Running to Keep Up

Plans were made. They had been in the works forever, an "epic" trip overseas, (only my second, ever) was finally coming to fruition. The trip was starting on labor day weekend, marking the divide between the seasons of play and responsibility. I had already signed in to two new classes which would begin while I was on the road. The responsibilities would start to pile up, I would be "behind" from the start. I am perpetually over-committed and behind schedule. I cannot bear to miss out on opportunities that excite my creativity, that feel like something brand new.

I had planned to write a new blog post before leaving home, I had begun planning and writing, in fact. It was to be titled "Summer Steps Up". It swirled and whirled in my brain during those last two crazy-busy weeks of shopping and organizing piles, dreaming of the grand experience ahead. And then there was no more time and I was leaving for the airport.

While I was gone, my life back home was in suspended animation behind closed doors. I was fully where I was: no Internet, no TV, no smart phone, simply no checking in. In fact, the trip was so intensely planned and layered, I was running to keep up. My camera's memory card became a substitute for my own at times, as places, colors, and textures so intense whirled by in a blur, and I couldn't believe there was so little time allotted to just stop and be with them. I could have spent hours, days, just staring, photographing details, and drawing if I were able. But on a guided trip you look, snap and move on. You keep your camera at the ready and don't ever think you will have a second opportunity to return to a scene. And yet, on our own, the sights would never have been seen and the 2000 photos not taken, the new circle of friends not encountered and enjoyed. I can complain, but I won't. It was all a glorious privilege.

But being a methodical person, I need to find closure on my summer before I take time to savor and share the trip. So I will give you the condensed and amended version of my August, just because it now feels orphaned, unfinished, abandoned. In truth, it was a wonderful time of its own.

Two new friends joined me in August: "Flash" the hippo, and ActiveLink, my constant companion, recording every move I make, reminding me to burn, burn, burn those calories.

(Summer Steps Up, an excerpt)

August has become that golden fruit I wait patiently for every year. The air is soft and sweet again and I am in heaven, sitting and gazing out from the gazebo in my wildly matured garden. During the long days of heat and humidity, of storms and the chaos of wind, I remained true to my summer goals of health and stitching. I am happy to see that my diligence has paid off. My slimmer profile welcomes the new garments and I eagerly look forward to enjoying their sass and comfort.

I think about sharing the riches, inviting friends to sit with me, but I have the need to breath and stitch in perfect quiet meditation. Instead I am listening to the chatter of crows and jays, the splash of the fountain, the muffled distant mechanical tunes of trucks and blowers and human productivity about the community. There are planes flying overhead to distant adventures and I will be on one soon. But for now, I sit and stitch, no talk, (selfishly maybe), my mind all to itself, all connecting to my here and now.

Especially when life is crazy busy, it is necessary to take time to be zany...

...to let the wind blow in your hair...

...to walk on the sand, to become part of the bigger picture of life.

In mid August, I took time to join in to a bit of "summer camp" with one of my favorite drawing teachers, Carla Sonheim. She was offering two new classes: "Watercolor Transfer Painting," and "Cereal Box Paper Dolls." I did most of my lessons for the first intensive session, but barely began the second. I will return to both as soon as possible, but have a number of interesting things to share from the first week.

I have taken a number of classes now in which Carla has taught her own techniques for the use of watercolor, often with gesso, and other simple media such as vine charcoal and graphite pencil. This time she has developed ways of working them on t-shirt transfer papers, so that the impermanent or easily smeared media can be made stable, trapped in a layer of plastic film.

three quick, impressionistic landscapes in watercolor and pastel 

This five minute beach scape was ironed to an old t-shirt to create a completely personalized update.

This mixed media "landscape" was basically doodled as a first step for later collage work.

A half of the sheet was cut to bits with no purposeful intention, then used to create three different collaged beings, two sea creatures and "Some Guy Who Stopped By". All three could be used "as is" but will probably benefit from some additional media development.

In this technique we did a sort of faux encaustic, by creating layers of an image independently, then ironing them over each other to create a thicker, complex, waxy image.

The initial three layers of ink, watercolor and pastel, ironed to watercolor paper...

...then color enhanced with a fourth layer of watercolors.

And, of course, it wouldn't be a Carla class without something just for fun. Here we find the story in the photo of a sidewalk crack. She flirts with him: "I Like Your Boot!"

My monthly play date with "Designing Women" involved trying out a simple(ish) technique for making batik-like designs on fabric using flour and water to make a paste, coating the fabric and scratching or pressing in designs. Once dry, the top surface is painted to allow the color to adhere to the fabric where the marks were cut through the paste. After a period of curing the paint, the whole piece is soaked and washed to leave behind organic markings. Enjoyable but messy, and requiring a bit of practice to achieve specific results.

