What Do I Get From Writing My Blog Part 3

Along the way another thing that kept me from finishing things was the process of getting my work ready for shows. I also suffered burn out after my solo shows or large projects like the 8 KING size Millennium quilts I made for my grandchildren, each with 2000 different fabrics. In addition I exchanged fabrics with hundreds of people all over the world while I was making them.

Currently I create with fabrics as an artist and I hope when you see my work it will add pleasure to your day and life.
My current work involving my Ice Tapestries is my own proprietary method. I copyright all the work I create. Each piece is unique and the ideas come from somewhere deep inside me from my 78 years of living.
Almost everything I create is available for sale. When you acquire a piece of my art I hope it adds to the quality of your life. Art can provide happiness, enjoyment, healing  and therapy in your life and beauty to your surroundings. .
Creating is my passion which is as necessary to me as breathing.
I never could have dreamed or planned the life I am living. I know I overuse the work serendipitous but it is the way I have always lived my life and it has worked for me.
Since I put so much of myself in my posts, I document all my blogs in a book I have printed every year. I enjoy looking back at these books and see how I have lived these most recent years.
So whether you follow my blog, get daily notices when I post or just check in occasionally I am happy to share my art and adventures with you.

How I Came To The Point Of Creating My Ice Dyes

This is a rerun of a post I wrote a few years ago. I get so many requests to teach this and questions on how I do this. I hope this explains how I got to the point I am at.

I have been christened “The Queen Of Ice” as my work is the best ice dyeing out there.

These are 3 of my experiments on the journey to create the BEST. I consider the above so-so but it takes a lot of these to achieve the best.
Thanks you to everyone for all your comments about a recent piece which I consider the BEST of the best Florida Ice.
This never could have happened without a lifetime of learning involving fabrics and color.
Many have asked how I do this and it is not something I can share.
For one thing, the results are serendipitous.
And the other thing is unless you have lived the same life I have for 77 years you will never achieve these results. It is all the experiences, education, and my research and development that have directly or indirectly made what I am currently creating happen.
I am no longer teaching, but am pursuing my own art.
To attempt to share this would not be fair to myself, nor to people who would try it and not get the results I do.
When I was doing one on one teaching for a fee I had a student ask if she could come and learn everything I knew about color from me in a one day session as she would have to travel a distance to get to my studio. It would not have been possible as she had not lived my life. I could have taught her about color theory but even if I did that until she did exercises,etc she still would not have learned what I attempted to teach her.
I can only suggest you take as many color and design classes as possible from the very best instructors and do the work from the classes.
Don’t concentrate only on working with dyes, but with paints, fabrics. yarns,interior decorating, food and papers.
Then play with your chosen materials until you get results that please you.
Devote every waking moment to your art as only then will you achieve your potential. You can multitask and think about your art being influenced as you live your daily life and think about what you want to do and how you will start.
You are all welcome to follow me on my BLOG and sign up to the email list on the page which will notify you each time I post to the blog.  In addition to my art I share parts of my life on my blog. Although I try to post as often as possible, sometimes a week or more may go by with no posts as I have nothing to post. The blog address is: http://quiltspluscolor.blogspot.com/
And in closing I am going to share some not so successful things I’ve dyed recently so you don’t thing I get a winner ever time.



The above are some less than lovelies but it takes creating a lot of these to find my direction to make the BEST!
Even the less than lovelies are useful for backs of quilts or they can be cut up and used in piecing. So all is not lost no matter what happens in my work.
I wish you success on your art journey wherever it takes you.
Be willing to play and accept the fact that you most likely will have to create 100-200 pieces to get some really good ones.

My Style As An Artist

Thinking about who I am and what I do as an artist I have some basic “tools” I use as I create no matter what medium I am using.

My current show “Ice Tapestries And Shibori Quilts” pushed me to think about how I work. Questions and comments by visitors to the show also help me clarify my creativity approach.

Color is one of my most important tools. Color can mean so many things and  the way colors work together and play off of each other is evident in my work.

I prefer to pair design down to their simplest form for the greatest visual impact.

