Confluence!
I subscribe to Quilting Arts Magazine, and four times a year get something in the mail to look closely at, think about, and feel completely intimidated by. I mean, yow. This stuff is so good. It's so sophisticated and complex and beautiful and completely out of my league. It's inspiring in an abstract way (create! create! create!) and depressing in a concrete way (how the hell am I supposed to do that?).
Well, I realized yesterday that maybe the fact that I steadfastly refuse to paint, soddering-iron/burn, use silks (or rather search out silks because the stores I go to only sell "commercial" fabrics), use fuseable backing, machine quilt, dye, or stamp has something to do with it.
Indeed I may be on to something here. I've been hedging on the whole machine-quilting thing for several months now, mostly because I would need to buy a new foot for my machine, but I will do that soon. The other stuff, especially painting, dyeing, and burning, I'm still not keen on at all.
I've found two new things that I'm going to try out. The first is needle felting, which is perfect because 1) it's kind of oddball - not a lot of people in the knitting or quilting world seem to do it, so there might be room for innovation, and 2) it offers a whole new way for me to injure myself painfully.
The second thing is Translucent Liquid Sculpey. This could potentially solve the problems with a series of quilts I started designing a couple years ago, but then put aside for lack of confidence in my ability to create the effect I'm looking for. NOW, though. Soon's I get my hands on a toaster oven to dedicate to cooking up polymers, watch out.
I keep saying to myself that as soon as I have x number of finished quilts, I'll go around town and see if I can display them in places. The number keeps going up, and I recently decided that I'd do it once Tree Quilt is finished (hahahaha), but maybe one of these days I will stick to a realistic proclamation.
Also, so you know, I have indeed been quilting. It's just that I've been quilting on Huhu wela loa a ula, which is symmetrical, and hand-quilting is still very slow-going for me and so I would be showing you the same thing over and over again, and probably in poor light at that.
Well, I realized yesterday that maybe the fact that I steadfastly refuse to paint, soddering-iron/burn, use silks (or rather search out silks because the stores I go to only sell "commercial" fabrics), use fuseable backing, machine quilt, dye, or stamp has something to do with it.
Indeed I may be on to something here. I've been hedging on the whole machine-quilting thing for several months now, mostly because I would need to buy a new foot for my machine, but I will do that soon. The other stuff, especially painting, dyeing, and burning, I'm still not keen on at all.
I've found two new things that I'm going to try out. The first is needle felting, which is perfect because 1) it's kind of oddball - not a lot of people in the knitting or quilting world seem to do it, so there might be room for innovation, and 2) it offers a whole new way for me to injure myself painfully.
The second thing is Translucent Liquid Sculpey. This could potentially solve the problems with a series of quilts I started designing a couple years ago, but then put aside for lack of confidence in my ability to create the effect I'm looking for. NOW, though. Soon's I get my hands on a toaster oven to dedicate to cooking up polymers, watch out.
I keep saying to myself that as soon as I have x number of finished quilts, I'll go around town and see if I can display them in places. The number keeps going up, and I recently decided that I'd do it once Tree Quilt is finished (hahahaha), but maybe one of these days I will stick to a realistic proclamation.
Also, so you know, I have indeed been quilting. It's just that I've been quilting on Huhu wela loa a ula, which is symmetrical, and hand-quilting is still very slow-going for me and so I would be showing you the same thing over and over again, and probably in poor light at that.
