Mudbug chair

My husband liked my chair so well he wanted something on his too. He considered and discarded several ideas before coming up with the crawfish. I did it right quick before he changed his mind! The chair isn't actually that green looking. It's a true lemon yellow, but it's fixing to rain and the light is funny.

the link between visual stimulation and creativity

Long and wordy and no pictures (but I did add the link for photobucket to the sidebar) this morning.

Catching up on blogs earlier, and as I was reading fellow-blogger Karoda's most recent post about sorting and organizing her stash, it occurred to me that it is very likely that my current dry spell has been precipitated by the cleaning (translation:shove shit in boxes and out of sight from the main living areas of the house) frenzy that occurred when the Japanese quilt magazine people were here to interview me. Most of the clutter/supplies/stash/fabric were willy-nilly stuck in boxes, bags, tote bins, and one lone hat box, and then stacked against the wall in my son's room. More stuff was crammed onto the shelves in there and then the stacks, fat quarters, dyed, stamped, stained, painted, yardage, cotton, poly, mesh, novelty, ethnic, and commercial prints were (sort of) separated by color or theme and stacked on his top bunk. Keep in mind that I'm about 5'2" and the bunk bed is one of those dbl bottom and twin top things so I have to stand back a bit from the edge of it and it's not much lower than eye level for me and the entire top bunk is covered in the fabric stacks. It makes it VERY hard to see more then the folded edge of the front row. So much for the design ideas flowing freely without the visual stimulation of being surrounded by "stuff" in every direction.

To make matters even worse, when I had the "cleaning" (I use that descriptor very loosely) hemorrhage for the aforementioned interview, I stupidly decided that my "workroom" (another loose term) should be for the actual work, and not storage. It made perfect sense at the time for the sewing machine to be in here and not on the dining room table (and kitchen table and living room floor) and for the ironing board to be in here with the sewing machine, and a cutting surface, and all those other tools of the trade I use. There is simply not enough room for the actual work space and the fabric and 'stuff' storage to be in the same room. Hence the fabric and stuff storage in the other room. BUT...and this is a big but....without the supplies where I can see them my mind darts off in too many directions to get a good grasp on any one specific design or project. I am struggling mightily with one piece right now that has a no-flexibility-at-all deadline of June 13 and I am so totally clueless it keeps me awake at night. I have several fabrics that are mandatory to use and I have never been at a loss to come up with something based on a specific fabric or theme or color palette. I had one really good idea that I was ready to run with, but due to circumstances beyond my control (or maybe mostly due to my own internal integrity concerning my work, or possibly simple bullheadness about what I think is right) that idea is no longer an option for me. Unfortunately, I am bereft of other ideas and options. I'm guessing that a June 12 marathon is not out of the question unless I have a stroke of genius between now and then.

All this nattering to say that I have discovered the correlation between being surrounded by the visual cacaphony of my materials and the free flow of ideas. That is apparently a necessary element of my creativity. I realize there are others who are the exact opposite (a repeating topic on the Quilt Art list) and require an orderly space to create in and are distracted by a jumble of colors and fabrics. I ain't one of them. I'm not sure what the solution is though. I know that if I start bringing materials back in here where I can see them, I will once again expand the boundaries of my work space back to the rest of the house and I'm sort of enjoying being able to actually sit at the table to eat.

Pictures!

Well, not actually any pictures in this post, but I have finally gotten off my butt and put them all in one place anyway. You can check them out at http://photobucket.com/DeltaMoon

Some of these go back 3 or 4 years and there are a bunch I never got pictures of before they went off to take up space at someone else's house. I haven't had a camera but a few years either so that's another excuse.

edit: I have added a direct link to the photobucket thing on the sidebar, and it only took me 15 minutes!!!!

Festival Chairs

We just bought new chairs last week for the RJ fest and they were sort of plain looking. Like all the other hundreds of identical chairs. Soooo......after a great idea from a JazzFester, here is the unveiling of the new and improved festival chair! The quote is used with permission of Funkkiejunkie. Thanks!

Happy day, mothers!

