Flower series 5: Happy heart

Happy heart
32" x 36"
paint and stitch

I love Happy Heart!

Of course, there was a moment when I wanted to throw her away (her??) That happens.

I like how my original small flowered heart transforms dramatically when enlarged. I copied the original onto a transparency and enlarged it. using the overhead projector that Maureen so kindly insisted I keep. (Sure does come in handy, Maureen! Thank you!)

I drew the lines in pencil on white Kona cotton, lightly so the pencil wouldn't show on the finished piece.

Then I sewed over the lines with black thread, using free-motion stitching. It was miserable! Even if I blasted light on the piece, I could barely see the lines. Then I used Mark-B-Gone, with trepidation. It's as blue as this quilt! It's hard to believe the color will wash out with cold water. I tested it first. Still I worried my piece would be ruined by blue. Probably everyone who uses the stuff feels the same way at first.
Before quilt-drawing I layered the Kona with felt and white duck. (Yes, purists, I confess I used spray adhesive. I love it!) The thing is, that felt is wool. I love wool felt.

After  the design was all stitched in black -- my machine was like a drawing tool -- I held my breath and ran cold water over the piece. I held it over the bathtub, and in a flash the blue ran down the drain. I sighed big time! 

Alas, too soon! 

Did you know that wool felt shrinks in a second?? 

My quilt was all scrunched up. Lots of people do this on purpose, but I did it by accident. Suddenly my quilt was very QUILTY. The design was bumpy, thanks to shrinkage. I was sad. 

Then I was happy. I love it the texture!

After that, painting.

This, too, was a delight. I expected to be bored to death, coloring within the lines of my flowers. But it was peaceful and fun.

It helped that I had made a dozen preliminary drawings, mixing paint and then trying out this and that combination. 

It still needs at least stitching around the edges. Maybe a simple facing. 

But I have a happy heart.

** Series note: You are right, Ellen! veering from guidelines is the definition of art. My series is far from what I'd envisioned. It turns out I'm exploring paint-related quilting techniques, doing what's fun rather than following the rules I'd set for myself. It's still about flowers, quilting, and color, with Beatriz Milhazes as my distant teacher. A series, it turns out, can be exploration. Boundaries are for leaping.

detail
Happy Heart

Series 4: veering from plan

Seduced by paint,  I have detoured from my plan to make a series of quilts. A couple of months ago, dazzled by my own sense of organization, I outlined what I wanted to make (Yes, I did want to!), then created a few flower paintings to warm up for the floral quilts. And never quit. There's paint on my pants and on my hands, and dripped on the floor too.

I haven't abandoned flowers. I thought they'd get to be a bore, but instead found that forever isn't long enough to absorb floral color and variety and life.

Flowers are in. Color is in. I've stuck to that much of my series plan. Stripes and mandalas are on hold. I'm spending lots of time painting (The colors, when I mix them, turn into other colors!) I'm making a glorious mess.

Thanks to Google and a visit last month to the Quilt National exhibit in Athens, Ohio, I have been able to observe how others combine paint with quilting. I'm now "drawing" on fabric using black thread and free-motion quilting, then painting inside the designs: flowers, for now.

This may be a series of sorts, based on the gorgeousness of flowers and fabric. And paint.

Flower series 3: Artists who mix paint and stitch

Talk about inspiration!  Paint and stitch go together many ways.

Artists who mix paint and stitch:

Maya Schonenberger

Sati Zech

Shelley Brenner Baird

Betty Busby

Cas Holmes

Barbara Takenaga

Katie Pasquini Masopust

Life of Poet James Merrill

James Merrill: Life and Art by Langdon Hammer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like it, but no.
I wanted to like him, but no to that too. Not Merrill's fault, but his biographer's.
This is a recitation of faces (family, lovers, students)  and places (the mansions of childhood, followed by Amherst College, Athens, Stonington, Madison, WI, California ...) and all the while a growing body of poems. Sterile, bloodless. Not Merrill, and maybe not all his poems, either. Just this book. It's a record, no doubt helpful but I like some life when reading a life.


