what is it about rainy days

I love them for time for hunkering down on projects. Forget the errands, forget the to-do list of trivia, and do something intense. The dawns and sunsets and clearly shifting & the seasonal mood has changed. Starting to think about Canadian Thanksgiving... & American too. Mid-October Lucy & Timmo, Joslyn & Rip are coming for a visit. That means that my 4 grandchildren & 3 children will assemble.

That might lead to  hide & seek, charades, games of Russian Bank & who knows what else. I am looking forward to it.
And now I will choose where to put my energy for today's work. What a luxury & pleasure!

                                                                That's it for now.

starting new work

I am mostly unpacked from the workshop week. My two friends who had MRIs last Tuesday both had no drastic diagnosis from it. So I am relieved, very. I set up this quilt this morning listening to Michael Enright & Stuart MacLean on CBC. And the quilting has begun. It was a perfect rainy day for it.

This is a thank you quilt I'm working on for my friend Leslie who has been a total brick for our family this past year & a half.  I was impatient about taking a picture of it and some raindrops fell on it out of my dogwood tree... I hope they don't stain. Otherwise when it's done I'll right away need to have it dry cleaned. Oh Geeze.

These are on the frame, so they are not straight. It's fun setting up new patterns with quilting puckers. The pattern is actually pretty calm which is what I want, though there are irregularities. Making the perfect geometry of quarter circles just didn't happen. Cloth is like that for me. That's its charm and interest, I hope. This one's going to be hand-stitched. 

Here are the drips.

Actually the spread of the watermarks are fascinating to me. In Susan's class I look pictures of another occurrence of that....

That's it for today.

Thanks to Susan Shie

Pronounced Shy.  Susan is legally blind, but my god, that girl can see & work in detail. I think of her as a seeing miracle. She has the affliction typical of "albinos".

And she has produced a huge body of work & writing on her quilts.  Her quilts mix social commentary & family history. She is, I believe, a living treasure. I've told her all this so she can just feel happy all over again! I love this one of the Magical Cupboard of Loving World accompanied by  the Pie of Precious Peace & Big Duck Full of Understanding.

And lots of glitz.

We're going to need some help if we are getting to the loving world, even glitz.

Susan told us these colors weren't true, but you get the idea. This is about her can named Maggie who died and who obviously attained sainthood.

And this one is about her home town in Ohio. She put all her favorite business on one convenient street and placed the real map in the center.

You can see more of her work and catch more of her style and humor & true political grit by going to her website:  www.turtlemoon.com

That's all for today, though I could gush for a long time about how much that workshop was for all of us 11 lucky people.

End of Day 4

Tomorrow I want to post some of Susan's work and tell you about her.

But today... our theme was fish which I totally didn't want to do, so I did Umbrella. My Umbrella Woman is actually in the midst of a big rainstorm and the fish, grudgingly included, are swimming into the clouds....She looks pretty serious to me. Maybe I'll have to sweeten her smile a bit. Then some words and some of the story starts getting added...

The 2nd photo is lit with indoor lighting.... That's why it's so yellow.

Please notice some fish swimming up the rain.....

That's it for today.

Mid day # 3 with Susan Shie

Yesterday's theme: vegetables. Here's a sketch of my ideas. EAT MORE FRUIT &  

VEGETABLES.

...which got developed...before the story writing......

                                Then the story got added. That part is so much fun!

After story writing. So fun. Our group is starting to cohere. That's a pleasure too.

But I also discovered the best mural ever [for me] in our neighborhood around Maiwa East.  It's by Richard Tetrault, I'm sure, though I can't find his signature.

Oh my!! I love the way he holds this together for two blocks at least.

Finally, me, just before I am going to heat set the work AND be a mask-wearing woman....

Frightening, no?  That's it for now....

Susan Shie workshop

We made a long list of possible themes. Of those 3 were chosen to vote on: sea, light, poetry.
Sea was chosen, and immediately I mentally went to Sea, See, & C...

We drew first in black on a patch of cloth, then ironed the cloth, then painted the image, then ironed, and last wrote out our idea on the cloth, and ironed again. I forget to photograph the first drawing stage..... oh well, here's 2nd stage....

So I have the cursive letter C making the waves, the seeing eyes, & the ocean.

What was surprising to me was how all of this paled after ironing & drying. Then words were added. The eyes meant seeing & the camera [c is for camera].

  C was for cute, co-incidence, & continuity. C is for a constant in math

Seeing is a great constant in my life

The sea is a constant for life on earth.
















One of the The The  I The happiest part of today was the success of color. I loved what happened with the mixes I chose: yellow, saffron, teal blue & green & royal blue.  Now I realize I've been in this color zone before.

Tomorrow we work with the theme vegetables. Hmmmmmm...

                                                        That's it for today.

greyness & color

Time for some greyness photos. It feels like a super cozy day.

There's the beginning of this too.....

                                                            That's it for today.

really, truly, not guilty, quilty

I don't connect quilt with guilt or the other way round....
It's just that they rhyme and that did amuse me. This quilt is about my thread rack

 

That's it for now!

yesterday's question

so my amusing thought/question yesterday was: from guilt to quilt...or...from quilt to guilt?

i realized that i come down on the quilt to guilt side
this is because of my puritanical/new england upbringing where there was a strong expectation that your life be worthwhile, socially beneficial, & not frivolous.
is making art, which is so much fun, frivolous & without social value?
i can easy argue myself out of this silly thought/question & often do, but it does still lurk

i made my first quilt top in 1960
10 years of 3 sisters making clothes in the 1950s gave me ample material
i put the quilt top on an eiderdown and backed it

my chicago cat peed on it & i hung it out my 4th story window hoping to air the smell off
but being in chicago the wind carried it off onto the street below & i clearly remember thinking to myself that i would just let it go. of course now i rue that decision.

each quilt has a story
last night i heard a new chapter
one of my quilts got laundered and it ran like crazy
the owner was mortified as if she had done something wrong
but i knew that i was the guilty one
clearly i hadn't properly rinsed my dye work before starting the quilt
i send her home with sintropol soap and new directions
& my abject apology.....quilt to guilt struck again

i close with a guilt-free quilt from april 2010

.....the work on my work wall and the other shots are details showing the quilting details...

this project started with a b/w study that was way more complex & then reduced because it was giving me too many headaches in piecing

oh struggle memories!

 

best of all i prefer from quilt to quilt

just make more

that's it for today

i made it to the end w/o being wordwiped by blogspot

More Majik in the Ordinary

This is a theme that I really like-- the elevation of the ordinary.

There are other worthwhile things......
I think there is something very special too about decay....

 

...and the patina of dust...and repair....and gentle neglect....

And oh my, multiples!! 

That's it for today.

Pesto Festo & majik

For years on Labor Day weekend, Gail & I have gathered spouses, children & friends to make pesto. This is a large operation requiring, appropriately, labor.

Boxes are bought from Norman on the Drive, and jars, pine nuts, cheeses & oil.

Destemming begins on the outside worktable. And soon talk about  a strike breaks out. It's pretty tedious work & fingernails turn green.
 
There was much geniality & oh, did I mention gossip? We all get caught up .....over amazing bottles or two of red wine.

  The floor eventually gets swept.

Meanwhile, inside there is washing, and spinning. There is processing heads of garlic and mashing them with oil in the blender, same with the various nuts. And combining. Gail's the main taster/adjuster.  This is busy & radiant Gail.

with Michelle at the clean jars & Leslie in the afternoon light.

 

And then there is the majik which I have known about for a long time, but have finally got a name for it from my teacher/artist friend Lana. Here's an example. The beauty of the ordinary. Mary Pratt, a Canadian paintress, painted images like this.

Mary Pratt, enjoy!!!

And finally the glory of a meal together beyond sunset and the full jars.

                                    WHAT a wonderful day. That's it for now.