At Last a Hosta Blossom

I actually fused the last piece of this design a week ago, but immediately headed out to teach the first session of my Art Quilt Series last Saturday, and then I started an on-line Photoshop course on Monday. I've been distracted by the US election as well. In light of that, I think we need to post something happy and pleasurable! Here it is, the hosta blossom I worked on last week, and that has been planned for some time. Right now it is not permanently attached to this background. I will audition it on others before I make my final decision.

I worked on two pen, ink and watercolour drawings since my last blog post. They are both based on photos I took in  Provence in 2015.

This yellow chair was just sitting in a grey alley.

I've worked on this quite a bit, but it is still not finished. Based on a photo taken at the Abbey Saint Hilaire in Provence.

In order to avoid the pressure and rush of last spring, we'll begin dyeing fabric this week for kits required during my spring teaching. We'll also begin copying and folding and packaging patterns. All of this is spread out nicely in my calendar and I'm hopeful it will be a bit more sane than last year. I'm excited about Session 2 of my Art Quilt Series, which takes place next Saturday, January 28. I'll be introducing the class to "seat of the pants" design.

A New Year ...

At this time of year everyone seems to be making New Year's resolutions or choosing a word for the year to inspire them. What about you? I don't really do either. I keep a running list of goals all year long, and update it maybe once a month. My list includes nine major categories:

1) Well-being (this includes health related items like eating better, exercise, and getting in the studio because it is good for my mental well-being)

2) Self Development (things I want to learn, things I need to learn)

3) New Work (the work my heart wants to make)

4) Show Entries (shows I plan to enter along with entry deadlines)

5) Course Development (classes I am revising or developing or dreaming about developing)

6) Patterns (this is a relatively new one)

7) Dyeing (what do I need to dye that might be useful in upcoming classes or for my own work)

8) Publishing (includes website updates, new brochures, e-newsletters, e-blasts, and sometimes magazine articles)

9) Commissions 

The last section is called SHORT TERM GOALS.  This is where I list all the things I need to do in the next few weeks. Sometimes they get carried over a few times.

Keeping all of the above balls in the air really does require me to write everything down, especially since my memory is not what it used to be!!

One thing is for sure, there are some big changes coming for me in the new year. I now have a retired husband and will have my first fabric line, and am heading into the pattern publishing world. There is also a plan to have a shopping cart on my website in a few months. My patterns will be sold there, and perhaps some fabric. It may be my Northcott line, and there may also be hand-dyed fabrics.  

As I write this I am beginning my relationship with Electric Quilt 7 software. I am on a fairly tight deadline to design two patterns for my new fabric line. Can I just say that the free-hand drawing tool is a big challenge?! My fabric line was finalized just before Christmas, but I have been asked to wait until the end of January to share it. So everyone will have to wait a bit longer. Well OK, maybe it is me that is having the hardest time waiting ;-))

In the mean time, I have some other in-progress work shots to share.This first little piece is my 10 x 7 inch submission for the upcoming SAQA Trunk Show. All members are invited to contribute a work that will get shared in a travelling trunk show to spread the word about Art Quilts. You can see it is a spring off from the panel I made for the European show, in the photo beneath it.  This piece is not yet quilted.

Over the holidays, between the travel and bad weather, I also managed to get a really good start on the hosta bud piece. All that is left is the main bud and one leaf below it. This piece is slow in the making.

Here are all the panels for the European exhibition group so far, with of course a big gaping hole in the middle one, where the main hosta bud still needs to be created. This piece has brought me back in touch again with my love of light and shadow, and how it creates form. But wow, it has a lot of little pieces. I am fairly happy with how the sheer purple organza is giving the effect of purple buds about to pop open. But as I write this I wonder what would have been the effect with green organza overlaying purple fabric? An idea to explore in a second hosta bud quilt.

        

What do you think? Do they work together so far? 

I am working on several projects at once. This peony is an experiment for another pattern I hope to publish. I am off to a good start but lots more work to do, after some of the other stuff that needs doing.

I have also finalized the designs for my new hosta classes. The first group to try my two new patterns will be the Windsor Quilters Guild in March. There are some lovely values of green in my new Northcott line, so maybe I can turn one of these into a pattern that promotes the line. That is if I manage to master that darn free-hand drawing tool.  Yes, I know, I didnt learn free motion in a day, and I probably wont master the tool in a day.

