Lisa Call

I did this week’s Everyday Matters Challenge, #43 draw something ceramic, while at work. I use an old mug to hold my writing implements, I took out the pencils and turned the handle around because that was too tedious for me.

I did it twice, neither is particularly successful but it was fun and gave me something to do while installing software on my computer at work.

My Mug #1© 2005:

My Mug #2 © 2005:

What I learned doing these drawings:

1) I don’t particularly like drawing realistic things.

2) I liked shading and drawing the background of my cube wall in the second one. Just making marks with the pencil is what interests me.

3) I’m really an abstract artist

4) The mug in the second drawing looks like it is furry – probably don’t want to drink out of it.

Karoda asked months ago, when I posted pictures of my studio, if I could show my dye studio. I finally cleaned it up enough I’m willing to do so.

My dye studio is in the basement with the sewing studio, in the unfinished part, and it’s not very fancy. But I also do very simple easy dyeing and don’t need much equipment.

This is it (the door leads to the sewing studio):

 
Just to the right of this space is where I store batting, fabric to dye, my grandma’s old floor quilting frame and a bunch of other random things. You can see my furnace (that big shiny thing on the right of the picture) sits right next to all of this so it’s not exactly glamorous.

Storage:

 
My basement is, um, rather large. I have a storage area for camping equipment, holiday decorations, boxes and all sorts of other junk. I’m not showing it because I didn’t quite finish cleaning that area up. And how exciting can backpacking tents be?

But the largest part of the unfinished basement is an area for my kids (9 & 13) to make their art. They used to have no rules for what they could do in this area. Until they became modern painters and were flinging paint on the wall and floors. They called it paint boomerangs, mom called it a mess and put a stop to it. So now they are a bit more restrained, but not much. They love having this space to do their own thing and not have to worry about spills or messes. This past weekend we installed better lighting over their tables and cleaned up a few years of accumlated clutter. It is rarely this organized.

Kids art desks:

 
Running along the wall next to my dye tables is the kid art gallery (pinned to 2″ thick styrofoam sheets attached to the cement walls, which keep the basement just a bit warmer in winter):

Vicki asked me a few posts back the following question:

How do you get and remain productive?

My answer isn’t short and this question was the motivation to finally move my blog some where that had categories. Now I can answer this question across multiple posts and keep them all together in one easy to find place. So here is post #1 about the topic and you’ll see a new category in the sidebar “Why – Motivation”.

My first thought when I read this question was that I was just born this way. I’ve always been very productive, it’s just part of who I am. And as I was reminded of again, during my dad’s visit last month, it’s probably hereditary. He is extremely productive also, never sits around, always doing things. [Which was great for me as a lot of things that needed done got fixed around my house during his visit - thanks dad!]

I get jumpy sitting around doing nothing. It’s boring. I don’t have a TV and when I did have one I only used it for watching movies as regular TV is waste of time. I don’t play games on my computer. Generally I’m only interested in doing things that are “productive”. It’s very rare for me to be sitting around doing nothing.

So then the question is – how do I turn that motivation to my artwork vs cleaning my house or paying bills, or doing something else “productive” as there are certainly a lot of distractions around the house.

I spent the majority of today cleaning my unfinished basement and installing some more lights (look for photos of my dye studio soon). I came across a bunch of 3 ring binders from my traditional quilting days (1980-1993). I have notes and sketches and patterns for many of the quilts I made during this period and towards the end of this time and into the first part of moving into original artwork, I kept a list of quilting goals for each year. I also had a list of things I had accomplished for the year.

So part of the answer to how I turn my motivation to quilting is that I have goals. More in the next “motivation” post about my goals – what are they – what format are they in – etc…

Although I’m not done fixing up my blog I probably should stop posting about it for a while or I might lose all my readers. So time for a change of pace.

I had intended to post these pictures of Santa Fe when I took them back in July but they were trapped on my work laptop. Last month I finally got high speed internet at home (the geek joins the 21st century) and was able to transfer them onto my main computer.

I grew up about a half hour from Santa Fe and when I go back to visit it sure doesn’t feel like the same place I remember visiting as a kid. But there are some things that hopefully will never change. I love the colors and the architecture. And who couldn’t love the New Mexico blue sky?

As you can see I’ve updated the look of my blog. And it looks good in firefox. Internet Explorer isn’t quite cooperating yet, but hopefully soon. Bright yellow forms and a messed up header, as css works differently in IE than in most other browsers. Sigh…

Very little sewing is going on as my websites are getting updated.

[Update: the bright yellow forms in IE are gone. It was a problem caused by the google tool bar and autofill function. I've disable the autofill highlighting as it is just downright ugly. See here for an explanation of what all this means, if interested.]

