Fiber Art or Quilt?

I always cruise Etsy looking for fiber artists with the same sensibility as me and to see what everyone else has been doing. I look at the section for Quilts and then go to "mini" or "wallhanging."  I'm generally not impressed with 80% of what I see. Well today I peeked at Art and then Fiber Art. Hello! Way more of what I have been looking for. So now the question is, how should I be tagging my art?  Obviously I have been thinking of them as quillts first, especially since they all end up being quilted. If you have a store on Etsy, would you mind telling me how you tag your art quilts?

Although I have not making traditional quilts these days, that is how I started and it is difficult for me to let some of the conventions go. Slowly, I have decided that it is OK to bind in a non-traditional way. I've decided that keeping the back of the quilt free of knots, etc. is for the county fair, not meaningful for my art.  I will admit, I feel guilty about it. I've decided that 100% cotton fabric is unnecessary, I don't even need to use fabric exclusively. My quilts don't need to stand up to washing, because they will not be washed. So here I am letting go of one more convention: The term QUILT.

POURING RAIN

As I sit at the computer on this day in late June it is pouring rain and my feet are cold. It's crazy, but what can you do? 

Faith Takes the Place of Reason, aka the dead baby quilt, is finally photographed  and on Etsy. I don't have any high hopes that I will sell this, but that's OK.

I read the rest of a book last night. A memoir called "Girls of a Tender Age," by Mary-Ann Tyrone Smith. I don't read much. I really like to read, but, I'm trying to focus on so many things, reading just goes by the wayside (I read the newspaper a lot, though) However, if someone plops a book in front of me, and it's good, then that's it, I'm hooked. Someone at work leant me this book, and I actually left it there for a few days, because I was afraid it would become an all-nighter. (I lack a certain amount of self control) I was reading one chapter at the end of every work day this week. Then, somehow it came home with me, and I was up til 2:30 am last night. It is my favorite type of book, where people tell stories about their lives. This woman has some whoppers. I don't care if it is fiction or not, this book happens to be true. She grew up in the 1950's in Hartford, CT, she had an autistic brother, her mom was out there, emotionally, but her dad was great. When she was in the fifth grade one of her class mates was murdered by a serial killer. She surpresses all of this until she is an adult. It is grim, but really interesting to read. Things were VERY different in the 50s. Anyway, check this one out if you think it sounds appealing.

Unmolested Friday

Good Morning.

I took a  vacation day today! My aim is to putter around the house. I'm so excited. Kate is off to Special Olympic Summer Games for the whole weekend. Joe is going to work. My son sleeps half the day, so I am more or less alone. I think, since Kate isn't here, I might clean her room a little. With wrecking ball and a bull dozer.

I'm also going to start gesso-ing the pages I've prepared in my altered-book-sketch-book. I've glued together every three pages, then I started to fold some of the pages funny, into triangles and such. The entire book is not prepared that way yet, but, it's a work in progress. It is raining again, every day this week, so I don't expect anything to dry today.

Ellene stopped by the other day and commented on the Magic Tree post. She was able to see the Gustav Klimt style fabric in the quilt. I have included some close-ups this time. Remember, this is when I jumped back into quilting. I went on line to look at fabric and I almost fainted when I saw the patterns that were available. I was seriously addicted for a while. I'd drop $100 bucks every time I looked at the site. Once I had a decent stash, I had to cut back. You know.

So, time to get another cup-o-coffee and make this day count.

Peters Valley: Day Three

I woke up in rough shape on this day. Maybe a little too much wine the night before. A big headache and a dehydration problem. I have not mentioned that there was a sign in our house warning that the parks department had posted a "boil water advisory" for our house. We were told we could brush our teeth with it, but don't chug. I really needed to chug. I just never thought to get myself any water to keep in my room. I wandered downstairs to see if there were any sympathetic souls around, and saw 2 big cooler jugs of (clean) water in the kitchen for the first time. I had barely even been in the kitchen before that, because, you know, why? Anyway, that brought me partially back to life. Then I saw Crystal in the hall and she had the Ibuprophen. I was on the road to recovery.