My pile of fabric chips, curing. At this point they were very interesting to look at, but quite useless.

After processing, subtle and pleasant, but not nearly as exciting.

My first set of Alabama Chanin designed projects were successfully completed in time for my vacation trip. New colors of the organic cotton jersey have been purchased and many stencils made, so that fall and winter will see further wardrobe additions.

This is the tie wrap, a simple rectangle of fabric that ties behind the back, to hang on the shoulders more like a loose jacket.

The reverse applique swing skirt and fitted top were a huge success, shown here at El Castell de Cuitat, La Seu d'Urgell, Spain.

My final Starbucks Saturday doodle before heading off to take my coffee breaks at sidewalk cafes and hotel lounges of Northern Spain and Western Portugal. Can't wait to share the excitement!

She's a Regular Balabusta

Summer in the mid-section has been hot, dry, and a little oppressive. Other than a few wild thunderstorms, there has not been much to distinguish one day from the next. The garden mostly languishes without my tender care. A squirt of water is all I can manage. I try to keep the back yard fountain full and flowing for the sake of the birds, but I've spent little time lately tending the beds, enjoying our gazebo, or even cutting bouquets for the house.  The basil plants are liking the weather (at least the ones whose pots are hooked to the automatic watering system), and I need to set aside an hour for turning them into my favorite condiment, pesto.

The last time I picked flowers for the gazebo was in late June. After the vase blew over in four storms in three days, i decided to give up. Maybe it's safe to try again.

One plant that thrives in the heat is this gorgeous portulaca. The "snowball" bush behind it got decimated in the storms. Happens every July, and yet we love it!

I've even given up a standing invitation for water aerobics and/or "noodle" floating in a friend's pool. The first time I did that I wrenched my back from walking backward in the water, and got a rash from the sun. The second time, I got a headache and nausea from too much bobbing. I figure I am not cut out for water action. Instead I have been spending hours curled up in quiet concentration on the couch stitching my reverse applique projects, or at my dining room table, craft knife in hand, carefully cutting stencil after stencil. For the first time in many a summer, I wouldn't dare question the absolute need for air conditioning to keep me sane and productive.

One of the finely detailed stencils I have been cutting. This one is a template for ribbon embroidery.

Beside my obsession with balancing input (food) and output (exercise) "points" and weighing in at my weekly Weight Watcher's meeting, I am lately taken with the back-to-basics desire to simplify my expectations of what life is all about. Maybe the dieting has focused me unnaturally on food and clothing, but there has been a sort of "aha!" return to what is (and has always really been) important to me. While my human relationships with family and friends seem to grow more complicated and distant with the passing years, my relationship with my own life seems to find clarity and ease itself into something I can understand and hold in my hand. There is definitely less regret and longing, and more "just living". I worry less about making my mark or fitting anyone else's expectations of me and surrender to the day. Every day seems to be a new adventure, full of promise, even when the list of activities involves the most mundane of "housewife" activities of cooking, laundry, personal care, or sewing alterations.

Every Saturday (and sometimes Fridays, too) is coffee date with Dave at Starbucks. Lately, less drawing and more doodle journaling is going on. One week the heat made me "prickly", the next we got to try some great new cooling beverages. Like the "Where's Waldo" puzzles, Dave is usually somewhere in the doodle.

The other day as I was pulling a beauteous but simple dessert pudding from the oven, admiring its pockets of bubbling red berry juice amidst the golden dome, a long forgotten word came to mind: balabusta! You, Cheryl, are a balabusta! In case you are sitting there with a perplexed look on your face, this is a Yiddish term often overheard in conversations of my youth, from my mother or grandmother, while commenting on some woman of their acquaintance. It hadn't been a part of my life for so many years that I felt the need to do a little Wiki research. The written definitions and oral explanations on this resource page confirmed my thoughts: this term, basically meaning the female head of house (and there is a male counterpart) is meant, then and now, with no facetiousness or irony, as genuine praise for homemaking well done.

Both clafouti are baked puddings with fruit, eggs, dairy and flour. The top one is made from milk with mostly cherries and some berries. The bottom one gets a slightly different texture from yogurt as the dairy, and mostly strawberries. They are low fat, not too sweet and taste great when reheated slightly. A dash of cream on top never hurts.

