Leafing Out

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to squeak into the completely sold out class taught by Gabrielle Swain at EBHQ. It was all about design the first day, using leaf shapes in particular. My printer wasn't behaving so I couldn't print out any fave photos of leaves, and since we are having an infestation in this county (Light Brown Apple Moth), I didn't think I should import any contraband leaves across several counties up to Berkeley/Albany! Luckily there were some inspiring shapes mere steps out the door of the classroom.

I had my camera so I snapped a few shots of these on-their-last-legs calla leaves. They really remind me of elephant's ears. I used the large leaf shown here in the first picture.
And I used the folded leaf below the one I'm holding. We worked for a long time sketching the leaves, enlarging, repeating, turning, twisting, layering. Making sure there aren't any stems leading the eye off the quilt. My design changed a few times, but I ended up with two of the large leaves in two different sizes, really large and pretty small. as well as one of the folded leaf shape in a medium size. I really got into this design exercise and it was fun to see how everyone else in the class tackled the challenge. Some people took trips to the copy center to enlarge sketches up to and including on enormous blue-print sized paper! And some were much more free-wheeling with the leaf shapes, going for more abstracted, stepped-back designs.
Gabrielle is a great teacher, she was really organized, confident, clear and giving. A great combination for an art/quilt teacher. I'm glad I finally got to meet her in person (instead of our Creative Spark class phonecalls) and learn from her in situ.

We were using hand-dyes (or batiks) for our leaves, and a geometric as a background. How do you like my background fabric? Pretty wild huh? I originally bought it to use as a binding fabric, thought the color stripe blocks would look cool on the bias. A very small amount of background will be showing on this quilt, so I thought I might as well have something really punchy and contrasty with the intense colors of the leaves. I found that I had brought a really strange selection of my hand-dyes, a lot of which were completely unusable for this quilt. (Of course!).
But with a lot of help from Gabrielle and friend Jaye I dug through and tried a lot of options.
And came up with this final combination of colors.

The smaller bits of fabric will be the main veining on the leaf.

The second day of the class was on the following Monday. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make the two hour drive up there due to my boys' school having a "late start" day (which we hadn't put on the calendar, oops!). So I didn't get to take the how-to hand-reverse-applique' part of the class. :( Sigh.

Now I have to decide whether to make this quilt in the manner I normally would (raw-edge applique' or maybe with some fusible) or try to do something out of my comfort zone involving hand-stitching (usually makes me run screaming quite honestly). I'm not good at it, because I don't do it very often. It is hard to make yourself do something you suck at, isn't it? But after getting to fondle and pet Gabrielle's gorgeous quiltworks in person, I think it might just be worth it to try the harder, more painful (for me) method.

Stay tuned on that one...

After the Rain, A Closeup

One of the assignments I've gotten to do for the Creative Sparks class with Gabrielle Swain , was to take a macro walk around outside with my digital camera. Looking for the details. The veins in the leaves. The essential shapes. Taking out the big picture look and lasering down to the basics. This is all to help us learn how to distill our designs down to what really needs to be there.

I found that the raindrops were an added bonus, added that unexpected circular shape to the more angular leaf and branch shapes. Also the contrast in texture between water and leaf is intriguing too. This first picture is a Pride of Madera leaf. It has a slightly fuzzy texture, so it can survive in the unprotected front yard. The deer don't like to munch on fuzzy leaves.
Click on this one to see the raindrop just barely hanging onto the redwood tips. This was a hard shot to get as the wind came up and the redwoods were dancing around. Which does not help when you are shooting on the macro level!
How about this rosemary branch? I love this peely texture with the smooth pointy leaves.
Good ol' rosemary. We have way too much of it now. And those flowers are almost always there, keeping the bees around year round. I think if I ever start bee-keeping I'll have rosemary flavored honey to collect.
A detail of the berries on the tea-tree (leptospermum).

The branch texture of the Pride of Madera.
Raindrops on the calendula petals.
A squatty warty lumpy kaffir lime. Why do I identify so much with this fruit? Anyays, oh man does this ever smell heavenly.
Another view of the kaffir lime. Such an intense brilliant color. Not like a normal lime, there is less green pigmentation, a translucence to the skin. I kept it by my computer to freshen up the air and remind me of the
And finally some raindrops hanging on to the palm fronds.

Neatness Counts

Sorry I've been blogAWOL,
life intervenes sometimes, doesn't it?! Between trying to not spend so much of my time on the computer, (a good thing, I've gotten so much done in the studio!) and teenager issues which involved a trip to the doctor for stitches, sigh(yes I was warned it was going to be tough, but I didn't know until I'd experienced it myself), the blogging just fell by the wayside.

Anyways! Moving on! (as Stephen Colbert would say)...

Turns out that one of the biggest things holding me back from getting anything done was my messy worktable. (see picture above).
I came to this conclusion as part of the work I'm doing in my mentoring class Creative Sparks with Gabrielle Swain.
She basically asked us to look around in our lives and figure out what is stopping us from getting going on making, doing, creating. And so I walked into my studio and thought to myself:
"Ok, what is it in here that makes me just do a u-turn and go read more books, magazines, blogs, watch movies, go outside, even, gasp! do the dishes instead of sit down at my worktable and **begin**.

And the number one thing was the messy surface. I couldn't see a place to start. Because there wasn't one. There was no space, too much besides just tools was out and taking up real estate on top of my worktable.
So I took a few minutes and cleaned up, I moved the scrap bag off and under the table, I emptied out the baskets, stowed away the projects in their designated boxes.
Now the only five things remaining are:

1. the cutting mat,
2. rulers/rotary cutter in the corner,
3. basket for scraps (which now gets emptied into my scrap tub under the table),
4. my thread jar (where all the threads, and broken needles go until I make them into witch balls, I find it visually exciting and inspiring so it got to stay.)
5. And one little wooden tray which currently holds the charm patches I'm cutting for J and myself as I go.

Seems too Simple huh?

Now my routine is when I'm done for the day I just tidy up after myself. So that the space is ready for me the next day. Geez, I know this is completely simple, and I don't know what it was that finally made this click in. But I sure am grateful and glad that it works for me! I used to scoff at those that kept hyper-neat spaces, seemed like a waste of time that could be spent creatively. Turns out, once I'm beginning with a clean space that it isn't really a lot of time to keep it that way. d'oh!

Times up, I'll share some of my work *output* with you tomorrow!