[Update #2: I think I've got the headers fixed in Firefox and IE (on windows). Hurray! Thanks for all the feedback everyone. If anyone with a mac sees a problem I'd appreciate knowing.

Only glitch I know of: If a user resizes their text larger in anything except IE the text in the header is going to end up being partially hidden. I could take my text into photoshop and incorporate it into the image but if I do this the text isn't searchable by google. Hm - I guess I might have to do this - but not today.]

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the States!

As you are all basting your turkeys, I thought I’d talk about basting quilts.

First, for the non quilters, some definitions. My quilts are made up of 3 layers:

• The top – this is the design that I have sewn together, made out of my handdyed 100% cotton fabric.
• The back – also made with cotton fabric, usually a few larger pieces sewn together.
• The batting – this is the stuff in the middle. I use warm and natural cotton batting as it is thin, dense and flat and I like the way it holds up to heavy quilting.

The 3 layers are held together with quilting stitches. I do my quilting on my sewing machine and if you look at this post you can see some detailed examples of what the quilting looks like.

Before I can do the quilting I need to fasten the 3 layers together temporarily so they don’t slip and slide around while I manipulate the quilt through my sewing machine. This is called basting the quilt. And it is also extremely important – if done well the final quilt will generally lay flat and look nice; if done poorly the top and back often have puckers and the quilt can look sloppy.

It’s a lot of work to baste a quilt, especially larger bedsized pieces and many quilters don’t enjoy the process, so I guess I’m a bit unusual because I do.

I like the look of just the sewn together top, before it has been turned in to a quilt. But for me it feels incomplete. My artwork must have the texture from the quilting stitches to really feel right and it is during the basting that all of the potential of that texturing is first realized. It’s the moment my artwork becomes a quilt and I love it.

I also have devised a quick and easy way to baste my quilts that always results in a perfect quilt sandwich and I never run into technical problems during the quilting. It takes me about half an hour to baste a 40″ square quilt with this method.

I took some pictures last weekend while I was basting Structures #39 to demonstrate my technique.

How To Create the Perfect Quilt Sandwich:

• Create a beautiful quilt top.
• Piece together a backing that coordinates with the top. I don’t measure with a ruler. I just keeping sewing fabric pieces together until the backing is 3-4″ bigger than the top on every side (determine this by holding it up to the top). I don’t skimp here – it’s too annoying fitting it together properly if the backing is only just a tiny bit bigger than the top. So I make it plenty extra big to avoid any of those headaches.
• Cut a piece of batting about the same size as the backing.
• Clear a space the carpeted floor large enough to layout the backing and walk around all sides
• Lay the backing, wrong side up, on the carpet and pin it to the carpet with straight pins. I pull the fabric taut but not too tight and put pins in every 4-6″. I start in the center of 1 edge and work my way to the ends until 1 side is pinned down. They I do the opposite edge, again starting in the middle. The do the remaining 2 sides. I usually do the 2 shortest sides first. The back should be pulled taut fairly evenly across the entire quilt. If any of the pins are straining then it is pulled too tight.
• Lay the batting on top of the backing and smooth flat, trying not to distort the backing. So do it gently but firmly. I don’t pin the batting down but I do work to smooth it out evenly. As it is cotton batting it will hold in place well with friction.
• Lay to top onto the batting and again smooth it down evenly. Start with the center of the quilt and work outwards pushing out any rumples with your hand.
• Start at the very center of the quilt and place safety pins (see note about pins below) in a line down the center of the quilt, start in the center and work out to each edge. Pins should be about 6″ apart. This first row of pins should be parallel to the longest edge of the quilt (so you don’t have to reach as far across the quilt to work – it’s best if you never stand or kneel on the quilt sandwich during this process – on huge quilts it can’t be avoided – just be as gentle as possible when moving around the quilt).
• Continue adding rows of pins, starting in the center of each row, about 6″ apart. The final row of pins should run about an inch away from the edge of the quilt. As you pin continue to smooth out any rumples in the sandwich. If done carefully the pins anchoring the backing to the floor should not move around much at all.
• Remove the pins holding the backing and lift quilt from the floor. I rarely catch the carpet with a safety pin as I am careful when pinning to avoid this problem. I’m been pinning my quilts to my current studio carpet for 11 years and there are no signs of frayed edges or other problems resulting from this activity.
• Trim extra batting and backing from the sandwich as it gets in the way when quilting. I leave about 3/4″ around each side.

