Collaboration

I've been creating daily 6 inch fabric art squares for 400 days. In 2015, I made 250 squares and today is Day 150 in 2016.  I have written 20 weekly articles in my Studio Notes blog in 2016.  I love both of these activities and will continue but sometimes you need to make things a little exciting and change it up. My current new project is all about Collaborations. The idea for collaborations just kind of happened to me.

In April 2016, I got a comment on Instagram that someone had posted one of my daily squares on their Instagram account called @quiltylovely.  (For all the Instagram accounts I mention in this article, just click on the highlighted name and you will be directed to their Instagram account to check them out for yourself on your laptop or phone even if you do not have an account.) This was exciting and shared my art with a whole new group of people.  Then I realized there are many sites like this on Instagram which curate material from other people’s Instagram accounts and then posts it on their account.  The curators always give credit to the original artists. I only follow the curated art accounts but I am sure there is a whole world of Instagram accounts based on thousands of topics. This is where the search function of Instagram becomes very useful.

In particular, two curated sites on Instagram that I have followed are @DoItForTheProcess and @CarveOutTimeForArt.  At first, I was just drawn to the posts because I really connected with all the artists they selected to share.  I also like the idea of focusing on the process and making time for art.  These two topics are basically what I write about in this blog every week. Then @CarveOutTimeForArt posted one of my daily squares from my Fire series. So exciting!

Another collaboration happened when a fellow quilt blogger, Debbie Jeske, @quilterstable featured my article What is Creative Flow and How do We Get There? in her fantastic newsletter, The Scrap Basket in April 2016. Several people signed up for my Studio Notes blog weekly articles based on reading my weekly article in her newsletter. I also had way more traffic to my website that week based on her article.

Daily 6 inch square from my Fire series which I sent to fellow Gee's Bend quilt fan.

Next, a fellow Instagramer @jimitick sent me a piece of his enso circle calligraphy. We had messaged about our mutual love of Gee’s Bend Alabama quilters. He kindly sent along a small quilt square made by a Gee’s Bend quilter that he got on a visit to Gee’s Bend, Alabama.  Swoon. I have it on my desk so I can see it regularly.  As a thank you, I sent him one of my daily squares ready to hang.  I made sure to send him one that he had liked on Instagram.

This collaboration stuff was getting interesting.  Up to this point, I had been rather passive and all this collaborating started happening to me. The next step was a natural one.  I reached out to someone I found on Instagram who is interested in supporting creatives to make more art.  Her name is Serena and you can find her on Instagram at  @sirensfinds and on her website sirensfinds.com. We are in the planning stages of doing a joint blog post and other exciting stuff.

 I also have been thinking about reaching out to fellow artists for art swaps. I am just amazed by all the wonderful creative people and their art on Instagram.  Collecting art is a recent idea that really has me daydreaming about it.  A fellow Instagramer @thewendywolf got me thinking about it when she posted pictures of art she has collected from friends and other artists.

About this time, another fellow quilt artist @wyndedyer who I have been following on Instagram for months posted on Instagram asking if anyone was interested in swapping art.  Again, serendipity? Or just clarifying your ideas puts them into motion? Anyway, I reached out to her and we will be doing an art swap this summer. I am making a pillow cover for her with 9 of my 6 inch squares.  She is making me one of her wonderful tarp quilts for us to hang outside and enjoy on our patio. Yes, I said tarp quilts.  She cuts up tarps in a variety of colors and sews them back together.  They are wonderful! I love her design sense. Plus they are waterproof.

My block for Merel.

Lastly, a friend of mine on Instagram @merel_birdblocks has had some serious health issues.  A fellow quilter Hillary, @entropyalwayswins organized a group quilt project where anyone could make a 8 inch quilt square of a bird in flight.  She and a helpful crew of others will assemble, quilt and mail the completed quilt to Merel.  Quilters have big hearts.  I had the pleasure of making Merel's bird out of one of my daily squares from the Sky series.  

So why am I writing about this?  Sometimes as creators we can get so busy and preoccupied with our own art. Collaborating is a way to get outside of yourself. It enlarges our view of the world. Whatever you give, comes back a hundred fold.  But isn’t that how it always goes.

I have only started to scratch the surface of finding more ways to collaborate. Good luck in finding your own ways. 

