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Archive for February, 2008

Brain Dead

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

I have spent the last two days doing homework for Lizzie’s class and spending a lot of time with SDA website stuff. Tonight, I worked for 2 hours trying to do a simple bit of homework for the class, and I have a pile of fused, cut up bits of fabric, none of which is working for me.

So I thought I would check in on the blog and then get a good night’s sleep. I lost enough weight this week to be at a new low at WW. It is pretty darn slow on the scale, but I think I am about ready to move in to a smaller size. I want to lose 10 more pounds before our trip in May.

Here are a some pieces that I did for Liz’s class. for this first piece, we had to take one of our small designs and redo it as a larger piece with a good focal point.

exercise28.jpg

Then, we were to do 3 pieces in a circle, square and rectangle with good placement of elements and a focal point. Tonight, I got hung up on the rectangle.

ex30round.jpg

30square.jpg

I quilted the round one. It has some of my complex cloth as the background. The square has some fused scraps that I got from Mrs. Mel a long time ago. I am still having fun with those scraps when I make postcards.

Liz has not critiqued these so I don’t know if I got a pass or a fail on these.

Better Art by Design

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I know I promised to post more of my work from Liz’s class – Better Art by Design. I have a class on Church History on Monday nights so I have heavy duty homework and the class to attend. We got home at 9, and I decided to watch “On Becoming Jane” instead of blogging. It was an OK movie. It took some time to capture my interest.

Without further ado, here is some of my work from week 5. The themes were rhythm, repetition and gradation. For this week, we started working in a larger format. The previous exercises were typically done on a 4 X 6 card.

The first assignment was to create 2 compositions to show rhythm using vertical and horizontal lines. I decided to use the same fabrics for both.

Here is the horizontal:

rhythmhorizontal.jpg

And, vertical, which I had to rework – very slightly. Can you see the subtle change in where the black lines end in the center. They were lining up in the first one.

rhythmvertical.jpg

ex241-verticalrevised.jpg

In the next exercise, we were to create 2 compositions showing rhythm using music.

Here is Jazz before and after a fix:

jazz.jpg

jazz3.jpg

This is Lullaby:

lullaby.jpg

For the next two exercises, I used two pieces that I started in a class with Rayna, last spring. They have been languishing on my reserve design wall, waiting to be finished. Here they are after using what I learned in Liz’s Better Art by Design class (click to find the info about her next class).

exercise24.jpg

exercise25.jpg

In the last exercise, we were to use subtle gradations of color and value from one area to another. I have reworked this one.

26colorgradation.jpg

26revised.jpg

I have not heard back from Liz, yet, so I am not sure if I nailed this one yet. You can see more student work on Liz’s blog.

Super-Duper Week-end

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

The highlight of the week-end was attending a lecture by Faith Ringgold for Black History Month at Reed College. Faith is somewhat legendary among art quilters She does story quilts painted on canvas that have minimal quilting. As a black woman who started her art career 50 years ago in Harlem, she has an amazing story to tell. She was funny, charming, witty, pithy and brilliant. She is still producing work, in her late 70s and a so was a great inspiration to me. She started her art career copying the masters and painting landscapes. One time a gallery owner told her that she couldn’t do that and it changed her life. She says that a black person knows how to take a negative and make it a positive. She started doing her quilts that tell the stories of her people and the rest is history. (For more about Faith, Click Here)

While we waited for the lecture to start, I got some silly photos with June, Terry and Reva. The first is June, Terry and I.

juneterrygerrie.jpg

Then, Reva showed up so I had to get a photo of us.

gerriereva.jpg

After the lecture, Mr C and I went to Steph’s for a delicious dinner of lentil stew with lamb sausage, home made bread, salad and a decadent molten chocolate dessert. Steph and Miles watched Nigella Lawson make them on u-tube so Miles asked to help make them for dinner. So good! We did some Oscar watching. My grandchildren do not watch much TV at all. They rarely go t the movies. Yet, Mia had a great deal of knowledge about the movies and the actors. I asked her how she knows some much. She told me that she reads the NY Times Arts and Entertainment section every day. I could so related to this. Of course, I had no TV in my childhood and I read every thing I could get my hands on.

