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Last week on Art With a Needle

My big news of the week is that my newly cleaned-up sewing table has indeed motivated and enabled me to start sewing on a quilt.  I think this is the first major quilt I've worked on in at least two years.  Can't exactly tell you why I decided to take a sabbatical from quiltmaking, or why I decided to start again just now.  But it does feel good to be back at the sewing machine.

Here's what I've done so far.

Not a masterpiece, because it's been three years or more since I worked with fine lines and I obviously haven't left enough unpieced space on the right side of this composition.  But that can be fixed.

Here's my favorite miniature of the week.  I sometimes feel that it's unoriginal to just find some random object and make a lot of knots onto it, usually with a couple of beads for good measure.  But then I realize that's an important recurring theme in my art, and I should just embrace it.  And I do love tying those knots -- so zen.

A small project -- finished!

Yesterday I finished a small "commission" -- from my sister, to make a piece of liturgical linen for her church.  It is 26 inches square, made to cover a funeral urn on the altar if the decedent has been cremated.  She's going to have a butterfly, symbol of new life, machine-embroidered on it (although I offered to hand-stitch one -- she probably thought it would take me forever, which is probably true).

I asked if she needed new linen and she said no, a repurposed piece would be just fine, and symbolically appropriate.  So I rooted around in my stash and found a beautiful old tablecloth, with a woven pattern of roses and stripes, acquired from who-knows-where, obviously well-used in its past life because the hemstitching is frayed and there are a few faint stains.  But I found a large enough clean patch in the middle to cut my square.  Actually, I tore it, because I wanted to make sure it was on grain.

I cut it four inches bigger so I could turn back one-inch hems.  Pressed carefully, mitered the corners of the hems and stitched them shut so they would not gap after being washed and pressed. 

In all these years of making fun of the quilt police, my favorite example of silly "rules" is that mitered corners on bindings should be sewed shut.  I always say that if your corners need to be sewed shut, you have done a lousy job of mitering them in the first place.  But that is for bindings, not for hems.  When you open up the hems and make a diagonal fold across the point of the corner, then bring the two diagonal edges up to butt against each other, there's nothing to hold the butted edges permanently in place.  I could have run several rows of machine stitching along that outside inch, but it seemed easier to just stitch the corners.  A first in my history, and with any luck, the last time I'll make anything this carefully.

It goes in the mail this afternoon.  And dividends: to get ready to work on this project I first had to clear off my large work table so I could put two large cutting mats together.   I had to clear off my sewing machine table of all the paints, glues, carpentry and wireworking tools, beads and junk that had accumulated over months of not actually sewing.  Finally, I had to get a scrubby sponge and some heavy duty cleaner to remove all the dried-on acrylic medium, paint, dirt and accumulated gunk from the sewing machine table.  My work place hasn't been this clean and bright in years.

Maybe this will give me the impetus to work on another sewing-machine project -- maybe an actual quilt. 
 

Last week on Art With a Needle

Two weeks ago Idaho left a comment on my blog about doing research before purchasing new stuff and I responded by saying how I know I should do that, but I find it hard -- my inclination is always to dive right in and learn by doing, even if that brings missteps.  Last week Idaho commented, "My art group is split between those who just go for it and those who dip toes in cautiously after gathering lots of info...  Info gathering can often be seen as procrastinating, and that can be true -- If I find just one more relevant piece of info I'll be confident enough to give it a go -- that sort of thing.  I DO find myself doing that and have to suck it up and proceed to diving in!"

That made me remember one of the most commented-upon blog posts that I ever wrote, in 2011, about a writing teacher who divided people into two groups: planners and plungers.  If you're a planner, you're big on writing outlines, filling sketchbooks, making diagrams and templates before you get to work on the actual product.  If you're a plunger, you dive right in and start working.  If the teacher makes you turn in an outline before the paper is due, you write the paper first and then write the outline.  Maybe you'll have some false starts and sections destined for the trash can, real or virtual, but working is how you figure out what is it you want to say, what it is you want to make. 

