Color
After my last dye session I took stock of the colors I had and decided I needed more reds and oranges and a few grays. As you can see I actually stayed focused in the dye studio and ended up with the desired colors. This is a rare occurrence so I’m quite pleased - both with myself and with the resulting fabrics.
Lately I’ve been feeling as if something were amiss with my color selection when making new work. I’ve felt a bit uninspired and that my color choices are off in some way. They were becoming boring and predictable. Lately I seem to come up with my favorite ideas for colors while ironing newly dyed fabric and stacking it into random unordered piles.
Last weekend while ironing out new fabric it hit me as to what was wrong. For years I stored my fabric on a big table organized by value not by color. But my cats slept in it and it was a pain to keep it all covered so I bought nice closet organizing baskets from the Container Store and I separated and stored the fabric out by color. Like this:
Which is all wonderful except
1) I can no longer see it all at once
2) Sorting it by color vs value is a presentation of the fabric that doesn’t work for my brain. I want to see all the colors jumbled together.
3) I would stress about the border colors - is this blue or green, is this orange or yellow. It was too hard to say and it annoyed me to have to pick which one.
So I decided to reorganize my fabric by value instead see if that fixes the problem.
First I pulled out all the drawers. Yikes - I have a lot more fabric than I used to.
Then spent a little over an hour sorting them by value. This is not sufficient time to really do a good job at this task as it is a lot harder than you might think it is. And it’s a bit tedious, especially with so much fabric. So I started sorting it out chunks at a time and not 1 piece at a time.
I definitely got inspired while sorting out my fabric this way. I saw possible color combinations that looked awesome. This is definitely the way for me to store my fabric.
This isn’t exact science, and as you can see in the black and white version I definitely missed on many of the fabrics. But for the most part it gradates fairly well.
But I’m headed to a 2 week workshop with Nancy Crow on sunday and this is more fabric than I could possibly take with me given the 100 pound weight limit for my 2 suitcases. So I went through the pile and pulled about 1/3 of the fabrics back out of the lineup and loaded the rest into my awaiting bags. This is the hardest part of packing for these workshops when flying and I’m very happy to have it done.
Although I’m sad. I feel I’ve abandoned some of these fabrics. The poor things are now just heaped up on the floor rejected and unwanted.
When I return I will once again sort the fabrics by value and then place them back into the drawers by value. I still won’t be able to see it all at once but I’m hoping this solves my problem, or at least helps a lot.
Another very good thing came out of ironing all of my new fabric this weekend. For long time readers you might remember my little rampage a while back after my iron started leaking (here and here) when I went and bought a bunch of cheap irons from the likes of target and walmart and taking each of them back as they were junk. In the end I just used the old iron as it stopped leaking.
Well the darn thing started leaking again and instead of going through the same ordeal I just went to my friend Cathy Kleeman’s blog and bought the same very nice Rowenta she bought a few months back. She’s a smart person so I figured if she liked it that was good enough for me.
So I now own a fancy, expensive Rowenta Advancer that weighs a ton. It did a great job pressing my fabric and I’ve used it to press a small quilt and attach a binding. Did a fabulous job. I do have a concern about the shape of the bottom as I think the funky shape (not a smooth curve up the side) could cause a problem for the way I press my seams flat when piecing. So I will have to test that out soon. I sure as heck don’t want to have to return yet another iron!
Posted by Lisa in: Making Abstract Contemporary Textile Art
Cathy Kleeman said,
April 24, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
I still love my Rowenta but even with its larger water reservoir I’m still filling it up all the time. I like lots and lots of steam so it gets used up quickly. Your fabric is so neatly folded and organized (why am I not surprised?) but what happens when you start cutting it up to use it? Do you refold it neatly again? I know my fabric would take up a lot less space if it were folded instead of jammed into the box. How about a picture of what it looks like while you’re working with it?
