This pattern had been on my Amazon wish list forever, silently intimidating me with the giant-scale circles and all those tiny pieces. See, I’ve made several quilts, but they’ve been deceptive to outsiders, because every time I’ve made up my own pattern and motif, going off things I’ve seen and loved, but essentially, designing each myself. Following patterns is actually hard, and I wanted to force myself to stick to a method, follow directions, and patiently cut out all the pieces ahead of time, per the instructions, so that by the time you hate the giant queen-size you’ve set out to make and cut all those hundreds of pieces, you actually get down to the sewing, and time flies by, and then you have a massive, beautiful quilt top ready to be layered with batting and backing and grace your bed.

My goal for 2012 is to take this baby somewhere and learn to use a long-arm quilter myself, taking the required course and then using the circular quilting pattern that comes with Schmidt’s design for Single Girl. I started this quilt on the day after my 24th birthday, September 25, and so I want to finish the quilting by my birthday this year, my 25th birthday. I’ve made four quilts, this is my fifth one, and three of the first four have been gifts. The only one I’ve kept, a throw-size in all fabrics I loved, is wonderfully experimental, including my first raggedy machine-quilting stitches on my own machine. It’s a lovely token of early quilting technique, filled with trial and error (read: mistakes). I love it for that, but I am excited to tackle this quilt, a giant one that is made for my bed, and make it a beautiful work of art, showing how I’ve grown in my skill since I began quilting in 2008.

I can’t make it to my final quilt class today, because I’m handicapped from recent foot surgery, but I needed to post some pictures for the other ladies in my class, as well as our teacher, Diana. I hope you guys can post some for me to see, I’m really sad I will be missing seeing the final products! Please post them here, or e-mail them to me, or put them on Pinterest–something!

One circle, four quarters together

Graphic

In a bunch

Detail

Circle love

Happy with the two-tone scheme I chose for this quilt. All reds and creamy whites.

Across my bed, all sixteen circles, each turning a little differently

This week I have finally been able to open my October and November issues of National Geographic and I was awestruck by the November story on the Sami people of northern Sweden. Their wardrobe and striking faces radiate against the harsh landscape of the region where they live–blanketed all in white snow. Even the reindeer they keep lend themselves to the grey and white backdrop.

They are a fascinating group, and the photographer who has been living among them for the last few years captured them spectacularly. I had just been pondering not renewing my subscription, as a glanced over an archeological dig and ancient treasure story, and then flipped to this story, just after it. That always happens. The stunning cultural pieces remind me why I always find something worthwhile in the pages. I just skip the ancient treasure stories. See the photo gallery here.

Sven Skaltje eats a meal of dried reindeer meat, homemade bread, and coffee in Gallivare, Sweden

A photo of a calf marking hangs in a home. I adore the images in this entire story.

I can finally post pictures of the gift I made for Elodie Watson’s first birthday, since her party was yesterday. She has two math teachers as parents, and so I was struck one night (literally, while driving home around 1 a.m.) that I should make numbers in the same way that I have made oversize letters before. And I already had this amazing pink corduroy that I couldn’t resist, but had yet to do anything with. I cut out pattern pieces, which I gave to Ashley so that she can make more numbers (and therefore build to more complicated and bigger number combinations), and made a 0 through 9, plus an addition, subtraction, and equals sign in grey flannel. The edges are raw, so there’s no turning out or anything–adds more character.

I love the color, that right pink is so much fun. The image I had in my head was Elodie just wandering around with a number in-hand, since they are cuddly and squishy and a perfect size for her. This was even more fun than the letters I’ve done before, since it did not require making 26+ pieces, and because numbers are an equally important component of learning for the little ones.

So fun, so cute.

Cutting out the numbers with these cute pattern pieces. I just printed them from Word, using a giant size and a font that had simple sans serif numbers. Then traced them onto template plastic.

