For those of you in the area of Alexandra, Louisiana, the SAQA Sightlines Exhibition will be on view until February 25. Come see my piece, Traveling Companions on Life’s Journey, and the other thirteen fabulous installations in this exhibition:
Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 10am-4pm
FOOTBALL NOT YOUR THING?
Come join the staff at The Nimble Thimble on Super Ball Sunday, February 5th at 2:00 pm
for wine and cheese and a trunk show of my work from all three books.
19 Putnam Ave, Port Chester, NY
Come see the work, hear about my process and ask questions.
Books will be available and, of course, I will be happy to autograph a book for you.
I will also answer any questions you may have about upcoming classes at The Nimble Thimble.
I am sure it will be a most enjoyable afternoon.
And if you are into football, you will still be home in time to see the Giants win!
Please RSVP with the Nimble Thimble by Feb. 3 at 914-934-2934.
The store will be open that afternoon for your shopping convenience.
DON’T FORGET TO RSVP SO YOU WON’T BE LEFT OUT OF THIS FUN AFTERNOON. Space is limited.
Hope to see you there.
Ellen Linder made a great comment on yesterday’s blog post about size and scale–that the size you work is also either aided or hindered by the print scale of the fabrics you use.
If you have a lot of small scale prints in your stash, working large will make all those little patterns look dinky and boring. However, on the other hand, if you have lots of very large scale prints in your stash, working small will be very frustrating. It is great to be able to fussy cut an area from a large scale fabric to do just what you need, but if you wanted the pattern or implied texture to show, you may miss out if you work too small.
Look at the print scale in these works:
this is a relatively large piece (for me, anyway) which means the scale of the prints is rather small. Make particular note of the turquoise print at the edge of the vessel….
the same fabric looks like a larger scale in chairs of this smaller piece.
What about the black and white floral fabric in the center of this drum, in a closeup from a larger piece:
here it is again in the tree bark:
or the black and white fabric behind her face
and the same fabric as the sidewalk in a larger piece
and keep in mind I never work too large, imagine the scale of these prints in a piece four times the size.
Thanks for the excellent point, Ellen!
I had a wonderful surprise this morning, when my copy of The Best of Quilting Arts, your ultimate resource for art quilt techniques and inspiration arrived on my doorstep.
Pokey Bolton of Quilting Arts Magazine has put together a really wonderful collection of art quilt techniques that cover everything from the basics to surface design, people and animals, recycled and natural materials, embellishment and mixed media. It is a beautiful book and I am thrilled to say that my chapter on “creating figures in fabric” is included–as well as my piece Twilight Time as the opening to the section on people.
Just like the magazine, every section includes easy to follow instructions. A great comprehensive guide to all things art quilt!
Apparently, every now and then Amazon deeply discounts a book for an unspecified period of time. Right now they are offering my second book, Photo-inspired Art Quilts for only $12.00. That includes the book and the instructional DVD. This is less than half the cover price! Buy Photo-inspired Art Quilts for only $12.00 here.
If you are not familiar with this book, it outlines my techniques for creating an art quilt from a photograph. I share all my working methods, from choosing a photo and cropping for more impact, creating a full scale pattern and how to use that pattern to create a fabric collage that is sewn together using raw edge machine applique. The book contains lots of information on fabric choice, the importance of color and value, and finishing techniques.
Nancy Zieman (you may know her from her long running PBS series “Sewing with Nancy”) hosts the accompanying DVD, which has video of me at work, and shows lots of my pieces pictured in the book.
So if you have been waiting to buy this book for yourself, or want to purchase it as a gift this holiday season, take advantage of this very special price. I have no idea how long it will last, so don’t wait!
If you have visited this blog or site in the past few days, you will have noticed a change in both the look and the content. I have made the books page more concise and provided links to Amazon for the purchase of books; I have expanded the information about workshops, and added a page currently called voice coaching which is for those of you who want assistance in developing a consistent and cohesive body of work. Please look over the site and let me know what you think.
