One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.
This week I practiced drawing and painting sandhill cranes in flight
This study will be part of a larger landscape that I am planning. I used cerulean and phthalo blues, raw sienna, burnt sienna, yellow ochre and a bit of Payne’s gray on Arches cold press paper. My reference photo appeared on the MPR website and was taken by Ben Hovland.
Last May I was engaged in the task of clearing out my mother’s sewing room. It was a sad but wondrous one. Almost forty years of accumulated objects, tools, machines and materials were stashed in every closet and corner of a tiny room. These included dozens of unfinished objects which were hidden in other rooms. In one closet I found draped over a hanger, rows of scrappy blocks – about sixty of them. She must have worked on this quilt over a period of years. It seemed very close to completion, so I brought it home with the idea of finishing it.
As I spread out all of the rows and loose blocks, I noticed that many blocks were not squared up. Some blocks were bigger than others. Some rows looked fine, others much shorter. (??.) Stymied by this discovery, I put the quilt away.
Now it is January and time for another Stay at Home Round Robin project. Led by Quilting Gail, this game is played by starting with a block, and then adding rows to it as clues (suggestions) are revealed weekly. I decided to get the scrappy blocks out and do something with them.
I disassembled some rows and organized the blocks by size and value. After a bit of pondering, I concluded that supporting fabrics for this quilt needed to be neutral solids. Purchasing a range of grays, I added a bright yellow batik print from my stash.
My plan is to create a value gradation starting from the center and working outward. The bright yellow will serve as a unifying sparkle for the design. Getting started, I chose four blocks that contained mostly pale colors.
To unify these four, I removed one corner from each, sewed on a triangle of yellow and assembled the blocks into a square.
My finished block will measure 15 inches. It is positioned on point to emphasize the many triangles that seem to catch the eye.
Now let’s hope the SAHHR team doesn’t throw me any CURVES!
To learn more about Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 and to play along, here is your link.
I have been spending time with pencils this week. The first sketch is a study for a watercolor landscape that I am planning.
This next drawing, still unfinished, is based on a sketch I made of Henry last month.
FORTEEN CANDLES
I transferred lines from my preliminary sketch onto toned pastel paper, then built up layers of graphite. A little chalk pencils brightens up the flames.
This rusty car was our assignment at the art association open studio last Wednesday. I think I got a pretty good likeness of the photograph. The hardest part was deciding when to stop.
I used a palette of raw sienna, burnt sienna, cerulean blue, cobalt blue and ultramarine blue. Painted on Fabriano Studio cold press paper.
It was a cloudy day when I staged and photographed this image. It documents the assembly of my latest quilt project, tentatively called “Creation.” From a few feet away, the piecing looks fine. All points that are not exactly matched are at least closely matched. You can see on the right one border attached.
At this point, I really needed a break on lining up and sewing points. So I moved on to the border’s corner blocks. In reading about medieval manuscript paintings, I learned that the owners of the missals often had their family coats of arms painted at the corners. Here are examples.
I desire to do something simpler. (Only partly because I don’t want to spend several years of my life painting an elaborately decorated border like the example!) I have a fascination with symbols, so I decided to place historical and ancient symbols of God and/or creation at the corners instead. After a bit of research, I got busy.
Three out of four are complete. They are painted on the same golden fabric used as used for the scenes of Creation. I used watercolor pencils again. Behind and to the left you can see my border fabrics.