Uppercase Fabrics, Kevin Umana, and Creativity Breakout

July 5, 2016April 9, 2018 Elizabeth E.79 Comments

This post is the story of two creatives, well, maybe three. One is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. That’s Kevin Umaña, up there.

Another is Janine Vangool, a graphic artist and editor-in-chief of Uppercase Magazine in Canada, who recently released a line of fabric through Windham Fabrics (photo of Janine from *here*).

And then there’s me, but you know what I look like.

And it’s also the tale of two quilts and a quilt block (which is at the end, by the giveaway from Uppercase and Janine, so keep reading).

Some time ago, my nephew linked me over to Kevin’s Instagram feed, as he knew I am slightly passionate about quilts and designs, and I’m especially in love the the “grid.” Apparently Kevin loves it too, as well as color and shape and repeated lines. (All these images are posted with his permission.)

I had sort of been in a creative slump, slightly burned out, not really knowing what to do next besides bee blocks and the Same Old. Idly scrolling through Kevin’s feed one afternoon, I found a few designs that interested me; he and I began to correspond, and then collaborate.

About the same time, Uppercase Magazine‘s Janine Vangool announced that they were producing an Encyclopedia (images from Uppercase’s website), and the one that interested me was her Stitch-Illo, one of three that was launching the Encyclopedia series. Since I’d missed submitting to her Compendium (which is always on my nightstand), I went right to her website and started choosing pictures to submit, planning on getting the submission in early. Everything was going along swimmingly until I hit this question: “What makes your work unique?”

Unique?

No matter what I wrote, it sounded trite and useless and idiotic and banal and cliched, and believe I re-wrote the answer to that question about 50 times. I felt dead in the water. (I’m sure Kevin wondered what happened to me.) It was like coming up to a mirror and instead of seeing a reflection of my image, it was like seeing past me into an empty sewing room, forty million quilts stacked to the ceiling, but they were all somebody else’s vision or creation or idea. Nothing unique anywhere.

That question rattled around in my head while on a trip with my husband, and where it rained nearly every day, giving me lots of time to think. I slowly reviewed all the quilts I had pictures for while sitting in my hotel room, wondering; do we all make the same quilt, over and over? Not our own same quilt, but the One of the Moment, currently seen on everyone’s Instagram feed, or splashed all over the quilty magazines? Where was my unique? If someone saw one of my quilts, would they say, “Oh, yes–that’s Elizabeth’s!” And if I really had a unique, what was it? What did it look like? How could I tell it from someone else’s?

And in my more cynical moments, I’d say, “Well who cares, if it’s unique? Doesn’t matter enough that I’m a maker, that I express myself with cloth and sewing and cutting and stitching?” Really helpful, right?

Back home, I began looking at Kevin’s designs again. In college we were encouraged to do “imitations” of writers, using their form in order to get the meter and the words under our creative nails, as a way of training up a writer. It was a form of limiting, giving us structure, but not letting us off the rails, so to speak. So I decided to allow Kevin’s form to give me structure. And I chose to limit my fabrics to a (delightful) bundle of Janine’s Uppercase fabrics, which I’d purchased at Market.

The first experiment (above) with Kevin’s work was almost an exact copy.

But the second quilt took off on its own.

The center cross morphed.

Somewhere in here, the experiment sparked an original idea. And when I quilted, I kept seeing more.

Crossroads, after Umaña • Quilt #166

Until finally, I’m here.

I won’t tell you what I wrote for Uppercase, because in a way, it’s really irrelevant to the idea of this particular story. What resonates is that challenge laid down in those words of the application, one that I think about to this day. I’m incredibly grateful to Kevin for allowing me to collaborate with him, and to borrow a little from his light when I needed it.

I’m also grateful to creatives who make fabrics for me to use, such as the excellent line shown in this post. All fabrics, with the exception of the solid white, are from Janine Vangool’s Uppercase Fabrics line. Yes, even the wee metallic letters in the sunglasses below, an echo of Kevin’s at the top of the post.

(Chuck Nohara block #345. Pattern for the Crossroads quilt coming soon to Craftsy.)

And finally, the cheesy way to close out a conundrum: let somebody else do the talking for you.

