Looking Forward with a Glance Back

What's your resolution, goal, wish for the New Year? 2010. Doesn't that sound like a promising number?

For me I have this plan of revisiting my too long abandoned sewing skills. It is hard to believe that there was a time when I won awards for my sewing. That seems like a lifetime ago. Now, I just want to get up to speed and while I'm at it have some fun!

One book that will help me toward this goal is The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff. If you don't have this in your reference library, think about getting it. It may just be the most difinitive work on fabric manipulation. It goes way beyond tucks and smocking to mixed manipulations and incorporating all of the different techniques into an art form. Pictured here is Plumage, by Colette Wolff.

I wanna do that!

Also in the year 2010, I want to focus more on Crazy Quilts. I like the form. I like the freedom of that form. And I like the embellishments. It seems like it would be a perfect way to increase my ability to make choices as to fabric, color, shape, balance, and also work on embellishments and embroidery and again, fabric manipulation. Anything goes in crazy quilting which is probably why it is referred to as 'crazy.' But also, it is therapy. So soothing not to meet anyone's expectations of what the finished product should look like -- except my own!

And I must add that Pamela Allen, one of my new dear friends (whether she knows it or not) has set my life on its ear with her way of looking at the world. The way she thinks, they way she embraces everything with such joy and abandon. Her crazy quilt always makes me smile. Crazy About Quilts -- is that a self portrait? It could be my own image she's captured because I am crazy about quilts!

I also like the idea of a crazy quilt as a timeline of a life well lived. My great grandmother made such a quilt and it is exciting to see dates embroidered on the blocks of a time long before my own. She lived through the American Civil War. Maybe I'll do a timeline of my mother's life -- born the year the Titanic sank, lived through the Great Depression, saw the first automobiles, World War I, World War 2, Man Walking on the Moon. Well, I can just see so many possibilities for a crazy quilt.

Susan Lenz has so inspired me with her quilts. If there is anyone who puts her whole heart and soul into her quilts -- it is Susan. Her Grave Rubbings series is just one of the directions she has taken her art! Everytime I see what she's working on, I just gaze speechless and inspired. The reverence with which she approaches the graves and the care she takes to preserve artifacts and not endanger any historic site. Susan taught me more than stitching. See a detail photo of her Mother and Father quilt.

In my own efforts, I hope to use the techniques of Celtic Quilts. The bias tape work maybe even incorporate that into a stained glass piece. Lots to do in 2010.

Note the photo of Philomena Durcan's quilt The Children of Lir. Hopefully she will visit us in 2010. Her work as Scarlett Ross attested has inspired a whirlwind of creativity and a legacy of beautiful quilts from the hands of her students.

And I hope you will all join me on the journey. I hope we can have a show and tell page next year with Subversive Stitchers. A time when anyone can offer up a photo and an explanation of what they're working on. I'd be glad to post your 2010 fabric resolutions here. What are you working toward? Maybe post some photos of your first steps?

Several guest bloggers are also waiting in the wings -- Kathy York, Sharon Pederson, Gloria Hansen, Martha Sielman.... I won't give away the whole list, but there are lots of exciting things ahead.

I have so enjoyed sharing this year with all of you. Subversive Stitchers: Women Armed with Needles began as my little way to say, "Even when denied words, we speak with what is at hand." Needles, through the ages have given voice to the oppressed, the needy, the powerless, the female.

At the same time, I was finding so much creative inspiration online that I just wanted to share it with others who understand that fabric is so much more than woven threads. Well, you know what I mean. And it is so much more to share my discoveries than to just admire them alone.

I think of names and a cascade of beauty instantly flashes before my eyes. Guest bloggers through this year have expanded our horizons -- Karen McTavish and her machine quilting -- but also her tattoos. How many more quilters sport feather tattoos now that they've seen Karen's? Leslie Riley has me so excited about photo transfers and her wonderful TAP product. Virginia Spiegel's Boundary Waters quilts and amazing fundraising efforts; Linda Cooper's unique kinetic quilts and Eileen Doughty and her thread sculptures and landscape and activist quilts? And then traveling with Vikki Pignateli and seeing her classes and fabrics of other lands. Diane Gaudynski's machine quilting that makes me cry when I see how beautiful it is. And her love of fabrics so perfectly described. Lyric Kinard's inspiration about playing and experimenting. The class I took with her at Quilt University this past year was a turning point in more ways than one! And I hope to do more with paints and the various techniques I learned. Sarah Ann Smith certainly untangled threads for me!