View all my reviews

Flower series 2: Painting orchids

Wild Orchids
16" x 12"
Paint on cotton, quilted

Detail, Wild Orchids

How I made it:

1. Sketchbook drawing. Inspired by orchid in my window. I drew the flowers and leaves onto white Kona cotton then painted them, thought it too boring, so painted black lines and shapes freehand. (11' x 14")
2. Drew it onto white Kona cotton. Black fabric marker. (11" x 16")
3. Painted with fabric paints. They seeped through. Wondered if Gesso would make fabric less absorbent.
4. Painted over white and green areas with acrylic paints. 
5. Layered over thin white felt.
6. Free-motion quilted along drawing lines. Black thread. You can't really see the quilting, but it adds depth. Decided not to use rayon thread. Too shiny.  
7. Tried adding machine quilting detail to an orchid. Didn't like it -- not subtle. ed Ripped it out.
8. Sew a couple of rows of stitching around edges, using straight stitch. Black thread.
9. Attached to Timtex painted black around the edges.  Timex is about 1" bigger than orchids. Mystifuse
10. Add a piece of muslin over the back. Before attaching, put Fray-check on the edges of the muslin and attach a rod pocket and a label.  Mistyfuse adhesive.

Flower series 1: Paint, print, stitch -- stop!

I am not ready.

Not ready to make the series of quilts that I planned a month or so ago: square, precise, Milhazes-inspired mandala-like flowers and stripes in vibrant colors. (Sounds pretty, doesn't it?)

After many false starts, a few paintings, and 2 quilt-ish pieces, I have learned:

• I can't do precise. I like messy, or shall we say irregular?
• I seem to prefer square-ish to square.
• I don't like to do intensive thread painting. For example, below, I copied my painting Roses onto cotton and then adhered it to stable cotton duck. Ideally, I would cover the surface with stitch to mimic the paint colors. But no! I just don't enjoy it.

... and on the positive side, I learned:

• I lean toward an intuitive, even spiritual,  method, not necessarily the mandala style I'd planned.
• I love working on a single subject, in this case flowers. My pop-around brain benefits from focus. There is no end to what flowers can teach me of color, line, shape, mood, etc., etc.
• I love layering.
• I love colors. 
• I love stripes, even precise ones. (One of my hero-artists is stripe master Bridget Riley.)
• Most fun for me has been painting. I thought I was painting to become a better quilter, but I love painting for itself.

My style emerges.

For my next "series" I'm going to paint flowers freely, and experiment with painting on cotton, linen, and silk and combine that with stitch.

In addition to recording progress online, I'm taking notes the crazy way I did in graduate school: big and messy, sometimes upside down --  sitting on the floor and writing/drawing with colored markers on a newsprint pad. One page or more per project, no other rules.

It works for me!

Notes so far

Walking backward to a series

I have taken many steps in my series project -- most of them backward.
First, I pinned my plan to the design wall. The plan taunts me. It seems I've picked exactly what I cannot bring myself to do: inspired by Beatriz Milhazes, I have set out to make precise, geometry-inspired designs in square format, with palette and imagery based on Florida nature.

For my first piece, I picked a drawing in my (rectangular, 11" x 14") sketchbook. It is a watercolor, based on a sketch of flowers against the window blinds in my studio.

The blinds would work as stripes, which Milhazes uses so effectively.

 I traced the image, rearranging the blossoms just a bit. I went to Staples and enlarged and also minimized the flowers. I made tracings of these, then played with them on my design wall, where I had pinned a striped 19" x 19" square for my base. I rearranged them over and over, many times, many days, including just  before I went to bed and as soon as I got up. I added a vase, put stars on the stamens, and took a few photos when something seemed close to good. What I'm looking at now is what a bird would see if he approached the flower upside down. A hummingbird, maybe. No, no! don't let me add a hummingbird!

Milhazes color copies on right, my tracings on left, and trash can handy for many rejects

I also played with the colors of blinds and grass and sky.

What I have been able to do is stick to flowers. A series is supposed to concentrate your thoughts, so give me one point. All this time, I've been drawing and painting flowers, real and make-believe, exact and abstract.

It's not that I adore flowers (I like chocolate and butterflies and bridges better.), but flowers are teaching me so much about everything else: color and line and shadow and impact. I'm afraid I'm also learning I love messy edges and incomplete thoughts. Precision, as in Milhazes' art, drives me wild. Not when I look at it, but when I make it.

But it's true I learned how to cook intuitively by first following many recipes; and I trust my series project will give me the same kind of good grounding. I have the feeling that once I start cutting fabric, the series might practically make itself. I can hope.