The Sky playlist on Spotify can be found HERE.  For each of my series I come up with a music playlist based on the theme.  This Sky playlist has one of my favorite songs, Blue Sky by The Allman Brothers and the great album by Jackson Browne Late for the Sky.

Unique vs. Universal

As an artist, you spend most of your time developing your unique vision, your unique way of making art. You follow what inspires you to keep creating.  I have been doing this for 18 years with fabric art.  A few people on Instagram have said they can tell which Instagram post is my art in a group hashtag such as #AbstractArt, etc with hundreds of Instagram posts a day.  I was happy to hear that I have a unique style that is recognizable to others as my art.  My focus is self expression, pushing boundaries of what I have done in the past, not trying to fit in or make what is culturally popular.  Sometimes being unique and following your own path can leave you feeling too much like a unique snowflake.

Sometimes I feel at odds with this unique approach when I teach private clients or group classes.  I'm obviously not teaching them exactly what I do, because that really wouldn't work.  Sometimes I think maybe I just shouldn't teach because no one is going to really get it or want to do what I do.  But then I found a super student who I have been working with since January 2016.  She made me realize I can teach the process of how you start a project, organize the steps, and get to the completion.  These are universal concepts to any creative project.  I have been able to teach the tips and tricks I've learned over the past 18 years of designing and sewing fabric art by showing her through each step of the process.  She said I am a wonderful teacher!  We have meet regularly while she made a queen-size quilt as a gift to her daughter. Yes, this woman has courage to tackle such a large project as a beginner.

You see at first, I thought I had failed because she decided to start with a quilt pattern sold by a well-known quilter. The kit comes with the fabric and a diagram of how you cut each shape and then sew the quilt top together.  It is lovely.  But I am someone who stopped using patterns almost a decade ago.  I am all about the freedom of expression in art, not the rule-following quilt police who stress you out about perfect seams and exact measurements.  I thought maybe people like the clearly-defined rules and control of knowing what it will look like at the end of the project. 

Bits and Pieces of 2015. Nine daily squares from the series.

Maybe my approach was too specific to just me. My approach starts with an inspiration for a series, like the Sky series I am currently working on.  The color palette comes from the white of the clouds, blue of the sky, and purples, oranges and yellows of the sunset and sunrise.  The design is based on the horizontal trending of clouds and sunrise/sunset colors.  This is what I mean by process-based design. Literally, I cut horizontal strips of fabric in my color palette and sew them together to make a 6-inch daily square. A recent addition to this process is the inclusion of small pieces of fabric sewn together as one horizontal strip.  I am trying to get the complicated colors and shapes of the kind of sunset or sunrise that makes us stop in our tracks and stare.  Most of my process-based designs are based on breaking down landscape scenes into their elemental geometric shapes.  Other types of  process design can be more geometric like my series Bits and Pieces of 2015 where I used left over fabric from last years series and sewed them to a dark grey fabric with a vertical theme.  Just pure geometry really.

The good news is that my super student said, of course, she wants to continue classes with me and her next project will be a process-based, free-form design. This has got me thinking.

Sometimes you have to know the rules before you can break them.  

Many abstract painters were classically trained and then followed the path to abstract expressionism. They had to know what the rules were to break them.

For all my students, I want the vision for their art to be their own.  I don't want to teach people how to be like me.  I want to encourage people to be like themselves.  It takes practice and dedication to find your unique expression.  But there are some universal processes and techniques I can share to help my students on their way.  Hopefully I can make it more efficient for my students and then they do not have to stumble around in the dark as much as I did starting out.  So I'm grateful for my super student because I realize that I do have something to offer besides just making my own art.

 

The Four Elements series

When I participated in the 100 day project in 2015, I made four 30 inch quilts that encompassed all the daily squares from the entire project sewn in the daily consecutive order.  I display them in my house as one large square with just a few inches of space between them.  I like that style of hanging four pieces together so much that when I contemplated participating in the 100 day project for 2016, I decided I wanted to have four pieces that went together well so I could hang them also as one larger square.

