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!

I have not had any available creative energy left for blogging these last three weeks! All of it has gone into thinking about and preparing for the museum art camp I have just finished teaching. I enjoyed it immensely especially this last week. The title was ART IN IMAGINATION, official description: Mermaids, Fairies, Spacemen, Robots- Create original artwork based on fantasy using both 2 and 3-D media.

I remembered to take my camera two or three days but I needed a full time photographer to take pictures. With things happening fast and furious most of the art work got away without being photographed! We try to send most of the art home as soon as it is finished so usually my pictures of finished art is a haphazard catch-as-catch-can occurrence.

My lovely and talented assistant, my daughter gave her account of art camp here.

Monday- Draw and paint your imagined character using tempera paint on white paper. Embellish the person and place with the addition of yarn hair, google-eyes, glitter, sequins, tissue paper, and feathers.

Tuesday- Create your own three dimensional imagined character. I showed examples of a doll/action figure made of a roll of corrugated cardboard, one inch diameter wooden bead for the head, and pipe cleaners for arms and legs. I also showed how they could make a character by cutting two simple shapes of felt, ovals or rectangles stapled all around and stuffed with polyester fiber. We had colorful felt, pipe cleaners, colored staples, google-eyes, variety of colored paper, plastic lids, corrugated cardboard, brads, buttons, beads, sequins, markers, paint, glitter, craft glue, and yarn. Available tools were: scissors, hole-punch, needle, and thread if asked for. We had a cool glue gun station with an adult doing the gluing as requested. My assistant was very busy gluing as soon as the children realized the potential to glue almost anything without the “wait to dry time” required by the white craft glue.

Wednesday- Continuation of the above. Most children made multiple items of increasing complexity.

Thursday- Imagination at Night

The children wanted to do the same thing again as the previous two days….They begged!

I had them start with black construction paper to create an imagined scene at night with their characters. All of the same materials and tools were available to use. Some children were so intent on creating 3-D that they pushed the boundary of the assignment to construct dioramas out of the black paper. Others made three dimensional characters to attach to a night-time scene. I found a roll of yellow crepe paper so I showed anyone who wanted to how to make crepe paper and tissue paper flowers.

Friday

Imagine a set of double doors that when opened hold an imaginary world. All the materials and tools of the previous days were available. We made triptych structures out of corrugated cardboard with bead and button doorknobs. The interior became a forest, mountain with a castle, the moon with an astronaut, sea shore with fish and mermaids, space aliens and dragons… Some of these structures morphed into castles!

The director of the program, parents, and children gave this class high praise and I have already been asked to repeat it next year.

Altered Mead Composition Notebook,
originally uploaded by molly jean henson.

I recently found a movie of 500 years of women in art for your inspiration. It reminded me of this composition book I altered several months ago with art prints.

On the last day of this week's Art Camp the children made books with people on each page. Some of them created a character for each page with names, ages, and occupations.

Next week class title is "Art and Imagination." We are going to make 2-d and 3-d imaginative characters like fairies, robots, super heroes, space aliens, "monsters," etc. I am going to do my best to not say "monsters" and to steer them away from scary and movie characters!

Making art with children is sometimes tiring and a bit frantic but fun, and amazing! I love what they create. Here are some more exaples of art from my classes.

Making Books with Children

This week and next I am teaching two classes each morning at a local art museum's art camp. My twenty-two year old daughter is my valuable assistant. We have 15 - 17 children in each class, ages 6-12. This week we are making books. This is one of my favorite things to teach! Yesterday we taught them the three hole pamphlet stitch. They made an accordion style book travel journal with pockets, one signature, and a pop-up! I would call it a hybrid book. Constructing the pop-up was the hardest part but they all got it, some after a try or two.

We are making nature journals tomorrow using an easy construction method. Maybe we will have time to go to the sculpture garden to sketch. I never have long enough with the eager artistic children but there are always a few who would rather be elsewhere. So far, they are a very pleasant group of children.

I will try to get some pictures tomorrow!

