A Walk through the Field (Study)

I have finished my first artwork of the new year!  O.k., o.k. it was actually started last year and I didn't get it done before the end of the year.  So now it is the first of 2015.

Field Study

48-1/4" x 37"

©2015 Lisa Flowers Ross

$2700

Since most of my artwork is abstract, I thought for this piece I would walk you through the thought process from start to finish.

The first step comes when I see something that inspires me.  That is easy because I see things around me all the time, especially in nature, that inspire me.  What I saw for this piece were the bare branches of dogwood bushes as I drove back and forth to Ketchum.

Here is a picture I took somewhere along the road.  It's hard when you see something while driving. (Yes, I stopped and pulled over to take the picture.  Even got out to walk along the highway to get the view I wanted. The things we do for art!)

What inspired me were the colors of the bushes that stood out so brightly in the winter landscape.

The next step was to go to my sketch book and draw out some designs.  I did several thumbnails and this was the one I went with for the piece.  The numbers and dotted lines were added later while I was working on the piece.

After I had my sketch, I went to my fabric stash to pick colors. I really wanted a deep red burgundy color, but I just didn't have that color in my dyed fabrics.  These lean more toward purple.  That is one of the hard things about dyeing fabric only once a year.  You have to make do with what you have.  It's also a good challenge.

I pulled out a bunch of fabrics I thought would work to represent the branch colors.  I also pulled out some golds/tans to represent the grasses.  Do they match the photo colors?  No, they don't have to.  That was just the inspirational start.

When I had chosen the colors, then I went back to the sketch to figure out how I was going to piece it together.  It looks simple but the order is a little different than what you might think.  That's what all the numbers on the sketch are for, the order to put sections together.  The dotted lines are the seam lines for the sections.

From that point, I just cut the pieces within each section free-hand and sewed them together. Then, sewed the sections in order of the numbers.

Once everything was sewn together, then I had to make a decision about how to do the quilted stitches.  I had several ideas.  Here is one of them where I have more of a free-motion scribble stitch in the top section.  This would represent the scrubby sage brush in the background and would also be denser stitching to help "push" that section back to create a small amount of depth.

Although I liked that concept, there is more energy in those scribbles and I wanted to stay with the more gentle, flowing vertical lines of the seams.  And that is what I did, I stitched gently curving, vertical lines.

The thread color was another choice that needed to be made.  I wanted to use a variegated thread to create a little variation.  I used the same thread in the orange section as I did on the bottom section.  It looks completely different on different backgrounds.  I used a similar but slightly brighter color of thread in the gold section, although it actually looks darker than the other.  That is some of the fun of playing with threads, or anything.  Colors will change depending on what colors they are next to.

Even though you might not be able to tell from the picture of the finished piece, I trimmed the edges free-hand with slight curves (maybe a little too slight).  All that is left to do is sew on the sleeve and put on a label (and cut a hanging rod), which brings me to the last step - the title.

In my mind as I was working on this, I was just referring to this piece as Field Study.  But when I found out the type of bush was a dogwood, I did some research online about the scientific name or any other information that would suggest a different title (like the word "dagger" came up in my searches, I think it was the meaning of a latin name for the bush).

I didn't really like any of the things that I found with my search.  For now, I think it is going to be Field Study (K1).  "Field study" because the bushes were out in the field.  And "K1" for Ketchum and the first in what I hope will be a series.  I can continue with the dogwood bush inspiration or I also envision using some of the many other pictures I have of fields for inspiration, in which case the letters would change to something like "B1".   That could be the first of a Boise field inspiration.

Now you know how this artwork came into being.

Quilts=Art=Quilts 2014

With all the different social media platforms, it's sometimes hard to keep up with what information has been put where. In addition to this blog, I have a personal Facebook page and a business Facebook page for my art stuff.

On Facebook and in my newsletter, I mentioned that I had two artworks, In Vein II and Foliaris VI, juried into this year's Quilts=Art=Quilts exhibition (and now I'm mentioning it here).  This past weekend was the opening reception and awards ceremony.

My friend, Kathleen Probst, won a Juror's Choice Award for her artwork, Dipped Dimension.  This is the second year in a row one of her artworks has won an award at this exhibition.  I am proud of her!

The Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, where the exhibition is being held, has posted a list of the award winners with images on their website (scroll down the page to see them).

They also posted some pictures of the reception on their Facebook page, including this one where you can just see part of my In Vein II in the background.

More pictures have also been posted on a community site here.

It is nice for those of us who can't actually travel to the event for them to post some pictures.

The exhibition is up through January 4, 2015. If you happen to be in the Auburn, New York area before then, you can see it in person.

Discharged

In an earlier post, I shared some photos of when we did some discharging of fabric at my friend's studio.  I have used some of the black discharged fabric to create a small artwork.

Dusk

hand dyed and discharged fabrics, machine pieced, free-motion stitching

14-3/4" x 12"

©2014 Lisa Flowers Ross

Here is a detail of the free-motion stitching.

  

Holding Back In Vein

It's that time of year.  The Quilt National deadline is drawing near.  Sept. 12th to be exact.  I have read on a few blogs that some people are trying to finish up their entries for this most well-known international, juried art quilt exhibition that comes around every other year.

Like others, I planned to enter some pieces this year.  But I have now changed my mind to work on some other things/events instead.  I did make a piece at the beginning of the year, back in January, that I was considering to be an entry.  But I have not posted it here.  Why?  Because the Quilt National committee has very strict rules about publication of a work before being juried into their exhibition.  Here are the rules:

Disqualifications include
"- any work that will have appeared prior to May, 2015 in an American fiber arts exhibition that draws artists and/or visitors from more than 100 miles from its venue;

- any work that will have appeared prior to May 2015 in an American publication that has national or international distribution; this restriction includes SAQA publications;

- any work that has appeared, after September 2012, on an internet site other than the artist’s own site. Facebook pages are NOT considered an artist’s website. Images appearing on Facebook will be disqualified." 

The last rule states that it is o.k. to post to your own site.  However, I heard a story that one year someone had only posted an image to her own site, but that someone else had copied the image and posted it somewhere else and was, thus, disqualified because of that.  So, most people wanting to enter don't usually post anything but maybe a small detail in progress.

This is all so they have fresh, new artwork for the exhibition that has not been overly seen before, which is understandable, yet taken to an extreme, I feel.

Since I have decided not to enter this year, I can now safely share with you (unless I wanted to enter it in the next one in two years) my In Vein pieces.

I started out making one big piece.  But after having it all together and looking at it.  I decided it really needed to be two pieces.  I ripped seams and reconfigured and now I have In Vein I and In Vein II.

In Vein I

hand-dyed fabrics, machine pieced & appliquéd, machine stitching

60-3/4" x 17"

©2014 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1050

In Vein II

hand-dyed fabrics, machine pieced & appliquéd, machine stitching
64-1/4" x 35-1/2"

©2014 Lisa Flowers Ross

$2900

I think the shape of the first piece is interesting and might like to work with it again, but it would not be in this series.  I do see these pieces as the start of another series, but am not sure when I will work on it again.

Good luck to all those you are entering Quilt National this year.

Vertical Nature

I have been working on a variety of different things since the beginning of the year, mostly for deadlines.  I have several series going that I want to continue working in, but haven't recently. Vertical Nature is one of them and I realized that I have not shown you the last one that was completed last year.

Vertical Nature V

hand dyed fabrics, machine pieced, machine stitching

41-1/3" x 28"

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

Available for purchase

Vertical Nature

Here are the third and fourth pieces in the Vertical Nature series.  I don't have a picture of the fifth one yet.

 Vertical Nature III

hand dyed fabrics, machine pieced & stitched

39-1/4" x 26-3/4"

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1,200

Vertical Nature IV

hand dyed fabrics, machine pieced & stitched

40" x 25"

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1,200

Vertical Nature

I have several series that I would like to continue working on this year.  Vertical Nature is one of them. I was able to finish the fifth in the series before the end of the year, so I could start the year working on a new piece.  But what I realized is that I haven't actually shared any of the pieces in the series with you yet.

You might have caught a glimpse of them on the walls when I showed my nice clean studio for the open studio event.

