Dèjá vu in the Quilting World

The "just make it" bug has chomped me into getting back to the birthday quilt for a friend.  This is the finished top (finally!) of the "Arboretum" quilt, the directions for which were generously provided in a the following SpringLeaf Studios blog post: 

http://www.springleafstudios.com/2019/11/arboretum.html

Finished "Arboretum" quilt top

 Now comes the hard part, trying to make a pieced back that I designed myself.  I'm almost embarrassed to say "designed" because I really have no idea what I'm doing.  The back is supposed to be larger than the front by at least 4" all the way around.  I can do that.  There's no guarantee that it will have straight sides or that the rows meant to be horizontal actually end up horizontal. 

Mock-up of quilt back

 

I swear this post echos another from about three years ago.  Have I learned nothing?!?  The blocks looked simple enough, but I am having one heck of a time getting it right.  I do believe the problem is entirely user error.  I have been very careful to make precise cuts and measure carefully, yet both blocks have the same problem.  The tail feather does not touch the bird butt.  

Another failed attempt at this bird's tail

 

Argh!  I took this photo after I started to remove the seam to see if there was any adjusting of the entire section up or down that would work.  If I shifted it up the little bit to have tail meet butt, the half square triangles above do not align properly while they DO align beautifully if the tail is left in (the wrong) place.  This makes no sense!  Today I made a third sparrow block using scrap fabric carefully measure and cut, stitched with precise 1/4" seams throughout.

 The tail feather did not line up with the butt.  Again.  By exactly the same measure as the two previous sparrow blocks.

 Searching for tips online only resulted in several videos of  quilters zipping along with perfectly starched fabric and perfect seams, every block stacking perfectly with no hiccups as if they could do this in their sleep.  Clearly the problem is me.  Ugh.  Even after I measure everything a million times and switched to a 1/4" foot for my Bernina (and measure the stitched seam to verify it really was a perfect 1/4"), make sure that I guide the fabric without pushing it, the exact same result occurred.  I wanted use all of my bad words in a steady stream of frustration.  I even took my quilting rulers to verify every piece was the size it should have been, actually hoping it was just me having cut a block the wrong size, but everything checked out accurate.  I WILL make this work, darn it!

This experience confirms that it's a good idea to get to know other more experienced quilters and take a class or twelve.  While at the local quilt shop for the 3rd time in a week for this project, I struck up a conversation with a woman after we bumped into each other on three aisles.  She is involved in a local quilt guild (wasn't quite sure what that meant) and invited me to attend an event the following Monday.  I went, met a lot of really nice ladies who are incredibly experienced, and will join with the hope of learning and one day sharing my (better) finished projects.

Over the years, I have started a lot of projects that involved skills new to me.  I took a class in soldering, but didn't work at it long enough to see any improvement in my end results.  Then there were all of the online classes I paid for, the work for which I did briefly only to be distracted by something shiny, the doorbell or a barfing cat.  I do enjoy a number of creative hobbies and want "making" time a greater priority.  I've said that before, but I've really been cranking away in my studio space for a few weeks now and am set to keep at it.  Now the internal debate.  Do I practice making more sparrows until I figure out what I'm doing wrong, or curse the directions booklet and move on?  I think I'll drag out some old fabric and make a couple more sparrows.

  

Creative Life After Cataract Surgery

 I realized a couple of years ago that my vision seemed off.  Looking out of my right eye only, everything had an amber hue.  My optometrist actually told me it was normal to see color differently out of each eye.  Hmmm.  I didn't buy it. Then a couple of years ago, I was told I had the signs of a developing cataract in that right eye, but that surgery wasn't covered by insurance until DMV determined my vision was a problem.  I'm an excellent driver and have never had a ticket.  My license was automatically renewed by mail for 20 years.  I don't think DMV would ever know my vision was whonky!  To cut to the chase, I was diagnosed with the start of a cataract in the 2nd eye and, as the family unicorn, was informed it was the more unusual type that started around the outer part of the lens and spread like bicycle spokes toward the center.  I had given up working on my quilt project, embroidery and any soldering  because I couldn't see properly and began having problems with tasks as simple as threading my machine or hand needle.  

My first surgery was in December 2023, the second eye done just a few weeks later in January.  Color seems so much bolder and I felt confident enough to tackle my first artsy project - painting a few calling cards used for sharing my contact information with a flair so they aren't tossed out!  My near vision is still a little blurry and will certainly require reading glasses.  The pairs I snagged at the pharmacy make me feel like Mr. Magoo.  Ugh.  My eyeballs are also super dry and, of course, the million dollar eye drops aren't covered by my costly PPO insurance.  Thanks again, Cigna. 

It has taken until May to leave the house and not panic that I don't have eyedrops on me.  My vision is pretty darn good, although I do need reading glasses even with the bazillion dollar tri-focal implants.  Fibbers!

Our home is now officially an empty nest.  No longer do I have to work at a rickety Ikea desk that was in my young daughter's room back in 1995.   Nor do I have to work surround by litterboxes.  Blech.  I have invested in my first actual (and adjustable) sewing table MEANT for sewing, plus a new chair.  My new work area is in a large guest room with great windows providing a beautiful view and terrific light.  OK, I did keep the Ikea desk to make a larger work space, but the new table in the centerpiece of my new little world.

To help me with creative inspiration, I signed up for several classes on the site Domestika.  One is about learning the ins and outs of a DSLR camera.  I've owned a great Nikon for a few years and am the worst photographer ever because I have no idea what I'm doing.   Artist Suzanne Allard also has some fun and encouraging online courses, one of which I've begun.  Lastly, there was a Facebook post by the "America Connects" folks that (for a fee) provides a theme, color pallet and instructions to create a small painting, the image of which is included in a large public mural project.  I was nauseous with nerves, but signed up and submitted a photo of my little painting of my granddaughter in the color required.  I think it came out ok!

 

  I used the cheater method given my lack of skill and experience, creating a posterized version of a photo and tracing the outline of the various shades as a starter.  All I cared about is that she saw it and exclaimed, "That's me!"  I'll be framing the original and putting in her room here at Grandma's house.  As my vision improves and my confidence grows, I'll try something else.