I re-read that post just now, including the comments that many people left on it, and it did me good.  Made me realize, again, that you have to figure out how your brain operates and then develop work habits that go with that rather than fight it. 

Shannon suggested that if I'm trying to do calligraphy that's more-like-art-less-like-letters I should look at Arabic script.  "I frequently find it exquisite, and as a non-Arabic speaker I'm drawn to it simply for the artistic forms," she wrote.  Shannon, you are absolutely right, and in fact it was seeing the work of Golnaz Fathi, a wonderful Iranian artist who makes art from Arabic script that helped me decide to do calligraphy as my daily art this year. 

Golnaz Fathi

I am so glad that you reminded me of looking to Arabic as an inspiration, because it's been on my to-do list since I made this decision.  I promise to start something this week, and I'll show you what I come up with.

Here's my favorite miniature of the week:

Calligraphy update -- brut style

The other night I was intrigued by the label on our wine bottle, what you might describe as calligraphy brut.

Always searching for new ideas for my daily calligraphy, I took this one home and tried it out a few times.

I like it!  Legible, but not beautiful.  (Legibility is not a requirement for successful calligraphy, in my opinion, but it's OK in its place.)

I keep searching for a calligraphic style that would let me use letters in a more abstract way, more like art and less like writing.  Maybe this is a first step in that direction, but I'll have to work on it.  It's still too pretty, and I want a little more grit.

Different sizes of letters?  Overlapping letters?   Letters going in different orientations?  Script?  Less legibility, more brutalism?

I'll try again this evening.

Last week on Art With a Needle

After I complained about a bottle of long-ago-purchased-but-just-opened acrylic ink, Cheryl pointed out that the globs on my bottle and pen are due to the acrylic medium drying out.  In this type of ink, pigment is suspended in a dilute acrylic medium.  Then Idaho pointed out that with india ink, pigment is suspended in water, so it behaves differently.  She wrote: "I am a firm believer in understanding the makeup of what you are using and what it is best for, thus avoiding some pitfalls and frustrations, wasted time and materials.... once you know 'the rules' then you can more effectively experiment by breaking them." 

Oh my, how I hate to be reminded that there is a better way than just buying something, opening it up and seeing what happens!  She's right, of course, I should look things up before I leap in.  But it's so much more fun to just leap in.  Yes, this occasionally brings pitfalls and frustrations and wasted time and all that bad stuff but for some reason I keep doing it. 

Shamed into it, I did a little more research and discovered that acrylic ink not only has the pigment suspended in plastic, it has the pigment permanently bonded to the plastic.  So it is more durable and lightfast than other varieties of ink, including india ink.  Perhaps worth putting up with some globs.  Or I suppose I could go buy a new bottle...  but I want several bottles, in lots of different colors, and by the time I use them all, they'll all probably have globs....

Idaho also found in her research that you should clean the pen or brush before acrylic ink dries.  I'm always pretty obsessive about this part with all kinds of ink, even more so when I'm using brushes rather than pens.  But I don't believe that I ever saw my father, lifelong user of old-fashioned india ink, clean his pen -- in fact, some of the pens I inherited from the mug on his desk still had ink on them, decades later, and they worked just fine. 

By the way, I've wondered why my colored inks vary so much in value, while my black ink is always black. 

Research tells me that's because the colored inks are transparent, black is opaque (don't know why).  The color variation is quite dramatic as some areas get multiple layers of pigment, others get only a light wash.  If you want your colored ink to look all the same, you'd probably better reload your pen or dip your brush very frequently.

Some comments also on my post about mending a silk blouse with the help of organza.  I love mending and am always happy if I can persuade somebody else to give it a shot instead of throwing away something with lots more life in it.  Warning: you can get very fiddly with mending, especially when you don't have enough material, or you're trying to make the mend invisible, or it's a slithery fabric, or any other tricky situation.  I find myself sinking into a zen state when that happens, and quite enjoy it -- but it's easy to spend more time on a mend than the salvaged garment really deserves.

Anyway, thanks, friends, for reading and commenting.

Here's my favorite miniature of the week, a little fish trailing a halo of bubbles: