Archive for the ‘marbled fabric’ Category

….well, probably not a real bump, more like a slight detour in the development of this new piece. I am trying to represent depression as something that is hidden in the brain. I have a great center piece that looks like dendrites. I want to build around it in reds for the angst that comes with depression, and I was running into some issues with how to quilt the third piece. So I looked at the rest of the fabric pieces I had to see if anything looked like it would work better. Found a piece that will be fabulous, and it’s going to take a lot of quilting to make this piece really happen.

As I’m auditioning threads, hubby comes in for his opinion, and as I’m trying to explain what I want to attempt, he brings up some legitimate questions on construction. While this is an art quilt, it still needs to hang like a quilt in a gallery setting, so I have to keep that in mind. I’ve had issues when trying to construct “unusual” fiber pieces in the hanging, so I have learned to keep that more in mind.

We’re drawing back and forth on the ideas, and it finally occurs to me that I need to do a mock-up to see if this design is really going to work. If I can get it together, it should be pretty amazing. So that’s the task ahead of me tomorrow morning after marbling. It’ll set back the actual quilting a day or so, but next week looks pretty darn clear for work…..

With that in mind, it has been a productive week. I finished my commission for my yoga instructor. Did some minor beading to represent the little bits of water we have in the desert, hence the name “Desert Stream.” This is a smaller version, with a number of changes, from “The Shallows” piece. I’m quite partial to how the lichen looks in this piece….a lot of use of the reverse button on the sewing machine! My yoga lady LOVES it.

Along with this has been my auction piece for SAQA. It’s along the lines of the depression piece, but a whole lot more positive. It’s called “Hotwired.” It’s simple in execution, but I think pretty effective.

"Hotwired" 12 x 12 inches for the SAQA auction

Because there’s not enough deadline sin my life right now, I decided to take apart one of my first quilts to requilt for the May Free motion challenge. I love the pattern, and I think it would look good on this pretty masculine quilt for hubby. Boy, you can tell how old it is (15 years?) by the really lousy batting I used – what was CHEAP at the time. I’ll post pictures as it get finished. This is it with the binding already gone, and I am starting to take out the really awful straight-line quilting in the ditch…with invisible thread, no less, back when I didn’t really have a clue. Should look considerably better when finished.

NOw fort he other piece in progress, my piece on depression. I spent some time today actually trying a pattern from some old white fabric, pinning it up on the wall. It was an interesting process, as I usually just try things as I go along. This time I just wasn’t sure that was going to work, as there were a lot of issues I wanted addressed in this piece. Here’s the finished pattern – and now I have pattern pieces to use – a bonus I never considered.

 If I’d thought about it, it would have been in different colors……but I really like the shape – very organic, very like a brain. Here’s a reject piece of fabric, now available for another piece.

 It just wasn’t playing nicely with the other fabrics. Here’s one of the reds with the thread to remind you of the colors of a PET scan. The problem with this piece is going to be the photography – the red is showing pink, the black is showing red….not quite sure what I’m going to do, so I need to get it finished with time to spare for the final shots.

THis is a little better, but you can’t really make out the sheen of the thread.

So it’s been a busy week, and hopefully it will continue!

Busy week! The commission piece (the triptych that wasn’t) is done, awaiting beading. As I was on the floor at yoga last Friday, I was looking at a very skinny part of the wall and thought, this would be perfect for a long piece. On Thursday night I had started the stitching on the lichen, and I absolutely loved the way they worked out, and I no longer wanted to cut the piece into three. This skinny wall section will be perfect. So over the weekend I steamed and blocked the piece, got the binding on and hand-stitched down. Love it! Took it to yoga on Monday to show her, and she is thrilled. The only thing needed at this point is some blue beads along the “stream” to add an additional color and bring the piece together. Formal pictures next week when the beading is done.

Also completed are two new fiber bowls for my gift baskets of marbled fabrics, set to go up in the Etsy store. We’re doing pictures later today so I can get the stuff up in the store. Wrapping clothesline with fabric is the absolutely perfect activity for watching television at night.

And…I am finally starting another major piece that has been brewing for a couple of months. I’ve had the backing since October, and the marbled fabric was done in September. I finally got the batting two weeks ago, and today I made the sandwich, chose thread, and started the quilting. It’s sort of a whole cloth, but not really. There’s no piecing at this point until this center medallion is done, and then I’ll just kind of see what happens. This seems to be the way I work….intuitively, guessing along the way, trial and error. Most of the time it works.

