Sharing with Like Minded Creative People

Today was the CQFA meeting. There are six meetings per year and they are held in Santa Clara, which is about an hour from my house. It is always a big effort (I usually stay up too late the previous night and am tired from the week of racing around) for me to get the to the meetings and I have missed a number of them this year. I was richly rewarded by attending today as the show and tell was fantastic. Also, nobody was being an attention hog or annoying me. Everyone was wonderfully supportive of one woman who is experiencing a series of losses in her life. Not only was the work wonderful, but inspirational as well. Check the website for the meeting and I am sure the photos will be posted soon.

The workshop was put on by Virginia Schnalle, who is a wonderfully creative quiltmaker. I admire her work, her fearlessness in art and her quiet manner. She has taught a couple of workshops for the group and they always yield wonderful results for me. It was in her class that I made the Eye of God. That quilt is now in the collection of another quiltmaker, but I consider it to be one of my most successful quilts.

Today we worked on getting started when your muse has gone on vacation or your well has run dry. First VS gave out a basket of words, from which we each chose three. We weren’t able to tell what the words were before we chose them. From these words we had to draw simple drawings that came to mind when we saw the words. My words were:

wisdom
release
freedom

I thought the words were good choices for me at this point in time and space. The drawings I made were not very satisfactory, but I think if I were stuck, I would be able to use them to get the muse.

The good thing about this exercise (and my lack of organization) is that, in looking for supplies on the supply list, I found two wonderful pencils. They are very smooth and easy to use. They are called Berol Karismacolor. I have no memory of buying them, but must have sometime in the distant past of my art days. I am putting them in the pile of possible supplies for my visual journal.


After discussing different kinds of balance: symmetrical/formal, assymetrical/informal, horizontal, circular or radial balance and crystallographic balance and the Rule of Thirds, we went to work on our own pieces. My first one is above. It is made out of cut up magazine pictures. I didn’t pay attention to the subject of the pictures…much, but concentrated mostly on the color and the pattern. The first one wasn’t terribly successful IMO.

I didn’t pay attention to the Rule of Thirds direction and just made the one above because I was inspired to do so. Very symmetrical.Same as above. I didn’t have any red to start out with, but scrounged some from the garbage pile and made this piece. Again, very symmetrical. I can see working with this design to make other pieces.
And TA DA! Here is the piece d’resistance. I think this one came out the best. I added the words (see first exercise) at the end on a whim as well as the #1. I like to mix characters and imagery. I am not sure what I would do with this, but I can see tracing the main lines and going on from there with it.

During show and tell and the announcements, I also worked on this piece from the Laura Wasilowski class. I worked on the handwork using Laura’s hand-dyed thread. Adding the thread is similar to Pamela’s techniques. I like the process, but I also like making progress. I have a few too many handwork projects in the pipeline right at the moment and would like to move a couple of them out. Goals are good!

More Various and Sundry


These are the two hand pieced blocks that I made last week. Different sort of look. Not so cheerful, but not depressing, either. I am not sure what I was thinking when I put the two dot fabrics in the same block? I thought I wasn’t using dots in this piece. Oh well. It is a scrap quilt, so who cares?


More dots.

I went to Britex today to get some fabric for pants. I was on the second floor and remembered that they have quiltmaking fabric. While the girl was cutting my pants fabric, I took a quick peek at the quilt fabrics. Lo and behold! They had dots! Hooray! I picked up the two above. They also had the Robert Kaufman Tropical Pimatex dots in both sizes. I have enough so I didn’t buy any, but it was good to be reminded that they are downtown and do have fabric. DUH!
I also stopped at the Container Store and found these project cases. I have been thinking about something like this since I read Be*mused‘s piece on the scrapbook project cases she found (I looked for the article, but couldn’t find it and can’t find her search button either-DUH!). They are 12 1/2 wide and 17 and something long. I bought two of them just to see how they would work. I filled up one with the Cross Blocks (Flowering Snowballs) + the fabric for the center pieces, which I don’t want to “put away” and never be able to find it again.

