Thoughts and Stitches from my Studio

Hello neglected blog readers! 

I have some big news that some of you may not have heard, the family and I are moving to the South Island. I wrote an email newsletter and in it I tell a bit more about what's happening.

If you'd like to read it, click here.

The reason this poor blog has been neglected for so long is many fold. One of them is that I intend to (finally! Talk about procrastination!) get my own website up and running, and then I'll have a blog on there. So anything I write here, I keep thinking I should save it and write there, it's just that there hasn't happened quite yet. So in the meantime, I'll be writing a monthly email newsletter with thoughts and stitches (rambling words and a few pretty pictures of my work) from my studio. I'd love you to join me in the conversation, you can sign up to receive my email newsletter by clicking here. 

The next big thing on my calendar is presenting at the SAQA virtual conference in about 10 days time.

I'm part of a panel presentation and discussion called 'Art from Oceania'. So if you are a SAQA member, and have signed up for the conference, I'd love to see you there!

And then the NEXT big thing for me is the Great New Zealand Quilt Show, being organised by Aotearoa Quilters. I'm on the committee so have been working away to help bring you this in-person, in-real-life, fingers-crossed-covid-stays-away, three day quilt show. If you are in NZ, you should try and get along, it'll be awesome!

 So that's it for me today. I better get back to packing up my studio. Happy stitching!

PS - Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter!

A great interview you should listen to.

Lisa Walton, a guest on my podcast a few weeks ago, took the plunge and has started podcasting herself.  Being administration vice president of SAQA (studio art quilt associates) and a travelling textile teacher, Lisa has access to some very interesting textile art professionals.

Her first interview is with Martha Sielman, executive director of SAQA, textile artist and author.  It was a great interview and well worth listening to if you have any interest in art quilts.

I stole this bio about Martha off the SAQA website (which is well worth a visit, even if you aren't a member, there are lots of resources available):

Martha Sielman has been Executive Director of Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA) since 2004. Her career in art quilts began in 1988, when she learned to quilt, and has included more than 20 years of work as a professional artist, author, lecturer, curator, juror, and arts administrator.  She is the author of Masters: Art Quilts (Lark Books 2008), Masters: Art Quilts, Volume 2 (Lark Books 2011), and Art Quilt Portfolio: The Natural World (Lark Books 2012).

Sielman has written articles about art quilts for The Crafts Report and SAQA Journal, and has appeared on the HGTV show Simply Quilts. She was curator for the exhibit Masters Art Quilts: 1, which travelled to the International Quilt Festivals in Houston, Chicago, and Long Beach, the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts; and she served as a juror for “Pushing the Limits: New Expressions in Hooked Art” and “Niche Awards 2008.” 

Sielman lives in Storrs, Connecticut, with her husband, five children and two cats.

Photo credit to SAQA

You can find Lisa's podcast here:
http://lisa4.podbean.com/?source=pb
or search for Lisa Walton Chats on iTunes.

Wingbeats II - SAQA Trunk Show Quilt

SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) have travelling trunk shows available for shipping and display around the world.  These are collections of many small (7" x 10" portrait) pieces of textile art from a wide variety of artists.  There is no theme and no jurying, so skill, technique, subject and interpretation is wide and varied.  They are also mounted on card and in protective cellophane sleeves so all in all, they make a great addition to any quilt show or exhibition (just in case anyone was looking for something of the like).

This year the call for entries closed November 30, 2016.  I squeaked in with my finish and was about to enter my piece online when SAQA announced an extension to the deadline of about two weeks.

I had sat down the day before and written a critique of my first piece.  It's something I've taken to doing after my starting it in my year of mentoring.  It's really useful to stand back, take a new look and say what worked, what didn't and what you would do differently next time.  All in a constructive, non-critical way of course - I have been known to be so 'out of love' with a piece that I've critiqued it as "horrible, grossly flat and uninspiring, with such a twee theme that it deserves it's own special spot in the rubbish bin"!  Not particularly helpful ;-)

The piece above is the first quilt I was going to enter.  

My critique of it was: "The transparency and colours of the herons work well, but three on such a small piece is a bit overwhelming and confuses them a bit too much.  I like the shapes of the water, they have a nice flow, but I want to get the edges of them neater.  The overall theme of the herons and moon sits well with me, but I need things neater, tidier and more symmetrical to be entirely happy.  I experimented with adding hand stitching to the moon, but I don't think it adds anything and I think the border treatment needs to be less bold - it is overwhelming.

