Creative Juices Flow

Often, I go reluctantly to places I have committed to many months before...not sure what comes over me...could be the not wanting to leave what I am doing that moment or just thinking I need to be somewhere else...however, I'm so glad I decided to forgo those feeling this time and attend the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas...all my classes were spectacular and I learned something new in each one!


Started off with Free Motion Graffiti under the tutelage of Alisa Burke who is an artist that likes to break the rules. She introduced us to stamping on fabric, painting on fabric and then cutting out the shapes to applique onto our fabric and using all sorts of found objects in our work.


I started out by stamping all over a piece of fabric and then adding a few splashes of color with more paint (just plain 'ol fifty cent acrylics you can buy at JoAnn's or Michaels) and then journaling a few thoughts with a Sharpie pen:

Later I added some graffiti free motion stitching to the piece:

But, being the good little "Quilter" that I am, instead of adding the letters I had painted during class I cut some fabric letters to applique to my piece:


Now I do believe I need to get out the paints again...what do you think?

"Patience is a Virtue"

Well, it has been more than a year that you have been waiting for the completion of this project. Hope you have been able to find the virtue in "Patience"...for me I have found a lot of guilt in the fact that it has taken so long for me to finish this piece...however, my friend Verda has truly appreciated the effort as evidenced by the fact she posted it on her Facebook page!

When I last left you, all I really had to do was add some of the little details that would tell more of the story of our times together. It took me awhile to find the right little poodle printed on fabric and in fact I had to color the one I eventually used as it was actually a white poodle on the printed fabric. But, she so fit for the image of Maggie dressed up in her little outfit that I knew it was perfect the minute I saw it in a San Diego Quilt Shop. The tiny little shell made a perfect nose and the feathered coral images created just the right sparkle in her eyes. Now, I want to assure I wasn't saying Verda has a whale of a big mouth but don't you think the curve of that piece is perfect for a person who always has a big smile and word of encouragement for her friends. I actually went "whale watching" while in San Diego last year and the joy I felt each time they surfaced was reminiscent of the joy that floods my soul every time I hear Verda's voice. Friends are a true gift from God and Verda is one of the best gifts I've ever received!

Patience

An adage I have lived by since our Brega, Libya days is "Patience is finding something to do in the meantime" and so while still waiting on the web site to get fixed I decided to work on a quilt that I have been putting off for almost two years. More than two years ago I began exploring a spin-off from my landscape technique when my friend, Carol sent me a Caricature Portrait Quilt of myself (see in top photo of my studio)...it was so personable and fun to look at that I got to thinking how I could combine my landscape technique to use as a background for creating an fun portrait using symbols representing the region as well as the personality of the person. Of course, the first one I made (shown at right) was for my friend Carol depicting our recent visit to Arizona. Since that time I have done Sedona Sue as well as AZ Carol and had a lot of fun with the process.

A few months later Carol and I visited a mutual friend of ours from Aruba days at her beach house in Florida and I began collecting fabrics to make one for her. Even though the fabrics have been waiting on the shelf for some time now I just haven't gotten to the project until yesterday when I needed "something to do in the meantime." Actually, I'm doing a class on this process at the community college where I teach this fall so I also needed to do a lesson plan and what better use of my time than getting two projects accomplished at the same time.

Steps in the process are as follows:

First, I do a quick drawing of the features of my subject using a photograph that has good facial recognition...for the AZ Carol I brought the picture up on my 17" monitor of my computer and placed a piece of paper over the screen and lightly traced the image...as you can tell I am more confident with my drawing skills now!

Next, I make a foundation for the fusible applique. After I have chosen a theme fabric for the landscape background I choose the fabrics for the sky and ground based on the colors found in the theme fabric... if sky or ground images are not included in the design of the theme fabric then I choose fabrics that coordinate with the tone and tints of the colors found in the images...in this case I choose three fabrics as I wanted to include a sea fabric. Seaming together the fabrics for the foundations gives me the additional benefit of creating the horizon line to keep my perspective defined during the process.

Then I began to build the landscape image that will be the background for the portrait using elements from the theme fabric (upper part of photo at left) and any other compatible fabrics needed to complete the "story" line...after doing more than a dozen of my landscape quilts I realized that I was really telling a story about the places I visited or just dreamed about visiting and thus they became Story Quilts.

Now it is time to put in the portrait pieces that I have cut using my drawing as a guide...at this point other symbols representing hobbies, life style, personality, dreams, expectations, pets, etc. are added to complete the story line.

