More black thread

As Gerrie said, I am in "can't make just one" mode with these little what-shall-we-call-them?—thread drawings? Yes, my favorite of yesterday's offerings was the first one. Simple is always better, I think.

Now, about the thread. Patti Lee, from Sulky, actually sent me two weights of thread to try.

Yesterday's pieces were sewn using the lighter weight of the two—30 wt. long staple cotton. The little piece, above, was sewn using the heavier one—12 wt. long staple cotton. Both have a notation on the spool to use a top-stitch needle. I didn't have a top-stitch needle handy, so I took a chance with my regular all-purpose needle and had no trouble with either weight. They are both really nice threads to use, but I am quite enamored of the heavier one I used today. It is heavier, but not stiff like quilting thread sometimes is and has a very nice texture and noticeable twist to it. Someone asked me if it is like buttonhole thread. Softer, I'd say, though would probably make lovely buttonholes.

Black thread

I feel like I have been on quite a roll these past few months and have gotten a lot accomplished. I have made several sizable pieces for entry into shows. Today I decided it was time to loosen up and play a little with some quick, experimental work.

You might remember some small pieces I did last year, using some of my doodle ideas, drawn with black thread on fabric.When I went to Cleveland for the Quilting Arts TV taping in March, I had a couple of those pieces with me to use as samples of my edge finish technique. There were two women there taping a segment who work for Sulky. They were interested in those doodly pieces and thought I might like to try some of the heavier weight matte cotton threads that Sulky makes. Last week a nice little box of goodies arrived from Sulky with a couple kinds of threads and some of their stabilizers. So today I tried out some of their heavier black thread to do the "drawing" on these little pieces. Really nice thread to work with. I like the look of it a lot.

These are all very small pieces—5" square and altogether took only a couple of hours this afternoon. Very fun to work on. I pulled from my little box of scraps and didn't pre-plan. All are intended as pure abstract forms, though my 3-year-old granddaughter pointed at the aqua background piece and said, "that's the beach," which for some reason I had been thinking myself. I have a favorite. Do you?

Mothers' Day

We've had a lovely day here. Got up early and, as Ray says, hit it hard. I started cooking. Ray vacuumed and swept off the porch and walks. We put the leaf in the table and set it for company. We had planned brunch to celebrate Ray's birthday and Mothers' Day. Yesterday I got a call from an old friend. He and his wife were here in Portland for several days. Their 2-and-a-half year-old granddaughter had been life-flighted from So. Oregon to Portland last week for surgery for a serious condition. She is still in the hospital, but doing very well and expected to recover completely. So a good outcome to a scary event. They were able to join us for brunch this morning and we caught up with their lives and family and had a very good time.

Our friend and his wife have been married for a long time now, but at one time, long time ago, he was married to my cousin and part of our family. I felt pretty devastated when he and my cousin split up. We liked him so much and we would miss having him as part of our family celebrations and everyday life. But life moves on and we have stayed in touch, even after we moved to Portland. He remarried. My cousin remarried. And they are both happy and living the lives I believe they were meant to live.

So, lots of family, lovely friends, flowers, funny birthday cards and sweet Mother's Day treats, a big ham, fresh biscuits, orange juice and champagne; good coffee, sunshine and time to enjoy it all, made for a near perfect day.

After everyone went home, I finished up my second version of the solar lantern.(Here's the first) This one has slightly longer legs to sit rather than hang. The proportions are a bit different and I used a little heavier bamboo in a beautiful reddish color. I had a comment on the first lantern from a blog friend who felt the bamboo structure was too prominent and suggested I might enclose more of the bamboo inside the fabric. Interesting observation and I considered it, but in the end decided that I like that structural element as part of the design. I did work out the way I connected the pieces, lashing them with black crochet thread, into a neater configuration. I am pleased with that. I left it out on the deck for the afternoon to charge up the solar light, but brought it in this evening when it started to rain. So the night time photo was taken inside and the light was not well charged. Still, I like the glow of the batik colors.

