Dots or no dots?

I have the major part of “It’s Rigged” stitched down. Now I need to decide whether to create dots where the pinheads were in the blocked piece. EB liked the pinheads as a design element even though I did not intend them to be.

Here are photos with and without the dots. The dots are from a black fabric with white dots.

Which way would you go? Dots or no dots? If you like dots do I need more dots. I basically put them where the pinheads were. I need to decide by tomorrow because I have to get quilting on it.

Linking to Off the Wall Fridays.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Chris

“It’s Rigged”: Lost and Found Edges

Finished up my blocked September quilt on lost and found edges and sent it off for feedback from EB.

I did have some concerns. Are the lost edges of the wind turbines lost enough? EB had said that I should have fewer windmills than I had in my sketch. So is 3 the right number and are they in the right place?

This is my feedback from EB.

“I think this looks quite stunning - I like those little beady eyes on the oil pumps!!  maybe they're thinking the wind pumps are creeping up on them! let's hope!  While, as you note, the lost edges in the windmills are not that much lost, they do fade softly into the back ground...and also your foreground really has a lot of disappeared edges too.  I like the little white dots!  If they are pin heads - you're going to have to stitch French knots or something!! because they do add to the design!
I think it's balanced out very well now..and there are no more changes that you need to make.”

EB sure hates when the pins we are using stand out in the blocked quilt!  HAHA..beady eyes indeed!  She knows exactly what they are. I know that she has commented about quilts blocked out by others in the class and their pins. This is the first time she has said something about mine and I have used these pins before!

What do you think? Do I need to have French knots? My first thought it to reject that notion because what are they really in terms of this scene? 

Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Around the World Blog Hop (Monday, September 15, 2014)

I’m very excited to be part of the Around the World Blog Hop. I was invited  last week by Bonnie of Institches with Bonnie.  You can read her blog hop post HERE.  The theme of the hop is to answer some questions about our creative process and to invite others to join in the fun.  At the end of this post you can see my invitees. So here we go…..

What am I working on?

My main focus this year has been the Master Class that I am taking online with Elizabeth Barton. I have always loved her work and have taken several courses with her at the former Quilt University. For this class we are given the lesson on the first day of the month. We have until the 10th to submit our sketches, the 20th to submit the blocked out quilt, and by the end of the month to finish it. At each stage Elizabeth critiques us. The lessons have been on things like value, line, nature, rhythm, letters in quilts.Here are my quilts from the class which runs until the end of the year. The sizes of the quilts varies and are not really to scale in these photos.  I am pretty happy with what I have accomplished so far this year in this class.

 

 

 

I am currently working on the one for September on Lost and Found Edges and have only gotten as far as the sketches and the beginning of the blocking out process.

 

 

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I have a background in physics and math and I think that comes out in my quilts. In fact several have science themes. This year I have created the start of an energy series (windmills, coal stacks, and oil rigs/windmills. I still make traditional quilts when needed, but mostly I focus on art quilts. I think the fact that I do both is different than some people. But who knows….maybe that is not unusual.

I know one thing that either may be the same or different than others is that I am very slow at this process. I have a tendency to over analyze things like fabric choices. I think that is often the battle between the left and right sides of my brain…my creative and mathematical sides. Even when the quilt is completely done I am still trying to figure out where it could have been better. I guess that’s what series are for.

So maybe the bottom line is that what I do is not that different….

 

Why do I create what I do?

I have been doing art in one form or another since I was a small child. I have sketched, painted, metal punched, woven, made clothing, screen printed, dyed and painted fabric, and quilted. Once I found quilting 30 years ago I found my creative outlet. It is just something that I have to do and that I enjoy doing. Seems I have to be doing something creative. 

One of my favorite quilts that I have made over the last several years is my cardinal quilt. Boy did I have fun with this one. My machine quilting improved a lot with it. It was the quilt that made me think for the first time that I could really do this art quilt stuff successfully. This quilt is about 30 in by 40 in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linking to other artists

I asked several people if I could link to their blogs and thank goodness 2 of my favorites agreed. Unfortunately I could not get a third person to agree to do this. The two artists that I am linking to will post their blogs next Monday, September 22. Both are really worth checking out. Make sure you check them out now and on the 22nd when they continue the blog hop with their posts.

