Gee, 4 days in and 2012 has already become WAY more interesting in ways I didn't expect.

First of all, I haven't spent any of my 2 week vacation in my sewing room because the renovation sputtered nearly completely to a stop.  Here's where we are right now:


The laminate floor is down, the walls are painted (two coats of primer, one coat of paint), four of my Ikea dressers are painted (two coats of primer one coat of paint) and they're filled with scraps, one colour per drawer. Also take note of my new T.V. - a Christmas present from BSP! :) Seems like good progress.. but note to your left - those sets of drawers aren't even primed yet. So are not FILLED yet, neither are my books all on their shelves...

But wait, there's more!




Four (actually six) of these bins are filled with yardage - but there are ten more to be done.



This little corner for my paints and assorted surface design stuff looks great - except that most of those bins are empty - and their contents are still in boxes.

To add insult to injury, I've been quite ill. On December 23, I went to see my doc because a cyst I had on my shoulder for ten years became infected.  I was given some antibiotics and an appointment to have the cyst removed (tomorrow).  In the meantime, I developed an abcess on my gum, and a sinus infection - so I am literally filled with infection - leaving me headachy - nauseated, and exhausted.

And AFTER Christmas I had an ultrasound and two appointments with my gynecologist, who informed me that the remaining bits I have since my partial hysterectomy 3 years ago have prolapsed (quite painful, btw!) and you guessed it - one of my ovaries has an infected cyst on it!!! So in February, it's all going to come out. MORE surgery, hurray!

The result of all that is that I've been lying around in bed, running fevers, feeling crappy and moaning for ten days (poor BSP!) - with NOTHING going on in my sewing room.




However, Maggie-May has been faithfully keeping me company - here she is lying in my lap (where she'd been for about two hours) just before I started this post. So the news isn't ALL bad. ;)

So I'll see you post cyst surgery - and in the meantime, sew, quilt, or paint a line or two for me, will you?

Cheers,

"In The Pink" my very first quilt made with my hand-dyed fabric, but otherwise with no special meaning.






"Stepping Stones" my mise en abyme  quilt, made from the scraps of my first quilt, which was made from the textile scraps of thirty-five years of sewing.  A simple quilt, but one of my favourites this year.






I went back to what was comfortable to me - only this time trying it with needle felting - but it didn't feel right to me any more. I knew that I needed to get out of that comfort zone or I was never going to get where I needed to go.




In March, I decided to try a different version of the painting - I only showed it to you recently as I initially disliked it so much I didn't want to show it to you - but I like it better now, although I still see the room for improvement!



More needlefelting, combined with hand-painted fabric, this time with a lighter hand - and I liked the results better  - but it still didn't feel quite like "me'.



By the time I was done this piece, I knew this wasn't for me either.



So I tried a different method of needle felting and hand painted fabric.  I LOVED it - needle felting all those fabrics together, and then finding the face within; but that was the problem. It all just kind of came together - randomly painted fabrics, and finding the face - what were the chances that would happen again?




So, I gave it another shot.  Needlefelted some of my hand-painted fabric together and then tried to "find" something in it.  I didn't in the way I did with "Wood Witch", but I found a nice background for a mermaid scene.



I tried some more abstract sketches as well - the art I'm drawn to as a rule is non-representational - I like the intellectual exercise and the emotional power I feel in abstract art - I don't like it when the story is already there, waiting for me to "read" it  - but it turns out I'm not really any good at non-representational art.  Perhaps as I learn and grow I'll be able to do so - or perhaps, I'm already doing it in my quilts, rather than my art.

           

I also tried going back to repair prior mistakes - with some success - although I'm not sure I like the "corrected" version any better, I learned a lot about something I called "ghost quilting" and it's something I'll put to use in future work.




Around this time, I was asked to be a contributor to a technique driven blog  in which a number of fiber artists tried out different techniques for the edification of themselves and others called And Then We Set It On Fire.  It was to fill in for a couple of months, and since I was a follower and a tryer anyway - I decided to give it a go.

The first technique we were to try was fugitive media -  techniques in which you apply things ordinarily applied to paper (water colour, pastels, acrylic paint, etc.) to fabric.  Without knowing it, I'd already dabbled in it and I took to it like a duck to water, producing Transracial Adoption above, and


With "Erosion" I knew I was really onto something - I loved everything about the technique and the method, and was sure I'd found my medium. (And "surprise!" it looked VERY much like the piece I produced the first of the year.)


In the meantime, I finished the last of my Charley Harper inspired series with Cardinal, and

continued to try new techniques with And Then We Set It On Fire, like the one I taught - transfer paints and disperse dyes.

 

And the unusual materials challenge through another group, in which I made quilts out of anything BUT fabric.

Towards the end of the year I re-visted some old favourites - shaving foam painting and needle felting to produce November.

So, at the end of it all, what did I learn?

My main learning is "how" I'm going to make the art I want to make.  Fugitive media and painting on fabric is what I'm going to continue to explore in my personal work - my main goal for 2012 is to get better at it.  And the quilting continues as it should.  Fractured, Phases, Stepping Stones, even Test Pattern are all the direction I intend to continue in - I have plans for lots of quilts in the future - they're even designed already, if only I could find the time to actually make them!


My biggest accomplishments this year were being featured on or at "big" websites and at Generation Q Magazine and for 2012 I hope to do more of the same, and I intend to start showing, throwing my hat into the ring for some of the juried festivals. 

I'm off for about a week - see you soon!

Since these are so quick and easy to make (less than an hour for all three), if you like them, you can whip a couple up for your coffee or sofa table, or even a centerpiece for your kitchen table and still have plenty of time to finish whatever else needs to be done between now and Saturday.

See you Wednesday!

This is just a little something I've been playing with on my kitchen table.  "Kitchen table" you ask?  Why yes! Haven't I mentioned that my sewing room currently looks like THIS:




that closet door is now primed too...


sadly, there's nothing I can do to make that window bigger...


and we're laying the floor this weekend.  AND THEN, paint, furniture goes back in, fabric goes back in - I'm hoping that shortly after Christmas, I'll be back in business!

This was a piece I made several months ago. I was experimenting with a number of techniques, (not purposely, mind);I was trying to create the effect of trees in the background, mid-ground and foreground, so, using some of my hand-painted fabric; I quilted it to death, painted over, painted under, quilted some more,  fused on top of,  and I think, did a final layer of paint  - all in an effort to make it look the way I saw it in my head -  and failed utterly.

So I called it "Failure To Thrive" (a play on both words and the utter failure of the piece) and put it away.  I never actually intended to show it to you, though the sharper eyed among you may have spotted it in this post ( like all my failures, I never give up on the - I always try to rescue them, make them over, prove that they can be beautiful despite themselves.)

I'm showing it to you today because it's part of a project I'm working on that will be revealed in the new year. Rayna Gilman is involved... and you can play too.  Pick up her new book or enter here for a chance to win a free copy.

Talk soon!