Lisa Call

I’ve been busy with photography and general business tasks and haven’t had much time to post recently. I’m leaving for a 2 week workshop so I won’t be posting again until mid october.

The following are the fullview shots of quilts I posted details for a few weeks ago:

Structures #36 © 2005, 69″ x 50″

Structures #46 © 2005, 45″ x 61″

Structures #35 © 2005, 32″ x 49″

Structures #40 © 2005, 44″ x 44″

Structures #41 © 2005, 31″ x 44″

I promised a few weeks back to post some close up pictures of my quilting. At the beginning of August I had 10 quilt tops in need of quilting – I’m half done! It’s taken over 100 hours of quilting as I like my work to be very heavily stitched. It is rare for there to be an open area larger than 1/4″.

I like the look but sometimes I wonder if I need to find a way to quilt that isn’t so darn time intensive. Then maybe I could get more work done. But again I think I spend as much time or more piecing some of the quilt tops (Structures #47 posted in august took me months to piece and 100s of hours).

Note: You can see the stitching better if you click the pictures and view the larger images.

I do a lot of quilting like this – where I just echo the shapes of the piecing with parallel lines and matching thread.

Detail of Structures #36 © 2005:

Detail of Structures #46 © 2005:

In the next 2 pieces I broke up the larger pieced shapes with smaller areas of quilting. Still with thread that matched the fabric. This gives the quilts a really interesting texture – almost like looking at farm fields from an airplane.

Detail of Structures #35 © 2005:

Detail of Structures #40 © 2005:

Again I broke up larger areas with smaller areas of quilting but used contrasting thread colors. I love this one and will do more of the contrasting thread. Of course this method is the slowest with all with little areas of quilting and switching thread color so often. I guess no surprise there – the better it looks the longer it takes to do!

Detail of Structures #41 © 2005:

Full view image of these quilts will appear soon. I’m building a portable photography wall with pvc pipe so I can take my own photos. Maybe this weekend I’ll finish that project.

I’m organizing an effort to get bedsized quilts to the evacuees that have come to Denver. My goal is to make 3 twin sized quilts by the end of then month when we distribute the quilts.

As James mentioned on Diary of a Pauper many of us have the desire to make something beautiful for the people effected by this storm. One of the nice things about doing fiber art is that there is a very practical and “useful” side to the artform that is of immediate need. It’s already cold here in Denver – last night it got down into the 40s. Goodbye summer!

haven’t made traditional bed quilts in years and have a large collection of commercially printed fabric that I no longer use (I only use my hand dyed fabric in my artwork). It’s been fun to dig through the old fabric again remembering the quilts I made long ago for friends and family. Although it’s been a bit embarrassing as I’ll be using about 30 yards of fabric (about $240-$300) and it has barely made a dent in my stash.

Maybe I should clean out my stash and sell it on ebay and donate the money to the red cross. Hm – think it would sell? I haven’t bought commercial fabric in 5-6 years so it’s all fairly dated stuff.

I started on monday and I’ve got the first 2 quilt tops done, they are about 65″ x 85″. It takes me about 4-5 hours to sew together a single quilt top. I just might make my goal!

What was I saying yesterday about distractions? This one is quite worthwhile but my artwork isn’t making much forward progress this month.

I have moved my blog to my own web server and changed the URL. I suppose if you are reading this you know that.

I’m working on restoring all of my posts from the old blog – should be done by the weekend. I will probably lose the comments – oops!

I haven’t gotten a lot of quilting done the last few weeks because I needed to refinish my redwood deck and porch. Wow – that was a lot of work. It took a week to sand off all the old nasty stain and a couple days to refinish it. In the end it looks great but I’m resentful of the time it took away from my quilting.

My newly refinished deck:

I find it frustrating all the little things in life that can divert my attention from my artwork. Work (the biggie), house maintenance, kids, paying bills, etc, etc, etc. I’ve cut out a lot of extra stuff but it seems there is still a never ending list of little (and big) things that I need to do instead of make quilts.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really need is a traditional wife – to cook, clean, maintain and in general organize my life so I can concentrate on my artwork. I guess I need a traditional husband also – to make the money to pay the mortgage and take the cars in to be fix (I need an oil change and a new muffler!).

But since it is just me I guess I just need to find a way to get the chores done more quickly so I have more time for the art.

Any suggestions?

I suspect canning 10-15 quarts homemade salsa next weekend with hatch green chiles and organic tomatoes from my garden could be optional but I grew up in New Mexico and salsa isn’t something I compromise on. Sigh…