When I was thinking about the number 4 for four pieces, the idea of the Four Elements just popped into my thinking.  I must admit when my children were little we watched the Avatar cartoon series which divided their culture into people with special powers over the four elements:  Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.  I wanted to mix it up and use my own terminology so I decided on Fire, Sky, Water and Earth.  I guess I wanted Sky because it's really hard to think about colors of the Air.  The vision of sky opened up all sorts of colors of the sunrise, sunset, and blue skies. 

Normally, I come up with a design idea and a color idea, and I just let it unfold each day without too much thought of what the final piece will look like all together.  I just let it happen.  My main concern is to have enough variations available in the design and in the colors to make it interesting for me each day in the studio.  However, this time for the Four Elements series I actually got out my colored pencils and graph paper to draw my design ideas with color to see how the 4 pieces would look together when I hung them as a square all together. 

This process of seeing all the designs together helped me balance the design elements in all four individual series.  For the Fire series, I used hot colors of reds, oranges and yellows for the flames.  I added blue for contrast and to represent blue flames.  For the design, my only parameter was three radiating lines from the bottom of the square.  For the Sky series I am currently working on, I am using blues for the sky and purples and oranges for the sunrise and sunsets.  The design parameters are horizontal trending lines with one white line in each square to represent clouds.  I knew I needed a different design for the Water series besides horizontal lines.  I decided to go with a diagonal line design in half of the square and a solid color for the other half for the Water series.  For the Earth series, I plan on having a green horizontal line for a base representing the green surface of earth with many colored vertical strips to represent trees and flowers.  I wanted to balance the cool colors of the Sky and Water series equally amongst the Fire and Earth series. So I will have the cool color series diagonal from each other in the 4 square layout.


When I work in a series, I always like to have one or two cohesive elements.  I'm always trying to allow for my art to be spontaneous in the moment each day. One way I have been able to do that in the Fire series and in the current Sky series is by using strips of very small pieces interspersed with the solid strips. I'm finding that is my most exciting part of the design process. I plan to continue this design element through the entire four elements series as one of these cohesive elements.

By making the detailed drawing of the design on the graph paper, I learned that I can have a plan but still keep things spontaneous.  Consider doing some preliminary planning for your next project but allow room for spontaneous inspiration and go with the flow. 

The Idea Behind the Gulf Waters series

Days 76-100,  Gulf Waters,  2016.

The idea for the Gulf Waters series started with a black and white junco bird outside my window in our redbud tree in March 2016. I always imagine these birds as little nuns in black and white habits. The idea came to me to make a quilt in all black and white. My immediate concern was that I did not have enough solid black fabric. Ok . Improvise. I could expand out to grey along with the black and white. Then I realized I have loads of bright blues like Caribbean water colors. I decide to switch to blues and greys as my color palette. This is perfect since I was going to be spending time on the Gulf of Mexico in March. Hence the name of the series, Gulf Waters. Things were starting to fall into place. Next idea, I needed some color accents in each square. The question is, should I use the same color in each square or the same color family, or totally random. Hmmm. I decided on Kona cotton tomato red to contrast with the bright blues. I have always loved turquoise blue and bright red together as a color combination.

Since I was in Florida for Spring Break during this 25 days, I needed a project that I could easily hand sew with some precut strips of fabric to sew together. This meant long strips and big squares as part of the design since they would be easier to hand sew. When I travel, I bring a small sewing case for a few needles, thread and a small embroidery-size scissors along with a variety of precut fabric strips in my color palette for the series. I use a lot of bias fabric which is cut diagonally across the fabric grain and can be stretchy. To stabilize my squares, I use a piece of thin cotton as a foundation fabric. I have used Ikea sheets cut into 7 inch squares in the past. It becomes my canvas where I lay out the fabric before I start sewing to see how the design will look. I audition the fabric choices for both color placement and the over all design. When I am satisfied, I start to sew the piece of fabric onto the foundation fabric by machine or hand sewing if I am not near my sewing machine. I keep sewing until I am done and the 7 inch white square is fully covered with fabric. Lastly, I use my 6.5” acrylic square ruler  and a rotary cutter to cut the square down to this consistent size.

In this case, this series started with the color palette. Once I knew what fabric to use, I turned to the design. 

