A Commitment to Show Up

A Commitment to Show Up

I’ve been thinking about relationships a lot. Perhaps that’s because I’m coming up on my 20th wedding anniversary with this awesome man. Our relationship has seen its ups and downs, but we are committed to doing the hard work of showing up for each other no matter how painful and difficult that may be. As a result we have entered into, what I think of as, our golden years together. I love this man more today than those first few years when we met and decided to have children together. I am well aware of how fortunate I am, it helps that he is as committed as I am, and is also funny, smart, kind, thoughtful, complicated, a great dad, a great friend and all around amazing human being.

Or maybe I’m thinking about relationships because it’s the holiday season when we typically fly to Colorado to visit my mother and sister, but because of the pandemic are unable to do so or maybe it’s because this year has thrown a couple of relationships into stark relief. I have had to come to terms with the fact that a few were not what I thought and others that have only reaffirmed how wonderful they are. I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned from both.

I’ve mentioned before that my husband and I start the morning reading something, usually something philosophical or a meditation of some kind. This morning’s reading began with a quote:

There are two equally dangerous extremes – to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.

Blaise Pascal

When I’m stitching the magical moments come when things just flow from one idea to the next – easily, magically. But there are other moments when everything I stitch feels wrong. Color is often at issue. If my base color is one that I don’t find particularly appealing, then everything I subsequently do can feel off simply because the base color isn’t one that speaks to me. The trick is finding the magic even then.

As many of you who follow me on Youtube know, I’ve been struggling with my latest improvisational piece. It uses a flesh-colored hand dyed piece of linen as its base, and it’s been problematic for me since I took that first stitch. Still, I’m determined to continue, if for no other reason than as an exercise in working through the myriad issues that are coming up for me. And what I’m learning is that if I’m committed to something, really committed, I am willing to have the difficult conversations, I’m willing to hang in there even when things get problematic, I’m willing to keep showing up. And when I do that, something magical always happens. (Of course if we’re talking about two people then BOTH people have to be willing. It won’t work if only one person is willing and the other isn’t.)

With the piece shown above, this is the magical moment that occurred a few days ago. I don’t know that it’s enough to shift this piece from an exercise, into something that I’m able to fully embrace, but I’m getting there and I’m going to keep showing up for it and see what happens!

Obsessive About Dyeing

Obsessive About Dyeing

Dyeing fabrics is an obsession.  I began with cottons as directed in the Elizabeth Barton class, Dyeing to Design, that I took over at Academy of Quilting.  I had little interest in dyeing or so I thought, and only took the class because Elizabeth was teaching it and I wanted to take a class with her and it was the first class closest to the date when I started researching her classes.  I had no idea I’d fall so completely in love with dyeing.  But I did.  After her class ended, I took her other dyeing Class – Basic Dyeing for Quiltmakers where we learned to over dye and dye just about any color we wanted.  It was thrilling to see a color, figure out what primary colors went into it and then create it!  But as is my way, I wasn’t content to dye just cottons.

I decided I had to learn how to dye wool, which is a different process entirely, so I could finish my block of the month designs (more on that in another post). So I went over to Dharma Trading, a great company that sells dyes and everything related to dyeing.  I sourced wool fabric, also not as easy as one might think, and then purchased a small amount of wools, silks, raw silks and silk/wools from a couple of different places.  I even found some lovely silk velvet at Dharma, perfect to use on my wool appliqué pieces that I began designing a few months ago.  And I began dyeing.

Fabrics

Aren’t they beautiful?

Here are all the cotton fabrics I dyed in Elizabeth’s class, including some of my silk screens and shibori dyed cottons…hand-dyed fabrics

Now I’m back to designing so I can use all of these lovely fabrics.  This is the beginning of Mr. Pig.  He still needs to be embellished and is one of twelve blocks for my Block Of the Month project featuring cookie jars that I’m in the midst of creating patterns and, hopefully, kits for, that will come with many of my hand-dyed fabrics as well as everything you’ll need to make each block.

