Muscle Memory

August 31, 2006

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to spend less time on the computer and more time in the studio. The bad news is I’m behind on blogging and email. But the good news is I’m halfway done quilting this big work, and I’ve got another quilt cut out on the design wall and and almost ready to quilt.

This quilt is only the second one I’ve done on my Inspira Frame that I got in January, but I’m approaching it totally different than I did the Towers of Babble. I loaded that quilt according to instructions - the top on one roller bar, the batting on another bar, and the backing on a third. Because I was unsure of my ability to deal with all the little figures, I quilted the entire background like a blanket, then fused and sewed the figures on top.

Now that I look back at it, I’m not happy with that method. It looks too flat, and quilting the figures on top of a quilt seemed redundant. Not sure about if it saved or wasted time — it took me almost 60 hours to quilt it.

So with this quilt, I returned to my technique of fusing all the figures down and gluing the quilt sandwich together with 505 spray. However when I put it on the frame roller bars, some of the bigger pieces started to come off, especially the cake which is a big heavy piece of fabric.

I took the quilt off the frame and stabilized the entire thing by stitched down all the black lines with my Bernina. I usually stitch down the black lines anyway, but since I usually do that as I go along quilting from the center out, it took some faith that I would not end up with unwanted bubbly lumps. (For those who keep asking about the black lines, I’ve written about those in previous posts in the archives: “help I lost my head” and “build a bridge”.)

Then I had the idea to roll the face side out to help avoid some buckling. I’ve also learned that I don’t even have to roll the front section onto a bar — I can leave it hanging down free and control the tension of the fabric with one of my hands. This saves some time since I keep taking the quilt on and off the frame.

However I still have the most control sewing when I can control the machine speed with a foot pedal, leaving both my hands completely free to move the quilt. So for things like faces, I return the quilt to work on my Bernina.

I always try to come up with new stitching patterns for different objects, and right now I’m trying to think of something good for the cake and the bar. Sometimes I just improv these stitching patterns right on the machine. Other times I practice on paper with a pencil. I got this idea after reading a book about how Matisse did his collage cut-outs, he would practice drawing shapes on paper over and over. Then when he moved to cutting out his painted paper with scissors, he had developed a kind of “muscle memory” for certain forms. So the cutouts were skillful, but at the same time, looked fresh and spontaneous.

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Mari’s Taiko Wedding

August 24, 2006

I’ve been slow in posting the best part of Portland — Mari and Scott’s wedding. Some somebodies went a little crazy with the digital cameras, and 400+ photos is a lot to edit. My cousin Mari is in Portland Taiko, a group that does awesome performances with Japanese drums. So for her wedding, Portland Taiko was a big part of the celebration! Here’s Mari playing with part of the group, doesn’t she look beautiful?

The wedding was at Kruger’s Farm on Sauvie Island. One of the most unusual parts was when the wedding party, parents and minister arrived at the ceremony on a hayride!

Getting off the bales of hay was a bit tricky for someone in a full wedding dress with train, but Mari handled it with grace and dignity. I’ll just save those great leg photos for a later date.

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The actual ceremony was under a huge old oak tree that was probably a hundred years old. There were all kinds of beautiful details see and hear during the wedding.

Scott and Mari signed their marriage license on the stump of an old tree that was cut down after a storm.

Here’s a detail of Mari’s gorgeous dress.

Other sweet details included a big candy selection of goodies to take home after the wedding. We each got a little Chinese take-out box to fill with sweet things to remember the day…

… gummy frogs and strawberries, sweet tarts, rock candy. I think I cracked a crown on a Bit-of-Honey, but I can’t say my cousin the dentist didn’t warn me.

Scott plays the saxaphone in a swing Latino band called Pepe and the Bottle Blondes, so after the taiko drums, there was lots more fun music.

Enough to get everyone dancing, way past dark. Even Mari in her crocheted wedding flip-flops. I’m glad I wore my cowboy boots, but even so, I did have tired toes the next morning.

