I’m always fascinated by the creative process, especially seeing how someone else did something.  So I figure I’m not the only one with these voyeuristic traits and thought I’d share a bit of “how I did that.”  That, in this case, is my quilt Clothed in Color, which is an entry for “The Space Between” juried exhibit.  I wrote about it here.

Clothed in Color; 36x48 inches (not quite one metre wide). Made with batiks, hand-dyes and thread.

Over the past few years I’ve been teaching myself about and playing with color, both in the dyepots and commercial cloth.  When I decided to do a portrait of our older son, I wanted to work with value only, the relative lightness or darkness of color, ignoring the actual hue (color).  As I mentioned before, though, I wasn’t too sure he would appreciate his skin being green, blue, pink, whatever.  As a test-run, I tried the process in the portrait of our pug, and it worked, so I set to work on the Joshua quilt (put Joshua quilt in the search box and it will take you to posts from mid 2010 with the process on that one) except that I used realistic skin tones.  Not so for this quilt!

For this quilt, I began by selecting pale batiks and dark batiks in anything other than a tan-brown-skin tone.  OK, an honesty moment.  I began by depositing a large sum of money (with glee, abandon and NO regrets) at Batiks Etcetera last summer.  As I drove to my teaching job at the AQS Knoxville show, I made certain to stop at Batiks, Etc. in Wytheville, Virginia. The shop is even more wonderful than their booths at shows and the service just as wonderful.  It is hard to find the light-light and dark-dark fabrics, so I went hog wild.  True confession:  I have never, EVER spent this much for fabric in one place at one time in my life.  It pretty much used up my fabric budget for the last 7 months of the year.  And it was worth every penny!  (PS…I blogged about it earlier, too, here.)   And I’m planning on doing it again this coming June when I drive past that shop on the way to teaching this year (WHEEEE!  Get ready Carol, make the bag a big one!).  Now here’s the photo of lights and darks:

Sorting fabrics by value...light to medium on the table, darker ones and some extra lights in the green bin.

To get the correct pose, I set up my camera on the tripod and used the timer to trip the shutter (and cover myself strategically before anything too revealing got on digital memory card!).  I took a lot of photos until I had the right tilt of the head, expression, curve to my side, placement of arms and hands.  Then I set up the digital projector (which I bought to use in lectures and classes, and now have this use for it, too!) to project the photo onto paper folded/cut to 36×48.

Me, in blurry living color, on the design wall in the old house; you can see the laptop and projector on the work table. PS--notice in the photo I am in our bathroom with a cloth covering the window behind me, not in a doorway at all. That's the camera and tripod on the right reflected in the mirror (which I was using to see how things looked).

Somehow, a photo is much more “revealing” than the same thing in batiks, so while I’m not too uncomfortable with a semi-nude quilt of myself, I decided I had best blur the photo.  Ahem.  And I’m glad I lost that 25 pounds a couple summers ago!   Having carted the weight around since my last pregnancy (the kid is now 13) it was time for it to go!

Anyway, back to quilting.  Or drawing.  Rather than use photoshop to define shapes, contours, etc. I prefer to take a drawing pencil and outline the edges and make my own decisions about where I want shapes and colors to merge and blend and overlap.  I will draw these “interior” lines, too, and often add notes like “medium-dark” on the drawing.

I decided to tackle the hardest part first:  my face.  In the end, the eyes ended up about 1/4″ too close together, and I may be able to adjust that, and they are a smidge too large.  Other than that, things turned out OK.  Once the face was done, I could move to the torso (using larger chunks of fabric), the towel, and the hair.

I began with the most difficult parts (face and torso). I ended up removing much of the dark fabric for the strong shadow under my arm..tho the photo was that dark, it just looked weird in cloth, so I reduced the fabric and later added lots of dark thread to create the shadow.

Thelma Smith made some awesome quilts of the Sonoran Desert, and in them used a technique she learned from a painter and then shared with me.  The painter used Cadmium Red Light paint to outline / highlight some figures.  It really makes them pop out from the background, especially when values are similar.  It doesn’t shriek at  you like black would, and despite being a color totally not there in real life, the technique works.  I’ve wanted to try it for quite some time, so I did for the hair, and used a deeper red for the shadows to the right and top of my right arm.  I decided since I selected a deep-dark fabric for the background, there was plenty of “pop” on the body, and didn’t continue the “red halo”, but think I’ll have to do another portrait of someone and give it a try on the entire figure.