Cuddly arithmetic

All in a row

Wrapped up in paper to match the numbers theme. I left the 1 out to be part of her card, since she turned 1. :)

In a pile!

Sources of vast inspiration

Sometimes, work and play intersect, overlap, combine. For this week’s material culture class, we read four selections, chapters and articles, on design and aesthetic. One of the pieces was a chapter from John M. Vlach’s book The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts, and the particular chapter was on African American historical quilting motifs.

Just a few days earlier, I had read a fantastic article from the Wall Street Journal on Denyse Schmidt–easily my favorite designer involved in quilts and modern textiles on this earth. In it, she describes her style as “neo-hillbilly,” which is a remarkably apt term, and one that I thought really got to the heart of her improvisational, old-timey, non-conformist, simple designs and motifs. Nearly every time I browse her quilts and patterns, I find something else that inspires me. Sometimes I want to copy her, other times I want to use a technique or a kind of aesthetic she’s used to head off in my own direction. I find her entire perspective on quilting fascinating and stimulating.

Men's weave textile, Ghana; image from Vlach's book

He goes into great detail about West African applique techniques, patterns, and purpose, but the revelatory part came after, with his description and illustration of the strip quilt.

Denyse Schmidt, in that article, had been talking about the value of state quilt documentation projects for her own inspiration; those are initiatives that were taken up in the 1980s and ’90s in nearly every state, urging people to bring in any quilt they knew of, old and ratty, any condition, to document each one and what the owners knew about them at that time, so that their histories could be collected and kept, as an important part of American traditional culture, and as a true collection of Americana art.

My favorite strip quilt from Vlach's selected examples

I had begun researching these documentation projects, and found the largest compendium of the projects in one place: The Quilt Index. (Browse at your own risk! It may consume your day.) There are also numerous books, by state, on their quilt documentations, including the processes, some of the most significant quilts, and if you’re lucky, directions for some of them.

Everything was colliding at once: quilt documentation projects as a source of “hill-billy” and traditional inspiration, from days when making your quilt meant using scraps, old clothing, and feed sacks–sometimes from textiles you have woven yourself–and accurate design came second to having a warm blanket to sleep under; Denyse Schmidt’s minimal take on quilting and what constitutes artistic design; and Vlach’s chapter on both of these concepts placed right smack dab in their historical place.

All the sudden, I turn to a page and see an “improvisational log cabin motif,” identical the one on the quilt I am currently making. Next to it, for comparison, was the precise, mathematical European log cabin form. Here was one of the core bases for my personal inspiration: southern quilting, and African American design aesthetic. As Vlach points out, this approach greatly resembles an improvisational approach to music that creates jazz, in that you must have a mastery of the form of the craft before you can begin to improvise. And African American women who lived in slavery were creating a counterculture exactly their own when they quilted, preserving a cultural memory within the larger colonial and early American traditions surrounding them.

My improvisational Log Cabin quilt, inspired originally for me by Denyse Schmidt

The photos of quilts accompanying Vlach’s text were each more fabulous and inspiring and random and thoughtful as the next. (Sadly, I checked out the book from the school library and was sad to find that the book itself is in black and white, meaning I cannot see the pieces in color.) The strip motif derives from the African tradition of men’s textile weaving, in which long pieces are woven on a loom and then cut into strips of the right length to be sewn together to form a blanket. For the first time in my life, I felt an itch to learn to use a loom, to make some of this stuff myself and build up a long, winding bundle that I could cut up and stitch into one quilt front.

Some were so simple they were stunningly curved and mix-matched and all too easy to start planning. Others were more composed, but still with that off-kilter charm, the very thing I was finding I wanted in my quilts, and the very thing that Denyse Schmidt makes sure is in each of hers. Not surprisingly, when I found myself in one of my favorite quilt stores a few days later, I ended up leaving with a quilt’s worth of fabrics in a palette that I am calling “menswear + African.”

By the way, I am already working on two other quilts right now. So yes, this makes three. And I have two jobs and go to grad school full time. What?