We had to get ourselves out of our lodgings by 10 am, so I was taking an armload of sheets down to my car. When I got to the porch, a woman ran around the corner and said, "You want to see some bears?"

Along with tick warnings, there were bear warnings posted all over the place at Peters Valley. We are starting to see bear in some unexpected places in New Jersey, so it is really no big surprise that they would be there in the woods. Still, up until that time, I had never seen a bear outside of a zoo. I dropped the sheets and ran around behind the house with her (I think she was taking a photography course) and another bystander. We went a short way on a path to a pond, and there were two black bear on the other side of the pond. And get this: The woman was bird watching, so she had a pair of binoculars with her! ( No camera, though) I was struck with how big the ears are on a bear. Kind of Mickey Mouse- like. They were looking at us, and we were looking at them, and the fact that there was a big pond between us made it seem pretty safe. Eventually they lumbered off. Really cool!

So then I finished packing up my car and made my way over to breakfast. For your information, every single time I went to a meal, I told the food nazi my name, Chris Mundy, and every single time he acted like he had no idea who I could be, and I would have to say Chris Murphy, and then he could find me. You would think he might catch on after a while.

Peters Valley has a craft store, with many tempting things. I had stopped in a couple of times, but this time I bought a mug for my husband. His favorite mug had recently crashed. He usually brings me back a heart when he goes away for the weekend.

Back in the studio, Barbara showed us some more slides. The evaluation form went around and also a form for us to fill in contact information which was copied and shared. I still have to find that and rescue it from among the chaos I dragged out of my car when I got home. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Everyone hung up what they were working on and we talked about it.

At this point I must mention that I am just learning to take pictures of things in my life. It isn't that I don't know how, it's just that I will be so into what is going on, that I won't think to take pictures. I remember my son's first birthday party and how I forgot to take a single photo. Fortunately my mother can't stop taking pictures. What I am getting at is that I wish I had taken better pictures of people's work, and that I had taken pictures of the people. Inexplicably, I have a picture of everyone in the fine metals studio, but hardly any pictures of the people in my own class. Weird.

The rest of the day was spent working on projects, if we wanted to. Everyone was leaving early, so I packed it in around 3:30 pm. I left with more than I came with, largely thanks to Bev, who was trying to move and had a couple of bins of fabric and scraps for the taking.

I thought a lot about my life and the directions it has taken. I look at the students at Peters Valley and wonder what they will go on to do. The decisions you make early in life are so important. I know I need to go back to school. I just need to figure some things out.

Peters Valley: Day Two

The sun woke me up at the crack of dawn this day, and that's OK. Breakfast is from 7:30 to 8:30, so I had time to stitch on a little side project I had developed. Then it was a shower and then make my way back up Thunder Mountain Road. I saw a green heron on the marsh, and a beautiful woodpecker, that I still have to look up and identify.

Day 2 was the day we soaked the paper off of our transfers. We all had mixed results, largely due to the weather. Barbara gave a slide show, and she also showed us a quilt that she brought to put in the faculty show at Peters Valley. The main section is a leather glove that belonged to her Aunt that Barbara washed and spray painted gold. She took that piece and had it reproduced by a printer, into a repeat pattern on fabric. That fabric is what made up the rest of the quilt. She told us that she had 5 yards made, at a cost of around $800. Very interesting idea, don't you think? A bit expensive, but... Then she mentioned an opening she was having in June, in of all places, the Clinton Art Museum. This is 12 miles from my house and I drive through Clinton on a regular basis. Mary says she can go as well. Looking forward to that.

After this we were to work on projects of our choice. We were cautioned not to feel we needed to come away with a completed project. We only had one and a half days left. We could continue with our fabric experiments or try to start a project. I took one of my transfers, a bird, and painted her with fabric paint. That paint is something else that has been hanging around my studio that I hadn't tried. I started making an arrangement with the bird and the bleach-penned denim patches. They seemed to have a similar quality. Then I took a piece of burlap and arranged everything in a symmetrical pattern, with the bird in the center. Barbara came along and rocked my world a little. I ended up with different fabric and an off center bird. I played around with the arrangement for a while. At one point I spread the fabric onto the floor to cut it, when right next to me was a big table!