My original inspiration for the series started with pictures I have of canyon walls.  But as the series goes along, it may change.  The inspiration is just the starting point.  I decided to call it Vertical Nature, because I can expand the series to use other inspiring vertical nature things like grasses or trees.

Here is Vertical Nature I and II.

 Vertical Nature I

hand dyed fabrics, machine pieced, machine stitched

50-3/4" x 32"

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1900

Vertical Nature II

hand dyed fabrics, machine pieced, machine stitched

43-3/4" x 25-1/2"

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1300

I'll show you the third and fourth piece of the series in the next post.

Utility Series

In my last post, I showed you the first piece of my Utility Series.  Here are two more.

T-Square #2

fabrics hand dyed by artist,

fused appliqué, machine stitching

10" x 10"

Available at Lisk Gallery (Nov. 7-Dec.31)

T-Square #3

fabrics hand dyed by artist,

fused appliqué, machine stitching

10" x 10"

Available at Lisk Gallery (Nov. 7-Dec.31)

The Utility Series is named for the the shapes in the artwork and for types of tools and hardware. I have sketches for L-brackets, C-clamps, D-rings and O-rings.

These first pieces in the series will be in the Lisk Gallery Small Works Group Show starting this Thursday, Nov. 7 (opening reception 5-9 p.m.) through Dec. 31.

Busy

It's busy, busy, busy here for me right now.  My studio is a mess, a productive mess, but a mess still the same.  I am working on pieces in several different series.  That is unusual for me since I don't consider myself a very good multi-tasker.  I tend to want to stick to one thing until it's done.

I realize that I haven't shown you the second piece in the Striae series, which has been finished for quite a while.  This series is on hold.  While I have other ideas for it, it has been set aside for now.

Striae II

hand dyed and screen printed fabrics,

machine pieced, machine stitching

43-1/4" x 41"

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1900

It's kind of hard to tell from the photo, but the center rectangular section has fabric that is screen printed with white lines.  I think part of the reason this series got set aside is that I want to explore more ways to screen print/paint/stamp/etc. lines on fabric.  And I haven't gotten to it yet.

Bobbin Work

Here is another new artwork I managed to finish recently.  It started out as part of a larger piece which was part of a new series I have started.  But when I had it all pieced together, I decided I didn't like it.  So I cut it up, ripped seams, added some new parts, re-sewed and now I have this piece, which no longer fits in the series.  And I have another part that still needs some work.

Lined Up Around the Block

38-1/4" x 22-1/4"

fabrics hand dyed and rusted by artist, 

machine pieced, machine stitched

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

$1100

You might notice the darker horizontal lines of stitching.  This was done with a heavier, perle cotton thread.  The problem with using perle cotton thread is that it is too thick to go through the machine needle.  So to use it in the machine, it needs to be in the bobbin.  I have a separate bobbin case for this because you really need to loosen the tension on it a lot.

Using the perle cotton in the bobbin means it will be on the bottom of whatever I am sewing. Therefore, if I want it on the front, then I have to sew the piece back side up.  But then I can't see where I want to go.

What I did was pin where I wanted the lines to go from the front and then flipped it over.  On the back I could see the pins and then I placed 1/4" masking tape along the pin lines, removed the pins and I was ready to sew.

Here is a picture of what that looked like when I was sewing.

I learned this bobbin work technique in a class I took many years ago.  I have not used it in my work before.  But I'm glad I had the knowledge to do it now because I like the look of those thicker lines.

New Artwork, New Gallery

Between all the summer trips and other activities, I have been trying to get some work done.  I have several pieces put together.  I just have to do the stitching on them.   But I can show you this piece that I have finished.

It is the first, in what I hope will be a series (although there is only this one just now).

Foliaris I
33-1/4" x 29-1/4"

fabrics hand dyed by artist,

machine pieced, machine stitched

©2013 Lisa Flowers Ross

Here is a detail of the stitching with orange thread in the middle.

This piece will be available for purchase at the Robin B Gallery in Chicago when it opens in September.  I am happy to have this gallery representation.

Their physical doors may not be open yet, but they do have the website up and running. Click on their name above to check it out.

Another DFC Finished

Just thought I would share one more daily fabric composition that I finished.  I cannot believe I did these in February and am still working on finishing some.

DFC02.28.13