The gallery pages are still in work, and in the next few days will include all my new work from 2011. I hope you like the changes and will visit the blog and site often.
As discussed in a recent post, color can be used to direct the viewer to focus on a certain part of your composition. Color can also effectively set a mood.
Every color has a personality, can establish a mood, and can conjure certain emotions. This is true not just for quilts, but for clothing, home decorating, and advertising–anywhere color is used. The world is filled with colors, and each and every one of them elicits a feeling in humans. We are all drawn to certain colors because of the way they make us feel.
Every color has a temperature. Blues and greens are cool colors, they conjure up feelings of tranquility–of water and grass and the serenity of nature. They will establish a mood that is calm and restful.
Reds and oranges, on the other hand, are warm colors–passionate, the color of fire; hot and exciting. Yellow is the color of sunshine, the more orange is added to the yellow, the hotter the color temperature. A quilt in these colors will be bold and energizing.
Purple, being made of both a warm and cool color can swing both ways. If the composition of the purple is 50% red and 50% blue, it will serve equally well as either a warm or cool color. But shift the percentages and it will lean in one direction–a bluer purple (more blue in the mix) is cooler, a warmer purple (more red in the mix) is warmer.
Using white will make other colors in your quilt look crisp and clear; black will intensify the colors around it, and beige make your quilt romantic and feminine–and will work better with grayer colors–like dusty rose, lilac and soft sage green.
The other component is saturation. Saturation is like dye–if you put a piece of white fabric into blue dye for only a few minutes, the resulting color will be a nice light blue. Leave it in a long time and you get a deep rich blue–or a color that is highly saturated. Saturation is different from value, it is the intensity of color.
If you add white to a saturated color, it gets lighter. Add black and it gets darker. Add both white and black and the color becomes “dusty” or grayer. The grayer a color becomes; the less saturation it has.
For juvenile quilts, primary colors are simple and straightforward. Using highly saturated red, yellow and blue with the addition of complementary green, orange and purple will result in a quilt with lots of energy and visual excitement.
On the other hand, baby quilts, where energy and excitement is not the goal, do better in a single color range like yellow, blue, or pink. Keeping these colors lighter and unsaturated, mixing them with white without complementary color accents will result in a quilt that is soft and soothing.
Look at these two water quilts.
Here the colors are highly saturated, they give the impression of a hot sunny day in a tropical climate. The addition of the yellow brings more “sunshine” and brightness to this quilt. Mixing it with its complement, purple, makes it really stand out.
In this one, however
The colors are grayer, less saturated, and set a mood of a foggy day. Sticking to only cooler blue tones, with no complementary accents, sets a mood that is naturally cooler than the quilt above.
Here, the hot colors extenuate the movement of the woman’s arms, to set a mood that is exuberant. Even though there is blue in the background, it is highly saturated. Compare this to the more somber mood set by these colors:
If this had been executed using highly saturated warm tones, it would not have set the same mood as the man himself. Look at this example, which set a cooler mood due to color:
Now look at what happens when I take that image into Photoshop and increase the saturation of the colors, and warm them up…
Changes the mood completely. Makes me wonder why that guy is wearing a winter hat.
What is the mood here:
Cool tones, grayer saturation, just a spot of warm color at the face for focal point. Does this quilt say warm and happy to you?
The depiction of a face is no different–color can support the mood and expression. A face does not need to be done in accurate flesh tones to be readily recognizable as a face, just like a black and white photo, if the values are correct the brain understands the color shift. Here, the face of the woman is fleshy and happy. Using peachy tones (which are not realistic) make her look happy and healthy:
In this next example, however, the face of the woman is sad, using peachy tones would have been a contradiction. By using green tones, which are also not at all realistic, we set a mood that feels sickly and depressed–which is better suited to her expression, and therefore amplifies it.
Whether you make traditional, updated traditional or art quilts, it is important to understand how the colors you choose and where you put them in your quilt will impact your final results. Understanding these principles will help you plan and execute the quilt you envision.
OK, I know. He is a goose, not a turkey. But I don’t have an artwork of a turkey so he will have to do!
