The Color Books

Once upon a time, I kept color books.  Not Coloring Books, but books arranged by color content.  These books are small, landscape formats (about 5" x 7") that I used for saving clips of work, paint chips, and notes on associations of colors.  Pinned or stapled to the pages are little stitched samples of an idea or color combination.

One of the things I discovered with working in these books is that no matter how well thought out a painted color might be, it is only paint on paper.  Despite careful thread choices, the only choices I really have are what is in my thread box, what the manufacturer has made available.  Eventually I began dyeing my own fabric and thread, and though I might design with color families in mind, I don't strive frustratingly to match anything I've painted or inked in or set so immovably in my design plan.

After coming to these dismaying conclusions, I began working less and less in the books, and since they are mostly stuffed beyond disturbing with new material, they remain as they are, an experiment.  When I went through them last evening with an eye to working with a particular color scheme, I  stopped and photographed some of the little sampling bits there.  Doodles.  Questions answered-- I still don't have a name for these little pieces.

One of my favorites is in the red book, a compilation of scraps from clothes-making over the years.  Mother used to sew, to create her own clothes.  She was a marvelous seamstress as well as designer, but she had no career opportunity other than housewife.  She taught her daughters to sew, and the lessons (mostly) stuck.  We were certainly well-dressed children!  And I was lucky enough to fall heir to her fabric scraps when she would do a clean-out.  This little compilation has an apple cut from scraps of one of the last blouses she made for herself, little ruffled pants for Bethy, a blouse for me . . .

Another is from the Violet Book, an exercise on the theme of "portals:"

Layers of fabric and stitch have a textural appeal for me that has been a subject of exploration for years.  When I discovered scrim, however, my stitching life took a marvelous new turn.

And so forth.  Studio Journals, Sketchbooks or even notebooks are such useful things to construct-- to say nothing of the fun of working quite freely without the pressure of preparing work for others to see.  They stimulate exploration of an idea in its initial form, and years later those ideas can be a way of seeing something very differently, of starting off in another direction altogether.  My personally favorite part of the studio is the wall of bookcases with the shelves of studio journals!  Of course, the other books and magazines are interesting, too.  My first stop when starting a new work, though, is always the studio journal cases.

"TOO MUCH" Reconsidered

All those bags of fabric going out of the studio have given me the shakes.  I asked Charles not to carry them off just yet, and his look spoke volumes about his assessment of my mental condition.

In fairness to me, I have just received a new book, How to make your own freeform quilts, and our author makes the point that fabrics that are old or ugly are excellent for this technique!  Old and Ugly would describe those five bags very well.  Jill was right to discourage me from casting these pearls out.

I love quilts that look as if they were sewn together between chores and cooking meals and burping babies, with no thought to color or design, and particularly if there are long, wavy strips involved.  This book is all about uneven strips of fabric.  I sat reading that first night, and when I turned the bedside light off, visions of my rotary cutter, sharpened and at the ready, with piles of fabric lined up for chopping, "danced through my head. . ."

Despite all the things I should have been doing, there was to be no peace until I had at least tried this idea.  My inner child was whining, and ever the undisciplined mother, I gave in.  I made, by reaching for the nearest thing at hand, these four coasters/mug mats.  You will notice that these are not really ugly fabrics.  I was not deep into the five bags of give-aways at the time I started this.

I can hear your groaning over the satin stitches at the edge.  I will confess that I have made a zillion coasters over the years, and the part that is always ugly to me is the strip of seam binding to finish off the edges.  The nicely put-together coasters suddenly go from usefully flat to un-usefully lumpy edged, the sort of thing that isn't safe for sitting narrow-base glasses on for even a moment.  I have voile, but voile doesn't really hide too much, does it?

There is always the possibility of reconstruction, however, because these are 5" squares, leaving open the door to finding that perfect binding and chopping off the satin stitches.

Basically, I think I need a larger project to make wavy-lined stripes.  "Larger Project" is not really a part of my vocabulary, so I am thinking about this.  Thinking hard.

Meanwhile, I am studying another quilt I pieced together before the holidays, trying to think of a way to bind this more formal piece.  Black and White and Red always look so modern, don't they?  I'll take it with me to Freestyle in January.  Two of the very best quilters in the state will be there, Tone and Sheila, and I shall ask their advice!

Studio Notes: "TOO MUCH" Defined

"TOO MUCH" of a good thing is too much.  I never thought I'd say that.  But the studio is in need of a good organizing, so I have started sorting (again).  As I cannot do much because of the constant cough and the sleepiness from the meds, it is a slow go.  But, four large—no, five large bags have gone out of the studio, and this is only a start.

