Four-in-Art

New Theme for Four-in-Art

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

While we are still figuring out the rules and learning our way around this little group, it’s my turn to choose the sub-theme to our grand theme of “Nature.”  I’ve gone back and forth between three different ideas, and while I won’t name the other two just in case they pop into someone else’s head, I’ve chosen “Tree.”

We all have memories of trees that we’ve climbed, going up high secure in the branches to touch the clouds, or merely to hide away from doing chores.  I’ve planted more than my fair share of saplings, skinny and pliable in the wind.  During the holidays many of us will decorate trees and with trees, bringing winter scenes into our homes.  Our autumn colors arrive in January, when the liquid amber trees turn a bright rusty red, like a belle-of-ball who arrived too late for Northern fall colors.

January in Washington, DC found me photographing stark limbs, their branches like sculptures marching down the National Mall.

Yet I also love the cherry tree’s shy blossoms of pink and white, and then all the spring trees unfurling their green buds to summer’s fat wide leaves, shading me on a hot summer’s day.

But I also think of family trees, of generations linked by blood and branches.  (This is a picture of my son Matthew, his lovely wife Kim and their four daughters.)

So, there’s the new theme.  Let’s see where we go. Reveal date is February 1st.

200 Quilts · Creating · Four-in-Art · Quilts

English Elizabeth: First Four-in-Art Reveal Day

Elizabeth E.5 Comments

English Elizabeth

Made and quilted by Elizabeth Eastmond,
for the Four-in-Art Quilt Group

Elizabeth Frances Fellow Critchlow, a lass born in England in 1855, in the county of Staffordshire, surely did love her garden.  She is my great-grandmother and I am named for her.

When Rachel announced the theme of Queen Anne’s lace for our first Four-in-Art quilt, my mind immediately thought of my great-grandmother and her gardens.  I looked up the origin of the name of this flower, and most sources believed it had origins in British royalty references, which reinforced that I’d be working with my English Elizabeth, as I came to think of her.  A dedicated Anglophile, she listened to major speeches by the King on her wireless set, tuning in from her home in the mountains of Utah.  My mother tells me that she loved to garden, and her gardens were renowned, with even the local university coming over to study some of her plants and trees.  Although she lived most of her adult life here in the United States (she arrived here at age eleven), I often wonder if she spoke with a British accent here and there on some words.

I chose to work with this picture, because of her smile–just barely there—but a warm welcoming face.  My mother says she likes this picture, but also remembers her grandmother out in her gardens, her straw hat on her head.

And then I thought back to the most recent wedding in our house, that of my son Peter to his bride Megan, and they chose a rendition of Queen Anne’s lace for their announcements as well.  I love how you don’t “see” a flower, and then suddenly it’s everywhere.

~~And now, Two! for the Price of One!~~

Betty lives in Virginia, and unless you’ve been under a rock this week, you know about Frankenstorm, the combination of weather patterns that spelled disaster, weather-wise, for the East Coast.  Sunday night, before the storm was to hit, Betty emailed me her photos and artist’s statement, just in case her power and internet should go out.  I’m pleased as punch to present to you her Queen Anne’s Lace quilt.

Betty writes:

“This Four in Art challenge, our first, was an opportunity for me to stretch – to stop, for a moment, the churn of easy quilts and do something new.  When the theme – Nature:  Queen Anne’s Lace – was revealed, I sighed.  Love the flower, although it isn’t as highly regarded on the east coast as apparently it is on the west coast, but I drew a blank when coming up with a setting.  So, I took a practical approach:  just love the Union Jack and decided to use that as my backdrop.  I planned to paint my flag, but could not get the red and blue faded enough so decided to go the fabric route.  I was excited to use the crown and copying that onto Kona Ash was a first; one of my favorite details in this piece is the silver metallic stitched onto the crown (which did not come through in the photos).    I had hoped to actually stencil the lace to form the flower, but that didn’t work well so I opted for real lace with pearl cotton accents.  The flower is my least favorite feature of this little quilt, but it is holding its head up boldly and doing its part and I am, overall, pleased.

“The backing is, appropriately, a simple flower piece and I loved making the label.  It is bound in simple navy Kona – had tried to overcast the edges with silver metallic, but that did not work well.

“This was fun and without boundaries (except for the size) and provided we do it again, I will find other new methods to try and apply!”

Betty Ayers • Powhatan, VA, USA

Here are some more photos:

Label from Betty’s quilt. We hope that all will be okay on the East Coast soon.  Betty usually publishes on Flickr.

Check out Leanne, of She Can Quilt, and Rachel of The Life of Riley to see their Four-In-Art Quilts.

And tomorrow, a new theme is revealed!

