Primed and Pumped!

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to visit with Mali Doktor, current President of the Alberta Society of Artists...and with Andrea Hatch, owner and star framer at her shop, Cabinet of Curiosities in Stettler.

Well, those meeting happened -- and left me with heart pumping, eyes shining, brain spinning in a gazillion directions about the pieces that need to be and will be made in the next several months.

First, the ASA.  Mali gave me my 'board' (resembles a canvas except that it's made out of wood) on which I'm to mount/create something "in [my] chosen medium".  It's 10" square.  The finished piece will be my contribution to a fund-raising auction event entitled "100@100".  That's me in the pink (!) with Mali in the right-hand photo.

I've never worked on a 'board' before so have to pick one up on which to practice before I make the final product.

I have it in mind to do something similar to what I've been doing on canvas -- in a much smaller size (5" x 7").  I picked up the first three finished ones from Andrea (my trusty framer and mat-cutter) yesterday.  Here's just one example:

She can produce 4 of these frames (with a bit left over) from one "stick" of moulding; the same would be true if they were 6" square.  Thus she could get two out of one "stick" if they were 12" square...and so on!  At the price she is giving me, I would be foolish to try to reproduce them myself.  What a blessing she is!!  Once I'm back from my Scottish holiday, I hope to create a good supply of these over the winter, for sale at the Lacombe Art Show in the spring (April).

Meanwhile, Bonavista Fine Art in Sylvan Lake is having its close-out sale, and I've given permission for a modest discount on my work.  Anything not sold will come back to me after September 30, when its doors are closed.

There's a bright side to that...because I've been booked by the LQS in Stettler (where I generally buy my backings and batting) to do an Artist's Talk and Trunk Show on the Saturday afternoon of a quilt retreat weekend.  Caroline, the owner of Homespun Seasons, has wanted me to do this for some time now, and seems to think that though Stettler is in the heart of what I call "Bed Quilt Central", there will be an interest in the whole process of coming up with original designs.  As for me, I look forward to any opportunity to show my work.  She wants me to include MOB I and my books...and will permit me to sell the books, given that the proceeds go to JDRF and Diabetes Canada.  So...one can only hope!

You can see I've much to think about and prepare for in the coming months...but my focus right now is getting ready to leave for the Celtic Quilt Tour to Scotland!  I fly out of Edmonton with my friend and colleague, Mary Wilton, on September 11 and will be touring there through the 28th!!

I decided that being away from the sewdio would make this the perfect time to take my Husqvarna Lily 555 in for her annual "spa treatment" at Red Deer Sewing Centre...so that will happen on my way to work at The Shop today.  That said, I just had to keep working her till bed-time last night...putting together blocks for what I'm calling "My Quilt".

I've now managed to create six rows of six blocks each. My design wall accommodates only three rows of six at a time; here's what the second set of three rows of blocks looks like:

All in all, I plan for it to be 8 blocks per row x 10 rows (i.e., 80 blocks each finishing at 8" square) -- plus borders.  I doubt that I'll try to quilt it myself, but I've had fun playing will all these brights, knowing full well the finished top will look nothing like the original pattern.  The goal is to have a fresh new quilt for my bedroom, and in that, I think I'll succeed!  😊

Continuing my Utilitarian streak, I've now finished two dishcloths from stash cotton and have cast on a third, aiming to replace my sad and sorry collection with at least a half dozen new ones.  The patterns are all mysteries from an old Ravelry KAL (2009/2010), so I never know what they look like till they're finished.  Here's the first one -- from a pattern from the middle of September 2009:

Side One

Side two

Yes, it's reversible -- and yes, it's a diamond...

or rather, diamonds within diamonds!

The yarn is Nova Four Seasons Cotton from Diamond Yarns (I'm not kidding!) in colour-way #25.

And that's all the news from the Sewdio for today.  I may squeeze in one more post before I travel; we'll see.  Meanwhile I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday over at The Needle and Thread Network, and wishing you a great rest of the week!

