Passion for the Creative Process...

I am slowly catching my breath and touching down on mother earth after a marathon quilting session, hence the silence....  

We all make quilts for different reasons.    Some quilters get pleasure by stroking fabric, some working on a huge stash of UFO's, others by making as many quilts as possible and then suckers like me, who have this crazy passion to push the boundaries all the time...

The creative process can be very lonely as one often battle against ideas not working, fatigue and fast approaching deadlines.... When does patience become stubbornness not to give up?    Two words with such different meanings, yet so close in a way...    During the past two months, I again realized how passionate I am about the creative process.    It is an emotion which I cannot really describe, it is very spiritual and takes me on a journey of intense focus and discovery...    The amazing thing is that while I'm in this creative mode, concepts and ideas just flow and I am the privileged one to execute all of this...    It is extremely exciting and the deeper I'm drawn into a piece, the more I switch into an autopilot mode where I can work very long hours, make do with little sleep and work with intense concentration...    It makes me feel so alive...   When it is done, I instinctively know it is finished...  

Working to deadlines provide me with lots of thinking time about what, why and how I do things, the processes which I follow etc...    It is like solitary confinement, just me and my thoughts.    This time around I again realized how difficult it is to estimate "production" time for a creative piece.   It is fairly easy to calculate how long it will take to make a traditional style quilt top.    Not so easy with creative pieces as one has no pattern and no instructions...   Finding your own path, often stumbling as not all ideas work which can be very frustrating and wasteful of precious time...    A successful piece will embrace all the different design elements in harmonious unity like all the music instruments in an orchestra - nothing out of sync...    It sometimes is a long journey to find that harmonious unity in a piece...    Lots of patience and time are needed to do creative pieces as it is a process, one cannot rush it as it develops over time.  

This piece below was pinned onto my design wall for about 14 months before I stitched it....    It just came to me one day how to stitch it and I am so glad that I did not rush into it as I was so pleased with the outcome - completely different to what I initially envisaged...  

Part of a quilt which I will share at a later stage....

As my latest work is for a competition, I cannot share it yet.   I will gladly do so in July....  

Enjoy the creative process....    It is so special...

Fusing

Oh dear, I am so engrossed with my Festival 2013 entries that I don't have time for anything else....   Even the poor dog gets neglected...  I have made peace with the way that I work - I need a deadline to really focus on a project and get working....    I tend to dream and fiddle and not really work productively if I don't have a date circled on the calendar....   I need the adrenalin rush...    I think many can relate to that....

I cannot share the work in progress at this stage as the pieces are for a competition.....   I am working on two pieces in tandem.   When I'm tired of the one, I switch over to the other one with renewed energy and focus.   Working on some pieces are physically exhausting because of the size of it and others again by the intense staring at the machine needle while stitching....   Normally I prefer to work on one piece at a time, but somehow this time I manage working on two pieces at the same time.

I have been using the fusing method for most of my pieces for the past 20 years.    It is such a versatile construction method with so much scope and I really enjoy exploring all possibilities....

At the end of last year, I redecorated our lounge and went back to the trusted neutral colour scheme of our first lounge.    Any way, what a wonderful opportunity to make new scatter cushions and by doing so, experimenting with different effects....   I used Bali fabrics, batiks, silks and some of my own Brush Rags fabrics in colours ranging from creams to rusty browns, greys and charcoal.    I sealed the raw edges of one cushion with a decorative stitch on the sewing machine, another with 3mm silk ribbon and hessian threads couched on either sides of the silk ribbon and for the other one, I stitched decorative cords on the raw edges with hessian threads on either side of the cords.     All of them were machine quilted.   The beauty of this was that I used tiny scraps for this project.     My one friend was amazed that I hardly ever throw scraps away!     I keep scraps in a container, all sorted in colours and sealed in ziploc bags, easy to to find when needed.    I have scraps from the first patchwork fabrics which I bought in 1984 and sometimes it is just the right snippet I need!

Some fused cushions made in 2012

 

I need to make a few more cushions, but I have more interesting work at the moment....!

 

Now it is back to the grindstone of making competition quilts......!    It really is hard work, but nothing beats the thrill of the creative process....

 

 



 

 

Ukhahlamba - Gallery of Ancient Art

I am so caught up in the excitement of being creative that I forget about the world out there - I am very busy with my quilt entries for the National Quilt Festival in July (but my lips are zipped as I cannot share it yet)...   I have started this post more than a month ago....   So, here goes...

I spend most of my days in my studio, whether it is actively stitching, preparing workshops, painting fat quarters, working on the computer or just daydreaming and fiddling.  It means being indoors most of the time...

I often look at websites and blogs of other quilters and am quite in awe of how beautifully presented it is....   When one opens this blog, blue skies, trees/bush, a few loose clouds and the open road welcomes one, not a quilt in sight....    Seems to be more of a traveling blog than a quilt one as such....     Blue and green, my two favourite colours anchored by the grey of the road....    

I love the atmosphere of this picture when I open the blog...   It immediately takes me on a journey, something which Willem and I love doing.   We have discovered beautiful and very interesting places by traveling off the beaten track, always excited to explore.   This picture is a constant promise that there are many more places and roads waiting for us to discover....    These trips are ideal photo opportunities and Willem is very patient with my constant requests to stop for photographs....   With the  use of a digital camera, it is so easy to keep all the images in folders on the computer, easy to access when new inspiration is needed.    Nature inspires the majority of my quilts whether it is the shapes of rocks, bark of trees, colour combinations, flora, landscapes and our abundant wild life......  

