Lisa Call

Thread racks installed in bedroom studio

Ready for Texture

Two days ago I prepared Structures #97 for the surface stitching. Last night I spent the evening with my builder working out what might be the final floor design so tonight I was ready to sit down and start quilting Structures #97.

Problem was all of my thread was jumbled up in plastic bags, placed there when I packed up my house a few months ago. It was all tangled together due to neglect and shuffling about the studio. Not very presentable or useable.

I use dozens of colors of thread on each textile painting and the thought of selecting the colors I wanted for this piece, without having them organized, hurt my head.

More Studio Set Up

So I spent a couple hours tonight putting the mettler thread back in order - around 190 spools.

[yes, I store it in numerical order by color on the thread racks - you can read more details of my super organized thread inventory of around 500 spools in this post about my thread.]

I moved the Valdani thread in plastic bin tonight as I don’t really have room on the wall for all of it.

My bedroom has more color with the thread racks on the wall. They may only be there a couple of weeks if I don’t have to go through a long building permit process. I should found out tomorrow what the approximate start date is on that project. I love the floor plan we came up with and am excited about the remodel.

Tonight when I sat down and spent about a half hour actually sewing and adding the texture to Structures #97 I was at peace. Making art, specifically textile paintings, is definitely my passion. It felt great to get organized and back to this part of the process.

Structures #97   (In Progress)    ©2008

Basting on a Bed

This evening I layered the composition for Structures #97 with the batting and backing, so I could baste the layers together with safety pins, before I start the surface stitching. As I talk about in my how I baste blog post, this step is extremely important in ensuring a flat finished piece.

I’ve perfected my method by pinning the layers to the carpeting in my studio (see the post above for details). I know exactly how tight to pull each layer for it to come out right for my style of stitching.

Problem is there’s not a lick of carpet in my new little house. Hardwood floors everywhere. I’ve been pondering how to baste this quilt for a week and finally came upon the idea of basting it on my son’s queen sized bed - the only large flat surface in the house.

It worked out quite well and I think the final textile painting will be wonderfully pucker free. Although I have to admit I had to remove at least 80% of the pins and redo them as I ended pining the layers to the mattress pad. I finally got my long rotary cutting acrylic ruler out to slide between the quilt and bed to prevent this little problem. With carpet, if a pin catches some fibers I can just yank it up and no harm is done.
 

The Right Tools

Today Photoshop CS3 arrived at my house and I installed on my new laptop. It’s amazing what 4 gigabytes of memory and a fast processor can do to speed up the manipulation of images. It’s wonderful. I’ll save hours of time each month not sitting around waiting for photoshop to load my huge raw image files.

The other exciting news is that I can process the raw images from my new Nikon D200 with this set up. I was unable to get my older version of photoshop to behave with a mixture of D70 and D200 raw images. This means I can now take my own high resolution images for publication.

Finally, I have all the right tools to do what I need with my images. It’s definitely time to take some classes to learn how to use them instead of my very improvised methods I use today.

Structures #97   (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

This evening I finished the construction of the composition on Structures #97, as shown above. The next step in creating a textile painting is to baste it, then add the surface stitching.

I don’t have my large custom sewing table set up in my new house yet but I think this piece is small enough to do the stitching with my smaller table. If it’s too frustrating I’ll stop and put it aside for later and move on to creating new compositions but I hope it will work. It will be fun to have a textile painting that was started and finished in my tiny bedroom studio.

Upcoming Week

This weekend was pretty laid back and relaxing. Friday night with friends, saturday in my studio and getting a few things done, sunday a beautiful 7 mile hike in the mountains with a friend and the evening spend in my studio.

Next weekend is crazy busy with birthday celebrations for my son (he’s turning 16 this week), a day/evening long interview for inclusion in an art quilting book, a free composting class offered by the city of Denver and my work will be in the Denver Modernism show over the weekend (more on that later), so any progress on art or art business goals will have to happen M-Th. Not a lot of time.

I decided the focus this week should be about making art - and doing a bit of organizing - specifically:

1. Baste Structures #97 and begin surface stitching - finishing at least 1/3 of the piece.
2. Play around with some of the house/home ideas I have in fabric.
3. Finalize floorplan for my remodel/addition (we are getting close).
4. Finish setting up my new laptop and retire my desktop.
5. Update my Getting Things Done list with all my projects (art and personal). I’ve let this lapse since my move and I’m starting to lose a bit of focus as a result.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

The above image shows the current state of my latest textile painting. The past few days I’ve been focusing on paperwork and other necessary but maybe not so exciting household maintenance chores. It’s a nice reward to get in a bit of sewing on this piece through the day.

