Textiles Influence Painter Chuck Close

Phil (2011-12) by Chuck Close: work and detail

If you've spent any time at art museums, you've undoubtedly seen the work of Chuck Close. I'm always taken aback when I round a corner and see one of his early, photo-realistic faces staring down at me—they're huge (his 1968 Big Self Portrait (below), which I first saw at the Walker Art Museum when I was in college, is nearly 9'x7').

So yesterday I was reading Spark: How Creativity Works by Julie Burstein, when I came upon a chapter about Chuck Close and his creative process (I am loving this book, by the way—based on the Studio 360 radio show, which despite being an avid NPR listener I've never heard). Close talks about the way that, because he is learning disabled, he has always created his paintings with a grid. Early on, it served to break the huge portraits into manageable chunks and for many years he would erase the grid (like he did in Big Self Portrait). But eventually he incorporated it into his work. Over time, the photorealism of his images—which had been created with tiny, tiny dots and brushstrokes—gave way to a more expressive way of painting, in which the faces in his paintings are evident if you stand way back, but up close they're hard to see. And lo and behold, he credits the textile arts as an influence.

Chuck Close, Self-Portrait II, 2001

"I know that one of the important primal experiences for me as a child was watching my grandmother knit and crochet and make quilts and afghans and things like that, which look a lot like my work today. She would crochet pieces and put them together to make even bigger pieces. A lot of what I do has a lot to do with what was called women's work—a process that you sign on to and you keep working at it until you get something. I think it has a lot to do with construction, and I try to build a painting rather than paint it."

Agnes, 1998

Of course, if you look at Close's work it's easy to see this, but it somehow hadn't crossed my mind. I got mighty excited knowing that Close's commanding works have their roots in his grandmother's tiny stitches, proof that however simple or mundane your work might seem, you never know the influence it can have.

Fabric Smack-down!

So those half-square triangles hit the mailbox on Tuesday, and it was something of a relief to have them out of the house. Soon another 1400 will take their place and I'll be contemplating ways to sew them together. But for now I've got another many-pieced project on the brain.

In January I took a workshop through my local guild with Bill Kerr of Modern Quilt Studio.  I've interviewed Bill's wife and business partner Weeks Ringle for American Patchwork and Quilting, and wrote a story about them both for Magic Patch. I love their work and how thoughtful they are about the design and coloration of their quilts. Plus they're friendly, funny, down-to-earth folks.

Fabric Fusion

For the workshop, Bill had us bring an assortment of fabrics and we teamed up with someone we didn't know well and had a "fabric smack-down." Bill said he and Weeks do this when deciding on fabrics for a quilt, alternating fabric choices and describing why each might work with the others. It was a real challenge: my partner Jean is a batik-lover and my stack consisted mostly of bright and bold pieces. So when she laid down a leafy batik, I laid the Brandon Mabley piece (above) on top of it. We both laughed in surprise—not a combo that either one of us would have thought of on our own, but one that seemed to work.

My Fabric Fusion palette

I took that same piece of fabric and decided to develop a palette around it and make their Fabric Fusion quilt from the February 2012 American Patchwork and Quilting. One of Bill's and Week's strengths is combining unexpected fabrics—Jo Morton calicos with contemporary David Butler lines. So while I found 26 of the fabrics to use in my stash they were mostly brights and I had to buy just a few more to round out the look. Here's what I've come up with...are there any that you'd remove from this fabric smack down? There are one or two I'm not quite sure of, but maybe they provide the foil that makes the others work...let me know what you think!

Sweat Shop Sewing

Tiny paper hats? Nope, HST trimmings

A few months ago I agreed to participate in a a half-square triangle (HST) swap. I'm always envious of the online swaps and Instagram challenges I see (I'm still contemplating a scrappy Trip Around the World quilt, although the speedy quilters of Instagram seem to have that one wrapped up already). So I naively thought this might be a good way to get into a little collaborative quilting.

