Quilting Arts Blog

Artwork in my studio

It’s here, it’s here! The Studios issue has just arrived in our offices and oh my… I think it came out rather nicely. I hope you think so, too. In my extreme makeover article, I mention that I will share some of the artwork in my studio on our website, so here goes.

“Beach Walk” by Rosalie Dace

This is one of my absolute favorite quilts that also made an appearance in our Quilting Arts Fall 2006 issue. It pays tribute to Rosalie’s favorite, restorative activity of walking along the beach to collect sandy treasures. I love how she layered torn bits of billowy blue sheers to depict water and added beige burlap, illustrative of gritty sand. Combining buttons, beads, and ephemera with thousands of hand stitches, this makes for a very joyful piece.

Nudes are a popular subject for art quilter Melanie Testa and looking at this piece is like taking a deep, cleansing breath—it makes me feel calm. I particularly love the way Melanie layers sheer fabrics on top of one another to achieve such an ethereal effect.

I went Etsy shopping one morning and was thrilled to learn that my UK friend Lucie Summers had an Etsy storefront. A talented mixed-media and quilt artist, Lucie has been featured a few times in our magazines and I am pleased to have these two little pieces as part of my collection.

If you look on the top shelf, you may recognize the yellow assemblage from the first issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. It’s by Lesley Riley and is from her “Windows to the Soul” article. The expression of the little girl as she peers through the window reminds me of how I often feel when I embark on a new art project: shy yet curious.

The quilt on the bottom shelf was hand pieced and hand quilted by my great grandmother many, many years ago. All throughout her life she painted, made dolls, numerous quilts, her own clothes, you name it. She lived until she was 99, and the last time I saw her was when I paid her a visit to her nursing home. She had just received a letter from a friend in a neighboring nursing facility and the envelope sported bright, glittery stickers of ladybugs and frogs all over it. “Isn’t this envelope the prettiest thing?” she asked me. All her life my great grandmother strived to make this world just a little more beautiful and she appreciated other’s attempts at doing so, too. An important lesson.

This quartet of small quilts is made by yours truly. I dub these my whimsical pop art pet portraits, and although I don’t usually like to hang my own artwork in my house, I do love looking at my beloved animal children depicted in fabric. 

What about you? Do you have any special pieces of art in your studio or home that you enjoy?

Studio Space

For all of you Project Runway fanatics, you may have been surprised by the size of Christian Siriano's studio when Tim Gunn paid him a visit on last week's episode. Upon seeing  Christian's cramped space, Tim said, "Wow, you really know how to make it work!" (By the way, for a rather fierce blog on Project Runway, be sure to check out the ultimate fan blog,  Blogging Project Runway and all of the other linked blogs.)

One point Christian made was that such a tiny space forces him to be organized all of the time. I'm so embarrassed to admit this, but one day last year when I was trying to find a particular fat quarter of fabric,  I actually found a fully intact, sealed take-out container of California Maki at the bottom of one of my fabric bins. It must have been there for weeks. How disgusting and I never knew it was there because the container was sealed so it didn't reek (thankfully). When I told my friend Mary Fisher about this and how I wanted to mention it in my letter from the editor for the Studios issue, she said, "No way! That is not the kind of thing you want people knowing!"  Of course she's trying to protect me, but I have to confess and absolve myself of this so I might as well do it on the blog. 

Here's how bad it got:

My uninspired, messy design wall, thread drawers, and folding ironing table:

My sewing table and stacked bins of stabilizers with the sun glaring through the window. What a headache.

For my reorganization I spent months journaling my needs, reading books on organizing (a great one is Organizing from the Inside Out), hitting flea markets, Ebay, Target, and yes, Pottery Barn. The photo shoot took place two weeks ago, and here's a glimpse of my new digs (I can't show more of the new space until the Studios Issue comes out April 1st).