Getting rid of things is only a beginning, however.  I need a new way of seeing.  My fabric cabinet has, for years, been a beautifully organized collection of shelves (the cabinet used to be a medicine cabinet in a hospital, built of oak, with narrow upper shelves and a base of deep proportions with a zinc mixing shelf).  It has been so beautifully organized, in fact, that I scarcely see it any more—it doesn't excite my imagination the way the rows of folded fabrics did in the beginning.  So all the fabrics came down for a good look-through.  I found fabrics there that I had used in the 70s and 80s when I first began quilting.  Dated?  Some are probably worth big bucks, now (*smile*)!  Especially the scraps from the clothes Mother made for us and herself when we were children.  Some really screaming "Mod" prints.

And there are the country flowers and hearts.  Small prints, the sort of thing to make doll's clothes from.  Might come in handy later on . . . but if I said this the first time, I would open the door to the merest shuffling things around, getting rid of nothing.

I meant for all of this to go to Good Will, but Jill said that Good Will did not really need our scraps, nor did they treasure little pieces of fabulous fabric the way we did.  Obviously, Jill is not the person to encourage me to continue with my clean-out.

But I know of someone who is giving her little daughter a sewing machine for Christmas, and having a couple of bags of fabric to practice cutting out and sewing and trying out all the stitches— that could be a really fun thing for a child!

Meanwhile, I kept two small boxes of bits and pieces, as I never use very large pieces of anything.  Only two boxes!  In a pile on the floor are things for projects— curtains for the studio, covers for the ironing boards and presser, some old clothes for Bethy to play dress-up in (REALLY old, some of these) . . .

My embroidery thread needed to be out where I could see it better.  So, I dragged drawers of it into the light and spilled it into a huge  wooden bowl.  Now I don't have to stop and open drawers and work with my color-organized bobbins to find a thread.  I can engage in the most soothing of occupations:  just fingering the bowl of beautiful threads and stitching.  No point to this stitching, no design, simply the in and out of the needle in the fabric, watching the line of stitch develop across the linen.  It can be good stitching, or it can be bad.  There is no standard here.  I stitch for the sheer love of the stitches.  When I'm done, I feel better, I can toss the stitching away or I can keep it (mostly it is tossed), and I move on to the next thing on my list.  I liken this to visiting a Day Spa for a short pick-me-up, but without having to dress and leave the house.

Then on to the fabrics or the "Surprise!" bags that have been hiding in corners, some for very, very long times.  An examination of the contents, some soulful delineation of the useful and the never-to-be-used-again, and, voiles!  A teeny-weeny bit more space!

Doing this not-so-difficult job makes me feel better.  If I was in the house sleeping on the sofa or whining in my chair by the fireplace, I would not accomplish anything but I would continue to think about all the things I was not getting done.  It is that horrible Puritan Work Ethic that spoils everything—even a nice opportunity for a lie-in on a rainy day.

A Little Housekeeping in the Studio

That title is misleading.  I don't know how to do a little of anything!  I took one corner and began to work on it.  While the optimum way to clean is to take everything out and only put back what you want or need (or suddenly find a place for) there is just no possible way I can do that— not if I plan to survive and drag it all back in again.

There were a lot of choices of messy places, but after careful consideration, I started with the fabric cabinet.  The cabinet is very old, a seven foot tall oak thing that was originally in a hospital in North Georgia.  I've removed the six doors and have fabric (mostly fat quarters) on the upper shelves.

The lower part, also doorless, now houses my work (in plastic flat boxes), two crates of silks, and a large collection of scraps of cottons, and some odd weaves in larger pieces.  The scraps are useful when I need just a little piece of something.  Since I work in small scale, I don't need a great deal of anything, but I do need a lot of those anythings.

Going through the scraps to put them all in one large, rectangular basket, I found pieces from the blouses my mother used to sew.  She made all her clothes, and often re-created things she had seen in magazines or shops rather than make the purchase of a new item.  It was the challenge that inspired her.  She taught us to sew when we were little, and I was wearing clothes I made myself when I was in high school.  What a blessing to have learned that skill so young, and to have been taught by such an excellent seamstress.

Today I need to tidy things a bit— there is so often more mess from a large, serious clean-up than when I started— and take back the table tops!  Carol Warren is coming tomorrow to direct the hanging of the pictures in the house (no one on the planet does this as well as Carol; her house is like a very smart up-scale gallery), and we will, of course, visit the studio.  I would hate to hang my head in shame over its scattered, day-to-day condition.  Other parts of the studio I will sort and tidy on next week, until I've worked my way completely around the room.  I need to have one more piece of furniture to completely hold everything without the nine boxes stacked on a rickety shelf, but finding that is an ongoing project.  By the time I find it, however, I may have used up all the knitting yarn I had planned to store in it!

