Lisa Call

Alison Schwabe asked

Looking at the ones further down, a couple of them strike me as really heavy in mood, so could you say mood influences your colour choices, and, if it does, and your mood lifts during a piece, do you modify the colours, or put one aside until you are in ‘that’ mood again?

Interesting question, I’ve been pondering it all day. My colors are most definitely influenced by my mood. I’m generally quite serious; my nature definitely leans toward contemplative and heavy, and “lighten up” is an often heard phrase. I tend to select my palette at the start of a project and while I will add and subtract a few fabrics here and there I generally don’t modify the original plan as it progresses. The color selection phase rarely lasts more than a day or two so it is quite reflective of a specific moment in my life.

When Structures #47 was started I told a friend, “I’m going to make gray quilt”, but the result has much more green, blue and brown than anticipated. I just started pulling fabric until I had a pile that looks interesting and this was the result. I guess I wasn’t in as gray a mood as I thought that day.

I generally piece together 1 quilt a time. I rarely get stuck when working on a quilt so my mood rarely interferes with the piecing of the work, or it is possible my mood doesn’t vary that often. That sounds ridiculous, I’m female, of course I’m moody. So there is more to it than that.

There are times I have to force myself to my studio to work. My full time job as a software engineer can be very draining, as are the 2 kids, and house, and yard, and bills, etc etc, but I know that if I am going to get work done I must be productive daily, or at least as many days as possible.

I think many can relate to what I’m going to say next, which is that after I do get to my studio, even if I’m tired, or cranky, or not feeling well, something magic happens and within a few minutes I’m much happier and the work comes naturally. On the rare occasion when this doesn’t happen I will leave the studio because I know I will make too many mistakes in the design and be unhappy with the results. Fortunately those days are very very rare.

Once a piece is completed it could be weeks or months or years before I will quilt it, partly because it takes much longer for me to quilt than to piece. But also because I have to be in the right mood to quilt a specific piece. If it is the wrong colors I can’t work on it.

I have 2 pieces from the summer of 2003 that I couldn’t work on all through the winter but now that it is summer I’m geared up and ready to work on them again. I’m quite excited about them as the colors are from my morning runs. An injury prevented me from running in 2004 and I’ve just started back up again so everything is clicking into place and I’m hoping to have these 2 pieces completed by fall.

The most striking example of putting off work because of my “mood” is what I refer to as my divorce quilt, Structures #10 (shown below). I pieced this top in a day and half during a workshop, 1 month after my ex husband moved out of our house in the fall of 2001. It took 2 and a half years before it was completed. I could only work on it for a few minutes at a time as there were too many emotions tied up in the quilt. When I finally allowed myself to complete it, I felt I had moved on to a new part of my life.

For me the quilt has a very specific meaning but I rarely share the details with someone until I have heard their thoughts on the piece. It has sparked some very interesting and meaningful conversations with friends that have brought us closer. I love these types of connections that my artwork can facilitate. I find this rather ironic as my work is about hiding myself behind walls and setting up boundaries.

Structures #10 © 2004, 35″ x 52″

I’ve started inserting the small strips into the blocks. I start in one corner and work my way across the quilt, adding the lines to each block one at a time. I spend the time to make each block beautiful as it stands on it’s own, in addition to considering the location of the block within the entire quilt when choosing colors and placement of the lines.

I can piece between 6 and 10 of these blocks per hour so it will take several weeks to complete the piecing of the individual blocks. After this is finished I will construct the quilt top by sewing all of the blocks together in a single competition.

My work is about fences and stone walls, as my motif, which is very similar to an E, is in fact a design inspired from my father’s backyard fence. Humans use these structures to keep out danger, but we also build fences to keep our true selves hidden from friends, family, lovers and even ourselves. As I construct my artwork my thoughts are often on these topics as I watch the very open and free background colors become trapped and fragmented behind the bars and lines that mark my boundaries.

Structures #47 © 2005 – in progress

Detail of the sewing

The start of a new quilt (about 7′x6′ in size). This quilt will be similar to my Quilt National 2005 piece, Structures #31. Right now I have the background squares placed on the wall and I’ll be inserting 5-8 narrow strips into each of the squares.

Structures #47 © 2005 – In progress