The Quilt Project

There is nothing to put on the pressure to create like a bestie, "D," saying that she'd like me to make a quilt for her to get me going again in my studio again.  Finally.  She reminded me that she had nothing made by me.  I'm not good about treating what I make as worthy of serving as a gift for anyone.  Yet she asked me many times to make something and donate it for a charity auction, and every time whatever I made from an funky art doll to a quilt or painted children's furniture sold at the fixed price and didn't even make it to auction.  I need to stop messing around and work on that confidence.  Will it ever come?

Sewing is generally easy for me (at least I know how to operate the machine), but it had been a while since I worked on piecing a quilt.  The quilt D selected required a lot of different fabrics.  Over the course of a year I added to my  Kaffe Fassett stash, and buying more (some of which had been discontinued and out of print) so I had enough to make 94 unique blocks with no repeat of the main fabric, an almost as many unique fabric for the "branches" of the tree blocks.  I sewed with what I had while waiting for the next delivery.  Thank goodness for Etsy!  Most days I tried to spend at least two hours cutting and sewing with great music blasting.  There were times when things went smoothly, and times when everything went wrong and I made good use of my four letter word vocabulary.  

My inspiration is the Arboretum quilt from Anne of springleafstudios.com who generously provided her instructions for making this divine quilt. These are just a tiny sample of my untrimmed blocks.  The finished quilt photo is that of Spring Leaf Studios and what I hope mine will resemble.

 

 

Image from springleafstudios.com and made by Anne, owner of that blog and business

The day before we gathered to celebrate D's birthday, I finished the last block and wrapped the stack, including a photo of the inspiration photo (she picked 3 and let me choose, so didn't know which one made the cut).  It was almost a let down to no longer have a deadline.  Now I can start trimming and piecing whenever I want.  Ooh, the danger of not getting back to it.  

  Of course there is always real life - hosting the 1st birthday party for our one and only granddaughter, cat with bad medical news that means learning how to give a cat IV fluids every week, grand-baby gets REALLY sick which means I mask up and help, demolition begins for a remodel going on over my head, move out of our room, one adult kid moves back home for a few months and this was all in one week.  

In the midst of chaos, I am going to try to keep creating.  I was a much happier person when I was buzzing away at the machine or struggling to make fabric combination choices.  

Time to make a mess!

The Grinding Halt, aka Spine Surgery

Back pain has been a part of my life for almost twenty years now.  It started off as just "achy" and then turned full steam ahead into wicked and incapacitating pain with no warning.  I remember sitting on the living room floor with my legs in a jackknife position, one stretched out, the other bent with the sole of my right foot on my inner left thigh, happily wrapping Christmas gifts for a couple of hours.  My back felt sore, a couple of hours later it really hurt, and by dinner time I could not stand up straight.  Ugh.  I struggled to get to the doctor in the following days, prescribed strong pain killers and muscle relaxers to help with the abominable muscle spasms and sciatica that made me nauseous and kept me hunkered over the trash can in my office (just in case).  Oh, and I worked (in a non-clinical role) for spine surgeons and pain management physicians.  I got a lot of good advice about body mechanics and modifying how I moved, proper lifting, got stretched and massaged in exam rooms when free if patients, and eventually recovered.  This kind of nightmare occurred with varying degrees of severity about every five years.  Most recently, the pain was more than I could tolerate.  I also began experiencing additional new and unnerving symptoms - my right leg felt as if it were wrapped with a heavy lead blanket, my right knee went "flamingo" on me, and I took two terrible falls in one week that left me black and blue on my legs and concerned that I had broken my foot (I had "only" hyper-extended all of my toes under my foot) which put me on crutches for a couple of weeks.  One fall from a stool resulted in a vertebral fracture.  Good grief.

I saw an orthopedist that specialized in knees.  The films suggested that the knee that gave out was NOT the worse of my two osteoarthritic knees, and he suspected that the weakness might be related to my ongoing and worsening spine condition.   My lowest spinal disc appeared on film like a thin black line.  The vertebrae above it was slipping out of line and nerves were being pinched to the point of causing all of those symptoms of neurologic claudication in my right leg, now including neuropathy - a constant pain on the surface of my skin that feels like someone taking sandpaper to a sunburn, and that "buzzing" feeling like my feet are falling asleep and hurt.  After meeting with a spine surgeon and, thankfully, having a lot of work-related knowledge of the procedure and risks, I opted to go ahead with a two-level spine fusion to relieve pressure on nerves, reduce the risk of permanent damage, and stabilize my spine.

 Recovery has been much harder than I ever expected.  I spent nearly a decade with daily interaction with spine surgery patients.   I saw some have a much harder time than others (usually much older patients who also lived alone), and I saw a lot who did really well faster than I would have expected.  I have always been healthy in the sense that I recovered very quickly from "cooties" like a cold, and recovered well from my only other surgery 20 years ago.  This one has kicked my butt.

When I came home from the hospital, I could barely walk even using my walker.  I had a vertical incision on both my abdomen and back larger than the average cesarean incision (I asked friends who had gone that route).  My husband rented the first medical bed he could find.  It felt like an awful sleeper sofa, but it was what we had available.  There were nights I just sobbed, miserable and unable to roll one direction or the other on my own to get more comfortable, and NOTHING was comfortable.  I felt gross, unable to shower until more than a week after surgery when someone finally put a waterproof bandage over my back incision.  My hair was greasy, my pain was worse than anything I had ever experienced and meds weren't helping much, I was stuck in a dreary office downstairs...life just sucked.  And it sucked like this for a couple of weeks before I started to feel like I was improving.  

It has been nine weeks since my surgery.  I have made good progress recovering, but it has been slow.  I was telling a friend that this has been like a hard diet.  You starve yourself and give up everything you love to eat and drink.  The struggle is on the mind all of the time.  Weight loss is in very small increments and you don't see it looking at yourself in the mirror every day, but someone who hasn't seen you for a while notices right away.  Or you find that suddenly your jeans are loose right out of the dryer.  This recovery has been that kind of agonizingly slow.  Then one day I realized I got up from a particular chair by myself.  Then I feel the setback of still not being able to get up from a toilet without a walker or cane (yeah, that one's real fun).  Then I waddle around the kitchen without falling, making scrambled eggs and ham by myself, or a cup of tea.  Woohoo!