Here’s the first focus fabric….very “brain-looking,” and I’m approaching it as though these were dendrites in the brain. Doing a thread check –

– going for the one on the top, as I like the black section in the thread…looks like the nerve endings are skipping, which is the look I want. The lower thread will be in the bobbin.

I started the stitching, and then I took everything out – not happy with tension, and I wanted to analyze the pattern yet again.

This picture, when I saw it through the view screen of the camera, made me somewhat upset. I couldn’t see the discrimination of the black and the blue through my own eyes. I am having to look at it through a photo, so I know where I want to stitch. THis is the first time that I am aware of my eyes not being true to what I am seeing and want to do. Doesn’t make me happy…..

So I took my own advice from the Monday Marketing post to just get in there and do the work…I did, and I have a lot to show for it, with more to come.

I’ve been sewing a LOT on the commission that needs to be done before I can move on to a couple of other projects. I am finding that setting specific number of times for sewing each day, as well as assigning specific times, is helping me make progress. Hopefully next Wednesday you’ll see the finished commission.

In other work, we’re experimenting with Margot Bianca, a batik artist we met at La Conner. Here’s her Etsy store. We traded a batik for a marbled fabric. Margot will batik on top of cotton that has already been marbled. We are going to marble on top of a piece that is already had wax. Here’s initial results. This first is the original batik and the marbled batik (we just did a small piece). I personally like the effect, and I think we could do some interesting combinations together.

Here’s a close-up of the piece after marbling.

And…since I haven’t been working on Photoshop lately, I just had to play around with a couple of filters – there are a lot of possibilities for art cards…..here’s an inversion.

Here’s a half-tone:

This one is poster edges.

And now for the emboss:

The other batik experiment is with a piece of linen that just has wax on it. I’m still working on ironing out all the wax……For this piece I think the marbling pattern needed to be more complex than just a basic stone, but again, I think there are possibilities.

Now waiting for batting and backing is the very beginning of my “depression” piece….which has a general idea, and it will speak to me as we go along.

This is an unpolished black satin.

Hopefully I will have a bunch o’ stuff next week!

Busy week! I’ve been dutifully getting a list made each day, and I am being pretty successful at accomplishing everything. The biggest news….I FINALLY have all the names entered to be able to start the newsletter. Next week it should arrive in your mailboxes….a mere 16 months after the last one. I’ma workin’ on it……

Here’s a couple of pictures of what’s been happening this week. We are waiting on about 10 years of pima cotton to get started on our next big order, as well as a large order of paints. Meantime, hubby is planning to marble some small test pieces for a couple of projects. First up, a piece of linen that has wax on it. We met a wonderful batik artist up at StashFest in La Conner, Margot Bianca. You can check her Etsy store here. We spent a lot of time talking, and we’re going to marble a piece of linen, and then Margot will dye it, and she is going to batik a piece of already-marbled cotton. Should be a lot of fun to experiment. We’ll show results as they happen.

The studio is ready for marbling. We can dry in the garage, but sometimes for pretreating, it’s just easier, especially if there are mostly small pieces, to set up the drying racks in the studio. We sure do know how to maximize space!

And we do recycle, as you can see from the OJ bottles – they are perfect for keeping carrageenan as the bubbles disappear and then get stored in the refrigerator. We always cover up the rugs, even though we are obsessively neat, because the one time we don’t, paint will spatter…..

I am currently finishing a piece for my yoga instructor, as we are bartering: art for yoga lessons. You may recognize the piece….this is the “remains” of my “Shallows” piece, and it is in the process of becoming a triptych. More on that as it gets finished, hopefully by next week.

Still lots of shading, binding, lots of beads so that we have a small stream running through the three pieces. And of course, my lichen……

I’m also trying to start the pattern for the seasons wall hangings. I’ve got the ideas, and potentially the right fabric. Here’s spring….

…and here’s summer…..

I may actually combine the two…it will depend on how it works out.

There’s lots more on the list, including a new book I am starting on tutoring. I need to schedule significant writing time, along with all the sewing. So far, so productive!

So the Etsy shop was on hiatus while we went to Seattle and back. I’ve added lots of new fabrics in cotton and basically restocked the store. Now, we have had some movement within the store. Certainly more this past year than totally since I opened the shop. But I feel like there is so much more I can do. I need to get the links done to my TAFA (Textile and Fiber Arts list) profile, and just generally think about how I can market this. By the end of the month I expect to have silks and some other specialty fabrics in the shop.

