Zoe's newest quilt

I've just put the last hand stitches into the latest quilt made by my granddaughter Zoe, who is 11. She chose the fabrics and did all the machine sewing. I cut the fabrics into strips, pressed the quilt after each seam and trimmed it to give a nice straight edge to sew the next strip onto. Zoe quilted it, and I put on the binding and sleeve.
Zoe started sewing three or maybe four years ago, we don't remember exactly when. At the beginning she sat at my sewing machine, which meant we had to build up a platform to put the pedal on so she could reach it. At the start I sat very close to her and held the left edge of the fabric, tugging as needed to help it go under the needle straight. We made one quilt that way.


But as Zoe got better at sewing I decided she could do more of it herself and we should have parallel work time. We set up a second machine on a low table that allowed her to put the pedal on the floor, and more important, allowed us both to sew at the same time.













We started the Japanese Lady quilt a year ago during summer vacation but didn't get it finished till a couple of weeks ago.

I asked Zoe what she wanted to do for her next project and she thought she might like to try hand stitching, so that's what we're working on now when she visits. But I suspect she will be wanting to make another quilt someday soon.

Answering Elena's question -- suggestion #2

Elena also told us, “I have many ideas percolating. After another one-week workshop in May, I'll have many more. If I don't follow through with these and don't make many quilts, will I be able to find my voice?”

My answer: No.  If you don’t follow through and don’t make many quilts, you will not be able to find your voice. But I think that you may be heading into a danger zone by going to this workshop.

I am as much of a workshop junkie as you are ever likely to meet. After all, I’m the person who has spent 14 weeks in Nancy Crow workshops in the last six years, not to mention a bunch of workshops led by other people. But I have learned the hard way that if you’re not careful, a workshop can hinder your progress as an artist rather than enhance it.

That’s because we are so easily seduced by new techniques, new approaches, new materials. I took a short workshop in papermaking last week and had a lot of fun; it would be so easy to go out and buy $100 worth of new toys and spend a month making lovely paper and probably make some nifty things out of it that could even resemble art. But I tamped down that surge of enthusiasm in a couple of days and reminded myself that I need to be working on my quilt-in-progress instead of playing.

You can also get seduced and distracted by quiltmaking workshops. It’s so easy to fall in love with the teacher’s work, or the quilts that other people brought for show and tell, or the work you do that week that is a long way from the work you were doing at home. It’s so easy to come home and say “gee, maybe I should fuse my next piece instead of piecing it” or “it would be fun to work in commercial prints for a change” or “I should really learn to dye-paint my fabric instead of buying it.” And then you’re off on a tangent that abandons all the progress you had been making on your own voice.

There are so many exciting techniques and materials out there that it’s hard to focus on a limited area. And the huge variety of workshops, magazines and books available to quilters only makes it harder. But without focus you are never going to develop your own voice. You may make a whole lot of nice quilts, but you won't have the cohesive body of work that is the mark of the serious artist.

That may be perfectly OK with you. But if you want to develop your voice, here’s my suggestion for dealing with workshops. It's what I do for myself.

Before you go to the workshop, set an objective. You might even write it down for added weight. When you get there, announce your objective to the others if appropriate, or if not, at least announce it to yourself each morning.

The objective should be related to your current body of work.

At one end of the spectrum of relevance, I once went to a two-week Nancy Crow workshop with a very specific objective: “I want to develop a new way of piecing that will help me convey my concept of disintegration and chaos.” That kept me focused during the workshop and kept me from going off on tangents. At the other end of the spectrum was my workshop last week: “I always wanted to learn how to make paper and this will check that item off my list; I don’t really expect to do much with it later." That kept me grounded, allowing me to play for a couple of hours but not to come home and embark upon a papermaking extravaganza.

In the middle of the relevance spectrum come objectives like “I think I might enjoy spending a week with this teacher and meeting some new people and seeing their work, even though I don’t expect it will affect my own work very much” or “I don’t care about the fusing or the dyeing or the surface design that I know she will talk about a lot; I just want to learn all I can about machine quilting.”

