Doors of Opportunity

I'm really behind on posting photos and updates, but one of these days I'll catch up.  For now here are photos of a series of nine fairly small square quilt tops I made recently that I call "Doors of Opportunity." 

Hand dyed cottons, not yet quilted.

Happy Creating,

Carmen Rose

The Confections

These little art quilts are my current favorites!

And I love how they look in the frames! 

It gives them a dimensional look that I really like!

And I think they look nice with the rest of the display.

Sometimes I can't believe my luck at working with color.  I love the movement, the give and take of interacting with color.  I am a full tilt addict, I can never seem to get enough!

They are:

Confection 1 & 2

Hand dyed & hand painted cotton

Fused & machine quilted

6.5 x 6.5 framed to 15 x 15

$245 each, framed

Happy Colors,

-Carmen Rose 

Roses & Dreams

I'm back to work in the mornings, I manage property for a gentlemen who owns a bunch of property here in town. I was hungry this morning when I came home, so I ran by Food Lion to pick up a few things. I picked up some eggs and veggies for quiche and a chicken for the slow cooker... and I walked by the flower case as I often do. I usually stop and enjoy the flowers for a bit then keep on moving. This time the pink roses seemed to have my name on them... (Carmen Rose... ha ha ha!) so they came home with me.

I tried them in my white pitcher but they were too tall and straggly looking so I cut them a little shorter and tried out this small pitcher. My grandmother used to do some ceramics, the kind where you buy the ware, glaze it then take it back to be fired. The little pitcher is one she glazed, white with little blue speckles. It seemed fitting somehow to remember Nannie and enjoy my roses.

I'm really struggling to get anything done right now. I picked out a few fabrics inspired by this vase and fused them to the wonder-under... but there it sits. My recovery seemed so rapid at first. Now I'm struggling with the lack of energy and even some unexpected pain. I suppose I should take it a little more easy but I have a one person show coming up at the end of the month (Yes, only TEN DAYS!  EEEEK!) and I really need to be in production for that. I feel the *need* to get back to work... but struggling to find the motivation and energy.

I did manage to pop the chicken into the slow cooker and make three quiches today though. I haven't felt like eating or cooking and I'm getting tired of cooking for one. So, now I can pop a slice of ultra healthy tofu, bacon and veggie quiche in the oven in the morning and have an excellent breakfast with no fuss. Yeah, tofu and bacon... healthy and unhealthy... that's just crazy, but really, it works. I also put in spinach, red peppers, mushrooms, fresh pineapple and extra sharp cheddar cheese. I forgot to put in the onions and the salt and pepper. Oh well.

I am giving some thought to what is next for me. Now that I have chosen to be child-free instead of becoming an adoptive mom, I can be more career focused again. I felt like my life was on hold for those two years that we gave to the process. I'm giving some thought to getting a job or opening a gallery, or or or... I'm spending some time just holding the question "what do I want?" It's a bit like considering what I'd want said of me at my funeral, what kind of mark would I like to leave? What do I want to be known for? I can chose, life is not lived entirely accidentally.

There is an element of "how am I going to make a living?" in my dreaming at this point as well. My friend says that when someone asks him what he does for a living, he wants to be able to respond that he doesn't work, he plays. I've had seasons of my life where my work brought me so much satisfaction that I didn't consider it work at all. I'd like to find that zone once more. So I'm taking some time for consideration, healing, and dreaming. And perhaps some of the answers I seek will present themselves. It's difficult to be at rest in this uncertainty when I get impatient, but I will walk in the light I'm given. And time will tell.

Happy Creating,
-Carmen Rose

Today's Guest Blogger: Bekki Fahrer - "Creation and Destruction"

It takes me a long time to create things.
This can be ironic, as I spend many hours multitasking life with creation. (Yes I'm the one you see knitting in the movie theater, and during the sermon on Sunday, and in the Meeting, and so on and so forth). One of the reasons it takes so long for me to create anything is because I'm forever ripping things out and starting over.

Case and Point.
Davids Jean Quilt.

It was all pieced. All ready to go. But there was a flaw. Half of it came apart. It had to be just right.

It irked me to no end. I thought I had planned it so well. Figured exactly how the rows were to be created, and how the colors were to go. I made one little error, and the whole thing was thrown off.

I do it all the time with knitting. I made a pair of Dobby Socks for my friend Becky. I researched sock making. Had an expert teach me heels and I worked long and hard on them. I tore them apart over 5 times.

Is it that I can't handle giving things that are flawed? Is it that I have an idea or standard that has to be lived up to? Is it that I have to be in control?
Well yes....but....