(pictures added after this was written)

The Chihuahuan Desert

On visiting the real desert... A

bit obsessed!

I say that I live in the desert or on the edge of the desert. Recently we have had several years of drought. Our annual average rainfall is 13.51 inches. But in 1998 we got 5.18 inches which was the lowest rainfall since 1930 when measuring in this area began. We have been in a drought since 1998. Of course that means we are due for some catch up years. We have had good rains this spring even to flooding in specific locations. I don't yet know if it is enough to end the drought but I hope so.

This Sunday we went to Van Horn, Texas, which is in the Chihuahuan Desert, with its characteristic yucca, agaves, grasses, creosote bushes, prickly-pears and other cacti as well as a wealth of wildflowers. I love it! The Chihuahua Desert does not have the saguaro cactus, the tall branched cactus of western movies and illustrations. If you ever see a western movie ostensibly set in Texas but with this type cactus

you can be sure it was not actually filmed here but in California.

Here are some of my sketches and photos recent and old. Some are from previous trips and visits. When I was looking for old photos of the desert I found these of me as a child. I loved tocamp, still do!

What is more fun than eating?

Aragorn : Gentlemen, we do not stop till nightfall.
Pippin : What about breakfast?
Aragorn : You've already had it.
Pippin : We've had one, yes. What about second breakfast?
Merry : I don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.
Pippin : What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?
Merry : I wouldn't count on it.

This morning I sat on the porch with my coffee and breakfast. It was a beautiful morning. Not really cool but pleasant. I took my camera, journal, and art supplies to record the moment. The moment that lasted for some time longer than I expected because it was so much fun. I didn’t have second breakfast but did keep warming up the coffee and topping my cup until
at least eleven!

The sky is darkening, but to the north east a giant looms, glowing with a blush of pink which fades to lavender, then to dark purple. The whisper, the growing rustle, and as the sun sets a change in the air signals a possibility of rain.

Is that thunder?

Not the promise of rain, but a teasing possibility. This is a pattern of the last three nights. I miss the full view of the sky that I had when I lived out on the prairie where you can see a storm
building miles away and maybe more in several directions!





This evening brings to mind an afternoon some years ago. I was in New Mexico taking children to camp. I had a few short hours to enjoy the mountains. I walked around, found a comfortable place to sit and quickly began to draw then write. I have a vivid memory of that moment in time because I took the time to record it! This page also includes leaf printing, a border stamped with hand carved stamp.

My new Etsy store is launched with one item!
Have you heard of Etsy and wondered what it means.
It means "and if" in Latin spelled ET SI.
Here is a TV news clip about Etsy.


Isn't technology wonderful? I didn't think so last night when for about 4 hours I thought I had lost all my blog posts! I had just put my first item in my new store and was in the process of adding a link and rearranging links. When I did something.

All better now! Isn't technology wonderful!

I am feeling a great sense of loss. Too much for such a thing as this. I am on one hand justifying my strong emotions but on the other hand I am appalled that it means so much to me! I have not cried, amazingly enough as crying is my normal response to frustration, but I have talked out loud to the computer and felt a desire to get up and stomp around! And I feel compelled to use lots of !!!!s. Not bad words, mind you, just dramatic exclamation points!

Two or three hours pass.....

I have now recoverd my posts and comments.

I have my links saved in a word file...

I have overcome the panicy feeling, learned a thing or two and changed my background to white. Let me know if it is easier to read. (I still love art on a black background)

Slowly adding links back.

Must sleep then I will try to add counters, map, atom feed and various "widgits" I think they are called.

What am I doing this beautiful day?

Laundry, dishes, sorting mail...the never ending stuff!

Spending way too much time at the computor

Drinking iced Jasmin Tea

Doors and windows are opened for the coolish breeze

Listening to the birds and Finding Neverland Soundtrack - the best thing about this movie was the music!

I have made several new ACEOs, Art Cards Editions and Originalsthat I am listing for auction on Ebay. I love the format of tiny art quilts.