I'm off to bed now. I just stepped outside and there is still a little rain softly falling. The frogs are singing in the darkness and it smells like green and growing things. I think spring is finally here.

Oregon Coast

So, here is the glass float piece finished. It measures 25" x 35". You would never know, looking at this photo, really how large or small it is. The glass float is larger than life-size, though I guess there are some pretty big ones. My model was about 8" in diameter. It's a pretty simple piece, both color and detail-wise. A little unusual for me. I enjoyed the process, maybe more than the end product, but I will submit it for the show and see what happens. Like so many things I am tired of looking at it, so I have lost most of my perspective. I was pretty pleased with the way the seafoam worked out. It is always kind of fun to try something different and have it behave as expected. You can see it a bit more closely in the detail, below.

I had a couple questions about the curved quilting using the little cardboard template. A couple people asked how I kept the piece of cardboard in place. I just held it there while I stitched alongside it. Not hard to do. Someone else suggested that I should make my template out of freezer paper and iron it down. Look at this thing! That's a lot of ironing and stitching and peeling and ironing and stitching and peeling and ... Unnecessary. The cardboard template is easy—really.

Thanks for all the suggestions regarding the attack robin. Somebody suggested borrowing a BB gun. Whoa! You want me to shoot my eye out?! So far today the robin has been quietly sitting on the nest. If she (I'm now thinking it's a "she" since she is sitting on the nest) commences attacking the window again my next strategy will be to lower the blinds, though I hate to lose the light and the view.

Drivin' me crazy

For several weeks we have had a robin who has been attacking our hall window. He(she?) repeatedly flings himself at the window, then plummets to the ground. You can see him above plummeting.

PHWAP! 

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PHWAP!

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PHWAP!

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PHWAP!

Over and over and over and... You get it. Driving me crazy and also making me worry about the poor bird's tiny, simple little brain.  I finally discovered that he/she is building a nest in the rhododendron just outside the the living room window. Not easily visible, but I think if you look closely you can see it.

This makes me wonder if the bird is seeing the bamboo blinds inside, that are visible at the top of the window, thinking they are a source of twiggy stuff for the nest. I don't know. Ray's theory is that the bird is mentally ill. He will surely be mentally impaired if he keeps this up. And, of course, I am well on my way over the edge too, as I sit here at my computer and listen to the phwapping.

I remember seeing where people put black silhouettes of hawks on large windows to deter birds from flying into them. I am not inclined to try this, especially since I truly enjoy the view out that window as it is, hawk-free. And this doesn't seem to be a case of a bird accidentally flying into the window. This guy starts out on the ground below the window, then purposefully flings himself into the glass. Aye, yi, yi. I had a little gel kind of window sticker that I put on the window, thinking that might discourage him. It didn't. Today I remembered a little leaded glass butterfly I never hung up anywhere when we moved and I dug it out and hung it at the window. It's been about 20 minutes now and the bird hasn't hit the window since. Maybe I've found a solution. Maybe.

 

Update: An hour later the bird is back, launching himself at the window. Now what?

Smooth curves

I have a real thing about curves.I'm not talking about anybody's figure, I'm talking about lines in art. Curved lines. I have a thing about smooth curves, that's what it is. There are undecipherable (for me) mathematical descriptions and definitions of what a smooth curve is, but to me it is more a "know it when you see it" sort of thing.
For example: top=clunky, un-smooth curve. Bottom=smooth curve.
In my opinion nice smooth curves are something that you don't really notice (as it should be) but clunky curves make a piece look amateurish and graceless.

I really want to avoid those clunky un-smooth curves. To me they jump out of an otherwise nice piece of artwork like a sore thumb. I really worked hard on the curves in my 12 x 12 volcano piece (last post). There is still one little bobble that bugs me. I won't tell you where it is, but I'm sure if you look closely you will see it.