Now for the design decision. In 2015, I was inspired by aboriginal artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s art to make the piece titled, Homage to Emily. I used one of her classic designs and added a color palette from one of her other works depicting colors of her native Australia, reds, oranges, and magenta. I thought this design would be perfect for the hand sewing portion of this Gulf Waters series. Not one to do the same thing twice, I decided to make some slight modifications. The lines would be vertical instead of horizontal. In addition some the same strips would have two or three colors instead of just one color. This adds quite a bit of complexity into the design.

I just completed quilting Gulf Waters. I love the red H in the middle of the quilt. The utter randomness of all the lines really speaks to me.  I never know how all of the daily squares will look together except in my imagination.  This piece exceeds my expectations.

 I used light grey thread to quilt all three layers of the quilt top, cotton batting, and backing fabric. The grey thread weaves in through the design vertically just like the fabric strips. For complicated designs like Gulf Waters, I try to keep the quilting lines simple and minimal to let the colors of the quilt top really stand out on their own. The finished quilt is 30 inches square. I am continuing to catch up on the quilting of all the daily squares and will post them on Instagram as I finish them. 
 

Learning about Habits and Imagination from author Terry Pratchett

I am currently reading this book, Terry Pratchett's second in the Disc World series.

I am currently reading this book, Terry Pratchett's second in the Disc World series.


Terry Pratchett was prolific. He wrote 41 books just in his Disc World series that came straight out of his imagination where he created an entirely different universe that was a disc-shaped world riding on the back of four elephants standing on a turtle. I have read a few of them over the years. I am challenging myself to read all of his Disc World books in order in 2016. Over Spring Break, I read the last book he wrote before he passed away called The Shepard’s Crown. He knew he had some serious health problems and was contemplating mortality which comes across in this book in such a no-drama, matter- of-fact way. The rest of the book is about how the people left behind reacted to a beloved person passing and how they gained strength and resilience. I found the book very moving.

I admire Terry Pratchett for his imagination (which is off-the-charts by the way) shown in his books and also for his work habits. Here is a quote from fellow author and Terry’s friend Neil Gaiman in his introduction to the book Good Omens which they co-wrote,

"These are the things I realized back in 1985: Terry knew a lot. He had the kind of head that people get when they’re interested in things, and go and ask questions and listen and read. He knew genre, enough to know the territory, and he knew enough outside genre to be interesting. He was ferociously intelligent. He was having fun. Then again, Terry is that rarity, the kind of author who likes Writing, not Having Written, or Being a Writer, but the actual sitting there and making things up in front of a screen. At the time we met, he was still working as a press officer for the South Western Electricity board. He wrote four hundred words a night, every night: it was the only way for him to keep a real job and still write books. One night, a year later, he finished a novel, with a hundred words still to go, so he put a piece of paper into his typewriter, and wrote a hundred words of the next novel. (The day he retired to become a full-time writer, he phoned me up. “It’s only been half an hour since I retired, and already I hate those bastards,” he said cheerfully.) There was something else that was obvious in 1985: Terry was a science fiction writer. It was the way his mind worked: the urge to take it all apart, and put it back together in different ways, to see how it all fit together. It was the engine that drove Discworld—it’s not a “what if…” or an “if only…” or even an “if this goes on…”; it was the far more subtle and dangerous “If there was really a…, what would that mean? How would it work?”" from "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett

Really, he started the next book the same night. That is impressive.  It is what I strive for. The no-drama, kick Resistance in the a** kind of creative output.
How can we all be more consistent in our creativity?  What holds you back specifically?  What would need to change to open up time every day or every weekend for you to create what speaks to you?  We are not talking about quitting your job.  Just starting with 10 minutes a day. Not sure how to do it or even what to do? Sit for that 10 minutes and think about it.
If you already have a creative passion, this still applies to you. Consider if you are stuck in a rut and need a creative kickstart. I have been practicing keeping my mind open lately by listening to podcasts, reading, and watching documentaries to keep the ideas flowing. Sometimes a creative habit can become stale.

The challenge is to keep up the work habits of a employee punching the clock and balance it with the wildest imagination that keeps you wanting to punch in every day. 


When I feel stuck, I am going to think about Terry Pratchett the man who kept showing up and wrote all those books.

And, yes, I highly recommend you read one of his books.  Good Omens is a good one to start with.  Next in line for my favorites is the Tiffany Aching series starting with A Hat Full of Sky. You will never forget the Wee Free Men.