Mine was great! A trip to the Robert Johnson Blues Festival in Crystal Springs yesterday started off the weekend just right. We got to hear the Copiah County InBreeds (or whatever they called themselves) butcher some perfectly good music. They butchered some crap too, but that was to be expected. After a couple of hours of bleeding eardrums, the emcee brought out this CHILD all spiffy in a starched white dress shirt (92 degrees and humid....I was impressed) and black dress pants. I think I have blue jeans older than this kid. He was absolutely incredible though, and about 3 seconds after he got cranked up, you totally forgot he was barely out of diapers. I talked to him later and asked how old he is. 14. Only 14 years old and only been playing since he was 11, and he's already traveling the country (he lives in CA, I think) and playing. His name is Gabriel Lambirth and we truly enjoyed his music.

Jessie Robinson and the 500 lb Blues Band took over after that and rawked! The first time my husband ever saw him play, he was sitting outside the Piggly Wiggly playing for shits and giggles while he was waiting on somebody. God, that sounds country. Running into a famous blues player in the parking lot at the grocery store (especially one called the Piggly Wiggly of all things), killing time with a free impromptu concert among the Fords and Chevys. Willie "Big Eyes" Smith sat in for a couple of numbers with the band and he was so good! Then they brought out Steve Bell, just landed from Vegas they said, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. He played a good 30 minutes or so at least, and the band really let him showcase his stuff. They backed off and just let the harmonica music take over. I'm out of words to even describe how good he was. The way he moved holding the cordless mic it looked like he was blowing a horn, and he made the harmonica sound like one too. It was the ONLY set that the sound engineers got right, too. The woman on the bass, Nellie Somebody, got her 5 minutes of fame and showed her stuff. I can see why she plays with Jessie!

Then Honeyboy Edwards. Oh my. Honeyboy. The last living Bluesman who actually played with Robert Johnson. He's 93 years old and hasn't lost a step. They got him on stage and settled, then hovered around adjusting the mics, moving things around just so, making sure there was water and a towel handy, just generally making him comfortable, and it was all done with an incredible reverence. They were at the feet of one of the greats and it showed. Then he started singing. About 70 of those 93 years fell away and it was pure heaven for the duration. There was some sort of glitch and he showed up a couple of hours late so Pinetop Perkins and the rest of the line-up had to be pushed back to later in the afternoon and we missed them since we had to cut out about 4:00 to get back for a supper/Stanley Cup playoffs date here in town. We met out at Corky's and ate BBQ and drank swill. Good food, good friends, good times.

We headed out to the lake this morning for Mother's Day lunch. Just hung out with the kids, threw a few casts into the lake (caught nothing, but the youngest girlchild snagged a branch) drank a glass of wine, ate too much, laughed with/at the kids and siblings, and came home and crashed for a nap. All in all, a very good weekend.

And for your viewing pleasure, a picture of me and Robert Johnson's son Claude. The t-shirt he's wearing is one of only 150 printed. We bought two of them, but Robert Johnson's family doesn't own the copyright to either of the 2 pictures of him in existence so they have to license them just like any random Joe Blow does.

WWYD?

What would you do? I just posted a comment on another blog that I've seen in passing but don't check regularly. She was excited about being contacted by a woman in London who wants to buy 2 of her quilts for her new home in South Africa. This is a scam!! It has been all over the QuiltArt list and a couple of other lists I belong to and the circumstances and arrangements are always the same, and it's always a scam! They send you too much money and then want you to deposit the overage, then their original check bounces and you're stuck with not only the amount of the original check, but also the additional money you deposited back into their account. I hate to see anyone get taken unnecessarily but I don't know this woman and am not a regular reader of her blog. I felt bad about raining on her parade with even the suggestion it might not be legitimate. Now I'm second-guessing myself about making the comment at all.

Would you prefer to have a stranger steal your thunder by telling you it was a scam, or to just not know? That question sounds like it's loaded to be answered a specific way, but it's not. I'm honestly interested in knowing if you would rather a stranger comment or keep their mouth shut? I guess it's a little late since I've already commented on her blog, but I'm curious all the same. Any thoughts?