All best wishes for a happy, healthy, and creatively fulfilling 2014!

EQ7 Meets EQ52 and Other News

Wow, it is a steep learning curve becoming a Northcott Fabric Designer! Two posts ago I told you about my attempts at dyeing a second set of fabrics identical to the ones I shipped to Northcott for scanning/photographing so I would have fabric to work with when creating something from this line. Little did I know that the quilts designed to promote lines of fabric are designed virtually with photos of the fabric, and not with real fabric. The production schedule is just so tight that there is no time to deal with real fabric. The patterns that goes on the promotional cards that are shown to the fabric shops, must have a picture of the pattern on them, and those promotional cards are printed before the fabric is even produced. This is where EQ7 gets to meet EQ52. Yes, I am going to have to learn to use Electric Quilt 7. Do you think the fact that the initials "EQ" for Electric Quilt are the same as my initials means we will be a match made in heaven? I sure hope so. I can't wait until the line is finalized and I can share it here. It won't be long now.

In the mean time, I've been clearing out "stuff", in preparation for my husband's retirement on December 13, and in preparation for the many bolts of fabric that will arrive here when my line is produced. I think I have mentioned here before that our house is small. I haven't gotten to cleaning up my web code yet. I'm hoping to have an improved website up soon, but I'm a few weeks behind on that.

I've also created another 12" x 24" piece for the European exhibition on Nature. Here it is below. I am not completely happy with this one, but I am going to wait until more of the panels are made before I decide whether to change it or make something new.

I'm moving on to the third panel (third in order of making, and not in order of hanging). It will be inspired by a photo I took of hostas about to blossom.

I've pulled out my palette below. Today I did some experiments using hand-dyed purple organza to add the bits of purple over the unfurling blossom. I think it looks better than using the purple cotton because the organza is a bit transparent and you can see just a bit of the green showing through.  I also have a piece of fabric (lower left below) that is an interesting mix of green and purple that I might resort to. Still deciding which green to use. I think it will be the spring green at left and top.

I am starting to become a bit panicked about the lack of Steam a Seam Lite available on the market. As you may have heard, there was a problem at the factory that produces the backing paper. After a couple of months the company re-issued Steam a Seam products, but there were problems with the new backing paper. They are trying to resolve the problem and will not re-issue Steam a Seam until the problem is solved. I couldn't believe my good luck when a very helpful person at NJefferson in Vancouver found one last bolt of Steam a Seam Lite in their warehouse. I can limp on for a while longer. I'm concerned for classes I have coming up in the new year, and this is not enough Steam a Seam for three classes! 

I might have to resort to using Pellon Lite EZ-Steam II. It will definitely be fine for my Collage Tree class, but a challenge for my In Full Bloom class. On the other hand, those who have never used Steam a Seam might not feel the challenge ... perhaps I am just set in my way of working. Given that Pellon's EZ Steam is the only other fusible on the market that has the repositionable, pressure-sensitive adhesive, I think this is the next best choice. Building a tree or flower requires a lot of little pieces, and the design clings together so much better with these fusibles than with all others.

Keeping my fingers crossed that there is Steam a Seam by the time I teach my first hosta class in March. However, I think all the back orders will not be filled by them. I think I'll need to make the EZ Steam work.

International Exhibition Group: My Other Big Project

During my exhibition and workshops at the Quilt en Sud Textile Art and Patchwork Biennial in France this past spring, I received an email from Textile Artist Jane Rollason, who lives part-time in the UK and part-time in France. The email invited me to become a member of an international exhibition group. At first I hesitated because I am pretty focused on what I want to do, and if the themes or challenges involve creating work outside my realm, I feel it is not a good use of my time. However, the theme of this show is going to be NATURE. Right up my alley! It means I can still continue with the series I had in mind. I still hesitated because of my busy teaching schedule, but then I thought about my goal of seeing more of the world through international teaching. Jane plans to pitch the exhibition to the large shows in Europe. Each of us must submit six works by September 2014. One can be any size; the remaining five pieces must be one of the following: 24"x24", 12"x24" or 24"x12". OK, I'm not great at working to size, but I think I can do this. At this moment we don't have a name for the group, and I am not completely sure of the final list of members. So whatever happens, this will be time well spent because I get to do the work I want to do. The only parameters are size. I am planning a review or retrospective of sorts of all my hosta styles. Maybe four pieces that are 12" wide and 24" long, that can hang side by side. Not a diptych, not a triptych, but a group of four. Does anyone know the word for that? So here is my first piece, created this week, a hosta unfurling. A piece I've always wanted to make. It is 12"x24".

