Finishing Up…a Quilt and an Exhibit…

Normally I’m a fan of rain, but not when the thunder associated with it makes the girlchild’s dog want to climb into my lap. Then it just sucks big time. She shut the computer down in the middle of a long post for one of the art groups I’m in. I finally managed to close the door to my office, just to get some peace without her trying to dig a hole in my fabric (she’s a Golden Retriever, not something that is easy to hide in a drawer of fabric, but she does it nonetheless). Her mom (the girlchild) is apparently NOT at the Fair, because it’s raining up there too, and the boychild just lost 4 wisdom teeth, so his patience is worn a bit thin and bloody. Plus it’s humid and muggy, not good for me either. But I’m trying to get all this computer crap out of the way, and then I can come out and sit with Ms. Whinypants, because I really need a Retriever on my lap.

Last night, finally, after a ton of stuff was done, I managed to finish ironing the pieces for the newest quilt…

I told you I would be adding color. It has 49 fabrics and it took about 5 1/2 hours to pick them all.

Pretty fast, actually. That’s because the majority of them were the same fabrics, so I just had to find them all and figure out which of the 6 flesh or 4 bone colors it needed to be, rather than find all new fabrics.

Kitten has appropriated the chair once taken by Babygirl and by Limbo before her.

In fact, she’s sitting there now, curled up against my back. I rarely get to sit in the chair properly. I’m always sharing it.

I did start cutting them out last night, mostly because I had to stay up until the girlchild came home, but also because I’m a night owl…

Although I’m feeling it this morning. Hopefully I’ll get the rest cut out tonight and then move on to ironing. Or maybe I’ll cut out the commissioned breast fabrics. That wouldn’t take long. We’ll see how tired I am. Cutting is fine while tired (I still have all my fingers). Ironing is harder. It requires standing and conscious thought. Always a problem.

I posted for California Fibers about the show opening on Saturday. You can see it all here, on the California Fibers blog. There were a few other artists involved in the show, so I wanted to post about them here.

This is Dani Dodge’s Sutured Jane with her video The Weight of Fabric playing on top of it.

I met Dani and had a conversation with her after we accidentally photographed each other in this panoramic…

She’s holding up the camera in the right middle…you can see how crowded the gallery was.

And here’s another view from more in the middle…of the gallery, not Dani.

Sandra Lauterbach was there with 6 pieces…yes, I know there are only 5 in this photo. I’m not sure where the 6th was.

Here’s a view from the stairs in the back, where more pieces were hiding…notably, Camilla Taylor’s We Waited, 4 figures total.

Here you can see three of them and her piece on the right, Feign.

I was more than a little fascinated with their construction…

listed as fabric, welded steel, paper pulp infrastructure. The stitcher in me wants to know HOW.

Terri Hartman’s work continued down the stairs with her Melancholy Sideshow…

Her Bullseye pieces…

In different sizes going up the stairs…

And her highly amusing My Family Tree…

consisting of descriptions of people we ALL want in our family…

Sold separately!

Seriously. I know these people.

And her Altered Definitions…

Lastly was a room with an installation, photographs, and video by Marisa Caichiolo…No More Blood in Your Clothes…

As you can see here…

The requisite picture of the harried artist, finally in front of her art (which was in a good place, right in front of the wine station)…

This guy matched the quilt…

Anyway, it was a good exhibit opening, which was nice, considering the drive. I would love to go back and peruse the hardware store as well…

Walls and walls of fun stuff. Now on to the next exhibit…although, honestly, I’m not sure I have one coming up with a local opening (or even one within a 3-hour drive), so it might be a while before I get to have those types of photos again. All the more reason to enjoy this one.

Diverted Destruction Details

So I can’t post final pictures of the two Diverted Destruction pieces here until the end of May, since one will be in a magazine and I don’t know why not the other, but whatever…the photographer has finished, so here are details of both pieces.

This is Upholstered Nude, finished back in March…

It was made entirely of recycled upholstery fabrics from those annoying sample books, except for the background, which is from the stash of my friend Mariah.

Mariah supplied all the fabrics for the second piece, By All Means…

Forcing me to work with a range of colors that weren’t really planned, but also to use leftover blocks and strips and bits and pieces from her previous quilts…

Cuz, honey, y’all know I don’t piece my backgrounds.