I was told today to look at other kinds of art besides quilts to see what I am inspired by. I have some books. I guess I will look at those and see what I see.

I am still thinking about black and white line drawings in a new visual journal. I haven’t done anything about it yet.

The photos of some of the quilts to which I linked (to Artquiltmaker.com) in the past week looked really crappy and I was embarrassed after I posted them. I took 4 quilts including Ocean Ave, Get the Red Out, the Punk Rock Quilt and the Mary Whitehead quilt to be photographed. I want to put better pictures on my website.

The latest baby quilt, which my mom made and I paid to have quilted, is done. It has to be picked up from the quilter soon. She is quilting the Nosegay next.

More Weekend Work

Making strange mixed media works all weekend didn’t feel comfortable to me, so I sewed on Pineapples while the paint and various layers dried. I completed three more side border blocks. I wanted to make three more on Monday, and think I could have done it, but I had to work on the house a bit, so I did that: 2 days fun-work; 1 day: work-work.

More new fabrics. The two on the top left are replacements, but the others are new. Enjoy.

What a Messy Day!

After reading Cloth Paper Scissors all week, I got a bug in my ear to paint and layer stuff. It had been germinating for awhile and the CPS just put all the pieces together. I used to make book covers and postcards by cutting out pictures from magazines, gluing them down and covering them with contact paper. I still have at least one bookcover with such a collage. Not as sophisticated a process as the ones CPS describes, but creative nonetheless. I like to make things that are useful, I guess.

The World’s Finest Chocolate boxes are cool. Darling Boy sells chocolate from them every year and I love the shape. They are like little suitcases and I just couldn’t toss them out. I thought I could decorate them and make something.

First, I went through my supply closet and pulled out all of the possible supplies.

I am embarrassed to say that a number of the items were unopened. Some of the rubber stamps had never been mounted. It took some time to do all that.

Then I carted everything downstairs, covered the table DH had set up for me with newspaper and set out for the craft store. I knew, from reading CPS, that I needed Diamond Gel Medium. I don’t have a good art store nearby and the craft store didn’t have it so I reverted to some dark depths from my painting past and bought Gesso. On a whim, I also bought some Sparkle Glaze and some dotted scrapbook papers as well as a pack of cheap brushes.

Next, I covered the box with Gesso and let it dry.


Drying was a problem. I didn’t factor that into the whole process. Not only did the drying take a long time, but the layers weren’t completely dry even after I waited. I have to admit that I was impatient to engage in the process.
First I used a Stampin’ Up roller wheel and I stamped/rolled dots all over it in purple ink. I didn’t do that well, because I didn’t know how to ink the roller and roll at the same time. I wish I had paid more attention in Karenlee’s classes!

Next I ripped up some of the scrapbook paper and applied it with decoupage medium. I had some around from when I wanted to make a type of prayer box (still have the stuff, except for some of the decoupage medium).

After the first layer, I began to feel some confidence and added some more scrapbook paper (see the yellow ripped into circles?) and began to add other pictures.

I started to apply some magazine sayings and pictures. The decoupage medium gave the piece a bit of a shine.


The glitter I added didn’t turn out as nice as I had hope. I know it had to do with my inexperience. I didn’t really know how to apply the glue the right way to make the glitter spread evenly.

I also stamped the large cups and flowers on it. Some of the rubberstamping smeared after I put a layer of Sparkle Glaze on to finish the piece. This is pretty much how the outside of the finished piece looks.

This is the inside of the box. I just painted it with the Gesso just to make it a little nicer looking. My painting skills aren’t great, but maybe I will put some fabric inside or something.

I was really out of my comfort zone doing this project, which I think is good. I thought it was fun. It was good to have enough time, though I know now that I need to leave the piece to dry longer. It didn’t come out as well as I would have liked, but I am not ashamed of it either. I have some more of these boxes and might like to try this project again. It got something out of my system.