Balancing Art with Everything Else

Lately I feel like I'm in spinning-plates mode, trying to keep several projects in the air without anything coming crashing down.  So far I'm managing, perhaps just barely, but at least one of my projects is a vacation.  A real one this time, not just working out of town. We're headed for Montreal in the morning and on Saturday we're boarding a cruise ship for a leisurely trip back to Boston.  It's a belated celebration of our fortieth wedding anniversary which occurred while  I was in Columbus for QSDS.

One of the things I just did to get ready for my trip was to cut some more little fabric pieces to make into original cards.  I mentioned in my last post that this was how I spent my down time while vending at QSDS adding some embroidery to each of the little bits that I'd brought along.  Then over the last couple of days here in the studio, I mounted them on blank cards--doing some layering with some abaca papers and other handmade papers.  It's been fun and I'm pleased with how they came out so I decided to do some more on this trip.  Here are some examples of the completed cards.

 This first one started with a commercial fabric that had Paintstik rubbings on it.  I layered a sheer fabric with a bit of couching over that, added some sparkly abaca paper, and finished with a little embroidery to hold it all together.

 This next one started with a bit of fabric with some nice shiny couched threads.  I filled in one of the spaces with French knots, then layered it over a sheer handmade paper.

This last one started with a pieced remnant from a jacket I made a few years ago.  A little embroidery and an underlayer of more sparkly abaca paper  was about all it needed.

I love handwork; I find it very relaxing so it's a great vacation project.  I've been so busy with various administrative projects lately, that it feels really satisfying to make some art again.

In the last six weeks or so these cards and one free lace scarf is about all I've managed to finish in terms of artwork, but at least I'm doing something to keep that plate in the air.  Here's the scarf I finished.  I tried something new in that I made the ends of the scarves quite different from the middle.  I like the lacey look, I think I'll try that again.

Greetings from QSDS

I've been away from the studio now for almost two weeks - spending my days in a room without windows, vending at the Quilt/Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio.  Here's a little view of my area.  We're in a classroom at the Columbus College of Art & Design.  My sales area is shown in the left part of the picture.  I think I should have focused on that rather than my rather messy work area, but I think you get the picture.  I've brought as much stuff as I could fit on three 8' tables plus two small book shelves.  There are three more vendors in the room with me--Judy Robertson of Just Imagination with her hand-dyed fabrics, Bob Davis who has Helene's hand-dyed fabrics and shirts, and Becky Hancock of St. Teresa's Textile Trove.  We have all vended for QSDS for many years, so this is sort of like old home week for us.


Between customers I try to keep busy with some type of handwork, just to keep the creative juices going at least a bit.  This year I brought a bunch of small swatches of "leftovers" from various projects.  I have been adding a bit of embroidery to each one as a sort of finishing touch.  My plan is to fuse them to blank cards.  I don't know if I'll then try to sell them or just use them myself.  I guess I'll see how they all come out.  Here's a look at the first ones I've done.  Some are more successful than others--as is always the case--but they're keeping me busy and that's the most important part.


We are also managing to get in a bit of sight-seeing while we're here.  One morning we walked over to a topiary garden that's only a couple of blocks from the college.  It was delightful.  It was started in 1989 to not all the figures are complete but that does not take away from its charm.  The garden was planned to reproduce Seurat's Walk in the Park in 3D.  Here are a couple of views.

Here it is sort of as if you were looking at the painting.




And here is the pond at the back with the boats.

Playing with Color and Texture

I'm trying out new technology today.  We recently broke down and bought a small laptop computer for our business.  My main motivation was to be able to take it with me to the Quilt/Surface Design Symposium next month, but now I'm finding many other uses for it.  Today I'm learning about sharing pictures and documents from my office computer via the web.  I'm hoping I can add pictures to this post via a new service my husband set up for me.  It is my test run to see if I can manage this on my own.  I'm pretty computer-literate, but for many things I still feel like a newbie.


In my more hands-on world, I've been creating more Free Lace scarves.  The gallery I am working with in Newton has requested longer ones than I've made before.  Customers want to "make a statement" with their scarves.  My previous ones didn't have quite enough length for that.  I made a big push and made four scarves in four days this week.  I wanted to make them as different as I could.

Here's the first one.  I've incorporated triangles of shot silk as well as threads of various textures, even one with some sparkle.

This is the second one.  I had just a bit of some beautiful yellow threads that I wanted to use.  There wasn't enough for a big project and I also wanted the challenge of using yellow.  It's not a color I work with often.  The overall reads green to me because of the combination of yellow and blue threads, but the yellow adds a liveliness that pleases me. 

Here's the third.  This one incorporates triangles of silk and squares of an embroidered sheer.  With this one I got to a place where I thought it should be done, but it didn't feel quite special yet.  I had a random square of sheer fabric setting on my table that kind of jumped up at me to say "use me."  It was a fairly small sample that had an embroidered grid pattern filled with circles.  I loved it but didn't know what to do with it.  I realized that the colors worked well with my design and the sheer was soft enough to work well in a scarf.  So I cut it up and added it in.  Another example of why it's necessary to keep a stash of fabric and supplies on hand even if you don't know what you're going to do with them.

Here's the last one - another challenge color for me - orange.  The color alone makes a statement.  I've toned it down a bit with some purple, but it's definitely bright.




So I have to say that it's work I'm pleased with.  I hope they find good homes.


I also have to say that I'm pleased that I've managed this new system and gotten my blog written with pictures included even though I'm away from my office computer.  Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Need Lead Shoes Today

I haven't posted for a while because I was working hard to finish the jacket commissioned by my neighbor for his wife.  The hard work paid off - I delivered it right on time last week.  Today I got the nicest note from her.  She'd worn the jacket four times already and had received many compliments and lots of questions about where she got it etc.  She felt great and her husband was very pleased with himself for ordering it.  Makes me feel so good.