I use traditional quilt making techniques for sewing a pieced quilt top to construct the compositions for my textile paintings. There are no raw edge of fabric showing on the front side of my work as all seams are sewn and pressed to the back for a smooth finish.

Step By Step Construction Images

1. Remove the background and strips (that become lines) from the design wall and place on rotary cutting mat:

 
2. Determine cuts to be made for this step and place remaining strips aside for future cuts. Cut lines in background for inserting the fabric lines (the yellow handled thing is a rotary cutter - it’s like a pizza cutter for fabric and its how I do most of my cuts - occasionally I will use scissors also):

 
3. Stitch the fabric strips into the cut lines with a home sewing machine. I use a 1/4" seam allowance:

 
4. View of the back side before pressing

 
5. After pressing seams to one side (on the back), the front now has 2 thin lines sewn into the composition. I always press from the front side of the fabric and use a ton of steam:

 
6. Continue cutting and inserting lines until the section is constructed. This is the front side of this section completed:

 
7. The back side - you can see the fabric seams are pressed to one side. After layering with batting and doing the surface stitching this side will be inside the work and not see, yet the back side of my constructed compositions are always this neat as I think it adds to the quality of the finished artwork.

 
I construct each section using this method and then sew the sections together into a single completed composition. I hope to have Structures #97 completed by the end of the weekend. I think that will determine how long it takes me to set up my router and printer and scanner. So far I’m not having a lot of luck with my older peripherals working with Vista but I have a new version of photoshop CS3 on it’s way and am hoping that will solve my scanner problems. I’m likely going to give up with the printer as they are cheap.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

I spent a few hours this evening moving the lines and changing colors on this new textile painting. I see a few minor things I’ll tweak now that I see the photo on the screen then it’s done and time to start sewing the composition together.

Shelia made an interesting observation on a previous post about the colors of this work being all cool colors and wondered if it was a reaction to the hot weather. She’s definitely right, cool greens and browns and almost definitely a result of the current environment, not by design but by influence.

I think a lot of my color choices are a result of my mood and my environment. Often I can tell how I’m feeling based on the colors I’m using.

Tonight I added a few warmer colors but once it’s sewn together they will be much less noticeable. This is definitely some art to cool you off on a hot day.

Handdyed Fabric

This morning I finished ironing and folding the fabric I dyed over the weekend - 72 yards of beautiful colors. All told I spent about 15 hours doing the dyeing, washing, etc. At least I think that’s about how long it took. I’m curious so next time I’ll try to figure out how much time I do spend. I’m engineer, I like numbers.

I love having this fabric stacked up on my cutting table to look at for a while. I see some color combinations in there that are really great and might make their way into a new piece.

And check out the middle stack of fabric - more very cool colors. Although I’m happy to report I was actually cold for about 20 minutes on sunday as it rained a bit during my hike/walk up in the foothills. It was the best feeling.

Twitter

I’ve been watching twitter for a while. Wasn’t sure I’d ever do anything with it but signed up quite a while back. I started posting (I refuse to say tweeting - that’s just not a word in my vocabulary yet) a few days back. If it takes a ton of time I might not keep up or maybe I’ll get addicted. We’ll see how it goes. It’s kinda funny.

You can see my profile here if you want to follow me: Lisa Call’s Twitter Profile.

For those of you not familiar with twitter - think about a mini blog - what would you write if you could only type 140 characters? Not a lot. The idea is to answer the questions "What are you doing?" several times a day. Each post is called a tweet. Makes me feel like a yellow bird to say that so I stick with "post".

Maybe it falls under the too much information category. Or maybe it doesn’t. We will see. I think there could be some real value there, I’m not sure what it is yet but I think over time my twitter participation will need to evolve into something a bit more than a few posts about my life and a public conversation with others. Or then again, maybe not.

If you are already following me you will know I bought a new laptop computer. Actually 3 of them as the kids each got one. More in my next post as to why and what and how happy I am about owning an orange computer.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

I made some progress on my latest textile painting over the week. Above is my first pass at roughing in all of the lines. After moving things around I came up with the version below. I’m liking the right hand side but the left still needs more work. Because my studio is now in my bedroom I can see the piece when I wake up in the morning and today I think I came up with a plan for improving it.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Weekend Plans

We’re still in our streak of record high temps here in Denver with yesterday hitting 104. Today is looking to be least 100 and Sunday a cool 97. Not exactly the kind of weather for doing much without air conditioning. I’m tempted to spend the entire weekend sleeping (or attempting to sleep in the heat) but that seems a bit out of character for me. The kids left for vacation with their dad this morning so I have 2 weeks to get some stuff done, so that’s of course what I will do.