But that’s why I have Be The Ink, to compile and share my ideas when I can’t execute them anywhere else, for the time being.

My working menswear + African palette -- for my next project

Stove Eye quilt, from the book Great Lakes, Great Quilts, part of Michigan's quilt documentation effort

Kaffe Fassett meets African American tradition: these are the exact same pattern, also a stand-out piece

This book is a treasure trove of everyday patterns inspiring quilt motifs (Kaffe Fassett)

Flying Geese have been calling me name everywhere. I am going to make a quilt front using this motif. This was the ceiling pattern at Japan Fest, and from my angle, Flying Geese!

]]> http://betheink.com/2011/09/to-be-off-balance-but-still-under-control/feed/ 0 http://betheink.com/2011/09/art-was-not-separate-from-everyday-experience/ http://betheink.com/2011/09/art-was-not-separate-from-everyday-experience/#comments Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:35:14 +0000 Jcedens http://betheink.com/?p=1443

I went to the Atlanta History Center for the sole purpose of visiting their many exhibits–for the first time in my life. This is really sad, considering I have a degree in history, I’m earning a master’s student studying museums, and I’ve lived in Atlanta for more than five years. In my defense, I’ve been there once to see one specific exhibit, and we also got a tour of the innards of the place, including their giant holdings areas down below where they keep the collection pieces that are not on display in exhibits. I have also been to their Kenan Research Center on several occasions for research purposes. But this was my first time going to meander my way through their permanent and temporary exhibitions.

Folk art meets daily life necessity: rice hulling mortar and pestels, circa 1800s (used into the 1900s). This is the most enormous mortar and pestel I've ever seen.

I knew I needed to pick one to highlight for yet another assigned exhibit review for a class (this makes about the fifth review I’ve done), but I didn’t really go in thinking of any one in particular–especially not, for some reason, the folk art exhibit, which I’d heard one or a few classmates discuss before but never given much thought. But this semester, I’m taking a class on Material Culture, on the things we adorn with a human touch, and make with a purpose, be it necessity, pleasure, tool, comfort or any other reason we have to create something. In the wake of this summer’s interior design class, I already feel that I am more aware of the conscious designs and historical components surrounding aesthetic, style, and the use of the things around us.

The first two weeks of class already have me thinking even harder about the things we design, make, buy, use, sell, throw away, repurpose. It was truly serendipitous that after a few other galleries, I wandered over to the Shaping Traditions: Folk Art in a Changing South gallery while deciding where next to spend my time. I had been planning to review a different exhibit, for a different class than Material Culture, but here it was in front of me, and there on the introductory panel was John Burrison, a professor at my school and friend of many of my professors, in a photograph with some of the pieces in the collection. I had a memory flashback and realized that I remembered learning that most of this collection–thousands of items–was his–he had been collecting southern folk art since the 1970s, and turned his collection and his lifetime of knowledge on folklife into an exhibit–a stunning and approachable work in itself.

From this leftover bit of mussel shell, you can see how they made buttons out of them. Incredible!

There on the same panel was a name that suddenly meant a lot to me: Henry Glassie. I had only just finished reading one of his books for my class, his 1968 classic within the folklife field, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. I got really excited, and from there, it was several hours later before I noticed how much time I had been spending at each panel, examining each piece of folk craft, studying the selection of photos that accompanied throughout.

My favorite part, obviously really, was the section devoted entirely to southern textiles, quilts, motifs, and influential styles. The designers came up with a truly ingenious method to display and preserve the six quilts within the exhibit: each one rolled out on its own giant display board, once prompted by a visitor who pushes a button–which sits below a description of the type, material, quilter, and estimated year of creation. I must have pushed those buttons more than a dozen times, engrossed in their pattern and fabric choices, old as they were. Each was so beautiful, and they combined to tell a distinctly diverse story of the variety of quilting styles and influences that play into southern quilting.