Ebay has been great for small pieces of fabrics and remnant bags. In fact, remnants have been the big seller on eBay, so we’ll keep it that way. I will use Etsy for the specialty fabrics, and the fabrics that are more expensive. This is one of the ways I feel we can specialize, and at the same time differentiate product. I need to do some reading on getting an Etsy store to be productive, so that is one of my goals for the rest of this month. By the end of May I want to have a couple of pattern kits in the store, complete with fabric. I have two of the samples made, and I am ready to start writing the pattern, as well as complete the remaining two samples. That’s my May goal.

I have sold a couple of small quilts in the store, so I should think about increasing a few of those, especially around the holidays. Speaking of holidays, I have not been able to take advantage of buying for specific days…and Mother’s Day is coming up. I need to think about how to incorporate that.

All that said, here’s a look at the fabrics waiting for you and your projects, be they quilts, wearable art, or applique. Perfect for that creative person you know!!

Oh my goodness, life is busy! We returned on Monday from StashFest, a benefit for the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum, with lots of new momentum and ideas for the business. I’ll be addressing some of the marketing issues and challenges in a later post. For right now, there are lots of new things in the works, as well as some current projects to finish.

We have two commissioned orders awaiting us. One has gone in the mail today to England, and the other is awaiting fabric and paint to arrive. On my walk this morning, I set myself the task to come up with what my “spring” and “summer” designs would look like for my seasons quilts. The marbled fabric is all ready to go, and I now have two specific designs in mind. This was a little trickier than fall and winter, because I still wanted to keep the log cabin basis for the new quilts. I’m hoping by the end of May to have the two new quilts finished and the pattern pretty much ready to go. Then I can consider the marketing for the kits.

I have a commissioned piece – a three-part triptych – that will pay for my yoga lessons, so I want to get that completed by this weekend. I have several small quilts that I am going to take apart and requilt, based on what I am learning with this year’s free motion quilting challenge. April’s lesson, about creating your own stencil, will solve my problem about wanting to do snowflakes for an old holiday quilt. I’m looking forward to trying this. The three quilts that I have requilted were all big hits at StashFest, as they were god examples of how marbled fabric can be used in traditional blocks. And I had LOADS of great feedback on how wonderful my quilting was. Yay me!

Now that I have installed Quilt Album software, I need to start putting in my quilts, especially since as I am traveling more, I can create an album to show at any time. This ties in to the portfolio we took with us to StashFest. We were able to show the article about us and the actual process through pictures, examples of Bernina garments that used our fabric, and other interesting patterns we had. The portfolio needs some updating….need to get that on the to-do list.

I really want to get to the DVD on quilting various marbling patterns. I need to perhaps start with just a couple of tutorials, and then let that determine where I go from there. As my quilting skills increase and improve, it will be interesting to see how that transfers to the marbled fabric.

Mainly I want to do a lot of sewing, designing, and quilting. So many ideas in my head! Hopefully next week there will be actual pictures to show……

I finished the quilt remake in time to get the suitcase packed full of quilts to take to StashFest. Of course, it couldn’t be quite that easy to pack the suitcase….ended up packing it three times, as I went to photograph the quilts for a new book, and the first set wasn’t high enough resolution. So we set up again, and this time there was too much light. So third time was the charm….setting up the room again, and unpacking/repacking the suitcase. But the photos are on there way now….and my new little quilt looks great!

When I left off, I was working around the various quilting motifs. The larger triangles had a zentangle-like stippling, and the area around the stars was much smaller stippling. I will definitely need to practice that so the stitches are really consistent. But I really like how the rosettes worked out.

I wanted to do feathers on the border and ran into tension problems…the background thread (Bottom Line) kept peeking through, and I finally decided I didn’t want o keep taking the feather out. So I changed the thread in the bottom to be the same as on the top – problem solved for the time being. The feathers go up half of each side. They’re pretty subtle, but I like them.

You can also see the corner squares. I actually marked those lines for consistency. I must say it was the first time I marked anything, and I will probably do it again. I liked the effect, but I need to consider what I’m going to use for marking, so it’s easy to get out.

I absolutely love the back! Yeah, there are some tension problems, but I am making SO MUCH progress.

I can certainly see the appeal of white whole cloth quilts. I feel the same about the backing quilting on my whole cloth marbled quilts.

