OK, yes, it does take some time

I came home from my residency in Japan with a bucket of ideas. And a bad cold. Despite the sniveling, snorting and hacking I was intent on making progress on works that I had started as well as new works brewing in my mind. The cold won. And I floundered, frustrated. It was another lesson in expectations vs. reality.

The first task was to preserve the work I did in Japan. Like this 18.5 foot drawing on a rice paper scroll. I fused the paper to muslin and now I am considering a wooden roller for it. It’s tricky. I am moving slowly to resolve the challenge.

I left for the residency with a piece on the wall that was unfinished. It’s a challenge in pattern and color. (see previous post) And after six weeks thinking in black and white I had to put it in the “works-in-NO-progress” pile. It just served to frustrate me rather than inspire.

I’m not really good at giving up. But the minute I did that with that piece I felt a rush of adrenaline that gave me permission to think about new things. And open up that bucket to start fresh.

When I am in a quandary about how to move forward I wrap thorns from a black locust tree with discarded thread. Or I fold fabric scraps into neat piles. It serves to slow me down so that I can clear my mind of distractions.

Giving myself permission to fail is something that takes practice. My expectations are high. I am impatient. Judgmental. And distracted. There are not enough hours in my day to accomplish what I want to do. I need to go back to the idea that it is all about the process and not about the product.

Stream of consciousness stitching on found fabric.

After folding a couple of shelves of fabric, reorganizing my tool closet and wrapping some thorns I found this piece of drop cloth that I had saved from a particularly colorful day of playing with ink. It is an amorphous, non-figurative mush of color on a used and reused scrap of sheeting. It pleases me. And challenges me to play. So that is what I am doing. Playing. Responding. Giving my time to that space of no expectations.

Winter is here. A time to notice the shortened days. A time to pay attention to the skeletons of trees.

Join Me!

You might notice that I have a number of scheduled workshops here on this journal page. I’ll be at the Santa Fe Madeline Island School of the Arts in March. The Alegre Retreat in Colorado in April. The Columbia FiberArts Guild in June. Quilting by the Lake in Geneva, NY in July. The Woodland Ridge Retreat in Menomonie, WI in August. Stitch in Durango, CO in September. And the Stitchin’ Post in Sisters, OR in September.

Treat yourself to a workshop in 2025.
We need to play with each other more!

I had to stop thinking

Here’s a way to stop the endless news dipping. Turn off the Instagram pages, close your ears to news anchors, take out the sketch book, scribble, then stitch. I had to stop thinking this week. I had to disappear from day in day out headlines and distractions. It started with a What If?

What if I only used straight lines and angular corners when drawing a line that never ended. Fill up the page then turn the page 90 degrees to fill it up again. What would I discover?

Here’s the drawing

Filling in the intersections yields a background foreground pattern.

On to stitching

A square of raw canvas, some wool batting and my trusty black thread started me off. I use YLI 40 wt. cotton thread. It has a deep black color and a strong presence. You can’t miss it when stitching on a light background. It’s all about commitment right?

The nice thing about this exercise is that it stopped me thinking about anything but where the thread wanted to go. I had to anticipate the turns. Here’s the base stitching.

I find that the stiffness of the raw canvas and the loft of the wool batting gives me a surface that has both body and resiliency.

Next step, fill in the blanks. This step was like finding treasure.

Choosing which blank areas would be filled in allowed some shapes to have more definition while others could fade away. Letting the pattern meander across the surface brought some active negative spaces and some interesting positive shapes.

What are you looking at?

Then I started seeing faces. It’s a very common thing with me (see this post for more on that). So I added dots for eyes.

What a powerful thing a dot is.

It looks like some of these guys are asking the same questions I have.

Here’s where it stands now. I may add more shaded areas. I may add more dots. I may cut it up and make something else out of it.

I See Faces, 25” x 28”, Paula Kovarik

Taking a break from thinking made me feel a little more settled this week. I recommend it.

Is it the weather?

Hot. humid brain. Clouds too full to stay afloat. No focus. Time to walk away from existing projects. Instead, I had a quilt camp week. Two very promising artists participated. We talked about modules, grids, color theory, stitching and machines. They both learned how to build compositions from scraps, thread the machines, trim their work with a rotary cutter and stitch with a free-motion foot. The terms strip piecing, log cabin, and machine appliqué now have meaning to them. They followed the rules and broke the rules. As they should. 

Did I say promising? No. These boys had it going on. They fell into the slipstream of stitching with no fear, no preconceived notions and a willingness to learn. 

Bravo. 

On the sideline I played with their leftovers to create this blue state red state composition. And since I was a bit pre-occupied with making sure that they were safe I had to work fast and without boundaries or rules. No seams, no careful stitching, no worries. I may pursue this practice a bit. I have bundles and bundles of scraps to consider. 

Blue state, red state. Work-in-progress. Paula Kovarik

After they left I pursued some of the work I had already begun. A new Glyphs piece (see another Glyphs piece here). These glyphs have bodies. 

Glyphs enlarged, work-in-progress. Paula Kovarik

Meanwhile, I watch too much TV news is sitting in my hand-stitching chair. Using a needle to poke into that fabric roll is satisfying. Like a little voodoo panel that lets me get away with commentary. 

I'm scattered but productive. Confused but dogged. Doubt-filled but determined. Fuzzy-brained and seeking clarity.

Maybe it's the weather. 

More than I want to count

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?

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.

All the trimmings

I've been thinking about trimmings. The way we trim off the excess when we have to choose a new path. The way we add things to our meals and memories and collections. Trimmings are extras....extraneous or extraordinary. They are the side salad, appetizers and desserts. But they are also the leftovers, discarded and forgotten.

I save all the trimmings. There's a whole in there somewhere.

Collections show which extras I want to save.

There are two ways to think about trimmings — as additions or subtractions. In fiber art trimmings can be decorative edges or edited scraps—add-ons or take-aways.

My memory is a collection of trimmings. I don't know how my brain selects each bit. Do the memories come up by catalyst or do they float around waiting for a chance to surface? As we formulate our thoughts do we pick up little trimmings, put them together in new combinations and blurt? Or, is the whole just a leftover of the editing? And what about the new stuff we learn each day? Where does it all go in the stack?

Conversations are a collection of thoughts trimmed in emotion, logic and beliefs. The extraneous drones on and on, the extraordinary inspires and lingers. Bits and pieces stay with us, stored mysteriously in the heap of understanding.

Assembling a group of extras gives me a playground for stitch. This is a work-in-progress that started with two-inch strips sewn together and then cut into rectangles.

This medium gives me a perfect way to use trimmings. I can edit, add, and subtract. I linger with compositions that move forward, get stuck in cul de sacs and challenge my perception. I squint my eyes to see the final stack, tilting left and right to find the balance. Then I commit to negative and positive spaces that support or conflict with each other. Each shift of perspective tells a new story. Each scrap adds its own voice. I'll let it build until it tells me to stop. Then the fun begins—a new playground for stitch.