For me, an essential part of creation is destruction. I attempt things I can't do, so that I can learn from them. This doesn't always turn out well, and I find myself ripping out seams or stitches. This can be annoying, but it is also a promise. That's a mistake I'll be less likely to make in the future. Or I learn causality of a method, and it gives me an arsenal of ideas that help me create things without a pattern. Every place there is destruction, I have the opportunity to make something new. Transforming what is

 into what could be:

 It is not the creation itself, but it's partnership with destruction that gives me room to grow, to get beyond myself. To be able to dream outside of the probable, and even the possible.

Happy Creation and Destruction,
Bekki Fahrer

Today's Guest Blogger: Barbara Lardon! (YAAAAAAY!)

First I want to thank Carmen for asking me to be a guest on her blog. Let me introduce myself. I am an art quilter. I live in Plymouth Wisconsin which is a small town of 7000 about 60 miles north of Milwaukee.

I have been quilting for about 30 years now and mainly do raw edged fused appliqué. You can see my work on my blog at bslartquilts.blogspot.com.

Today I would like to share with you my experience recently when I decided to look into a basket I keep in my studio of unfinished projects. I had totally forgotten about some of them. While going through them I became amazed at how they are almost a recording of my “evolution” in the last 10 years.

In this one you can see I am still in my traditional primitive country phase. It is a queen sized piece with lots of stars in the border and oh I was so in love with stars in those days (still am).

Then I needed more. So I moved into paper piecing and much more elaborate and complicated patterns. Here is my Japanese Fan quilt. However, as you can see, I am beginning to do some raw edged fusing on the backing where I placed my own design of a Japanese woman in traditional garb. This is also in queen size.

And finally I transitioned all the way to doing raw edged fused appliqué. Here is an example of one of my more recent pieces.

 It is amazing to me how we travel through stages in our creative world, trying new styles and evolving into the artist we are today.  It is an adventure to me and I hope for you too.

Thank you Barbara Lardon for guest posting!  It is a treat to see how your work has developed over time! 
Thanks so much,
Happy creating,
-Carmen Rose

Color in the Kitchen

What color should a kitchen be? O more precisely, what color should MY kitchen be? That's a great question in my opinion. My theory is that a kitchen should be a (not exactly blank) slate for a great art collection, a room that fits the owner's personality and culinary needs. It should be great function with great form and then... there should be ART and COLOR!

This kitchen looks like a blank slate to me, so many ways to dress it up and give it some personality.  If only they hadn't taken the photo before the work was done.  Even some black and white photography would have been an improvement... now it comes across as sterile and the marble reads as cold.   

This is a bold move to use this much olive green in a kitchen.  One really has to be committed to a color choice like this to make it work in a room where one spends so much time.  I wouldn't do this color, but that's ok, that's not my house.  I just wish they'd taken some risks with the accessories and instead of spreading the green like moss growing on the north side of the... kitchen - they could have done something wonderful with red, fuchsia or plum!  It's a trend now to do the island in a contrasting color and this kitchen would have been a great place to give that a try! 

This is an interesting choice with lots of black outlining.  I have the urge to look a little closer than this photo allows, and I'm curious about the gate in the foreground but the beauty of this kitchen is the commitment they've made to making an original statement.  I think it's charming.

This chocolate brown and white kitchen features a show stopping stencil on the cabinet doors.  I think this is an idea that could hold some possibility, however, I've done enough stenciling to know that it's tedious to the extreme.  My tastes don't run country and I've got far too many cabinet doors to ever give this any real consideration so it's just as well.  But I think it's a successful choice here.

This buttery little confection of a kitchen is the picture of warmth and sweetness.  I do wonder, however, why they made the kitchen island top so small.  If they would have added 18 inches along the side facing us, it would have been a fantastic change!  (depending on things one can not see beyond the scope of the photo.)  Being able to have a few guests on stools while one cooks is a wonderful perk in my opinion. 

I think I kept this photo because of the floor.  I also like the color scheme of black/white plus one!  The pale mossy green in this one is a soothing choice but again my eye wishes for some real saturated color in that room somewhere.  I'd put a few flowering violets or an orchid and a beautiful textile on that table to soften the look of the cold hard looking appearance.  There are many good reasons to use white marble in the kitchen, but something must also be done to soften the cold hard look of it.

The careful use of turquoise in the floor and backsplash saved this room from the hum drum and I think it's successful.

No matter what the basic colors are of a kitchen, one should be able to dress it up with beautiful color like this table scape.  A lovely piece of fabric, some fresh flowers and perhaps some fruit and candles and the table and kitchen are dressed and ready for great food and friends.   

