eQuilter Blog

I am very happy to announce a fundraising fabric project with SAQA and Andover Fabrics – and a call for entries for all you aspiring fabric designers!

http://saqacallforentries.com/

Full details and instructions can be found on SAQA's website.

From Martha Sielman, Executive Director:    SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE! I am very pleased to announce that in celebration of SAQA's 25th Anniversary in 2014, Luana Rubin of eQuilter.com has arranged for Andover Fabrics to print a SAQA Urban Textures fabric collection. This collection will be based on designs by SAQA members, and Andover will donate a percentage of the collection's sales to SAQA. Luana Rubin will be the juror for the fabric collection designs. She will also write a brief article on how to design a fabric collection, which I'll send out by email soon. The SAQA Urban Textures fabric collection will consist of six to eight designs printed in multiple colorways. The goal for this project is to create designs that will become contemporary classics and be stocked by quilt shops and fabric stores around the world. The name of the selected designer(s) will appear on the selvedge of the fabrics.      For SAQA Urban Textures, find your inspiration in the textures of city streets, the graphics of signs and maps, or distressed surfaces and lights reflecting off asphalt. Deconstructed screen prints, splattered and layered paint, and digital manipulated images are all possible techniques. Use any artistic medium that expresses this theme. Full details and instructions can be found on SAQA's website.

It's March, and in my book that means it's (almost!) Spring. Even though we have
several inches of crusty snow covering our yard, I am already in that
I-survived-another-winter mindset, and I'm thinking about planting flowers,
giving away the kids' outgrown clothes, and CLEANING MY STUDIO!

My
problem – and I know many of you have the same problem – is that there is too
much of everything in my house, my car, and my studio. I am not a compulsive
purger, and I am not a hoarder. Ok I admit I am a collector but in the way most
creative people are collectors. I like to have lots of pretty things to inspire
me. I need all of my art and sewing supplies where I can see them. I really need
to go through that stack of magazines before I give them away. I have old
fabrics I want to donate but I need time to go through them and keep a few for
sentimental reasons. Sigh…

Last weekend I really got a kick out of Amy
Butler's presentation at QuiltCon. She also collects colorful interesting things
wherever she goes, and then arranges them into themed groupings of eye candy,
but she makes it look like a photo spread in a home dec magazine. Of course with
some primping and selective editing with photography, one can make almost any
room look like a scene from a glossy magazine… if you can get your kids to
stay out of the room for a day.

These days, there really is too much of
EVERYTHING. Too many emails, too many TV channels, too much information online
than one could ever hope to process in a lifetime. It is the blessing and the
scourge of the creative soul. We are finding our way in this new reality –
because even "living a simple life" is a relative term. I never feel that I have
mastered this balancing act, but I feel that I've learned how to have reasonably
good boundaries so I can be fairly productive and efficient.

My trick –
is to have a chunk of time every day when I pretend I have nothing else to do.
This is my Empty Time. I meditate, I draw, I sit in a garden and write in a
journal, I take a long bath listening to classical or jazz music. If I didn't do
this, I would literally go nuts.

Cleaning my studio a couple times a
year is also Empty Time. I am creating a blank space upon which to project my
next set of ideas. It can be a very spiritual experience for me, because when I
make the space, the ideas and inspiration come. Sometimes it just takes my
breath away.

I'll be in my studio this week!

Sometimes you have to throw all the pieces up in the air and start fresh to have
a creative breakthrough. Sometimes you have to throw the dice… or the
colors….on the table and then let someone else play around with the random
results. This is why a Round Robin quilt project is great for beginners: because
they get to see how different people can interpret the same set of colors,
fabrics or guidelines.

For 15 years I belonged to a weekly figure
painting group. It was truly fascinating. We would come and set up our easels
and paints around a live model, and then we'd paint for 3 hours with one 15
minute break. I was always amazed after an hour and a half, how we all had
interpreted the model in completely different ways. If I saw something I liked,
I could try to incorporate that idea into my work in the second half of the
painting session. It was a great learning experience.

Today I had an
experience that made me think about this as a part of the creative process –
i.e. interacting with others as a work is in progress. The work in process was –
Sophie's hair! That girl has the thickest hair I have ever seen – and it is
curly! Since I have straight hair, it is a learning curve for me. (but it is
fun, because I always wished I had wavy hair as a kid)

Every few months
we start struggling with brushing her hair, and we realize it is time for a
trim. Today she ended up with a new stylist, and I gave my usual explanation of
how we wanted Sophie's hair cut. Instead of being the helicopter hair mommie, I
went and sat in the waiting area and worked on editing my photos on my iPhone. I
noticed the stylist was layering Sophie's hair and thinning it out pretty
aggressively, but I decided to just let her go and see how it turned out. Wow!
Sophie and I were so happy with the results! She has this really cute layered
haircut and it is a brand new look for her. I had to throw the pieces and step
back, so something new could happen. It really got me thinking about my own
creative process: how much do I stifle innovation by having expectations and
trying to control the outcome?

Hey, I know that this may sound very
familiar to many of you, but it is always worth a reminder to throw the dice and
let the random results stimulate a new way of thinking. One way to play around
with this in a small quilt group is to take a photograph, blow it up, and cut it
into several pieces. Each person takes one segment or strip of the image and
makes a segment representing that image, and then they are all joined
together to make one big quilt. (This one is Jennings Homestead by Suzanne
Mouton Riggio and 26 members of the Milwaukee Art Quilters, Wisconsin)

I
love seeing these quilts win in the Group Quilt category in Houston, because you
can see the personality of each quiltmaker shining through each segment, and yet
they come together in a harmonious composition.

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Hurricane Sandy
Quilt Relief Info *

* Sandyhook Elementary Memorial
Quilt Project *

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