[-photo essay, fiber art-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

Patchwork quilting is an exacting process. There is a great deal of planning, measuring, precise cutting and piecing. Some of us are cut out (ahem, *sorry!*) for that and some aren’t. Or perhaps it’s a discipline that we enjoy at some times and not others.

At times we may just want to be spontaneous, playful and get quick results create with our textiles.

Here are some examples of a kind of stitchery that requires none of the planning and precision of quilting, but that can give stunning results.

There is no one name that sums up this kind of work. It includes raw edge collage, surface stitching, whole cloth manipulation and fabric weaving. The idea is to make a new textile by combining more than one kind of fabric by layering the elements and using surface stitching rather than hidden seams to make them one.

Here is an example of a simple and quick project. It is a placemat made from three fabrics woven together and surface stitched until it becomes one. Below, you see the base fabric cut into wavy strips.

A strip of fabric was left uncut at one end. This edge was basted onto a piece of interfacing the size of the finished mat.

The two alternating fabrics were also cut into wavy strips.

These were then woven into the base fabric. Don’t worry if all the corners don’t meet exactly. You can remedy that with your overstitching. Pin or lightly hand-basted the strips to the interface backing to keep everything in place while it is being stitched.

This one is top-stitched in a wavy, random pattern in both contrasting and matching thread colours. In order to add durability to a project that will have to stand up to fairly frequent laundering, there are vertical strips of zig-zag stitches in various colours.

Once the stitching is finished, it’s backed and the edges finished and in a afternoon’s work, you have a lovely new placemat for your (or someone else’s) table.

This kind of weaving can be done with straight edges for a more traditionally patchwork look.

Decide beforehand what kind of surface stitching best matches the fabrics and results you want. They can be contrasting colours or ones that blend in, or both. They can be random or follow a deliberate pattern. The patterns can be angular, squared-off or wavy. Use plain or decorative, zig-zag or straight, single or double stitching.

This table cover was also made using this technique —but taken to extremes. The fabrics are swatches from decorating sample books. They were cut into random slits, woven in random directions, over-stitched and sometimes re-cut into strips and re-woven. The table base that this was designed to cover has curved sides and front and this technique worked beautifully to be able to mold it to the precise shape needed.

This is rather old and has been washed several times. The fraying, raw edges are more pronounced, but the whole piece is quite sturdy.

Another fun alternative is to cut slits in the middle of a piece of cloth, weave other fabrics into it and over stitch the whole thing. Here’s a more delicate “shabby chic” pillow top that uses this technique. This pillow was one I had purchased years ago. The front was made from old linen and lace. The linen fell to pieces a while back, but the lace and structure of the pillow was intact. To refurbish it, I cut slits in the white lining and wove in strips from old handkerchiefs. These were then top stitched extensively.

In addition to the weaving, other bits of fabric can be appliqued to the surface design. As long as your raw edges are securely stitched, it will hold up well.

This small lap quilt I made for my niece, emily, shows this technique as well as the interspersed woven sections. I divided the whole cloth of the floral background fabric into thirteen squares (3 rows of 3, 2 rows of 2). Strips were cut into those areas and then interwoven with other floral fabrics and top stitched to secure all fabrics. Appliques of additional fabrics were also added and surface stitched.

Raw edge collage is also wonderful for representation or impressionist fiber art as well. Here is one from fiber artist, Suze Corte. It’s titled, Coming Apart at the Seams and uses vintage quilt scraps, fabric, buttons, lace, threads and a shard from a china dish—all with raw edge technique.

© 93-07 suze corte, all rights reserved

Stayed tuned! We’re going to be showing you more of this kind of fabric collage work in the months to come.

For more instruction in all these techniques, you might be interested in
On the Surface, by Wendy Hill.

[-essay, process-]

The space in our minds is often more cluttered than our studio space. Here’s an article that may help unclutter yours.

by Suze Corte

Here’s the way I work.

I’m not saying it’s efficient or even evolved; it’s just what comes naturally. For me there are two kinds of goals: the practical, everyday type and the creative ones. When I set a practical goal like having the house clean by Friday, I go about it directly and stay with it until I finish. True, I may procrastinate until Thursday night but still, I can plan exactly how to go about the task, how much time it will take, and what the final result will look and feel like.

Not so with creative goals.