The clever system within the exhibit that only exposes the quilts to light when visitors choose to roll them out--it's also fun to use!

The textile section had an essential "touch me" section, for those of us who were dying to feel the quilts and had to contain ourselves.

"Barn Rising" variation of a Log Cabin quilt, early 1900s

"Eight Point Star" variation with strips, by Estella Daniel, Emerson County, Georgia, 1930s

"Whig's Defeat," by Susan Loyd, Rome, Georgia, 1856

"Brick Work" and strip pattern, Annie Howard, Madison, Georgia, 1957

(Read on for a bit more about the themes of the exhibit; it’s worth a few minutes!)

The exhibit was consciously created to revolve around its stunning artifacts, to tell the larger story of the relationship between folk craft and folk art in past and present southern life. The overarching thesis the exhibit aims to impress upon visitors is that there has been both continuity and change in southern folk art, and that the relationship within it—southerners and their handmade products—is an important component in the history of the South.

Craftsmen-made ladderback chairs

The exhibit has an incredible collection of folk furniture, with all the requisite textiles, potter-made earthenware, and other pieces that defined home life in preindustrial Georgia.

Modern-day artists and immigrant groups who have added their cultural traditions to the South in the last half century are featured near the end of the exhibit space, proving that folk art in the region, while no longer necessary for our work or daily life essentials, is still an important part of our cultural lives; we are surrounded by the artistry and traditional techniques of those who continue to practice and pass on our folk arts. Shaping Traditions tells this story through the objects that define the subject.

Go see it.

Ben stopped by to say hi to my camera

Ben's note in the guest book. Haha. True statement.

This is what pure giddiness looks like.

Also: Nose-picking in the Metropolitan Frontiers exhibit

Material culture historian Henry Glassie reflects on the value of the world as an inspiration for art, and how artistry, at its core, comes from age-old trades. He takes us through the lifespan of a traditionally-made Turkish rug to illustrate this, and brings us back around to the very fact that he is writing about it, to ensure we understand that all manner of artistry, big and small, is a product of the creative soul of humankind.

The chapter I read today was a joyous revelation, a celebration, of the material as historical, as everything we can and hope to be, in what we create on this earth, with our hands, our patience, our inspiration, our minds.

My current quilt project, which has been such a creative thrill thus far.

Her body is made of felted wool pieces, mostly hand sewing, with little bits of other nice materials, like her little cream-colored cashmere sweater. I must give credit to Valerie Weberpal, the artist who works with the Earth Angels artists’ guild, and you can find more of her monsters (for sale too) on her site.

This got me thinking, instantly, of my Mom’s stash of felted wool, and how I could put together all these pieces. As inspiration, we bought her, for a whopping $80. But we know the value of hard handwork when we see it, and so it was worth the price. (She’s about 12″ tall, plus ear height.)

Otis the Monster

So we began the process of creating Otis, Izmir’s boyfriend, and a friendly monster made of wools and cottons and especially huggable. Once finals were over, I had much more time to bring him to life, and I had my Mom’s advice with his color scheme and with the construction of his very dapper vest. His long, dangly arms are scraps from the arms of a sweater my mom had knitted long ago, and has since turned into a pillow. She cut off the arms, giving me perfect multicolored monster extremities. His nose was inspired by another large schnoz that I had seen in Valerie’s pile of adorable critters, on a monster named Alister.  I love the extra dimension. Other little touches and textures were added from my stash of ribbons, fabric scraps, and embroidery threads. He was a work of hand-sewn fun and love. Making Otis was pure fun, and he’s just for me.

Otis's face

His very dapper vest

While Otis was in the making, I was also itching to make another, gigantic monster, that would be more like a pillow. There is a similar idea in Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing for Baby book, but I wanted to do a bit more than what she suggested, and definitely wanted a cuter face than the stamp-on one in the book. I again hand-stitched a face using some of my favorite wool felt and a sweater scrap that had the perfect murky colors for his smile. His ears and limbs are the softest stripey flannel, and his whole body is flannel too, so he’s cozy. I stuffed him with the best fiber fill on the planet, Cluster Stuff, so he is basically a big, friendly pillow who is also a monster. It was suggested that his name be Redding, to match his needle-and-thread twin Otis.

