Dyeing fabrics is an obsession. I began with cottons as directed in the Elizabeth Barton class, Dyeing to Design, that I took over at Academy of Quilting. I had little interest in dyeing or so I thought, and only took the class because Elizabeth was teaching it and I wanted to take a class with her and it was the first class closest to the date when I started researching her classes. I had no idea I’d fall so completely in love with dyeing. But I did. After her class ended, I took her other dyeing Class – Basic Dyeing for Quiltmakers where we learned to over dye and dye just about any color we wanted. It was thrilling to see a color, figure out what primary colors went into it and then create it! But as is my way, I wasn’t content to dye just cottons.
I decided I had to learn how to dye wool, which is a different process entirely, so I could finish my block of the month designs (more on that in another post). So I went over to Dharma Trading, a great company that sells dyes and everything related to dyeing. I sourced wool fabric, also not as easy as one might think, and then purchased a small amount of wools, silks, raw silks and silk/wools from a couple of different places. I even found some lovely silk velvet at Dharma, perfect to use on my wool appliqué pieces that I began designing a few months ago. And I began dyeing.
Aren’t they beautiful?
Here are all the cotton fabrics I dyed in Elizabeth’s class, including some of my silk screens and shibori dyed cottons…
Now I’m back to designing so I can use all of these lovely fabrics. This is the beginning of Mr. Pig. He still needs to be embellished and is one of twelve blocks for my Block Of the Month project featuring cookie jars that I’m in the midst of creating patterns and, hopefully, kits for, that will come with many of my hand-dyed fabrics as well as everything you’ll need to make each block.
Notice the cotton fabric to the far left? That is one of my shibori dyed cottons and the green wools and pink wool and velvet are all my hand-dyed fabrics too!
Last fall I decided to design my own bed-sized quilt. I wanted a quilt that would remind me of spring and summer, that was colorful and had big organic shapes that inspired cheerfulness. This was before the election and though there were many things being said that were ominous – calls for great walls to be built, mass deportations being touted as campaign “promises”, comments about bringing back the “good old days”, leading many of us to wonder to whom those “good old days” applied, (obviously not women, minorities, and anyone who didn’t conform to traditional gender roles and relationships) all this from a man dogged by bankruptcy, lawsuits, accusations of fraud and sexual misconduct, a man who bragged about assaulting women, not paying his taxes, and encouraged his supporters to physically assault those who voiced opposition to him – still, it seemed there was room for optimism, and, if nothing else, the elections hadn’t taken place yet. Those months and weeks before the election now feel like the “good old days”.
So in the midst of all that, I decided to design my own quilt and was inspired by the shapes in a fabric covering a chair and couch my husband used to have in his office at his advertising agency, that now occupies the western portion of our bedroom.
Couch in our bedroom
I wrote about this quilt, that I began designing and intended to make, just after I’d chosen all the fabrics for it. I discussed the process of taking a sketch and translating it into an actual quilt. That post is ‘here‘.
Matisse reminds me of the playfulness that can be a part of life if we allow it in and the shapes he created make me smile. The colors he frequently used tended toward bright, primary colors, and I decided to stay close to those as well. It took ages to figure out where everything would go, what fabrics to use, how to fit everything in to the size quilt I knew I wanted. The quilt kept getting bigger, and even though it is intended for a twin bed, I wanted it to be long enough that I could tuck it under and over pillows. I really wanted it to be the size of a bedspread.
And then the elections took place and I threw myself furiously into escaping what was now to become our collective reality learning how to dye my own fabrics. I took several classes at the Academy of Quilting taught by the extremely, talented, artist Elizabeth Barton. Between learning to dye, which I love, love, LOVE, playing with colors, and sporadically working on my “Ode to Matisse” quilt I managed to avoid getting too depressed by the events and endless drama that has now become commonplace with this new administration. Still, I knew I’d have to make a concerted effort to concentrate on my Matisse quilt if I was ever going to finish it. So about a month ago I began working on it daily. The free motion quilting, which I’m very new to, was challenging and I ran into lots of tension issues, but then went back to one of the dozens of Craftsy classes I have enrolled in and was reminded not to be afraid to turn the tension down as far as needed in order to get the threads to behave with each other, no matter how imbalanced that relationship might seem. Read whatever you like into THAT statement, but it did seem ironic given who now occupies our White House.