Initially I had cropped back a photo to the composition below (the entire photo, not just the section within the black lines)..

I went ahead and drafted the pattern. That was a few weeks ago, but just as I was about to start the piece it occured to me that I could do better with the composition. I got out my cardboard viewfinder and brought the spiral in closer. The new composition was contained within the black marker frame in the photo above.

Here is the final design. I didn't like that the spiral in the first version was so centred. I also wanted the piece to be a little more abstract, so zooming in closer and not depicting the edges of the hosta leaf help to achieve that goal. I am much happier with the final design and am glad I took the time to re-draft the pattern.

Looking at the design now, it very much reminds me of the Golden Ratio. 

The Golden Ratio looks at what proportions are naturally the most visually appealing. It has been used in design, architecture, and mathematics for hundreds of years. It even corresponds to what we find most attractive in people's facial features and body types, and it is displayed throughout nature, in the spiralling of seashells, sunflower centres, and leaf growth. To be a more perfect Golden Ratio, however, the rectangle I placed my design in would need to be wider. In fact the ratio of height to width should be 0.618, whereas mine is 0.5. But hey, I have parameters I need to follow for the show. Still I think the final design is more appealing than the initial one. 

Stay tuned as I create more works in this series in the next several months. I am finally back in studio mode, and it feels good!

Dyeing and the Studio

I am sorry to say that no one wrote me a note with a story of quilts and healing, so there was no winner for the last blog give-away.  I was surprised since I often hear these stories when I travel.  I have my own story, which I have shared in most of the interviews I've given, and the UTube videos on this blog.  So I'm not sure if folks felt it was too private to comment publicly (which I understand), or it was too much work for a book you might not win anyway, or the book wasn't of interest.  So I shall hang on to it for a future opportunity.

I'm home all winter, so trying to plan ahead for busier days.  Just take a look at the state of my studio!  There's that tree on the design wall that I just blogged about.  Stacks of fabric dyed and ironed, boxes with teaching material, and a tray of bark created for tree collage.

There's a messy stack of fabric that includes the snow dyes with too many white spots that I am going to overdye, and a stack of fabrics tried for backgrounds to the tree that now need to be put away (wherever "away" is).

I've been doing lots of dyeing!  I was low on dark darks, so did some of my favorites.  Those of you who have taken my new "Dye Another Day" class have created some fabrics just like this!

I also dyed a bunch of fabrics in one of my favorite combos at the moment: dark brown and purple.  This time I also tried adding brown (which tends toward the rusty reddish side), and it added a wonderful addition in the second last piece from right.  The piece at right was a happy surprise.  At the end of the dyeing session I had a bit of brown and some navy left, so combined them on a half meter.

I tried snow dyeing one more time.  This time I dyed two pieces of fabric on the screens I showed in my last post on snow dyeing.  This allowed me to spread the fabric out a bit more, in the hopes that there would be less white spots.  There are still lots.  Fabric at left used a medium concentration, fabric at right a light concentration.

But the colours bring back to my memory some photos I took in autumn at the Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa (by the way, this cemetery is a beautiful place to photograph in any season). The pink hydrangea were just hit by frost and turning a bit brown.  I love the colours.  I wonder if I could use the above fabric somehow to create something like this? I think I might have to keep these fabrics, and thus my fabric stash continues to grow!

Videos on U-Tube and Blog Winner

The winner of today's blog give-away is Lisa Quintana!  Stay tuned during the month of January for more give-aways.

As I mentioned earlier, I was interviewed for Blog Talk Radio today.  Part of the process was also shooting five U-Tube videos.  My cat Kissabelle joins me in the first one.