And finally, hanging briefly on the wall before being packed:

Tomorrow I will be so ready to leave, and no doubt all the loose ends will be done by noon, so I am going to start taking apart another older quilt in preparation for some brand new quilting!

So I am totally enjoying the free motion quilting challenge, with a new pattern each month for the year. I LOVE doing feathers – never EVER thought I would be able to do them on my own. Now since I have these new skills, I have all these old quilts that look pretty blah…..and I’m going to take them all apart and use them for practice of all my new patterns. I started with a BOM (with Judy Martin blocks) I did in probably 2000, when we were selling marbled fabric in kits, as it seemed like so many people loved the fabric but didn’t really know what to do with it. I had a new block every two months (I had six small quilts, but I ended up selling two of them. I redid one of them last summer, after I looked at some videos from Sharon Schamber. This was originally all stitch-in-the-ditch quilting. Here’s my Monet’s Marbled Garden:

Next one I took apart was my fish quilt, with fabric marbled probably in the late 1990s. Again, just stitch in the ditch. With this one, I realized I could use a couple of decorative stitched on my machine, along with fmq. This time I actually quilted in the marbled fabric, following the lines of the pattern.

Then I decided to get another little one ready to take to the Seattle show, so I spent a weekend taking out all the stitch-in-the-ditch. No picture of “before,” but here’s the backing fabric:

Part of what was so much fun with this quilt was looking at each of the various sections and deciding what I wanted in each place. I happened to have four different Superior Threads that would blend perfectly, as the purpose with these small quilts was to show off the marbled fabrics. I used the Superior silk thread for the first time in the green sections and loved it. You can see in the stars I did some loops (more like zentangles) in the backgrounds of the stars, and did some free motion curves in the points. Everything is very subtle.

My free motion loops need work here. I think it’s a combination of speeding up the machine, as I do move my hands and the fabric pretty quickly with these loops. I’m not happy with the stitch size – very inconsistent, so I know I need more practice.

Now while I don’t subscribe to the quilt police, I really do like to have a ice back to the quilt. While I had some tensions problems, overall I am THRILLED with the back of the quilt. The whole thing finished is going to be gorgeous!

Of course I had to include some feathers, so each of the green squares has a circle of feathers – more like a rosette. Love them!

I thought I had more pictures, but evidently not. Tomorrow is a picture-taking day, so hopefully I’ll get the rest up. I need the feather borders, the white squares, and the back.

Later – packing for the trip!

   One would think that once you are in your 60s you would stop having mid-life crises…..evidently not……..Seems I am once again concerned with the direction my artistic life will take, now that I’m retired. This thinking has kind of evolved over the last two-three months, as I realized I had over-scheduled my retirement on a weekly basis. College algebra on Monday (which takes 6 hours on Monday, plus a good chunk of Sunday for preparation), tutoring on Tuesday afternoon, yoga on Wednesday, tutoring on Thursday afternoon, yoga on Friday……add in an unexpected move, and there’s been virtually no sewing time these last six weeks. Not a happy camper……

So what to do? I have one Monday after today to finish the term, and then I am putting this teaching on a long-term hold. One of the reasons I retired was because I didn’t want this grind any more. I know I could teach more classes, but aside from screwing up SSI, I really don’t want to get back into the teaching focus. Yoga is a constant; I will keep my two mornings a week. I feel good and I am making weight progress. I’m going to keep the tutoring, as it is more rewarding, doing the one-on-one work. I picked up an additional client short-term, and both clients now will be a total of 6 hours a week, spread out, over several months at a time. That’s fine, because I can adjust travel schedules as needed pretty easily.

All that said, nothing much has gotten done on marketing. It took me forever to find the time to get new business cards made for the Seattle trip. February just flew by in a blur. This week are are attempting to finish the last of the marbling for StashFest, and we have already started to put things aside for packing. Two weeks from today we will be somewhere in California, headed north. I decided to redo a smaller quilt from about 12 years ago, to take along another example of the marbled fabrics with more free motion quilting. Spent about five hours over the weekend ripping out stitches. Surprisingly calming, not that I need another project…..

The rest of the marketing for the quarter is on the back burner. Visions got completed and entered…and I learned last week that the piece didn’t get in. Oh, well….this time at least I am philosophical and not pissed. It’s still a great piece. But I am rethinking the entering-shows-again route. I will keep making art, regardless. I do work well with deadlines, however, so I need to keep that in mind. And I do want to get back to taking some classes on line, once we are  back from Seattle.

