Category Archives: The Road Less Traveled

Paying Attention

BS11Cemetary Hello,

When one needs ideas for solutions  or inspiration I believe  one has some  choices.         I was struggling with part of the  Stone Church project.     There is a old cemetery that is a part of that area and I wanted to include it in my piece.  But I was having trouble  so I took a walk in the near by cemetery to refresh my mind.  I was surprised by the presence of the deer.  There  were two actually and the cemetery  is surrounded by city on all four sides.   Looking at  how compact these stones and how much they overlapped has helpedVictoria's-project1 me formulate a solution to the  work I must do on the project.

Sometimes the ideas are as much about paying attention as anything else.     There was a FAB meeting at my house this week.  Folks showed their work and  Victoria is moving along nicely with this quilt.  She got inspired by Ginny’s silks that she had purchased a few weeks ago.  They  are shown here in the orange and  gray strip. ( I got inspired by that same orange silk)    I Vickie's-bed-fullthink the shadow of the leaf looks wonderful too.   She  also showed a top that she had assembled for a bed quilt that she is making for her new house.    I am so impressed by the large number of prints she uses and the colors.    I would not have put that strong orange with the turquoise myself- but I love the combination.   So by paying attention to this  little surprise I now have  a jumping off  color  combination  to try in the future.   The real trick here is to note the surprises and in my case write them down.  I do that in my idea journal and it helps me when I need to get going with a new piece.

Progress Report:

Foundations XXI  Elsies Stone - Cape Cod Rock 43" X 44" $595.00
Foundations XXI Elsies Stone – Cape Cod Rock
43″ X 44″
$595.00

Foundations XXI Elsie’s Stone- Cape Cod Rock   The Road Less Traveled

I am finally done with this project.  I love all the texture on the surface of this wonderful stone.  I am very grateful that Elsie gave me this parting gift.     The many fascists of its surface with the limited colors make it fascinating to me.   I think I could revisit this rock and work from a different side  too.

I used yarn ,  nylon nettingClose up -Elsie's-St and lots of torn fabric bits to produce the colors and textures.    There is also my favorite silk paper at work on this piece.

 

Elsies Stone-cl2

 

 

 

 

 

The Road Less Traveled  35" X 45"  $535.00
The Road Less Traveled
35″ X 45″
$535.00

 The Road Less Traveled

  I started this quilt in Rosalie Daces Color class at QBL.  I have finally completed the process.      I used many of the techniques she taught us.  I did insert slender curved lines into sections.  I let colors “bleed” or flow  across seam lines to make connections.  I used raw edges to add texture  and I hand embroidered across parts of the surface to draw sections together.      Even Close up -road-less-traveledusing all thoughts techniques  I did not use all the techniques that she taught us.  As a teacher she has a lot to share and she does so very willingly.

I enjoyed using these

BS11Road-LT-clearthtones and I will continue to  pursue the techniques she taught.  I am still not happy with size of my slender inerts- so there is work  to do there.

 

 

Stone-Church clStone Church

I already mentioned the bit with the cemetary so I will not cover that again.  I added lots of machine lines on the roads as they were gravel and I remember how there seemed to be lots of “tracks” of the tries on them.   I remember too that Grandmother Ester liked to drive down the middle and only pulled the turquoise ford  over when she could see a car coming toward her.

Harmony     I am done with the assembly of the form of this quilt.  I decided to use the character that

Harmony cl represents Harmony for the central focus and so far I have just quilted around that shape to create the quilting pattern.   I want to fill in the character with black hand stitches/ patterns so it stand out.   But I have not come up with the correct stitch to do that job yet.   So I keep looking in books and paying attention to the world around me and hope that I will find inspiration.  Until then  the project will just hang in the studio awaiting the correct solution.

BS11Sketch-for-CNew Work      In Valeri’s Goodwins class she had a do a fabric ” sketches” of 4″ X 6″ before we started work.   So in keeping with using the best the teachers have to offer I made the sketch first.  This is the one I selected as my jumping off place.    I wanted to use the big printed flower I created a few weeks ago as a big part of this work.  NowBS11Crumasnthum I am in the process of pinning up parts that I think will work to do the job.  I have split the two flowers apart and added parts of a third to the design.  Very few parts are  connected or solid in its position at this point .  This is  fun but scary part of the process-  but I need the challenge.

 

 Daily News    This project is finally complete.  I have now Daily6sewn all the blocks closed and will continue to play with placement  for as long as the process interests me.   This will be the last post where the  project will appear because at this point all the finished units have been appeared at  least twice and some more times then that.   Daily-5I have enjoyed doing a daily sewing pieces and it is very true that the whole is made of of lots of little parts.  If I had started out with the intention of making  180  hand embroidered  blocks I do not think I would have done it.  But by making small manageable  units- it as a doable Daily-4task.    I have been encouraged by Susan to submit this idea as an airticle for Quilting Arts so that is my next project.

Keep Creating

Carol1Daily3

 

 

 

 

Daily1

Daily2

Making a bit of Order

Sunflower Hello,

The last fling of summer is over and the kids are all back in school.    I find that this time offers me a great time to reorganize as I prepare for the fall and up coming winter.    I need to sort a bit as I put away the shorts and summer tees.  It is also  a good time for me to look critically at what I really use.  Like that wonderful divided basket that I thought I would use to carry dinner things to the patio that I never even pulled out of the cupboard this summer.   The back end of my station wagon is full of items like that- all perfect ally good, but not necessary to my life that I Show1am now passing along.    It is very easy to pile up too much stuff- so now I feel a bit lighter and look forward to doing a bit of wall painting next week.

I hung a solo show at  Man in the Moon Gallery in Kings Ferry on Friday last week. Show2  There  are about a dozen works in this show all featuring  the golds, oranges and browns of fall.   I had a good time preparing and hanging the show.

Angela's-workTuesday this week was the first Tuesday of the month and so I had meetings.  The QuEG’s  had wonderful things to share.

Angela is creating a wonderful hand embroidered  baby quilt for her first grand child.  The theme is  Australian birds and animals.  The Kookaburra is one of them.   She is doing a beautiful job .Barb's-remberance

Barb is creating family history works with bits of hand work from her relatives.

 

BS4Linda's-work Linda is quilting away on a very colorful lap quilt to keep her knees comfortable this winter.  I think these colors will keep summer memories worm too.

 

BS4-Liz--modelingLiz kindly modeled my latest  fabric flower necklace   at the meeting.  I thank her for that.  I only have one more to complete.

She also has been taking a

Liz'a-work watercolor class and did some wonderful work in that area as well.

Then in the evening, I went off to the Diva meeting.  This time of year BS4-Ruth's-work BS4Sally's-workseems to make many quilters  want to dye.  Both Sally and  Ruth put in time on that topic this month.     They both show their individuality even in their dying colors and techniques.    I love that.       Sally isPannels also putting together a small accordion book to send to Elsie who has moved away.   Everyone is adding a small 4″ X 6″  page to the work.    The wood cut is by Liese and the Fimo bird is by Donna.  The book will be sent to her when it is complete.     It is so very thoughtful of Sally to come up with this idea.

Liese is workingLiesa's-work on wonderful project using Valerie Goodwin’s book, Art Quilt Maps  her jumping off point.    This is her start of her work displaying her  favorite place in the whole world.  This is just an early stage she says and she has yet to add houses and churches and trees  to the work.  I find it fascinating and look forward to  seeing how it grows and changes with her efforts.

Anne is workingApplique-Blocks-Anne on several things.  One is a block exchange that she is creating wonderful reverse applique leave blocks for.  I like the fact that she has pieced the fabric for the appliqued units she is using to create her leaves.  They will all be unique that way.

Susan's-birdsSusan made us all laugh with her  big head parrot choris.     She made the removable paper mache’ heads over little soft bodied little creatures that she had picked up at garage sales for about ten cents a piece.    What fun.

Noel  does wonderful workBS4Noel's-work-cl with silk and this is a close up of some of her style.    She too dyes many of her fabrics to get the tones and shades she wants.  They are just luscious and I can hardly keep my fingers off of them.  She really is a master of curved piecing.