Enjoy your holiday!
It has been a while since my last post, something a reader reminded me of today. I am glad there are some or you out there who do miss me when I don’t post. So here I am, back at the computer.
Several things have been keeping me busy lately. First and foremost has been a renovation in the house which meant noise and commotion and trying to keep the dog from going crazy with all the strangers in and out of the house all day. We redid the bathroom, and made some changes to the bedroom. Like a quilter, I found a way to combine patterns in the bathroom. I went Moroccan, here is a photo….
I have always loved Moroccan design, and the way patterns are mixed. This is my take on Moroccan, although the tiles do come from Morocco, as does the lantern. I can’t wait to soak in the tub!
Also, I have been given the great honor of being a featured artist in a book now being prepared on art quilts, which has meant over the summer I made some new work and now must get it professionally photographed. That will be tomorrow in NYC, but I still haven’t decided which pieces I want to submit to the book. I guess I will photograph more than I need and then make the decisions. Exciting, but stressful.
Finally, although the house has been in total chaos (while the floor in the bedroom was being refinished, we even moved our bed into the studio) I am back in the studio and working again. Here is what I am doing now:
Notwithstanding my recent decision to work smaller, this piece is fairly large (for me). It will probably measure about five feet wide by about 3 1/2 feet high when it is done. Another figure will be in the front right corner, she will be almost life sized. I wanted that sense of looking at someone looking at someone looking at something–like those mirrors in department stores that seem to go on forever. The big dilemma will be how to handle the quilting–one of the reasons I have been working smaller lately is for exactly what will need a solution here–I like that broad expanse of white and would prefer to leave it without stitching. But it is too large an area to leave unquilted, as it will pucker and stretch. Working smaller eliminates that problem for the most part. But this just asked to be large, so I will make decisions as I get there.
For those of you in the area, I will be giving a workshop and talk at the Northern Star Guild in Somers next week, and a class from the new book 3-Fabric Quilts at City Quilter in NYC later in the month.
thanks for keeping me on my toes!
Some time back I shared my negative experience with FedEx losing a submission package. I was not impressed at the time with what they call customer service, they all seem trained to say “I am very sorry” but not to actually do anything.
So having noticed on my calendar on July 26 that they would be issuing a check to reimburse me for the cost of the shipping (nothing else, they don’t seem to think anything has any value, not to mention all the hours I spent on the phone and having to replace the contents and sending it another way). But to date no check, so I called again.
Call #1 the customer service rep (after telling me how sorry she was) filled out all the paperwork with me on the phone and gave me a claim number, telling me the check should arrive in five business days. Great, getting somewhere. Then I got an email which contained the claim form and nothing filled in but the location from which I had sent the package and the recipient address. So I called again.
Call #2 told me I hadn’t filed a claim, that number wasn’t a claim number, I had to speak to the claim department, and they would connect me. I was on hold for claims for over seven minutes, so I called back. Call #3, on hold for five minutes. Call #4 I decided not to let them connect me with claims, I decided to go over the information with the rep.
Got sent to the billing department who insisted they absolutely MUST know if I had paid cash or used a credit card. Why did it matter? She said the package cost was listed as $0. So clearly it didn’t go through and I was never charged on my credit card. Not so. Ok, then we issued a credit to your card. Not so. Do you have all your statements in front of you m’am? Oh, sure, I keep them with me all the time. “I am sure if you take it up with your credit card you will find that either they never charged you or you have gotten the credit.” Well, which one? She didn’t seem to care, but she was SO SORRY.
So I called the credit card company. Thank goodness I used AMEX. The agent there told me it sounded vindictive to him, and I had to agree. Even though FedEx had been paid, and no credit had been issued from them, AMEX was issuing a credit to me immediately and they would take it up with FedEx–withholding other payments, if necessary. Now THAT is customer service.
So the EX at the end remains the same, but if it has an AM in front, you can count on them for top notch customer service. If it is preceded by FED, go to UPS or the Post Office. You will be glad you did.