So with that in mind, and very thankful for a deadline extension, I started a second quilt.

It's so gratifying when you plan and scheme and it all works out!  This quilt is exactly what I wanted.  Cleaner, clearer, more finished and more polished.  I used one of my favourite techniques, which comprises of a complete overlay of organza over the whole quilt and that meant I didn't have to stitch to attach, I could just stitch to enhance.

You'll see from the closeup that the herons were printed on, not added as pieces of fabric.  Some of the blue water pieces are printed, some are fabric pieces below the organza overlay.  The moon is a piece of silk underneath the organza and I finished the quilt with a facing.

So - does this mean I should remake every quilt I finish?  No.  But it does push me further along the path of working in a series.  And it does make me think about taking out some of my older quilts and doing a proper critique of them.  You never know where it might lead!

SAQA International Artist Webinar

Well hello there blog readers!  Nice to connect again.  It's been a while (a month to be precise) in which the Christmas Crazy has been and gone, camping has also been and gone - a little shorter than usual due to weather issues - and school summer holidays are still in progress.

Coming back to the blog after a break is hard.  What do I write about?  The stuff I did a month ago or the stuff I'm doing today?  It's almost a bit paralysing.  So I've decided to just start (now there's a piece of advice for all things difficult - just start!) and write about what I did today.

Today I was a panelist for the SAQA International Artist Webinar - Oceania Region.  Ok, so today was a little out of the ordinary, I don't do something so exciting every day!

(SAQA is short for Studio Art Quilt Associates.)

It was a pretty cool experience.  When Deborah Boschert, the webinar coordinator first contacted me to invite me to be a panelist, I was thrilled, but also a little taken aback.  I describe myself as an emerging artist and when I learned the my fellow panelists were to be Brenda Gael Smith and Jenny Bowker, both very established and well known textile artists, I was sure Deborah had made a mistake.  But she reassured me that she wanted artists across the spectrum and people with different styles and experiences, so I said yes and I'm so glad I did.

I put together my presentation in good old Power Point.  It works really well for presenting a slide show of photographs.  We were asked to talk about what influenced us as artists, especially in regard to our location.  It wasn't hard for me to show my influences; my work is pretty figurative and very much related to the natural world and what I see around me.

It was pretty informative for me to look back at my work and try and work out what was influencing me when I made it.  It's helped me get a clearer idea of my personal style and my artist voice too.

I also talked about moving to live aboard MV Cerego and how I ended up with my studio and art gallery.  I could have kept talking for another half hour (I've never been accused of having nothing to say) but our time was limited of course!

Apart from a few nerves as we were beginning, the only real stress for me was finding an internet connection with a good enough speed to make the whole thing work.  We had a practice session the week before and my internet here on the boat wasn't quite up to scratch.  I uplifted my computer and plugged in at my mother in law's up the road and luckily it worked without a hitch (and I bribed the kids with a special movie and threatened them with beheading to keep them quiet - it worked like a dream...)

SAQA members can listen to any of the webinars anytime by logging into the SAQA members resources page, and clicking the mentorship webinar recordings under the professional development heading.  

If you're not a SAQA member, perhaps it's time you were.  This is an example of one of the resources they offer to their members.  Aside from the International Artist Panels, they have webinars on writing proposals for grants, selling your artwork, organisation and productivity and finding your voice as an artist.  I'm working my way through the older ones and learning heaps as I go!  

So happy new year everyone and I look forward to journeying through 2016 with you.

SAQA Benefit Auction Quilt - Seeing Both Sides of the Story

Every year SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) holds a benefit auction.  They ask members to make a 12 x 12 inch quilt to donate.  These are then auctioned off to raise money for the association.  They raised over $55,000 last year!

My quilt for this year is a little different for me, it's the first time I've really tried to include a message.

There is an ongoing debate about the back sides of art quilts.  Artists who exhibit art quilts at quilt shows often feel that the back of the quilt isn't relevant and shouldn't be judged.  Other's feel that in view of the traditions that art quilts spring from, the back is an integral part and should be celebrated as another aspect to use to convey a message.  And still other comments I've heard are that painters never consider the back of their work, so why should we?