Song of the South

I love Mississippi. I love the history and the land and the people and the music and the weather. It is a state of contradictions. It's the KKK and the old white woman at the Deep Delta Festival today leaning in to whisper in the Black man's ear as they both swayed to the Blues pounding from the stage. It's the flash-flood rains we had last night that broke limbs and flooded streets, but mostly washed everything clean and green for the sun today. It's the pine forests, and flat cotton fields for miles, and the sand and live oaks, and the rolling hills choked with kudzu. It's the land of every Camaro-driving-redneck stereotype ever conceived and it's #1 in the nation in charitable giving.
In the last 8 days I have driven to a quilt show in Koscuisko, a Marcia Ball concert in New Orleans and the blues festival in Rolling Fork today. The coreopsis, Queen Anne's lace, spiderwort, vinca, red clover and wild roses are everywhere. The magnolias hang heavy in the tops of the trees. Corn, cotton, beans, pecan trees, cows and horses as far as you can see from the highway. We took the "scenic route" up through Satartia but had to turn back because the road was flooded. An extra half hour down to Vicksburg to go back up Hwy 61 didn't even seem like a detour. At the place where Hwy 16 was flooded out, there was a group of men sitting on upturned 5 gal buckets fishing from the road.
The weather was perfect, the sunburn only minor, the music good and the fried catfish delicious. We have so many festivals this time of year it's hard to even decide which ones to go to. There was another one in Leland today too. And of course, JazzFest and Memphis in May. Blues festivals every weekend through the fall.
For all the insane politics, hurricanes, tornadoes, illiterates, bad roads and worse crime rate it's still home, and I still love it. My feet are planted in the rich black soil of the Delta and seawater runs through my veins.

Patchwork Quilt Tsushin

The editor of Patchwork Quilt Tsushin, and her photographer, just spent 2 and 1/2 hours at my house interviewing me and taking pictures of my quilts. The article won't be published until Feb '09, but it was an unbelievable experience. It didn't really seem like a big deal until today, but not because it WASN'T a big deal, just because I had so much other stuff on my plate for the last 6 or 8 days I didn't have time for it to really sink in exactly how big of a deal it actually is. I made it through though, and it wasn't an ordeal. It's easy for me to talk about my work because I love what I do. I love the processes I use, and the materials and the techniques and the design aspect and the creation aspect....I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to live my passion, and to be able to share it with others. I'm so excited and overwhelmed about all of this right now that I have started typing 3 different sentences in this post and gotten halfway through them and forgot what I was going to say. Let's just say I'm happy and tired and excited all at once and leave it at that for now.

No art, no quilts

No power! 5 confirmed tornados around Jackson last Friday. We finally got power back yesterday evening. No damage to our house but terrible damage all around us. We were in the last 1500 customers to get our power back, and it was SOOOOO frustrating to see power restored on all sides of us, but our little 3 block cluster was without for several days longer than the rest of the neighborhood. Maybe the delay was due to the HUGE trees down across the roads and through the roofs of houses on those 3 blocks. The front page picture the day after the tornados hit was a house about 2 blocks from us. Driving anywhere took 3 times as long because of no stop lights, blocked trees and streets down to one lane. Of course, this all happens when everything else is happening too, but nobody ever gave me a copy of that master calendar to schedule acts of God around my own deadlines either. Well, they may have given me a copy of it but it's probably buried under the mountains of other crap in my house and I can't lay my hands on it. I should probably locate it before hurricane season starts though.

Without further ado, pictures of stuff within one block of our house. We were extremely fortunate.

gel printing at the craft guild

One of the obligations of membership in the MS Craftsmen's Guild is to sign up to do an all day demonstration every so often. Saturday was my day. I would have gone insane sitting there sewing all day (especially after we discovered how much the tables shook when we were actually using the sewing machines!) so I decided to do some gel plate printing to get some fabrics for a piece I'm working on now. Poured the plates the night before and gathered all my stuff to use. I have this fear of forgetting to bring some crucial component every time, so I tend to over pack. I did have fun though, and even though the rain they promised never materialized, I think it kept people away from the craft center. Very slow day for visitors, but I enjoyed having the room to stretch my stuff out on the tables and just do nothing but create art fabric. No distractions like I have at home. And yes, that is latex wall paint from Lowe's that I use for the gel printing. The gel plates are much smaller than I normally use, but it was a demo and I only needed small pieces for the string piecing I had in mind. I did spend the last hour or so of the demo cutting and piecing, but the majority of the day was spent just getting paint on fabric. The colors are darker and a bit muted, but it was what I needed for the chosen project. If nothing else, the setting is absolutely gorgeous, as you can see from the huge windows behind the work tables. I even took a nature walk to pick up some seed pods, stones, sticks and other assorted detritus, including dove feathers from a freshly-dead dove who thoughtfully committed hari kari against the window. The treasures will be incorporated into the quilt I'm making from the gel printed fabrics, so it all dovetails (hahahaha, I crack myself up) nicely.