On the way home from the workshop, review what you have learned and try to articulate how it fits in with your current body of work. Again, there’s a spectrum of possible responses, ranging from “nothing here for me” to “I’m going to abandon my current body of work and do this new thing with a vengeance for the next year at least.” More probably (and more helpfully) you’ll have a response somewhere in the middle, like “I learned that I need to be more careful in choosing colors and values, that I tend to avoid certain colors but I should challenge myself to use a wider palette and be more adventurous in combining colors.”

If you take back a specific and limited insight, or resolution, or new idea, and apply it to your pre-existing body of work, you’ll probably have much better results than if you come home with your head swimming over a dozen possible new concepts that you intend to try out in sequence.

That's my two cents worth for the day.

Answering Elena's question -- suggestion #1

Elena wrote back to tell us a little more about her situation. From her comment and her blog, it seems that it takes her a long time to make quilts because she’s doing small projects and samples (a good idea) and because her major work sits on the design wall for a long time while she tries to decide what to do next. And she admits to procrastination.

I don’t want to urge people to rush ahead and finish quilts before they know what they want to do. And I have had work on my design wall for months myself. But while I’m waiting for inspiration, I tend to work on other things.

I know there are artists who like to work on only one thing till it’s finished, then move on to the next thing. Perhaps it helps them focus, and gives them an incentive to get through the tedious work (no dessert till you finish your vegetables). But that’s not the way my head works.

I like to do something every day. It helps me maintain the discipline of regular work because I know that even if I’m blocked on Project A for a bit, I can work on Project B or C. Sometimes you’re blocked for creative reasons – you don’t know what to do next. Sometimes you’re blocked for technical reasons – your sewing machine is in the shop, or you can’t get more of the red fabric till Monday morning. Sometimes you’re blocked for personal reasons – you’re exhausted and overworked from your day job, or you’re under emotional stress, or you’re feeling sick and can’t concentrate enough for major decisions. In any case, I think you need a fallback plan so you can keep working and not lose your momentum. Otherwise, you may fall into the trap that Elena may be in – when she’s blocked, she doesn’t work. So of course it takes her months to finish a quilt.

If this is in fact one of the issues that Elena has, then perhaps she could move herself along by developing two or three tasks to do while she’s waiting for her fabric to talk to her. For instance, maybe she could have a not-important top available to practice free motion quilting. Or she could allow herself to start another piece and work on two more or less simultaneously.

I once attended a workshop with my sensei Nancy Crow in which one of the other participants had accomplished nothing after several hours of "work". She was fussing over a piece on the design wall, making minuscule changes every half hour or so and not moving along (which is a big problem at an intensive workshop where you’re expecting to make major progress during the week).

Nancy told her to start five pieces and put them all up on the design wall. She was to work on the first piece till she hit a block, and then was immediately to put that piece back on the wall, take down the second piece and work on it. It was OK to realize that she couldn’t make the decision right now, but it was not OK to stop working. By the end of the week, she had managed to work herself out of her funk and made a good quantity of acceptable work.

In the past I occasionally got myself through periods of emotional stress by having totally mindless things that I could do at the sewing machine. Sewing was my therapy, my time to go into my room and work on something comforting, but I wasn’t up to serious thinking. So I sewed bits and pieces into 2 1/2 inch squares and put the squares into a box. Eventually I had several thousand of them, and I made a quilt. At the time, just making a few squares of an evening was all I could manage, but it did give me something to do and I could feel I had accomplished something.

Suggestion #1 to Elena: when you’re stalled on a project, work on something else.

Suggestion #2 comes tomorrow.

Answering Elena's question (sort of)

Yesterday Elena posted a comment that I thought deserved a good answer. She said, “I am still learning the quilting basics - the medium, techniques and tools. Definitely the first stage. Three years at this now and I am finishing my second quilt. Any tips about getting more prolific while still hanging on to my other job?”

Although I am now retired, my twenty years of working for a consulting firm makes me incapable of answering a question like that without asking other questions first. Elena, why do you think it’s taking you 18 months per quilt?

Is it because your life is so busy that you can spare only one hour a week for sewing?

Is it because you don’t have a decent workspace, and you’re cramped and distracted when you try to sew, or you have to set up and take down your machine every time you work?

Is it because your sewing technique is shaky and it takes you a long time to actually make what you have decided to make?