I feel so very fortunate to be a part of such strong artistic groups of women.

 

close up of Road-Less-Traveled Progress Report:  The Road Less Traveled     I am still doing the hand and machine work on this piece.    I am doing lots of fly stitch as well as chain and ladder stitches on this one.

 

 Stone Church  Stone-Church This work has not appeared in a while.  I did not know what I wanted to do with it.    Like Liesi it is based on a memory of a location.   I was stuck  so I  looked again in Valerie Goodwin’s book and decided to push forward.  I painted the church on the organza and  and then I carefully placed dark fabrics behind the opening in the decaying structure.      It is getting there  but the concept is not quite in place yet.   Some work just takes lots of time.

New-WorkNew Work     This is a close up of the quilt using the orange kimono fabric I purchased a few weeks ago.  I am almost ready to start quilting it.  I thought I knew what I wanted to do and had picked out some wonderful Chinese Characters to use as my pattern – then I realized – this is Japanese material- not Chinese.  I will keep thinking.

 

BS4Dailiy's-5 BS4Daily's-1 BS4Daily's-2 BS4Daily's-3 BS4Daily's-4 BS4Daily's-6

 

Daily News     I am still working on finishing the blocks for this project.  But I can see the end of the process now.   I am still adding/ subtracting  and altering the  units daily and that is why there is so much size in the photos.   I do not always stand at the same distance from one day to the next.

Please write if you have any comments.

Keep Creating,

 

Carol

 

 

Sharing August 21, 2014

Good Habits  21" 32"
Good Habits
21″ 32″

Hello,

As fall approaches I feel the need to “tidy the nest”  a bit.  As a result of that feeling, I have been sorting out old works and finding new homes for them.      So I took along this quilt when I went to the Dentist and it is now hanging in his office.  It took a min. before he saw the tooth brushes.   He was delighted and so was I as the work was only setting in a dark closet before and I think art should be out in the world.     I feel so fortunate that I can share in this fashion.

This week the FAB group BA21Nancy-Komonawent on a field trip too.    We visited the home studio of Ginny Spina  to see her silk /Komona collection.   It was wonderful.    Her home is beautiful and so are her gardens.    She sells on etsy at  www.silkhouse.etsy.com.    We got to see and handle the silk.  Nancy even tried on one of the Kimono’s that had arrived in the mail that morning.    Victoria and I  both purchased some of her scarps and now I have a new pile of fabrics and the  ideas are flowing.  Nancy purchased on of Ginny’s scarves BA21-Nancy-+-scarfand her custom designed pins that day as well.     We all had lots of fun and made new connections.silks

 

 

 

 

 

Progress Report: Ju Ju June

Ju Ju June  !8" X 30"  $190.oo
Ju Ju June
!8″ X 30″
$190.00

  As I predicted this quilt is now complete.   There is lots of experimentation in this piece.  This is my first attempt at using only canvas as the fabric base.  I also had full control of the colors and patters on that base and although I really enjoyed that aspect I do not feel like I explored it fully.  So I need to keep putting myself in that position and dealing with that challenge.   I also feel I need to do a similar project  again because the process is still very much a mimic of Katie Pasquini’s process.    I did enjoy mixing the metal with the gathered ribbon “flower” shapes and the beads.     BA21JuJuJune-cl1

 

 

 

 Rafter Room This quilt is now hanging overRafter-Room  the door to the rafter room were it will remain for it’s life time.   Because it is summer I am not aware of how many drafts it is stopping, but I imagine it will do the job in the fall and winter.    I really enjoyed  doing the free motion work on this project.     It was not only fun to trace the Rafter-Room-cl2shapes printed on the mud cloth it was fun to extend them out into the blank areas.   Then I went forward  to drawing and filling in the blank areas as well. Rafter-Room-cl1  I think  that I will look at pattern with a little bit of a different eye- and notice more details as a result of this  project.

