Inspiration Everywhere

Traveling is like a long-running Artist's Date, as described by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way. You get to feast your inner artist on beautiful things, coming away refreshed and inspired, full of ideas. This past trip I was less tuned in to my Inner Artist than usual for some reason, but here are several things that struck me.


Rinder by Franz Marc, in the Pinoteca Moderne in Munich. Doesn't this make you think of a quilt? I should even be able to say whose style is is, but I can't; maybe someone else can. Does comparing this painting to a quilt belittle Marc, a painter I like very much? According to the museum information card, he was killed at the battle of Verdun in 1916; what a tragedy.


The palette of neutrals in these paintings by Murillo is stunning!


This is a major department store in Munich. Wonderful patchwork design, isn't it? I like the silhouettes too.


I'm always fascinated by the patterns on inlaid wood floors. This one, in the Prince Archbishops' Residence in Salzburg, is an interesting variation on the six or eight pointed star you often see.


The shapes and colors of these buildings beside the river in Innsbruck make a wonderful silhouette against the mountain. I found a postcard featuring a painting of a similar view, so I'm not the only one who liked it.


Something about the shapes of these arches as they change with the curve of the porch struck me as beautiful, especially with the lines of the palace in the background. (My husband thought I wanted his photo; I didn't disillusion him.)


A little stream is in the English Garden in Munich. I tried using the cut out filter in Photoshop to simplify it, as described in Elizabeth Barton's blog, and that worked really well. It would be fun to do something from this photograph someday.


But first I have to finish the Hoffman Challenge!

Travelogue Lite

Germany and Austria were beautiful,

the beer delicious,

the buildings historic,

the people friendly,

the museums fascinating.

(I even enjoyed the Deutsche Museum, full of science and technology exhibits.)



And my packing plan worked perfectly!

It's good to be home, however. I spent yesterday unpacking and doing laundry. I thought about doing something in the sewing room in the afternoon, but didn't. In a Munich shop window, I saw this carpet that made me think of my Hoffman.
Maybe I'll get to that today. It was fun to catch up with everyone's news although I haven't commented much. That's something else to do today.

The Hills are Alive...

Sunday we are leaving for 6 days in Innsbruck, Austria, followed by a weekend in Munich. Munich was a sweetener for me, since I didn't have any interest in Innsbruck when my husband was asked to speak there, but I've always wanted to go to Munich. I've since found out that Innsbruck is in Eastern Austria, in a valley surrounded by the Tyrolean Alps. Think Sound of Music, everyone. So this should be fun. I'm certainly expecting good, fattening pastries and sausages, washed down with coffee and beer, but maybe I can hike it off. Or not.

So I've been doing the things you have to do to get ready for a trip. Organizing stuff, running errands, etc. I can't work up any interest in German for some reason, so I hope for friendly, English-speaking people. I finally forced myself to dig out the phrase book this morning, much too late to learn anything.

The part I love is packing. It's such a challenge. I think I mentioned once before my fascination with this web site: One Bag. It's got everything you need to know about traveling light. I'll never be as light as the author, but I try. It doesn't matter how much junk you have for some kinds of trips, but if you've tried to get a suitcase on or off a European train while a bunch of men sit and look at you as though you had two heads, you learn to pare down!

Ironically, since men are supposedly better at traveling light, it's my husband who has all the luggage. He's always weighted down with things he thinks he'll "work on", but of course never touches. He also has to be forced to give up the heavy cotton underwear, socks, and shirts which take up half a suitcase, and never dry, so have to go to hotel laundry. We've made progress though. This time we're checking one full size bag (his) and one smaller one (mine). But then there's his backpack and his briefcase...
We look like one of these pictures, but in reverse.

Of course, probably anyone watching will think Herr Professor Doktor is chivalrously carrying his wife's overload.

In quilting news, I've also been working on the Hoffman Challenge, and have made some progress. I got through the part that seemed tedious or tense, and now have to make some design decisions. But I may wait on that till I come back.

Tantalizing Glimpses?

I'm working on the Hoffman Challenge. It's past the point of being fun, and has become a list of steps to finish, including a few questions about exactly the best way to do some of them. I feel like I did in grad school when I could see the answer of the essay exam before me, but was totally bored with writing it. There's something wrong with that.

Fortunately, it's a beautiful day here, so I think I'll go for a walk or plant something. Everyone have a good weekend!

May Alzheimer Quilt Auction

I'm thrilled that Ami Simms has chosen two of my pieces, Bleeding Hearts and Crazy in the 70's, for this month's auction on The Alzheimer Art Quilt Initiative. There are particularly good quilts this month: some beautiful miniature traditional ones as well as mixed media art quilts. Go admire, and maybe bid, starting May 1!

