What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 

Heritage Medallion, 60" by 60 Nina-Marie Sayre, 1996

Well, you can imagine what I thought, when my rug hooking teacher, Cindi Gay announced the next big topic was designing with geometrics.  I mean as a 35-year quilter, geometrics is kinda like our bread and butter, right?  Apparently, some rug hookers shy away from geometrics because the rug police said your lines must be straight, edges perfect (hard to do with fluffy wool!).  That totally reminds me of the quilt police judging if your points match and your seams are press properly.  (huge eye roll)

Her design directions were very loose ...

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YOU TELL 'EM, SALLY!

 The doldrums have finally diminished, and all God's people said Amen.   Unless you live off a Great Lake you really can't get a sense of what it's like to go weeks - yes weeks  - without sun.  We'll get a sunny afternoon, and I always go for a long drive, it feels so good.  Today was not such a day though.  The last sun we saw was hmmmmmm Saturday and this morning we awoke to inches of ice.  Lovely.

But...my pile of last year's Art Page-A-Day calendar paintings were sitting there just ...

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Peppermint Reindeer by Laura Heini

 This week in my spare time, I started thinking about decorating for Christmas.  To tell you the truth, I'm not all that much into decorating, mostly because it takes so much time.  What I do like is designing the composition of the decoration scheme.  Yes, you read that right.  Your decorating has a composition just like your quilts.  One thing I've learned, is that all the elements of design I've been studying over the years can be used in a myriad of ways....like planning your Christmas decorations. 

But this post is ...

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 So my last week of traveling got cancelled since I finally caught the dreaded Covid.  It took me 3.5 years so that is another thing I can mark off my bucket list!  Luckily, with the last variant, it amounted to little more than a cold.  It did disrupt my sleeping and eating though which seems to me so strange.So between those two things, I'm a bit of a mess.   It's also kept me out of the studio for two weeks which is a bummer.  Because of that...I am re-running a post I did on value ...

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Houses, Mabel Hewit, 1936

 

This week I went down the rabbit hole they call Pinterest,  only to rediscover my love of woodcut art. Woodcut is a relief printing process in which knives and other tools are used to carve a design into the surface of a wooden block. The raised areas that remain after the block has been cut are inked and printed, while the recessed areas that are cut away do not retain ink, and will remain blank in the final print.  It is a very positive/negative area kind of printing!  I always thought woodcut printing was interesting ...

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Genesis 1:3,4 Nina-Marie Sayre Radiating Lines

 

Am I the only one that finds Pinterest the mother of all rabbit holes? Whenever I'm on there, I find something else that captures my interest.  And down the rabbit hole, I go!  That's where this whole obsession with composition types began.  Long ago, I found a graphic from a book, Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Alwin Payne.  Payne (1883-1947).  Payne was an American painter known mainly for his work of Western US landscapes.  This graphic (you can download a copy here) really changed the way I thought about ...

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 So it's that time of year again...time to buy my new Art Page-A-Day Gallery Calendar.  I've had one sitting on my desk for the last 10 years.  In fact, every day when I sit down to work, the first thing do is change the page so I can see what the "Art-of-the-Day" will be.  Throughout the day, I will glance back at the calendar noticing new things each time.  It's fun.  At the end of the year, I always go through picking out the days I want to save for inspiration.  

This year, however, I thought ...

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 So last week,  Michelle commented, "It’s funny, I’m aware of having different feelings about a piece, but I hadn’t really put together why."

  I thought WOW!  she gets it.  That is precisely why I do blog posts like this.  Improvisationally piecing is getting more and more popular.  It can grow organically, but it doesn't necessarily have to.  You can go into it with a loose plan in mind like a simple line drawing and a tone you want to set and then go from there.  I remember the day I finally realized that abstract design wasn ...

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 When I first started quilting, it was all about the basics.  How to get a consistent scant 1/4" seam.  How to get your points to match.  How to get the right tension etc, etc.  As I moved on to designing my own work (and it didn't take long), I realized that the design elements were what was really important.  And I didn't know them....at all....funny how they don't include them in a BS in Engineering.  So little by little, I've been studying them.  This week is line.

Oh good!  I know what a ...

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I am traveling this week so it gives me a good chance to procrastinate on finishing Tessa's face.  I'm so close to getting that piece done that it has me thinking about the quilting.  I tend to do three kinds of quilting on an art piece...lines that are essential for the composition....lines that are essential for the texture...lines that hold together the three layers.  

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 So last week, I introduced tangents in composition.  They are basically where two lines touch in an annoying visual way.  The reason, I think this is so important is so many times we create a composition that feels almost right butttttttttt not quite.  We then start deconstructing the whole composition to find the problem.  A lot of times, it's simply that the composition contains tangent lines and it's throwing off your eye.   

In a search online I found some befores and afters.

Before

After

Notice the before feels all squished together.   The line of the pan becomes ...

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 First I want to apologize for messing up the link-up from last Friday.  When I said I was suffering from insomnia, I wasn't kidding.  THEN my doctor got me on new medication and  I end up sleeping most of the weekend, I didn't notice that the link-up was not right till late Sunday night.  So again, I apologize. Thank you so much for all your kind words and comments.  I think I'm on the road to recovery.

In that light, let me see if I can manage something readable this week!  Recently, I created a composition that ...

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#1

My gosh, a moment to breathe!  Believe it or not, in my retail world Spring Rush is more hectic than Christmas.  A Spring Rush as the country is starting to open is that much more hectic.   I take call after call which all start out in the same way..."Thank You for Calling My Company, I'm Nina-Marie how can I help you?" It's a familiar pattern but after that you're never quite sure where the call is going to go!  (And since my customers are all about 75-100 years old, I'm sure you understand...grin ...

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Symmentry, Framing, Rules of Thirds, Balance, Negative Space!!

 Recently I decided to catch up on my episodes of Quilting Arts and started watching Episode 2 of season 26, Natural Elements.  In it, Denise Oyama Miller and Nancy Ryan, showed their methods on how to make a confetti quilt or snippet quilt.  They started with their example and I thought, "WoW, how did they do THAT?"  Then they took 15 min and proceeded to show how easy it is.  Well, it is and

Focal Point, Rule of Thirds, Balance,NegSpace

it isn't.  

I've been intrigued by this technique ever ...

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So the Spring Spruce of my studio continues this week.  How come with this type of project, things always look worse before they look better?  Right now there are boxes every where, shelves pulled apart and barely room to move.  UGH!!  On the bright side, I've been finding things I've stashed in there.  Among them is my collection of old Art of the Day Calendar sheets that I've been saving for inspiration.  I was just about to chuck   file them away, when I thought of a good use!!

COMPOSITION STUDIES

I mean doesn't everyone stare at ...

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