Bluster

July 30, 2025

I alternate between being obsessed with the news and choosing to ignore it all. As a citizen, I feel an obligation to be aware and to speak up. As an artist, all of that information is stacked up in my memory. It will inevitably show up in the work if I let it.

This is teaching season so a lot of my time is in the classroom or preparing for the classroom. Except for the airports I do love it. A week at Quilting by the Lake quieted a lot of the political chatter I was listening to and made me focus on making art. My students were eager, talented and experimental. We found time to share our stories, appreciate the process and laugh when the work brought us joy.

When I returned I wasn’t counting on being able to work in the studio. I had too many errands and I had to prepare for next week’s workshop at the Woodland Ridge Retreat in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, while unpacking this quilt I laid it on the table next to the piece below that had failed earlier in the year. They were stacked on top of each other and I saw a way to combine them.

*Nonsense* is made with a printed cloth I designed based on my *Disruptors* series.

This collage kept getting more complicated. I liked the ingredients but not the result. so it ended up on the scrap pile.

What follows are some of the details and a semi-final reckoning of how it ends. I’m calling it Bluster after all of those politicians and tv commentators who buzz our ears with the same stories day after day after day after day.

*Bluster* is a tornado of texture and color. I need to finesse the warp of it and I might add some hand stitching.

People ask me all the time how I can possibly cut up these pieces to create new ones. This art is not a fast process. Each piece takes many hours of contemplation and stitching. After all that effort the pieces can become too precious. For me the process of discovery is the prize. I don’t really seek new finished pieces. Instead I focus on working with what I have to make and remake art. The transformation is the point. What is old becomes new. And, look, I end up with lots of really great scrap pieces that can be used for more explorations in the future.

The leaves were dancing

November 9, 2023

The other day I was driving home after doing some errands. I saw autumn leaves dancing in the street from the turbulence created by the cars driving by. They twirled, jumped and rained down from the sky.

For many years I have been collecting the final scraps of each project. I stitch them together to create garlands of scraps. They remind me of those beaded curtains we used to have in the 70s.

That day they reminded me of the leaves dancing in the street.

Each scrap reminds me of former projects.

That night I watched the news about the wars in Ukraine and Israel. The photos showed remnants of buildings, explosions from bombs, scraps of life. It’s so hard to process that horror. So many people affected. So many lives lost. When I got back to the studio the scraps of stitched fabrics became those scraps of life to me.

The announcers on the tv were talking about collateral damage. How does that make any sense at all? When does it end?

On collecting.

June 19, 2020

My studio is a hive of fabric and images. There are usually 3-4 pieces in process on the walls or tables, notes to myself stuck on various surfaces and a 12 foot bulletin board with paper flotsam pinned in layers. But more than that, I have collections of debris everywhere.

I have become a magpie, collecting shiny objects for the pile.

At the end of each project I wrap the trimmings into these textural balls as reminders of the raw and unfinished.

I collect rocks with holes in them for their animated messages.

I wrap tubes with strips of fabric. I don’t know why.

I save thread ends, tie them together and wrap them onto spools or stuff them into holding cells.

I save all found rust. Especially the curly ones.

The bulletin board has 10 years of layers on it. I may have to edit soon.

Scraps from cut up quilts are great raw material for new work.

The fabric rainbow gives me great joy every time I see it.

The mask table is getting full. I may have to figure out some other way of keeping these soon.

I won’t go into the insect exoskeletons, broken shells, animal bones and feathery bits that turn up in my drawers. I think this habit of collecting drives my creativity. The rich raw materials that surround me take me beyond the mundane.

What do you collect? Tell me about it.

scrap project starts making sense

March 18, 2015

While working away on assembling hundreds of little scraps of fabric into strips … black then white then black … I finally came to a final composition for the whole. Harkening back to the cigar box project that I did last summer where I wove scraps and threads together to create a flag, I thought I could do the same thing here on a grander scale. The black and white alternating strips work together to communicate a community of immigrants of different nationalities, races and histories. Substituting black for red speaks to the racial divides we are experiencing now and in the past. And, by reversing the strips to the back side the chaotic variety becomes more intriguing.

Yes, I am making the back the front, ragged ends and all.

The white fabric on the back allows the pieced fabrics to glow through creating a hazy dimensional surface that is hard to resist. Goodbye batting! It would only get in the way.

Taking a cue from Kathleen Loomis who recently completed a piece without batting I decided to shroud the back in a simple white fabric that would let the pieced fabrics simmer through. It seemed a shame to cover them up completely with cotton batting, especially after so much trimming and ironing to make them lay flat. This may have to be a two sided piece. The shrouding is compelling.

And now, to the stitching and finishing. I think I will start with a simple hand stitch down the rows in red, white and blue. Then to the stars and edges.

More later.

in a frenzy

February 8, 2015

First full day in the studio in about a week and the pace is frenetic. So many ideas, so many directions. I am full to bursting. Looking over today's scraps makes me think I might want to work a little slower in the next go round.

hmmm.... how can I repurpose this?

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