Suzanne Earley

Merry Christmas to me!

I’ve been debating about whether or not to post this yet, but heck, I’m so excited about my new artwork, I just can’t wait to share!

One of the blogs in my blog reader is Diane Duda, don’t remember now how I found her blog, but I just love seeing the new works of art she shares.  A week or so ago, some artwork showed up that called out my name.  Really loudly.  So, I asked her how much, and then I asked Mark if he would get it for me for Christmas.  (If he’d said no, I probably would have gotten it anyway, which shows you how loudly it was calling my name…)

The package with the 3 pieces of art showed up over the weekend, and I’m just thrilled with them!  I still need to figure out where to hang them, though.  The thing is that I should technically wait until I actually “get” them from Mark for Christmas….

And I’m sorry, but you are going to end up with an earworm here in a minute….

Whiskers on kittens….

Bright copper kettles….

It was the warm woolen mittens that sold me — she’s my favorite, but I love all 3.

(And in case you missed it, these are all girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes….)

My darling husband asked if he had to wrap them with brown paper and string.  Isn’t he sweet?

If you want to be reminded of the full lyrics, because they are now starting to swim around in your head, you can go here:  My Favorite Things.

Thank you to Diane for creating these gorgeous pieces of art (and for granting me permission to post the pictures), and thank you to Mark for buying them for my for Christmas.

Suzanne

p.s.  Diane’s blog has links to her Etsy and Ebay stores, and you should also check out her Flickr account to see what else she has created.  Her frogs are a stitch!

Dimensions

I started this post way back in February….I was going through drafts and thought I’d either delete them or finish them….I thought this one was interesting enough to finish….

On the QuiltArt list, a discussion about the proper way to list the dimensions of artwork made the rounds way back in January/February when I started this post…

I think it the discussion was started by someone working on an entry to a show.  The question:  Do you list the WIDTH first or the HEIGHT first when stating the dimension of a quilt or a piece of art?

Not surprisingly, we heard arguments for both sides.

My first reaction was that, as a quilter, I generally think of listing WIDTH first, then HEIGHT. But then I thought some more, and realized that in a lot of instances (not necessarily related to artwork or quilts) I tend to list or think of the SMALLER dimension first, regardless of whether that is the height or the width.

8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper
4 by 6 photograph
3 by 5 index card

Most of the pictures I take are actually landscape — so if I were to list WIDTH first, they would actually be 6 by 4. But that sounds very wrong to me — the smaller number should come first. I’m not really sure where that notion came from, but that’s the way my brain works.

Clearly, the most important thing is to be consistent and to label the directions of your dimensions if you are writing them down for some purpose in which the dimensions actually matter.

4 in (w) by 6 in (h)

It probably also helps to label the unit of measure, too, especially since those of us in the U.S. of A. still don’t use metric….

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.  What’s your story?

Suzanne

The Art Quilt Workbook

I just posted this review to the QuiltArt list, but I thought I’d  post it here too:

Last week I ordered a copy of “The Art Quilt Workbook” by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston — I ordered it directly from Jane, and want to thank her for the quick service.

I got it yesterday and skimmed through it. I can’t wait to dig in and really use this wonderful book. There are a lot of beautiful quilts to be inspired by and many exercises that I’m going to enjoy challenging myself with.

One of the best parts of the book, and the part I am most grateful for is the page at the end of each chapter that lists websites of quilt artists, books for further study, as well as artists that work in other mediums (media?), all of which have some relation to the topic that was discussed in the chapter.

As a traditional quilter who is looking to expand her horizons, I’ve been floundering a bit. I would like to learn about art and art history, but have been at a bit of a loss as to where to start. I know there is no magic fairy dust that is going to make it all easy, but I think this book is going to a valuable guide on my journey.

Thank you Jane and Elin.

Thanks also to the QuiltArt list, which is an education in and of itself. I have been reading the list for about a year and have learned about all kinds of books to read, websites to visit, techniques to try, and most of all: artwork to view.

Gratefully,

Suzanne

(I ordered some other books last week, too, but those are coming from Amazon.com, so I’ll post about those when they arrive).

Monday wrap-up

So here it is the last day of April, and I’m still behind on the Quilt Studio 12×12x12 challenge.

But now, I’m only 1 month behind, instead of 2. Click to view this larger:

I was so tickled with my rainbow idea for the ABC Round Robin book (see yesterday’s post), that I did it again as a 12×12 quilt for myself.

It’s the same but different. It’s a 6 by 6 square of inchies, rather than the 6 by 7 rectangle for the book. You’ll also notice the addition of some buttons. And beads — the buttons on the inchies each have a black bead on top of them, in addition to the beads in the fringe. I love beaded fringe. I think I need to do more things with beads and buttons and fringe.

The funny thing is that my theme is supposed to be the Alphabet, with the idea that I will incorporate text on my quilts. Um yeah. Well, I forgot today. I had an idea that I was going to try, but I didn’t remember that I was going to try this idea until….the quilt was completely done. Oops. I still have a few ideas that I may play with, but for now, this is good enough. *I* know it is supposed to be a representation of “R is for Rainbow.”

Learned a few things from it. Still need to work on my satin stitch technique. I was brainstorming about why it is so messy, and it occurred to me that changing my needle might have helped. Any tips on how to do a clean satin stitch around the outside edge of a piece? The inchies are made of fabric fused to Timtex.

My next 12×12x12 is in progress. It’s covered with beads and buttons too. It’s taking me some time to do, but I hope to be done in a few days. And then I need to get going on something for May!

**************

On a completely unrelated note, as I was looking through pictures, I realized that I never showed a picture of this little book I made. I saw these on Lisa’s blog last week. She also provided a link to the tutorial where she learned how to make them, which is here.

I learned from this project that I am a very messy gluer. Actually, I knew that already, it was just driven home to me with this project. No matter how hard, I try I get glue allover the place. I’m not sure what my problem is. Maybe I need to go back to Kindergarten for some gluing lessons.

Last, but not least, I thought I’d show off a picture of my athletes. I didn’t get very many decent pictures at the soccer game on Saturday, but was glad that at least one of them had both boys in the same shot.

I think that’s all from me for today. I need to go sew on some more buttons and then go to bed.

TTFN!

Suzanne

Updated photo albums

One last post before I go to bed — I was a week behind in uploading photos to my 365 days albums.  I was doing things, just not getting them uploaded! The last week’s worth of photos and daily art projects are now in their respective albums, you can find the links on the right-hand side of the page.  They are organized in reverse chronological order.  It’s hard to believe that February is almost over already.  It feels pretty cool to see how full those albums are already starting to get!

Purses

On Saturday, since I didn’t want to turn on the quilting machine, I started digging around for something to do.  I’ve let myself get a little off track with my daily art project idea — I’ve still been doing things, but haven’t gotten away from creating something that was a completely finished project each day.  I grabbed the Winter 2006 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors and was reminded how much I liked the tiny purse shaped books that were on the front cover.  So I made a couple.

Charming

I am vaguely fascinated by these little charms I have seen online (and that I have occasionally been messing around with) lately.

I’ve made a couple in the 1 inch size, and a few in the 2 inch size.  It’s interesting to work that small.

I found a blog a couple of days ago — this artist is making paper charms — her goal is to make 1000 1 inch charms on 2007.

Postcards from the Once Inch Square Edge

She has a bunch of links of various 1 inch charm projects and ideas (scroll to the bottom).

Today’s little "art" project is a fiber postcard that I made.  I’m still stuck on this pink and green:

I guess Valentine’s day is also on my mind….