just playing around

These are two thread bowls I've been playing with. Neither will go any further than this probably, but they were good practice for one I have in my head. They are stitched on a base of water-soluble stabilizer, so once that is rinsed out, the entire bowl consists of nothing but the thread from stitching. I totally get in the zone doing these since it's very much like thread painting or free-motion quilting. I do have a timer set for 15 minute increments though so my back and shoulders don't get wrecked for a week by losing track of time. And if I push my machine too hard it overheats too. I usually work for 15 minutes, take a short break, and after 45 minutes I turn the machine off completely and take a longer break. For the 'real, true' bowl I have in my head, I'm thinking maybe solid black rayon (sort of shiny) for the bowl with lots of beading. I like the effect of the fringe on the edge but I'm not sure how that would look with beads mixed into it. I do want a pile of beads in the center, maybe spilling out of the bowl somehow. We'll see. It'll probably turn out nothing like I envision it anyway. And I have another idea for a quilt that's percolating in my brain too. A trumpet/piano combo design. What a surprise, huh? It's a relatively simple overall design, but pretty fiddly so we'll see when it actually gets made.

No pictures today

At least not yet. I got "Primarily Jazz" finished yesterday and wonder of wonders, it lies perfectly flat and perfectly straight and is apparently perfectly square. Of course I decided to use a technique that I've never used before when I quilted it, so I was worried I'd screw it up. And I used that evil monofilament thread too. Between sewing through the painted fabric, using the mono, different color top and bobbin threads and the double layer of felt for the batting I was expecting the perfect storm of bird nests, bad tension, lots of frogging and a back full of pleats and tucks. I got none of those! NONE! Do you hear me? I was in the zone with the stitch in the ditch, the tension stayed right where I put it, the back was smooth as glass and the only frogging I had to do was about 6" where the excess backing got folded back and I stitched through it while quilting. I even remembered to put the sleeve on it! I'm hoping and praying that the relative ease of getting it assembled and quilted is a good omen for it getting accepted to the show. A label, good photos and off goes the submission. Wish me luck!

Now, on to some other ideas I have in mind for the next one. And the next one after that.

This is a test

Do you recognize this man? This is a quilt I'm submitting for an art show in New Orleans. Hopefully, I'll have the binding on this evening or tomorrow and then I'll get good pictures of it and off it goes for jurying. Think really good thoughts, really hard, for me to get in. I'll invite everyone to the reception if it's accepted! (Any excuse for a party in New Orleans!)

Another weekend of Blues

We spent the day Saturday at the Bentonia Blues Festival at the historic Blue Front Cafe' and had a blast. Only in the Deep South can Wonderbread, fried catfish and mayo be considered a meal. With a side of boiled peanuts and a cold beer. The heat wasn't so unbearable as it was at Leland either. Only a few degrees cooler on the thermometer, but it was on grass this time instead of dirt. At one point, the clouds moved in carrying rain and it got downright cool even though we never got any of the actual rain. The trains passing on the very busy tracks directly behind us were a nice touch, and it was funny how people all turned and waved at the City of New Orleans when it came through. The musicians jamming in the cafe' never stopped even though they were about 10 feet from the stage and every time there was a break between songs you could hear the music coming from the cafe'. Nobody seemed to mind either. Duck Holmes' 91 year-old aunt spent the entire day on the stage dancing and nobody seemed to mind that either.

It's great living in a place where we're only 2 or 3 hours away from all these festivals that celebrate the birthplace of so many types of music. A 3 hour drive in any direction gives us Blues, New Orleans jazz, hill country music, cajun, pretty much anything we want to hear on any given weekend is a day trip for us. Our kids think it's "cute" that we go to all these festivals now too. We would have been going to them all along except that we started having kids practically the minute we got married so we never had the time/money/freedom to do much of it until we got them out of the house. My youngest daughter has expressed an interest in going with us and my son already hits the festivals he's interested in. It's pretty cool to be able to talk music with the kids and know that we have a lot of the same tastes. It's also nice to swap CDs with them (except their definition of "swap" is to go shopping in my CDs and then report back how much they love the most recently lifted CD of mine) and to suggest new artists to each other.

No art quilting in this post other than to say I'm really struggling with a piece right now but it's not ready for me to show yet. I have done a lot of the detail work on it and I've started piecing it, but it's a very organic sort of piecing. Add a strip here, a square there, a border around that and then hold it all up and hope it works together at each stage. So far, so good, but it's slow going for some reason.

Congratulations Amy and Gregg!

We missed the wedding, but we'll be around for the marriage! I think I can safely post a pic of their quilt since I intend to deliver it before they see the blog. At least that's the plan. Upholstery fabrics in tapestry, chenille and silk. It will be hung by brass rings on a decorative brass rod.