I will be posting the full pieces the end of May…not sure which one will be in the show, because I don’t get to pick that, but the opening is the end of June in Los Angeles. Will let you know details as we get closer to the day.

I’m just glad to have them both done EARLY. How strange.

Ironing Her Down…

My hand hurts tonight from cutting the upholstery fabrics for two nights running…it’s harder to cut through than cotton quilting fabric. And my scissors probably aren’t great.

There’s the trash…

Here’s the upholstery fabrics I used…texture really was the only pattern.

I had all the pieces ready to cut out on Monday night…

Oh yeah, I had two cottons…white because there wasn’t any, and black for the pupil, because it was going to be tiny and the nipples are bad enough in this stuff…

I started cutting stuff out Monday night (and almost finished). You can see the seam in the arm.

I did find a background fabric that works. I usually pick them first, but because my fabrics were limited, I started with what I had for the body. I figured I could thrift shop a background fabric if I couldn’t find anything in my house. Which yes, of course, meant that I would be carrying around cut-out body parts, like boobs and things, to local thrift shops. I don’t always think these things through. There it is…it’s purple…it’s a Jinny Beyer tiny dot print probably from the 90s. ANCIENT. Or vintage. You decide.

What’s left in the box is what I had left Monday night at 1 AM, when I decided sleep was in my best interest. Sometimes I think these things through…not last night, though, because I was up Way Too Late. I blame the full moon. I blame it for lots of things.

Tuesday night, I finished cutting pieces out and then started ironing.

This quilt only has about 150 pieces, so I could lay them all out at once…

The textures were interesting. Here’s me ironing the eyeballs separately. Then I can lay them on the face at the same time and make sure spacing is right and they don’t look kittywampus.

I was going to go to bed around midnight, like after I had ironed a whole bunch together, but then I realized I was almost done, so I didn’t stop. This is what causes my sleep issues. My art. The part of my brain that thought that was a good idea.

And here she is on her background.

Looking much pinker than she is in reality…she’s more the yellow tones in the upper picture.

The bitchy bit is going to be the stitchdown, because I think it’s gonna fray like crazy. I debated putting tulle over it, but I don’t think that will stop it and it will just annoy me. So I’m just gonna go balls out and stitch it down. I don’t know when that will happen though, because I’m going to be gone for a few days and I’m way too tired tonight (see last night’s excess for explanation) to start anything that involves a needle going up and down very fast near my hand. I’m going to finish this post, print one thing for school, and go to bed. Well, first I’m going to have to rinse the girlchild’s dishes, because although I asked her to do it before she went to bed, I don’t think she did, so I will have to do that so I can run the dishwasher. I was gone for 13 hours today and she couldn’t manage to get the dog from her dad’s house and feed both the beasts. Ugh. She needs to go to college. I love her dearly, but she needs a reality slap upside the head.

And I need more sleep.

To Fray or Not to Fray

Some cats are sweet. Some are just annoying. Some stand in front of the computer screen while you’re trying to watch Walking Dead and iron at the same time, and if you move them, they squawk and jump back up, and then try to stand on your fabric AND your Wonder Under all at the same time.

I want you to guess what kind of cat this is.

I decided at some point last night to just jump in and start ironing fabrics with the upholstery samples…I mean, I have to start somewhere. It may make me nervous, because it’s outside my normal practice, but it’s going to make me nervous no matter what. So get on with it.

I needed a variety of shades of one color to do the whole human body. The only color I had enough variation in was an off-white color.

But I didn’t have enough of each texture in that shade for the two largest pieces in the quilt, so I had to piece them…and I had to piece a couple different types of texture together to make it work. They were about the same shade, though, so I think it will work.

I know they look different on the back, but that’s because some of the fabrics have a lining-type backing on them. The other fabrics have a sort of rubbery backing that comes off a little when I iron. Does that worry me? A little.

Sewing them together was an issue, which yes, does in fact worry me. I didn’t rip on this one, but cut the seam right off and tried again, because the stitches were too damn small and buried in the texture. And then I lengthened the stitch as well.

Here’s the piecing I did for the other large piece…

All the other pieces were much smaller, so I put together a run of medium to dark values, just like I normally do…

I finished all the body parts except for eyeballs, lips, nails, and hair.

