off to france

one chilly winter day

chris and i went for a walk

through prospect park

i took pictures of all the subtle colors

and the textures of nature

i've been putting together a portfolio

of my range of artistic skills

from watercolors to photography

to fibers to styling

it's in development,

but i was sorting through these images

awhile back to use.

the pictures have been sitting on my desktop 

and today

when i went to write a blog post about-

france and paris and my great adventures ahead

in my month long journey..

i could see these ducks, dipping in and out 

of a serene gray 

landscape

and it felt calm.

i've been jubilant and overwhelmed

and a bit bitter sweet at taking a hiatus

from everything that was once so frightening

(like new york city and its public transit!)

and is now so normal,

that i can go through my daily routine

(from the subway to the shop, back home again)

with my body and not my mind.

i've been in brooklyn for 4 years,

and it was high time for an exploration

of something new, of something other than 

what i currently experience 

day to day to day.

many people have asked what our definite plans are...

truth is, our plans are not fixed.

our plans are loose,

so if we fall in love with a town.

we can stay for longer.

so we can be open and free spirited.

we are flying in to paris (spending a week), 

then taking a train southwards,

to toulouse or perhaps stopping in limoges first,

then to carcassonne and following the coast eastwards

walking towards italy. we ultimately fly out of milan.

i want to stop in as many small towns as we can,

or as budget will allow, along the way. 

we have our first leg of the trip booked with accommodations,

so parents and loves can keep from worrying.

my goals for the trip are to:

- revel in all the beautiful small moments

- take many many photographs, but also, to remember to look

not through a lens, but with my eyes, open wide.

- taste everything. be the most open i have ever been.

- be nice to myself. it is a harder goal than one would think. 

but i push myself so much- to accomplish so much. 

to be productive every single day.

i once saw an illustration that said 

"happiness is productive"

and i need to remember that. 

so i can learn how to relax and let go of the anxious

and embrace 'just being'

here's to exploration and fueling the artistic spirit!

see you all in 5 or so weeks.

laila

watch it unfold, slice it up, stitch back together

i'm not surprised

that i've found a love in quilting.

it is oh-so-very-much

a process based craft.

and i am a process based artist. 

i like to knit, because it is a journey

(as cheesy as that sounds)

and i like to dye

because there is beauty in the pooling colors

and you never quite know what will emerge

from that enameled pot.

you have to wait, you have to grow

while each stitch is formed, 

while each particle of dye is settling on the wool

and the steam is building to just the right temperature.

my last quilt- i worried about inundating instagram 

with too many images, all-at-once, of fabric

being moved half an inch.

haha, too subtle for anyone to care, but me.

but now, afterwards, i am happy that i flooded my feed

with too many images of the same, yet not.

because now i have trove of images

that show, 

how it evolved.

here is how- 

pushing myself with using

an awkward combination of colors

dark purple meets hot pink 

(thanks for the shove, nani iro!)

my bruised beauty of a quilt emerged.

first i started with 6" squares
of a large scale nani iro print,
a purple shot cotton, and a purple hand-dyed fabric
i sewed them into strips of squares after laying out the composition,
and sewed a grayish shot cotton in a long skinny strip between
(it's called "bronze" in case you were wondering the color)

you can see i've already decided to flip it around-

the colors are a bit truer in this image despite the yellow look.

now i realize i've essentially created a really rigid grid

and i need to break out that. 

so i sew on a strip of my own hand-dyed fabric

(i made the fabric this summer when i fell in love 

with low-water immersion dyeing)

i sew a lavender color shot cotton along the edge, and more bronze

and a little rectangle of more nani iro to bring it back in

i mused with this bright blue, a perfect match 

for those wild

flower stems

but i didn't attach it. i just stared.

this is when i first started to feel stuck and anxious.

i went to city quilter (another fabric shop in the nyc area)

to break out of my blahs and investigate other prints

i found a lot, and spent a lot!, 

but after a wonderful craft time at tracey's house

using her gigantic batting wall! 

i realized it was too far in another direction-

not the one i wanted. too pink. i liked the pink being spare-

pushing you. like WOAH hot pink. you are unexpected.

i told everyone at craft time that i would slice my whole quilt up

if it felt right. they were shocked, but i think 

it is very very nice to be so attached to the process too.

and so,

back at my studio,

i chopped up the strips i had sewn at tracey's.

and formed them into squares and triangles.

they felt better already. spaced out. not so cluttered!

here's a detail of a pieced triangle.  

with my hand-dye as an edging.

because i cut up strips i had already pieced,

when i made it into a triangle, it was very very layered.

an attempted layout, spacing the 'intense' blocks

(as i started dubbing them, 

since they were heavy on pattern/print/color)

farther and farther apart

placing blocks and staring.

you can see here that i've removed all the 'intense' squares

kept both the triangles,

and made a new solid pieced rectangle.

that rectangle was the RIGHT direction. i felt it.

here you can see the rectangle better.

isn't it pretty? 

i've also decided that grid layout is 'set' with the 

little nani iro rectangle in the lower left.

the bottom left is now also sewn as another 'block'

but not attached to the bigger grid

here's a shot of me pinning.

i like it because i rarely share desk shots while quilting

(it's all about the wall!)

and i especially like my lil mandarin orange

 with my well-loved tomato pincushion

so a lot happened between up there and down here,

buuuut essentially, the piecing of the solids inspired me to 

keep it simple while still adding depth.

so i created 3 irregular blocks, 

comprised of squares/rectangles mostly

and used two strips of bronze aligned vertically

to play off the bronze in the center grid.

sewed those together (that's what you see in my pinning picture).

and that forms the bottom beneath the original grid.

then i create the 'left side' of the original grid. 

i brought in a long strip of hand-dye to mimic 

the long horizontal along the bottom of the original grid.

and i devised a way to use up the rest of the large-scale nani iro,

by piecing into rectangles w/ snippets of solids between

and creating a big sliced block with solids to mimic the small 

solid block on the lower right. 

sewed those two sides together, and then sewed them to the big grid.

final steps,

used a long ombre fabric & pieced to a hot pink 'shell' pattern.

sewed to the long skinny strips of bronze and lavender

and then sewed the edges together to the last nani iro piece.

sewed whole portion to the final grid.

and fin.

and a quilt top is finished.

i think my explanations may make no sense. 

but sometimes, it is hard to look at this and to see how these pieces 

connect, and how this shape was even formed. 

and what other iterations it very very easily could have been.

i like how it came to be. i like that it 'stayed true' 

to where i thought it was always meant to be.

and now i have a pile of CRAZY fabrics i bought to 

'bring it together' that will be in the stash 

until i stumble upon another bizarre color combination

 that just may need them. 

i hope this was illuminating? 

and not so confusing? 

from my stitches,

laila