There isn't much to distract me while I recover.  Home PT has run its course, so says my insurance company.  I am too unstable to walk alone outdoors since we have windy roads with no sidewalks and there is no one to pick me up if I take a splat.  My husband has been working at home since March 2019, so Zoom meetings are going about ten hours a day.  He doesn't complain, but I know it has been exhausting - taking care of me, taking care of a huge house, working - all of which adds up to more hours in a week than exist.  I feel guilty and useless, as if all I do is watch TV and do my PT throughout the day.  Brain cells are falling out in chunks.  I read at night to help me doze off.  If I read during the day, it makes me doze off too and nighttime sleep is too hard to come by, so no napping!  I have GOT to get in a better state of mind. 

My goal this week is to find something creative to do that doesn't strain my back and that is not coloring!  I keep hoping that I  can find a way to cut quilt bits, or even play with watercolor, anything to save my sanity.  

Time for more PT.  I need to move more, fuss less.

I'm back with fresh approach

During this period of Covid-induced isolation and seclusion, I half expected to get back to trying to be creative.  The promises I made to myself to do so were empty.  The easel sat forever with a dusty canvas on it.  I never finished the project I started at the retreat I attended more than a year ago.  The list of personal disappointments is long, but I'm not going to document all of the failures.  Time to move ahead and DO something.

Last week I stumbled on the web site Domestika which offers very affordable art classes, the kind where you pay a single fee and have access to the videos forever (we'll see about that).  I started poking around and found two that really interested me, one offering instruction in watercolor, the other a combination of portrait painting using a photo as a guide and Photoshop layers.  The format allows for independent trudging along, but the opportunity to ask questions of the artists or participate in the forum for the class.  The lessons are not in English but subtitled, so each will take a couple of viewings (the first to read, next to watch), but I don't mind.  This will offer an opportunity for me to improve my Spanish which I clearly need after the game of charades with my landscaper today.  Two lessons for the price of one!

The first "lesson" was simply to view the artist's introduction to herself and the course, then provide a personal introduction and thoughts behind choosing the course.  I made the mistake of reading the introductions of others taking the class before submitting my own and just about stopped in my tracks - graphic artists, doctors, illustrators, interior designers...but the description clearly stated that no experience was required.  While I sat frozen for a good ten minutes before attaching photos of my own work and my bio brief, I reread what I typed a couple of times.  My goal is to have fun learning something new.  That's it.  Not to compete with others in the class, not to compare my work to theirs and then feel sorry for sucking at painting, but to focus on having fun.  So I hit "submit."  It was the most challenging keystroke ever, but I did it.  As soon as I did, I wondered if it were possible to go back later and delete the photos.  Then I stopped myself, having decided that I need to do things differently.  I always told my kids, "If at first you don't succeed, stop doing the same thing that didn't work over and over again!"  Time for me to listen to my own good advice and shut down the negative thoughts. 

Time to look at lesson #2.

Just give me chardonnay and a bendy straw

For a while, I wrestled with trying to find time to be creative when I was juggling a full-time job and parenting.  Then I gave up the job so that I could pursue my creativity drive, and it took a nap.  Then I became an almost-empty-nester when my older child married, and the younger of the two in college and only home for summers and the holidays.

Not any more.  The newlywed was recruited to her dream job close to our home that came with an impossible commute from her own, so she moved back home Sunday through Friday.  Now her husband is also job hunting in this area, so they are now both here full time.  Then the one that graduated from college is still in Asia (sending the most terrifying photos of spiders bigger than his hand that were on the roof of their "room" for a night or two), scheduled to return in a few weeks in time to start the hunt for his first full-time job post college.  His significant other was displaced and is working full-time and living with us, also saving toward their getting their own place post college.  It's nice to have company other than the cats, and I've actually been good about forcing myself to stop with chores to get into the studio most days.

To make sure that things remain interesting and never boring around here,  we are about to embark on a full kitchen gut and remodel, so my studio/laundry room will become a temporary kitchen for the next 3-4 months, and a lot of my art supplies are getting packed away and moved into the garage.  The library will become the family room, part of our upstairs will become the office and the family room & kitchen will become a war zone for a while.  The project is starting sooner than I was initially advised, so I am NOT prepared to cook in the temporary space unless we are having microwaved popcorn for dinner.  And chardonnay.  That doesn't need any heat ;-)  Just a straw.

It is hard enough to be creative when everything is going smoothly, so these next few months are really going to be a test of my commitment to keep at it.  I won't have an oven for working with polymer clay, so maybe this is the time to experiment with paper clay again.  I can always solder (and heaven knows, based on my recent results, that I really, really need to practice), sew and work out ideas for new projects.  Even in the midst of construction, I want to push myself to do something creative, make something, every day.  And then celebrate my accomplishment with chardonnay :-)

Art and math do not mix

I have to start this off by stressing I have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom whose kids are now grown (though one is home after college graduation and trip meant to kill ME to Asia for a month, but that's another panic attack story), so I do the old fashioned job of keeping the house Monday through Friday.  Unsolicited, my husband, who works an executive job about 11 hours a day, often two weeks straight if traveling, kicks in before I even get up on the weekends AND he cooks on the weekends.  Seriously cooks.  So my "chores versus creative time" is a mess of my own doing.  Some things never change.  The cats keep using the litter boxes that I have to scoop.  Dinner doesn't take long to cook, but it always means making a mess that I have to clean up.  Repairs around the house need to be managed, and it's my responsibility since I'm home.  The problem is that with a big house and constant chores, it's really, really easy to get out of the habit of doing anything creative.  What a shock to see how long it had been since I posted to my blog.  It isn't that I expect anyone to read it - it's all about catharsis for me - but still!  The lack of activity here is a testament to the lack of activity in my litter-boxy studio.  Time for a new plan of action!

Today I put "studio" time on my calendar, actually treating it as if I were having a meeting (like in the oooold days when I wore a suit and had an office and business cards).  If I put more of what I need to do on the calendar, it will give me more direction for the day, plotting chores time, errands time, and make a mess time.  Today was more about making a mess.

Husband Harold has always liked my quilts and actually looks forward to attending events like the Road to California show every year with real enthusiasm.  He also really loves the same modern prints and bright colours that I do, so he was very happy when I handed him my copy of Kaffe Fasset's "Country Garden Quilts" and ask him which one (that didn't have any curves!) he would like me to make for him.  I should have torn out pages 28 & 29 first.  O.M.G.