In addition to the monthly Alz Quilts auction, Collage Mania, part of Virginia Spiegel's Fiber Art for a Cause is having their preview now. Bidding for those wonderful mini art quilts and collages begins May 5. You'll recognize many of the artists, and these pieces are definitely worth looking at. So you can pick your cause and your quilt style in the next ten days!

Completed Red Stars and a Postcard

When I arrived at my sister's last week I found my red star quilt waiting for me with all the quilting completed. I'm so happy with this! Click on the pictures and you can see a close-up of the beautiful quilting that Deb Geyer did. The center of the stars can't have been easy. I still have to sew on binding, but since I won't do that for a while, this is this quilt's
final appearance.



When I came home last night, I found this beautiful postcard from Joy Vale, sent all the way from Australia as part of an exchange on Stitchin Fingers. It's hand painted fabric with a lovely suede-like texture, and some applique. Thank you, Joy! This was a delightful piece of mail. In fact, this was a good week for me and the post office!

Update

This is just a quick post to prove I haven't disappeared. I'm at my sister's, enjoying the visit, but very busy. I've dusted, vacuumed, cleaned kitchen drawers, weeded, all trying to bring some order to my mother's house which has been empty over the winter. It's rather a hopeless task, and knowing that I need to go home and do much of the same work at my house is depressing. It's beautiful here though, with spring flowers in full bloom.

I did go to the International Quilt Festival last week end, but don't have many pictures. Here's one-- Springtime in Japan by Akiko Kawata. It has a beautiful impressionistic quality, and the heavy quilting adds great texture.

The festival was excellent this year, and I'm not alone in thinking this apparently, since I've read unanimously favorable reports. I liked the special exhibits Town and Country, Tactile Architecture, the fabric artists' retrospective, and Hands All Around, the international exhibit which is always my favorite. The Hoffman Challenge quilts were missing, and disappointed, I tried to find out why. After asking four people, I finally found the person in charge of special exhibits, who reported that they just forgot to book it in time!

I'll be here two more days, and then I'm driving home. It will be good to be back to the regular routine.

Traveling

Tomorrow I'm driving to Chicago to see my son, daughter-in-law, and of course the twins. My original plan was drive over to the Chicago Quilt Festival on Saturday and leave from there to drive part way to my sister's in Missouri. I find I'm not as excited about the show as I have been in the past. The crowds and the general hassle of getting there seemed more trouble than the show was worth last year. But I'll give it one more try. Perhaps I can find some interesting thread or fibers for my Hoffman Challenge quilt. I'll try to post a photo or two although that is becoming more frowned upon. In other quilt news, Deb Geyer has finished quilting my red star quilt and has sent it to my sister's so I can pick it up there and show it off to the family. I'm excited about that, and will definitely post a picture.

Old as Dirt

Happy birthday to me. This is a very low-key day. We're having a good dinner though, and as my gift, I am ordering a new cutting table to replace the ping-pong table that has been the center of my work space for years. The good thing about the ping-pong table is that it's large, and the bad thing about the ping-pong table is that it's large, so that I can't move around it to get to my storage space. I will be away next week at my sister's and while I'm gone, I hope the ping-pong table disappears and maybe, the new table will arrive and be set up.

In fabric news, I've started work on the Hoffman Challenge, buying new fabric for it. Every year I vow I won't do that, and every year I break the vow. I'm sure the Hoffman people count on that!

And then, just for sheer cuteness, here's this picture, taken last week when the twins were here. Too bad about the prominent placement of the condiments, but I don't have a way to crop this photo.




Cropped by way of Candace's suggestion. Thanks, Candace.

Finally Crazy: a Saga

When Debra send me one of her machine embroidery motifs, I tried to use it as the starting point for a crazy block for Alz Quilts. I made it my goal to push on this--going on after I thought it was finished. (My less-is-more attitude is not well suited to crazy quilting.) This was interesting. Ordinarily quilters think in terms of color, value, and shape. Line is less important. I found that I had to think about line in planning this block. It was a new approach for me, and I could almost feel my brain growing!

I drew a block plan, using freezer paper templates. This works for me. When I have just done flip and sew in a truly crazy way, I've found I regret the fabric choices and have to figure out a way to compensate. This way allows me to audition fabrics.


Heres the basic block. I liked this, and would really have loved to stop. But I forced myself to go on.

First some machine decorative stitches. I'm learning the Janome here, killing two birds with one stone, to coin a phrase. Then I couched some fibers, and attached the ribbon flowers (The leaf in the upper left was knit by my mother; she made it for me to use several years ago. It was a natural-colored thread, to go with linen, and I painted it green to use here. The paint had the added virtue of stopping its tendency to curl.)