I narrow-mindedly outlawed the word ‘unique.’ Practically every press release contains it. Practically nothing ever is. (Fred Hechinger)

Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique and every man or woman’s foremost task is the actualization of his or her unique, unprecedented and never recurring possibilities. (Martin Buber)

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. (Margaret Mead)

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. (Tallulah Bankhead)

When I saw Janine at Quilt Market, her booth was handing out free Uppercase Magazines. Since I’ve been a subscriber for several years, I mentioned to Janine that with the free magazine I could instead do a Giveaway on my blog, and she handed me another magazine, her fabric catalogue and the charm pack of her fabrics to sweeten the pot. ~~To enter, please leave a comment. Blog followers get double their chances (shameless promotion), but it’s not necessary to follow to win.~~

NOTE: Giveaway now closed. Thanks to all who entered.

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And finally…

…congratulations to the winner of the Dresden Carnival book, Beth T, who wrote about making a squared Dresden plate block for her niece’s quilt. I’ve sent you an email and I’ll get that off to you this week. Thank you to all who entered. You have lovely Dresden Plate Memories!

Quilts · Something to Think About

Three Mini Quilts and a Few Thoughts on Deliberate Practice

March 22, 2016March 10, 2016 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

RoadFriendsHouse — *The Road to a Friend’s House is Never Long*, Quilt #159

I started this July 2015, and you know what happened to me shortly after that, so it was nice to get it fixed up and quilted, because I’d had a purpose in mind: a gift for a friend.

Leisa likes it! Pattern coming soon. I used the new Northcott labels I bought at QuiltCon. I just cut them apart, backed them with freezer paper, and ran them through my printer; see the complete how to under the tab “Tutorials,” above.

Thread Doodles_front — *Thread Doodles*, Quilt #160

And then there’s this one, a mini quilt made as a class sample for the Free Motion Quilting Class I’m teaching in late summer at Quilter’s Cocoon. I had to think of a way for the students to practice their stitches, yet display what they’d learned in a pleasing way. As soon as they master one of these stitches, I’ll have them stitch it onto their own class sample. They may want to finish it all up that day, or may want to add to it as they get better.

I’m big on naming my quilts. Another Northcott label. After they are printed, I cut a square of lightweight interfacing and fuse it to the back the “light” section of the label so I won’t see the fabric underneath.

Electra Magnetic_front — *Electra Magnetic*, Quilt #161

I seem to be finishing up quite a few things lately, a nice change from the months November to February, where I felt swamped all the time, unable to seemingly get to anything. Do you have times like that–like you see everything around you and just can’t get to it at all? Where you are climbing, climbing Mt. NeverFinish and wish you could find the summit? That’s why these minis feel like a success story to me.

So, with all my rainbow-type quilts this past year, I’ve about run out of names. Combine that with the funny comment I got on one of my quilts that they thought it looked like Hal the computer from the Space Odyssey 2001. This quilt might also suffer from that comparison, so I thought I’d go with it. The electromagnetic spectrum is all the colors, from those that we can see to those that we can’t; they call it “wavelengths, both visible and invisible.” Okey, dokey. So I feminized that idea and came up with Electra Magnetic, mother of Hal.

I’m still working on these patterns, and should have them out shortly. Well, maybe not this week; I’ll let you know.

But let not’s stop there today. I have Brain Pickings in my Bloglovin’ Feed, and occasionally they hit a streak of book reviews on topics that interest me, and recently they did a review of Ursula LeGuin’s latest revision of her masterpiece on creative writing, Steering the Craft. Brain Pickings references her written piece “How do you make something good?” and notes that:

Isn’t that also what quilters deal with? We can make a decent quilt from stuff from the garage sale or someone’s basement (with that embedded fusty smell), but why not go for better ingredients? We are surrounded by loads of high quality quilt fabric. Perhaps instead of focusing on accruing endless supplies of this good fabric, why not focus on being good? That means getting in those oft-cited 10,000 hours of practice, but as Joshua Foer noted, sometimes just making and making doesn’t bring us to the place of making something good.