Since childhood, cooking, sewing decorating, and entertaining--these have always come easily and added pleasure to my life. But in the late sixties and beyond as I came through college, a first marriage, and the work world, we were fighting to be liberated from gender defined roles and given the choice to have careers outside this "limited" scope of expertise. I felted less inclined at that time to make this my calling, even though I loved those things so well. Now, twenty years after retiring early from a brief teaching career, I realize this was my best career choice after all.

Two views of my first Alabama Chanin garment that is made with a complex cloth. This is stencilled, then reverse appliqued. As a poncho with one point, it can be worn front, back, or side for a variety of looks.

Another stencil design currently being worked in reverse applique to make a tied wrap. The bottom layer that shows through the cuts will be black.

The progression from stenciled to finished took about two weeks.

So with a life partner who joined me at those crossroad years, who is both indulgent and appreciative of my "Martha (Stewart)" tendencies, I am finally settling into who I really enjoy being. This "love of my life" who has had to put up with a steel mill career for most of his life, comes home from a hot, dirty, chaotic day, and puts up with my current dual obsessions of Weight Watchers and Alabama Chanin, never says an unkind word, and actually encourages and helps me with my goals in both. He recently bought me an air brush and compressor to paint my stenciled designs on cloth, and even takes patterns to work to enlarge for tracing.

 Most days, even though he has been out in the oppressive heat all day, he still comes home looking forward to a walk after dinner. So we do, and this has kept me on my exercise track, when alone, I would have made excuses. And then we come back to our very pleasant front deck, have a beverage and cool down as the sun casts lengthening shadows, and sinks to a cooler place in the sky. And some nights, after we return to our air conditioned oasis, I proffer a slice of that golden fruit clafouti with a bit of cream on top.

So, am I still striving to become an "artist"? Yes, I am still studying and exploring and practicing in different media. I am letting my imagination wander, I am not taking any of it more seriously than it deserves. I have no real expectations of starting a new career or looking for glory. But "balabusta"--that role in life I joyfully hold in my heart.

When Losing is Winning

(Just a reminder to new blog readers, or if you just forgot: clicking on the colored words (links) will take you to more info, and clicking on the photos will take you to an enlarged image, the better to view details.)

Sometime last winter, while enmeshed in endless preparations for a quilt show, a large and complex embroidery project, and another embroidery challenge,  I dreamed of having the free time to return to a bit of creative clothing construction. Clothing sewing had been my main type of artistic self expression for most of  my life. I had wanted for many years to go to art school and become a clothing or textile designer. Unfortunately the dream of a professional life as such had been thwarted, but in recent years I had returned to a selective set of projects that might be called "art clothing." Generally these involved using articles of clothing as a base for textile surface design explorations, and the body as the gallery for displaying them.

While I loved the idea of being able to show off my "art" wherever I went (I now can do that by whipping out my phone and pulling up my Flikr photo steam), there was the small issue of middle age spread making me an unsuitable longterm gallery for these pieces. I gradually decided it was a better use of time and money to shop for clothing that fit me now and make art that always would. The funny part about that idea is that as I have matured into my "be here now" living style, the longevity of the interest I need to have in my finished pieces of creativity has diminished no matter what the medium. I get the pleasure in the moment of creation, and generally have less interest in long term ownership. Also, the concept of digital storage of images has made it easier to catalogue, revisit and reuse the art when desired.

So when I recently decided it was time to go back to making my mark on interesting portable art, I didn't feel the pieces had to be mine forever. I did decide, however, that I needed to provide them a great looking gallery. I finally bit the bullet, rejoined the new and improved Weight Watchers (mostly improved because the online tools make tracking everything a breeze), and now I'm watching the daily shrinking me show, where I'm weighing, measuring, trying on older, smaller sizes until by the power of will they finally fit, and waiting for the time I deem the mannequin "just right." But while this has become my major summer project in the category of "just do it!", I am beginning work on a fabulous new wardrobe of someone else's inspiration, but my joy.

For once, I decided I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, that I would give myself permission to use patterns and ideas from another designer. That would be Natalie Chanin and her fantastic layered mix and match wardrobe of totally hand sewn, surface designed and embellished pieces made entirely from comfy cotton knits. Bam! The perfect combo of simplicity and excess! Any piece in the basics wardrobe can be made totally and utterly plain, or encrusted to the point of body armor. Your choice. And for your own satisfaction (aside from having a wonderful piece of clothing to complement your lifestyle), when people complement you and say "what a lot of work you did" or "how much do you think that is worth?", you can point them to the retail sales side of her company and say: this little poncho would set you back $1,235, but I made it for a yard of material and the joy of stitching.

