Taking a chance – Daily Fiber

Year 2020 in my Rearview Mirror

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Laura Kate

My usual practice on New Year’s Day is to clean out my clothes closet, eliminating all those items I no longer wear and taking stock of any needs for replacements. But this year? Staying at home 90% of the time? Who needs new clothes! I fell into a consistent pattern of wearing jeans or stretch pants and cotton knit shirts.

So today, I will ignore my closet and instead look back at the work emerging from my studio. In glancing at my 2020 posts, I realize how much my work has changed since I started this blog in 2019. What comes to the front are the forays into making art quilts and painting with watercolors. But I’ll start with my first love –

KNITTING

While this year was not a high point in creative design, my output was strong. I completed 3 hats, 4 pair of socks, a toddler sweater, a dress, a top down cardigan, a serape and a water bottle holder. My most complex object was the Weaver’s Square vest made for my daughter.

Technically, I did design this garment. But the fair isle pattern on the vest’s back was adapted from one I saw on Knit/Lab’s website. I don’t take credit for that part. The vest turned out pretty great and she loved it. Here are a few photos of some other knits I made this year:

I finished the year with two UFO’s – a pair of men’s socks and a pair of gloves.

PAINTING

Last year I was focused on learning to sketch. But this year, I was determined to start painting. To that end, I joined the local art association and signed up for some on-line classes. Anyone who has tried to paint with watercolor will freely admit that the medium has its own set of challenges. I spent the year more disheartened than encouraged. In July I followed the daily challenge on World Watercolor Month, organized by Charlie O-Shields of Doodlewash. That’s when I started to see some improvement. I began by painting copies of other people’s photographs. Eventually I was able to paint from my own photographs, from life, and from my imagination. Here are a few favorites.

QUILTING

Confession: I learned how to quilt only for the purpose of realizing my fiber ideas. So there are a lot of technical areas of quilting that I choose not to pursue. While my favorite thing to do with fabric is to paint on it, I am willing to piece fabric into a quilt top when my inspiration seems to require it. I use commercially printed fabric as well as hand painted fabric for these pieces. During the past year I learned how to mount small art quilts onto stretched canvas. This allows me to present them as works of art suitable for hanging.

At the beginning of 2021, I find myself with a number of unfinished objects. I also have more ideas than I have energy to pursue.

So perhaps my goal for the new year needs to be a narrowing of ambition. The hardest part is deciding what to leave behind. I love it all.

drawing, quilting

In the End – Confetti

Posted on October 1, 2020October 12, 2020 by Laura Kate

My creative bent took an unexpected turn today. I started the day by thinking about Van Gogh. You see in the photo the sunflowers I planted this year. I took this image over my garden fence with the idea that it would make a good reference photo for artwork. To further this end, I made a sketch of the photo this morning.

This is a simplified image that I thought would work well for either water color or fiber. Since I am currently up to my eyeballs in reference photos suitable for water color painting, I decided to make a small art quilt featuring sunflowers.

This is what led my brain to Van Gogh. Sunflowers were a favorite subject of the artist. He liked to paint them as still life images, cut and arranged in a vase.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-van-goghs-sunflowers

I intended to portray them growing in the garden. But I wanted to create a “Van Gogh” like background – full of color, motion and energy. Think of Starry Night as an example.

During my blog browsing today, I came across a post from the group 15 by 15. This is a very creative group of quilters who like to work challenges. One of the members mentioned that she used the “confetti technique” to create the background of her new work for the current challenge.

Helen Hazon – M

My brain started firing up! What is this “confetti technique?” I must learn more!

Of course You-tube came to the rescue. I found an explanation on how to add confetti to a quilt. There are several techniques, but I watched this one by Gail Hunt.

The rest of the afternoon went like this:

Find a bunch of scraps. (I used several from my Under the Sea quilt, because they already had adhesive attached to them.) With your rotary cutter, slice them to bits.

Arrange on a background fabric and press them down with your iron.

Cover the piece with a bit of tulle or netting. Glue or stitch it in place.

With sewing machine and free motion foot, stitch over the piece like crazy. (I used black thread to meander on the background and sew straight lines over the pale bits.)

I then switched to white thread and made swirls into the dark areas.

Just like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

knitting

That was Close

Posted on December 29, 2019 by Laura Kate

Knitters: What is the big cliff-hanger that every knitter faces? No, not the one about whether it will fit, or if you will finish on time. I’m talking the night-mare proportion, no-turning back, hold-your-breath issue. (Clue: I had 4 yards to spare.)

My latest stash-busting knitting project is the Peace and Love Gloves, from the colorStyle book by Pam Allen and Ann Budd published by Interweave. That book is 10-years old, so I don’t know if you can still buy it. The pattern is by Veronik Avery who has many patterns on Ravelry. Here’s the link.

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/peace-and-love-gloves

This is my second go-round to knit these gloves. I lost the first pair in Milwaukee last spring. But lucky me – I had another ball of the grey Knit-picks Stroll and almost two balls of the 100% alpaca white finger weight yarn.

The pattern claimed that I would need two balls of the main color, but ha, I didn’t believe it. After all, I had already knit this pattern, using only one ball with a little bit left over. Well friends, that bit made all the difference today. It was used to knit the two thumbs.