Makeover and Head Shots

My friends know that I will try just about anything, so when my friend Rachel asked if I’d consider helping her create “head shots,” I said I was interested!
I cleared a day and she came over. We started with her hair, I didn’t intend to give her a hair cut that day, but that was the way it worked out.
Then I did her makeup and we went outside for a few shots. It was a dreary overcast day but we got a few good shots outside anyway.
Later we moved inside to my quilt studio, I cleared off my design wall and set up some lights and we got to work.
I finally let her go home last evening sporting her new ‘do and I sat down to see how the photos had turned out.
It was a pleasure to work with her, she has tons of natural charm and charisma and her hair was so fun to work with!
I’m pleased that we got some good photos!
PS, the jewelry in the photos is all work I’ve created, doesn’t she make a lovely jewelry model?!
Don't you love it when the breeze helps?
Hope she likes them. It was a fun day! She's a lovely soprano, I hope these help her get the opera gigs she'd like!

One Quilter's Heritage

I wanted to share my first quilt with all of you. It’s on our bed now, now that we live in a house where we can fairly easily keep the dogs out of the bedrooms. It’s a double wedding ring and the fabric is all commercial cottons in teal, cobalt, blue-violet, purple, red-violet, and magenta. I designed the color ways, the layout and cut all the fabrics. My mother-in-law sewed and I think my sister-in-law may have helped by ironing. The three of us have made a number of quilts together in this way, I design and cut and keep the process moving and the two of them (or maybe the Mennonite grandmas instead of the SIL) keep the assembly line moving.
It’s pretty intense but we’ve made some pretty cool quilts this way and we can come pretty close to making a full bed sized quilt in a day. That’s important since we live in different states and very rarely get together. This quilt was quilted by my mother-in-law and my husband’s Mennonite grandmothers, some of their friends may have added some stitches here and there as well.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This quilt is one made by my father’s mother. The colors are washed out by direct sunshine, an overcast day would have made better photos. My grandmother was a beautiful Mennonite woman with her ultra conservative dress, a covering with strings and wire rim glasses. She made many beautiful quilts, always with an amazing degree of excellence. Her corners were always perfect and her stitches were tiny and ultra even.

I remember as a child that there was a gathering in Ohio where the quilts were distributed, one for each grandchild. I was the youngest child of her youngest child, and so I got the first choice though I have no idea why they did it that way. I may have been about five or six and when they asked me to choose I pointed immediately at this one. Someone muttered that I had good taste and had chosen the prettiest one. I guess even at that age I responded to colors like these. I have a variety of old quilts, some really amazing examples of Mennonite and Amish artisan design and execution and they are among my very favorite things. I count these quilts along with my heritage as part of my development as an artist and a quilt designer.

Website Update

This is a mixed media piece I made a while back, watercolor, colored pencil, ink and metalic ink on paper. It's now in my bedroom and I love it there.

I have spent some time today working on my website. I spent the afternoon at Oasis Gallery in Harrisonburg, VA where my glass, photography and soap can be found. While I was there I was able to get some work done. There is now content on the painting, cake design, glass, drawing and mixed media pages of my new website. Click here to take a look. It just takes a while to get through all the details of designing a website and getting all the information filled in. You should see my "to do list" now!! I know most people would complete the whole thing and then publish, but I like to work on it as I go because some things just don’t translate very well and require tweaking and experimentation, it is less overwhelming this way. Check it out and if you have problems with the site, please let me know! Feedback is helpful, so please do let me know what you think. Thanks!

I Saw Silver!

My final projects from the two days with Sarah Lock are all about the jeweler’s saw and a bunch of tiny little blades. I glued together two sheets of sterling silver and added my drawing to the top. I drilled holes in the design using a dremel tool that had been set up like a mini drill press (gotta get me one of those base thingi’s for my dremel!) Then carefully threading the saw’s blade through the hole and tightening it up, I commenced sawing. And sawing… and sawing... and sawing… Punctuated only by breaking saw blades. Take out the broken blade, figure out which direction and which side up the new blade goes, thread it through the work and tighten it in the saw frame, add some bee’s wax and then get back to work(and repeat!) There is a real learning curve to this process and by the end I was getting much more distance out of each blade.

It is still something that takes forever and my cuts are nothing compared to Sarah’s!! So when I was finally done sawing, I had two positive fleur de lis shapes and two negative shapes. So first of all I soldered a copper back to one and formed a large square pendant. Polishing it took forever and I noticed in the photo that when I wiped it on my shirt to remove the big fingerprint right before I snapped the photo… I scratched it up pretty good. Oh well, life does that to ya. Oh, and I added that teensy tiny little fleur to it but I might change that out and put a crystal briolette there instead. I think that might look better.