Anyway, here is the hair in progress:

Hair, in progress (early stages)

In this photo, I decided to work on the table, not the wall.  I placed my sketch UNDER some parchment paper; I can still see the lines, and can cut and MistyFuse directly onto the parchment.  As with Joshua’s hair, I cut large, darker chunks to create the overall shape of the hair.  Then I cut highlights (magenta, orange, rust, green!) in wobbles and waves and wiggles, adding until it was “just right.”  Here’s a closer view of the hair when done:

Detail showing finished hair

When I first envisioned the quilt, I thought I would fuse assorted bits of dark fabrics to make the background, as I really liked how the stark, dark contrast worked in the quilt of Joshua.  To get an idea of how it would look, I took one large chunk of blue batik and put it up on the wall, then pinned the fused “me” to it.  I liked it…a lot!  And decided that if I made the background into “boards” like our walls in that house, it would actually detract from the quilt.   So I made my life easier and used one single dark blue batik for the “wall behind the doorway,”  a doorway that doesn’t actually exist.  Then I used other bits to create the door frame and wall around it, preserving the angle of the light / shadows—the light was strongly coming in from windows on the left (and lamps set up to cast strong shadows to make getting the planes and shapes of my body easier in the drawing phase).

I’ll add that the entire quilt is done ONLY with thread, cloth and MistyFuse (my totally favorite fusible web).  There is no paint.  No pens or pencils.  Just cloth and thread.

So that’s how I did it!  Hope you’ve enjoyed the view,

Cheers, Sarah

In his weight class in wrestling!   Every year Eli has improved, but this year he took a qualitative leap forward.  It began last year when Chris Weiss, an amazing young athlete from Rockland, worked out with the Camden-Rockport team since Rockland didn’t have a team last year.  He is an incredibly gifted and hard-working, focused kid, and he and Eli challenged each other to improve.  Last summer Eli went to a top wrestling camp in Boston for a week (the only middle schooler with many high school kids), and learned a lot.  At the beginning of this season, Eli set two goals:  undefeated and regional champion.  Eli admits he made several mistakes in one match about halfway through the season and lost one match.  So  he put that goal aside and focused on Eastern Regional Champion, and he DID IT!

Eli is the one holding the bracket card over his head, the number 2 from Ellsworth is on his left in the burgundy shirt, number 3 from Brewer is on the right in gray sweatshirt, and number four from Bucksport  (the only kid to beat Eli) is on the far left.

Here’s Eli’s match against the Bucksport kid…if there had been 3 more seconds in the period this would have been a pin, but instead Eli won (whomp) 13-3  (previous matches during the regular season were Eli wins by pinning, Eli loses 9-6 but doesn’t get pinned, Eli wins 13-0):

The Number 2, Jack Weeks, almost beat Eli in the first match of the season!   He was ahead 2-0 with 15 seconds left (matches are 3 periods:  first is two minutes long, 2nd and 3rd and one minute), when Eli somehow managed to get a reversal and near fall (2 points each) to win 4-2.  They met again in the finals, and it was a hard-fought  contest. For much of the first period and part of the second, it looked like this, with Weeks (in burgundy on top) controlling the pace:

The boys were well-matched in strength and skill, and Eli had to fight for every point. Then Eli (in red, on top) got his groove back:

Eli was able to hang on, literally and very tightly, to prevent Weeks from escaping and tying up the match in the final 20 seconds.  Eli won 3-2!!!!!!!

The Camden-Rockport team did well.  Last year there were about 9 kids on the team.  This year there were 18, most in their first year of wrestling and many in the 5th and 6th grade years (i.e. have a lot to learn).  Of the 18 kids,  3 placed fourth and  3 placed first!  YES, we had THREE Regional Champions on our team. The six will go on to States next weekend.  Of the 3 champions,  Chris Weiss in the weight class below Eli won his *fourth* regional championship (yes, he is that good!), and Taylor Crosby surprised many including himself in defeating Brandon Waterman (really nice kid and really good wrestler from nearby Belfast) in the weight class above Eli.  Here’s a picture of the three of them with Jared Gilbert from HAL (Hope-Appleton-Lincolnville schools combine to field a team) who won in his weight class.

Just think…in two years these four champions will be on the Camden Hills Regional High School team together:  can you say kick some serious keestker?

Congrats to the boys who won, to the coaches (including dear hubby who is the assistant coach) who got them there, to all the team members -boys and girls- who participated on the team wrestling varsity or back up and learning.  Well done!  See you at States and again next year.