In addition to working on Structures #97, I plan on dyeing fabric today, with the heat I should get rich vibrant colors. Tomorrow I’m headed to the mountains to cool off a bit after washing out all my fabric in the morning so the weekend’s not all work.

I also need to work on my house remodel plan. I’ve had my head stuck in a place where I think I have to design a house that will have good resale value and the result isn’t working for me. So I’m going to toss those ideas and just build the perfect house for me. A friend sent me a link to a really interesting book, The Not So Big House. Great ideas about building a house that is aligned with how I live my life instead of designed to impress others.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Making Art

The mornings are cool enough to turn on my iron and work on my latest textile painting. This week I finalized on the basic structure of this piece as can be seen in the photo above.

Next step is to select colors and approximate placement of my lines. It takes quite a while to do this. I cut the 7/8" wide strips freehand, using my rotary cutter (like a pizza cutter for fabric), without any rulers or guildlines. Years of practice results in pretty straight cuts, but not too perfect. They still have that hand cut feel to them.

I then pin the strips to the background shapes. Below is the current state of the piece on my design wall. It’s cool this morning so I hope to make more progress before heading to work.

Summer Reading List

In the afternoons it’s not so cool in the house. It’s been sunny and still hot so even with the swamp cooler we are moving slow. As a result we’ve been playing a lot of boardgames and doing a lot of reading. My daughter read all 5 books needed for the library’s summer reading program in a week and last night got her prize - a free pass to Elitches (a six flags amusement park here in Denver).

A couple noteworthy books I’ve read this summer (there is also long list of light summer reads that I can’t remember at the moment):

Savvy by Ingrid Law. This is a children’s book (along the lines of Harry Potter) by a friend of mine. Ingrid used to belong to one of my artist support groups many years back. She’s now a published first time author with a big contract for her second book and getting rave reviews. I think they’ve optioned a movie from this first book also. The success couldn’t have come to a better person. My 12 year old daughter loved this book and couldn’t put it down. I definitely recommend it.

Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff. I haven’t actually finished this book. I had to return it to my old library and am waiting to get to the top of the hold list at the Denver Public Library. What I did read, I found quite interesting . There has been a lot of research into happiness lately and Marci has interviewed people she identified as truly happy and reports her findings in this book. Definitely worth finishing.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I listened to this as a book on tape last summer and it changed my life. It’s what lead me to attend the retreat by Christine Kane last December and really think about where I wanted my life to go and the person I want to be and the people I want to spend time with. My move to Denver is part of this chain of events and I know I’m on the right path. I decided to read it in print this summer and very much enjoyed it again.

The Appeal by John Grisham, about a fictional town with contaminated underground water and all the big business and political craziness that might surround such an event. Typical Grisham, always a fun light read.

A Bit of Fiction Reflects Life

Turns out the house I bought is in an area with contaminated underground water, so reading the Grisham book was quite intriguing. Fortunately we drink Denver city water from pipes and not the stuff under us.

They are in the process of cleaning up the mess left by a rifle scope manufacturer that dumped all their solvents into the ground. The affected houses have mitigation systems for the fumes from the solvents, pretty much like radon mitigation systems. From everything I read there is little to no threat the my health over this and even without mitigation I’d never be able to smell the fumes, it’s just annoying.

Before I moved in, home owners tried to sue, they lost. Supposedly the bad water does not effect real estate prices (I saw no signs of it) and when I build my addition the company responsible will pay to modify/extend my mitigation system if needed and I hear they are fairly easy to work with.

The Whole House

Add to this asbestos siding, lead paint, more electrical problems than I mentioned yesterday (the main line to the house is woven through the gorgeous crab apple in the back yard and the fuse box is faulty and built by a company that was successfully sued and now out of business), a cracked clay sewer pipe and also a nasty mold problem in the back of garage that has to be torn out. It’s fun!

It’s definitely in the fixer-upper category. It was a rental for 10 years and the owners lived in texas and ignored it. The grass looks like it hasn’t been watered in years and it’s mostly weeds and dirt. My house is definitely the ugly step child of the street at the present moment but I still love it and know when the remodel is done it’s going to be gorgeous. Plus I got it at a good price and have a big chunk of money in escrow from the sellers to pay for most of the stuff listed above.