Along the way I try to find the most efficient way to construct my work. I also strive to find the easiest way to bring my vision to completion. Often as I am working on something a lightning bolt hits giving me a better way for my next step.

Although I have chosen imperfection as my word for several years, it is something I have a hard time doing. I do use it as my excuse when things don’t work perfectly.
I work in series, although sometimes it is not as evident in my finished work that the varied pieces were part of the same series.

Play is another part of my creativity. I do not attempt to recreate something I’ve already done.

My work comes from deep inside me and cannot be forced. Creating is as necessary to me as breathing.

I march to my own drummer and do not follow the latest pop craze in the art arena.

What Is A Journal Quilt - Rerun

When I was looking at the statistics for the number of views various posts I have done in the past received this was today’s most popular. So I revisited it and enjoyed it as well as all the great comments.

I thought maybe those of you who hadn’t seen this blog post from  April 13, 2009 might enjoy this post too.

What is a journal quilt?

There are many answers to this question.
None are wrong.
All are right.

For me making a journal quilt is a way to make a quilt on a regular basis with certain guidelines. Generally those guidelines include a consistent size. It is a chance for me to experiment.
When I made journal quilts for 9 months I used them as a way to make me do the work. It was also as a way to create something that was related to either something I was doing in my other quilts, classes I attended or taught or to try something new.
This Tutti Fruitti journal quilt used every little scrap of the fabrics I had left from the big quilt. I had to bind it with a fabric not in the quilt.
I used it to test a quilting design I was considering using. I didn't use it but used a similar quilting design on the larger quilt.

The quilting style I created on this shibori quilt shows up on many later shibori quilts. The fringed dot also shows up on other quilts.

This quilt started with the piece of giraffe fabric. My goal was to use good proportion in the piecing of the quilt top and have it come out the size it had to be. I also used this quilt to try out some new quilting designs. These quilting designs have also shown up in later quilts.
Please click on each one of these quilts to see the quilting designs more clearly.
What do YOU use as a definition of a journal quilt? I'd appreciate any of you with thoughts about this to post them in the comment section. By doing that others can also benefit from what you contribute to this discussion.

When I made this journal quilt I started with the piece of black and white shibori fabric. I selected two other fabrics that would be the supporting cast. The quilting echoes the shibori design as it spills over to the other fabrics. To add a little spice to this quilt I reversed the colors on the binding so they would not match the edge of the quilt.  Posted by Kay Koeper Sorensen at 7:55 PM Labels: hand dyed fabric, Hand painted fabric, journal quilts, My original design, My original technique

9 comments:

JYA said...

What is a Journal Quilt? A slice of inspiration; a manageable piece of art; an experiment; an idea that goes from your mind out through your hands and lodges in the mind of the person who views the art and interprets the piece, so that it has meaning to you and to them. The sharing of an idea that inspires you both.
Judy Anderson

April 13, 2009 at 9:04 PM

Antonija said...

I agree that journal quilts can be used as a means to try new techniques and experiment with different media, but I always thought they were to represent a personal thought/emotion/happening, much like a page in a written journal. That it expresses whatever is going on in your life and in your head at the moment. Or at least be inspired by such.
That's what a journal quilt means to me...
--Toni Mitt

April 13, 2009 at 9:09 PM

marion said...

How strange, someone asked me what a journal quilt was yesterday on my Facebook page. I said then that usually they are the size of a piece of printer paper, and that you make one per month, often 'about' a theme or 'about' daily life. I think myself that the term 'journal quilt' has come to mean a small quilt of a specific size, and doesn't necessarily have any bounds on content.

April 14, 2009 at 4:18 AM

Diane said...

The journal quilts at festival that excited me to start quilting were the ones that were about the artists' lives, thoughts, or memories. A page from their dairy. The techniques are incidental. I was not as inspired by the explanations of how something was done if there was no "why." An experiment in technique doesn't need to be completed with a binding to function as a sample. The journal quilts that combine both "journal" and "sample" are the ones that stand out from the black drape.

April 14, 2009 at 7:30 AM

Leslie said...