The videos can be accessed here:
http://hypnosisyoga.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/elaine-quehl-textile-and-quilt-artist/

Interview on Blog talk Radio

Next Wednesday, January 9, at 6:30 pm EST I will be interviewed in my studio by Liana Voia on Blog Talk Radio. You can listen to the interview live or tune in afterward at this link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/multiplearts/2013/01/09/elaine-quehl--textile-and-quilt-artist

Liana Voia hosts the radio show Contemplative, Expressive and Imaginative Arts (http://blogtalkradio.com/multiplearts) on Blog Talk Radio. She holds a PhD in Clinical Hypnotherapy (2008) and a Master of Arts in Educational Studies (with focus on Adult Education). Liana is also a Hypnosis, Guided Imagery and Mindfulness Instructor and Practitioner.

You might also be interested in the interview she conducted today with American Quilt Artist, Edna Patterson-Petty, of St. Louis, Illinois.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/multiplearts/2013/01/02/edna-patterson-petty-american-quilt-artist

The Making of Red Stool II

In my last blog post, I shared a photo of my latest piece, Red Stool II.  It was made for the 2012 SAQA Benefit Auction.  Anyone can bid on these quilts.  The auction is a reverse auction, meaning that on day one the quilts start at $750 and the price drops each day.  In the last four years my quilts have auctioned for anywhere from $750 to $250.  Proceeds help SAQA spread the word about the art quilt as a fine art medium, and support the many SAQA exhibitions travelling around the world.

I think I have pretty much decided I will never teach a class to make a hosta quilt, at least not where I provide the pattern.  There are several reasons for this.  As an artist I just feel that I want to keep something for myself that is original.  I have taught absolutely everything I know, and in fact I have taught the method I use to make my hosta quilts ... it is the same method I use in my "In Full Bloom" class.  But equally important is the fact that I think it will be extremely difficult for students to find mottled green fabrics in such a variety of values.  You might think that I would jump at the chance to provide these fabrics and earn a little money.  The problem is that I would have to make sure I had these fabrics in stock for every student in each class, and sometimes I simply don't have much turn-around time between teaching gigs.  I also want to spend some time in my studio designing new quilts.

You may have noticed, however, that I have a new week-long class called "Fabulous Flowers and Foliage", which was scheduled to run at the Abruzzo School of Creative Art in Sulmona, Italy in June 2012.  It appears, however, that registrations continue to be low for these classes as the school is not yet well known.  Additionally, the depressed economic climate in Europe is probably a factor in the lack of registrations.  In other words, I am almost certain it won't happen this year.  I am scheduled to teach the class again in June 2013, and hope there will be more interest.  But I am also available to teach this new class anywhere that anyone wants to hire me to do so.  I will teach others how to make floral and foliage quilts inspired by their own photos.

Having said all that, I thought it would be fun to share how I made Red Stool II above so you can see what goes into the making of one of these pieces. 

I am seldom satisfied anymore with one particular photo, so I have begun to put together compositions based on several photos.  Red Stool II contains sections of three different photos.  I start with photos that have a lot of highlights and shadows. I combed through hundreds of hosta images in my photo library for this design.

There is a particular section of the above photo that I really liked, so I cropped out that section and show it below.  I love the sweeping curve of the hosta leaf at the bottom of the photo below.  If you look closely, you will notice that I cropped it from the lowest and fullest hosta leaf from the photo above.  I then printed it on my HP Inkjet printer.

I then cropped out the section below from another hosta photo I took, and printed it.

Last year when I decided to Make Red Stool 1, I needed a real stool as inspiration.  I mean, I really wanted a red stool, as I have developed an obsession for red stools, chairs and benches.  What do you suppose that says about me?  I had a vision in my head of what the stool would look like, searched the internet for red stools I might purchase, but didn't find any I liked.  One day I found an unpainted stool at Michaels, and it had the shape I envisioned, so I purchased it and painted it.  I set it in my backyard and shot it at a time of day when there was light coming in from the side (late afternoon) so there would be lots of hi-lights and shadows. The stool lives in my studio now and I love it.

I do have Photoshop Elements software, but am not very adept with it  Everytime I spend time with it I feel like I've just wasted a few hours I don't have.  So I put together my composition manually, using a scissors and tape.  I cut the sections out of the hosta photos that I liked, cut out the red stool (which I printed in several sizes so there would be one that was the proper scale) and fit the red stool in behind that lovely sweeping curve.

Below is the composition I came up with, all taped together. 

In the past I have often relied on tracings of the composition, by laying a transparency film over the design and tracing out all the colour and value changes.  I then projected that line tracing onto a wall with an overhead projector to enlarge the design.