Little did I know when I said yes that the required number of HSTs was 1400! We're using Laundry Basket Quilt's 2" HST paper, which helps because you can make 28 at a time. And I'm enjoying mixing up a lot of fabrics from my stash--a dark and a light for each. But it's amazing how many I still have to do. I'm past the halfway mark, but still face more nights in my sweat shop...er, sewing room...before I finish.

Next I'll be stressing over what I'll do with all those HSTs. That part has been fun to think about, though. The variety of possibilities is endless. When I can't face making any more HSTs, I fool around with layouts to keep myself motivated. With 1400 HSTs, I might just make two smaller quilts.

Any suggestions for great HST layouts?

More on Tim Fay and the Wapsipinicon Almanac

Detail of a paper cutter

As I noted on Facebook, there are days that I feel so lucky to do the work I do and visiting Tim Fay in December, in preparation for an Etsy post, was one of those days. I've always admired the almanac and been a little jealous of my friends and colleagues who've been published therein. I was worried that Tim would be intimidating, but the opposite was true—he was friendly, interesting, and true to his journalistic training, interested. He's definitely his own guy, living simply, in a way that few people choose. But his passion about printing and the equipment he's gleaned from other printers over the years was easy to see. And if there's one thing I love, it's people who are doing something they love.

Below are some photos from that day. If you're a local reader, there is a Wapsipinicon Almanac reading at Prairie Lights this Friday at 7. I'm planning to be there, after the UPPERCASE event at Home Ec for Sonya Darrow, aka Ladyfits, that starts at 6 pm and is in celebration of the story about Sonya in issue 16 of UPPERCASE that I wrote, with photos by Heather Atkinson and styling by Tonya Kehoe. It's a night for celebrating Eastern Iowans!

Unbound almanacs await covers

The bed of Fay's Miller 2-color flatbed press

Corrections on a galley of the Wapsipinicon Almanac

Sign on the paper cutter urges cautious use

Almanac cover awaits gluing

A sign printed by Fay advertising his now defunct band hangs on the shop wall

Almanac stitched volume awaits cover

Something Old and Something New

For a couple of weeks life has been slightly calmer than it was before the holidays and I've managed to sneak in a bit of sewing. I finished up a baby quilt that was more than two years in the making—once I'd gotten it bound I worried that there wasn't enough quilting on something that would inevitably get washed a lot, so I added more quilting around the borders. Then it took me a mere two weeks to actually get a label made and send it off...why do those last little pieces of the puzzle inevitably take so long?

The quilt is from a bunch of Heather Bailey fabrics, with a stripe and polka dot thrown in to keep it interesting. The back wound up being totally pieced because I didn't want to buy anything more--it's a little crazy, but I love the feeling of really using my stash to the max.

Pieced back

Then I finished piecing the quilt top I started in October at Lake Tahoe. I've still got to figure out a border for this (although I've got the start of an idea). Hanging it outside on a warm winter day (that would be a day that it got up in the 40s—warmth in Iowa in January is relative), the colors created such a stark contrast to the season's drab tones and made me very happy.

Finally, must add a link to the post I wrote for Moda about their Nancy Drew fabrics. I waxed a little rhapsodic about them, as I not only loved reading Nancy Drew, but have a personal link to the author of 23 of the first 30 books. Check out the story (and some of the fabric) here.

Featherweight Follow-up

Colleen & Roger Hicks Featherweight table

My recent Etsy post on Featherweights was such a treat for me. First, it enabled me to learn more about these tiny, but mighty machines. Then—always one of my favorite parts of my work—it gave me the opportunity to get to talk to others about them. Roger and Colleen Hicks welcomed me into their home and showed me Colleen's collection of nine Featherweights. I especially loved hearing about their search for new ones and about the time they found one of the rare Featherweight tables in a junk shop and bought it for a fantastic price.

