was that inspired them to become artists. I immediately thought of my Mother, who really instilled in me a love for beauty and art. But when I thought more, I realized that there was another factor.

For six years I volunteered at my children's elementary school, teaching kids how to do what I do. The art teacher, Robin, had a few free periods that she was willing to give up and work with me in creating community quilts. We created six cooperative quilts and several individual ones as well.
The children started by taking a theme and writing about it. They took their discoveries and drew pictures. Often they had to work with one or more other children on a single drawing. Once the drawings were finished by the children, I would alter them slightly to allow for areas of color, and I drew over them with a bold marker. Using tissue paper they would trace the area they were doing, choose a fabric, adhere it to 'Wonder Under' fusible web, pin their tissue pattern and cut. The finished shape would be ironed on to the sandwich of background fabric, batting and backing fabric. It would then be sewn with a satin stitch to cover the rough edges.
Each child got to experience every facet of the process. We had two donated sewing machines and Robin and I often had a student teacher helper as well. The children learned about distance and foreshortening, contrast, use of color in perspective, as well as how to choose fabric colors and designs, how to sew with a machine, how to iron and bead and cut fabric. The hardest for them was learning to hand sew. But throughout the process I seemed to learn more from them than they did from me. I learned to be excited about the prospect of creating something. I learned to pare it back and see things simply. I learned to take chances. And I learned that I love to teach kids what I do.
Amongst our quilts were as seen above, "The United States of America", in which each child had to discover three things about a state and illustrate them, "The Rhode Island Quilt", in which they were discovering things about their own state and "The Martin Luther King Jr, I Have A Dream" quilt. This quilt was created by making several small quilts and hand sewing them together. My second photo is a shot of one of those panels. It was a drawing by two students who interpreted Dr. King's message as a world where there would be no need for jails and consumerism would reflect an ecological mindset. Below you can see the shape of Rhode Island is the border of the quilt. We made two RI quilts, the one below to keep in the school library and a smaller one which some of the children took to a school in the rain forest on their summer vacation.
All in all, my experience doing this truly expanded my love of quilting. I took so much from it and I miss it. Robin, my teacher collaborator, retired and due to budget cutting the school department decided to cut the art program in half. There were no longer any free periods for us to sew. What an awful shame it is that art is not valued along with other disciplines. Artists are our visionaries, and our dreamers. There is not one thing that we touch that has not been designed at some point by an artist, from our clothes to our homes and everything in between. The excitement and joy that it brings should not be taken lightly. It's necessary to the development of every well balanced child and adult. I keep a few pictures of my time here always in my studio to remind me to always find the child inside and then have lots of fun!

An Afternoon Stitching

2009-08-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

I spent my afternoon with my Bernina. I'm still not very comfortable with freehand stitching. I'm not afraid of it, it's more a feeling that I suck at it. I know that time and practice will help to make perfect, but in the meantime, I feel like I'm ruining the progress I am making in fabric selection and piecing.

This piece is rather small. The whole thing with borders will be somewhere in the range of
18" x 24". The loop-the-loops on the green, silk background are rather small. My issue is how to keep the speed up, therefore creating even stitches and not run into the problem of running out of space as you are creating your loops. I'm sure I'll finally get the hang of it but I welcome any feedback. It's always a learning process.

2009-08-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

"Nancy's Garden" a piece originally meant as a gift of love for a dear friend, & 'sister', Hannah.
25 1/4" x 30 1/2", begun September 2000, completed July 2009

Looking Back

2009-08-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

It's a new day.

I like to spend a little time on Friday on Twitter discovering new things. If you are reading this, you are probably a Tweet too. I like to follow other people's discoveries. Mostly I like to find other artists. I love looking at their galleries and reading their blogs. I live out in the country with 8 cats and a dog, two kids and a husband. But my universe is pretty small. My inspiration usually comes out of my gardens and the wildlife I see each day. One thing I know as an artist is that you cannot create art in a vacuum. You need to observe, take in life. I may not be jetting all over the globe or conversing in smoky cafes in the metropolises of the world, but I have my computer and with it I can soar to places I know I'll never see and chat with people I'd otherwise never get to meet.

Technology really has expanded the universe in so many ways. With over 5 decades behind me it is an interesting perusal back over time. What I learned about art 3 decades ago has morphed into something a bit different. Change is always essential and even expected, but as it happens it's always a wonder. Which leads me to a piece which I started nine years ago and just finished. I have this habit of setting off to create a piece, starting in headfirst and then realizing that something has changed or perhaps needs to change in order to complete it. I really think this is an essential element of art. It is an observation of the element of change. Not an easy one to grasp.

"Nancy's Garden" was originally meant as a sort of an art connection between myself and a dear friend. Each square in nine were created within a month's time as a monthly art letter to the friend. At the end of the 9 months we were expecting to see each other and I would assemble the piece for her to keep as a whole. In the meantime she was creating her own art for me. Within two months time the whole plan fell apart. She was not as enthusiastic about the venture nor was she coming home in the time planned. She sent me back my first two installments. So I lost my inspiration to continue. Our friendship really tanked about three years after that and I have no contact with her at all anymore. After the pain of the lost friendship subsided a bit I picked up an interest in continuing the piece.

This is when I started to realize my own limitations in my abilities to create what was in my head. I worked off and on for a few years as I was working other less important pieces. I learned how to bead much better and it brought me to this month when I took out all nine completed pieces and beaded them together. What is usual for me is to let it sit for a while as I decide if I am finished with it. But for the most part it is a complete piece which can be viewed as a whole.

There is so much of life stuffed into it that when I look at it I marvel at how we deal with the changes in life. I have moved twice since I started it; moved the essential flowers that I love and drew originally, twice. Taken a studio in an old refurbished mill and sold it. Moved my studio into storage for 3 years until I moved into the home I now have with a large sunny studio space. My children have grown into young adults, my hair is white, I was divorced and am now remarried. I have never seen or heard from my friend, Hannah, again. All of these huge life changes are sewn into the quilt, like tiny stitches.

And so I resolve to look back more often as well as I look forward because the lessons of living art are not always linear. You will be seeing all of this as I progress.

2009-08-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. This is a learning process for me as I am much better with a needle and thread than I am with a computer. Have patience with me.

Where to begin.

I've been working lately on a series of nature inspired drawings from my garden. I draw without shadings, using only outlines to create areas which will become "colored in" with fabric. I often use transparencies to move subjects around on a field. There are three new drawings in my sketchbook that have been worked over the last two weeks. It is my latest intent to create as many drawings as I feel I can do while my gardens are bursting with blooms and full of creatures. I will be very happy to pull them out to start the piecing process in the dead of winter.

I also work my drawings from my own photographs. I am forever taking photos of the blooms and trying to zoom in to get a butterfly or hummingbird. Lately I discovered a cache of drawings that were my Mother's. She was a watercolorist, self-taught, and her subject matter was, like mine, nature; most always, flowers. She would draw her subjects on tissue paper and then trace them with carbon paper onto her block. The paint was applied, and after she finished she would erase some of her drawn lines.

These drawings of my Mom's were a reminder of where I come from and a sweet connection to the woman from whom my love of all things artistic come. The similarities in the way we draw are many. I never really realized it before. Since this discovery, I have been very conscious of this connection to her drawing as I am sketching out my compositions. It might be fair to say that all of a sudden I have new inspiration. I wish she was still here for me to discuss this with her. I think she'd get a kick out of it. One thing I know is that she was my biggest fan and supporter. What would we all do without the love of our Mothers? Without her teaching me to sew, I'd probably have one very boring life.