Today also offers me a chance to go to the grocery store!  I have progressed so well at walking that I can even make the rounds of the Kroger and Publix markets, and Charles' meager selections are now supplemented by interesting things to eat.  Charles is a good man, but he has yet to fully comprehend that there is life beyond meat, potatoes, and ice cream.

Independence Day 2010

We are being quiet here. Charles has made a Vanilla Pudding (of which he is a little too proud), and I am in the studio (duuuuuh, did I really need to say that?). I've been going through boxes again. Today, I have two large empty boxes to be removed. Some of the contents were in the wrong place and needed to be put with others of a like nature. Some were destined for the landfill. But a nice little collection is going to a friend who is interested in niblets and nibs. She uses them in spinning wonderfully lumpy yarns for her knitting and felting projects. When I go to a knitting yarn store, I always wonder what people see in plain yarn. It is like plain yogurt to me-- in need of sprucing up.

Anyway, whether I have Rules Of The Studio or not, I am two boxes closer to being sorted out.

It may be that sorting is not a one-time thing. When a person moves a studio, they move their perspective and, often, their support group. Re-thinking past projects, how they were carried out, and wondering if those techniques are still interesting is well-spent time. I thought and re-thought the dyeing process until I knew I would not like to do that messy sort of thing again without a dedicated kitchen for the sole purpose of mixing chemicals and creating dye pots. Each time I open a cupboard (and there are a number of cupboards lined up against the walls) I come across another package of materials I collected to experiment with a process. Eventually, I'll be sure enough to either use them again or find a home for them.

And that is a sort of Independence Day isn't it?

How the studio came to be

Tonight I am going to bite the bullet and add pictures to the blog.  A blog without photos is like a day without chocolate, too blah to contemplate.

The studio is the remodeled detached garage at the upper back of the house.  The previous owner of our new home, Dennis, originally built the garage to house his two antique cars.  It is about 22 feet square.  I needed a little more space, so we took the two single garage doors out, including the wall between them, replaced all with an overhead beam to hold things together, and began framing in the little bump-out addition.  A raised floor was also put in.  The picture above shows the work in progress.

This photo is  from the inside looking to the front of the building, the framing done, waiting for sheet rocking.  Dennis, who is also our builder, found the five 6-foot windows that make this wall so striking.  Because the studio is away from the street, on the upper level of the sloping yard, and in a wooded neighborhood, it is rather private, so I am still of two minds about hanging curtains there.

This next view is of the completed sheet rock, before it was trimmed out, primed, and painted.  There are two small windows (right photo) on the wall facing the lower terrace of the backyard and the house.  Despite this, it still left the back corner of the studio a little dark, but we solved the problem by adding two sky light for maximum natural light.

Bookcases are a big deal with me, so we had the top half of the back wall made into nine sections of bookcases with movable shelving.  The cases do not go all the way to the floor so I am able to move furniture around as I make different uses of the space.  Dennis trimmed the space out beautifully and painted everything in Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace in a satin finish.  How the light bounces!  The floors are plywood over the subflooring, tongue-and-groove, with three coats of urethane exterior varnish with white pigment added to it.  Even the air conditioning unit is white!  The only color will come from the elements of the studio itself.

In the center of the room are sets of strip lighting and two power cords that are ceiling hung for convenience in working at tables there.  

You can see the bookcases, and to the left, between the two small windows, is an old wall cabinet that was in my dad's shop.  Riaze, one of Dennis' carpenters, did a nice job of sanding

and re-painting it for me and adding open side

 shelves.

We were away when the room was finished, and my husband and I came home, eager to see the space.  When we opened the door, it was a shock to our senses, because everything was so pure white that we momentarily lost our sense of "up" and "down."  It was like walking into a totally negative space where gravity and walls and ceilings did not exist.  After a moment my world righted, but for that instant, I was in a white free fall.

I began filling it that evening with boxes of books, fabric, paper, thread-- all good things for making fiber art were stored in those boxes.  All the furniture has not come yet, several large pieces are still in the old studio space in Knoxville.  Unfortunately, I will have to wait 

for the movers to bring them (which means the Knoxville house has to sell). To make the materials accessible I have installed temporary plastic shelving for a large number of boxes.  This called for careful labeling.  Still, I cannot become distracted and leave things out while I work away at a table, because the boxes are a bother to navigate, and I trip over things regularly.