Notice the cotton fabric to the far left?  That is one of my shibori dyed cottons and the green wools and pink wool and velvet are all my hand-dyed fabrics too!  Mr. Pig

PigSketch

Obsessive About Dyeing

Fear of Dyeing

I was going to entitle this post Fear of Dyeing (and Silk Screening) but Where’s the Pun in That?  But it was too long so I just went with the edited version… a girl can have a little pun.  Okay, okay that’s enough. I’ve filled my quota of puns and I’m barely out of the starting gate.  It’s all going to be very serious from here on out.

In my last post I promised screen printing, so here we go.  All the photographs below are of techniques described by Elizabeth Barton in her wonderful class Dyeing to Design over at the Academy of Quilting.

The last and only time I did screen printing was when I worked (briefly) for the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes while living in London having just graduated from Parsons School of Design about a hundred years ago.  Zandra Rhodes is known for her beautiful silk screened fabrics as well as being the “Queen of Punk” a distinction given to her back in the late 70’s.  All I remember from that time, aside from the time she told me to clean her bathroom, was using a huge squeegee-like thing to scrape paint across the enormous screens she used.  I wish I could remember more as it might have helped me get over my fear when tackling Elizabeth’s silk screening lesson.  I have to admit I was completely intimidated reading the lesson over, so much so that I read the lesson and then didn’t do any of the exercises mapped out in it for at least three days.  Then another person in the class posted her gorgeous silk screened fabrics and it motivated me to at least try some of the techniques suggested.

purple-swirls

Using newsprint this was my first attempt at silk screening on white cotton

Have I talked about fear during the creative process?  I know, I know, I have.  But maybe you didn’t read that post and anyway, I’m feeling compelled.  I’m always surprised when I feel fear while designing or doing something art “worthy”.  Why feel frightened when creating something?  Why should I feel anything but joy?  How does fear, even a twinge of it, make itself known through all the curiosity and excitement? And while I don’t have complete answers for these questions, I do know it isn’t unusual for artists to feel tremendous fear when creating.  So much so that there’s even a terrific book written on this very subject called Art & Fear ~ Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland.   Heading up the chapter entitled: The Academic World is this quote from Howard Ikemoto –

     “When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work.  I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw.

She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?”

I went to Parsons School of Design for my undergraduate degree and majored in Fashion Design.  Much of what I learned had to do with the business of fashion design and that there’s no such thing as new, that everything is recycled and that in order to succeed one must be as determined, if not more, about the business as one is about creating.  The truth is, I learned little about being an artist and more about the challenges of being a designer in the business world.  By my last year my fairy tale notion of what it would be like to be a fashion designer was thoroughly squashed and in my disillusioned state I felt only  dread at the idea that I was about to go out into the world and seek a job, much less in the fashion world.  After floundering for a few years I abandoned fashion design in favor of a series of jobs/careers that I thought might be more fulfilling and less soul wrenching.  And while all the things I tried my hand at varied, even dramatically, they were all in the “Arts” of some kind.  What I’ve learned is that artists tend to have a difficult time making a living with their art, no matter what the medium is.

There’s a wonderful quote from Oscar Wilde that begins Part II of the book Art & Fear.

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art.  When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.”

How does one price one’s art, something that might have taken hundreds of hours to create through trial and error, through missteps, through experimentation, through FEAR?  If artists used an hourly wage system to price their work, all art would be so expensive no one could afford it.  So most of us don’t.  We can’t.  And while in an ideal world no one would have to concern themselves with making money from their art, and instead would just spend all their time making it, few live in such a privileged world.  The fear of being able to sell our work, and how that inhibits the process is a whole other topic and one most of us can understand, but there is another fear that is far more complicated.  It is the fear one feels when confronted with something new, something one has never done before, but would like to learn.  There is the fear of failure or appearing incapable or of ridicule, criticism or being seen as incompetent by others, but also by oneself.  To create art, is to be at once vulnerable and confident, and it is a tricky balancing act to not lean more one way or the other. Both carry their own pitfalls.

