Lisa Call

A new review has been posted on the Art Quilt Reviews website that I mentioned a few months back. (See my post about how this website came into existence here.) Check out Joanie San Chirico’s review of the Fiber Revolution show A Survey of Styles here.

I agree with many of Joanie’s points in this review. I’ve seen many group "art quilt" shows where it appears the goal is to just show as much work as possible but no effort is made at curating a cohesive quality show. From viewing the installation pictures I believe at least half of the work in this show should have been removed as the crowded walls bring to my mind a county fair atmosphere not that of an art gallery. There is no way to step back and view each piece individually without interference of it’s neighbors.

And I what is there to say about those peg board walls? I often tell my kids "Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should." I’m not sure I’d agree to show my work in such conditions. How is it supposed to look professional when it looks like a garage wall?

Would you show your art in a crowded room on pegboard walls just to get another line on your resume?

Fiber Revolution says one of it’s goals is educating the public about fiber art as an exciting art form. Is this goal achieved by having shows like this or are shows like this detrimental, not just to the group but to art quilts in general?

I’d love to hear your opinions. Please post them here or on the art quilt review website.

Earlier this fall I entered 5 juried shows. I already reported that I had work accepted into both Quilt National and Fiberart International.

I’m now happy to report I will also have a piece in Craft Forms 2006 at the Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania and a piece in Fine Contemporary Crafts at Artspace in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Craft Forms runs December 1, 2006 through January 24, 2007 and Fine Contemporary Crafts will be on exhibit November 18, 2006 through January 13, 2007. I’ll put details of these venues on my website soon so if you are in the area let me know if you had a chance to check them out and what you thought.

The fifth show I entered put me over my limit of only 8 juried shows this year. But it is organized by a friend and I won an award last year so I entered anyway. I didn’t get in, which oddly makes me very happy. I feel freed from entering this type of show now. Quilt National will probably be the only juried quilt-only show I will enter from now on. I feel the high quality hard cover catalog produced by Quilt National is currently the best record we have for the “art quilt movement”.

My piece Structures #56 will be in Fine Contemporary Crafts in North Carolina.

Craft Forms 2006 was being juried by Gretchen G. Keyworth the director and chief curator of the Fuller Museum so I decided to enter 2 of the pieces from my new Markings series. I’ve been nervous about having done this because they have only been seen by a few people. The notification was 9 days late so I figured for sure I didn’t get in. I was quite happy to get the “thick” envelope in the mail today.

The juror selected Markings #1 for the show and now that this series (which is up to 14 pieces) is going to be seen in public I’m posting a photo of it on my blog. I’ll do a post later talking about what I’m exploring with this work but for now here’s just the photo without verbiage to interfere with your own interpretation.

Markings #1 ©2006   62″ x 44″.

Shelia commented in a previous post about liking the thicker lines in the in-progress shot of Structures #53 and asked if was tempted to use them:

Yes Shelia - I love that thick line also and a couple years ago that’s what I was using. My work is a progression with each piece building upon the pieces that came before it. Here’s a quick photography journey that shows a little about how I got to the thin lyrical lines. It skips several steps along the way but gives you a rough idea of the progression.

Structures #13 ©2005    44"x35":

Structures #24 ©2003    29"x32":

Structures #32 © 2005   53″ x 67″

Structures #35 ©2005   49"x32":

 
Structures #52 ©2006 - top only - still to be quilted (actually done now but I don’t have new photos yet):

Structures #53 ©2006    66"x41":

Yesterday it was near 70 and sunny. Today I woke up to this:

I love Colorado in the fall.

Although Denver proper only got an inch of snow and our tiny 4"-6" isn’t even enough for a delayed start at school . Which is really quite depressing, along with all the school kids in town, I was hoping for a day off work to spend in my studio.

But I did plan ahead and brought my work laptop home and I plan on working from home today to avoid the nasty commute.

Which, of course, means my kids can’t go to school either as I have to drive them in, no buses for our special school. They aren’t sad. Everyone deserves a day off once in a while.

I’ve been taking some in progress photos of quilts as I’ve been making them and am slowly getting them processed to document on the blog. Here are a few photos I took of Structures #53 during it’s creation almost 10 months ago. Admittedly I forgot I had these photos and I was hunting around for something to blog about that required little mental effort, as I had to work late tonight at the day job, and stumbled across these.

I work on a design wall, which you can see in my studio posting. The pieces of fabric are just stuck onto the wall during the design so I can step back and see how it looks during construction.

Step one - layout the background. At this point I’ve just folded the pieces of fabric to approximate their final size. One of the harder parts of making a quilt by piecing (sewing each seem so no raw edges show) is taking into account the seam allowances (I lose 1/2″ on each seam I make) and the extra bits that get chopped off here and there as I fit things together.