 

Since I have been away from regular studio hours the last several months, I dove right in.  I had a lovely weekend class with Margaret Cogswell in Asheville through the Cloth Fiber Workshop, and I finished the second of two pieces I began there.  And worked on a project for the Freestyle group back in Knoxville.  And enjoyed re-discovering old studio journals and sketchbooks that had been packed away for months and months.  The books came out of their dozens of boxes, and suddenly the wide-open white space is filling with all that color and texture that excites me.

Home at last!!!

So, you see, Cynthia, maybe I CAN do this blog, after all!

Packing the old studio

Packing up the old studio is a heart wrenching task.  There are places here that simply NEED the studio things in place to give the rooms a sense of spirit.  

Charles, my husband, has worked like a galley slave.  He enjoys sorting the boxes and furniture and putting them on the truck.  He is extremely organized (there are all sorts of jokes I could make here, but not after he's done such a nice job of things), and has packed  the trailer Jordan so graciously loaned us, the bed of my pick-up truck, the back seat of my truck, as well as his Camry.  We look like the Clampetts on the move.  We leave with the just-rising birds tomorrow morning for Woodstock, and I will spend the next weeks organizing the studio, or at least I will move things in their first space and see if that really works or not.  How will 950 square feet of "stuff" squeeze into 500 square feet?  I think I am about to find out.

The larger pieces of studio furniture are not coming yet.  I have to really be a good girl to get that job done.  The drafting table (gift of Sandra and Lynn Beck), small desk, and antique cupboard (which is where most of the fabrics are stored) and tall, thin chest of drawers for storing linen yardage-- these things need better backs than ours to heft them out of the studio.  As with all things, now, I wait and try to practice patience to see what plan unfolds for me.

I haven't seen the studio for a week, now, and our builder says it should be finished when we get there tomorrow.  I will take photos before we bring anything into the studio-- this will be the last opportunity to see all the walls and floor before I start to cover them up!  And maybe I'll have figured out how to add photos when I post my next blog.

In the beginning . . .

Cynthia Patrick has encouraged me, by her example, to blog.  I have not thought I had the time for this, so I'll give it a shot.

I am a fiber artist.  If I don't create something regularly, I get surly and difficult to live with.  I also use dangling participles and split infinitives when I'm creative-less, so you can see I need to get to my studio.  SOON.  The problem is this:  the detached garage that was given to me to convert to studio space is moving slowly, slowly, toward the finish.  First the foundations had to be dug out and waterproofed, the two doors removed and a beam put across the whole of the opening to support everything.  Then the front had to be bumped out three feet beyond the front wall, a raised floor put in, and along with insulation and sheetrock, HVAC, lights and wall outlets (these outlets are absolutely EVERYWHERE, including a pair of pull-downs in the ceiling).  And what would a studio be unless bookcases were built?  Lots of books, so all along the back wall, about half-way up, so I can use the wall space for tables and ironing board and lots of et cetera.  I had everything painted white, so the floor was put in last of all, because it is also white.  Yes, white!  Painted with three coats of a urethane outdoor enamel with white pigment in it.

This all came about because we are moving back to the Atlanta area from Knox County, Tennessee, where we have lived since 2001-02.  We moved there when my husband retired from the Cobb County school system so we could take care of his dad, whose memory was failing.  It is two years since his passing, now, and we've bought the house in Woodstock (September of 08), only 3.5 miles from our son and his family, and we're playing the waiting game as we try to sell the Knoxville house.  Meanwhile, the studio in the basement of the Knoxville house is an eyesore and doesn't encourage anyone to want to live here, so it is being emptied, and everything stored in the sun room of the "new" place, waiting for the studio to be completed.  The room is about to split its seams.  Hence the conversion of the detached garage.

The hardest thing about leaving Knoxville (Powell, really) is my stitching friends in the Freestyle Embroidery Group, an interest group of the Knoxville Chapter of Embroiderers' Guild of America.  The dozen women there are incredibly talented and very happy to share their talents with others.  They are an unusual and rare group.  It is difficult to get back for the meetings, now that I have a half-live in both places, but I really try to work my schedule so I can make the trip back and forth.

We only have a computer in Knoxville, so blog entries will be scanty until the house is sold and everything is moved to Woodstock, we get our cable line installed there, and my son, Jordan, sets things up for me.  Right now I'm getting ready to travel to Asheville for a class with Margaret Cogswell this weekend.  Cannot wait!  I love her clean style, have met her at her Penland studio, and am impressed by her seriousness and vision.  I hope to gain insight into studio journaling and developing ideas from the process.  I love my studio journals, would be devastated to lose them.  They represent years, decades of thinking on paper.

Hope to be able to keep this going.