And the beginning of the final piece. It's all pieced and quilted and I've just started on the embellishing. There are tiny slivers of maybe 5 commercial fabrics in the string piecing, but everything else is painted/dyed/printed by me. The color is bad (as usual) in the photo, but I'm pleased with it in real life.

Rust staining classes scheduled

I have finally got a rust staining class scheduled that's open to the general public. June 17, from 9-noon, $25.00 plus your supplies. The class will be taught at Quilt Arts on Lakeland Dr. If you can't make that one, we've also discussed running one (or more) rust stain classes at ARTichoke this summer. I much prefer doing it in the heat of summer since you can see the results immediately. I have a piece of raw silk that's been on the rusty pole out back all winter and all it has so far is half a dozen small spots. I could do the same piece in the height of summer and have a deep golden brown in 48 hours, and a good mottled piece in 24. I have no idea why the heat makes any difference but it seems to. Maybe it's the "cooking" that goes on in the black plastic with the Mississippi sun beating down on it. Anne and Marianne have ordered in some PFD fabric for us to use and of course they have all the tone-on-tones and solid colors already. I played with some prints and colors last year and my favorites are the black and white prints, and a few solid colors like blues and greens that play well with the rust stains. Not every color does, but it's like the entire process of rust staining....trial and error. I do know that it doesn't have to be 100% cotton though. That's always nice to be able to do some surface design on non-cottons.

I'll be demonstrating gel plate printing Saturday from 10-4 at the MS Craft Center on Rice Rd. too, if anyone is interested in that technique. A quick stop at Hancock's on the way out there for some scrim and muslin and whatever other weird fabrics I see and I get to play with paint all day! I have what's left of the pints of wall paint from last summer, and the bajillion bottles of the craft acrylics, and a pkg of plastic bowls and spoons so I'll be a mixing fool trying to use up some of the remnants of crap I have. Maybe I'll even finish off enough that I can throw some of the containers away. "And my color inspiration for this piece was using whatever I had the least of so I could throw the can out." I'll have to round up my foam stamps (at last, a reason to use the Fluer de Lis!) and bubble wrap and assorted mark making tools. Pour the plates tonight, clean house all day tomorrow and then demonstrate all day Saturday. Gee, I can't wait!

Into the Woods

For the first time in several years, I'm actually enjoying the costumes and props duties of a production! It sure is easier to get motivated and get things done in a more timely way when I'm having fun doing it. The storms came through last night and our power was on and off this morning so I wound up dipping the buns and rolls in polyurethane in the dark. Literally. I was doing it at 5:00 am and it was absolutely pitch black in the house except for the flashlight. The bread needs to bake a few more hours and then I can coat it with the poly. What the hell am I doing, you ask? This is stage setting for the play. They need an assortment of breads for the baker's shop and the cheapest, easiest, fastest way to get it done was buy a bunch of different kinds of day old bread, bake it overnight on a warm setting on the oven and then seal it with the poly. We'll probably wind up adding some color to some of it and maybe frosting it with drywall mud "icing" before all is said and done.

The dresses are cobbled together from some basic ready-to-wear pieces from the Salvation Army. The Snow White bodice was originally a very expensive suit jacket and I just replaced the sleeves and added the collar and skirt. Some cheap accessories from the Dollar Tree and it's good to go. The gold and silver dress was originally 2 separate dresses that I just cut the skirt off the silver one and added it to the gold one. A yard or so of the silver and gold fabrics and it's done.

Busy, busy

I completely forgot to post a report on the closing reception Saturday! It went off without a hitch (or a power outage) this time although we went to bed the Friday night with dire predictions of up to 2" of ice and snow overnight and the first thimg I saw when I woke up was the totally covered roof of the house across the street. At 5:00 am it never occurred to me that the house was vacant and had no heat so I almost panicked at the thought of another reception in bad weather conditions. Fortunately, it warmed up into the 60s by the afternoon and everything was good. Everyone who walked through the door had a joke about my luck with the weather though.