EBMC - May Finish!

To quote a fellow-student in this year's EBMC, "This piece very nearly landed in the bin."

I spent most of yesterday with the re-vamp of my May piece for the "Landscape" theme, and the quilting was a struggle.  It was my own fault, really;  I decided to try a slightly different tension for my walking foot (recommended by the instruction book that came with my sewing machine) and it looked great on top -- but underneath, a mess of small loops where the top thread was pulled down off the surface.  Sigh.

Reverse sewing was the only way out.  Rough-edged fused strips became really rough-edged and bits of frayed thread were all over the surface.

(cut here to weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth....)

Cursing gave way to a frustrated yell to the Heavens...recognizing I should have gone with tried-and-true...

Eventually, the thing was quilted:

Ready for trimming and squaring up

Here's the faced piece on my design wall (facing still has to be stitched down but at this point, I consider it ready for submission to EB):

Wide Alberta Sky (C) 2015
26.25" W x 23" L

And a detail:

And EB's feedback:

I think this came out very well...especially the detail!!   The little hint of gold does just make it!  A LOT better than that darned shed!!  That's because its shape is in keeping with the other shapes so it is unified, but the color is bold and that gives one the contrast.

With hindsight the full version would be a lot better if the sky wasn't so obviously stripped...if instead you had pieced the sky in a similar fashion to the land...the vertical joins stand out very boldly and really for no good reason.

I do like the canola!!!  Yes when I say rape[seed] down here people look at me very funny...interesting though both here - in Georgia - and in the UK, it's a bold chartreuse, never gold - I've got it in a least one quilt and several paintings!! 

The slough looks okay...but would have been better had it come further across...or come and gone (as it were) like the canola.  Remember you don't have  to make it exactly as it really is!!!

But you have caught the sense of the rolling plains and the wide wide sky which is very nice indeed.

All in all, I'm satisfied.  I take her point about the pieced sky, which I created because I wanted to generate movement in the sky and because, darn it, I wanted a variety of blues and didn't have enough long yardage, so I used shorter bits!  (grin)

Any thoughts?

Linking up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday, and taking a break with some knitting.  I have a sock to finish -- and the Socks-from-Stash challenge deadline is tomorrow night!

Giving Birth (or EBMC May: Landscape)

I slept through the arrival of my children who, for medical reasons, were both delivered surgically.

I'm making up for that now by birthing my art work with all the push, pull and pain that goes with labour and delivery.  Very little of the process is easy for me -- notwithstanding that I am 'given' the images for some pieces in their entirety, having only to assemble them according to the Creator's instructions.  :-)

You'd think with all the landscapes I've made that this months EBMC theme, "Landscape", would be easier, but no.  For one thing, having gotten away with creating two 'minis' last month, I determined I would try to produce something larger this time.

My motivation is two-fold:

• First, I want to enter SAQA's Canadian call for entry -- "My Corner of the World" (All SAQA members)* and "My Corner of the World: Canada" (Only Canadian artists)** and there are size requirements that are in the realm of "large" based on my usual work; and
• Second, I have a commission to do a landscape, and my hope is to make it larger than a 'mini'.

So I'm looking on this piece as -- if nothing else -- practice for the Larger Leagues!

Poplars - Charles Beck

If you read my last post, you'll remember that EB had me consider woodcuts as a style.  Woodcuts?!  So...yesterday I spent most of the morning looking at woodcut landscapes and the artists who make them.  Woodcutting is a venerable form of print making, but there are contemporary artists who still do this work.  I was particularly captivated by Charles Beck who, as far as I can tell, is still alive and working in his nineties.

Mr. Beck lives and works in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, a small city not much bigger than Lacombe, Alberta, and -- like my beloved Mirror -- situated in a topography of rolling prairie, woodlands and small lakes.  

Taking some inspiration from his work, and noting EB's feedback, I set to trying to sketch variations on my original sketch.  

More sketches...