It goes round and round and round!

I'm not sure where I stand on the debate.  And hence my quilt: Seeing Both Sides of the Story.

The text on the front reads,"So, I guess you turn over paintings and look at the back of them too?"  Which is something I've heard as a reply to people saying the backs of art quilts are important.  You can say it with a sarcastic tone or not, up to you!

I began with white fabric and a fabric pen.

Then I used layers of hand painted and dyed silk organza.  I wanted a painterly feel with depth and translucency.

I worked up the text by quilting around the letters and using coloured pencil and colourless fabric paint to highlight them.

The outline of a woman's back was done using a heavy thread in the bobbin and free-motion quilting.  I used this motif for a couple of reasons - obviously the 'back' of the woman ties in with the statement of the 'back' of quilts.  I also wanted people to think about both sides of things, how one side can be hidden but perhaps be the more revealing.  I also wanted to reference fine art - nudes often appear in the traditional masters you see in museums.

The back of the quilt has a hand written mini essay.  It is hard to read in the photograph, but easier in real life.  This is what it says:

Textile is tactile; it begs to be touched and fondled, to engage that kinaesthetic sense. Yes, we hang textile art of the walls, but we also wrap ourselves in it. Should not the back be another aspect to engage with, to admire? Why do we insist on trying to make art like painters? We aren't painters, we are quilters, and we stitch though all three layers. So, let us celebrate a marvellous attribute of our medium and embrace THE BACK.

And this, for me, is the other side to the back side story.  I wanted this on the back so you would have to turn over the quilt (the action that the whole debate is about) to read it.

I bound the edge with a very skinny single fold binding, popped in an envelope, crossed my fingers and sent it winging towards the USA.  It arrived safe and sound and now appears on SAQA's auction pages, page 8.

There are many, many beautiful quilts up for auction.  There are also many videos of how individual artists created their art.  Go and have a look - you will inspired and amazed at the beautiful work.   And please share the link with others so that they can see the quilts too.

PS - I'd love to hear your thoughts about the back of art quilts, please leave me a comment.

Moonlight - My SAQA donation quilt

SAQA is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting the art quilt and the artists who create them.  The SAQA benefit auction is held every year.  Members make and donate 12" x 12"  art quilts to be auctioned to raise funds and this auction starts soon.  On September 15th bidding will start on section one.  If you want to know more about how the process works - visit here.

I haven't been a member of SAQA long, but I've already found it a valuable resource, lots of interesting discussions, support, and exhibition opportunities.  So I made my first SAQA donation piece.

I had been making lots of moons for various experiments and had a soft yellow silk one on my design wall that I wanted to make a sky for.  I pulled fabrics and was most pleased with a bunch of hand-dyed silks I had made.

I sketched the 12 x 12 outline on parchment paper and the moon shape in the centre then collaged and fused the silk squares around those outlines.

But then I decided to audition a few other moons.  Too much choice!!  I wanted to convey the luminosity the moon gets sometimes, the beauty of her different phases and the feelings of a connection to the divine I get when I spend time out under the moon.

So this is the moon I chose to convey those feelings.  I finished it off with machine quilting to give the feeling of a winter halo and then used a facing to finish the edges.

If you'd like to see more donation quilts, and there are plenty of stunning ones, head over to the SAQA website and spend some time browsing.  My quilt is in section one.

Podcast Episode 8 - Know when to pull the plug

Nope, not pulling the plug on podcasting, but pulling the plug on a project when it's just not working.

Today I give a (not so brief) life update, including a rundown on the boat renovations.  I then talk about what's going on in my quilting world, including how I had to admit defeat and decide not to push through and try and meet my latest quilting deadline.  I also talk about my SAQA donation quilt, my summer postcard swap and other quilty bits and pieces.

Here's a photo of my SAQA donation quilt:

And a photo of the postcard I sent off to Kim for the Summer Postcard Swap:

Last, but not least, is a process pic of part of my Growth Challenge quilt, the one that's been giving me gip and is not going to get finished for it's deadline:

And I'm feeling clever!  I think I figured out how to embed my podcast.  But just in case I'm not as clever as I think, here's the link to go listen at Podbean:  http://theslightlymadquiltlady.podbean.com/e/episode-8-know-when-to-pull-the-plug/