Ami Simms and her inspiring mother! Maybe this is the year a cure is found for Alzheimer's Disease and maybe that will translate into a cure for ALS. Thanks to all of you who supported Derrol and me throughout this year. For buying raffle tickets and for encouraging me in that endeavor. Fundraising is not for the faint of heart! My hat is off to everyone who takes on that battle!

I'm so humbled that people say they like this blog. Humbled and so pleased. Every guest blogger is so special to me. Please revisit their guest blogs -- the line up is listed on the right column.

On the days when I can't think how to cope -- you all get me through. Each blog follower touches me whether you know it or not. If this little blog helps you through your day -- well, I can't ask for anything better than that! If it inspires you to do greater things, push further with your fabric art -- AMEN!

So, here's to 2010 -- I hope we can all enjoy it together! Let me know if there's someone or something you'd like to see displayed or featured here. If you'd like to guest blog, please let me know. It's been a fabulous year (despite the world problems)  -- I hope you feel the same.

Happy Holidays and a Happy Prosperous, Soul Satisfying New Year to Everyone!

“The Magic of Fabric” by Diane Gaudynski

Diane Gaudynski transports anyone who views her work to another place. A land where feathers and swirls and circles and crosshatch and stipple and thread and needle come as near to perfection as any of us have ever witnessed. Seeing her work simply mesmerizes. Eyes search every inch, mouths form ohhs and aahhs escape like sighs and yes, some are moved to tears. In her S.O.S. inteview with The Alliance For American quilts is such a tribute to our ancestor quilters. And her retelling of what inspired the colors for the featured log cabin quilt made me laugh and feel such delight. I do hope you'll visit her interview and read about Fluffy, her feline muse. But first, get comfortable and enjoy Diane's romance with fabric that's so evident in the way she speaks of quilting, fabrics, color and this community of quilters. -- Dawn

(Photo: A selection of Cherrywood cottons for a possible class project.)

Fabric is “Magic” contained in cloth.

Quilters know this. It’s instinctive.

I recently thought my family room looked dull and lifeless in these grey cloudy autumn days, went shopping and indulged in a new silk throw pillow.

The color is bronze/umber and shines like an oak leaf in autumn, and has tiny pleats through the center part that catch the light even more, giving texture and more angles for the light to bounce from. It lights up the room.

One new piece of fabric turned a graying dull old lady of a room into a warm and inviting place. I am going to get another silk pillow today to finish the job. And do some dusting too, always helps. And then look for some silk fabric in this shade to add to my mostly cotton quilts.

Earlier this year I was at a big quilting event where progressive sessions were held, one group would leave, and for a day or two the place would be empty of all but a few quilters who stayed on to attend or teach at the next class. When the quilters left, the atmosphere at this beautiful location suddenly seemed to me flattened, depressed, void of color and life.

I sat with non-quilters for meals and discussed mundane things. When the quilters started flooding in to the registration building for the next session it was as if the sun came out. Smiles, color, laughter, joy, bags of fabric and supplies piled high made that place come to life once again. One could not help but feel better just seeing these people arrive, quilters who use fabric to express their take on life and their art. They had packed magic in their bags. I knew mealtime from then on would be exhilarating!

(Photo: Free motion machine quilting on hand dyed sateen by Wendy Richardson.)

It was difficult in that “off” time making conversation with people who did not have private hoards of fabric, rooms devoted to them in their homes, plans to add more finds at any opportunity. The quest for the perfect fabric for the next quilt is always there with us, and the excitement of the hunt or the find puts roses in cheeks, sparkle in eyes, and beauty in the finished quilts.

I have always loved fabric—the colors, textures, designs, the hand of it, the softness or crispness, the challenge of what you could do with a new and wonderful find. Before I could even read, I began my journey into fabric involvement by sewing doll clothes with scraps from our own clothes. I then progressed to sewing for my younger sister to learn all the basics (she was too young to be a critic) and then to my own clothes in high school and for twenty years after that….. until I discovered piecing and quilting.

(Photo: Free motion echo quilting on silk dupioni fabric with #100 silk threads)

During those years I learned and loved everything about the fabric: selvedges, the grainline, how it behaved in sewing it, washing and preparing it, pressing fabric, discerning the good from the not so good in quality. I shopped at manufacturers’ outlets and had access to the best wools, cottons, corduroys and hounds tooth, gabardines and batiste, silks, crepes and satins, all beautiful stuff, for great prices. I fearlessly cut into it and made clothes and decorator items, monster bed spreads that went to the floor with insets of stuffed cording. Making machine quilted bed quilts is nothing compared to the weight of that quilted corduroy bedspread I sewed on my original Singer Silver Touch ‘N Sew.