Before I move on to my summer of show and tell stitchery, I thought I would share with you the rest of the projects from my five week course, Flower Crazy, with Carla Sonheim. I was so captivated by the techniques she taught us that for once I completed every assignment, including the "extra credit"! 

In addition to an overall inventive, personalized floral theme, the course centered on the creative combination of gesso and watercolor as the media on a variety of substrates. This is watercolor paper with gesso "last".

Here we created a textured painting with gesso "first" then watercolor and Carla's "patented" rub and buff technique.

The idea for these pod flowers came to me in a waking sort of dream. Here the same texture first, then color, but on birch plywood.

These next two pieces are my pride and joy from the class, and involved birch plywood base with wet on wet paint (and many layers more). And yet there was almost no planning involved and the two pieces took under two hours to do.

This piece and the next are the surprising base layers for the two painting to follow. Surprise for me, because I had never worked with collage before as a first layer, especially when the notion is that you will cover most of it up.

This is what the orange, green and blue papers inspired in me after adding layers of gesso, watercolor, charcoal and white acrylic ink.

And the wild black and white polka dots (left over from making journal covers for a previous class) served to give punch to this fun graphic celebration of petal power.

The "final exam" of sorts was to take a children's board book, remove most of the paper from the pages and convert them into a smorgasbord of our favorite flowers and techniques from the class. I used a great deal of collage as the base for these designs, and added water-soluble markers as well as colored pencil and water-soluble ink pencil for punch. There are a total of ten paintings in this book. Check them out here.

One of the "extra credit" assignments was to make more flowers on watercolor paper that could be cut out and arranged as a wall installation.

This collection is above my television on the main living room wall.

These are on the closet doors above my sewing machine. All of them made from scrap paper, cardboard and tape, but the key ingredients are whimsy and color.

In addition to starting the Alabama Chanin designs, I am currently a member of  Jude Hill's class, Contemporary Boro 2, in which we are exploring a variety of philosophies related to clothing ownership, use, repair, and design. It is, as always, as much a community as a class, and populated by a fascinating circle of caring individuals. I showed you the dress below back in the May 7 blog entry. The reason it is here again is to share the label. One of the first projects suggested in Jude's class was to think about the alternate uses of clothing labels and how they can become part of the story of the mended or redesigned (or newly created) pieces we are making. This label is a miniature print of a quilt block from a very special group piece I did with my Designing Women friends a few years back. The image is the first "creative" portrait I ever drew of myself, and the sentiment, "I Am One of a Kind", speaks of both the dress and me.

Here is another label I made using an old stamp that was that has been the symbol for years of my sometime craft business, "Hippo Productions". This garment has been "Infused With Hippo Love," the label printed on tea dyed muslin.

A very simple but fun style from the "Alabama Stitch Book" that makes use of recycled logo t-shirts. The brown one was a prize from an Oregon hops grower for photos submitted of hops plants growing in my garden. And no, I don't brew my own beer. Not yet, anyway. I'm too busy trying to decide which  stitchery project is calling me the loudest this week. Can't wait to show you what's on the worktable now. But hopefully, hanging from my "new" body.

I'm Old, So What?

A week ago today I celebrated a birthday with a number that brings me much closer to pensions and social security payments than I ever imagined I'd be. Well, truthfully I knew I'd get there eventually, but I imagined the me that arrived would somehow be a different one than the smiling person in the photo below. That "girl" still feels like a girl. She is still trying to lose weight, still working out regularly, still eating healthy, still in love with life and, thankfully, finally on the road to doing the things she always dreamed of. Maybe the dreams were a little grander in the long ago, with fame and money in the mix, but basically they were always about exploration and creativity, and daily joy rolled into one. Oh yeah, and friendship and dancing. Always those.

The birthday number is not so important, except for the reality that they come with a finite count, and we have to understand that we are on the countdown. So we try not to dwell on years, but on the moment, because we finally came to understand, that is the only place that matters. Plans for the future are great, even necessary, but only in how they lead us to use our current moments with awareness and gusto. I've gotten so good at going for the gusto that sometimes I tire myself, and have to have that pep talk that says "Stop! Sit! Breath! The expectations are only yours, and you can choose to change the agenda."

It didn't take me long after the quilt show ended to move on with a new spring list. First came the items that had been promised completion and really were a pleasure to do. The prayer flag above was my first experience with such a project. I have seen blog friends making them for themselves or to participate in a group venture, but never thought of doing it until I was asked by my friend Linda Miller at The Bhavana Project. According to Linda, the Sanskrit word means "emergence, visualization and cultivation of intention...[and is being used] to send out positive energy as a contribution to the community." She sent me a string of already completed flags with a blank base to decorate. Our intention was "Reflections on Peace," and I was proud to add my painted and hand stitched design to fly in the wind at it's eventual destinations.