Drawing smooth curves takes practice and has a lot to do with using your whole arm  and drawing the curve in one action rather than just your hand making ee-ee-ee little curve sections. Painting, the same. For technical drawings there are templates called "French Curves" that are made to assist in drawing smooth curves. My Dad had a set of these in his mechanical drawing supplies. I was always intrigued by them and thought the one on the top right looked like a sled. Kind of pretty, aren't they? 

Another curve drawing tool is called a "flexible curve". It is like a flexible ruler. You can bend it into a variety of curves, then trace along the edge. I have one that I used a lot when drawing up patterns to sell.

Nowadays one uses a computer drawing program for most of these kind of tasks and the Bezier curve pen tool is the best tool for making smooth curves.

I am pretty good at drawing fairly nice smooth curves, but I find sewing nice curves is challenging. I am doing a lot of curved quilting on the glass float quilt, so I made myself a little cardboard template of a nice curve. I can just lay it down on the fabric, hold it in place and stitch alongside the edge. It is also very useful in deciding where the next line of quilting will go and what the angle of the curve should be as I work. You do have to be careful not to stitch into the cardboard. (I have done it several times—maybe you can see a little fuzzy edge where I had to pull stitching out!)

So, there's a little tip that might be useful to someone else.

Twelve by Twelve reveal day!

Today the latest round of the ongoing Twelve by Twelve colorplay challenge is revealed! Our member in Hawaii suggested the color palette based on the colors of Kilauea volcano. Of course no sooner did she offer up the challenge than volcanoes began erupting around the world! My piece is called "Flow". The many interpretations of this theme are fascinating. Take a look!

Friday news roundup

Working away on quilting the sandy background for the glass float piece today.I like the way it is shaping up. I probably won't show it again until it is finished.

It was a day of odds and ends and catching up and moving forward. It was a good luck sort of day too. I found my Dr. Slick scissors that I have been searching for for weeks. Of course I wasn't looking for them when I found them. I was looking for a spool of thread, which I found, and there were the scissors in the bottom of a plastic box that I'm pretty sure I searched last week. I think gremlins move things around in my house. Do you have that problem?

I know I have written here about these scissors before, but they are so great and I am so glad to have found them, that I have to say again how perfectly useful they are. They are made for fishermen and fly tying, but they are perfect little scissors for trimming threads when quilting and doing needlework. The blades are curved, making it less likely that you will snip into your quilt when you trim close. The tips are wonderfully sharp and will pick up the tiniest stitch to clip. They are pretty besides, smooth and beautifully made and the finger loops are roomy and very comfortable.

I also got a nice little package today from Deb Lacativa. It was a wooden printing block from India. She had picked it up at a yard sale, didn't find that she used it, so she sent it off to me. It will join my growing collection.  I love them. I use them for printing directly on fabric, or rubbing. They can also be used to apply wax for batiks. I made a quick little rubbing just to show you how nice it is!

 These are the other printing blocks I have.


What a nice thing to share a tool or material with another artist. I have a piece of African fabric that I have had for a long time. I'm not sure I would ever use it, but it looks like something Deb might use. I know she sent me the block with no expectation of anything in return, but I'm sending her this fabric. I can't wait to see if she finds something to use it for.

Name of the beautiful purple flower

This, just in from my blog friend, Joanne. "The flower's name is Osteospermum.   A Proven Winner annual." Joanne works at a nursery, so I knew she'd know. Thanks!

They are, apparently, a native of Africa and come in a vast number of colors. Mine looks a little beaten down by the rain today. I hope it perks up. The picture was taken last week when it was looking a little livelier.

