speechless

December 24, 2021

Navigating the new normal, I am speechless. I can’t seem to get my head into the holiday spirit. It is almost 70 degrees here in Memphis, blustery. That’s just not right. There are hardly any acorns in the yard. The news keeps offering challenging perspectives. Another shooting. More variants. Planes grounded. I could go on. and on. I look for ways to escape the worry by using saturated colors, stitching in mandala form, creating puffy, comforting soft rounded shapes with a hint of rebirth.

At play with stitch

The galleries below offer some distractions in the colors of the season (thank you Kaffe Fasset for the jumping off point). These are 7.5 x 2.5 little collages that give me room to play. I might go looking for some spring colors next. Can you cure melancholia with color?

Many wishes

May your new year be filled with more good news than bad. More potlucks, less politics. More quality, less inequality. More dancing, more laughter, more hugs, more color, more sunshine, more music, more family.

More than I want to count

September 21, 2016

How many decisions does it take?

I started a project about a month ago that included color. A great big pile of color all stitched up together. Rectangles nested, connected and spliced to create a whole. It is a process that demands patience, the power of arbitrary decision, and attention to detail. I can usually count on having two of three of those traits on any given day.

Decisions are endless, if I counted all the seams, snips and rearrangements I would have to seriously question my behavior. For example this little section took most of the morning to figure out. Which way should the red, white and gray composition attach to the orange white and gray section?

red square connects to orange

red square connects to gray square

red square top left

red square bottom left

When I run out of patience I get distracted. Like: How cool are these wispy thread ends on the back of the piece? They seem to be blowing in the wind, or tangled with an inner confusion. And then I start studying the trimmings. Looking for the answer in chaos.

Stitching scraps together brings new meaning to the whole.

Leftovers reflect the effort of the choices I made.

And now I've turned the whole thing to the back so that I can study that for a while.

I started this piece with no clear goal. I vaguely wanted to create a playground for stitch. Something I could hop, skip and rollerskate over with my thread. And now I'm not so sure. I'll have to take some time to think about it some more, I'll have to find the patience to make some more decisions.

cold snap

November 18, 2014

The weather maps I have been collecting for the past year are decidedly blue and purple in cast -- a sign that arctic winds are traveling south. So it was with a sense of joy I noticed these colors in the kitchen. The rescued tomatoes and the first winter lentil soup.

fun with triangles

July 28, 2014

Half-square triangles have an infinite variety of ways to be put together. These color study units I have been working on give me a way to release some creative problem-solving time. Here are some of the ways they can work.

half-square triangle diagramsI think I will do something like this:

roughed-in composition for color study quiltI like how the white breaks up the geometry, forcing the viewer to complete the pattern in their imagination. I think I might add a wide white border too.

color experiments

July 14, 2014

Since the free-motion fairy is not with me today I decided to play with some color. Based loosely on the Pundit quilt colors of lime green, black and white I experimented with other highlight colors to create a different mood. Here are the half-square triangles in pre-trim mode. A lovely prayer-flag composition... I didn't really want to cut them apart.