Creating is a messy process.  Most people never see all the discarded bits, the beginnings and first steps taken to get to that finished piece.  What I love about blogs is that people are willing to show their process.  My favorite blogs, in fact, are the ones that do just that.

purple4

Adding color to the purple

When I am starting something new I often have an idea in my head.  What I envision is always spectacular, but creating that idea takes skill, talent and knowledge, things I do not always have.  So I have to learn, practice, and explore in order to be able to get the skills to (hopefully) produce the image I envision.  Sometimes I’m successful, but more often I’m not.  Sometimes I realize it will take me years to achieve the level of expertise required to make what I envisioned.  So I have to accept that I won’t be able to do something as I’d hoped or modify what I’m doing to compensate or continue to practice, with the idea that eventually I might be able to produce what is in my mind.

orange2

Torn newsprint

redswirls

For this piece I cut stencils out of a thin plastic sheet, before silk screening on top

blueswirls2

This is the result of using those stencils that I removed for the red piece above

waves

A technique attributed to Kerr Grabowski.  This piece has yet to be washed, so who knows what it will look like!

stripe2

Another technique described in Elizabeth’s class.

Regardless of the approach I take, perfectionism is truly the greatest kill joy and, for me anyway, the root from which almost all my fear springs. While some argue that without perfectionism, we would settle for less or not work as hard, they are misunderstanding perfectionism at its most destructive. I am referring to perfectionism that lacerates, the kind of self-talk that abuses and brutalizes.  It is that awful voice that needs to be muted before anything can be created.  Free from perfectionism I am allowed to explore and play.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with any of the fabric I’ve silk screened, and in some ways that’s beside the point.  I didn’t approach this lesson with a preconceived idea.  And that’s the beauty of taking a class like this one.  The assignments require you to explore and play first and then after you’ve done that, consider what you’ll make.  Most of these fabrics have been done for almost two weeks now and I still don’t know what to do with any of them.  Or as one of the many talented and wonderful people taking this class said, “I’m waiting for divine inspiration.”

Obsessive About Dyeing

“Dyeing To Design”

I almost didn’t post this today as it’s Election Day and figured many of us would be out voting or thinking about voting or waiting in anxiety for the presidential election’s outcome and then I thought – a perfect time for some levity while waiting in line to vote or for those reading this from elsewhere… okay not sure where I’m going with this, so here it is…

“Dyeing to Design” is the title of the terrific five week online class I’m taking given by the talented artist Elizabeth Barton through the Academy of Quilting.  I wrote about the first week ‘here‘ and promised to write about the second.

I started the second week by pretty much dyeing every bit of white cotton fabric I had.  Seriously.  I went through the ten yards that was suppose to last us the entire five weeks of the class.  Restraint is not a strong suit.   In addition I went through so much dye that I realized I was not going to have enough to get me through the rest of the course, which meant I had to order both fabric and dye.  Waiting was excruciating.  I was going to work in a pun using the word “dyeing”, but restrained myself.  See. I try where and when I can. While I waited however, I had all these beautiful fabrics to look at and consider for my next design.

The design I decided to do used shapes I come back to again and again, long ago when I was a fashion designer, now still designing jewelry and again this past week while using my hand dyed fabrics.  Let’s not spend any time analyzing this, yes?