Unpacked - For Now

The studio/bedroom/computer room

My studio is set up! I even have an 8 foot by 8 foot flannel covered design wall with Markings #21 ready to go (it was folded up with lots of pins in a box until yesterday).

The entire house is pretty much unpacked. At least for now. In about a month I will be taking everything back down and moving to an apartment as the builder I hired adds the addition (on top - decided going back would hurt my tree). I hope to be back in the completed house, with a nice big studio, by christmas. It’s definitely an exciting, action packed year around here.

The studio/bedroom/computer room

Good thing I don’t have many clothes or there’d be no room for art.

Making Art

And even more exciting - I’m making art! It feels great. It’s been months since I spent any serious time in my studio and I’m loving it. I feel like a real person again. Or maybe I just feel like an artist again.

Yesterday I sat down and was ready to get to sewing when I realized I didn’t have some very important things - like rotary cutters, scissors, seam ripper, etc. The simple basic things I used every day. It took me 2 hours of hunting in my garage to find the box with these items. It was all in a slide projector box, labeled on every side as "Easter". Clever of me to hide it like that to make unpacking more fun.

Here’s what I’m working on:

Markings #21 In Progress

After a few hours of sewing today this is the result:

Markings #21 With Some Progress (the left 2 panels have been sewn together)

The Newsletter Will Happen

I think I will make 3 or 4 ACEOs with my scraps from this piece to offer in my studio newsletter, which I plan to email by this weekend. That’s a bit later than I hoped but I’m still working on it. Last week I got a bit side tracked with life but I’m back to really focusing on the art this week and am making some great progress.

Dyeing Fabric

Yay, finally some art content for my blog. This weekend I dyed fabric with my best friend from childhood. It was a trick in my new house but we managed to get it to work. I had ordered 200 yards of fabric to dye but it didn’t arrive in time so we only dyed about 60 yards. So I’ll be doing more soon with 200 yards on it’s way.

The PFD (prepared for dye) fabric torn into 1 yard pieces ready for the dye bath:

There is no where in the house and no basement so dyeing is done outdoors at the new home (isn’t my big crab appletree awesome?):

The dyes are mixed (powder added to urea and water in the water bottles) and we’re ready to begin:

Kelly adding color to her fabric:

The dyes are on the fabrics and the table isn’t quite as clean as when we started:

Another cool tree picture - couldn’t resist:

The final results - washed, ironed and ready to make a new textile painting:

Dyeing Details

A few years back I was on the TV Show Uncommon Threads demonstrating how I dye fabric. In conjunction I did a series of posts with all the details. If you have any questions they are likely answered in the Dyeing Fabric series of posts.

Comments

Thanks to everyone that left comments over the last few months as I sold my old house and moved. I tried to keep up but many times was too busy. I appreciate all of them. Today I feel I’m an artist again and can get back to my "normal" life. At least until the remodel to add on a studio begins.

Markings #12 - In Progress

Upside Down

Well yes, as Monica and several others correctly identified, Markings #12 is hanging upside down at my show, Markings: Repetition and Pattern. So all those folks that went to the opera last night and the thousands of other people that have been through the theater lobby get to enjoy it 180 degrees from my intended orientation. Pretty funny.

In the above, in progress, photo of the piece it’s clear which end is up as my electric plugs are near the floor not the ceiling. And really, it’s rather difficult to get a digital image upside down.

So at some point I forgot which end was up and I sewed the hanging mechanism (a sleeve of fabric that holds a board) to the bottom instead of the top. Impressive. What’s interesting, when I photographed it I knew which end was up and photographed it correct (I don’t use the hanging board/sleeve when I do my photography).

 
Correct:

 
Upside Down :

I definitely like it better as designed so when I get it home I’ll fix it. I’ll leave the signature at the top. It’s barely noticeable and sideways so it’ll look fine on the upper left instead of my normal lower right. I’ll just unsew and resew the sleeve and label.

In Good Company

I can’t say this is the first time I’ve ever gotten this backwards. Structures #13 hangs upside down from how it was designed because I signed it upside down and the signature is rather obvious and it would look more than odd having the signature upside down. So I flipped the piece 180 degrees and it still looks great.

I almost did the same thing with Markings #22 but caught the mistake before it was too late. It has 2 signatures - one at the top and one at the bottom. The top one is sideways and both are hard to see so I figured, what the heck - a bonus signature.

Do any of you ever do such silly things?