"The Storm" redux

The pictures I sent in for the submission are much better than these, but the files are freaking huge so I'm not posting them. Use your imagination for color adjustment and cropping.

The Storm

I took down the pictures of the artist book in case they have an objection to it being posted somewhere. If it isn't accepted I'll re-post the pics or add them to the photobucket.

My brain really isn't hitting on all cylinders apparently. I sent all the submission info and files they asked for, and promptly forgot to add phone number or email addy to the contact information, and I doubt they'll be sending me anything through snail mail. Hopefully, I didn't hose things up badly enough for them to refuse the submission.

the mechanics of art

Whew...my mind has been racing with all the combinations and permutations of assembling an idea I have for an art project. I have stacks of little test samples pinned all over my work space and 3 pages of notes on what I want to include on the actual project once I get the technical details worked out. I'm actually taking notes for this one since every time I make a new sample I have to wait...and wait...and wait...for it to dry so I can see the final effect. o any of you have any idea if I can add acrylic paint to polyurethane to give it color? I may wind up just buying a can of tinted poly wood stain or something. I'll apparently be investing in yardage of wonder under too. And probably a new printer that will take fabric sheets without totally hosing up everything on my computer. MY fabric sheets, not the commercial ones. The commercial ones are never the right fabric, or the right size, or the right color, or the right texture, or the right price. I have a very specific design that I want to TRY to achieve with this particular piece, so all of the pre-prep work is necessary. Unfortunately, it also has a very short deadline, and a very personal message, but I want to get it right. We'll see. If nothing else, I'm learning the properties of several different techniques for surface design. That's never a bad thing.

Oh yeah, and my dumb ass decided to make a quilt for a gift.....that's due NEXT SATURDAY! Thank goodness I seem to work best under pressure. I would post some pictures today, but one project can't be revealed until the middle of the month, one is in the planning stage and I don't even have the fabric yet for the other one.

artist's book

Like I need to take on ANOTHER project! At least I'm down to the quilting and embellishing on the quart bag quilt that is due June 13 so I have a bit of breathing room. The new project was inspired by a call for submissions from the Abecedarian Gallery for textile related artist books. http://www.abecedariangallery.com/ It feels like a good fit for my current experimentation with the journals I'm making. They have been well received by people who have seen them and I really enjoy working on them too. As soon as I saw the prospectus an idea came full-blown to me from something that's been on my mind for a while now. Of course, I have a feeling it's going to be VERY labor intensive but better to spend the time working on it than leaving it in my head to distract me from everything else. As long as I resist actually creating something from the idea, my brain won't let me do anything else other than think about it. It's almost like it fills up all the creative cells so no other ideas have any room to exist. Maybe if I get it out of my head and onto fabric I can move on to something else. I hope, anyway.

These are all hand stitched pages and beaded, embroidered pieced, embellished, etc. The one at top left with the batiks and rust stained fabrics is my own personal notebook and is made to take a standard size spiral bound book. The rest have 96 page sewn signatures. You can see the different signature treatments on the shot of the spines. All but one of them has a bookmark sewn into the cover. Several of them use pieces of my rust stained fabrics on the inside. Dupioni silk, commercial print, mud cloth and batik covers. 9"x6"

A memorable Memorial Day!

My new Marine! He graduated Friday at Parris Island, SC and we drove all the way out there to see him. Thursday was family day so we got to see him doing the marching thing and then had about 5 hours to hang out with him on base. We grabbed a bite to eat (he ate like they hadn't fed him for the last 13 weeks!) and then, because my daughter was with us, we went shopping. We hit the museum, the gift shop, several side roads as we got lost a time or two and lots of just aimless wandering as we chatted and caught up on things. The feelings switched back and forth lightning fast between feeling like it had been a year since we talked and feeling like he hadn't been gone a week. He seemed to be glad we made the graduation, although we've been telling him since he left that we'd be there. I think he was a bit worried about how his friends here would receive him when he got back (10 days leave at home before heading to Jacksonville, NC for another month of training) but they seem to have not even noticed he's a Marine. I'm sure there were jokes about the hair, but that's about it.

Aidan was so happy to see him she was practically giddy the whole 3 days. He's trying very hard to maintain his Marine face" and not smile, but he's not having much luck. I think he was as happy to see her as she was to see him. We teased her all weekend about getting a shirt that says "Proud sisterwife of a U.S. Marine." One awkward moment when he was trying to introduce us to his Sgt, but it passed quickly with some laughter. It meant a lot to me when he finally decided the appropriate introduction was "This is my second mom" though.

My "second son." I couldn't be more proud and happy and hopeful for him.

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.