This quilt is made up of a million pinwheels, which means a zillion triangles have to be cut from dozens of fabrics, then reassembled in as close to perfect stupid little squares as possible.  Four of those stupid little squares made of two triangles get assembled into one larger square and you have to hope and pray every stitch is straight and the squares are actually square.  Curse pages 28 & 29!  The instructions are NOT for the faint of heart, for the person who needed a tutor for math in 7th grade when we had to do math using dreaded fractions.  I can do it now, but trying to do it with questionable instructions to begin with, boggling my mind, resulted in a lot of mistakes and the usage of all of the bad words that I know.  And I have used them all with gusto.

This is what the stupid quilt is supposed to look like.

 

The instructions are a little confusing.  I can build furniture from Ikea in the blink of an eye, so you KNOW these instructions had to be a little wonky.  The directions for cutting fabric didn't make a lot of sense and are contradictory to most of what is taught in quilting class that I could find on my beloved YouTube or other web sites.  All I wanted to know to begin was what the heck size fabric square do I need to start with to end up with a pinwheel of a specific size.  This is what I had to do to get an answer to that question (and then I add extra to compensate for waggles in cutting).

I drew pictures.  I cut out practice pieces using scrap fabric and assembled them to experiment with size.  Then I found the Missouri Quilt Company website and video that explained how to do the math you see on this notebook page.  None of that helps with simple counting, though, as is demonstrated by this pile of useless pieces that are the extras because I'm soooooo good at counting.  

My charming husband asked, "Can't you just use these for another quilt?"  And I asked, "Do you think I'm insane enough to make TWO quilts made up of a zillion triangles put back together to make one big piece of fabric?!?"

I think tomorrow I'll paint something.  Maybe I'll make some more of my calling cards.  I don't use as many bad words.  Then I'm going to send all of my extra triangles to my sister as a surprise gift to add to her stash.  Good luck, Lisa!  xox

Practice Does NOT Make Perfect (yet)

The last few weeks were disastrous for trying to get any artwork done or even going back to my beading class.   I knew I wouldn't make the next class because of family birthday plans, but was thrown for a loop when my father died that night, having only learned from a Facebook post by his family member that he was in serious trouble medically.  After weeks of drama, there were the additional distractions of a failed irrigation system in a drought (we cut back a lot, but are trying to keep trees alive), finding that we had a leak in our pool that could have resulted in the electrocution of my future son-in-law and then a bee hive and swarm that showed up right after (thank goodness!) our July 4th barbecue and fireworks show, along with working on a destination wedding just four months away.  The plumber did as much as he could to fix our irrigation problem before the bees got too grumpy, I managed to get a bee guy out within the hour, and postponed all of the repairs to the pool and yard until next week.  Harrumph.  I am totally buzzer-phobic, so I'm glad this was resolved quickly.

Too scared to go outside for another day or two (the suggested time to avoid the angry bee area by the bee dude), I figured I'd take advantage of the fact that the husband is out of town and have the house alone.  Time to start cutting out that quilt he wants!

It shouldn't be this hard or confusing.  I've been sewing garments and stuff for the house since I was a kid, plus I have made quilts before.  Not many, but I figured I'm experienced enough as long as it doesn't have curves or require crazy piece work.  Alas, I have been away from it long enough that it is NOT going well.  The directions are a little squirelly.  I love Kaffe Fasset, but someone did not do a thorough job of writing the instructions.  Some steps are left out, including one bit of information about how may pieces of a particular color of fabric to cut.  Yikes!

I made things worse by going on the internet and surfing videos for advice and finding a "shortcut."  The "shortcut" wasn't well executed by me, and so I made some costly errors.  The pattern calls for cutting about a trillion triangles and piecing them together to look like pinwheels, and then putting those pinwheels together to form the quilt top.  The shortcut showed how easy it was to just cut bigger squares instead of a bunch of little triangles, put the two bigger squares right sides together, sew around all four sides, then make two diagonal cuts and voila!  You open each of the four pieces and have four sets of the triangles together!  I did a lot of math to figure out the proper size of the squares.  OK, I thought I figured out the right size.  I was wrong.  Over and over again.  I have used all of the bad words in the bad word bank and wasted about a half mile of fabric.  I even practiced with ugly older fabric to test the process.  And test it again.  And tweak the needle position on my machine.  And trim the squares, sometimes ending up with a rectangle.  Or ending up with a square the wrong size.  Sigh. 

Time to crank on some good music, whip out the rotary cutter and start trimming the already cut pieces to make them workable.  At least I'm not just watching TV or having long, drawn out discussions with the cats.  And I'm glad to be doing something creative, even if I started out doing a bad job of it.  With practice, maybe I can perfect the pinwheel.

Another Step Outside the Comfort Zone

After more than three years of living in a town where I have yet to make any real friends (or much art, for that matter), I knew I had reached a point where I had to actually DO something to break out of this rut.  I found a little garden shop in a neighboring town that offers crafty classes.  Some of the classes are for the type of project I wouldn't normally be attracted to make, but I remembered an article by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer where she wrote about the value of taking a class like this, breaking out of the same old mold and pattern of redundant creativity. 

Making the call to sign up for the class and actually going was much more nerve-wracking than I expected.  Even after all these years, I still think back to the horribly critical art instructor I had in one of my first college classes, the beast who grabbed my sketch pad from my hands on the first day of class and wrote a big, fat red "F" on it.  Then there was the "beginner" classes I took with an established local artist, only to find that some of the others taking the class had REAL studios and shows...huh?  Not beginning, but very intimidating.  The day before I was to attend the first session, I really clobbered my foot and did some serious damage to a toe enough that I couldn't put on a shoe for a couple of days.  I was relieved that I had an excuse to put off attending for another week.  What a chicken!