There are many wonderful free motion quilting classes on Craftsy, but the two I particularly love are Free Motion Quilting Essentials taught by Christina Carneli, her blog is A Few Scraps and Divide and Conquer: Creative Quilting for any Space taught by Lori Kennedy, who also has a blog, Inbox Jaunt. They are both wonderful. Christina also teaches several other free motion quilting classes for those who are more experienced. But for me, starting out with her class was perfect and just what I needed to attempt this:
and this: and this… And this…
From Lori’s class I began with doodles of things I saw others doing and then took it to the quilt. Patterns like this…and this…and this…With each block, I tried a different free motion quilting pattern that I thought complimented the shape in the block. I know many feel the shapes themselves should also be quilted and I may have to go back and quilt the larger shapes, but I wanted them to pop, so decided to leave them alone. Once all the blocks were quilted I agonized over the binding. Eventually I opted for the darkest background beige fabric I had used. I cut it on the bias, pieced it together and then following the instructions in Mimi Dietrich’s book, Happy Endings I bound the whole quilt with mitered corners. I added a label and voila!
And here’s a shot of the label
There’s nothing quite as satisfying as finishing such a mammoth project, except of course writing about it while it is draped over your lap!
I forgot to include the contents of this quilt on the label. They are: 100% cotton fabric, Wool Batting, Cotton thread.
Next up – my Block of the Month quilt that I’m currently designing and working on, inspired by the fabulous Sue Spargo, who is to blame for my current obsession with all things fabric, quilted, embroidered, embellished, etc.
I’ve been alive for over half a century and have witnessed a great deal of beauty as well as tragedy, both personally and in the world. However the current political climate is unlike anything I have ever experienced. The take away from the past three months is that we Americans are as divided, if not more so, as we’ve ever been. Our planet and its people are in jeopardy and we Americans are in crisis. Even those who backed the current administration seem unable to accept that their man has won and leave it at that. There is a combative rage that masks the fear and despair of so many.
What I find most helpful in coping with my concern regarding the world and our place in it, is to take action, speak out, write letters and postcards, make phone calls, join protests, get involved and take at least a couple of daily, anonymous, kind, actions toward another human being. And then, with whatever time I can carve out, I create. Every day. I work on something, whether it is my Ode to Matisse Quilt, which I’m now free motion quilting (yay!) or working on a block of the month or throwing pots or painting or sketching out new ideas, I create. Every day. It’s the thing that has always saved me over these past 56 years. I create.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a fine artist. I loved pen and ink, but also acrylic paint. I studied with the great Nate Oliveira, who also happened to be a close friend of my parents. While at Parsons School of Design, one summer I took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. I painted, drew, designed, sewed, embroidered, knitted, wrote… I have explored many different artistic mediums, but in the end, I kept going back to designing, whether it was hand knits, fashion or jewelry, design was what I did, more often than not, to earn money. But fine art, is always there, somewhere in the background informing it all.
Last month I took out my paint brushes and began painting again. It’s been years, no decades! I’d forgotten how much I love it. The following images are all collages with acrylic paint and a variety of other things, such as pastel, ink, torn newspaper, cardboard, etc.
Red
On the Horizon
Dawn
Obscured
America
Wishing everyone a peaceful day filled with creativity and ART!
I was going to entitle this post Fear of Dyeing (and Silk Screening) but Where’s the Pun in That? But it was too long so I just went with the edited version… a girl can have a little pun. Okay, okay that’s enough. I’ve filled my quota of puns and I’m barely out of the starting gate. It’s all going to be very serious from here on out.