So here's a look at it:

The bands on the front and cuffs are crazy log cabin squares.  I worked in many colors so she could coordinate with lots of things.  As an added challenge - and more fun - she had given me several fabric remnants from her 87-year-old quilter aunt to work in if possible.  I am pleased to say that I managed to use at least a bit of all the fabrics she gave me.  I think it's wonderful that the jacket has that added level of meaning for her.

Now the secret of this jacket is that it is reversible so she can get double the wear.  Here's the "inside."

In my original plan this side was going to be just plain, but as I thought more about it I realized it needed a bit of spark to be sure that she would really get double the wear.  That's when I decided to add the couched threads.  These are the Stef Francis 5400 rayon threads that I love so.  They add great color and shine.  (Don't tell her but these were leftovers from Sonja's wedding dresses.  The colors were perfect.)  In her note she said she'd worn both sides already, so I guess it was a good decision.

So now you see why I need those lead shoes - to weight me down to the earth after all the good news.  I've got lots to do, so I can't just go floating away...

Walking on Air

I think I need someone to pinch me to make sure I'm not just dreaming.  So many good things have happened this past week that I find it hard to believe I'm really awake.

It started last Tuesday.  First I had lunch with a very good friend that I hadn't seen in a over a year.  It was great to catch up on everything.  Lots of good things going on in her life.

After lunch, I went to check out a wearable art store I'd heard of from Barbara Poole, another fiber artist in the area.  I wanted to see if it might possibly be a venue for my jackets.  I am absolutely thrilled to say that the store was beautiful, it really does sell one-of-a-kind items, AND the owner was happy to carry my jackets.  (I had brought pictures, just in case.)  So as of today,  my kimono-style jackets and free-lace scarves are available at Dahlia, 97M Union Street, Newton Centre, Massachusetts.  I hope you'll stop in there when you're in the neighborhood and help me spread the word.

The next wonderful thing that happened last week, was that one of my neighbors commissioned a custom jacket for his wife.  This will be the second jacket I've made for her.  When we got together last week, she told be that she'd worn the first one at least 200 times!  And it still looks great if I do say so myself.  This one will be a quilted, reversible hip-length jacket with pieced bands up the front and on the sleeve cuffs.  She wanted blues.  Here are my preliminary choices.  We'll see if she approves.

Then Friday my daughter Sonja e-mailed to say that she'd received an award for outstanding performance in her division at work.  It was so nice for her to get recognized by "the powers that be" at work.  It's just not the same when it's your mom telling you you're great.

By the weekend we were both riding high, so when we heard that the studio next to us here at Western Avenue was going to be available in June we decided to jump on it.  Sonja will give up her little personal studio down the hall and we'll double the size of our joint studio.  We'll knock out part of the wall to make one big space.  It will allow us to expand our display space, hide all our messy supplies, and have more room to work.  It's going to be a lot of work to reorganize everything, but it will be awesome when we're finished.

...so if I'm just dreaming, I don't really want to wake up.

Riding the Roller Coaster

I've had quite a ride this past month.  I hope I can stay off the roller coaster and on more level ground for a while.  I've spent a good deal of time working with my siblings to get my mother moved into an advanced care assisted living situation.  If you've been there you know how much mental and physical work is involved.  Luckily the four of us work well together and we found a situation that we are all happy with. Our mother seems pleased as well, so we're hoping things will settle down for a while.

With all that going on, I haven't had much time for sewing, but I did finish a jacket yesterday.  I call this one "Persuede Me."  The fabric is a nice, buttery-soft micro-suede.

I think the fabric was designed with chair covers in mind.  It consisted of panels with what looked like organic "squares" screened in the middle of a beige ground.  I loved the patterns and the colors, but it took me quite a while to figure out how to use it.  I finally decided on my "default" of cutting it up in strips and then putting the strips together to create a new whole.  Once the new fabric was created, I added couched squares to add texture and echo the squares and rectangles.  Then I found a beautiful sheer fabric with a woven leaf design for the collar and cuffs.

Here's the back:

I'm trying to keep up the momentum by moving right on to a new one.  A bit ago I pulled out several lovely wool fabric remnants in coordinating shades of jade and a lovely watered silk.  Now I need to figure out how I can put them together for another one.

New Jackets Completed

Since my last post I have finished two more jackets.  This first one I call Sheer Magic.

I had built up a stash of beautiful embroidered silks, including several sheers.  They'd been calling my name for some time, but I couldn't quite decide how I wanted to put them together.  I thought about creating a sheer jacket, but I knew it would need all French seams.  That process was just too daunting.  

In my usual fashion, I decided to just start in and see what happened.  In the process of laying out the fabrics to use, I noticed that layering the sheers over the other fabrics gave a beautiful haunting effect and that settled it for me.  In the body of the jacket the embroidered sheers are layered right over other embroidered fabrics.  In the collar and cuffs I've layered the embroidered sheers over a plain color.

The final design detail - couched rayon threads - was inspired by my daughter Sonja.  She'd pulled out several Stef Francis 5400 rayon threads for an order one day.  Turned out she'd taken out an extra one, but noticed that the colors coordinated beautifully with the fabrics I'd laid out on the table.  So she left it out for me to see.  The colors worked so well I just had to use it.

My most recently completed jacket also incorporates embroidered fabrics but this time I used embroidered linens.  

Again I added couched threads to accentuate the vine designs and add a hint of color to the tone-on-tone fabrics I'd chosen.