 

artist one

First is my good friend Sheila of Idaho Beauty’s Creative Journey. Sheila does amazing quilts as well as making journals, padfolios, and cloth baskets. Please visit her. Sheila has been a great help to me when I have been stuck on a quilt with very generous feedback. I wish I could move to Idaho to hang out with her, go for a hike, and see her quilts in person. Sheila has had her quilts displayed a few times in places like coffee shops. She is one very creative lady.

artist two

Second is Deborah Lyn of Deb’s artistic impressions. Deb does a variety of things as well. She is a wonderful watercolor painter, a portrait painter, a fiber artist and an interviewer. Currently she is doing a series of watercolors called a Virtual Paintout.  You should check out her paintings, fiber art and her series of interviews. Hey she even interviewed me!

Thanks for reading my blog. Make sure you check out the 2 artists that I invited to join me in the blog hop.

I have to publish this one day early because tomorrow I will be teaching all day and I have been having issues with my computer starting up. Not sure it will start up tomorrow. Right now I have to get back to backing up files just in case!

Chris

Feedback and thinking

 

 

For the most part EB liked my sketches. This is what she said:

I like the way the windmills make the oil pumps look like little ants!!  I think this works very well...I wonder if you need quite so many windmills though?  since a windmill can go on "making power" for ever...and an oil pump can only pump up what's there and then it's gone - it would be a nice conceit to show that one or two windmills will provide, in the long run, as much power as the pumps.  Also I don't think you need the extra pump on the right...it looks stronger, I think without it.
I've done a couple of oil pump quilts - they're great shapes to work with!!  good luck!
another thought would be to have the oil pumps black, the windmills in the lightest value and the sky a medium value....emphasizing the point even more...

So I roughly sketched it out in EQ to start trying out fabrics. This is what I have so far.

 

Medium sky, light windmills, dark oil rigs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light sky, medium windmills, dark oil rigs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dark sky, medium windmills, light oil rigs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I look at these they all seem to work. I like all three. Of course the big question is what fabrics do I actually have? What mood do I want to set? I do have the sky and windmills in the 2nd one with the light sky. In fact the sky and windmills are scanned from fabrics that I already have.

What do you think? Which way would you go?

Chris

Lost and found. Hard and soft

We got our new lesson for my master class. This time it is about different kinds of edges in a quilt. The edges between fabrics can be sharp or fuzzy is how I interpret the lesson. Sharp is achieved by strong contrast between the fabrics and fuzzy with less contrast. The soft edges leaves some things up to the imagination of the viewer instead of spelling it all out.

I have had a little experience with this. A few years ago I made a blended quilt. For this kind of quilt some of the edges blur together due to the fabrics chosen and the design is harder to see. I found making this quilt a challenge since generally as quilters we chose fabrics that have a lot of contrast to make the design stand out. In a blended quilt parts stand out and some do not (lost and found edges). My quilt was made of reds and greens and tans and some of the stars stand out and some do not. It was made as a Christmas quilt, but hangs year round because I like it so much. A blended quilt uses a lot of large scale fabrics to help create the effect.

 

 

Even in my master class I have had a little bit of experience with this concept although at the time I had no idea I was using it. My Misty Morning Piper quilt had sharp and fuzzy edges. So as soon as EB gave us our latest lesson the thing that came to mind was how fog creates this effect in nature. Some of the edges are lost and some are found.

 

 

 

 

 

When I received my critique of my smoke stack quilt from last month EB had suggested that I might be able to continue my “energy” series with September’s lesson. So that is what I decided to do. This time I wanted to combine oil rigs and wind turbines. Here are my sketches that I sent to EB.

My original sketch with windmills barely visible in the background. This is a bit hard to show in a sketch. I think this might be easier to do in fabric than with pencil and paper!

 

I used the reverse filter in Photoshop to see how it would look with the values reversed.

I wonder what EB is going to say. What do you think? Do you like the original sketch or the reverse better? Have you ever done a quilt with lost and found edges?

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Linking up to Nina-Marie.

Chris