I intended to stop here, but realized it was still naked. So then came the embroidered vine thing, with French knots. I'm stretching the limit of the embroidery stitches I remember here. Then I painted some lace motifs (not well done--I should have cut them out before painting), and added them, then I did a bit more embroidery, and then finally the yo-yos and little butterfly, something I usually wouldn't do.


Here's the finished version. I'm happy with it, although I didn't originally visualize such a 70's mix of avocado and harvest gold! Maybe those colors are classic.


Thanks to all you crazy quilters out there. Whenever I thought I'd had enough, I looked at some of your pictures, and realized I hadn't even started!

An Award

"This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY -- nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these blogs!”

I received this kind award from Liz. What a pleasant surprise! Thank you, Liz. The rules are to post the award and pass it on to eight people.

So after much thought, here are my eight: Karen, Jen, Debra, Paula, Libby, Candace, Annie, Dee. All nice people, interesting blogs. I could go on and name more, but this is a start. If you don't know them already, get acquainted.

Bleeding Hearts

This is ready to go to Alz Quilts as soon as I finish one more piece to go along with it. My grandmother always had this sweet old-fashioned flower in the bed outside her back door; the kittens hid in the foliage. It's favorite memory of mine. I thought the stylized shape would be easy for me to do, but actually it was hard to avoid a cartoonish, valentine-like look. I tried, but I don't think I succeeded totally. The very candy pink fabric is part of the problem. Also, now that it's finished, I'm bothered by the fact that there is no visible stem on the leaf in lower center. I could add a small appliqued or embroidered stem. What do you think? Are those leaves floating? But I do like the colors and composition, and was very pleased with the way one of the Janome's decorative stitches fit perfectly inside the little "drop".

City and Guilds, Vicariously

I don't know how many people in the US are familiar with the City and Guilds certificate program, operated in the UK. Linda Kemshall, who contributes to Quilting Arts Magazine offers on-line courses connected with City and Guilds. This seems to be a serious, in-depth program of skill building in all areas of needle arts. There's a series of assignments to be completed, each of which is evaluated by instructors; the course culminates in a final project, also evaluated. I have been interested in this program since first reading about it, so it was exciting to discover that Helen Conway is documenting her class work in a blog dedicated to this subject. She also includes links to some other blogs about City and Guilds. Her class is just getting underway but I think it's going to be fascinating to look over her shoulder while she works. Helen's other blogs, From Down the Well, and the humorous Quiltland Chronicle are well worth reading too. Take a look.

I enjoyed the comments on my triangle misadventures. It's heartening to know that other people do this sort of thing too; when I've watched others at guild sewing days, everyone seems to have their pieces perfectly organized. The block is one of Judy Martin's, from an old Quilters' Newsletter. It's called Carolina Basket. I started cutting it last summer, put it aside and came back in November, and then again last week. The big time-lag is part of the problem, although I'm not making excuses.

The Vanishing Triangles, or Why You Shouldn't Shoot Your Mouth Off about Quilters and Math

OK, here's today's word problem, boys and girls. If you are going to make 13 of these blocks in yellow and 12 in pink, how many of the tiny quarter square triangles do you need? Let's just figure out the colored ones first and save the blue ones till later.




I made the pink ones already, so I need the yellow ones. Each block has three flowers and each flower takes two of the itty-bitties, so that's 13(2x3) = 78, right? Hold your applause. If I can figure that out, WHY do I continue to have to cut more? Having to go back to the cutting board repeatedly is making this sloow block even slooower.

I guess I can calculate but not count. Or maybe the whole formula is wrong. If so, someone set me straight, please. There's also the part that trips me up every time, which is: How many squares do you need to cut if you cut each square into four triangles? May that's the problem. There's also the fact that I should write this down when I figure it out, but I didn't. So back to the rotary cutter!

And I have no idea if I have enough blue triangles cut.

Lots of Work?

Does it annoy you when someone looks at something you've made and says, "That's a lot of work!"? Another kind of startling comment is the type of thing a friend said recently: "That's a lot of thread." (She's a woodworker and should know better; I wouldn't look at something she made and say, "That's a lot of varnish.")

Comments like this are intended as praise, at least I think so. I find them hurtful though, because they miss the point so completely. Cleaning the bathroom is hard work. Making a quilt may be time consuming and have tedious stretches, but it satisfies the creative spirit before, during, and after the process. There are constant challenges to overcome, new fabrics and colors and stitches to try. That's not "hard work."

However, quilters can sometimes contribute to the quantitative approach to quilt appreciation. Not too long ago I read the "Artist's Statement" of a big prize winner who proudly reported how many yards of thread she used in her masterpiece. Sometimes too, we value handwork more than machine work, even if the handwork is poor, apparently because handwork is "harder."