This whimsical family of critters will now grace my apartment with coziness and love, and a dose of simple cuteness. What fun to make little things with personalities and faces and names. A good way to use up some of the names I love and collect, since I certainly won’t be having enough children to use all of them.

Redding before his stuffing

And stuffed!

The whole critter family

In 2002, the saga of this young woman and the mystery and enchantment she beset upon McCurry continued, when he finally found her again–seventeen difficult years later. I remember reading that story, and the fact that the first picture he took of her was the first time she’d ever seen a camera; when he found her again, it was the second time her photo had been taken. In rural Afghanistan, traditional customs still rule, and McCurry was allowed unusual access to this woman–now married with several children.

What I didn’t realize until now is that McCurry’s photographs are known for their very saturated color, an effect which he gets by using Kodachrome. I have sen hundreds of his portraits, of people across cultures, and never knew what was behind this rich and fascinating quality.

Kodachrome was discontinued last year, and the company gave the very last roll to McCurry. He’s currently working on taking the last 36 shots with this film, and taking his time to ensure each one will live up to the responsibility he has been given. (There’s only one place in the country that even develops them, in Parsons, Kansas.) Based on the book of his portraits, and his lifetime of vision, creativity, and global exposure, he’s got a proven set of eyes.

We used poster board taped toegther to create the homemade pattern, giving each square its essential, unique shape.

The piecing was done to refect the original look, but I took each little design in my own direction. This is the quilt body at five rows, around the start of July.

For color scheme, I wanted to keep the palette close to the pastel and pale dominating colors that bound the original quilt, because that base is what makes all the bold squares really pop. Right as the fall semester was starting, I finished the eighth and final row on the quilt front (nine would have made it disproportionately long, so I opted to stop at eight). A few weeks later, I bought the backing fabric, a funky Amy Butler design I found at my local Red Hen Fabrics. My mom taught me a mitered corner, and I successfully created a bold black frame around my quilt front. It was ready to be quilted.

I learned mitered corners while applying the black edging fabric that would frame the quilt face.

She called me with the good news about three weeks ahead of my estimated completion date, which meant that after everything, I was going to finish the job in time for Christmas. All that was left was the binding, which I again learned from my mother. I used a nice stone-colored fabric for the binding, and hand-stitched the entire back side as I learned this final step.

The finished quilt face, at the start of September.

The entire quilt was a learning process. Every little technique was taken into this larger project as an essential and important skill, one that must be accurate and provide the professional touch that learned quilters look for. Learning from my mother, there was no way I could do things in an amateur way, which is why piecing each square was just as important as reverse applique, and little things like seam allowances had to be accurate. Those skills translate into many other areas of sewing and design, and knowing how things are made when I see them only makes me want to start all over again with a new design. But I’m not quite so crazy; I’ll give it a few months at least. I have mastered the mitered corner (OK, I’ve only somewhat grasped it) and learned some tips and tricks on making a professional-looking doubled-over binding. Along the way, I also bought my own sewing machine (having grown up using my mom’s trusty Viking) and have definitely mastered threading and cleaning that thing.

The quilt comes alive with the quilting lines, which I had done professionally in order to maintain the technical mastery I had tried to keep with my quilting.

Look closely to see the geometric quilting pattern running through the entire body. The reverse-side fabric is an Amy Butler design. That is also some of my hand work on the appliqued binding.

Close-up of the corner I used to make the binding look lovely.

Most importantly, it is Avery-approved, so it's a cuddly spot for Ben's cats too. She spent a lot of time snoozing in my quilt basket too, getting hair on the fabrics that would grow into this quilt.