Meagan said,
April 24, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
I know what you mean about frustrations with your iron. I have a wonderful really old, really heavy, steamless Westinghouse iron (you can only find them at garage sales now, and only if you are very, very lucky) and I live in fear of dropping it or somehow causing its death. Fortunately, my mom has 3-4 of the same kind at her house, so if I do need another one, I can get one of hers.
I love it when you post picture of your fabric stash. Such eye candy! Have fun at your workshop.
Olga said,
April 25, 2007 @ 1:43 am
I so agree with you about sorting colour by tone. That is what distinguishes paintings and other colour work from different parts of the globe: the use and reflection of light, and hence tone. I think that the amount of movement in a piece of work can be controlled by judicious use of tone. I hope that you have a sparky time at the Nancy Crow workshop.
Rachel Simons said,
April 25, 2007 @ 4:34 am
I wouldn’t have thought that sorting by value would make such a difference, but once I had seen your results I think you are absolutely right.
I imagine that now the colours are all mixed together, a fabric that might have looked uninspiring next to it’s neighbour-in-colour would come alive next to a new neighbour.
Enjoy your trip to the Crow barn. I am going to a workshop there in October, so can’t wait to see some of your pictures when you get back. You certainly have a great selection of fabrics to work with anyway!
Lisa Call said,
April 25, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
Cathy - glad to know you are still really liking the iron. I keep my fabric folded neatly like that all the time. When I finish a project I refold it always the same way. At worst I might have a few stacks of fabrics (already neatly folded) waiting to be put back in the drawers. I’m not much for having a messy studio as it slows me down. Although I can make a mess during a workshop so maybe I’ll get a good photo for you next week!
Meagan - what an excellent mom you have to have a backup supply of irons around for you.
Olga - I definitely agree - tone/value can so much more important than color. I tend to gravitate to low contrast work so being able to put my hands on similar value fabrics is important.
Rachael - yep - that’s exactly it - putting together colors you never thought to put together can result in some really fascinating combinations.
Nellie said,
April 25, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
So many times it hasn’t mattered what color I used as long as the value of it “reads” correctly within the compostion. An interesting bit of knowledge is that the language of specific colors is different among cultures, whereas the language of value relationships within a piece is a universal language no matter the culture. For weak contrasts of closely related values:
light values = delicate, atmospheric, optimistic
medium values = surreal, dreamlike, introspective, quiet
dark values = somber, depressed, brooding
Sometime soon I’ll post more about this in my blog.
Sarah Jayne said,
April 25, 2007 @ 3:38 pm
What a great job you did organising your fabrics - I’m really impressed. I particularly like the idea of the b&w photo. I might be brave and give it a go.
Diane Clancy said,
April 27, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
Color, color, color - so much fun! My work is mainly about color - it is one of my greatest passions!
My personal favorites is when all the colors are separated by color (and not value), but then again, we are different artists! I so much appreciate your sharing these photographs !!
~ Diane Clancy
http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog
Lisa Flowers Ross said,
April 28, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
I was wondering how you dyed your gray fabrics. I am going to a Nancy Crow workshop in Sept. at Sandpoint, Idaho and I do not have the gray fabric required. I have bought two bolts of fabric to dye this summer but I have only made gray once by dumping all my leftover dyes into a bucket and putting the fabric in it. Do you just use a small amount of black? Do you mixed complementary colors (I think that would make more brownish color)? Do you mix bits of triadic colors?
Lisa Call said,
April 29, 2007 @ 12:07 am
Lisa - it’s all very noble to just use red, yellow and blue but I gave that up years ago. I buy gray and brown dyes all the time because it is a much more predictable way for me to get the colors I want. I’m sure if I could take the time to measure my dyes and be very precise this wouldn’t be a problem but for me that takes the fun right out of it. At different points I’ve bought each of the different prochem gray dyes. And I use black for mixing with my colors and for making gray.
pamdora said,
May 14, 2007 @ 9:55 pm
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to spend time reorganizing your fabric at different times in different ways. It’s a way to get re-acquainted with it, and probably premiates your subconsious which gives you new ideas.