This week, I butched up, packed up the supplies I thought I might need for this weekly one-hour beading class and marched right in.  What a wonderful, pleasant afternoon!  The class topic is "Beading Basics."  The course description included instruction in stringing, wire wrapping, crimping and other basic beading skills.  If nothing else, I'd learn how to repair a lot of broken jewelry.  After a little chatting, I learned that the instructor as well as another class instructor live in the city that I live in but, unlike my experience meeting residents so far, were warm, wonderful and welcoming.  I had a great time meeting these ladies, completely losing track of time.  Not that my verbosity distracted anyone from the clock, nope, nope, nope!  We worked until almost 2:30, an hour and a half longer than anticipated.  At the end of it, I had a fine beaded bracelet that I was proud to have finished.  Better yet, I feel like I've met some people with whom I could become friends.  After this class, I'm eager to try another, maybe the art quilts and fiber arts class.  Finally, like-minded souls in my neighborhood! 

Stepping out of my comfort zone and taking this class might seem like a small task for some, but my fear of failure and ridicule have held me back for so very long.  This was a big deal for me and I'm happy I made the move, eagerly anticipating the next gathering.  Thank you, Beth and Libby and classmate Crystal for renewing my faith in friendship.

When Bad Instructions Lead to Bad Improv

When the creative juices have slowed to a snail's pace, I have no problem resorting to the use of a pattern to make something, anything, instead of just staring at my studio desk.  Over the past couple of years, I have added a few patterns for sewn and stuffed creations for help with my stifled creativity.  Tired of a blank brain on the art front,  I finally opened one of the patterns to look over the materials list and read through the instructions.  Just a few steps into the instructions, I noticed things like materials listed appeared nowhere in the actual instructions.  Then there were the confusing directions to do things like cut two pieces of ribbon followed by instructions about what to do with the middle piece.  Middle?  Of two pieces?  Huh?

The distraction of the obvious errors, including conflicting instructions and missing information, made me think that I should just move on to a different pattern.  Maybe these errors were an anomaly.  I opened the next pattern and began reading through those instructions as well.  They were worse.  I can't silence my mental red pen and felt compelled to let the author know, without being impolite, that there are issues with the instructions that needed clarification before I could get started.  It was hard to find a functioning means of communication with the creator, but we finally connected via email.  One of my questions lead to the creator realizing this was a big error in the years-old pattern, and the "clarification" for a different step that was still just wrong: 5+3+5 is never going to add up to 8.  Sigh.  At least I have years of sewing experience and figured most of it out by myself.

I got to drawing, sewing, cutting and stuffing and found myself enjoying getting messy with this silly project.  I question some of the steps, thinking that this just doesn't look right or thinking that I could save myself a messy task by doing some things out of order.  At least I'm doing something creative, even if it is editing instructions and poking myself in the fingers until I bleed.

I've done stuff like this a million times, so I just put on my smarty-pants and improvised on some of the instructions.  Bad idea.  Pants were not so smart.  The most important thing to remember for future similar projects (and should have remembered!) is not to gesso fabric that requires being hand-stitch later to avoid having to paint in nooks and crannies.  It's like trying to poke a needle through a sheet of plastic.  So I have the body of a bird on wire legs too flimsy to support its weight (even though I used wire one gauge thicker than the pattern called for) so it looks like a drunk on the sidewalk.  Do I bother to finish?  Throw it out and start over?  Or do I challenge my inner-Tim Gunn and figure out how to just make it work?

I say, "Start another project and hide the mess!"  Yup, I'll come back to this fiasco leter.

Trying To Get Back In The Game

I've been on jury duty for a few weeks now, almost grateful to have an excuse for all of the things I'm not getting done at home.  One of my new juror friends told me about her artwork, sharing photographs of the beautiful greeting cards she makes.  Looking at her work made me think about all of the supplies I have and am not using.  Again.  She asked about any web site I might have and so I confessed I had a blog, sharing the URL with her and almost hoping she never looks.  When I looked online myself to be sure I had it right, I was startled to see that it had been more than a year since I last posted.  Has it been more than a year since I sat in the studio?  No, but close to it.  As we walked to our cars at the end of the day, I committed to doing something creative over this long weekend (long for us, no court on Thursday and Friday).  Now to figure out what to do.

So I've cleaned out the litter box that is at the far end of the room, got two loads of laundry going and am about to sit at the desk and see what happens.  I need some good creative juju.  Artist John Whipple's assemblage speaks volumes to me.  That darned artsy block feels like such a burden.  Time to get my hands a little dirty and try to shake it off.

Addendum: When my brain doesn't cooperate on the creative side, I make business/calling cards.  I was reminded of steps I'd forgotten since it has been a long while (like using an extender with acrylic paints before using a brayer).  Listening to loud music and messing around with paints and papers and scissors was fun again.  While it is hard for me to avoid making comments both in my head and on my blog about how lacking my artistic skills are when I share, I am going to make an effort.  While I don't fancy myself much of an artist, I have found it handy to have cards with my name and contact information when someone asks for it.  So this is the extent of my creative session today.

Tempermental Printers Rule the Studio

Today, there was no Pinterest-cruising and no reference book cheating, just straight to the studio to fiddle around with ideas for the painting of Great Grandfather Ross.  Once again, the shadows cast from the window to the back of the painting provided inspiration (although the lines are all in a different place), so I quickly traced them before the sun moved much.

Today's studio lesson was all about printer abuse and neglect.  A couple of years ago, I spent too much money on a fancy Epson Stylus R1900 printer because an artist and author I admire uses one for printing her art.  Hoping one day I would also generate art worthy of printing, I bought the same printer.  It's very rude and overly sensitive.  Apparently, one must use up the expensive ink faster than I do, or it just dries up and the printer thinks it needs to be fed.  I don't think I've used this printer in two years, in part because it was packed up when we were moving and then I just didn't get around to making much art.  Today I fired up the beast at which time it told me that I needed to replace four cartridges.  Ugh.  At least I had those four.  Then I went online and bought a replacement for each colour since they're nearly impossible to find in an actual brick-and-mortar store.  At least it seems to be happy and working well.  I prefer a simple printer that remembers settings and does the same old thing every time unless you tell it something different.  This one seems fussier, assuming you are printing something large and fancy and glossy at all times.  I'm pretty tech savvy and have read the manual and clearly need to spend more time finding it's secret tricks.

With my husband out of town and nothing but time on my hands, I need to remember that I can work after dark.  For some reason, I always feel that I have to stop working as the sun is setting.  It must be my mindset from the days of having kids at home to feed and knowing I'd get the, "I'm on my way and will be home in an hour" call from my husband.  It's hard to get used to all of this free time.  Now I have to make good use of it.