Sorry...You must wait until I come back to this project at a later date. Practice your patience while waiting on me to return to the studio...maybe you can go to your local quilt shop and find some fabrics to start your own "Is That Really Me" quilt of yourself or a friend!

Still Waiting

Still waiting for the "Buy Now" button to be fixed on the suesquiltshop.com site, so decided to re-adopt an old saying I've been living by for thirty years now..."Patience is finding something to do in the meantime"...as that one of 60,000 thoughts for my day went through my head, the next one said, "work on the Carr Women scrapbook".......so here I am in my studio working with a host of old pictures from my Grandmother and Mother's old picture boxes.....of course, I have to stop ever so often for a sneeze as the dust is literally flying all around.

My Grandmother was not good at labeling her pictures and my Mother probably only found the time for that later in life because nothing before the 1970s has a date much less a name. Gladys, my Grandmother was born in 1904 and by the time her first child was born there were four generations (see picture above) of women in her life...when I was born there were five generations of women alive in the family...when my firstborn arrived there were five again...so the book is really based on those five generations. By the time Debra's first girl was born we were down to only three generations still living...guess that is due to women walking down the aisle later in life as well as waiting to have children.

Grandmother was a big part of my life...we lived with her when I was born as my Father was over in Germany fighting in the war...she always found time to visit us regularly during my childhood and in her later years she came to live with us when I was a teenager and again lived with my parents after she became blind and until her death. She was literally larger than life for me...a woman who found herself divorced in the 20s with three children to raise and accomplished that feat quite well...in my mind's eye she will always be standing behind her saloon bar with a smile on her face and singing along with the jukebox...when Debra and I visited her 'ol saloon, White Leghorn Inn in Westhoff, Texas back in the 80s, one of the old gentleman sitting at that bar said, "I remember Gladys, she was the greatest hostess in the whole world"...wish that had been engraved on her tombstone as that one statement summed her up perfectly!

Now Grandmother's Mother was another story...she liked the feminine side of life...always baking, quilting, crocheting...my fondest memory of visiting her was her "button box" which I always sat down to and would string the buttons during the entire visit...sure she would take them all off the string when I left so I would have something to do next time I visited...being a quilter today I can respect her talent with a needle or crochet hook...however, she was an innovator as well, for most of the quilts that I now own of hers were quilted on the machine...image quilting a quilt on a treadle machine!

Of course, my Mother, Fannye Lee (L: she is second from left with her high school friends) went to college and wanted to be a modern, independent woman...uh, until Cecil walked into Grandmother's cafe one night in early summer of '43 and asked her to go bowling after she got off work...6 weeks later they were married and 13 months later Sue came into the world...after Dad returned from the war we moved around a lot...even finding ourselves in Westhoff living in one of the cabins at Grandmother's place for awhile when I was 5 years old...that was during my dance class days and my brother, Jarvis and I would dance to the music on the jukebox for the pennies the guys would throw from the bar...but, back to Mother who finally gave up sewing clothes for us out of feed sacks and twirling my hair over pencil sticks to make Shirley Temple curls before I went to school every day and went to work as a florist in my Aunt Hazel's flower shop and eventually took it over during my teen years...from then on she was in some sort of business or another when she wasn't bowling and taking care of the family.

Upon reflection these women ancestors of mine didn't seem to ever be waiting on anything...they were always busy when I was around...even to the point of giving me plenty to do in order to help out around the house, the shop, or the saloon!

Long Day

Today I fully intended to get some housework done but alas, the Internet sucked me in just like a vacuum cleaner sucks up the sand tracked in by little grandchildren feet. After checking my email I "Xed" out and before I shut down decided to look at my website and discovered that if anyone wanted to purchase a pattern or a kit they would be out of luck as the "Buy Now" button opened up to a page full of gobble dee guck! So, I packed up my computer and went to see my Web Master, daughter Debra for a quick fix. The quick fix turned into an entire afternoon of surfing the net for everything but the quick fix to my original problem. However, we did accomplish some updates on the website http://www.suesquiltshop.com/ and visitors can now see some of my quilts and new kits offered such as the Tuscan Landscape shown above. But you will have to call me to purchase any of the items that strike your fancy. Tune in tomorrow to find out if my computer savvy son-in-law has fixed the problem or if I am still waiting for my "Buy Now" button to be fixed!