In my last post I promised screen printing, so here we go. All the photographs below are of techniques described by Elizabeth Barton in her wonderful class Dyeing to Design over at the Academy of Quilting.
The last and only time I did screen printing was when I worked (briefly) for the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes while living in London having just graduated from Parsons School of Design about a hundred years ago. Zandra Rhodes is known for her beautiful silk screened fabrics as well as being the “Queen of Punk” a distinction given to her back in the late 70’s. All I remember from that time, aside from the time she told me to clean her bathroom, was using a huge squeegee-like thing to scrape paint across the enormous screens she used. I wish I could remember more as it might have helped me get over my fear when tackling Elizabeth’s silk screening lesson. I have to admit I was completely intimidated reading the lesson over, so much so that I read the lesson and then didn’t do any of the exercises mapped out in it for at least three days. Then another person in the class posted her gorgeous silk screened fabrics and it motivated me to at least try some of the techniques suggested.
Using newsprint this was my first attempt at silk screening on white cotton
Have I talked about fear during the creative process? I know, I know, I have. But maybe you didn’t read that post and anyway, I’m feeling compelled. I’m always surprised when I feel fear while designing or doing something art “worthy”. Why feel frightened when creating something? Why should I feel anything but joy? How does fear, even a twinge of it, make itself known through all the curiosity and excitement? And while I don’t have complete answers for these questions, I do know it isn’t unusual for artists to feel tremendous fear when creating. So much so that there’s even a terrific book written on this very subject called Art & Fear ~ Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland. Heading up the chapter entitled: The Academic World is this quote from Howard Ikemoto –
“When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw.
She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”
I went to Parsons School of Design for my undergraduate degree and majored in Fashion Design. Much of what I learned had to do with the business of fashion design and that there’s no such thing as new, that everything is recycled and that in order to succeed one must be as determined, if not more, about the business as one is about creating. The truth is, I learned little about being an artist and more about the challenges of being a designer in the business world. By my last year my fairy tale notion of what it would be like to be a fashion designer was thoroughly squashed and in my disillusioned state I felt only dread at the idea that I was about to go out into the world and seek a job, much less in the fashion world. After floundering for a few years I abandoned fashion design in favor of a series of jobs/careers that I thought might be more fulfilling and less soul wrenching. And while all the things I tried my hand at varied, even dramatically, they were all in the “Arts” of some kind. What I’ve learned is that artists tend to have a difficult time making a living with their art, no matter what the medium is.
There’s a wonderful quote from Oscar Wilde that begins Part II of the book Art & Fear.
“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.”
How does one price one’s art, something that might have taken hundreds of hours to create through trial and error, through missteps, through experimentation, through FEAR? If artists used an hourly wage system to price their work, all art would be so expensive no one could afford it. So most of us don’t. We can’t. And while in an ideal world no one would have to concern themselves with making money from their art, and instead would just spend all their time making it, few live in such a privileged world. The fear of being able to sell our work, and how that inhibits the process is a whole other topic and one most of us can understand, but there is another fear that is far more complicated. It is the fear one feels when confronted with something new, something one has never done before, but would like to learn. There is the fear of failure or appearing incapable or of ridicule, criticism or being seen as incompetent by others, but also by oneself. To create art, is to be at once vulnerable and confident, and it is a tricky balancing act to not lean more one way or the other. Both carry their own pitfalls.
Creating is a messy process. Most people never see all the discarded bits, the beginnings and first steps taken to get to that finished piece. What I love about blogs is that people are willing to show their process. My favorite blogs, in fact, are the ones that do just that.
Adding color to the purple
When I am starting something new I often have an idea in my head. What I envision is always spectacular, but creating that idea takes skill, talent and knowledge, things I do not always have. So I have to learn, practice, and explore in order to be able to get the skills to (hopefully) produce the image I envision. Sometimes I’m successful, but more often I’m not. Sometimes I realize it will take me years to achieve the level of expertise required to make what I envisioned. So I have to accept that I won’t be able to do something as I’d hoped or modify what I’m doing to compensate or continue to practice, with the idea that eventually I might be able to produce what is in my mind.