I had a bit of a jolt when I walked in the door too. A small Robert Johnson piece I sold last fall was front and center, beautifully framed in a shadow box and sitting on an easel. Anne said the owner had seen the announcement for the reception and offered to let her display his piece during the show. What a rush to see to see it professionally framed and displayed! I kept going back to it and thinking "Did I really do that?"

I've been doing a ton of beading lately and have pictures of some of the stuff but not of others. I also realized last night while working on a book cover for Aidan that I have like ZERO beads in the yellow/orange range. I think I had one tube each of seed beads and a few bugles from a bag of mixed colors. Other than that, I was reduced to cutting up old jewelry and fudging into the gold and brown spectrum. I also re-drew the pattern to make the yellow and orange parts a bit smaller. At least it gives me an idea of where I need to fill in the holes of my bead stash.

The "Earth Fissures" series of small beaded pieces I'm doing using rust stained borders is coming along, although none of the 3 I have now are completely finished yet. I am really loving doing the heavy beading sort of free-hand. Some with a theme in mind, some just as it comes while I'm working on it. My cats thought they had hit the jackpot when I started making a lap so often when I sat down to bead, except that I put a tray across my knees for a beading surface. You can just see their little cat brains wondering why I go to all the trouble of sitting down and then not letting them get in my lap. That doesn't always stop them from trying though. And sometimes they even succeed in getting under the tray to curl up between me and the arm of the chair. At least they don't swat at the beads and thread.

Keep in mind that neither of these are finished yet.

How strange!

My fellow blogger Penny Sanford Fikes http://pennysanford.typepad.com/ has a post this morning about some fabric collage plates. What a shock to open up her blog and see a red version of my husband's grandmother's green plates! Even the patterns for the individual pieces of fabric appear to be the same. This is apparently something that was a thing to do at one time, although I can find zero information on where they might have come from or what era they might have been popular. That is assuming they were ever "popular" to begin with. They are relatively detailed for what they are, just sort of strange in a weird, creepy sort of way. Fabric pieces just glued to a standard cafeteria ceramic plate. No markings on the back of the plate, and all of the painting on the front is obviously hand-painted. Rick rack, nylon netting, sequins, and a button for the embellishments. The date is 1922 on James' plate, and 192? on Eula's. The second number on hers looks like it was scraped off and changed, although the changed number has apparently flaked off also. His geneology records say June 1920 was their wedding date, so who knows what the real story is with them, or even who made them, or when, for that matter. Interesting sort of thing to run across though.

If any of you have any clue what these things are, or any other information on them, I'd love to hear about it.

Art in the Dark

Music by candlelight. I encourage people to feel my work, but not usually to feel their way through the rooms displaying my work! The reception last night was a smashing success (if 3 cubes of cheese and a strawberry with a nibble out of it being the only leftovers is any guage) even without power. We had just gotten into the rhythm of things good when the lights went out. The power actually went out in the entire downtown area. They say this is only the second times that's happened in years. So of course it happens during the reception. Carmen and Ann calmly began passing out candles and people just chatted with whomever was standing next to them. I did my "elevator pitch" for the allotted 3 minutes then the party continued as usual. The surprising thing is that nobody left right away. And people continued to arrive. I'm not sure exactly what I expected from an artist reception (this is my first, remember) but if they're all like this one I think I'm going to become like those old ladies who show up at all the wakes. I'll just make the rounds every week to all the opening receptions for artists all over town. Carmen and Anne made things unbelivably easy and (other than the power) the evening went off without a hitch. As a testament to their calm approach and composure, I only worried about the whole open flame + melted wax + quilts thing for about 30 seconds.

For those of you without the inclination to buy a quilt, you should check out Carmen's new "Blues Tapestry" candle creation! I felt so honored by her doing that.

Many thanks to everyone who showed up, whether I knew you or not, and to Kenta for the incredible food, and most especially to Carmen and Anne.

Hollow cube quilt blocks

Speaking of copyright, I've noticed over the last year or so that one of the most common search strings that shows up on my site meter is for the hollow cube block. The actual pattern can be found in Sara Nephew's Big Book of Building Block Quilts. The pattern was designed by her and is still under copyright to her. The only way to legally get a copy is to buy the book (or draft your own pattern for it), so you won't be seeing the instructions on my blog. The books aren't really expensive (under $15) and, judging by the interest in the pattern, well worth the money if you want to use it in one of your own quilts. I found copies for sale on a bunch of different sites so it isn't hard to find.