the back story

Earth Stories, © Paula Kovarik

Due to some major miscalculations I have found that my style of quilting can subtract a great deal of dimension from my intentions.

This quilt, an entry into the SAQA Earth Stories exhibit, was supposed to measure 72" x 72". I started with twenty-five 14.5" squares. 14.5 x five equals 72.5" right? I thought to myself I can always trim the excess when I start to bind the piece.

Of course knowledgable quilters will know that I messed up big time on that first calculation. I did not calculate the seam allowances of all those 14.5" squares. That meant that each finished square turned out to be 14" after subtracting the 1/4" each side for the seams. Now I am down to 70" x 70" requiring a one inch border to make the piece 72" square. I reasoned that that would be OK since the piece definitely needed a border to make it look finished.

Except that when I finished this rambling river the stitching forced the cloth to shrink. A great deal of shrinkage occured. When I squared the piece up and trimmed off the ragged bits and bad endings the piece measured 67" x 67". Five inches short of my goal. Dang. A larger border now requires more thought. More engineering and more time.  

So today I turned the quilt over on my table and started cleaning up the back side. This is the dark side of quilting. 

The moral of this story? Missed calculations make intentions more like deliberations. And maybe I am not cut out to be an artist with a specific size requirement in the mix. 

clouds rolling in

©2013, Paula Kovarik

It's an open-the-door-to-the-breeze day here. The chimes in the garden are celebrating the brief respite from oppresive humidity. Sun skimming over my work table caught this work-in-progress shot. The clouds rolling in...

making marks

making marks, © Paula Kovarik, 2012

I spend a lot of hours at the machine these days. It is not a healthy sport. My shoulders and hands are weary at the end of several hours. I have come to set alarms so that I look up. On bad days I forget lunch.

So when I looked at this piece in the shadows I was taken by the texture that hand stitching creates. The stitches are not even. They dip and ding the fabric leaving a hill or valley or a crease. For some reason I can work hand stitch happily without tearing anything out. But when I work by machine I focus (too hard) on stitch length and tension. I think after I finish the large piece I am working on I will concentrate more on hand work and play wih the light and darkness created with fingers instead of machine.

morning light

©2013, Paula Kovarik

I love how the morning light in my studio skids across my work table. It gives me a way to see where the bumps are working and where they might be a bit too much. Continuing this challenge of a higher loft with the wool batting I am using, I am starting to feel more comfortable with the 3D-ness of it.

shadow and light

©2013, Paula Kovarik

The photo on the left of this image is a detail shot of a quilt I am working on. On the right I turned it 360 degrees. Isn't it interesting how the shadows on the left make the piece look concave but the same pic turned upside down looks convex? Since I was turning the image to see if the curves were balanced (an old trick for judging layout) I was confounded on how different they looked. I had to shoot the piece again by turning it upside down to be able to have a fairer comparison.