There were two college students among my classmates. I noticed that they did not even try to start a project. I think they have plenty of opportunities to work. Robin had just learned to make french knots and was just making so many beautiful knots. Cathy was the other student, I remember hearing her talk about trying to arrange her school around her two young sons.

Bev was a retired art teacher whose daughter was an accomplished artist and a former student of Barbara's. Cheryl was a recent widow who was emerging from a painful time in her life, but you knew she would be OK because she had so many interests. She ended up making one of the best projects. Kim and Jannika were friends and came together. They are both prolific and experienced quilters. Kim described herself as a "gadget girl" and really knew the ins and outs of all the different sewing machines. Jannika was from Holland and had a slightly off way of speaking English that was delightful. She reminded me a little of Gunnel. If you have ever visited her blog, you would know what I mean.

At dinner we sat with some of the people from the fine metals studio. They were hammering out bracelets and other jewelry in that class. The teacher, Wayne Werner, was a real character and was cracking us up at the table. He invited us to a party in that studio in the evening. Check out this man's jewelry if you get a chance, it is fantastic.

Wayne came into the fiber studio later (Fine metal is right next to fibers) looking for a picture of a tick. There are signs all over the place with tick warnings, and there was a pamphlet stapled right on the wall in our studio. That wasn't cutting it for him. By the way, if there is internet access at Peters Valley, I wasn't aware of it, so googling an image was not an option. He said he needed the image because he wanted to forge a bronze tick to hang on the wall in the food house! There was quite a bit of art like that around, maybe left behind by students or instructors.

We get thrown out of the fiber studio at 10 pm, but I guess if the instructor stays, you can be in the studio as long as you like. That's why the metal studio remained open. Mary and I went over to hang out. There was wine and beer in a 5 gallon pail with ice. They were all working over there, banging away, making some really cool stuff. Wayne was working on his tick. I was just checking everything out, and he asked me if I wanted to "bang on some metal?" "Hell yes." was my reply. A young man named Kat (Cat?) was the student assistant in that studio. He annealed a piece of bronze for me that was already in a ring shape. Annealing is when you roast the metal with a torch and then quench it in water (Some metals you quench in oil, but not this) This leaves a brine on the surface, which I had to steel-wool off. Then I put the ring on a rod that is a ring sizer, and I had to bang on the ring with a hammer, which made it bigger, until it reached the size I needed. I got carried away and got to size seven, which is almost too big for any of my fingers. Then I had to bang the ring on it's sides to flatten that back out. Then I banged with a sharp hammer, to make ridges all around the ring. I was given what I would describe as a vegatable peeler for metal. I scraped along the ridges I had created to shave off the high spots. Then I polished it and, viola! A ring! I don't really think small forge is for me, but I really appreciated having an opportunity to give it a whirl.

We were hanging around talking after that, and I was running my fingers through my hair and found a tick. Wayne was thrilled. He took a picture with his phone and zoomed in. Unfortunately I never saw the finished tick.

Peter's Valley: Day One

I left my house at 6:15 am Saturday. I could have gone the night before, and maybe I should have, but the night before I was up until at least midnight, loading the car with boxes of fabric-n-stuff. I can never get over how heavy my sewing machine is. I left that morning with NO coffee in me. Painful, but better than having to find places to pee five times during the trip.

I went up the Pennsylvania side, and crossed over the Delaware River at the Dingman's Ferry Bridge. It is an iron bridge with a wooden roadbed and these guys are standing there with their hands out to take the one dollar toll. Later on someone mentioned to me that it is the only remaining privately owned bridge in the country. Of course I had to look that up when I got home. Not entirely true, but almost. Check this link out if you would like to read about how many times the bridge washed away before someone finally built a decent one!