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Bagdad Pub and Naked Clothing

August 12, 2006

Here’s another place I could have gotten the laid-back virus. Hawthorn Street in Portland is home to the Bagdad Pub, Cafe and Theatre. It’s a wonderful place to hang out and watch people, especially from the open-air tables along the street. Since in Missouri the weather is not so temperate, we have much fewer outdoor eating and drinking opportunities.

The Bagdad pub is a great place for discerning beer connoisseurs. Especially yummy and fattening is the Terminator Stout.

Bagdad was an old theater that was saved and rennovated in the 90’s. I love it when people save cool old buildings! It’s now a magnificant movie theater, and so we stayed late to watch Nacho Libre - so silly that it’s funny.

I like going to musuems and galleries (and an afternoon at the Portland Art Museum was well worth the visit), but I even like more to find art in unexpected places. The rescued Bagdad Cafe and Theatre has art in every nook and cranny. This beautiful tree by Lyle Henn was painted on a bathroom door.

But a closer look reveals all kinds of unexpected and interesting details. There’s another great place to lose a few hours right across the street from Bagdad — Powell Books.

The Powell branch on Hawthorn Street had lots of interesting vintage sci-fi magazines. I meant to go back and buy some because I’m researching space travel for one of my next quilts, but got lost in the art department reading stuff like this. It mentions stuff like Andy’s “New York City Diet” — order lots of stuff you don’t like to eat in a restaurant so you have something to play with while everyone else talks. Then ask for a to-go box so you can leave the food in a place where someone who might need it will find it. Maybe I should try it.

There are lots of other fun shops around. We spent lots of time in Naked City, which maybe a misnomer because they sell lots of cool clothes. Group shopping is fun because you get the vicarious thrills of others’ finds — Russ got several graphic t-shirts, my cousin got cherry-embossed flip-flops, her husband got a tie that looks like an ice cream cone, and I got a graphic 60-ish smoking lady t-shirt and white sunglasses to wear for yoga. (actually I don’t need sunglasses to do yoga, I just thought they matched the shirt.)

By the way, when I was trying to find website for Naked City Clothing, I stumbled across this video. Did anyone know that Portland has a Naked Bike Parade? Don’t be afraid to click on the link, you can’t actually see anything x-rated. Just enough to remind you how crazy some people are! Shoot, we missed the parade by only a few weeks…

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Happy Kokeshi

August 8, 2006

I promised Gerri I would take this photo. Gerrie gave me the Kokeshi doll in the middle to add to my collection when I met June, Terry, and Gerrie for lunch in Portland. She said it was lonely at her house, but it’s taken me a while to round these guys up for a little Kokeshi party. Thanks Gerrie, she fits right in!

Kokeshi are wooden Japanese folk toys that were commonly made as dowel-shaped dolls carved from branches of trees. Now days there are tons of different styles — the one on the right with the tassles still has bark from the tree on its base, and the two on the left with the brown jackets are dolls from my childhood that my mother recently found in an attic. Somewhere in a Japanese tin I have more small ones, but for the time being, they are determined to stay hidden.

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Laid-Back Virus

August 7, 2006

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been posting lately, it could be because of a virus I caught in Oregon. Although I have tons of photos and stuff to blog about, I can’t seem to get motivated — I think I caught some kind of laid-back virus.

This is Cannon Beach, one of several places I could have picked up this disease. Because of some beautiful photos of the beach on Terry’s blog, (can’t find that post, but check out the great postcards she’s doing right now) we drove there on the last day of our trip.

Oregon was cool in the mornings and evenings (I even bought a coat!). Although it was afternoon, the wind at the beach was actually chilly.

But the sand was warm and soft on my bare feet. Since we don’t have beaches like this in Missouri, I had to soak up as much as I could before getting back on the plane. Now that I’m home, for some reason I’m only interested in eating salads, working out, and finding the perfect flip flops. Anyone know a cure for this?

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