When I began piecing and making quilts, there was very little variety in quality 100% cotton available, and I made do with blends, and bright primary colored cottons, but I wasn’t happy. A trickle of quilt fabrics appeared in our new quilt shops back in the late 1970’s, and they were fabulous, like water in a parched desert. The colors, the lovely hand of them, the prints and designs, oh my. I still have remnants of the first Jinny Beyer collection, and always tell the story in my “Mud” lecture about searching everywhere for some mustard colored cotton for my quilt, made with all cool greens and purples available in the late 80’s. Mustards and khakis were not around. It was all dusty blues and old rose. I found that fabric, and it made the quilt work. It saved that quilt.

Being a quilt artist requires an extensive library of fabric. When you begin a project or find your work “needs” something, not sure what, you will always have that library and be able to rummage through it and find what the quilt needs. Maybe it’s my favorite mustard, maybe hot pink, or dusty teal or scarlet or aubergine. Maybe something not 100% cotton, as first we turned to nothing but cotton, learned our craft, and now have branched out into including any kind of fabric in the universe in our quilts. We indulge shamelessly in fabric.

(Photo: A block from my quilt “Shadows of Umbria” which featured large scale vintage type fabrics floating in a sea of heavily quilted Cherrywood cottons.)

I machine quilt my quilts on a home machine, and have to adapt what fabrics I choose so that they will work with a machine stitch, allow proper tension, not stretch and distort, etc. Fabrics are auditioned for color and scale of print, but also for how they will handle when machine quilted. Will the thread morph nicely with the fabric or will it sit on top and look stringy and pathetic? Will quilting show? Will the fabric sabotage my skills in quilting, or showcase them?

I use starch frequently to stabilize fabrics for cutting and piecing. It helps tame unruly fabrics and washes out of the finished quilt nicely.

And I make prototypes. My students get so tired of my telling them to audition the fabric, and the quilting that will be used on that fabric before piecing the quilt top. I have saved many a project from becoming a UFO because of pre-washing the fabric selection, layering it with the batt chosen for the quilt and the backing as well, and doing some quilting on it in the design planned for that fabric. How it handles in the machine, how the thread colors look on that choice, how it looks in then end all help me decide if I will use it or not.

(Photo: Here is a sample of a prototype: I quilted a small feather design on the fabric designated for my tote bag, tried out the thread colors, backgrounds, shading with pencils or ink, and then used this information on the real project.)

I have a stack of center squares from a log cabin quilt all with different quilting designs, including the one that was the final choice. It is obvious all the other designs were second best but I didn’t know that until I took the actual fabric and quilted it in the options.

As you gain experience the need for prototypes and extensive testing of your fabrics is decreased. Your knowledge base will fill that need.

Do I pre-wash fabrics? Yes, always. I like to know what could happen if and when the finished quilt is washed, and I like to control that outcome. So each fabric is hand washed separately in very hot water with a bit of quilt soap until no color runs, then washed in a load of fabrics in the washer, rinsed thoroughly, dried in the dryer on low, folded and used. They are washed right before cutting for the quilt so they are fresh and clean and don’t bother my allergies.

I’ve learned that sometimes it’s more important to use a fabric that I can control, that showcases my quilting well, that behaves in the finished quilt, that doesn’t run or bleed, and that looks wonderful than to fall for the next best thing or the pretty face in the new assortments for sale.

I’ve also learned not to worry if a fabric will “go” with the others in a quilt. If “you” love it, it will work just fine.

Fabric is the bedrock of quilting and it pays to take time to find and use what works best plus gives you the payoff in fabulousness that you need.

Fabric softens the rough edges of our lives, gives visual warmth as well as actual warmth, is a comfort in times of joy and hard times as well.

Keep quilting; your work gets better every day, plus you’ll use up some of your fabric library!

Diane
Visit Diane Gaudynski's website and blog, too. Can anyone ever get enough of her work? Don't forget her several books and DVDs and classes.
Photo: My cat Arnie in his youth would always find  fabrics, cut or uncut. He seemed to find the right colors to set off his handsome good looks too.)