When I dream up something I want to accomplish creatively, I invariably begin somewhere in the middle and work towards both “ends”the start and the finish. I remember doing this with a newsletter I was asked to create. The content included children’s art and writing, so the style, I felt, needed to be free flowing, surprising, and playful. Since it was a four-page newsletter, I had plenty of space to express myself. I began working on the project by brainstorming. I jotted down ideas for a while, then switched to playing with type styles, and soon found myself sorting through drawings and stories. I hit on an idea to use an appealing child’s drawing of a bee and repeat it, buzzing through the issue to highlight different articles. I tried it, liked it, but decided to set it aside in case I thought of something even better later on!

The process went on in this manner—somewhat like a bee flitting from one flower to another—until the newsletter began to take shape and make sense conceptually and visually. I eventually got around to designing a logo that fit the style, but I found that I needed to lay out a lot of the content before I knew what the “beginning” of the newsletter looked like. The point is, the final result was not something I originally foresaw from top to bottom. I had started with some basic space and size requirements and vague conceptual notions, but no concrete vision of the end product. Quite characteristically, I didn’t head out towards this creative goal on a smooth linear route. To the contrary, I weaved, spun around curves, backed up, switched around, and regained forward movement by fits and spits. Despite the path I took—or maybe because of it—the newsletter turned out to be delightful, inspiring to readers, and visually pleasing. And I felt fulfilled creatively, as if a puzzle had been solved and a mystery revealed. It was great fun!

Sometimes, of course, creative goals are not geared towards this kind of progress to their final destination. For me these are often the ones where I not only begin the journey in the middle of the road, but also complicate my life even further by nebulously approaching as if it were a circle, with no beginning or end, something like a traffic roundabout with options shooting off in many different directions. I don’t do this to confuse or frustrate myself; I find that it just happens as a matter of course with some impending creative quests. These are the projects that tend to get set aside until some future time when other ideas emerge that will send my thinking in a more fruitful direction. And let’s face it, some projects don’t deserve to be finished and are meant to be perpetually stalled.

I often put off creative pursuits by telling myself that I am working on them when really I am just cleaning the work table. I know a lot about procrastination, having developed my skills to master status. Gathering supplies is another nice technique for avoiding actual creative work: you look busy and you are, in fact, dealing with the tools of the trade, and so it is a great trick for pretending to be in the actual process of producing something. However, there are times when even these ruses turn towards the light and become useful. Sometimes while playing like I’m cleaning my studio, a glinting object will catch my eye, and like a magpie, I start to gather goodies and fill my creative mind with interesting bits and pieces, thought and ideas, connections and relationships that work.

In the course of writing this article—which, by the way, was only a vague concept in the narrow recesses of my mind about an hour ago—I have rediscovered a great two-part truth about my way of working towards and reaching creative goals: it doesn’t matter how I get there as long as I get there AND I must give myself permission to honor whatever path I take. There is no one right way to go and there is no reason to feel like there’s suddenly a Wrong Turn sign in my way when I choose to select a meandering path to my creative goal. This has all been very therapeutic for me, and now I will go create something. Or not. Or not now-ish.

My studio table is a mess.

words and images © 2005 - 2007 Suze Corte; all rights reserved

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly; theme: space and spaces

Suze Corte is a writer, artist and pre-school teacher in Houston, Texas. In 2007, she was chosen as be the Houston Area Association of Educator’s of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year and the Texas Association of Educators of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year. Congratulations, Suze! It is a well-deserved recognition.

[-practically mperfect-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche said that and I - with quite a bit of creative chaos in my life - completely understand what he means. Chaos - if we tone it down to a buzz of unrestrained energetic activity - can be an inspirational muse. However, chaos is hardly the only thing we need for creativity.

Creative chaos will not get a zine out - on time or otherwise. “Quarterly” doesn’t mean much to the chaos swirling in one’s soul. Chaos doesn’t know a single thing about html or how to put in a link that works. And chaos can’t write an essay for anything in the world.

Chaos does not keep up the blog entries.

Chaos cannot re-write a novel.

For those things and more, you need another “c” word; a word with a lot less magic, a lot less pizzazz, a lot less playfulness. You need consistency. This, folks, is the practical side of being practically creative. And it - or the want of it - comes up frequently for me.