Next I select the colors for the lines for each block:

At this point I’ve cut the backgrounds so they aren’t just folded lumps up on the wall. Then I cut straight lines from the fabric for the figure and I get an idea of the layout of the motifs in the individual sections:

Then I skipped a bunch of pictures of cutting and sewing (I’ll have to show these steps in another quilt but now I think I might have skipped photographing this step in most of the pieces as it seems rather obvious to me. Hm, maybe it isn’t.) but here is the finished quilt top before basting and quilting:

Without being able to see the details of the quilting stitch the top looks a lot like the finished quilt. The color in this completed photo is more accurate (although maybe not perfect - photography and photoshop are definitely not my strong points) as it is taken outdoors instead of with a flash with very suboptimal studio lighting.

Structures #53 ©2006    66"x41":

Detail:

This piece went together quickly with little dithering on my part as to what might work. Some of my pieces I have dozens of photos of possibilities that I take looking for the right combination of colors, shapes, and lines. I definitely love it when it comes together as easily as this piece.

Today I have to pack up the 8 pieces going to Winter Invitational at the Lux Center for the Arts. The show runs November 3 through December 30, 2006 in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Included in the group will be this newly finished piece. It was quite difficult to get the reds correct with the digital camera and while this isn’t 100% accurate it’s pretty close. The right panel is a bit more pinkish than I could get here and the far left is a bit more deep wine/burgandy. But not much. Just enough so I’m not completely satisfied with the photos and if the piece doesn’t sell I’ll rephotograph it on a little more art-photography friendly day (ie not bright and sunny).

Structures #57 ©2006    33" x 66":

Detail:

Woke up to our second snow of the year here in Denver. A perfect day to stay inside and work in the studio all day long. Although it is beautiful out there.

I’ve tried to write a few blog posts this week but I can’t seem to focus on the task. I think I need more sleep. I have been going to bed at 9:30 and getting up at 5:30 but last week bedtime has crept up to 11 or 11:30 and that’s just not enough sleep for my brain to function enough to write coherent and interesting words.

I’ve felt pretty drained all week and so I’m back to going to bed at 9:30 and hoping I feel more peppy this coming week.

Although I have managed to get in 12 1/2 hours in the studio the last 5 days along with the 40 hours at the day job. While quilting Structures #52 tonight I was thinking I didn’t accomplish much else this week and I feel my life is spinning a bit out of control. Although when I thought about it I did get some things done, today I went to the post office to renew the kids’ passports, earlier in the week I balanced my checkbook and paid bills (always a fun task), took my son to his eye doctor appointment, I got a new cell phone last week so I’ve spent way too much time this week learning how the new one works (technology on phones has sure changed in the past 4 years and boy do I hate all those stupid ring tones - where is the nice unobtrusive sound my old phone made?), and I updated the links on my blog and added more artists blogs I’ve been reading lately.

I’ve added a new category, and for lack of better title it is called "Art Blogs by Artists". These are blogs by artists that aren’t specifically about that artist’s own work (although some) but more about art in general and many of them are reviews of other artwork. It’s a fine line and I’m not sure there is a reason to separate them but in my head (and my rss reader) I have them in a different category as I expect different types of posts from them than a normal artist blog. Maybe I organize things too much. I’ve been asked to contribute to the Art &Perception blog and once I get some sleep I’m looking forward to participating in that capacity.

But now it is past 9:30 again so bedtime - even on a Friday night. I’m clearly boring or maybe just old. Tomorrow I’ll try to finally finish my post about art school. As a preview check out the posts on other blogs that inspired my desire to write on this topic:

The original post was on Carl Zipser’s blog Art & Perception (here and several follow up posts here, here and here. ) in addition to a related posting on Tracy Helgeson’s blog. I’ve written some comments on a few of these posts but I want to address the topic more on my blog.

I’ve received several questions about my thread post so I thought I’d answer them in a new post instead of my normal plan of answering questions in the comments. I was going to write about art school tonight in response to some very interesting posts I read last week on other blogs but that can wait another day.

First thanks for all the compliments on my over-organization. I agree with Omega’s comment on my last post, the organization of the supplies is part of the creative process.

I stopped using rayon, polyester and metallic threads back in 2000 or 2001 when I started making exclusively pieced abstract quilts from my handdyed cottons. I don’t feel the glitz and shine of the specialty threads matches with the work I’m making now. The cotton thread provides exactly the look I’m after, so that’s all I use.

This has the added benefit of not having to deal with the hassle of those threads breaking and shredding as they go zipping through the sewing machine. Nor the hassle of experimenting with different needle types trying to find one that works with each specific thread. I love the process of making quilts but all that technical fussing is just not for me. I like simple.

I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with these threads. They just aren’t for me.

I always use matching thread in the bobbin when quilting and piecing. It takes a bit more time to wind and change the bobbin but I think it’s worth it to not have some unmatched color poke through here and there. The tension on a sewing machine is not rocket science and no matter how well adjusted there are times the bobbin thread can be seen from the top and I find matching thread colors in the bobbin results in a nicer looking sewn line.

This means I have a large stock of bobbins. One per thread color plus extras because when I’m piecing I will wind 10-15 bobbins of tan or gray (the colors I use when piecing 99% of the time) so I don’t have to stop and wind bobbins very often.