Still no newsletter, and blogging took a big hit for about three weeks……just when I was getting so close to 3000 visitors. How important is all that? At my age, being retired, just how much of the marketing/business work do I really want to do? I find that if I don’t have one or two days a week to just sit outside, read, and generally veg, I’m not happy. So it’s time for some rethinking. And time to enjoy this new trip that’s coming….never been to Seattle and Portland, so we’re saving our pennies, given gas prices and the fact that the tax refund was virtually non-existent, so we can have some fun…and  possibly buy some new art!

 Pun intended. I’m back, and the back is bad again…all that moving. We are actually marbling this morning, trying to finish everything for the northwest trip in less than three weeks. The move cost us a month, plus money that could have been spent on fabric. Expensive in several areas. If I hadn’t been doing yoga, I can’t imagine how sore I would be now. It’s sore, but I think that’s because I tried a few too many stretches unsupervised yesterday.

This move really did us in. Now, we are experts at the moving process, having done it numerous times. But this was more condensed – three weeks from signed a new lease, giving notice, and packing. Plus, we transported a lot more boxes than we normally do, and we set up a lot of things ahead of time: kitchen, bathrooms, closets, pantry. A week and a day later, most of the art work is up, and there are a few boxes of books and miscellaneous (my purple fabric….) that are still waiting to be unpacked.

Speaking of fabric……there are pros and cons to having a fabric stash when you’re moving. Pro – lots of soft fabric (no grimy newspaper) for wrapping all the precious items in the hutch. And you get to fondle the fabric. Con – lots of soft fabric that you can fondle again, as you refold and store.

It’s been interesting the reflecting I’ve done over the past week on our various moves. That needs to be a post in itself……got to get the rest of the boxes broken down for the recycling truck tomorrow.

Wow. Lots of new visitors to the blog – and WELCOME!!!! I said to hubby about three weeks ago “are we ever going to get past 1400 readers a month?” (according to Google Analytics), and the next thing I know, a mere three weeks later, we just passed 2100 readers this last month. Yay! I promise to make visiting worthwhile. We’re getting ready for our first newsletter this month, so please feel free to sign up (the link on the right), and be entered to win some free marbled fabric.

I have a tab on the top navigation bar that takes you to some resources. I invite you to view those. If you are interested in this marbling journey of ours, click here. Some are great art blogs that I follow regularly. I invite you to send me your URL if you have a blog. Others are resources I actually use, feel great about, and can recommend wholeheartedly. Yes, I am an affiliate of some of them, so I am attempting to make a few pennies off your clicks. But as I said on that page, nothing is there that I don’t trust implicitly. When I get time, I like to take a piece of really cool marbled fabric and work with it in Photoshop. You can see some of the journeys in Digital Marbling (TN), and we plan on adding lots more.

Tuesdays I try to include cool stuff I’ve found on the web the previous week. I go through a lot of blogs and try to include interesting, amazing, unusual – and of course weird – links for you. I try to keep Wednesdays for works-in-progress, but right now the WIP is for an entry and I can’t show details….Mondays I try to give you some marketing advice – sometimes what I’m doing that I find helpful, and sometimes links to how other people are doing it amazingly well.

Lately I’ve started my own “Brain Dump,” as a way of making my list and then checking it off to see how I’m doing with projects. Sometimes there’s just too much floating around, and the mental noise makes us nuts. This is what I’m trying to do, and I invite you on Sundays to add your own Brain Dump for the week and see how you do. Each Sunday I’ll do my own brain dump and ask you to do yours in a comment. Then the following week you can post how you did….I may set up a FB page for this……

And now a SALE…..through Sunday at midnight ONLY. Any Sampler 1 package from our website at 15% off, and 15% off anything on our Etsy site. Now if you need to see what you buy, then the Etsy offerings are for you. If you want to be pleasantly surprised, then the website deals are for you.

Here’s how each works. On Etsy, we have some small art quilts that are mostly marbled fabrics, and a lot of pieces of marbled cotton – and one exceptional piece of red silk – even better in person than in the picture. Decide what you want, and the discount is taken at checkout. This week’s coupon: WK1SPECIAL

On the website we have a page that shows patterns, but what you get is a surprise to you. The swatches are marbled depending on mood, desire for different patterns, and colors. So if you like surprises, this is a deal! Code: SAMP1 Coupon Code.

