Lisa Call

This weekend I organized my studio and then added an additional 16 feet of design wall to my studio. The 30 ft x 20 ft studio is in my basement and now has a total of 48 feet of design wall, which is either white flannel or black felt over 1″ thick white styrofoam insulation sheets.

I use this room for design and construction work only. I have a separate dye studio in another part of the basement and all my business and paperwork is upstairs in my office. Even though this is the basement I get natural light from the 4 garden level windows.

This is the view of the studio from the stairs. There is a lot of open floor space in front of what is shown as I baste my quilts by pinning them to the floor so need to have a large clear area as some of my quilts are up to 8ft x 8ft.

This is the east wall, which is at the bottom of the stairs (so behind everything in the previous picture). This wall has 24 feet of design wall and is currently covered with completed quilt tops awaiting quilting.

Moving counter clockwise around the room this is the first section of the north wall. These 2 design walls are new. I wasted no time starting a new piece on the design wall on the left. The blue quilts on the right are pieces I started a few years ago awaiting completion.

The table in the middle is for design work, which I do very little on paper so mostly the table collects junk. In the future I would love to replace this table with another sewing table with a second sewing machine, so I could piece with one machine and quilt with the other.

Still part of the north wall, this is where I spend most of time, in front of my sewing machine, a Pfaff 1475 that I bought in 1993. I have a custom built 8′x4′ table that is wonderful for quilting my large work. I keep my ironing table adjacent to my sewing machine so I can work quickly.

Moving counter clockwise again, this design wall on the west wall is the one I use most often for designing a new quilt. I like working on a black surface. As you can see Structures #47 is still in progress. The dresser to the right and the drawers beneath my sewing table hold my rather large and very neglected collection of commercial fabric.

My cutting table is on the first section of the south wall. The shelves under the cutting table hold my old projects, my beads, scraps and misc stuff.

The last of the new design wall space on the second part of the south wall. The piece on the top is a piece I handdyed/painted years ago that I would like to hand quilt someday. The piece on the bottom is a new idea I’m playing with. The green blocks are a design my son is working on and the sewing machine in this picture is my ancient singer that he uses.

You can also see my storage bins for my hand dyed fabric. My very small book collection is also on a shelf under my cutting table.

Last week my critique group, Material Evolution, and I flew to Burbank, California for the taping of the TV show “Uncommon Threads”. We had a blast playing tv stars for a couple days. It was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. The show will air next spring on the channel DIY. When I have specific information on the date and time I’ll let everyone know.

Instead of flying back to Denver I hitched a ride with a friend that was in California and we drove back. The drive was spectacular and incredibly inspiring and I won’t soon forget the experience. I took over 80 photos of the desert landscape of California, Nevada and Utah. I’ve included a few here from the section of I-70 that I absolutely loved.

These black cliffs are incredible.

This rock looks like a submarine and the valley it overlooks is beautiful. The colors of this area are amazing.

It may not be the Grand Canyon but it is still amazing.

Close up view of a gorgeous canyon wall. I took this photo at 70 mph through the front windshield. I love my Nikon D-70!

A very cool rock formation just as we were dropping out of the high canyons.

It’s taken longer than I had anticipated but finally each of the individual blocks are sewn together. Next step is to sew the blocks into a single interesting overall composition. I love this final step in the piecing as it is quite challenging to get them all to fit together as they are all different sizes. It’s like working a big fabric jigsaw puzzle.

I use a lot of brown in my work, probably an influence of growing up in Northern New Mexico. Or maybe I just like mixing all the colors together when dyeing fabric and it all comes out muddied so I have no choice. Either way I love the dry desert scruffy landscape and canyon walls of my home state. They just feel like home.

Here are a few pictures from my trip last week of
Bandelier National Monument. I love the patterning of the holes of the long house on the canyon wall.

And of course, what trip to Bandelier would be complete without a ladder picture:

I am almost finished piecing the individual blocks for Structures #46 but this summer has been so busy I haven’t found the time to really concentrate on the quilt.

This week I completed the new website for my online group, The Fiber Connection. This group has been instrumental in the forward progress of my art career and I am more than happy to do this work for the group as they have given me so much. Most of the members, all very talented artists, have new work on the website so check us out!

Last week I took my kids on a road trip to Santa Fe, NM and we had a fabulous time. I took a bunch of pictures that are currently trapped on my work laptop but once I figure out how to remove them I will post some of my favorites here. I grew up in Northern New Mexico and it will always feel like home to me. It is spectacularly beautiful and peaceful. And last week darn hot also.

Later this week I will be headed to beautiful Burbank California for the taping of a segment of the new DIY show “Uncommon Threads”. I will be demonstrating how I do my very simple “dump and pour” dyeing. It’s very simple and stress free dyeing that anyone can do. I’m not sure when the show will air but I’ll keep everyone updated.

I needed to have some fabric to display so last night at I dyed a batch of 20 yards with the colors I will be using on the show. I always carry the containers of fabric in the dye baths through the studio and up the stairs to my laundry room and I’ve always been very careful not to spill. Well I guess at 1am I wasn’t very alert and I spilled drops of dye across the entire 30 foot length of the studio and up the stairs. It’s quite difficult to clean up blue dye when your arms are dead tired and you desperately wish you were asleep instead.

Does anyone know how to get dried procion MX dye off of cheap nylon carpet?