According to Joshua Foer, this is called hitting what is called the “OK plateau.” That’s when we are just going through the rote mechanics of quilting, making quilts of only rectangles, or traditional fixed patterns in a loop that’s known as thinking from “bottom-up,” where we are good-enough, automated, rote practices to get our work done. Yes, even those modern improv quilts with their fluid patterns can get stale. Daniel Goleman notes how we can get stuck here:

Foer also emphasizes this point: our deliberate practicing must be hard for us in order to engage that higher focus of creativity. I, like many of you, can cut and stitch until I’m so bored I can’t slice one more piece of fabric or sew one more HST. I’m falling right in line with studies that indicate that about four hours of concentrated deliberate practice is about the most amount of time we can do anything well. At that point, we have to take a break and do other things. Perhaps that’s why we are sometimes distracted by a new quilt, or a new design, or a new piece of fabric, as we try to restore our ability to refocus. Perhaps we just need a break, in order to deliberately practice well. But what I learned from these authors is that when I do come back to my quilting, I must “counteract the brain’s urge to automatize” and actively concentrate on what I’m doing.

So take a break, read that magazine, scroll through your IG feed, and then get back to it with a determination to make it good, make it better, and to fully engage.

Something to Think About

Cleaning the Design Wall

June 29, 2014February 2, 2018 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Since I am away from the computer for a while, I’m running a few favorite, previously published posts.
This one originally ran on July 22, 2010, but is modified for today’s post.
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Here’s the before:

The during:

The after:

Okay, that’s not a very exciting thing to do, right? We want all our sewing tools to keep on working, day after day, no complaints, no breakdowns, no upkeep or maintenance required. But it’s such a little thing to take a few minutes and cheap-o lint roller remover and stroke down the board. And really, is the Before picture really so objectionable? Yet, what surprised me is how many of the threads that came off on those sticky papers were seemingly invisible to me.

But since I did it yesterday, just walking into the room is different. My pin wall is thread-free (for the time being) and it makes the room look cleaner. It made me think of the premise behind Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point: that an epidemic can start with one small thing and roll on out from that. It’s like how picking up the towels in the bathroom and rehanging them triggers a cleaning of the sink. Or washing the curtains makes you repaint the bedroom. I’m talking about those kinds of mini-epidemics, that are just one person wide and one person deep. Those changes I make myself.

My sewing room (aka The Study) had been a mess since we arrived home from our trip to Canada and I just didn’t seem to have the mental energy to put the things away. But I cleaned the threads off the wall and now I’m putting away those little naggy things that linger after travel is done.

So maybe, taking time off to take care of things has unintended consequences? That this can, in some ways, apply to our own creativity level? That taking time off to clean out a few cobwebs, have a walk on the beach, or take a minute to sing along to a popular song in between shuttling the family to various places is like cleaning the threads off the design wall?

Perhaps a little mental maintenance on our own selves is why summertime is such a tonic, even if we don’t know what ails us.

Something to Think About

Process vs. Product

June 26, 2014June 3, 2014 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Since I am away from the computer for a while, I’m running a few favorite, previously published posts.
This one originally ran on July 16, 2010, but is modified for today’s post.
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Is it possible to lust after another person’s finished quilt? Yes, quite possibly. Definitely. For sure. The quilt shown above uses the Castle Peeps line, and was put together by Elizabeth Hartman, of Oh! Fransson. I purchased the blue colorway of this line this summer and before I close out my sewing blitz and focus on The Job, I’m dying to throw together one more quilt. This design has inspired me.

There’s been a lot of talk on the blogosphere about the issue of production in quilting, and I’m here to add my .02. Jennifer, of “That Girl. . . That Quilt,” has written a whole series of her thoughts about “quilting without obligations.” They seem to be a reaction to the feeling that quilting is all about production, rather than about the process. This is an age-old discussion and is found in other corners of the creative universe.

When I was an undergrad, working in the black and white photo lab, this idea–process vs. product–was discussed constantly. To give you a flavor of what our conversations sounded like, as we blew dust specks off of our negatives and worked at creating “art,” have a listen to the little clip below. Yes, it’s dense, but give it a go.

I think his point that when we focus on product, we may miss other connections that may arise from the creative process is valid, but there are times when product is not the Big Evil. Sometimes I just want to get something done, speaking of quilts and quilting. Sometimes I just want to quickly make up a quilt in a fabric line because I want to see that on my bed. I’m not interested in being drawn into the process of the quilt–I just want to lay down under it. Or hang it up on the wall. Or because the process has already happened in my mind, in thinking about it at the back of my brain when I couldn’t get to the sewing machine for one reason or another.