I also need a way of keeping track of which bobbin matches which spool of thread. And for that I use handi bobs from Nancy’s Notions. They attach to the top of the spool of thread and hold the bobbin in place. Here’s a close up view of some of the spools on the thread rack with their bobbins.

 
As to the batting. Warm and Natural used to have seeds in it, long ago. I actually wrote an FAQ about batting in 1993 that mentions the cotton seed oil. You can still find the FAQ on the internet here, too bad most of that information is out of date.

I called many of the batting manufacturers when I wrote some of that as I was doing research for a program I presented at my local quilt guild. It was interesting research. If you want to know something about a specific batting just call up the manufacturer. They were more than happy to chat with me and many sent me samples.

To quote the current information from the manufacturer about warm and natural:

The soft, natural cotton goes through a gentle mechanical cleaning to pick out cotton plant and seed remnants. The tiny plant particles that remain lend a special look to crafts when used as an exterior fabric and will not damage your fabric when used in your quilt.

I have never had a problem with Warm and Natural since they started cleaning the cotton before needle punching the batting. Beyond the color I’m not sure there is a difference between it and Warm and White. I prefer the natural colored batting because it hasn’t been subjected to bleaching to turn it white. Seems a bit nicer to the environment.

I recently bought 30 yards of plain white fabric (which I’m sure is bleached, just like the hundreds of yards of fabric that I dye each year) to challenge myself to try to use white in my work. I might have to use Warm and White batting in quilts with a lot of white in the design but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve used the Warm and Natural with some very light colored quilts and have never had a problem.

The materials an artist uses to make their artwork can make a huge difference on the ease or difficulty in creating the work. I’ve learned in my recent dabbling with painting that there are student quality paints and there are more expensive artist grade and you get what you pay for.

With quilting this rule also generally holds true. The higher quality materials are generally easier to work with and result in a better quality piece of art when finished.

My quilts are made of only 3 basic materials:

• A very dense weave 100% cotton fabric (Pimatex by Robert Kaufman) dyed with Procion MX fiber reactive dyes (these dyes create a chemical bond with the fiber vs. dyes from the grocery store that just stain the fiber)
• A high quality cotton batting (warm and natural). This is the middle layer sandwiched in between 2 layers of cotton cloth.
• Long staple 100% cotton thread used to sew the top design together and also to “quilt” the piece, holding the 3 layers together by adding a secondary textured design over the top of the composition.

An example of quilting stitches in Structures #42:

 
I use 2 types of thread in my quilting. Most of it is Mettler Silk Finish 100% Mercerized Cotton 50 weight thread. You can find this thread in most quilting stores.

I used to just buy thread at random and hope I had the right colors when it came time to quilt a quilt. I thrive on efficiency and this approach quickly resulted in too many emergency trips to the quilt store to buy more thread so now I have it inventoried in an excel spreadsheet and I try to keep 2-3 spools of each color on hand so I never run out in the middle of the night. With 190 colors I currently have about 500 spools in my inventory.

My thread is stored by color (and then by manufacturer color number) on 4 thread racks above my sewing machine. The mettler threads are ones on the left and lower right racks. The thread in the upper right are rayon threads that I no longer use and are soon to be replaced by more spools of cotton thread.

I’ve been doing a lot of quilting the last few months and not keeping track of the empty spools as I quilt so I’ve found myself running out recently. So last week I finally dumped out my bin of empties and figured out what I needed to replenish. This is about 100 spools of thread.

Fortunately thread was on sale at Great American Quilt Factory last Friday so I saved about $70 on my pile of thread. I don’t buy anything else at the quilt store anymore and I get the feeling not many people buy as much thread as I do because the sales clerks have taken to calling me “the thread lady”. With their inventory system it takes about 15 minutes to check out as they have to scan each spool separately. This is about 150 spools of thread.

I keep one spool of each color on the rack. The remaining spools are sorted by number and stored in bags in a drawer next to my sewing machine. If a spool runs out while I’m sewing I can reach down and pull out a replacement (quickly locating it because the bags are labeled by number, and of course I store the bags sorted in order in the drawer).

These are the spares - about 300 spools.

Recently I have been able to purchase Valdani threads through a friend at wholesale prices. These are gorgeous hand dyed long staple 100% cotton threads, also 50 weight, and they come in colors not available in the Mettler. These are the large spools in the middle on the right hand side and they will eventually displace the rayon threads.

I don’t have very many of these yet but I’m slowly working my way into purchasing all of the available colors of these also. I just ordered 40 more spools of the Valdani and each year I plan on adding more.

I’ve only been able to find 190 of the 196 available Mettler colors also. I need to visit a few other quilt shops some day and see if I can find the missing 6. I’ve never compared my list to the manufacturers color list (which I just found today) but it’s definitely high on my curiosity list to see what I’m missing.

It’s expensive to add a second manufacturer to my thread inventory but I believe in what I’m doing and I know that having more choices of colors will result in my best work. Not having the supplies at hand when they are needed can really slow down or compromise a project. I think it’s worth the investment up front because unlike paint, I can’t just mix up a new thread color when the need arises.