But I can show you the cover:

It was not planned to have a shot of Sophie and me on the cover (in fact I was really embarrassed that the team was exploring the idea). However, after we shot this particular spot in my studio (sans dog and me), I went and grabbed Sophie, our official Quilting Arts office mascot who serves double duty as a studio pet. (I grabbed her for a picture to place on the editor page.) When we got the shots back from photography, however, everybody felt this image with a person and a dog was a bit more inviting for cover than the image without. I hope you enjoy the issue as there are some incredible studios and stories inside.

Other News...

Earlier this year I got a Thermofax machine and I am so in love with what this contraption can do. I have a teeny, tiny obsession with a certain television series and wanted to create a quilt out of the series to enter the new exhibit at International Quilt Festival/Long Beach, "The Silver Screen." I used my Thermofax machine to create a screen of the lead character to test out fabrics and images for this possible quilt. I first manipulated a picture of this character in Photoshop, made a screen, then screen printed him on different fabrics to give me a better idea of how the image looks on different backgrounds.

Can you guess who this is?

Even though I like the image on the green batik, I think I'll use the hand-dyed red fabric because symbolically it works best for this character. A good blog entry on Thermofax screens is one by Gerrie Congdon that can be found right here.

Lastly, we have just posted the line-up of artists for Make It University! at International Quilt Festival in Chicago. I will be expanding this page over the weekend, but here's a first glimpse of what will be taking place. Hope to see you...

Studio before and after

The Big Clean

If you saw my letter from the editor picture in this latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors, you'll know what I mean when I say my studio easily could have been mistaken for the set of "The Swamp Thing."  With the amount of clutter and gunk I had accumulated, it resembled a marshy landscape of questionable hygiene. And more importantly, I had an impossible time finding anything. Ever.

Here's what I mean:

and this:

And since I'm exposing my messy ways, let me show you this:

As Good As It's Gonna Get

Everyday for the past month, I've slowly chipped away at cleaning it up. How did I motivate myself to do this? I pictured my mother (otherwise known as "mA"), coming out from Las Vegas for a long-awaited visit. We'd hug at the airport and loop arms around each other as we entered the house. We'd  ascend the stairs to my beloved studio---my atelier, my secret, cherished garden so to speak.  With pride and joy, I'd open the studio door, only to hear her gasp, look over her shoulder at me with trembling lips and say, "Could you really be my daughter? Because no daughter of mine could ever disrespect her things--or herself--like this."

This imagined, shame-inducing scenario worked. (Thanks mA!)

As of this morning, April 1st (and this is no April Fool's), my studio looks something like this:

 

and this...

And this...

  And OH OH OH...this!

And I can't forget this!

  And and and...

Oh! And one more...

So there. I've cleaned up my act. A few things to point out about the cleaning:

1. I organized all my hand threads into plastic bags, sorting them by color. All of the skeins have been placed on large key rings inside the plastic bags. This way they never get tangled and I can always find exactly what I need. Mary Fisher (the most organized person I know) taught me this trick.
2. All of my rubber stamps are sorted into bins by theme (i.e. human forms, alphabet letters, abstract designs, floral designs, etc.)
3. All of my hand-dyed and over-dyed fabrics that I love to pet and ogle at everyday, get a special place on the shelf. All my other fabrics (quilting and novelty fabrics) are sorted by color into large bins that fit under the tables, I do not bother folding any of this stuff--I just toss it in.
4. I've separated my studio into four general areas:
    a. Mixed-media and stabilizers (all my "burning" supplies and tools, chiffon scarves, Angelina, silk     cocoons, water-soluble stabilizers, Pellon, etc.) are placed in bins near the sewing machine area.
    b. Hand-threads and quilting supplies.
    c. Rubber stamps, paints, papers, and adhesives.
    d. quilting and machine threads. I have a design wall and a peg board to keep my rotary cutters,        color wheels, rulers, and other supplies.

Although I'm constantly mixing it all up, it does help to keep each craft housed in their own corners so to speak.

If you want to see other artists' studios, click here.