I arrived at Peter's Valley at 8:10. My class started at 9, so I had time to figure everything out. I stopped at the office, but it was closed. There was a sign that directed you to room assignments on a bulletin board. Really, what I wanted was coffee. There was also a map, so I was able to find the food house. I say food house, because Peter's Valley is in a small village that was purchased by the Parks Department. (It is in the middle of Delaware Water Gap National Rec Area) So everything is in one of the old houses. There I met the food Nazi. This guy waits at the door to make sure you are on the list. If not, you need to pay. I signed up for the complete food plan, but alas, I was not on the list. There was a "Chris Murphy" on the list who had not yet gotten their breakfast, so I suggested that there might have been a mistake. He grudgingly allowed me a cup of coffee and a bagel. By that time the office was opened, so I went to sign in. Chris Mundy was on this list, phew! Then it was on to the fiber studio, which was on "Thunder Mountain Road," a dirt road that went on for a mile and a half. They had amusing little signs that cheered you on.

There were 8 women in my class, from many different backgrounds. We were all asked to introduce ourselves, which is pretty standard in these classes. I mentioned that I had a blog, and Mary said she had seen it. I find that to be amazing. How small the cyber world is! She googled the name of the class and found my posts about it.

Mary was my favorite person. She was a pharmaceutical rep living in NYC and you could see she had an enormous amount of energy and was interested in everything. She was a certified beer taster (!) and was now educating herself about wine. She had taken many different art courses and knew something about everything. I loved talking to her.

After introductions, we were given a list of action words and told to do these things to 10" squares of fabric. Some examples were burn, tear, layer, and pleat. The teacher, Barbara Schulman, was trying to push us to do things we might not normally do. We hung all that up on a wall and talked about it.

Then it was time to make transfers. We spread gel medium on laser prints and magazine pages, the pressed them on to fabric. We let them dry overnight, soaked them in water and rubbed the paper off. The image was left on the fabric. We also spread layers and layers of gel medium on laser prints and magazine pictures, and the just soaked the paper off of that. You ended up with something of a decal. I had limited success with this method. It was very humid and things dried very slowly. After I soaked off the paper, my decals dried weird, like potato chips. I will try that again sometime.

While waiting for gel medium to dry, I was digging around in my stash and pulled out a bleach pen. I've had this thing for a few months, and had never used it. I drew on some denim patches I had leftover from a project. I left the bleach on while we went to dinner. The studio opens again in the evening. When I came back, it had dried to a crust. I just washed it off and I had neat designs.

At 10 pm they throw you out of the studio, so it was time to check out the living arrangements. I signed up a for dorm style room, which meant I had to share. There were so few people staying this particular week, that none of us had to share, hooray!! Good thing, I had 3 beds in my room, ick.

The house where I lived is very old. Old, like when you go in you can smell the old-ness. I just adore old houses, I don't care how funky they are. I've lived in a few, so ancient bathrooms don't confront me. Peter's Valley largely survives on grants and donations, so the place was filled with a lively mix of dreadful and interesting furniture. My mattress was particularly interesting. George Washington may have slept on it. You can either rent sheets and pillowcases, or bring your own. I was going to bring a sleeping bag, but came upon the quilt I made for my wedding. (the first wedding) I took that. It is in such rough shape that I don't even use it any more. It was a nice old friend to have along. I went to sleep to the sound of PING PING PING coming from the blacksmith shop, that is in barns behind the house. (Those guys never stop) and a gurgling brook.

Stay tuned for DAY 2!!!!

Saturday

I spent most of today at the Fairfield racquet club. It was Sectionals for Special Olympic Tennis. Kate is in division 2. As you can see, there are all men in her division. She beat 2 of them and gave the third a run for his money. Go Kate!  Summer games are  mid-June.

I woke up at 5 am and decided to sew. Here is my experiment, hanging on the clothes line,

What Day is It?

LAMBS!

Three in a row

I'm real busy, what can I tell you? It's definitely cutting into my posting time. I used to squeeze in some blog prep in the morning before I left for work. I'd write the post and e-mail myself the pictures (They upload much easier at work) Recently I decided it was in my best interest to begin exercising in the mornings again, now that the weather is less obnoxious. This morning it was in the 20s, so I decided to not walk just this one day. So, I am posting.

I got over to the cemetary in Clinton finally on Sunday and found myself some excellent lamb tombstones. I also took the time to observe and record a situation that I find in nearly every old cemetary I see. That is the presence of similar gravestones, as if it became all the rage to use a certain type when a loved one passed on. The trend in this cemetary was markers that look like beds. I think I'm going over in a month or so and plant some flowers in those lamb beds. They are all from one family and none of those kids made it to 5 years old.

