The Quilt Skipper

quilting makes me skip for joy

Jenny K Lyon

Quilting makes me skip for joy

Failure, photos, flowers and a vintage top

I’ve been consumed again this week with trying to get my on-demand class up and running. It never seems to end. I am sitting, a lot. My shoulders and back are sore despite my best efforts at good ergonomics. This is rough work! I did make a 3 min video about my upcoming Road@Home classes (type my name in the search bar) that you can find on my Facebook page, but it’s too big to load here.

I’ll be posting random flower photos, just because…


I did have a fail this week – my sheer piece was a bust. I didn’t even finish it:

There are so many things wrong with this I just don’t want to list them. You may recall I had trapped the sheers in between 2 layers of organza topped with water soluble stabilizer:

I don’t like it, don’t want to resurrect it, alter it, singe it, stamp it, paint it or cut it up for something else – no! It’s dead to me. I will try again and I’ve certainly learned a lot from this little piece.

That’s the thing about failed pieces. You’re going to have failures and that’s good, you learn from them. But there needs to be a purposeful decision about the carcass. I will not put this in the UFO pile; it’s a fail, not a UFO. I am not going to keep it around because “one day I might need something sheer”. No. I have plenty of sheers!

This will be a toss and it should be. Things like this suck the energy and creativity right outta ya. Your mind plays tricks on you and says “Oh you’ll regret it if you toss that.” No again. I am a purger not a hoarder and I prefer clean, organized spaces so it will not be painful for me to toss it. My motto has always been:

Onward!

I came into n unexpected windfall this week – this beautiful “summer quilt” from my friend Sherry:

Let me show some details of the exquisite hand and machine work:

Isn’t that fabulous? In the background there is subtle machine quilting:

That border screams for feathers, no? I will have to figure out how to quilt the center and honor the maker. I wish I could work on this NOW!!! I’m pretty sure it is screaming “trapunto” at me.

I had some fun this week with a “lifestyle” photography session here at the house, a necessary step in the making and marketing of my on-demand class. I found Roseville photographer Andrew LaFrance through Upwork.

I had never hired through them before and it’s pretty cool. You can get just about any work done through their process and vendors will bid on your job. Billing goes through them to protect both parties. He got some great shots, here are just a few:

Who knew irons and pin cushions could look like that?

I see that live quilt shows are beginning to happen around the country – yippeee! I taught the Miami County Quilters last week (Kansas) and they were excited about the upcoming large regional show, the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival in June and it’s live! I want to hop on a plane a go.

I’ll be linking up:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday

Finished or Not Friday

 

Comments

  1. The cutout piece is beautiful. I find that when I’m unsure of a design, leaving it alone and waiting a day or two before looking at the design makes a world of difference. More than once I’ve decided a piece was ugly, left it alone, and the next day the design is suddenly beautiful.

  2. A wonderful photo of you indeed! You look great — and relaxed, despite all the activity and challenges you’ve been facing to get your classes going.

    As for the “failure”…my first art quilt teacher, Anna Hergert, used to say, “It’s just a sample!” I actually *keep* mine — in plastic sleeves in binders labelled “samples”. Sometimes these are simply learning pieces (not intended to be more than that) and sometimes they start as intended artwork but “fail” — and so are a record of what *not* to do next go ’round. So…your sample has taught you…why not store it away to refer to later when you take another stab at the process? Hugs — and have a good week!

    • Thank you Margaret! He actually made it fun. I don’t need the actual piece in this case to remind me of what went wrong. It’s already in the trash! Hugs back at ya!

  3. Your use of the term “carcass” for your failed sheer piece cracked me up. I would not term it a “failure”, but a “learning experience”.

  4. I love your fancy lifestyle photos, you diva, you!! And I love what you had to say about putting a stake through the heart of a fail and walking away from it for good. At some point, keeping on trying to save something that is just not working, way past the point of loathing, is just not healthy — it’s like that WIP is an abusive relationship and you need to just walk away instead of trying to fix it any longer. You learned what you needed to learn from it and you’re a better artist for going through that experience. Sometimes, that is enough. And I’m DYING to see the trapunto and whatever other loveliness you have in mind for that vintage treasure!

    • Yes Rebecca Grace, you get me! It would be toxic to me to keep the piece. I’m dying to see that quilt trapunto’d too! Wish I had the time right now, sigh.

    • Alycia, I am so humbled to have that quilt. It may be some time before I get to it but I am excited and have ideas forming!