A journal quilt to me is a commitment to do a piece of work a month. It is also a great way to try a process I am not sure I want to invest a lot of time, effort or funds in if I am not going to like it. It is also a great record of progress as an artiste. I have 7 years worth of JQs and I love looking back at them as a reminder of where I was and what was on my mind at that particular time.

April 14, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Johnni Schell said...

"A record of experiences, ideas or reflections kept for private use" - that is how Webster (in 1965) defined the word journal. Happily, journal quilts are not being kept private. Testing ideas on techniques certainly fit the definition along with using them as a diary. I have found that most people do respond to art with a story or symbolism behind it. My question for journal quilts is this - when you have committed to making one each month or each week - what do you do with them all?

April 14, 2009 at 10:43 AM

Carole said...

Thank you for asking...to me a Journal Quilt is about size AND content... size first, then I like to document thoughts, statements, even some trial and error, in various media. I have learned big is not necessary to be beautiful. Your own pieces prove that!
What I have appreciated is the looking back... I go to some of my early ones that I thought were not so great and see things I hadn't noticed before. I view them as a documentary of my growth and development.

April 14, 2009 at 10:46 AM

Elizabeth said...

Re Johnni's comment about what do you do with them all. I have framed some of mine and exhibited them in a textile exhibition I had with a friend, an open exhibition of an Art Club I belong to and, best of all, had three selected for a mixed media art exhibition, i.e. they moved outside the 'quilt' world. I would like to sell some but have still to do my marketing for this.

April 14, 2009 at 12:28 PM

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing your journal quilts. To me, they represent an expression of what is going on in my life and mind today. I am struggling with a change within me in how I wish to express myself through my quilts and creating journal quilts for a while will help me work through this issue. It is a very personal one, not so much related to materials and technique as it is to the content of my self expression. I plan a series of journal quilts, each of which will reveal something about me.

April 14, 2009 at 2:17 PM

A Time To Dye!

This is a major part of the palette of fabrics I have dyed in the last 2 years.

Can you see what colors I am missing?

These are some of the fabrics I have prepared to overdye. I am not quite sure what colors I will be overdyeing them with.

I have these rolled on poles and ready to go.

I will attempt to prepare a lot more fabrics today so I can load up the dye pots.

Wish me luck!

Happy Valentines Day

Today I am going to show you the rest of the Valentines I received in our fiber art exchange up close and personal.

This one is by Chris Fitzreiter. She used a lot of gorgeous sparkly metallic fabrics. Her background is also significant as it features a musical theme and music is something near and dear to Chris.

Judy Devaney attached a little message on a separate tag to each of the Valentines she sent. Her Valentines were a crazy quilt style, one of my favorite kinds of quilts.

It is obvious she knows how to use her sewing machine and it’s various stitches to advantage and she knows how to make a person feel good about themselves.

Carolyn Eaton did a masterful job of combining many different sewing techniques and trims.

Did you notice the see thru ribbon she used? The “dream” message? The fleur de leis she stitched? The flower with the pear center? and of course the strip pieced background. It’s hard to integrate so many varying things and she sure knew how to do it.

Gloria Meacham is one of the members of our group who is a master at using all the features on her sewing machine.

She even used her machine to sign the back of each valentine.

Carol Walker made each Valentine different. Her theme was using texture on them. She showed us all of them and then sealed them in envelopes and had someone shuffle and cut the envelopes and passed them around and we each got a beautiful card. The one I received features metallic fabrics woven like a Swedish heart.

Of all the Valentines I received this one reminds me the most of the type of Valentine we used to exchange in grade school. It also is a perfect quilters Valentine featuring sun bonnet Sue.

Elaine Scully is another member of our group who is so talented when it comes to using her computerized sewing machine. In addition to that what creativity this shows. Of course I ate the sucker right after I photographed it!

One of the guidelines for this project was they had to be in an envelope. Elaine made her own envelopes with a heart print fleece type fabric. No one else thought to do that.

This was such a fun project and really allowed every one to play to their strengths. We do something like this about once a year and it just keeps getting better and better. Can’t wait for our next project.

There is not puzzle cut that is a heart so I used a star symbolizing the fact that each and every Valentine our group made was "STAR" quality!