Torn newsprint
For this piece I cut stencils out of a thin plastic sheet, before silk screening on top
This is the result of using those stencils that I removed for the red piece above
A technique attributed to Kerr Grabowski. This piece has yet to be washed, so who knows what it will look like!
Another technique described in Elizabeth’s class.
Regardless of the approach I take, perfectionism is truly the greatest kill joy and, for me anyway, the root from which almost all my fear springs. While some argue that without perfectionism, we would settle for less or not work as hard, they are misunderstanding perfectionism at its most destructive. I am referring to perfectionism that lacerates, the kind of self-talk that abuses and brutalizes. It is that awful voice that needs to be muted before anything can be created. Free from perfectionism I am allowed to explore and play.
I have no idea what I’m going to do with any of the fabric I’ve silk screened, and in some ways that’s beside the point. I didn’t approach this lesson with a preconceived idea. And that’s the beauty of taking a class like this one. The assignments require you to explore and play first and then after you’ve done that, consider what you’ll make. Most of these fabrics have been done for almost two weeks now and I still don’t know what to do with any of them. Or as one of the many talented and wonderful people taking this class said, “I’m waiting for divine inspiration.”
I began this blog a few years ago because I wanted a place where I could discuss creativity, art, inspiration and being an artist. Since life has always informed my art, I came up with the name – Where Art & Life Meet. Art has always been the thing that saves me. When I am creating I am completely present, focussed and I am most at peace. I’m in the zone, an almost trance-like state of being. I feel happy and serene. So when life gets turbulent, when I am scared, when the world feels chaotic and unpredictable, art is the thing that beckons me, soothing me, allowing me to appreciate life and it’s beauty, if only in that fleeting moment. However these last two weeks have been particularly difficult, so much so that for an entire day I couldn’t do any art at all. Nothing.
Thankfully, I had my online class, Dyeing to Design given by Elizabeth Barton, which I’ve written about ‘here‘ and ‘here‘ and we had another project due, so I forced myself to focus. We began with some basic shibori dyeing. Shibori is the Japanese art of wrinkling, creasing, folding and binding fabrics before dunking them into dye. One can get a great variety of patterns from Shibori. Here are some of mine.
But once the fabrics were dyed, I felt at a loss as to what to do with them. I am drawn to shapes and usually sketch out my ideas first, but these fabrics are so bold, even bossy, that I couldn’t figure out how to respond to them. Finally I had an idea that I began to play around with, but it was going to be far too complicated and I didn’t have enough time to create it…
So I refined and came up with this…
I plunged in and began cutting out shapes, putting them up on my design wall, pulling things down, putting other things up. Eventually I designed this.
In part this piece was in response to a comment about how things seemed dark, but the sun would shine again. That red was glaring and SO red, so I went back to my design wall and did this.
And here’s the back and the label.
In between working on this piece, I lost myself in the bliss of hand painting some of my pots that I threw over a month ago. They make me happy. I am calling them “Message Pots.” The next batch will feature a more diverse population, which I’m looking forward to creating. Did I mention that I haven’t been sleeping much? I think all these guys look sleepy.
To all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, have a happy one. To all who are feeling frightened and despondent, know that there are many feeling the same.
As for me, I will be losing myself in several days of cooking, another art form(!) before getting back to my painting, dyeing, quilts and designing.
and this…
And this…
and this…
and this…
With each block, I tried a different free motion quilting pattern that I thought complimented the shape in the block. I know many feel the shapes themselves should also be quilted and I may have to go back and quilt the larger shapes, but I wanted them to pop, so decided to leave them alone. Once all the blocks were quilted I agonized over the binding. Eventually I opted for the darkest background beige fabric I had used. I cut it on the bias, pieced it together and then following the instructions in Mimi Dietrich’s book, 
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