The Artsy Resolution

My resolutions for the new year are not about diet, exercise, losing weight or any variation of those things (a never ending battle all year long).  I have resolved to 1) spend more social time with friends and family less time in solitude and 2) to get my artsy self back. 

Having fun with art is something I don't do well these days.  I read about so many successful artists (and I mean success in the sense of making a living) that are self-taught, learning from books, DVD's or taking single classes of instruction here and there.  I found a year-long online course with artists Carla Sonheim and Lynn Whipple (I am SO excited) and signed up, something I would have been afraid to do in the past.  The first lesson involves line drawing.  I completed the first lesson, and found myself muttering, "I stink at this."  The lesson reads all over the place that this is about having fun, relax, just go with it, it's not supposed to be perfect...but I still caught my inner critic speaking out loud.  When I was to pick a single subject and make multiple attempts at it, I caught myself scrolling up on the screen to see what the instructor's drawings looked like.  ACK!  Mine don't look like hers at all!  I must be doing it wrong.  Then I stopped myself and zoomed down the page so that I couldn't see her drawings any longer.  Really?  I still can't just relax?  This is going to take more practice than I thought it would, but I'm up for it.  I just need to tape the mouth of the inner critic shut.

I have decided that I'm going to give myself permission to try my hand at something another artist does that inspires me, not to sell it or claim the idea as my own, but to get back in the habit of making stuff.  Last week we had another of those crazy wind storms that absolutely trashed my back yard, leaving eucalyptus leaves and branches littered everywhere among the pine cone bombs that came flying down.  I remembered seeing pictures of painted individual eucalyptus leaves at bicocacolors.blogspot.com and figured I could have some fun experimenting.  I spent a good two hours painting, something I can't remember doing for ages.  Now my leaves look nothing like the artist's leaves, but I had focused fun, music blaring, and was happy doing it.

Tomorrow's exercise is to continue without self-criticism.

Falling for Studio Time

The last couple of months have been busy with things like travel and injuries (later...), and I realized it had been too long since I did any art work.  My usual mantra - my brain is blank.  Where do I start?  I never have any idea where to begin.  Sheesh, you'd think I'd have this figured out by now.  After my usual wasting time on Pinterest, I slammed the laptop shut and figured I needed to put something, anything, in my hands to get started.

A couple of months ago, a distant cousin gave me the most wonderful gift of a photograph of one of my great grandfathers, a man whose photo I have never before seen.  As an added bonus, I found that he had been a railroad conductor in Illinois and one of the photographs was of him in his uniform.  Given my son's obsession with trains as a young boy, this made it extra fun for me.  I thought it would be fun to create a personalized piece of art for the house using this photograph as a reference.  I accepted my painting skill limitations decades ago, so I figure this is a test of creativity, not necessarily painting skills.  I'm going to confess right off that I used Photoshop and bright light behind the canvas to help with the image.  If I'd drawn it freehand, Grandfather Carter would look more like a troll than a train conductor.

Are there steps that are supposed to be taken in a particular order when painting?  I have no idea.  Last month, I smooshed around what I thought to be pleasing colours for the first go 'round.  Today I painted the silhouette.  I'm thinking about adhering faint images of the railroad maps onto the background, but then I saw the lines cast by the setting sun on the canvas and liked that image.  Sigh.  I figure it's just a mess-around project at worst.  I'm getting my hands dirty and, hopefully, some artistic brain cells will slowly begin to stir and I'll move along to the next projects.   

The original photograph of Great Grandfather Grant Ulysses Carter

My poorly lit painting with Phase 1 started

While on vacation in Orlando two weeks ago, I took a terrible fall on what locals later told me they call "winter acorns."  That's code for deadly tree marbles.  I had tried dressing up like a big girl for a dinner date with my husband in an upscale restaurant, so I was wearing a dress and platforms (not huge and not wedges, so in my mind, not particularly dangerous).  We'd made it most of the way back to our hotel when I stepped on one of those stupid beasts and did quite the crash and burn.  My left knee made direct contact (and skid, ouch) with the pavement and I twisted my right ankle something fierce.  My husband helped me take off my shoes and hobble back to the room.  Mind you, this was after buying a 2-day pass to Universal Studios and our first visit ever to Orlando.  After a full day of begging for help from the hotel for first aid, help finding a wheelchair to get medical attention (my foot and ankle looked like a black and blue loaf of bread), I was a wreck.  After a doctor visit and x-rays there, then another round when we got back to CA, I was finally correctly diagnosed with not only a nasty sprain, but two hairline fractures in my right ankle.  Ouch, ouch, ouch.  I've never broken a bone or had to be on crutches.  This stinks.  But with the swelling down a lot, I figured I'm so limited in what I can do, I no longer have an excuse to avoid the studio.  Between rounds of elevating my food, I'll play in here and see if something wildly creative comes out of this.  At least I'm no longer Shrek-coloured from the knees down!  Now I'm a puffy, pale shade of Bart Simpson.  It could have been worse.

Another Day, No Blood This Time

Well, that last round of soldering hurt.  I managed to stab myself good with a twisted and sharp point of the copper tape I tried pulling off of the glass, thinking I might be able to re-use it.  No such luck.  The front was cracked in half, the adhesive clearly melted solidly onto the glass.  What a mess.

I decided to give it another whirl and it turned out much better.  Clearly, I need to continue to practice, but at least it's not so bad.  I think I can wear it if I continue to move so that it's a bit of a blur and the wobbly line of rhinestones won't be so obviously wobbly.

It could use another go 'round...

Why does the back look better than the front?  More flux, that's why!

When I feel in a bind in terms of just NOT knowing what I'm doing, I find myself wandering the internet for help.  I actually did find a couple of YouTube videos that offered good advice.  One person noted that if you find yourself getting a lot of lumps and spikes in the solder, use more flux to get it flowing.  Great advice!  That's one thing I did much more with this version.  The other video offered suggestions about adhering the paper artwork to the glass first which I don't think I'll do.  I worry about how that glue will affect the paper.  In the soldering class that I took, the instructor had us use a modicum of glue adhering paper to glass.  I found that the heat of soldering caused a bit of condensation to appear under the glass.  Maybe I need to experiment.  The other tip was using a small amount of super glue on the back side of one of the glass & paper assemblies so that the two layers were truly joined together before soldering began.  I can see how this would keep it together tightly so the layers don't shift while wrapping with the copper tape, but still worry about 1) condensation from the glue if not 100% dry and 2) how the glue might affect the paper in terms of staining or eventually showing through.  Guess there's only one way to find out.