Struggling with the sand

It was really interesting to read the comments on people's preferences regarding diagonal or horizontal lines in the sand background. I think either could work but Diane hit on exactly why I was leaning toward the horizontal lines when she said, "To my eye, the horizontal lined background emphasizes the float more. The diagonal lines are striking, but somehow that takes away from the serenity of (what I imagine to be) still sand. So I like the horizontal lines better..."  I, too, liked the more serene feel of the horizontal lines and they seemed to offer a more solid foundation for the float. I also liked the rhythm of horizontal lines. Diane is one of the Twelve by Twelve artists and as I have gotten to know her I notice how often our thinking seems to align. So much so that for two of our challenges we made extraordinarily similar pieces. Thanks for your thoughts, Diane!  I always value your opinion, because I think we share similar goals in what we're after.

Once I made the decision to do the horizontal design, the execution was not really smooth sailing. I started by using two separate fabrics for the stripes. The more yellow fabric was cut, textured and fused to the more beige-y fabric.Once I saw the stripes coming together it seemed to me that the applied stripes were dirty looking. I think my shading was a little heavy-handed and the color a bit dead. Fortunately the fused stripes were barely fused and were easy to remove. Then I just continued to create the stripes on the single piece of background fabric.

I used a sheet of coarse sandpaper under the fabric and rubbed with water-color crayons to get the texture of the sand. Instead of the dark taupe and brown shadows I had been using I used a combination of blue and orange, which created an almost purple shadow. Much more lively than that dead brown.

Here is the finished piece of fabric. The next step will be to quilt the entire background. So far there is no stitching, though the edges of the shadows almost look like they've been stitched in the photo. I have been working on this all day and it has been a struggle. I think it is going to work, but it's not really there yet.

This is the point where I often get to with a piece and I just have to push on with faith that my plan will work out. I could easily give up on it at this point, but I think I have learned to keep seeing ahead to the next step. Not that everything always turns out well, but I think almost all (maybe all) of them go through a bad stage along the way. Do you go through this with your work?

So beautiful I could cry

And I did. This is a photo of the 12 x 12 quilts altogether for the first time at the Australasian Quilt Conference in Melbourne, Australia happening right now. See more on the 12 x 12 blog. It was the picture of Australian Twelve, Kirsty, holding one of my little quilts that did me in. The world just got smaller. Pardon the mush, but this just fills me with joy.

Featured on Dinner at Eight Artists Blog today

http://dinnerateightartists.blogspot.com/2010/04/terry-grant-portland-or.html

I am the featured artist today. The blog is featuring each of the artists with work accepted for the Beneath the Surface show. My piece, "What's Left Behind" will be part of the show.

Sand

This glass float piece is coming together in an odd way for me. I have the foreground elements done as component pieces. The sandy background has had me a bit stymied. I worked on it a bit yesterday, but was not happy with what I was getting. I woke up this morning with a couple of ideas—both less realistic, more stylized. Yesterday I was looking at photos of sandy beach and getting far too caught up in the way things really are! So I did a little playing in Illustrator and Photoshop this morning and came up with two scenarios, using a digital background and my photo of the float. You will have to imagine the foam added.

Here's #1





















Here's #2

So, this helped me figure it out. I thought I would like number 2, the diagonal stripes, but I think I like the horizontal stripes when I see it this way. What do you think?

And jandj—your suggestion of making a sand texture by doing a rubbing from coarse sandpaper is exactly what I plan to do! I have done this before and it works great.

Sea Foam

I am back to work on my Oregon beach/glass float quilt today. Since I am experimenting, and making a lot of this up as I go, I thought I'd share the process. I am trying to figure out how to make sea foam, using cheesecloth as the base fabric.

Here is my piece of stiffened cheesecloth—see yesterday's post if you don't know what I'm referring to. It is about the stiffness of a sheet of typing paper. I used some Solvy stabilizer dissolved in water to stiffen it.

I set my sewing machine up for free-motion stitching and started stitching little attached circles until I got a nice shape that looked like sea foam washing up on the beach. Then I cut it out and let it soak in some warm water to wash the stabilizer out of it.