Next, it was high time to finish construction of my Shrinebook Project from the Advanced FrankenStitch class with Arlee Barr. If you haven't kept up with the progress on this "monster" of an embroidery project, here is the link to an album of all the stages. The eight panels are mounted back to back in a strip of four, so that the screen may be displayed in a variety of ways, sometimes with both sides available for viewing (say, on the center of a table,) or possibly in a cube with only one side facing out. Either way, you can see it's just tall enough to reach a kitty's chin.

For those of you who collect fabric stashes with no apparent purpose other than to shop, you will be pleased to hear I bought not one thing to add to this artwork. Even the solid color silk strips joining the panels were there for the finding. I think I required a couple hanks of embroidery cotton to finish the buttonhole variations that make up the hand work.

The dowels that form the support hinges required end caps that would be difficult to find ready made. Luckily (in addition to all my other interests) I am fairly proficient with polymer clay and bead making, so I just whipped up (Ha!) ten tight fitting pieces. Seriously, this took quite a bit to design and execute, and was the main thing holding up the finishing. I do love how the collaged design adds interest and ties in to the panels without detracting.

Just before the quilt show brought my long season of "get 'er done" to a close, I was already making plans for a new direction. It has been a while since I have made clothing, although there were years of my life where I made the majority of what I wore. I also hadn't done a lot of art clothing in the past few years, partly because fluctuating body size made the large investment in time less than useful, and because my life recently had been rather casual. Both those reasons struck the new me as being totally unacceptable as excuses to not do what I've always loved best. The first could surely be conquered by making it a priority and a project (now ongoing and successful), and the second: well it was time to make beautiful art to wear that did fit my life.

I had recently discovered the handmade clothing of Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin. Her designs are both simple and outrageously embellished as you chose, but all made of organic cotton jersey and as comfortable as pajamas. So I was off and running. My first purchase of yardage, delivered days before the quilt show, was waiting for me, as were my hand cut stencil and hand traced pattern for a simple princess line dress.

I chose to begin with a stenciling technique new to me: fabric paint on WET fabric, intentionally made to run. They call this one "faded leaves" and I did it with black Setacolor Translucent on the natural color medium weight fabric. I was very glad to have purchased the fabric from A.C. because the quality is lovely and superior to anything I can find locally.

The idea of wet stencilling is to work on wet, but rung out fabric to allow the paint to first spread from its placement in all directions to soften the design, and then dry slowly while hanging to allow osmosis to run the paint away from the pattern and fill some of the blank area with a softened version of the color. What started black became grey and even separated to an accent of a blue component.

The two panels here show what it looks like when first hung versus about an hour later.

Even though I have sewn all my life, this is the first entirely hand stitched piece. This particular design has the seams on the outside which are then flat felled with a whip stitch. The only hard part of the process is, unfortunately, working with the jersey, whose tendency to curl on the edges requires patience and exactly care to keep the seams aligned and the proper width.

The hem is left completely raw, and the neck and armhole edges are bound with self fabric strips and decorative stretch stitches of your choice. Here I used Herringbone.

At exactly the same time I began a Spring treat. A five week long class in painting techniques that focus on fantasy flowers with one of my faves, Carla Sonheim. Working with layers of gesso and watercolor, with many choices of substrate to experiment with, we are learning that flowers are a state of mind, and that there is nothing you can't save with a little bit more layering of gesso!

This first painting started as an exercise in layering quick doodle floral shapes, then several days later was rescued and focused with, what else, gesso and watercolor (and a bit of marker.) It has since been revised a second time with collage additions in week four.

These two painting are again from week one, when we continued to experiment with tools and mark-making, and most of us created fantasy flowers that looked like they came from a galaxy far far away. We are now entering our final floral fantasies in week five with little books of paintings. Next time I'll show you what we've done along the way.

So back to the idea of art to wear. Here is my Dave and I in jean jackets bearing woven, embroidered and quilted pieces that I made a year ago in Jude Hill's Contemporary Woven Boro class. Jude has been lately expanding the notion of what a class can be. Those of us who have been participating and following over the last couple of years are now fortunate to be a part of a new type of clothing class, one that is equal parts community building, sisterhood (and a brother), counseling session, and design course all wrapped up in one. We are only a week into things over there, and already my head is spinning with interaction and possibility. It's going to be a great journey, and I haven't even planned our summer travel yet.