We hope you’ll take time to browse the website and look at the fiber art we’ve created using marbled fabrics. Some of these pieces have traveled to juried shows. We have a few that need to get into the galleries, and we have a line of ideas just waiting for the time to become new fiber art.

You can follow us on Facebook – I am trying to get better about posting regularly. Sometimes deadlines just govern everything else! You can follow along on Twitter.

You can visit us at the La Conner Quilt Museum in April at Stashfest. We will have marbled fabric available to sell as part of the fundraiser for the museum.

And if you visit, please leave a comment. I always write back – it’s SO COOL to hear form people! So WELCOME again! Ain’t stitchin’ grand?

 Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness…..and I could go on! What an amazing four days of art we just had….and we did quite a bit of marketing along the way. We just returend from Road 2 California – my first large quilt show since Market in 2003, and hubby’s first large quilt show. Two days of amazing quilts (photos to follow this week, after I get myself reoriented to basic life here….), plus a day at the Getty Museum – and coping with I-405….interesting experience there……

One of the best things I did in preparation for the show was bring three really great fat quarters with me, just in case someone was “interested” in seeing marbled fabric. One fat quarter went to the “quilt royalty” that was at the show, and one went to Susan Else, the guest artist – she will definitely have something different to use in her sculptures.

It was really helpful as we were looking at some of the cool tools to pull out the actual fabric and ask questions very specific to its use. This was particularly true at the Pellon booth, as we were talking we began to realize that if we are to take our fiber work to the next level, we need to seriously consider what is used in between the layers. We looked at embroidery machines, as I really would like to include some machine embroidery in the new pieces, and we had a fascinating discussion with the Brother people that could potentially lead to some licensing opportunities.

I collected a lot of business cards, as there was either a really interesting tool or embellishment I want to share. Hardly any book dealers, which is why I may need to consider Market this year or next. Speaking of books….I got home to about 300 emails, one of which was a request for photos to be in a book. That’s definitely a follow-through for this week. Renewed my Quilt Show membership so I can keep up with what’s happening in the field.

Interesting marketing observations. One company with really interesting hand-painted fabric doesn’t have a website. They only sell at shows. They don’t want to photograph fabric so people can see exactly what they are going to buy. I understand that; that’s precisely why there are some online venues that won’t take us, because they feel the need to photograph every piece of fabric. That’s why we sell on eBay and Etsy – what you see is what you get. We have a note on our ordering page on our website about why there aren’t pictures. We don’t get many orders off the website, but that’s okay, because we have other venues. No hand-marbled fabrics at the show, but there was a booth with commercial marbled fabric; nice line of fabric, much more subtle than what has been released by major companies in the last few years. Lots of quilts made up – using a stained glass approach – using the marbled fabric. Interesting to see.

Some booths had absolutely no information, beyond a business card with only an email. I tried making notes, but I figured there’s no way I’d be sharing that information. No web presence, and no pictures allowed to let people know what was available. Hopefully they make enough doing shows to make it worth their while. We couldn’t do that; the press of making fabric for our Seattle trip is enough.

It’s probably the most fun to put names and faces to cyber contacts and to ooh and aah at the gorgeous artwork. We went through the quilts twice, making sure we didn’t miss anything, and trying to find time to just enjoy the quality workmanship. I wouldnt have been able to take this amount of time had I not been retired…..

And after all that, as I was perusing and cleaning out emails, I stumbled across this older email that I hadn’t read, from resident web guru Suzan. I know there are more applications to marketing than meets the eye, but since we artists rely on our hands to make our art, this seems interesting food for thought. A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design.

Stay tuned – lots of pictures in the works!!!

I’ve written that one of my goals for this first quarter of the year is to create some new artwork to enter into a few select juried shows. Joanne Mattera had a really interesting blog post on Monday about entering shows: When Do You Stop Entering Shows?

Certainly timely for me. Her checklists of questions to ask yourself are excellent. I had success about 10 years ago with a series of shows I entered, especially Expressions in Textiles, which was more an early art-quilt venue. I would consider this my first prestigious show. I have success entering a show in Alaska each year, which is an art show, and fortunately for me they like fiber entries. I stopped entering a lot of shows from about 2006 on for two reasons: I was teaching full time and had  very little time for creating art, and entry fees were expensive (moderately so nbow, but I must say, being able to do online entries is a blessing). The entry fee was groceries. Then I entered an art quilt show two years ago and was rejected. Aside from being P.O.’d, when I looked at the artists selected, they were the “same ole – same ole” quilt artists whose work is very recognizable. That’s when I figured I wasn’t going to play with the “big girls” any more. I needed to make work for me.

