Goodbye 2014

I know that we are halfway through January, but it's been a busy end of year. I'm just getting around to reflecting. As I try to wrap up work on two decent sized quilts this month, I am thinking about how I pushed through the month of December half in a daze. From mid November through the end of the year, we have 4 birthdays, one of which is Riley's. The three holidays are enough in and of themselves! I'm tired.

On a personal level, I started 2014 with surgery and recovery. It was a tough start. Tony lost his Mom in the spring and my dear cousin, Jeff passed this fall. Tony's business took the hit of three of his clients shutting down for good. We buried our cat, Maddie out under the trees this year too. Our son Peter moved permanently to Florida, the first child to move far away. Quite a few of our plans went awry this past year and there were plenty of sad, difficult and teary moments. I must say, I am not sorry to see the year gone! 

However many challenges we faced, there were some bright spots for me, a lot of them tied to my studio. I became a SAQA Co Rep in early summer, working with Sue Bleiweiss to set in place two upcoming exhibitions in our region. Even with time constraints, I completed 5 pieces in 2014. Mariposa showed with the Butterflies and Their Kin exhibit in Texas in the spring and continued on to other venues. Nancy's Garden showed at the Whistler Museum this summer. I got a new addition to my studio, an HQ16, which has made the world of difference in my quilting.

There are still three, black furry, mischievous little elves (kittens) in my studio space. Blue, Bing and Teensy are now 9 months old and still wrecking my workspace daily. Left by their feral mommy, they are now part of the family. I got my first rejection letter this year with Queen Bee but she is so awesome I don't half mind. I am working with a mentor this coming year in the hopes that I will learn some business skills. The program was set 

up by the SAQA MA/RI region. In the latter part of the year I focused on setting goals and doing some much needed paperwork.

The last few projects of the year began with a blast from my past. I did much of my learning how to sew and construct as a teen making dolls. I thought it was time to get back into it, so I made Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden for my granddaughter Riley's Christmas present.

She came out pretty cute if I do say so myself!

After Christmas I returned to a UFO that I wanted to complete. I had done most of the hard part with the markers already. All it needed was some stitch work and a border. Below is the completed Monumental.

MONUMENTAL

20" x 27"

December, 2014

Commercial fabrics & batiks, silk background; fused & machine stitched; overdrawn with fabric markers

$750.00

I got some great Christmas gifts this year. One of which was markers and a sketchbook. It's tiny so I can complete my sketches quickly and move on to my stitching. I hope to use this sketchbook as a precursor to a body of work called, "In the Garden".

So goodbye to 2014. Hold on to your hat 'cause here comes 2015 with a huge bang!

The dragon and the wolf are calling my name. They are both neck and neck, as I work in a frenzy to get them done and photographed by January 31. Wish me luck! (Progress and pictures will be coming soon)

Studio Days

Busy days in the studio. The new wolf has been stitched in part to the background. He has extra loft behind him and it is making him seem more real. You can see some shadows above his eyes. He'll be done soon so I moved onto the next step.

Here, Peter is being fleshed out onto a piece of muslin. All the pieces are fused to the muslin. The excess gets cut away and he settles into the tree. The rope eases down from his hand to catch the wolf's tail. The little bird is flying about the wolf's nose. The leaves on the tree are the last to go on. You'll be seeing more of the process and the completed pictures soon.

Monument was started in 2013 to go with the three other Santa Fe pieces I did at that time. This piece did not fit well into the "Three Cohesive Pieces" theme of the exhibition I was preparing for so I set it aside. However, I really love this piece. I have done a bit more drawing on it with my fabric markers to delineate the stones in the intersecting walls. My new Sweet 16 will help me make short work of the stitching.

More updated pictures coming.

Summer Heat

Summer has hit us in the Northeast with a vengeance. As I type it is dark out, about 8:30 pm and the thermometer reads 83 degrees still. I am sitting in a pile of sweat. During the day when it is sunny, my studio, which is not air conditioned, is about 90. This is a heat wave and I'm not liking it! I can't seem to get motivated to sit in a hot window and stitch. But my creativity has had it's moments. 

In my last post you saw my three pieces which I entered into a local SAQA show in Lowell, MA called "Three Cohesive Pieces." They were accepted and will hang there from August 8 - 10. Woo Hoo! This summer, four out of four pieces that I entered will be showing. It is a great start and gives me a solid base for a beginning resume and also gives me encouragement to keep going.   

So keep going I must. I mentioned a fourth piece that I had started for the show in Lowell but decided that it would not work with the other two. It is called "Monumental" and I'd like to show my work on it so far. If you have ever needed a light box but not had one, I discovered a window can work just as well. This is my beginning of my drawing the bricks in this piece with my fabric markers.

In this shot you can see more of the drawing showing through the fabric and what I have already drawn.

Later in the day when the sun is not quite so strong, you can see more of what is drawn on top than what is on the paper below.

In this shot, I have completed the drawing and added in the fabric for the shadows. I love this fabric, which is one I found in Newton at a small shop where we had our last regional SAQA meeting. It is a dark brown/black with miniscule dots all over it in bright colors. It is a great fabric for bringing color into dark areas in a subtle way.

I got all my drawing done on the right side of the building and all the shadows fused. Next I moved on to try out other fabrics for the left side, which is shaded. I had trouble seeing value. A friend suggested using black and white to see it, so I copied swatches of my fabric choices in groups of threes on the B&W setting of my copier, so I could see the value better. In doing so I was able to make the right choice of fabric.

Super Mario is still helping me in the studio. Here she has chosen my winning option by sitting down next to it. I joke. In reality sometimes I can't believe that I just don't have quite the right fabric with the right value, color and print for what I need. I have so much fabric! I guess it is never enough. Anyone else have that problem?

This is as far as I got before the heatwave set in. The fabric to the left of the shadow still needs to be drawn. To the far left is my choice for the border which will be similar to the three completed pieces in my Santa Fe group. From this point on, pretty much all I have left to do is stitch, in which I will follow the lines of the brick. I may continue to do a piece or two to follow this body of work later in the year, but once "Monumental" is done I will begin going in a different direction.

And you might be asking, "in which direction will she head?" I have begun rounding up fabrics for "Queen Bee." With the crisis going on presently of a million bees dropping dead from chemicals on GMO seeded farms, I feel a need to get into my piece devoted to the love of bees. I have enlarged the queen to about 48" square. You can see the edge of my work table which is 60" wide. She fills the table.

I have done some redrawing and fine tuning to get her the way I want her and I am about ready to start. Her skin will be a peachy golden blend of a hand dye. Her dress will have another hand dye mixing yellow, aqua and orange. The background will be punctuated with black batiks which sport bright colors popping through. The lilies will be blending yellow-orange, orange and pink with turquoise leaves. And there will be scads more bees than the ones I have drawn. I have a cache of small gold-tone bee buttons that I have been saving for ages and they will land on this quilt. One good thing is that I can see her in my mind. I can't wait to get started. I can't wait to see her done! Mother Nature please give me cooler weather or let me win the lotto so I can install air conditioning in the studio.

Tomorrow I will post about what I do to feed the creative when it is so hot that I can't be in the studio. I can hint that it involves the company 'Spoonflower' which offers the service of printing fabrics, papers and decals. We'll chat tomorrow!