She would have designed this quilt... I'm telling you. She would have! More on this in a bit...
Wow. What a day! Today is the first day since I came home from the hospital that I actually went into the studio to "bring order to chaos". I started out the day with every good intention - make a list of everything that needed doing. House, Self, Studio. STOP LAUGHING! Really... ok, you can giggle - Lord knows that I am! But it NEEDED to do this... list making. I feel a little blown to bits.
THE HOUSE
Let's see - First there was the "House"... can't do a lot there yet without clearance from the doc but hey, I DO have a slew of items that need to be listed on Ebay... and now that I have a (say it with me) "Decent camera" it will be a snap... so it looks like "Photograph and List Items on Ebay" can go on the House list.
What else? Oh, Mr. Ben decided to go thru his closets and now he wants at the storage closet which co-exists peacefully in ...the studio. Love the hubs...not his timing. But as this will result in the storage closet becoming STUDIO property??? IT'S ON THE LIST!
Last, but not least... try to find my clothes again. The daughter and hubs did all of the laundry while I was gone and they were kind enough to put it away. Somewhere. In the house. Pillowcases are ... somewhere. Matching towels? Don't ask. And my ...bras... are AWOL. Scribble, scribble. Search for laundry... ON THE LIST!
CALLING CLAIROL
SELF - one thing and ONE THING ONLY... become a red head again. Nuff' said!
STUDIO JHP
STUDIO - Two customer quilts to get back into the loop, quilt labels to digitize and embroider for all of the spring projects that are ready to be listed, finish the quilting on Ben's grandma's quilt so that it can get shipped, oh and some time needs to be spent surfing for the raw materials for the ideas that I bumped around in my head while I was stuck in aforementioned hospital, new class ideas need to be put together, and LASTLY finish up the photo album work for the blog. ... breathing would be good here.
WHERE would YOU start? Which leads me all the way back to the beginning of this blog entry and Tinkerbell visiting Tokyo.
You see, I was ...alone... in the studio today. Just me and my imagination. :-) The "house" list? Posted on my to do wall for tomorrow. I'll be a redhead as soon as I get out of the shower later tonight. Check that one off. Studio list will be tackled in good order but oh, oh, I was alone in the studio today!
I was alone exercising my imagination. Ooh! Isn't that what quilting is for? (or whatever you happen to do to express yourself?). My imagination got a workout and my ...self... took a very large step towards healing today. I was smart enough to put the "List-y Lists" to the side and do what was really important. Exercise my laugh muscles. Use the little kid that lives inside to see things in a different light and then, praise God, have the courage to stand by what that little girl has to say. Kind of introspective, I know. So what exactly did I do? I named my quilts.
To some, that may sound a bit silly... or not. It is kind of like birthing a biggo problem child when you are finally done! LOL Or a perfect angel of a quilt creation... Click here for a great account of one of those! Tanya's story of creating a Crazy Quilt/Memory Quilt
But for me? The most important part of creating a quilt is the naming of it at the end. Oh sure, they all start with some working title so that we're not doing the "can you move quilt number 7 out of the way please" thing here in the studio! And even if it's just a simple crib blanket... it gets a name. (Now you either think I'm really nutz or you just decided I'm the kind of friend you'd like to get to know better!... I hope it's the latter!)
Today was the day I pulled the whole darned stack off of the rack and had the pleasure of naming them and creating individual embroidered labels for each. What a joy it is going to be as the week progresses to photograph (with the DECENT camera) each piece and post them! All my new kids of the blocks... har, har, har.
There's "Come Together"... a strange little art piece made out of ONE fat quarter, two jelly roll strips and 2 pieces of silk habotai ribbon. Remember that old "Family Circus" cartoon where the mom would tell one of her children to "Come straight home from school" and it would show the convoluted pathway the kid took? Over the neighbor's fence, thru the alley, over the doghouse, around the fountain at the park on the corner 3x, etc? Well, that's what I saw when I looked at this fabric - this sort of pathway thru the roses. I cut it apart, inserted the jellyroll strip, then quilted it with these two ribbons coming down one on each side... to meet in the middle down at the bottom like two folks finally... coming together. I decided to just loosely knot the ribbons and let them hang off the edge of the quilt because well, you never know... The fun part about this quilt is that I inserted a sound chip right over the knot - push it and it plays the Beatle's tune "Come Together"... that funky weird song that took us all forever to learn the words to (if we ever did! LOL). It matches the whole thing... Here come old flattop.... Yeah... come together...