Hence my decision to try for Visions and a SAQA show this year….there, I’ve said it. Big time. If I am selected, these will be two huge pieces for my resume. Which brings me back to Joanne’s article. “But at a certain point—a tipping point, let’s think of it—you want to see your exhibition experience evolve into opportunities in which you are invited to participate.”

Yup, that pretty much says what I am aiming for. Joanne goes on to say: “Indeed, most dealers looking at an artist’s resumé want to see that evolution. ‘When I see a string of juried shows on a mid-career artists’s resume, I have to ask, ‘Where’s the progression?’ says a dealer I know.”

I know I’m making progress in creating art, and I want to be mindful of shows that would add value to my resume and future opportunities. Quilt shows aren’t going to do it for me. Some art quilt shows? Visions, SAQA, Tactile Architecture…..probably. I’m not interested in dealing with the “quilt police.” My work is not mainstream quilting, although that’s a skill I use. A number of years ago we had our work in a now-defunct fiber gallery in Scottsdale. At the time I was doing different things with my “bindings.” I was serging or facing the edges of my art quilts because the technique helped enhance the message of the piece. The gallery owner – a fairly traditional quilter who worked with bright fabrics and called them art quilts – was appalled that I didn’t have regular bindings on my quilts, and she wouldn’t take a couple of pieces without regular bindings. Well, to my way of thinking, a binding would have constricted the design in a way I didn’t want.

Those pieces are now all in private collections, and I’m still spreading my wings as an artist, trying all different kinds of techniques.

Some shows I do enter – nonjuried, no-fee art shows, where fiber will be accepted. The Tikkun Olam show was an easy show, a twelve-by-twelve piece dealing with the theme, and it could be any media. I did receive a lot of feedback about the piece and some interesting opportunities – and a lot of interesting lessons (just because you say you’re a curator doesn’t mean you’re especially good at it….). There is another show like that coming up that I plan to create work for.

In retrospect, I am on the right track. My decisions seem based in reality and forward movement for me. We’ll see how everything plays out. I am behind on my piece for the Visions show, but I have a month…..less, when I think about photography, but I’m almost there…..a solid week of sewing (which will have to be next week…) should finish it for me. And then on to the rest of the first quarter list.

Ya know, I’m not really sure.  I have a few goals this year of entering a couple of shows, and a couple of proposals for galleries, but I keep wondering about the work I am doing. First of all, I really love the art that I am creating. I’ve had a love affair with fabric for years, and now that we are turning out some really great pieces with our marbling, I love it even more. But I feel like there’s a lot more.

The big change for me in how I looked at my fiber came when a quilting friend took a piece of marbled fabric and quilted it all over. I had secretly suspected there was a lot more I could do with embellishing the fabric, and Ellen showed me I was definitely on the right thinking track…it took me a year or so of playing with threads and the sewing machine and my ideas to create something that I really felt was good – and different.

I’ve written before about entering shows and getting rejected. Hey, it happens. It’s to be expected. Wjen I objectively look at work accepted into shows (like it’s really possible to be totally objective….), I am struck by how “quilty” the pieces are, even those billed as art quilts. I also can recognize styles and “names,” and I keep looking for something really different that pushes the boundaries of fiber as art. And then I always figure it’s just me and sour grapes.

Now here’s where I’m not sure just what it is I am trying to say. And this has been brought on by a post by Elizabeth Barton, an art quilter and artist and juror of art shows. “Quiltopee” was a post about a week ago that has me pondering. Here’s the beginning of her blog:

“Quilters often say they wish that “they” (critics, museums, galleries, collectors, the public) would recognize quilts as a mainstream art medium.  Other media, for example photography,  have developed to the extent that most museums now include  photographs in their collections and display them regularly.   So, why not quilts? At least part of the answer is that quilts have not developed from their early beginnings in anything like the way that other media have.”

I find this really intriguing. Art quilts seem to be the rage, and I see some pretty amazing ones. But I also see “art quilts” that seem to take everything that can be done with thread and fiber and machine quilting and throw it all together, just because you can. I subscribe to the philosophy that “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” Just because you can machine quilt something to within an inch of its life doesn’t mean that’s what your piece really needs. Yet those seem to be the quilts that are getting in to shows and winning awards.