I was fooling around in Photoshop and isolated just a lamb image and printed it onto fabric for my quilt. I had been making my own printing sheets using unbleached muslin with crack-n-peel sticker paper adhered to the back. At first it seemed like a miracle just to have an image on fabric, but really it doesn't come out very clear, and I was treating the fabric with bubble jet set, so it was time consuming. I splurged on some fabric printing sheets. I was trying to avoid the expense, but the results is much better. So now I've got me a nice lamb plus I printed a larger lamb to use for some future project.

Cocktail Quilt?

I like to find strange and wonderful old textile bits, and use them in art quilts. I found this seriously bitchin' tea towel on a recent excursion to Roller Mills Antique Center in Lewisburg, PA. (Possibly the largest Antique mall I have ever set foot in.) My interpretation of this towel, is a housewife doing the dishes, longing for a cocktail. Maybe an early version of desperate Housewives. Pretty funny, and I love the graphics. I just found what I consider to be coordinating fabric, at least in spirit. We've got cocktail glasses with clocks in them, all stating the time to be 5 pm or later. I've been staring at this combination for a couple of days, and I'm still not really sure where to go with this. It's almost as though the towel itself is so perfect it doesn't want or need anything else from me. Stay tuned...

Clinkers in the Coal Stove

Here is a little something I worked on between New Years and today. It is nearly done, I just have to sew on more beads. The name of it is "Clinkers in the Coal Stove." An explanation is in order.
When my husband, Joe, was a younger man, he lived in a small cottage on a horse farm. The heat source was loud and annoying, so he got himself a small coal stove. When he left that situation, the coal stove was transported to a friend's basement, where it has been these last 25 years. It has recently been rediscovered, and, to the relief of his friend (and his friend's wife) Joe has reclaimed the thing. He set it up in our cellar and it now provides heat to the area, which would otherwise be freezing. This is where my sewing machine is set up, so I'm grateful for it.
Joe was having a hard time keeping it burning, but now seems to have remastered the knack. One of the problems is "clinkers," which are bits of coal that haven't burned all of the way to ash. When you "shake down the stove," (shake the ash out from the bottom) these clinkers don't fall through the grate and can clog things up. The stove won't draft right and it can go out. That is where the name of the quilt comes from.

My First Post

My very first blog post: Hello world, are you interested in what I am doing? I really do wonder why anyone would care what I have to say, but I've created this blog to somehow promote my etsy site. (www.frenchtown.etsy.com) Apparently all of the cool artists have a blog. Now, I'm cool too.

I have a number of vacation days to use up before the end of the year. Today is one of those days. I've spent some time working on a new piece of fiber art. A quilted wall-hanging that I will call Pebbles in a Shallow Stream. Soon I will post pictures of it. It is in the quilting stage. I use a Janome 6600 sewing machine to quilt. Before I had this machine all I had was an old Singer that was my high school graduation gift in 1978. I find this new machine fabulous and still sometimes daunting.

Anyway, back to the quilt. I ironed that WonderUnder stuff to the back of  a bunch of "pebble-like" fabrics, cut them all individually into different sized "pebbles", and ironed them to fabric that kind of looks like sand. I really liked how it came out. I find myself just looking at it, noticing the different shapes and colors. I quilted over the edge of each "pebble" and then in the "sand" around each "pebble." Now, when you run your hand over it, it feels bumpy. Like very smooth pebbles, almost. I need to finish quilting the border, and then bind the thing. 

Binding is my least favorite activity in this whole process. It's boring, and I'm not that good at it. And usually, by then I'm already working on the next project in my head.

My studio is in the basement of our very old house. It looks like a dungeon but it is the space I have carved out for myself. It is currently a mess, but it's the kind of environment where only a few things need to be out of place and you have a disaster.

What kind of work space do you have?  Tell me about it. Recently I went down to my studio and found a squirrel looking right at me. We think he came in through the chimney that we had not been using at the time. My husband had it stuffed with insulation, but the squirrel was not deterred. we opened the outside door and he took off, but not before leaving behind some kind of fear scent that grossed me out for days.