A couple of them ended up in crumpled heaps on the sewdio floor.  The rest are stacked on the edge of my cutting table,  By the end of the day yesterday I was exhausted, and rather frustrated at my inability to 'birth' what I "saw" inside of me.

Prairie Spring (C) 2015

I decided to sleep on it.  As I drifted off (I later explained to EB when I sent in the assignment), I had a notion to return to the pieced simplicity of "Prairie Spring", which I did for the  "Line" assignment in March.

But...when I returned to the sewdio this morning, the image of that shed and the field, slough, trees and fencing wouldn't leave me, wouldn't let me distill them into a more linear or abstract form.

I decided to try for a very primitive approach -- as few 'frills and furbelows' as possible...

And I came up with this (working title: "Prairie Primitive":

"Prairie Primitive" (WIP) 2015

Materials: hand-dyed cotton (sky, slough from the same piece); hand-dyed silk (tree tops on left - no trunks yet - and trees on horizon), commercial cottons and batiks.  And those lumps in the left foreground aren't rocks; they're cattle...or will be...

While I await EB's feedback, I'm going to enjoy a quiet evening finishing a murder mystery (may I recommend Steve Burrows' A Siege of Bitterns'?) and catch up with the others over at Nina Marie's "Off-the-Wall Friday".

Tomorrow, if the rain lets up, I'll be helping my Sweet Sis plant her veggie patch over at her Sylvan Lake Sanctuary...

WD's veggie patch - photo from July 2014

Happy Victoria Day!

And if it's raining where you are, pour a cuppa, and enjoy this vignette of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Beck:

*See SAQA Calls for Entry HERE.  You must be a SAQA member to enter.

**See SAQA Regional Calls for Entry HERE.  You must be a Canadian SAQA member to enter.

SAQA Santa Fe Spotlight

On the Friday evening of the up-coming SAQA Conference in Santa Fe, there's to be a silent auction fund-raiser for the organization -- an opportunity to share work with one's peers and perhaps take home something special created by someone you admire and have come to know across time and cyber-space, if not in person.

I frequently joke that I have 'more stash than cash', so I'm always happy to step up to the plate when called upon to make something for a SAQA benefit.  Last evening. inspired by a walk late one afternoon recently, I put together 'Prairie Twilight' -- a 6" x 8" wee landscape based on a view at the end of a street near my house.  I was captivated by the sliver of sunset between the snow-full clouds and the snowy horizon, by the narrow band of trees in the distance, and the top of a hay-bale just peeking over the rim of a furrow in the field beyond the road.

Prairie Twilight (C) - 2013

Here it is, trimmed to size.  It's pretty well quilted from edge to edge, so I'll leave the rest raw.All the fabrics are commercial cottons and batiks, except for the slivers of peach and dark peach silk for which, again, I thank my friend arlee and her shop, FyberSpace.  When these pieces get to the curator of the auction/show, Deb Cashatt, she and her team will have them matted with a 4.5" x 6.5" opening, so it'll look sort of like this...but nicer, because what you see here are my worn and weary-looking home-made "L" frames! LOL!

And yes, I got rather hooked on the process of making these little pieces -- perfect for the Lacombe Show! -- so went to Andrea, my framer, today, and arranged for her to cut a dozen matts (I chose the colours --mainly white and black, but one very dark navy, and some deep rusty-brown and butterscotch ones for autumnal pieces) -- 8" x 10" with 5' x 7" openings.  I'll pick 'em up in a few weeks, by which time I should have several pieces finished to show her, and she can make sure I afix them to their respective matts properly.  (Yes, I ordered a roll of special 'stitcher tape' for the purpose, too.)

I love the thought of treating myself with some time to make a miniature or two, in between the larger pieces I'm also doing for the show, and I'm hopeful that these matted pieces will be priced just right for those who attend and buy purely on impulse as a special gift for someone or a treat for themselves.

If you're going to the Conference, perhaps you'll put in a bid?