Then I had an idea a few months ago... to make a quilt for people who love spring flower C
OLORS but aren't exactly the "Floral" type. Don't we all know someone like that? I put together this cool strip quilt with green on the bottom, long "flower" stripes in the middle, and blue sky on the top and was determined to call it "You don't bring me flowers!" right from the get go! Well... as I was finishing the quilting process the border stretched out...and out...and out. And the quilt ended up looking so danged fun that it just couldn't have a negative name! Enter the crazy quilter... it just looked like "one heck of a fine day" as my Opa would have said. Hmmm, one fine day.... I wonder? Would it work? Won't know unless I try it... so away we went my new quilting gloves and I and before you know it -that old border was made quick work of! All around that quilt in big and small script is... "One fine day"... tee, hee, hee.
As long as we're on the subject of mighty fine days... I finished "Wrapped in Summer"... a little retro picnic blanket made from scraps from another project. Red and pink and vintage sage and that peculiar sunny creamy yellow that streams in the windows on June afternoons... The windows where you ALWAYS find the cat all curled up with his tail twitching in contentment. Wrapped in summer... light and breezy and say, would you pass me an apple?
Speaking of cats... "MAD LUCY" is ready for market... My old crazy girl cat passed away this past winter and this quilt is a tribute to her. Dark as the nights she roamed the house, yet bright with the tiniest of neon polka dots for her indomitable spirit! It's a log cabin styled, optical illusion with batiks and just crazy gorgeous. Gotta love a little wierdness tho cuz there's a little Mad Lucy embroidered onto the corner!
Since we're kind of in psychedelic mode... I can't wait for you to really see good photos of "Twin Suns and Daughters" ! My watercolor art quilt - first in a series of 3 that will be worked on this summer. My friend, Phoebe Baker, (check her site on Redbubble out on the Wise Woman Marketplace!) made these fabulous prints and they inspired these art quilts. I actually cut up the print, used some of the fabric as squares, used the suns and treescapes whole and then created the fantastical background behind them. Just got me to remembering my science fiction days and earth daughter moon sun things... and oh yeah....
This is definitely going to date me but can we crank up a little Led Zeppelin? "Stairway to 1977" just had to be the n ame of a little fire orange and water blue with kaleidoscope print art quilt that I finished off just this evening with TA-DA... Swarovski crystals! A reminder of crazy, fun high school and late nights with
that special boy friend and homecomings that turned into a wedding dance on down the road. This one's for you, Jeffrey... you may have gone on ahead of the rest of us but your personality and your daughters keep you here with us still. Rock on!
...and then there's Tink.
That one quilt that is just a little different, a little more something than the others. It was giving me fits. A Japanese style Bento Box... gorgeous fabrics replete with rich blues and golds and vibrant greens. I swear the thing shimmers like, well, like it has fairy dust on it! LOL Since I don't know Japanese from Albanian I wasn't going to even try to do the pretentious thing (coming from me - a Japanese name?). And then, it hit me.... the green... the shimmer... it's TINKERBELL GREEN! Trust me, I'm a Yaya to several young granddaughters... Tinkerbell green I KNOW. ...and then the giggles hit along with the crazies. Hmmm... well, you know, IF Tinkerbell went to Tokyo... these would be the fabrics she would like... YEP! By gosh... If Tinkerbell Went To Tokyo is a mighty fine quilty name! ...and I'm willing to bet that someday that quilt title is going to grab someone else's quirky sense of humor and it's will find it's home!
Sure, there's more but you get the idea. There's always a place to have fun in art... and I for one am not about to pass up that place. How about you?
So tonight as I wind everything down... I am wondering if any of you guys do the same thing? Any special things you do when you finish projects? Victory dances that we should know about that take place when UFO's (Un-Finished Objects) become gorgeous goods? I know you're out there having fun...
As for me...Job is done. They all have their names. I've checked that one off the list and I'm heading to bed... IF I can find some pajamas!
Just Hatched...Just Thinking... Pamela