parsonsfinal

*R17YG copy 2

R17 – 18 Kt Brushed Gold

lesson2design

I chose two colors to work with, red and, with Elizabeth’s suggestion, an olive color.  Elizabeth encouraged me to play with the olive color using it’s various gradations, which of course required more fabric that I didn’t have.  Not easily thwarted, I pulled out some muslin and dyed that.  It was at this point that the faucet in the kitchen sink suddenly stopped working.  It was a drought.  Nothing, but the slightest trickle of water, a whisper, really.  However, we have a slop sink in the pantry.  It was one of my brilliant ideas when we gutted the place; I envisioned our loft as a veritable greenhouse with furniture.  Think Max’s bedroom when he falls asleep in Where the Wild Things Are.  This vision of mine never came to fruition and so the slop sink became a receptacle for rags, cleaning supplies and other items no one knew what else to do with.  And to add insult to injury underneath the sink we keep the kitty litter box.  As we live in NYC our “pantry,” while sounding grand and spacious, is actually the size of a very, very small closet, combined with the kitty litter under foot, a stacked washer and dryer, the slop sink overflowing with assorted cleaning supplies… Let’s face it, it’s really really cramped.

I was determined to make it work, and while this made for some interesting maneuvering on my part, I did fall in love with my slop sink, but not so much that I didn’t call the plumber.  He came a few days later and fixed the kitchen faucet, but in the meantime I washed all my dyed fabrics in my now beloved slop sink inside our closet, I mean pantry.  It was all very Alice in Wonderlandish.

Two days later, after the sink was working again I came home to the smell of smoke and asked FH (fabulous husband) what happened.  “Well,” FH said, and then after a lengthy pause and with a pained expression he finally added, “I think our washing machine blew up.”  I would have suspected wild exaggeration on his part had it not been for the lingering evidence of noxious smoke wafting through our home.  Evidently he was doing a load of laundry and heard a loud bang.  He went over to investigate to find smoke billowing out of our front loader.  You have no idea how happy I am that I was not there to witness.  So for the next few weeks we are without a washing machine.  But I digress… Here is the preliminary piece on my design wall.

lesson2

Slowly it began to take shape and as everything seemed to be falling apart, exploding, going dry and whatever else, my sewing machine, not wanting to be left out of all the fun, decided it was no longer going to play nice with my walking foot, perhaps it was taking a cue from our presidential race, requiring me to spend more than five hours watching various you tube videos, reading the instructions over and over again to troubleshoot.  There were a LOT of late, late nights.  Eventually I was able to convince my sewing machine it was in its own best interest to get along and all is well.  In actuality I realized that my walking foot was causing the automatic threader to jam.  When I thread it manually everything works.

After I did the quilting I decided to add some hand stitching, but couldn’t decide whether to do more or take it all out.  So what does one do when you’re not sure?  Ask Elizabeth and others in the class for feedback, of course!

lesson2_front

Which led to this…kyoto_front

And here’s the back.kyoto_bach

The third week of the class is well underway, my fabric arrived, the sink is running as is my walking foot (haha) and oh what fun I’m having!   We are learning basic Shibori arashi dyeing.  I still don’t have a washing machine, (and have two teenagers in the house) but these are luxury problems.   I haven’t figured out what I’m doing with my beautiful dyed fabrics, but will come up with something in the next day or so.  Here’s a sneak peak at this weeks dyeing and drying New York City style.  shibori-drying-copyAnd I didn’t make a single dye joke.  The title doesn’t count because it’s Elizabeth’s name for her class.  How can you not love that title?  I may go back and edit a few in, just to amuse, or you can make a few in the comments!

Obsessive About Dyeing

The Joy of Dyeing

Lest you, good readers, misread the above and think this is going to be about a metaphoric death resulting from an existential crisis, let me set you straight, it’s not.  This is about dyes, dyeing fabric and design.  Now if you’re like me, you might be thinking – oh who has time for all that? – but let me tell you, there’s so much more to dyeing than you think.  Get it?  Trying not to laugh, really, really trying…   It’s impossible to write a post about dyeing and not keep thinking of all the puns one makes without even trying…  This is just too easy.  You might dye of laughing… hee-hee!  

Ahem.

Okay.

Seriously.

