Stitching my bird.
What is this thing about birds? They appear in my artwork like a persistent meme. An like you, I admire them for their freedom and beauty. Also, don’t you envy their colorfulness and infinite variety of shape and size? Birds are fascinating creatures maybe because they are odd creatures and so different from us. That’s a pretty good reason for birds to show up in your art work. Go make a bird today!
A tangled mess of the Candy Corn colorway.
Are you a slow learner like me? This thread has been a tangled mess for 2 years. How did it happen? Behind my back, it fell into the washer and was agitated in the water.
I was also agitated. It was totally tangled. What a waste of hand-dyed thread! And then I came up with this solution: just cut off one end of the skein.
Now I can draw the strands free from the center of the skein and give them to my students in class. It only took me 2 years to come up with this solution. Like I said: slow learner.
It’s dye week here in the studio and that means I’m getting my workout. After all the thread is dyed, the next step is the wash out. Damp. dripping threads are tied into bundles and then dipped into buckets of water for rinsing.
Filling, lifting, and emptying up to 20 buckets of water to wash out thread is heavy lifting. It is especially difficult to get excess red dye to rinse out of the threads. Hot water, Synthropol, and even color catchers are used to get the water to run clear in the buckets. No wonder I have the arms of a stevedore!
Lake Michigan #3 (detail) by Laura Wasilowski
Do you have a yen to travel? Your yen should join my yen and go on a quilt cruise to Alaska in August.
Lake Michigan #3 by Laura Wasilowski
I’m teaching several classes on this Quilt Seminar at Sea cruise and I’ll know you’ll enjoy the classes and the cruise too. Last year we saw whales, a bear, and a giant glacier all from the safety of a boat. The bear looked very hungry.
It has been so cold here in Illinois, that I’ve added an extra layer of stitching to my bird’s legs. That additional layer of thread will no doubt keep off the chill and repel snow. Maybe I should add a scarf as well.
Have you ever made a piece of art work and come to a complete stop? Maybe the vision is lost, the enthusiasm wanes, or the design is just not working. When that happens, it may be time to give it up.
And that’s why so many of my recent small quilts have a piece of pie on the back. At one time (about 12 years ago!) I began an art quilt about a favorite topic, pie. But then I lost my desire to make pie and shelved the idea. Now you’ll find those slices of pie on the back of my current quilts. Rather than force your way to completion of stalled art work, maybe it’s time to put it to rest. Try a new idea. Put the pie away.