Creating · eQuilt Universe

Creativity and the Web

Elizabeth E.5 Comments

I’m thinking about all those affected by the horrific storm on the East Coast.  I have several quilty/blogger friends, as well as quite a few family members who have been affected and hope that they and their families are through the worst of it.  I’ve been on a blogging break this week from the computer (I wrote this post earlier) but I just wanted to jump in and send my thoughts to those who are dealing with this “Frankenstorm” and its aftermath.  Take care, everyone.

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In my class at school, we just completed a unit that was based on this book by Nicholas Carr, titled, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains.  We had our Discussion Panels last Wednesday, and it was fascinating that the students were fairly perceptive and able to discuss how the Internet has impacted their lives, for better or for worse.  One young man is fairly sanguine about the whole thing, saying, “Well, it’s here.  We just have to deal.”  Another pair of young women took opposite positions on the question of whether print was dead.  The internet’s main impact, that of re-wiring our brains due to neuroplasticity, was skirted around, but acknowledged when they all complained of the inability to finish a book before distractedly checking their phones for texts or messages.

And I think it’s rewired my brain as well.  Carr goes through the history of civilization’s adding of new technologies, from writing to moveable print to the typewriter and onward to clocks and the internet.  I was interested in his discussion on tools: “The tight bonds we form with our tools go both ways.  Even as our technologies become extensions of ourselves, we become extensions of our technologies.”

 I thought about how quilting has changed from the time when I used to trace a pattern onto cardboard, carefully cut it out and tape the edges for stability.  Then I’d trace it about a bazillion times in order to make a quilt, following along the pencil line for the seam.  I did use a machine for piecing, but hand-quilting was the only way to finish a quilt.  That’s why my list of 100 Quilts took so long to grow: our tools were more primitive before the advent of rulers and rotary cutters.

He also references Frederick Taylor’s Time-Motion studies and how it has changed how workers do their jobs (above: a golfer takes a swing).  Before Taylor came along, “the individual laborer, drawaing on his training, knowledge and experience, would make his own decisions about how he did his work.  He would write his own script” (218).

I think of us at work.  Some of us spread all our fabric out into a lovely mess (like mine, above).  Others fold and organize continually throughout the day.  I like to doodle around with my computer when thinking up a new quilt. Some like to start cutting, throwing the cloth up on the pin wall to see what’s going on.  Carr notes that with Taylor’s regimentation of industry’s messiness, something was lost.  “What was lost along with the messiness was personal initiative, creativity, and whim.  Conscious craft turned into unconscious routine.”

I hope I never become such a slave to a pattern or a ruler or a system of making a quilt that I can’t make  a creative and conscious detour into creativity.  But sometimes I wonder when I make a copy of another’s quilt, using one line of fabric if I’m not caught in a type of quilt-machine using Taylor’s demands for proscribed motion.   Is this creativity?  Am I being creative, or just following someone else’s script and benefitting from their decisions?

And like many of you, I’ve been following #quiltmarket on Instagram.  Carr said more than once, and I’m paraphrasing here, that trying to control the flow of information from the internet is like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant at full blast.  The internet caters to the new! unique! amazing! as we all know.

I also have Pinterest boards full of ideas, most are quilts which I’ll never make, but pin them up there nonetheless.   Can we be creative 24/7, or is that too exhausting?  Has the Internet made better quilting possible?  More interesting quilting?  Given us an access to a wider range of styles and types?

I don’t know the answers to these questions.  I only know that sometimes the Internet affects us quilters, too.

So my question now, is how has the Internet affected you?  And has it been for better. . . or for worse?

Something to Think About

Digital Images-NYPL

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

While I do think that the internet sucks up my time and not always in a good way, occasionally there are places that are interesting to visit, to gain inspiration.  The above image is from the New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery.

These two prints are by Maurice Pillard Verneuil from 1869.  More are found *here.*

I went into their Printing and Graphics section from the main page, then randomly clicked on the list as I didn’t want to wade through all the images.  Here’s another:

It’s harder to see this one, but the catalog indicates it has plant forms, peacocks, and a waterscape.

And this one could provide ideas for machine quilting when the quilt is done.

Applique, anyone?

So how does this relate to quilting?  By encouraging me to see new shapes and new relationships between shapes.  I sketched up a block, taken from some of the ideas in the first one, then played with it in my quilt program (flipping and twisting the block), gaining the slightly weird, but somewhat intriguing design below.  While I have to work mainly in solids on the computer, I could see this in rich florals, or another type of print where the edges blur from the colors overlapping from one square to another.

The idea, at least for me, is not necessarily to have a quilt to bang out in one week, but perhaps to tuck these doodlings away in a sketchbook, whether it be the digital or colored-paper-and-pencil kind.  The idea is to make new connections.  The idea is to have an idea.

Where do you get your ideas?  Other blogs? Flickr groups?  (You’ve already seen my take on Portuguese Tiles.) Nature? Quilt shows? Something a friend has done? All of the above?