I never thought I’d enjoy dyeing fabric.  I always felt there’s so much great fabric out there, why would I want to dye my own?  Well…  it turns out, not only was I wrong, but what a beautiful world it is once you begin dyeing!  Before I get ahead of myself, this all began because I was looking for blogs by quilters who are also artists.  As I was looking around I found the extremely talented artist Elizabeth Barton, and her blog, Art and Quilts, Cogitations Thereon.   What a find!  I read this post, The Proliferation of Online Classes, which I then felt compelled to comment on, which in turn led me to investigate the classes Elizabeth teaches and in particular one that began a week ago Friday, which I promptly signed up for. Her five week online class, given through The Academy of Quilting, is titled – Dyeing to Design.  Love that.

Dyeing has never called to me, but I enjoyed reading Elizabeth’s blog, really like her work, and this class had the most immediate starting date and I’m impatient, so I thought – Why not?  This is one of the many wonderful things about being new to something, it never hurts to try something you’ve never done before and the worst that can happen is you discover it’s not for you and you move on.  On the other hand, you might fall in love with whatever it is, become totally obsessed and that is a indescribable joy unlike any other.  The latter pretty much describes my experience with quilting and fiber art.  And so it was again, with dyeing and this class, now in its second week.  What a fantastic class.  I cannot recommend it, and Elizabeth Barton, more highly!!

It helps that Elizabeth is a terrific instructor, very responsive and thorough, has a great eye, and gives excellent feedback.  She writes extensive instructions with good explanations and examples of her own work to illustrate what she’s talking about.  The first week we dove right in mixing all our various dyes for the next five weeks and did this – gradations of black (photograph below.)  You’ll notice the mottled effect, which I think is so beautiful and striking.  As we were working with black and since there’s no such thing, the blues, pinks and greens can be seen in different areas.  The organic look to the fabric also appeals to my sense of design and so I was hooked.  Totally fell in love.  Completely.  Dramatically.  In.  Love. Gradations.JPGDesigning a piece using these gradations was next.  I had a couple ideas and with Elizabeth’s encouragement settled on this one, which also happened to be the first idea I came up with.  Gradations Sketch.JPG

I  decided I would cut the fabric into 2.5″ squares, which meant that after they’d been sewn together they would be 2″ squares, gradating from light to dark, but a little unevenly to keep things interesting.  This is how it looked positioned on my design wall.  Lesson 1 design.JPG

Emboldened by Elizabeth’s helpful suggestions, I made a few adjustments and began sewing all those squares together.  That’s a whole lot of squares…The beginning-Sketch1_Lesson1.JPG After consulting Elizabeth (again), she suggested linear and horizontal stitching, I began quilting, but left the larger square alone as I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  I wanted to do something, but couldn’t figure out what.Quilting Sketch1_lesson1.JPG

Back to Elizabeth who gave me more excellent feedback, suggesting a different color thread and syncopating the stitches so they didn’t meet with the other lines from the larger piece, and off I went to finish it.  I decided against a binding, instead made a facing out of my lightest grey and backed it with a piece of red fabric I had.  I made a label, again from one of the light greys and voila!  This piece, entitled Living in the Grey, is 17″X 23.5″.

Living in the Grey.jpgLivingInTheGrey_Back.JPGThe thing about dyeing your own fabric is how utterly seductive it is.  You can mix any color you want by tweaking the proportions of your primary colors.  The mottled effect enhances the overall feel of the fabric, making it completely unique and like no other.

We are now in Week Two and are dyeing as many colors as we have the time, inclination and material for.  Of course I went totally nuts with dyeing all the possibilities.  I admit – I’ve now dyed every color including varying intensities and am eager to start experimenting with the subtler, more nuanced shades of each, but ran out of fabric, dye and other materials I need, so will have to wait until all the things I’ve ordered arrive.  Here’s a sneak peak of a few of the colors I dyed over the weekend,  (and stayed up until 3 or 4am, I can’t remember now, to do so!) getting ready for my next design using colors.  Lots and lots of colors.  You could even say…  colors to dye for.  Oh behave yourself!

I’m just dyeing to read your comments.   Okay, okay, I’ll stop.

No, really.

I promise.

You have no idea how hard I’m restraining myself right now.