 
Note about pins: I use the short 1″ safety pins (#1 size), steel not brass. The larger ones leave big holes in the fabric and the brass ones don’t slide through the quilt sandwich easily. I bought a box of a 10 gross (1440) nickle plated size 1 safety pins for $24 at a quilt store about 12 years ago (you can see the box of pins in the photo above). You can get the exact same box of pins on the internet today for $12 at this dry cleaning supply website. I love having a big box of pins as I can baste 4 or 5 large quilts at a time, and I just ordered a second box. I’ve always wanted more but had never seen these pins in quilt stores again, probably because they make more money selling smaller quanties of very expensive safety pins, which are probably the exact same thing packaged in fancy quilter packages.

 
Time to check on the pies – enjoy your Thanksgiving!

As I mentioned earlier, I recently joined the Everyday Matters yahoo group to investigate drawings and how I might use some of the techniques in my quilts.

They have a weekly challenge and this week I went back and did #13 – draw your telephone. I did this drawing at work while waiting for my computer to do it’s job (it’s very slow).

I dislike my telephone at work. It rings too loud. I can’t figure out how to make it quieter. Every time I try it seems to just get louder. So every time the phone rings I jump. As my son would say, it makes me jittery. This drawing makes me jittery. So I think I’ve done a good job capturing the essence of the thing.

My Phone © 2005 Lisa Call

 
What I learned doing this drawing:

- It’s been a long time (30 years?) since I’ve done much drawing. It’s fun, although I still prefer fabric.

- Pencil is very smudgy and I made a mess of the paper. Plenty of fingerprints to identify the artist on this one. Hm – how do you do this without making a mess? Or do I just need to buy a good eraser?

- Doing all that dark shading is very noisy in the quiet cubes [note - you can see the phone just to the left of my computer monitor in this picture]. I had to finish that part at home because I think everyone knew I wasn’t exactly doing computer things at the time.

- I can’t count – I wrote 1 – 2 – 5 – 4 on the buttons first try. Oops…

I spent the evening getting my blog in shape. Many of the new features are in the sidebar so if you are reading this with an rss reader you might need to hop over to the “real” blog site, http://blog.lisacall.com, to see them.

Look Categories! One of the main reasons to switch to Wordpress was for the categories. All my postings are now sorted out so in addition to viewing them chronologically (in the archives), you can view by category. Want to see all the posts where I’m showing my work “in progress”? Click on the “What – The Progress” category. If you hover your mouse over the category title it will give you a brief description about what each one is about. The number following the name indicates how many posts are in that category.

My blog’s tag line has always been “The how, why, what, where, when and who of my artwork.” Now I’ve separated it out into those categories.

Search! While blogger had a search feature I turned it off as there are spyware issues with the blogger navigation bar. Now I can again have a search box for my blog, thank you Wordpress. [To avoid the spyware don't click the "NextBlog" button on the blogger navigation bar.]

A bio! I finally wrote a blog bio and there is even a picture of… me. Yikes. I talk a bit about my artwork and why I have a blog.

Fully restored content! A few months back I did a very stupid thing and accidentally deleted 5 months of posts. I’ve now restored all of the old content (I have a few more comments still to add in by hand but I’m almost done). So if you are a new reader and have some free time check out the archives for Feb-July.

Featured posts There have a been a few postings that I wanted to keep a more permanent link to for new readers. Like the pictures of my studio. Check out the “Featured Posts” list for this items.

This weekend I’m hoping to update colors and header of both my blog and website. The goal is for them to have a similar “look and feel” (the geek buzzword of the day). I’ve got to get rid of this green background – it’s just not working for me. Maybe purple…

Hope you enjoy the new stuff!

I’ve moved my blog off of blogger.com and onto wordpress!

My site feed has now changed! It is now http://blog.lisacall.com/feed/ . Please update your subscription with this new feed!!

[Note: This change only applies that those that read my blog with an rss reader - for example bloglines. If you just want to read the blog as normal then you continue to use the same address as before: http://blog.lisacall.com]

Sorry for the inconvenience!

And no – I won’t be leaving this lovely green. I’m in search of the least offensive template I can find and I will customize it later. I will get the artful quilters ring code on asap.

The EveryDay Matters Challenge #41 – draw a city landmark. [I recently joined the EDM discussion group to think about drawing exercises in fabric. I'm cheating this week and using an old piece.]

I live in Parker, Colorado, where everything town related has a Victorian light post attached to it (check out the town logo on their webpage). I still don’t quite grasp how a small horse town on the prairie decided to be Victorian but for some reason it is.

I made this quilt in 1997 and entered in our local annual art show “Images of Parker” where it won Best of Show and was purchased by the town. It used to hang in the Mainstreet Center but it’s gone so I’m not sure where it went, and I’m afraid to ask!

This is by far the most representational thing I have ever drawn or used in a piece of my art. I’m still amazed it actually looks like a street light.

Welcome To Parker © 1997, 51″ x 45″