I read a lot of blogs, like the rest of you, and many of them are designed as advertising. The quilt artists/makers have been involved in the process of their art and designed fabric/patterns/quilts that they need to sell in order to make their living. Many blogs are tied to online quilt shops. These are valuable places for me to go and get my ideas, be exposed to new fabrics, enjoy the fruits, if you will, of other people’s labors all before I take up my rotary cutter to slice into some fabric. I enjoy these blogs, love reading them, admire the work. But I do not ever confuse what they are doing–earning a living–with what I am doing. Some other blogs have “taken the process pledge,” and try to put out on their blogs how they arrived at the journey’s end. This is a valuable resource for us as quilters when it truly involves process, and not just a “how-to” tutorial (although I like those too).

It seems to me that there is enough room in this quilting universe that we can quilt what we want to, blog when we want to, go off on vacation when we want to, work (when we have to) that we don’t need to compete. Commercial blogs? Non-commercial blogs? They are resources for us all to glean from.

Images, and interesting reading, from *here*

Product? Process? We need them both.

Something to Think About

Take Some Time

June 18, 2014June 3, 2014 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Since I am away from the computer for a while, I’m running a few favorite, previously published posts.
This one originally ran on April 26, 2010, but is modified for today’s post.
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There was a path-to-nowhere (which led to a tiny hidden grove of orange trees) installed near the humanities building when I was attending the University of California, and on either side of this path was a poem written out in bronze embedded letters. The way I happened on it, was to read it backwards from the end of the poem. So the words that stuck with me, “Time Take,” were an inverse of the above title, but became a tiny logo of mine, with different punctuation pushing the meaning to a different place: Time. Take. or Time, Take or Time–Take.

However I slipped those punctuation symbols in, the meaning was the same: time was available and I needed to stop and take some. It was never clear to me what I would do with this time that I was taking, but it was the stuff of poems, and hurried grad students, and bronze letters embedded on a path to a minuscule orange grove behind the brick buildings that smelled like heaven in the spring months when I would take the time to walk through those trees.

So, I took some time this morning to think about what I do with my time, and one thing I tend to do is to catch up on my blog reader, where, more often than not, after reading blog after blog, I come away feeling like my life is just so banal and trite and disorganized and unfulfilling and undecorated and uncrafty and generally unproductive.

I “clip” news items to act on, quilts to make, books to read, always falling farther and farther behind, or so it feels. This morning, a little wake-up post by Jeezebel helped to articulate this feeling. I can’t recommend this site, by the way, but I can recommend this article to all you who are out there in Blogland feeling slightly overwhelmed by the pressures of blogging clever, beautiful, creative, productive, ever-so-interesting lives, every day or two. It’s funny to happen on this today, this morning, as last night I looked at the number of blogs I have coming in to my Reader, and put the feed on a diet, trimming the list by half — definitely getting rid of that decorator blog who is always putting pictures of other perfectionist decorators on her blog, with a chatty style that implies we just need to get with it a bit and that artist who artfully lays our her collections of old bias tape, rusty keys and pink erasers, one day at a time, sending the photo out into the world. I have this old junk, I think, why am I not doing the same artsy thing? You see how it goes.

So today, turn off the computer, and just make something.

Quilts

Don’t Put Up My Thread and Needle

March 4, 2014March 1, 2014 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Don’t put up my Thread and Needle (617)
by Emily Dickinson

Don’t put up my Thread and Needle—
I’ll begin to Sew
When the Birds begin to whistle—
Better Stitches—so—

These were bent—my sight got crooked—
When my mind—is plain
I’ll do seams—a Queen’s endeavor
Would not blush to own—

Hems—too fine for Lady’s tracing
To the sightless Knot—
Tucks—of dainty interspersion—
Like a dotted Dot—

Leave my Needle in the furrow—
Where I put it down—
I can make the zigzag stitches
Straight—when I am strong—

Till then—dreaming I am sewing
Fetch the seam I missed—
Closer—so I—at my sleeping—
Still surmise I stitch—