Just to see what was out there, I visited a number of Etsy shops that offered soldered jewelry.  I don't like to bash other artist's work, but there was some stuff out that that was just not what I expected to see for sale.  Was that polite enough?  Then there was another artist whose work was just about flawless and quite inspiring.  Clearly, it can be done!  Now to figure out how.  After I work at that for a while, I'm going to go back to fabric which doesn't make me bleed or sob in frustration.

Practice does NOT make perfect

Practice needs to take place more often than once in a blue moon.  When was the last time that I tried soldering?  It's been a while.  I'm not sure how many thousands of dollars I can afford on practicing.  To make the jewelry I want to make, I need images or something interesting to sandwich between the two pieces of glass I'm soldering together.  After working on a few tiny pieces of watercolored papers, I realized it was a lot of time spent on something that was likely to end up crap (at least until I had more practice).  There had to be something I could use that, if I pulled off a miracle and whipped up something respectable in terms of soldering, would be worth keeping and wearing.  A few months ago, I joined Teesha Moore's "The Artstronauts Club," and found that she frequently offers free printables of her artwork.  There are beautiful and perfectly sized bits to print (and touch up with sparkly paint or colored pencil for fun) and use in my practice bits.  It takes a lot less time to cut out a tiny rectangle than to paint or draw the work.

Today I was so happy to finish housework early (and skip the trip to the dry cleaners with hubby's shirts until tomorrow) and get into the studio.  My recently purchased burnishing tool performed much better than the old pen cap that I used for getting the copper tape to lay flat and tight.  Silly me thought that this would make a big difference in the finished project.

I just can't get it right.  I KNOW I'm going over areas too many times, but if there's a lumpy spot, there's only one way to smooth the surface.  I worried that I would melt the copper tape backing and it would stop adhering, but it looked like it was still sticking really well.  But as I made a final slide of the iron, I dropped the glass piece onto my studio desk.  If it were wood or metal, no problem.  But it's a cheap, crappy desk from Ikea, the surface of which is coated with plastic.  Ugh.  The hot solder picked up a bit of the plastic all around the surface.  In a panic, I thought maybe the high heat of the soldering iron would burn it off.  I know, dumb.  But I tried anyway.  Then I figured I could build another coat of solder over the first and hide it.  I should have quit while I was ahead. 

It was a wreck.  Done.  No more "fixing" would fix it.  I unplugged the soldering iron and let the piece cool off in a clamp.  After it was quite cool, I started trying to tear off the old solder and tape.  After getting three sides unwrapped, I just opened it like a book and wrestled the paper images out.  They are slightly marred on the edges from the uber-melting of the copper tape adhesive.  The glass was a total loss.  I can still use the images because the tape will cover it, but sheesh!  It's so much time invested to still suck this much!

The front after I over-soldered by quite a few runs

The back wasn't nearly as bad as the front

Time to try something new.  I need to practice every day, even just for a little while before I move on to something else.  I don't want to think that I, and only I, just can't do a better job at soldering with practice.  I've tossed the blechy glass and am ready to give it another go. 

Reunions are like mirrors...

I've been traveling so much recently, that I've had absolutely no time in the studio.  Just returning home from a reunion weekend, I opted not to accompany H on his trip to Santa Barbara.  I've had enough of trying to keep myself busy, by myself, away from home.  Ugh.

This reunion has given me a lot to think about.  An "old" friend laughingly pointed out that I can really TALK.  Yes, I talk too much.  I think that people who are out a lot, have a lot of friends and/or have a job that allows them to interact with people frequently have no idea how miserable it can be to suffer the silence of solitude after years of daily interaction with a lot of people.  The friends that I left behind when we moved in 2013 don't have much in the way of free time for getting together socially.  This new town has been rough, with everyone driving their snooty cars into their snooty garages, the doors close and we don't see them again until the garage door raises the next morning and they zip away again.  We have received the message loud and clear in this neighborhood.  Neighbors don't speak to each other.  Ever.  So yes, when I get around fun people, I tend to make up for lost time.  My mid-year resolution - listen more, talk less. 

The other thing I reflected on this weekend was how apologetic I am about the results of my creative efforts.  Spending time with my now real-and-in-person friend and fabulous artist Debbie was eye-opening.  We talked at length about how to move ahead, the fears and trepidation all artists experience, the rejection, and the need to keep moving forward and let our stories come out in our art.  I've struggled with a particular piece for so long and Debbie has urged me to just finish it and move it out, completing that circle that is creating art and moving it along and then starting anew.  So I have a plan for this piece that's been haunting me and will work on it this week.  Photos to follow!

I have a lot to think about now that I'm home.  I want to be healthier for the next reunion.  I want to make progress in my artwork and not feel the need to apologize or explain sheepishly what I was thinking when I made it.  I want to feel confident again.  I want to learn how to make friends here and get the social back in my life.  I'd like to see something different in the mirror the next time I look.

Still No Art?

I continue to just sit here and mess with my art supplies for a few minutes before I turn back to the computer and photos for "inspiration."  It's not inspiration if I don't do anything.

Today I grabbed the paper clay head I've been fiddling with for months.  Everyone wrinkled their nose when they saw the peak on his head, asking if he was an alien or if it was a horn.  Looking at it, I felt nothing.  It doesn't speak to me at all.  I keep trying to listen, and there's no thinking noise in my head.  So my response to the silence was to dip that puppy in some warm water and start whacking off the peak/horn/freaky hat.  Who knows how this one will end up, but I figure if I go over the top away from what I normally do, maybe my internal creative spark will get a little brighter.

Picture to follow.

Soldering Mistakes & Flops

It's been a few weeks since I sat down in my studio space and started working on anything.  We spent a week in Washington D.C. where I experienced my first real snow.  I've played in the snow a couple of times at Mammoth Lakes, just south of Yosemite, but the snow had fallen long before we arrived and the sunny skies were melting it quickly.  In this case I went to bed at the end of a sunny day and woke up to about a foot of snow.  It was beautiful!  We tromped all over the city and were stunned to find nearly everything closed because of the snow.  The streets, sidewalks and parking lots were clear.  If this Southern California girl can stomp a few miles in snow, I'd think the locals could drive to their jobs and open things like the Library of Congress :-(  In any event, I did get to nail my husband with many, many snowballs.  After a while, he got a bit annoyed and suggested perhaps he'd had enough.  I suggested he move along a little faster.  Bahaha!