I also really loved talking with The Bobbin Doctor, Steve Pauling. I found his name through a comment on a Featherweight post on someone else's blog (ah, I love the sleuthing aspects of journalism!) and as I was on deadline, decided to try calling him. He had just come in from shoveling 14 inches of snow and was incredibly gracious and kind and we had a great conversation in which I learned he's also a tailor extraordinaire. I'm hoping to follow up with him, so look for more about Steve in the future. (His partner has a fantastic, sewing-related Etsy shop, too.) Steve's comments about the durability of well-made, older sewing machines were so interesting—stitchers' love of these machines is so great that Steve's turned fixing vintage machines into a full time second career.

Colleen's Featherweights on display

Finally, I absolutely adored all the comments from Etsy readers. As someone who often feels that her job is mainly sending stuff out into the void, never really knowing if people read what she writes or if it means anything to them, getting close to 200 comments is like the nectar of the gods. Seriously. And the comments were so thoughtful and there were so many great stories...I still can't get over the skill level of people who wrote that they made wedding dresses on their Featherweights, for example. And I loved all the memories people shared of watching their mothers and grandmothers stitch away on these machines. My favorite was from a woman who said that the first letters she learned as a young child were S-I-N-G-E-R because she'd spent so much time siting at her mother's side while she sewed. There's brand loyalty you just can't buy!

So inspired was I by the post and Roger Hicks' comments about how little there was that could go wrong with a Featherweight, that I decided to try and fix mine, which sadly went on the fritz during my October Lake Tahoe retreat. There was some tension issue I couldn't resolve. So Paul and I spent a couple hours on Saturday checking the manual and Featherweight 221: The Perfect Portable and Its Stitches Across History by Nancy Johnson-Srbebro. We oiled every nook and cranny and tried all kinds of fixes, but alas, despite feeling so empowered by my own article, I ended up taking it in to a professional on Sunday. Sigh. But I really do know so much more about how a Featherweight works than I did. So there's that.

Resolved: To Share the Holiday Glow

The month before Christmas had more than its fair share of deadlines, and Pearl the Squirrel suffered serious neglect. My Thanksgiving knitting frenzy came to an end and I spent most of my days trying to keep up with the work, while still enjoying a bit of the holidays. I did manage to see friends and host some holiday get togethers including a craft party, birthday gathering for two Scrabble friends, and a knitting night with rowing buddies. I remind myself when things are especially crazy that in a year I won't remember how nuts I felt, but I will remember having my friends come by for food and fun.

The culminating event to all this was our family's Christmas in Oaxaca. After our trip there last February, we decided it would be an interesting place to spend the holidays. The time crunch became even crazier as we had to leave one day early due to an airline screw-up, and then another day earlier to foil an incoming blizzard.

Thankfully all four of us managed to arrive in Oaxaca from three different parts of the country and the subsequent days were incredible—the perfect mix of sightseeing, eating and drinking, walking through town, meeting wonderful folks, and never ceasing to be surprised by the brass band or fireworks or choir concert that seemed to be taking place around every corner. (There was also an amazing line-up of brides at every church—getting married around Christmas seems highly desirable.)

We spent an especially wonderful day at Seasons of My Heart cooking school, which included a tour of the Etla Market in the morning and the opportunity to make (among other things) mole and cook on a outdoor comal in the afternoon.

And we met other wonderful tourists, as well as enjoying time with Luis, our fantastic driver and guide, and spending a bit of time with alebrije-carvers Saul and Alma Arragon.

The colors and sun of Mexico never fail to make me feel like a new woman this time of year and I feel so fortunate to have traveled there. I hope you, too, enjoyed the holidays, wherever they found you, and are feeling refreshed and ready to take on 2013.

No Turkey Duties? Try Knitting a Snoflinga...or Four

This Thanksgiving we decided to make a quick trip to Southern California to see my folks, and my youngest daughter was able to join us. (Sadly, my eldest daughter had to work—while I often rhapsodize about the joys of having adult children, it's not always so great when they have those adult responsibilities!) Still, we managed to have a lovely time, enjoying the weather (we ate Thanksgiving dinner al fresco), the company, a few walks along the ocean, and poking about in the tide pools on Thanksgiving day.