Is it because you don’t have good tools, with a cranky sewing machine that makes bad stitches, an ironing board too small to get your quilt really flat, or no design wall to put your work on view?

Is it because you have performance anxiety or some other kind of mental block that leads you to do a million other things rather than work on your quilt?

Is it because you have a hard time deciding what quilt to make next?

Is it because you are paralyzed in the planning stage, sketching and erasing and auditioning fabrics and questioning your own decisions and starting all over again with new sketches and never actually starting to sew?

Is it because you bit off more than you can chew, trying to make a king-sized quilt and then getting frustrated because (of course) it takes so long to piece it and it’s so hard to quilt?

Is it because you lack support from other quilters or other artists, so that you feel alone and uncertain?

Is it because your loved ones either deliberately or unconsciously sabotage your quilting, interrupting you or disparaging you or running off with your scissors or spilling their snacks on your fabric?

Obviously the solution depends on what the problem really is.  If you can analyze why it’s taking you so long, you can probably figure out for yourself how to improve the situation. But if you do that, and think of some things to change, and you’re still frustrated, then write back and I’ll try to make additional suggestions. My life as an artist is pretty smooth now, with a supportive husband, no day job, a big studio and a wonderful bunch of art friends to provide aid and comfort. But it wasn’t always that way, and I can remember how I struggled to get where I am now. I’ll be happy to share my experiences and ideas with you.

Art-A-Day

February 28 -- on campus

March 1 -- red leaf

March 2 -- waiting for spring

March 3 -- now open

March 4 --  weathered

March 5 -- in the alley

March 6 -- south of downtown

Finding your voice -- part 1

All artists, whether Leonardo or you and I, have the same question - what shall I make art about?

Sometimes that's an easy question to answer - if Francesco del Giocondo calls you up and wants to commission a picture of his wife, and you need the money, you paint "Mona Lisa."

But most artists have to answer the question on their own, and some do it more successfully than others. In today's world, artists try to establish their own voice, an overworked word that encompasses, to a degree, their subject matter, their medium, their style, their theme.

Voice is what enables us to walk into the museum and from across the room distinguish Jackson Pollock from Franz Kline, or into Quilt National and distinguish Pam RuBert from Inge Mardal and Steen Hougs.

I believe that the artist's career goes through three stages. First, you learn the basics -- how to use your medium and your tools. Next, you find your voice. Finally, you make good work.

This is overly simple, of course. All artists change their voice and their focus over time. And many successful artists have multiple voices and multiple bodies of work going on at the same time. But I believe that too many voices at the same time can create cacophony rather than harmony.

For those of us who don't have the genius of Leonardo, who after all was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a musician, a scientist, a mathematician, an engineer and a writer (among other things), I think we need to limit the number of balls in the air. I have been asking myself for the last year or so whether it's counterproductive to work in two different voices.

My first voice, which I have thought of as my "serious work," consists of pieced quilts, like the one below. They use traditional quilt techniques, feature very fine pieced lines and are heavily machine quilted.






Crazed 7: Flood Stage

My second voice, which I have felt slightly guilty about (because it takes me away from my "serious work," consists of nontraditional work like the one below. It is constructed out of hundreds or thousands of small, messily stitched bits of fabric about the size of postage stamps, held together in a stitched grid.



































Spaghetti Sauce

I've had a lot of success with the second voice, winning a big prize at Quilt National and getting accepted into Fiberart International 2010. But I don't want to abandon the pieced quilts, because they represent a huge body of technical prowess that I have accumulated over many years and that I am proud of. Besides, in this day of fusing and surface design, I believe that piecing is an endangered art, and I feel almost a religious obligation to keep practicing it, since so many others are falling away to less tedious techniques.

Recently I came to a realization (rationalization?) that both these voices are saying the same thing. I can describe both bodies of work the same way: they're about a myriad of small bits, joined by fragile connectors. Under that heading I can talk about our decaying infrastructure, or our frayed social bonds, or the stresses on our environment, or the toll of war, all of which I like to comment on.

But I digress. I want to talk not just about me, but about the general process of finding one's voice, and I have some ideas that might help you find your voice, too. Stay tuned. Details at 11.