To Learn is To Live

To Learn is To Live

My mother has always been a self proclaimed “student,” whether that’s a student of life or of a specific topic, she has always been curious and an avid learner, and as a result, she is a really interesting person to talk to.  I, too, am a constant “student.”  What this means is that I am often a beginner, which means I’m learning, practicing, making mistakes, perfecting, learning more.  When I was younger I wanted to be an expert at something, anything, but as the years wore on I have learned to love the “beginner’s mind,” which can be applied to just about anything. (There are some things I do know quite a bit about and as a result I have strong opinions about those topics, but I’m talking about learning and how it applies to the creative process.)  Having a beginner’s mind means being curious, open and filled with wonder.   This post is about creating, and in order to create I need to be open to new things.

Last January I took a class, an actual class, not a virtual one, at the soon to be closed City Quilter.  It was a BOM (Block of the month) class, and though there were not 12 blocks, but instead six, I figured it would be a good way to learn the process of taking a quilt from start to finish, and it was!   I learned a different appliqué technique, I had the support of other classmates, I enjoyed going in once a month to see what everyone else was doing.   It was wonderful.  It was my first BIG project and I’ve written about it at length in previous posts ‘here’.   Each block was hand appliquéd (I’m adding the link to the Craftsy class I took, that helped me enormously, with the hand appliqué technique) and I applied all the stitches I learned from Sue Spargo’s Craftsy  class.  I’ve talked about the joy of Craftsy in other posts ‘here‘ so I won’t go into all that again.

Once the quilt top was put together, I had to learn how to quilt the whole thing, which took me to this class and this one and this one. I am now in the final stretch and I continue to learn, make mistakes and try again and then learn some more.  Each time I don’t know how to do something I google it and look for websites that focus on what I want to do.  For Free motion quilting, Lori Kennedy’s The Inbox Jaunt blog is absolutely fantastic with free tutorials on specific motifs.  For stitch inspiration there’s of course Sue Spargo’s fantastic website, store and blog, but there are also some great blogs out there that concentrate on stitching, such as Sharon Boggon’s Pintangle where she features a TAST (take a stitch Tuesday) and Mary Corbet’s NeedlenThread, which is more traditional embroidery and oh my goodness is her work beautiful, then there’s Eleanor Pigman’s blog, she’s a bead artist and her work is absolutely incredible!  A couple other, not-to-be-missed-blogs are:  Kelly Cline Quilting, a blog filled with amazing work, both stitching AND quilting and Trish Burr, the queen of embroidered birds and flowers, though all her work is absolutely incredible and beautiful.

There is a whole world of knowledge, expertise, creativity and art out there and I love finding, learning, applying that knowledge and then creating my own designs.  Interestingly I’m drawn to similar motifs over and over again, no matter what the medium is.  Below is my 18 kt Gold, Tourmaline and Paraiba Bracelet from my Lotus Collection.  It’s no surprise one of my favorite free motion quilting motifs is Pebbles!

B26YG Lotus Collection

Ariane Zurcher Jewelry – B26 Lotus Collection – 18 Kt Brushed Yellow Gold, 25.08 ct Pink Topaz, 2.69 ct Pink Sapphire, 12 ct Tourmaline, 2.96 ct Aquamarine, 17.21 ct Mandarin Garnet, 4.03 ct African Paraiba

pebbles

Free motion quilting Pebbles on my Queen-Sized Quilt Top

Here’s to autumn and here’s to the joy of creating and learning new things!

To Learn is To Live

Adventures in Free Motion Quilting

“What’s all the stitching in the background?” I typed to the artist, quilter and stitcher, Sue Spargo while taking her terrific class, Embroidering Texture and Dimension By Hand, on Craftsy.  I didn’t know the world I was about to be transported to with that simple question.  More ‘here‘ on Sue’s class.

A quick back track, seriously, it will be quick.  This is a quilt I made when I was 15 years old for my home economics class in high school, which also included sex education and fire prevention, presumably all things that happen in the home, though not necessarily at the same time…

1stQuilt

My First Quilt Ever When I Was Fifteen

In a previous post I wrote that I knew nothing about quilts and quilting and now this photo will show me as an unreliable narrator, but in my defense, when I found Sue Spargo’s class and saw her beautiful art, this project, made more than forty years ago, did NOT leap to mind.  As you can see I got a little tired of all those circle blocks and decided to alternate with a plain white block and then in the middle just added huge rectangular pieces of dark blue (a polyester satin-like fabric, if I’m not mistaken, it was the 70’s after all) and some cotton paisley fabric top and bottom, because it was all becoming so endless and tedious.  By the time I was finished with the various blocks I tied each corner with a little knot and called it a day. I think I used a polyester filling, not sure I knew the word “batting.”  I do not remember particularly loving the process and I think this project may have been the reason I didn’t think much more about quilting for the next forty years!

Okay, so that was brief-ish, right?

I blogged about my first large quilting project ‘here‘ so I won’t go into all of that again, but now I’m at the quilting stage of the quilt.  Quilting the quilt is a whole other beast indeed.  There are some who like hand quilting and then there are those who like machine quilting and then there are those like me, who think both are amazing and want to do it ALL.  Which led me to Free Motion Quilting.  This is where you put the feed dogs down on your machine and guide the fabric to obtain beautiful fluid looking stitches that add a whole other layer to your quilt.  But since I knew very little about FMQ I decided I needed to take another class.  Christina Cameli teaches one on Craftsy called Free Motion Quilting Essentials that I love, as it’s perfect for the beginner (me) and plus, she’s lovely.

I had a quilt sandwich that I’d prepped for another class and began practicing.  After a few days I decided to leap in and began quilting the first block I made (and then didn’t like the background fabric and so remade for my queen-sized Flower Pots quilt designed by Kim McLean).  I designed a border to match Kim’s queen-sized border and now have a top perfect for a 30″ square pillow, which will go nicely with the queen-sized quilt.

Free motion quilting

Free Motion Quilting

I started with the center and did swirls and whirls, but ran into problems with my stitch regulator, which broke (it’s still not fixed) but I barreled ahead without it, rationalizing that people make beautiful quilts without stitch regulators all the time.  This idea, people-have-been-doing-it-this-way-for-centuries, was also how I rationalized giving birth to both my children without drugs, cutting my own hair, as well as my children’s when they were small (my son may still have some trauma from that.)  Then I did the sashing and each 2-inch square was a chance to practice something different, with a different colored thread and finally I began stitching the outer border in a pebble motif, which I love, love, love!

Now here’s the thing…  I know people who never pull out stitches, but I’m not one of them.  I can.  I’ve done it.  It makes me very, very uncomfortable.  Kind of like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.  So after I finished the outer border, which I really like, I decided the center swirls and whirls had to go.  And besides, the stitches were uneven, its all about practice and the process, which I’m thoroughly enjoying…  So yeah, I pulled the whole thing out.  Yup.  Five hours.  That’s how long it took.  This is what television is for, I’ve decided.  My husband watches a couple of movies and I sit beside him allowing my obsessiveness to flow.

Pulling out swirls

Free of Swirls

Now back to quilting.  Oh, but what fun, and it’s only just beginning!

 

To Learn is To Live

Quilts!

Remember those “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” books?

This is my version of that…

If you show a girl a quilt, she’s going to wonder how it’s made.  When she wonders how it’s made, she’s going to take a Block of the Month class to see how  it’s done.  Once she’s signed up for the class, she’s going to begin making a quilt herself.

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Center Block from the Flower Pots Quilt Designed By Kim McLean

When she starts to make a quilt herself, she’s going to think about how she can make it uniquely hers.

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Detail of one of the Center Blocks

When she begins to make it uniquely hers, she’s going to incorporate all the stitches she learned in the Craftsy class given by Sue Spargo that she wrote about a few weeks ago on the post, Change.

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Detail from Flower Pots side panel

Once she begins adding all those stitches she learned…

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Almost finished Flower Pots Quilt!

she’s going to want to start designing her own blocks…

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Rhino Block designed and stitched by Ariane Zurcher

…which will lead her to a two-week Artist’s workshop retreat.

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The artist’s retreat will be life transforming and will give her all kinds of ideas for new pieces that she wants to design and create…

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Manhole Cover at Onondaga Community College

While she marvels at all the things she’s seeing and learning she will be reminded of other things she’s already working on…

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Detail from Flower Pot Quilt Border

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One of those things will be manhole covers!  Who doesn’t love manhole covers and if you love manhole covers, wouldn’t a quilt inspired by them be even more fabulous?!

So it’s probably best to give a girl her first quilt while she’s still very young so she has plenty of time to learn and do all of this!

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Merlin overseeing the work.

Coming next week: pots!   Not flower pots as in the quilt, but real pots, thrown pots, hand painted pots… gotta love pots!

To Learn is To Live

Change

You’ll notice it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything here, but not for the reasons you think. It became necessary to give up my studio when we made the decision to pull my youngest child from school and began homeschooling. That was over two years ago. We felt we didn’t have a choice. There is nothing, absolutely nothing I can create that is more important than my daughter’s education. We are all happier as a result.

Which leads me to this blog. Just over a year ago, last May of 2015, to be exact, I signed up for a Craftsy class. Do you know about Craftsy?

WHAT?

YOU DON’T???

Craftsy is fantastic. There, I even added the link for you to go check them out.  No, I am not being paid, nor do I, in any way, get anything for writing about them. This is my opinion and experience.  Okay, so I took a class on Craftsy called: Embroidering Texture and Dimension by Hand by Sue Spargo and it changed my life.  I loved the way Sue used stitches on layers of wool and fabric.  I loved how she created something so different from what I was used to seeing.  She didn’t “embroider,” not in the way I was used to seeing embroidery done, but instead created a whole new three-dimensional textile.  I was utterly enthralled.

I knew nothing about quilting. When I signed up for her class I did not know that her work was considered quilting.  In fact when I took the class I wrote her and asked what all the stitching was in the background, was it done by machine or hand and when and how did she do that and, by the way, why and how was it all so puffy looking?  Someone helpfully suggested I take a beginning quilt class and my first thought was – “huh, I didn’t know a quilt could do that!”

But back to Sue Spargo’s class.  It began with a download of one of her lovely designs, a butterfly sampler, but as I have a strong independent streak,  I decided to design my own piece and use what I learned in her class on my design.

A few weeks before I found Craftsy and Sue Spargo’s class, my husband came home with a photo of a West African Long Tailed Hornbill that was perched on a railing at the Central Park Zoo.  He, the bird, not my husband, though my husband is also fabulous, was so captivating I decided to use his image in my piece.  Here’s the photo my husband took.

Look at him!

A West African Long Tailed Hornbill.   Look at him!

C’mon, admit it, he’s adorable.   So here’s what I started to do and you’ll notice I got way too involved with everything BUT the bird, which was the focus…  and again, this is something I also tend to do – do everything but the thing I’m trying to focus on.  Look, squirrel!

The Beginning

The Beginning

He began to take shape…
#2

I gave him some much-needed feathers on his head, because he was getting cold, I could tell.

A little hair/feathers/plumes, whatever are good, but he definitely needed more...

A little hair/feathers/plumes, whatever are good, but he definitely needed more…

More, more, more and while we’re at it, let’s toss in some black beads.  I am a jewelry designer after all.

There, that's much better

There, that’s better

And some more #5circles, because honestly who doesn’t like circles?

Circles can go anywhere I always think and I wanted to try my hand at all the different circular stitches from Sue Spargo’s class.

And if one or two circles are good, well many, many circles can only be better, right?

Okay, so maybe I got carried away….
#6

And here it is, the final piece.  As an ode to my beautiful daughter I call this piece Thunder Bubbles.
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I used every single stitch Sue Spargo taught on this.  It really should be called, “Thunder Bubbles Sampler.”  Because I knew nothing about quilting I didn’t know that you should leave an edge so that you can bind, face or otherwise somehow finish it off.  I also took a hand quilting class at the local quilting shop and did my best to hand quilt more circular shapes.  I didn’t know to iron in between, so the back isn’t as flat as I would have liked and the weight from all those drizzle stitches on his head pulled the batting and backing fabric into a kind of crater.  Anyway here’s the back of my very first hand quilted piece!
The back

Next week I’ll write about where all of this has taken me and what I’m doing now.