Got him!  And look at all of that ammo coming up on the left ;-)

There were a number of people sledding on the little hills of snow alongside the Capitol building

 
So I'm back in the studio and decided that in order to get better at soldering, I've got to practice.  Usually, I'm one of those people that are OK realizing that it takes a while to get good at something, practice makes perfect, and all that rot.  There are some things about which I wonder if any amount of practice will ever result in my getting good, forget perfect.  Those things are cooking and soldering.  I can cook OK, but I think it's just OK.  No one has died yet and I was going to say no one has ever spit anything out, but there was that veal scampi I made a couple of years ago with what turned out to be nuclear-like pucker power.  My daughter spit it right out on her plate and has refused to eat that dish ever again.  It really was tart, I'll admit, and I've learned that lesson and have made the dish a few times since with significantly better results.  Did I mention that she was a college grad at this point?

Before

Before (the other side)

The soldering is another story.  I took pieces that I made a while ago and tried to fix them.  I use the term "fix" loosely.  If I were to go back and re-read the books or articles I've explored in the past, I'd probably find that I did everything described as a "common mistake by those new to soldering."  The sides are lumpy and, no matter how hard I try to make them smooth, all sides are inconsistent in terms of thickness.  If I try adding solder to a side that has what looks to me like too little solder, it drips down the sides or flows over the back (too much at once?) or liquifies and thins out further (too much heat on one spot or moving too slow?).  This is going to be an expensive learning curve if I keep plowing through the solder at this rate of speed, but there is no other way to get better.  I will NOT repeat the same class I've taken twice.  If at first you don't succeed, don't keep doing that thing that didn't work over and over again.  It looks so darned easy when I watch those darned YouTube videos. 

The "after, but not finished" versions

 This is when I want to sew.  When I sew, I know what I'm doing.  Sometimes I make a mistake, but I know what I did wrong, know how to fix it, and enjoy the almost meditative state of mind that comes with cutting, sewing, cutting, sewing. 

Tomorrow I'll give it another try.  The inexpensive glass I bought when I picked up those cheap picture frames at a discount store will help reduce the cost of learning.  There's no point in using less expensive solder - poor quality supplies will result in a poor quality finished product.  I have learned, however, that cheap magazine pictures or scraps of wrapping paper make a perfectly suitable insert.  There's no need to waste an original little painting.

Since I did not at first succeed, I will try again.  Sigh.

Art Instructors Still Scare Me

I know I've blithered on about this before, but I only took one art class in my adult life until recently.   It's the one where we were supposed to draw three objects and the art teacher took my sketch pad out of my hand, gave me a big, fat red "F" and tossed the pad back.  Trying to get over that fear when I am already  so insecure about my art is HARD.  Last year I pushed myself and took the soldering class, believing I did OK.  I didn't start a fire and came home with some finished work.  I've practiced a bit, know I have a lot to learn still, but kept at it anyway.  This last weekend I took another soldering class.  The subject was the same - basic soldering - but the project was different. 

One thing I must say is that I don't want to hurt any feelings (or get caught for busting anyone's chops, frankly), so I feel like I have to write in code.  Darn.

The project for the class is a multi-panel standing photo frame with curly wire decorating the top.  I've blurred out the faces of the sample project since it's not my photo.

This most recent class was hard for me because I thought I was coming into it a step ahead, having taken the soldering class last year.  But so many little things throw me off - getting the supply list so late that I couldn't get everything I wanted to bring vs. having to beg or borrow at the class.  There were things on the list we were not to use, and things not on the list that it would have been good to have.  I'm not sure if the instructor assumed we know how to do things like cut glass, but I found it very intimidating and, frankly, I really suck at it.  She finally cut it for me (it was a challenging shape and I'd never done it before, so I broke a few pieces and felt like an idiot).  Then I was afraid to point out that the two pieces she cut weren't the same shape/size which they need to be because they are the sandwich for the photos being soldered and I didn't know how to fix it.  I figured I'd fudge and just bulk up on the solder when she wasn't looking.

In the end, I felt good that I never burned myself, I only cut one finger (note: flux hurts like mad in a cut!) and think I did a decent job of soldering.  I got all of the emails this time and confirmed the potluck (missed that one last time), and managed to bring something I thought was yummy that wasn't a salad.  (Not that everyone else bringing a salad was bad because they were really good salads).

So I'm tippy-toeing here, trying not to snark or come across as a smarty-pants critical, but I am just having such a hard time getting past being so nervous around snappy teachers that I'm struggling with the notion of going back for another class.  A couple of the other attendees (SO much more experienced than I) were SO nice, encouraging me to come to more classes, get over the fear and just get out there.  The instructor did not.  Am I back in high school and reading too much into this, being a paranoid big baby?

In any event, today I worked on putting on the jump rings.  I've learned that spring loaded needlenose pliers suck for this job and the rough end of a wire cutter works great.  I learned I should keep an antibiotic ointment with a pain reliever and bandages in the studio.  One more cut - ouch.

This is what I've got so far.

Starting to add the jump rings

Back of the panels

The photograph has a very sad story behind it.  The groom on the far left was my mother-in-law's brother.  His bride, to his right, died very soon after they were married.  The other woman in the photo is my mother-in-law.  They are all deceased, so we don't know the details of the story other than that Lawrence outlived his next wife (of many, many years), and pre-deceased his last wife.  He and his sister, my mother-in-law, died within six days of each other.  It was such a sad time.  I wanted to pay homage to them by creating this piece and hope it comes out well.  I should note that the backing paper was a fun project.  The center two panels were creating using gradients on a transparent background in Photoshop Elements.  The fun thing is that you can make a single page, then make a million variations of it by simply tweaking color & saturation.  That was the least stressful part of this project.

So the lesson I'm trying to take from this experience is to just try to stop hearing snark or criticism, focus on the learning, and keep moving ahead.  Oh, and stop being a paranoid big baby.