Elizabeth continues: “Contemporary art is rich, diverse, and unpredictable.  While  painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and crafts are still popular,  new media  are more likely to be seen in contemporary art shows: film, video, audio, installation, performance, text, computers.  And media are frequently mixed.  It’s hot to use an “old” medium  in a new way: paintings that are pixilated, drawing with chocolate. But how many quilts have you seen made from chocolate? (though it’s a grand idea!).”

She goes on to say (and this is what really struck me): “But I’m afraid, and correct me if I’m wrong(!), we don’t see these kinds of things in quilts.  Quilters tend to stick very much to making quilts the way they were always made.  There’s nothing wrong in this, but that’s one reason why the contemporary fine art world is not very interested.  They’re not so interested in paintings made the traditional way either.”

Hmmmmm. I’m doing things with fiber and marbling – an unconventional marriage to begin with – and adding thread, additional painting, unusual hangings/display means. So much so that people who look at my work don’t know what to call it….”Is that supposed to be a quilt?”

Well, no. It’s art, it hangs on the wall. You can look at it, appreciate the subject matter, mayne think about how it was made. But how does it affect you? What do you see? Forget the “why isn’t it a regular quilt?” They don’t see any underlying message to the subject matter.

Elizabeth finishes with ” I think that the answers to questions as to why art critics arn’t interested in quilts are evident in both formal and content areas:  quilters don’t really want to stretch the medium to uncomfortable (if not breaking) lengths, nor do many of them want to address some of the contemporary issues evident in main stream art.  As I said before, neither good nor bad, but, rather, why!”

The small fiber piece I created in response to the Tucson shootings upset a few people. The subject matter was raw; it was created during the first week after the shootings that killed 6 and left 13 wounded. One snarky comment (anonymous, of course) in our local paper said, “Where was she with a quilt to wrap up Hitler? That would have saved some lives.”

As I’m writing this post, I’m also processing. The Art from the Heart website does contain art quilts – and other media –  with a message. They probably wouldn’t be accepted into any kind of art quilt show. But they are addressing contemporary issues. So am I ahead of myself? Am I pushing myself in other directions that the fiber world is ready for – the quilting world isn’t – and may never be?

I am really interested in your comments to this post, and Elizabeth’s ideas in general. You can see some of my earlier fiber work on our website. The more “message-driven work hasn’t made it up yet. One of my goals for the first half of the year……

So a while back – like the end of November – I did goals for my third season of practicing abundance and attraction. December was pretty melancholy for me, made more so by the fact that I couldn’t seem to get it together to work on my new goals. So I decided on a “do-over.”

January 1 came and I was into the zone. We’ve been marbling like crazy for StashFest in Seattle the end of March. And selling on eBay and sewing like crazy. So I recognized I would need to take some time and look at what was planned already for the first quarter and then build on and in those plans. January first we both sat down and looked at what was ahead of us to get ready for StashFest, and once the calendar was blocked out, I knew what I wanted to add.

First, updating my profile on The Textile and Fiber Arts List, which has a totally new design. This will take a while, but I need to get it done.

Second, update my Etsy site with more fabrics. I am getting down (a good thing) because of the holidays, and I want to get at least two more gift baskets up on the site.

Third, make a list of art shows available through June that I could enter. This looks at what work is already done and acceptable, and my availability for doing new work. I narrowed to five shows, of which two need significant new pieces. I am up for that challenge, as the fabric is already created for one of the entries.

Fourth, newsletters. For some reason this has been really difficult to work on….don’t really know why, except I read so much about how great your newsletters need to be and I think it intimidates me. I also have to figure out how to work Mail Chimp…..There will be two newsletters: a general one once a month, and a collectors one once a quarter.

Fifth, the portfolio needs a major overhaul in preparation for Seattle. This shouldn’t take long, once I get to it. Along with this are additional business cards and postcards. I just need to get the images set for these.

Sixth, continue normal marketing. the blog is continuing, and readership has increased, due to my posting on the FMQ list as I quilt along. I don’t tweet as much as I should, but I do post on Facebook. I haven’t been as regular with postings on the Facebook fan page, and that needs to change. I also need to comment on more blogs – get out of Google reader and pass on comments.

So those are the goals, keeping in mind by March 15 we need 400 fat quarters…..with today’s marbling we will be at 75 (and that’s just since December 30), so I’d say we are on track…….

What have you decided to do for marketing for this first quarter of a brand new year?