So there are a couple of things I’m thinking about…first of all, I think these are going to fray like crazy. I’m hoping the Wonder Under will help a little with that, plus the backing on those that have it. Otherwise, I think that will just be part of the piece. I’m thinking of embellishing the seams and some of the pieces with stitching, a la crazy quilting. I’m also considering painting over this, but I haven’t decided for sure. I think stitching through the whole mess is going to be a disaster. I might have some issues with the weight and strength of the rayon thread I usually use, and my machine might balk at the coatings on the backs and the general thickness. That’s why I’m thinking I need a cotton background…like one if Mariah’s leftover pieces? Or a random tablecloth. There’s always a trip to the thrift shop. I have some old sheets too.

Tonight, I’m hoping to get the rest ironed to fabric and start on the second one. Or maybe cut these out. Who knows? I need to grade papers too, so it’s not a free night. They never are…

Finding Fabrics

I’ve been sewing since I was 7 or 8. My first machine-sewn piece of clothing was a 70s floppy blouse made from my mom’s old yellow curtains and some lace. I sewed many of my clothes in middle- and high school, thus assuring my freak status. It did mean I always had bits and pieces of fabric leftovers, off cuts from this or that outfit, lying around.

When I got older, I started sewing for the house: curtains, cushions, couch slipcovers, and whatever. In 1990, at the age of 23, I took my first quilting class. I started by buying 1/4 yards of fabric. Now I buy 1/2 yards unless I need it for something in particular like a backing or a background where I know I need more than that. Over the years, many people have gifted me fabric, some randomly sending it through the mail, some giving me gifts at Christmas and birthday, and more commonly, divesting themselves of THEIR stash by moving it on to me. I rarely say no. When crazy people say things like, “I have too much fabric and I need to get rid of some,” it just confuses me. One woman about 10 years ago went through her stash and gave me about half of it. I still don’t really know why. She was a smoker, so that took some work, but I wash everything anyway. My SIL sent me offcuts from when she quilted. When my grandmother died, I got all the leftover pieces from all the pajamas she had made as Christmas Eve gifts over the years…talk about vintage. I did actually pack a bunch of those up and sell them on eBay for quite a profit. I kept small pieces of some of the more interesting ones.

So this show came up on the radar for a group I’m in called California Fibers. The Loft at Liz’s is a gallery in Los Angeles that does a Diverted Destruction show every year, suggesting people use recycled materials to create work. Our group was chosen to do a show there this summer, and Liz got us access to those upholstery fabric sample books you see when you go pick out your next couch or whatever. I chose one that was texture, not a lot of color really…

Mostly because I couldn’t visualize my process in any of the others. I’ve removed all the labels off the back and cut them out of the book, then ordered them vaguely by color. OK, there’s some pink and red in there, and even some green and blue…but none of the pieces are particularly big, which might be a problem. I could also paint over them. This is an option I have used before.

So I have a drawing for this one…

I think the big pieces will lend themselves nicely to using texture…but I think the major body pieces might be an issue. Still trying to figure that part out.

The other drawing…because I’m apparently supposed to do two…

Has more detail and really lends itself to being done in cottons…just because of the piece sizes…so for this, I turned to my second recent stash of recyclables: Mariah.

Mariah texted me around the new year and asked if I wanted some of her offcuts from making quilts. She’s made baby quilts and sold them around town, plus she’s made some beautiful batik quilts for her family. But once you have these long strips or tiny triangles or squares cut, they aren’t good for much except making a big pile in the sewing room. Since she was pregnant with baby number 2 at the time (born last week!), she was trying to clean up and pare things down, so we filled two trash bags with fabric…here’s halfway through my color sorting at home.

I still have the problem of small pieces in general, though…although there are some large pieces in there that I took for backings. They aren’t really body appropriate though. There’s a LOT of blue and brown…

Not very much white or gray…

And these randomly pieced bits that are leftovers, which I’m trying to figure out how to get into the quilt…I think I can do it…

So the biggest problem with this batch, besides folding it all or figuring out how to store it, is how to make sure the quilt isn’t a crazy mismatch of stuff, because I can’t choose from my whole stash. I might need to piece the background if I can’t find something that’s recycled, in my stash, and appropriate. There are about 10 fabrics that were big pieces that are currently in the dryer, but most of them would compete too much with the image.

So there’s that. Sometime this week, I’ll start picking fabrics out for this. Until then, know that the show will be June 27-September 8 at The Loft at Liz’s, and one of these pieces will be there. And I’ll keep you updated on the process as I muddle my way through it.