I spent most of the last few days getting homework done for my class with Liz. I will show some of my work and the tweaking I did after her critiques. (Note: except for the last piece, these are done on 4 X 6 cards. They are exercises, not finished work.)

The assignment was to create a small harmonious composition using 3-4 analogous colors.
172harmonious.jpg

exercise172revised2.jpg

This assignment was to create contrast with color.

ex213colorcontrast.jpg

exercise213revised.jpg

Here, the assignment was to create contrast using size.

ex212sizecontrast.jpg

exercise212revised.jpg

For this piece, we were to make a small piece showing contrast with harmony and balance.

221.jpg

exercise22revised.jpg

OK, now it is up to you to see what I did to make a better composition!!

I will post more tomorrow.

Re-finishing Quilts

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

The sun has been out. The plants are blooming. The pollen is in the air. I am trying very hard to keep the darn sinuses under control which means going back on meds and daily saline rinses. That being said, my weight was up .4 on a pound due to a Sudafed bump in water retention. I know – excuses, excuses.

I did some remedial work on a couple of quilts this week so that I can enter them in a quilt show. Here is a thumbnail of how it originally looked. You can click to see it larger.

fragments5.jpg

I changed the name from Fragments to Fragments of a Life. I added the cheesecloth to tame some of the painted areas.

fragmentsblog.jpg

I mounted the piece, Passages, on black velvet on stretcher bars.

passagesblog.jpg

A couple of you asked how I got rid of the branch on the Moonlit Aspen by using my skinny little scissors and snipping it off. That whole little quilt was completely hand stitched so it was pretty easy to snip away the unwanted part.

Lizzie has given me permission to share some of my work from the class so I will upload some of the compositions later this week. Tomorrow will be devoted to catching up with my homework for this week.

I am watching Project Runway and getting such a kick out of the reunion show.

Catch-up Time

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

I am just so busy that I am finding it difficult to keep up with reading blogs and responding to e-mail. I have had new responsibilities added to my SDA website admin job and there has been a learning curve and some glitches to work out. Let me just say that if you belong to SDA and you received an e-mail from a region other than the one you live in, we are working on it. The web gremlins are at work.

While I was chatting with Derry, our webmaster in London, he told me that my personal site is one of their top 5 sites for traffic. Considering the number of sites that they have designed and host, I was quite happy to hear that. Thanks to all of you who keep my site busy!!

Look what I found when I was doing some reorganizing last month:

turquoiseswweater.jpg

This is a sweater that I started a few years ago. I decided that it was not going to fit me so I stopped knitting. The body was about two-thirds done. It now will fit me – yeah! – so I am finishing it. I lost the directions, so I have to figure out how to do the sleeves. I know I need to do some decreasing.

Today, I have been working on a couple of quilts that I want to enter in the PAQA South ARTQUILTSculture exhibit. I added some of the hand-dyed cheese cloth from Kristin to tone down some of the turquoise painting. I stitched it down with variegated perle cotton.

fragmentupdate.jpg

I am mounting another quilt on stretcher bars. I also did a fix on the Moonlit Aspen piece. This is the way it was with that annoying branch at the bottom center.

indigoaspens.jpg

This is how it looks now. I still have to do some touch up stitching. Better, don’t you agree?

moonlitaspenfix.jpg

I just saw a preview of the CD catalog for the Good to be Green” show that opens next month. The quilts are all spectacular. It is going to be a very good show!!

I keep forgetting to recommend a wonderful little movie that we watched over the week-end: Sweet Land. I really loved this one. I had not heard of it, but found it on Netflix.

A shout out for my candidate of choice, Obama! Nine straight. I hope when I wake up it will be ten. It would be kind of funny if Hilary took Hawaii, his home state.