I got to use up the end of one of the fabrics that I had created in Judy Langele’s class at QBL 2  three years ago too.( It is the bottom of this work with the blue gears and dark violet in it)

 

 

 

the road less-traveledThe Road Less Traveled    I am still doing the free motion work on this piece.   I am  trying to sort of soften the hard seam lines with the machine work.   I will add hand work as well.

 

 

 

Foundations XXI- Elise’s Rock/rock A Cape Cod Stone   This is a rock that  Elsie Dents gave me.   She has moved to Pennsylvania and we will miss her strong graphic bird based  work in the DIVA group.  She was cleaning and found this stone that she had collected on the beach at Cape  Cod and BA21Elsies-rock-qthought of me.  So she brought to me at the last meeting that she attended.  I like the strong lines across the  stained quarts  so I am using it as  my jumping off point for the next Foundations work.  I am still working with the out side shape of this quilt part as well as the light and dark on the surface.

Daily News  daily8 BA7daily-10 BA7ddaily9 The news goes on and on.  I am enjoying the playing part of the process now.  I thank Barb every time I finish a block because her way of completing the process is so much faster than mine.

Keep Creating

Carol

Back in Balance August 14, 2014

PopularHello,

I have been on the go a lot of late and this morning I was feeling a bit out of balance.    There were lots of tasks I need to do, but I decided to treat myself to a walk.  When I go  I do not take my phone or any electric devices to distract me.    I use the time to pay attentions to the physical world I live in.  I noted the sunshine,  the many bird songs,  and found the visual surprise of that the Maple-seeds-2 Popular tree is already  shedding golden leaves.  As I walked along the street I noticed that the fallen maple seeds looked like the  birds in flight.  I felt  thankful that my legs were still able to carry me along at the pace that I wanted and returned home with a hand full of weed pods to draw later and a positive  feeling of  confidence about taking on all the little tasks that I needed to do.   I also realized how much I need that bit of physical exercise for balance in my life.

BA14CheriThe  Diva’s had a play day last week and there was a lot going on.  Cheri was marbleizing in one section of the room.  I was do that as well although I was using a different method.marblising

My work was pale because I was using ink on water and Cheri was using paint on a gel base.

There was lots of laughter,  talk BA14consulationsand sharing of ideas.   Sally, Ruth and Susan  did  consolations as well.       Everyone got a lot done and we all went happy  home having made progress at our various projects.  Unstructured days of work with fellow artists is a wonderful thing.

 

 

Victoria's-workThere was also a FAB meeting this week.  Again lots of sharing and words of encouragement.     Victoria shared the top she started in Rosalie’s class with us.   The colors are based on a photo close up  of a tulip.  One of our challenges was to work with a color that we did not normally use.   She chose the bright pink.

BA14-Ju-JU-June-close-up

 

 

Progress Report:   Ju Ju June    I am to the quilting stage on this work.    The free motion step is fun and  enjoyable for red-canvusme.     I will finish the quilting and do the binding this week and then post the final next time.

 

 

Rafter Room Project   This project too is left over from before QBL.  rafter room finalIt is to be a cover over the door to the rafter room from  the bed room.  I think it will stop the draft that I feel in the winter.  Again I am  to the fun part of drawing in the images in free motion.      I like that fact that I not only get to complete the figures that I cut up from the mud cloth,  BA14Rafter-roomclbut I also get create some new ones  to fill the spaces between the printed fabric.    This example shows the outlining and the filling in  of those drawings  on the surface.     I am about two thirds done at this time.

 

 The Road Less Traveled Raod-less-traveled I have now completed the assembly of my top from Rosalie’s color class.    The color that I seldom use is the green brown color in this quilt.    It is a good challenge I think and it did make me streach- one of my personal goals for this class.    I am almost ready to start adding hand work and machine drawing on the surface of this piece.

 

Daily NewsDaiily-1 BA14Daily2 BA14daily-3 BA14Daily-4 BA14Daily-5

This project continue to move forward.   I ran out of velco for the connections so I am at a bit of a stand still.  I have ordered more and now I just wait for it’s arrival.

Please send a comment and let me know what you think about what I am doing.

Keep Creating

Carol