I was invited to participate in the 2011 Korea/Japan/South Africa Textile Challenge with the theme of "World Heritage Sites".    30 World Heritage Sites from all over the world were selected and 30 quilt artists from the three countries were invited to participate - in total 90 quilt artists.  The quilts had to be 50cm x 50cm  and each site was interpreted by a quilt artist from each country - so one specific site had three different interpretations of it.     These three entries were displayed together at venues in Korea, Japan and is currently in South Africa.   We were fortunate to have these quilts on display here in Port Elizabeth in 2012 and it was wonderful to witness the creative flair and genius of the 90 international quilt artists.

I was fortunate that I was given the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg World Heritage Site.   While we lived in Harrismith, we often visited various sections of the Drakensberg...   The mountains are magical and awesome, it has the same effect on me as watching the ocean - very spiritual....   It is so huge and one realizes what a small fraction human life is....

I love the amount of research needed for such a project as I learn so much of many things...   For this project, I learnt that the Drakensberg mountain range has the biggest selection of Stone Age rock art on the African Continent and because of the significance of this, the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg Park was proclaimed a World Heritage site.   Giants Castle was proclaimed a nature reserve in 1903 to protect the eland from extinction etc....    

I decided to make postcards of three sections of the mountain range, Cathedral Peak, Giants Castle and the Amphitheatre which was placed on the one side of the quilt.     I painted a background like a cave and had lots of fun trying my hand at San drawings.    I also wrote lots of information regarding the history of the site into open spaces of the cave.   Unfortunately I do not have permission to publish images of the other two interpretations of this site.

Ukhahlamba - Gallery of Ancient Art 2011

The label displayed next to the quilt in the languages of Japan, Korea and South Africa (English)

Techniques included fabric painting, raw edge machine applique, needlelace machine embroidery and machine quilting.

Now it is back to the sewing machine and my new quilts....   

Challenging myself...

Wonderful, I feel like I have my energy and inspiration back...     Such a blessing...   I have been stitching all week on a project which I had already cut in 2011....   Yes, sometimes one has a wonderful concept, but the challenge is to transform the initial idea into something special....     A lesson maybe that we don't always need to rush through projects, sometimes one has to wait for the magical inspiration to come....  I know that if I started stitching in 2011, it would have been quite mediocre.... Now I feel the stirring of excitement and I cannot wait to continue, but I am taking it slowly, there is no rush ....  While I was happily stitching along, I realized how exhausted I was before my long holiday....      

My Mom's motto in life was that one had to try before you could say that you could not do something....   The word "cannot" did not exist in her vocabulary and she always encouraged us to try again if our first attempt failed...    I share this motto and it has landed me in challenging situations...   Where quilting/sewing is concerned, I know no boundaries and will try my hand at anything, no matter what amount of patience it takes....   I will challenge and push myself until I get it right....

I made a wedding dress for a very special young lady with very definite ideas of what she wanted...    But as you know, it is not always possible to find the exact fabrics needed to create the dream with....     This is the same reason why I started painting fabric for my quilts as I could not find commercially printed fabric which suited my style of quilts.   We wanted a piece of lace with a curved edge at the bottom with a border pattern - a very tall order indeed.   So, without thinking twice, I decided to make the lace myself...!    I have never made lace before and I had no idea what it would entail...   As I felt skilled enough to work with all the wash away stuff available for embroidery, I decided that it would actually be easy....    I started off by designing the lace panel on paper to scale.   The design had a curved edge at the bottom which would form the back section of the dress.   I joined strips of Avalon Plus with wash away thread to form a big enough piece for this panel and transferred the diagram onto the Avalon using a wash out marker.   The bridal tulle was sandwiched between two layers of Avalon Plus to make it more sturdy and protect the tulle as it was very soft and delicate....    I tacked the 3 layers together the same as making a quilt sandwich.    I then started embroidering the design by machine, numerous little satin stitch leaves with rayon thread, the 3 layers carefully secured in an embroidery hoop.   I couched No 5 DMC perle thread with silver and gold metallic thread as stems between the leaves.    I used  commercially embroidered organza flowers on the border section.   The entire piece was hand beaded, using numerous perle sequins, pearls and glass beads.   The beading took almost 80 hours to complete.....     I used the same technique to make lace sections to cover the shoulders with scalloped edges - this was stabilized with transparent organza to prevent strain on the delicate lace.   Making this lace was rather daunting and I had no idea whether it would actually work....   I completed the beading 5 days prior to the wedding - only then could I wash all the Avalon Plus away....   What stressful experience it was to put this piece into the water not knowing whether all this effort would produce the desired lace....!    Any way, the Angels smiled upon me as I took the lace from the zinc and spread it open onto old towels, just perfect....  I was so excited, relieved, grateful and needless to say, I slept like a baby that night!    I succeeded in making this lace, the first time ever that I did something so spectacular....    The bottom line was, if I was not an experimental quilter, I would not have known how to tackle this challenge....

Diagram for shoulder sections

Bodice section with completed lace section on shoulders.
Bodice partially embroidered and beaded.

Lace  panel immediately after it was washed with untrimmed scalloped edge....

Bottom back section of completed dress...

This post is about making lace and not about the dress.....   It was a wonderful challenge to create this, but rather stressful ....    As with life, there is always something new to discover...     This project introduced me to working with silk.   I fell in love with silk and promptly started collecting bits of silk in all the colours of the rainbow (and all the colours in between) which has now taken me on another road of discovery.....