And to end the day, sunset just as I was ready to turn left into the driveway…with the trees reflected on the hood of my car (this was a stick-your-arm-out-the-window-and-snap photo):

WOW… I actually made an art quilt, and I can share it!   I had thought that the quilt must be kept secret until those juried in were announced, but apparently I was seriously wrong.  So I can SHARE!   Once again this year Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison are jurying and curating a show that will debut at the IQA show in Long  Beach, then hopefully head on to Houston and beyond.  The theme this year is “The Space Between.”

This is a detail of my face:

I knew what I wanted to do in a quilt, but wasn’t sure how it could fit the theme.  In chatting with Leslie by e-mail, she recognized that *I* was in the space between, the sandwiched generation handling the needs of both children and aging parent, not to mention spouse, work, family and all that.  I am indeed the one caught.

Presto!  I would finally get to make a quilt that has been in my head for four years:  a (discreet) nearly-nude self-portrait using no skin tones–I am clothes quite literally with color.  Like artists in the days of old, I find that I am my own least expensive and readily available model, so I ended up as the subject because I wanted to do another portrait, following the ones I had done of our pug:

and our older son:

I’ve been learning and experimenting with value (light-medium-dark), and used the pug (a 12×12 inch quiltlet) as a practice for the quilt of Joshua.  However, I wasn’t sure Joshua would like having pink, pale yellow, peach, mint green, baby blue or lilac skin.  SO….I opted for realisting skin tones and played with value in the color of his clothing, guitar and room furnishings.

When it came to me, I could do whatever I wanted, so I did.  Skin is pink, orange, plum, green, blue.  Hair is plum, peach, rust, dark green……in another post I’ll share the in progress photos.

Keep your fingers crossed…I hope it gets juried in to the exhibit again this year.

Some days, you are filled with life and verve and sunshine.  Other days, the speed with which time disappears can threaten to overwhelm you.  Then I think of people like Melanie Testa (Every-single-day blog here) who is confronting cancer with grace and courage and beauty and strength that inspires so many of us.  We all have small and not-so-small moments of pain or sadness, so I’m thinking every now and then, I shall have to share a photograph or moment of beauty.

Slow down.

Appreciate those in your life and give thanks that they ARE alive and share themselves with you.

And that includes things with four or more feet that love you, too.

And take time to look around you and give thanks.

As I drove to Eli’s wrestling meet yesterday, the fog that had lifted here in Hope was hunkered down along the coast from Belfast north, including crossing the Penobscot Narrows Bridge at Fort Knox-Verona Island and over to Bucksport.  This bridge is stunningly beautiful no matter what, but yesterday it was nearly unearthly…

The Narrows Bridge over the Penobscot, looking up at the suspension cables as I drove over. Photo (c) 2011 Sarah Ann Smith. Photo is clickable to view larger

I had no idea what the photo was going to be.  I saw the wires and reached into my purse one handed, pushed the “on” button and held the camera up to the window to push the shutter.  I just clicked without opening to view screen…. some days beauty comes to find you.

The 13 would be for my “baby” who decidedly isn’t (and is now, gasp gulp SHRIEK…a teenager)!   The 16-1 is for his regular wrestling season record…and the one he lost was because he made mistakes against a kid who knew what to do (Eli has beat the other kid twice in other meets).  Next week is regionals, and it looks like Eli will probably be the number 1 seed in our class for Eastern Regionals (Maine) / Middle School Wrestling.   WOOT!

Let's start with the best first today---Eli, on the right in red, wins with a pin, making him 16-1 for the season!

Here’s Eli in his first match:

Eli, in red, is about to LIFT the other kid off his feet, carry him across the mat, and deposit him on his back....sheesh!

And pinning the next boy (sorry it is blurry…this stuff happens fast and the camera didn’t fully focus…sorta like me a lot of the time)

Eli in read is head and toes on the mat OVER the other kid, who is twisted up into a human pretzel and about to get pinned....sometimes I wonder how their shoulders and bodies can twist like that!

And, drum roll, opening his b-day gift:

We still aren't sure where the gift wrap is, so I went "green" and wrapped his box in a yard of cloth (I actually found one to open--studio still in a heap of boxes)

At this point my “baby” is now all of 1/4″ shorter than I am, and I expect by summer I’ll be the shorter of us two…..  he’s such a wonderful kid, and we are so blessed to have him!