Here is what a small piece, washed and ironed, looks like against the float and sand-colored background fabric. It seems to shrink a bit and since not quite all of the stabilizer washes out, it irons up quite crisp, which I think will be an advantage when I am ready to stitch it down. Yes! I think this is going to work. The finished stuff looks quite a lot like lace. I can see that one could use this technique for a variety of interesting effects.

 

Here's a bigger piece.

 

Now I need to figure out what kind of pattern/texture I want for the sand. Here's an experiment on a scrap of the fabric I'm using.

April Showers

It has rained quite steadily all day today, except for early this morning when I went to walk. Somehow the weather has turned the corner into spring, so the rain was more like spring rain than winter rain. Maybe you have to be an Oregonian with intimate knowledge of rain to distinguish a difference. Spring rain—warmer, gentler, but if anything, wetter. Makes everything feel damp. Indoors and out. But it is great for the flowers, especially those I planted over the weekend.

I pondered the glass float quilt and decided I need sea foam on the sand around the float to indicate that it just rolled in from the ocean, and just because I like the idea. My idea is to stitch a bubbly, foam pattern onto filmy cheesecloth, then stitch that to the quilt. In order to stitch cheesecloth I need to stiffen it. So I painted a piece with a liquid stabilizer that is like super, duper starch. I can stitch it, then wash the stabilizer out and have my soft cheesecloth back. Mind you, I've never done this before, but theoretically it is supposed to work! The problem is the high humidity. My stabilized cheesecloth is a bit limp. No surprise. That's what happens to crackers and potato chips and corn flakes when it rains like this. Maybe tomorrow I'll take the hairdryer to it. But for now I haven't made much progress. The rain makes me feel unfocused and lazy. I'd rather curl up in a chair and watch it come down outside or watch Dora the Explorer on TV with Sofia.

I just got another birthday present. See? I told you I liked to make my birthday last for most of the month. Muriel sent this utterly perfect wind chime. There was an old eye bolt already in place right where it was needed on the corner of the overhang by the front door and I hung it immediately. It is an articulated pine cone made of heavy iron and the sound is lovely when it moves. Kind of low and soft as opposed to your ordinary high, tinkly chimes. Just perfect.

 

And look who's back. Silly goose doesn't have the good sense to get out of the rain.

Oh, and one more thing. Yesterday Barbara left a comment and said, "You did inherit your mother's artistic instincts!" Barbara—who are you? Did you know my mother? I have been clicking through my mental file of all the Barbaras I've known and can't imagine which one left the comment... But, thanks Barbara. It was lovely to read that.

Finishes and starts

I started today by finishing a couple of projects. The first was my 12 x 12 quilt that will be revealed May 1. The theme colors this time are from Kristen in Hawaii and they are the colors of the Kilauea  volcano. It has been an interesting challenge. I found my inspiration, surprisingly, in a Native American art exhibit we saw at the Cleveland Art Museum last month. Be sure to come back on the 1st and take a look. The next thing I finished was a flower-themed quilt block which will go into a quilt being made for a friend's birthday. It is meant to be a surprise, so I will say nothing more. But I think I can show you and not give the secret away. I love irises and have done several iris quilts over the years. I think my friend is quite fond of irises as well.

Once those two projects were finished I took some fabric and paints outside and painted this big circle for a new quilt I am about to start. It will be another Oregon-themed quilt. Can you guess from this what it will be? I posted it on Face book earlier and one person guessed that it was Crater Lake. Another said "water—sky" then my niece chimed in that it was definitely Crater Lake. It's not Crater Lake, but amazing Crater Lake would certainly be a good Oregon subject.

It will be a glass float on an Oregon Beach. This is a childhood memory of trips, with my grandparents to the Oregon Coast. In those days you could still occasionally find the glass floats from Japanese fishing nets that washed up on the beach. I wanted to find one in the worst way, and one day I did, though I suspect in hindsight that my grandfather planted it for me to find. I wrote about it back here.