It is true that difficulty and quality often go hand in hand. Detail and intricacy add to the enjoyment of viewing a quilt and help make the difference between an ordinary quilt and an outstanding one. I know when I look at the work of Japanese quilters I'm stunned by the beauty and intricacy of the design and the unexpected color harmonies, but part of me is thinking, "How long did that take?"

Still, I don't want "That's a lot of work" to be the reaction to one of my quilts.




I'd really like to hear opinions about this. Have you had this reaction to your work? How do you feel about it?

Kale and Red Stars

Karen posted about her love of kale, and I offered a salad recipe. Since I got another request for this, I'll post it. Spare me the "Yucks". I was told it was rude to discuss your food. :) As I told my kids, "Just say 'No, thank you.'"

Kale Salad 6 servings

2 bunches kale, stems removed
2 T EVO
2 T lemon juice
3/4 t salt
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup raisins
Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Stack kale leaves, fold in half lengthwise, then roll tightly like a cigar. Slice crosswise into thin strips. Chop the kale strips crosswise a few times, so they aren't too long.

Place the kale in a mixing bowl along with the olive oil, lemon juice and salt. Toss well with your hands, massaging the dressing into the greens, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the red bell pepper, pine nuts, and raisins, and toss gently, Season to taste with black pepper. This will keep for three days in a sealed container in the frig. (I didn't try this, so can't vouch for it.) Serve at room temperature.

This is surprisingly good. The very tart dressing and the raisins cut the strong taste of the kale, and pine nuts are always a great addition! The red pepper mostly just adds color, and vitamins of course.



And in quilt news, Deb Geyer is working on the quilting for my red stars quilt. Isn't this exciting! I'm going to be so glad to see it again after she's done her magic.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who wished me well when I was sick. It's amazingly comforting to have so much good will. I am finally feeling better, but still taking it easy.

The one thing I have done is change the header on the blog. The old one was driving me crazy, but I couldn't get rid of it, and then when I finally did, I couldn't replace the picture. Something was wrong with the template HTML that wouldn't allow an image in the header even though it appeared in the pop-ups. Thanks to a blog called The Blog Doctor,I solved the problem. The new picture isn't great, but at least it's a change. Now that I can easily change the header, I hope to improve it. But that's it for the day!

A Little Pity Party

We're having record temperatures, 70 degrees and sunny, the first nice weather of the year. I have a record cold; spent yesterday lying on the sofa under a quilt, and have only a little more energy today. Thank you, bloggers, for something to occupy my dead brain. I know I could find a book, but that takes energy, and the laptop is handy. I hope to be back in gear tomorrow. I know on a global, or even local, scale a cold is trivial. But complaining can be fun, can't it?

A Little Crazy

Debra sent me this beaded sun motif from one of her thrift shop purchases. I've used it as the focus of a little crazy block forthe Alzheimer's Quilt Initiative. I used some scraps of silk and kimono fabric and some of my huge stash of old buttons. That was fun, but otherwise, this was way out of my comfort zone. I made a value plan first because I wanted to get that right, and cut the pieces with freezer templates instead of just doing flip and sew because I was using small scraps. I was going to plan the embellishment stitches too, but that turned out to be unnecessary since my repertoire of embroidery stitches is so small. I kept it simple. I could say this was to keep the emphasis on the sun, which would be true, but mostly it was because I'm so rusty at embroidery that anything more is beyond me. Wouldn't an embroidered motif have been lovely in the orange piece on the right? Maybe next time. Thanks, Debra, and thanks Allie for your tutorials about backing and finishing a crazy piece.

A Lost Day

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

Oscar Wilde
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

I had that kind of day, not because of neurotic genius, but because of disorganization, indecision, general confusion. I had hoped to make a little quilt for Alzheimer's Quilts using some motifs and fabrics from last year's Hoffman challenge. Should have been easy, but it wasn't. Maybe tomorrow.

What did I do when I wasn't staring at the fabric? Had eyebrows waxed, prepared discussion questions for book group, did laundry, sent some business-type e-mails, mopped the floor, cooked dinner. I don't know what Oscar Wilde's story was, but that's mine.

This weekend is the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show in Bloomington. I always enjoy this fairly small, but high quality show, and am taking a class from Wendy Butler Berns called Out of the Blocks Quilt Design. As I understand it, we will design a block and make a model, not by sewing but apparently as a paste-up. I chose the workshop because it was one of the only ones that wasn't project oriented or teaching a technique I don't/can't do. Not having to drag along a sewing machine is a plus too. So another thing to do tomorrow is organize class supplies, if I can remember where I put the list.