I made the two positive shapes into big dangly earrings, they are light weight so it works. I really enjoyed wailing away on these things with the whammer and look forward to more of that. It feels destructive but it’s actually quite constructive in this situation. Then I went off to spend some quality time with the polishing wheels. I added ear wires and a coin pearl to each one. The conventional wisdom of the class was that they would make better pendants because they are so big and I might go there eventually, but for right now I LURVE them as earrings!

I have another one of the negative shapes to do something with. In the process of polishing it on the wheel those points kept catching on the wheel and it would go flying out of my hand. Now that made me jumpy! I finally learned (mostly) how to do it but that piece is pretty delicate now after all that damage. No worries though, I have enough fleur de lis jewelry to last me a while.

I’m delighted that I was able to take Sarah’s class! I learned so much from her and it is good to be able to sink oneself into an absorbing task and learn to do something new. Sara Lock is an amazing woman, very sweet with incredible skills and a creative approach to problem solving. She was pulled in a million directions by the six of us but she handled it with patience and grace.

Finishing up the Cake.

Finally we come to the interesting stuff, though I was really down to the wire with this cake so I didn’t get many photographs at this stage. I drove the cake to location, stacked the three tiers and began to decorate them. Now usually I would have decorated them and then transported them but I was running out of time. By that time I’d had three hours of sleep and it was an afternoon shindig. I decorated small “50’s” with some hearts/swirly things and some small fleur de lais. Each edge got a border and that was pretty much it for the details on the cake.

I added a bunch of colorful fresh flowers...

And then set the cake in place. Then we got some photos and then the guests started to arrive. Whew, that was close!

Color Play

When I finally got some studio time today, I started by ironing out my freshly dyed colors. All that color, what’s not to love? And when you look up close they have a variety of patterns (this is dyed white on white fabric) plus with the wrinkles in the dye there is a lot to look at if you get up close.

I started building strip color ways… a bit tedious. But thankfully I had company in the studio today. Our exchange students were working next to me in my jewelry studio making fun things. It was fun to see how much they enjoyed making their necklaces and earrings. And who knows, maybe I’ll return to jewelry making when I get a moment. Ha ha!

I sliced them and diced them and this is how they looked. I have paired them with white and a pale taupe, I love the white, not so sure of the taupe. But with the taupe walls in my room, this seems like a reasonable choice.
Sandwich it between chunks of hand dyed fabric? Naaah… not lovin it. I shall have a better idea tomorrow. Right now I'm toast.

The Liberated Quilt Designer

Well, I wasn’t expecting this! I went looking in my stash for a quilt I’d made years ago. I couldn’t remember what it looked like. And when I pulled it out and brought it upstairs and started unfolding… well, not one but TWO quilts fell out!

This one I expected. And then there was a second:

When did I make this one? Anybody know? I don't remember it one bit! This pattern makes up so quickly that I guess it never really sank in. But don't these two look good together? I could see them each on a twin bed in the same room! And no, they were not made to match. That's purely accidental!

I made this one from blocks Melody gave me:

And then this one is on my wall right now:

Don't these two look like they go together? I could also see these on two twins in the same bedroom! And no, these weren't made to match either. But they work.

The other thing I noticed is that all of them are about the same sizes and shapes. They are roughly sixty something square and three of them need borders yet. I’ve said before that I love a square quilt for a bed and the queen sized one that is on my bed right now is square and I love it! (I’ll get around to showing photos of that one someday.) So I’m thinking that in MY house, twin beds are going to have square quilts on them.

Thing is, I made this froggy quilt which is kind of cute. But that blasted quilt really started to get on my nerves when I laid it out on the floor and doggedly tried to force myself to add enough to make it fit a twin bed in the traditional way. I really developed an attitude about that one and honestly when I look at it I still see a square quilt with cheap filler at top and bottom. So… I am coming to the conclusion that I like square quilts. (So shoot me!) And with this wealth in the house, our children are not in danger of freezing their tootsies. So why am I fighting with myself over this? I like bed quilts square. It’s hardly revolutionary. I seriously doubt the quilt Gestapo is going to be knocking on my door anytime soon with a warrant demanding that I conform! So I think I shall liberate “PEACE, joY and hoppiness” from its rectangular fate. The very idea makes me smile.

I doubt I've ever been so happy about the idea of going to find my seam ripper! :)

Yes, so much of my life I've tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. I know that I've been led to accept the design I was created with rather than trying to be someone I'm not, for which I am eternally grateful. That is one of those life lessons that sounds very simple but is nothing of the sort!
So now this is ME telling the world that bed quilts in MY house are simply going to be square! And honestly, this makes all this work MUCH more fun!

So now I can get on with the important stuff, like which quilt goes on which bed? And what color do I paint those bedroom walls?!