Even though the floats came from Japan, I think of them as quintessentially Oregon. You see them hanging in seafood restaurants along the coast and in gardens and homes all over Western Oregon. Apparently there was something about the tides that brought so many of them to Oregon beaches. They are quite rare now that most of the floats used are plastic, but I have heard that they still wash up occasionally. They were made as strictly utilitarian items from recycled sake bottles, but I think they are quite beautiful.

Here is what it looks like now that I have finished painting and it is dry and cut out into a circle. I think it captures something of the look of those wobbly globes of bubbly glass. My task now will be to create a beach context for it. Otherwise it could easily be a green bowling ball. In the spirit of my other Oregon piece, Douglas Fir Cone, it is larger than life-size.

Saturday

It has been a very Oregon Springtime Saturday today. First some sunshine, then a little rain and then some more sunshine. It was a good day to drive up over the hill out into the country to the Kinton Grange for the Master Gardeners' plant sale. Ray found some things he was looking for and I wandered around and took pictures and enjoyed the sunshine.

The Oregon countryside is beautiful and so very, very green this time of year. The Grange is next to the old Kinton Schoolhouse that is literally falling down. What an interesting old building. Too bad it has been left to decay so badly.

The old orchards roll across the hills. This is probably a hazlenut orchard.

Days like this make me wish for summer and spur me to plant flowers and clean off the deck, though it is too cold to sit on the deck for very long. I had a gift certificate at the Portland Nursery, so we drove across town, making a stop at IKEA for lunch and a few items, then spent way more than my gift certificate at the nursery and came home and planted some of the porch and deck pots.

One of my purchases at IKEA was a frame for my green eggs photo from the other day. I ordered a print and knew if I didn't get it framed and hung right away I would forget where I put the print or forget the whole idea altogether, so it is done. I love ordering prints from digital photos online. I can sit right here, order the print and about an hour later drive over to Walgreen's and pick it up. Hasn't photography changed dramatically in the space of what seems like just a few years? Used to be I'd have a roll of film in my camera for so long that by the time I got around to having it developed, which took about a week it seems like, I didn't even remember what pictures I had taken. From a roll there might be three or four worth doing something with and several totally worthless shots of the ground or the sky and a bunch of "who cares?" shots of the backs of people's heads at a parade, etc. Now I can crop and improve just the photos I want prints of and have them in my hand the same day.

So, here is the egg photo framed and hung. It is right below my son-in-law's little painting of the old houses along the river in Cuenca, Ecuador, his hometown. He gave it to me when he and Emily were dating. When I measured it for a frame I found that the stretched canvas he purchased in Ecuador did not correspond with any standard frame size here once I got it home, so I had to have a frame made for it. I can tell you it cost about 7 times what the IKEA frame did. I hate spending a lot of money on frames, but I like things to look good. I like the clean lines of the IKEA frames and the price is certainly right.

Green Eggs, No Ham

I bought a big 2-dozen carton of eggs at Costco the other day. They were lovely shades of tan and brown. I decided to hard boil some of them today to have on hand. I am trying to eat a lower carb diet and think I could enjoy a hard-boiled egg for breakfast instead of cereal. I usually mark the boiled eggs "HB" with a pencil so we don't confuse them with raw eggs, but remembering our lovely colored Easter eggs, I decided to add a few drops of food coloring to the water as they cooled instead. The green food coloring affected them differently from egg to egg. You may see these weird putty-colored eggs as ugly, but I am quite in love with the colors.

This one looks like it was treated in some way to achieve the interesting stripes, especially the wide patterned stripe. I didn't do a thing to it and it looked exactly like the others when I started. Somewhere there lives an artistic hen, who marks her eggs with a secret code.

 

These three seemed to exactly match this ceramic plate, even duplicating the effect of the clay color showing through the green glaze. I want to frame this photo and hang it on the wall.