I find them a challenge and a pleasure. I have had the pleasure of trading cardswith some of my flickr friends but at the moment I need to make some sales.

I still plan to sell some books on Etsy as soon as I iron out the wrinkles in my new store. I also need to research the new postal rates.

Almost done with this one! Photographing it outside changed the colors somewhat; the previous view was scanned this morning before the sun came up. The sketchy black free motion quilting also gave it a different look! Sort of brought it to life! I also added some silk roving for highlights.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Claude Monet

I love flowers! And when I paint them I tend toward botanical accuracy, a look I love. But at times I desire to break away more into abstraction or interpretation of the flower. That has taken place at times when I am painting with children using tempera paint, a "throwaway medium."

Then two years ago I painted purple petunias with a decidedly stylized look. It is one of my favorites, the flower and the painting! Now I am trying to interpret the painting with cloth and fiber using needle felting and sewing. I am using bits of cloth, yarn, and wisps of dyed unspun wool to paint the picture.

Book Binding Tutorial
for Journal with
Quilted And Felted Cover

Recently, I was asked if I have a pattern for my felted books. I decided to do a small simplified version, take pictures, and give some dimensions. I am going to show pictures and give some links to other sites because I don’t have time right now to draw and scan diagrams!

I am not going to use a lot of book binding terms because I don’t want to spend hours defining them! So I will try to keep it very simple.

It is always easier to try a new technique on a small scale and with easily accessible materials.

Make the quilted cover:

For the cover you need:

4 1/2 x 12 inch piece of polyester or wool felt (1 sheet cut in half length-wise)

Or 11.5 x 30.5 centimeters

small scraps of quilter's cotton fabric
yarn wool roving or dyed locks of wool (for use with needle felting tool)

Here are pictures of my example: pieced, felted, and quilted. See previous post for tutorial on how I use needle felting on a quilt.

When I was pleased with the look of my cover I trimmed it down to 4 inches wide, rounded the corners slightly, and finished the edges with zigzag stitch.

(If you don't want to do the needle felting this could be made without felting as a small slender quilt using batting with cotton fabric on top and bottom and lots of machine stitching to hold the layers together.)

Paper for pages:

I used 6 sheets Canson Mi-Teintes colored drawing paper from a 9x12 inch pad.

You could buy one large sheet and cut it or use what you have, even nice copier paper
(8 ½ x 11 inches) parchment or other paper with pleasant weight and color.

Cut paper 3 ½ x 8 inches long or 9 x 21.5 centimeters.

To make your book pages cut the paper to size, fold in half and burnish the fold for each page individually then nest sheets together to form a signature. Use 6 - 12 sheets nested together, depending upon the heaviness of the paper. With the Canson paper I used 6 pieces of paper (folios) per signatures (groups of pages that are nested together).

Make a pattern for the holes in the pages. Cut an extra page of cheap paper the size of your pages. Make a mark in the fold, at ½ inch, 1 ¾ inch, and 3 inches. That will put stitches ½ inch from the top and bottom and in the center. I used an awl to punch the sewing holes in each page. For years I used a sharp nail. The hole should be about the size of the thread and needle.

Sewing the pages into the cover

I used waxed linen thread and a sharp needle with a large eye appropriate for the thread. You could also use six strand cotton or linen embroidery thread or pearl cotton.

The pamphlet stitch is good for sewing each signature into the cover and is very easy and elegant! You can begin the stitch inside the book, like I did here, or outside on the spine for a different look. If you choose to make a really large book someday, you may need to reinforce the spine area and use a different stitch.

I made an effort to sew the signatures in straight. Sewing all the way through the cover, with the spine of the pages at a right angle to the cover’s edges. I put about 1/8 inches between signatures when I sewed them into the cover. If you expect to glue a lot of elements into your book you can leave more space at this time.

Odds and Ends

I crocheted a chain with two coordinating yarns for the wrap around tie.

I deckled the fore edge of the pages.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I may amend this as I see the need or leave comments.