Studio Kit

You know the piece I was working on last week, when I made this lovely wing? I'm not working on that anymore.

I may go back to it at some point, but having painted and quilted the background THREE separate times (and these are not small backgrounds! They're all 60 x 45 inches) and stalling out on it realizing that they weren't appropriate for the other elements; I have decided that clearly, the Universe doesn't want me to make this piece right now.

So I have withdrawn from the show (well, the other two pieces will still be in it) rather than rush to finish it in time and turn in substandard work. I'll probably come back to it when (if ever!) I decide on what background to put it on.

In the meantime, when I looked at the most recent failed background and realized it wasn't going to work, I immediately saw this new piece, whole in my mind.

Okay, seriously, this is about my sketchbook and about my next piece.

So, some people have sketchbooks that are works of art in themselves (see also "journals").

It's not my way. When I "see" the piece in my mind's eye, all I need are my notes to guide me to its completion. I have 8 x 10 notebooks in which I scribble those notes, with my rough (very rough sketches). Sometimes I'll colour them, most often not.

The piece I'm working on right now has had many incarnations - this was extremely unusual and troubling development for me.

So you may remember that I was working on this piece a couple of weeks ago. First, I hand-painted my fabrics (a post on how to achieve this result is coming soon), but I was struggling with the leaf issue - I wanted it to look leaf-blown, but couldn't decide which leaf worked best...

I made a couple of different styles in a couple of different fabrics...

But finally decided that the "November-ness" of "November" was best expressed by no leaves at all.

Just a cold, Northern wind...

Oh, and the winner of two charm packs of Tula Pink's Neptune is:

Hiyacinth, who said "Terrific Tula Pink designs. They're so intriguing! " Congratulations Hiyacinth, email me your address and I'll send them along to you.

I'll be doing another giveaway very soon, so stay tuned...

So, remember the other day, I was talking about working on that wall quilt with the flowers here, here, here and here (and probably elsewhere) and how I was saying I wasn't sure that my fussing with it was going to be helpful in the end?

Well it wasn't. (Big cheesy grin.)

See, the more I worked on the placement, the more I realized that it just wasn't working. Stumped, I asked BSP for an opinion and what I got was "I don't get it." *heh*

So then I explained - "Juxtaposition of angles and curves!" - "Life arising from/despite the darkness!" - "A conversation about the tension created by man vs. nature!" "assorted other asshattery!"

BSP said "Yeah, yeah I get that. Those intellectual ideas make sense. But that's not what's coming through on your quilt. It just looks like a bunch of flowers you stuck on a a black background.

I sputtered while BSP circled my design wall.

"But that black all broken up with the green - now that's cool.You should make a quilt with just that stuff on it."

BSP wisely left and I stared at the pieces on my design wall, and looked at my photographs, pondered my sketches and pondered and puzzed 'till my puzzler nearly broke (to mis-quote Dr. Seuss); and realized BSP was right.

Don't you hate it when your spouse is right? DAG-NAB-IT!!!!!! ;)

Anyway...

I took out the damn flowers and pieced together my black velvet and green satin bits, and pondered the nature of mental health/mental break downs, what living in our fast-paced, compartmentalized lives does to our souls, why it is that self styled "non-artistic" spouses are so damn opinonated and why it is that when they're right, it's so damn annoying?

And by the time I was done thinking about all of that, I had finished my latest wall quilt.

The fun thing is, the entire quilt is made completely out of scraps - even the batting is scraps pieced together. I don't think these pics don't do it justice, cuz you can't feel how luscious and cuddly all that black velvet is, nor really see the quilting angles working against each other. But it's really lovely.*

* As is my much Beloved Spouse.

So, when I last left you, I showed you the threads I was going to quilt this piece with; and quilt it, I did. Here's a little piece of the background.

But I knew that was going to be only the background; and after thinking about it for a couple of days, I was eating my lunch at work one day and knew what it was this piece needed.

Ta da!

I finished the piece I was working on - the one I've been showing bits of all last week. I started out by showing you mystery bits that were felted with roving, scrim and gauzy ribbons...

Hopefully, this doesn't look too familiar to you, but you may remember (if you used to follow me at Coneflowers In Leslieville) that when I was "done" this piece, it looked like this:

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