Not this time.  I decided to draw the composition, and am I ever glad I did because I learned that I can.  I think I will probably choose to challenge myself to draw every composition from hereon in.  It really isn't hard because you don't have to shade or colour the drawing.  You do all of that with fabric, so you really only need a simple line drawing.  Below is the line sketch I settled on.  I always number the pieces of my design starting at the sections furthest in the distance, so I start numbering anything tucked behind the stool first, then the parts of the stool, and finally the leaves that sweep over the bottom of the stool.

I trace my drawing on to a piece of muslin, which will provide the base on which I fuse all the parts.

Once that is finished, I take my drawing and flip it over and trace the drawing onto the back of the paper that contains the drawing. I will need a pattern in reverse to trace to my fusible web. I used a fairly sheer paper here to make it easy to see the pattern through the paper.

I trace out all the parts of my pattern onto fusible web (Steam a Seam Lite).  Of course I don't want any gaps where the muslin shows through, so I have to add a little bit of extra (approx 1/4" around some of the pattern pieces).  This all has to be worked out.  I make my decisions about this as I trace.

Then I pick out the palette of fabric I think I might use.  Here are all the greens for the hosta leaves.  I line them up from darkest to lightest.  I don't number them and I don't plan what value will go where or note it on the pattern as many artists and teachers do.  That would be too restrictive for me.  I make a decision about the value of every piece in the design as I go by observing my photograph.

Here are the reds. 



Each part of the design that has been traced to the fusible web is then ironed to the back of the fabric I've chosen for that piece.  Of course since these are hand-dyed fabrics there is no right or wrong side.



All the pieces for the quilt are then cut out and I'm ready to put them in place.

Below you can see how the piece looks as I start placing the pieces on the muslin base that contains the design.

This is how I prepare the leaves with veins.  There are two layers of fabric, with a lighter one on the bottom, and the top piece cut apart.  I call it cut-away applique, but that probably is not the most accurate term.

Below is the final "Red Stool II".  It was shipped yesterday and once it arrives at its destination it will appear on the auction page.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Recent Dyeing Episodes & The State of the Studio

A quilter from Waterloo, Ontario recently wrote with a specific idea for a piece of hand-dyed fabric she envisioned. She described it as light blue in the middle, surrounded by soft yellow, then golden yellow, then gold, rose, blue and purple. The colours are supposed to represent the colours associated with Healing Touch Therapy. I love requests like this as they stretch me to try new colour combinations and new ways of applying dye, so I said I would give this one a try. I am not quite sure I was successful, but I know that even if Wilma doesn't like the result, someone will see these fabrics in my "store" and love them. One thing that might be a problem is that my colours go from light blue in the middle and spread into the other colours she requested until you reach the end of the fabric. I think she might have been looking for something more like an aura or halo effect. I was using two meter pieces of cloth, so they are only about 42" wide but about 80" long. It was hard to move all those colours along the width of the fabric without them all mixing and becoming mud. In the photos the two meters are placed across a washline in my dungeon (er I mean basement), so what you see is only half of the piece of cloth. The half on the other side of the line is almost a mirror image of what you see here.

If you ask me, I think these would make great stitched landscapes.

But just because I enjoy these kinds of challenges, please don't refer clients to me who wish to have garments dyed! I get emails all the time, especially from young women, who want to dye their wedding dress to reincarnate it for another purpose, or mother's of the bride who find the colour of their dress is too much like the bridesmaids' dresses. I am not a garment dyer, and I don't work with synthetic fabrics. I would not touch a bridezilla's dress with a ten foot pole, and I am not even sure where you would find someone who would.

My last dyeing job a few weeks ago involved dyeing about 20 scarves to sell in the gift shop at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum during the show that Cathy Breedyk Law and I have hanging there until December. I also have some scarves for sale in the boutique at the Ottawa School of Art. The scarves are silk/rayon velvet, and have been dyed using a pole and the Bomaki Shibori method. They are rather hard to photograph as they have a wonderful sheen that seems to cause a bit of glare. Here they are.

I'm also prepping for the classes I'm teaching in the next two weeks, so my studio is a disaster. There is a separate container with supplies for each of the workshops I will be teaching. There isn't a place left to sit, in what is really only a 10'x12' studio. The studio should look rather neat once everything is moved to my car!

But the question is ... will all of it fit in my car?