Inspiration and Design

Here is an Australian print I used as the inspiration for two small journal sized quilts.



I have been taking part in a local informal Art Quilt Group for the last 3 months. This group of quilters includes some awesome talent. I learn and am inspired from them even when they are using techniques I am not currently using. I am not, at this point in my life going to make bed quilts. I love their "tailored" and perfect paper-pieced rendering of their drawings. However, I am not using that method and I don't have the time or patience to put perfectly mitered 1/4 inch binding around each art quilt.

I believe that many quilters are artists even when they use traditional patterns and methods. Art goes beyond skill alone but can certainly utilize skill. This gets into the area of "craft" and Art, how the two differ where the two intersect, a perennial question!

I am currently working with raw edges, free-motion machine stitching, felting, and an overall sketchy and messy look. I am painting with fibers!

In other words, I feel like the odd one in this group but still very welcome and more at home here than in the larger quilt guild.

Last month we isolated a 2 x 3 inch area of a printed fabric and used a sharpie to trace the lines of the design on a piece of clear acetate. We were challenged to take this home and create small quilt 9 x 12 inches to show at the next meeting. Here are my examples.

Long have I been absent from blogging!

"Momma is playing with dolls again!" This time paper dolls. I have been drawing and painting. Then using images of my various paintings I am playing with digital collage to which I will add hair and I don't know what else before I am finished. This is my small creative endeavor/offering for this week.

I am working at school three or four days a week plus two other small jobs that occupy me for several hours 3 afternoons. I feel wrung out... "thin, sort of stretched ...like butter scraped over too much bread." I have the "mid-to-late-summer-blues, I am not going to get done all the things I need or want to do, blues" I have had the satisfaction of working on flowerbeds.


O, and I am re-reading THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I am reading leisurely for an hour or so at my early bed-time, more on the week-ends. I already know what happens so it is a savoring of words! I am actually reading my mothers copy so I see what she underlined. I read it the first time when I was fourteen, the summer before I went into high school. I was into speed reading then purely for plot. I did not read it again until Christmas break after seeing The Two Towers. I read fast that time too. This is my second slow reading through. I love the story, plot, characters, images, and language!