Snoflinga in Rowan Lima

And I was a knitting maniac. Between the flight delays and flights themselves, there was lots of time sitting around. And though I was first sad when my dad said we'd go out for Thanksgiving dinner, I ended up thoroughly enjoying not doing any dishes or fretting over side dishes being done at the same time as the turkey. My dad and daughter made two pies and that was the extent of Turkey Day meal prep.

The Bean trains in pie-making with the master baker—Popsie

Below are a few photos of the weekend, including the hats. The pattern is Jenny Gordy's Snoflinga (available here). It's super fun to knit because it's easy, but not boring. There are enough elements of change (including bobbles, which I simply love) to keep it interesting. I think the hat is most effective in a simple yarn, so that the lovely details show up, but I'm a sucker for variegation. I do wish my knitting was a little more even, though. Despite knitting gauge swatches for most of the hats, they vary tremendously in size. One's too big even for my big head, and that's after popping it in the dryer for a bit. Well, at least they're not as enormous as previous knitting debacles.

Message to our missing family member

Snoflinga in Cascade Eco Duo

Sea anemone courtesy of Rebecca

Snoflinga in Malabrigo Rios

Father-daughter team catch some Thanksgiving rays

Mother-daughter team check out the tide pools

Snoflinga in Malabrigo Twist

The 'rents anticipating their Thanksgiving feast

Back to School: The Pleasures and Purposes of Taking Craft Classes

The newspaper pattern we created to make a-line skirts

 I am one of those people who can't resist things. I cut out myriad recipes, planning to try luscious-sounding new foods; I get intrigued by threads of conversation that lead to story ideas and want to follow through and write them all; and of course, I'm a sucker for every new crafting idea that comes my way. As someone who writes about artists and designers, that's a heck of a lot of ideas.

Granny square class

For me, taking classes is one of the best ways to give in to my multi-crafting urge. I can buy books and materials, but actually sitting down and committing a several-hour block of time to use them is hard. There is something about paying for a class and putting it on my calendar that gives me permission to devote the time to trying something new.

South African embroidery in progress

In the past couple of months I've taken two classes taught by Alisa at Home Ec—one sewing a skirt (from a pattern we learned to make ourselves!) and another on crocheting a granny square (something I'd done in college, but not since). Also at Home Ec I took a class on South African embroidery (taught by Catherine Redford), and knitting a hat (taught by Jenny Gordy). I've done all these things previously in one form or another, but in each class I was reminded of what I enjoyed about that particular craft and I learned something new (last week in my hat class Jenny taught us a cool way to join stitches while knitting on circular needles). I get to handle new materials and use some old ones (I'd bought the fabric for my skirt at a Quilt Market six months ago, but wasn't quite sure what to do with it.)

Jenny Gordy (Wiksten) hat with bobbles

So here are photos from my classes—I finished the skirt the same afternoon I started it, but the other projects aren't yet finished. Those resulting UFOs are probably one of the biggest problems with taking classes. I sometimes question whether flitting from craft-to-craft is wise—after all, I have at least five unfinished quilt projects in my sewing room just waiting for me to devote time and attention to them. But I tell myself that some day these skills will all be waiting for me, as will the time to use them.

Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers! Hope you find some time to sit and stitch this coming weekend.

Yarn Bombing in Iowa

 Sunday was the culmination of a several-month event spearheaded by the Downtown Association in Iowa City. The idea was to organize a yarn bombing of downtown trees as a public art project and way to involve the community.

It was a whopping success—the first 97 trees were quickly snapped up by knitting volunteers, and Home Ec Workshop, which coordinated the yarn kits, pulled together more tree measurements and yarn with the help of other downtown businesses. The assignment was to knit a five-foot piece from the "approved" yarns (purchased by the Downtown Assn. and an anonymous donor). I misunderstood and thought I needed to try and get my yarn to go as far as it could, so I opted for simple stockinette and some stripes, but boy, oh, boy, was my tree plain compared to many. There were cables and bobbles and embroidery and myriad stitches and imagery knitting in—a spider, hearts, leaves. The results are amazing and here are a few of them.