Like all creatively conscious people, I adore those brilliant flashes of creativity when disparate ideas and materials come together in a new and exciting way. This stimulates and energizes and feeds on itself. So, if I occasionally feel those brilliant flashes, why worry about something as dull as consistency? Because not only does consistency accomplish tasks that chaotic creativity can’t, it also feels good to accomplish daily goals. Chaos cannot accomplish long-term, complicated projects. It takes consistency. It takes showing up for work, day after day.

For about a month after the first issue of the year came out, I was “showing up” to the Practically Creative blog most days. It was fun and creatively stimulating for me and, I believe, for others. I had plenty of gloriously creative raw material thanks to the Practically Creative flickr group. It didn’t take much time and I always felt better after doing them. It’s similar to the way I feel physically after exercising. Often I resist, but I always feel better when I do it. With the blog-roll I was on in February and early March, there was no reason for me to think that I couldn’t continue doing consistent daily blog entries forever. No reason except self-knowledge and experience. By now, I know myself pretty well.

Chaos and consistency don’t easily coexist. In my life and I think, the lives of many artistically creative people, chaos more often than not bests consistency in hand-to-hand, day-to-day combat. Even if we just call it moodiness, it’s enough to get us off track. So what can we do about it? We need both ‘creative chaos’ and consistency and they are close to being mutually exclusive!

We have to do what it says at the top of this article. We have to learn to accept our shortcomings. Consistency isn’t a parlour trick like a white rabbit conjured out of a hat. If it’s not in us as a natural attribute, then we have to practice acceptance, but we also have to foster more functional habits. It is a balancing act - think tightrope walker’s skill rather than a magician’s trick - to accept who we are. To embrace the strong parts of ourselves, those parts that are capable of giving “birth to a dancing star” while also repeatedly disciplining ourselves to show up so we can finish and bring our creative projects to the world.

Getting down on ourselves because we fail only gets in our way. The goal is not perfection. It is progress. Guilt and self-hatred come from that perfectionist thinking and will keep us from showing up tomorrow if we let it. Only a balance of self-awareness and the steady goal of making ourselves better at consistency will help us achieve a finished product.

Writer, Stephen Nachmanovitch said this about creativity:

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.

We will, more often than not, miss that brilliant flashpoint if we haven’t shown up for the work. That’s consistency. We have to work when we aren’t inspired. We have to work even when we feel uncreative. We have to do it when it isn’t intuitive. The experience of it being “play” instead of “work” will follow from that consistent effort.

Whether or not we finish our creative projects - whether, for instance, my novels get re-written or my blog gets an entry today - isn’t going to make a difference in anyone else’s life, but it will in our own. Even if consistency isn’t our strongest trait let’s vow to continue working on the habit of showing up everyday.

Maybe today there will be a brilliant flash and, just maybe, that star will dance.

Originally published in the July 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly
© 2006 - 2007 all rights reserved

[-essay, practically mperfect-]

by guest contributor, Karen Hatzigeorgiou

Are you one of those types of people who always has several different projects going at the same time? I know I am. Right now I have five unfinished altered books and four collages in varying stages of completion. I’m in the middle of reading two different books and two different magazines. I have two different journals — one in a little moleskin book I keep in my purse and another composition notebook that I keep by my bed. I’ve been trying to clean up my office-slash-studio (a never ending battle similar to trying to keep up with the laundry,) but am also in the middle of painting and redecorating my youngest son’s bedroom. I’m sure I’ll get most of what I’ve started completed someday, but if I don’t– so what?

Now I’m not saying that it’s okay to not meet a deadline or to leave my son sleeping in the living room indefinitely. I’m just saying that simply because I didn’t finish that embroidery of a unicorn that’s still in my sewing box from fifteen years ago doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person. But it’s taken me a while to come to that realization. And one of the things that helped me realize that unfinished projects don’t equal failure was when I read the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb.

This book is about being a creative thinker in the way that Leonardo da Vinci was. But what impressed me the most as I read about da Vinci’s life was discovering the number of projects that da Vinci never completed.

Consider the following: First of all, da Vinci’s journal shows elaborate plans to create the bronze statue of his idea of a perfect horse– a statue that was never made. He also did a series of sketches for a commissioned painting that he never painted. In addition, because da Vinci couldn’t bring himself to paint the face of Jesus Christ, he was never able to finish painting his great masterpiece The Last Supper. And amazingly, of the seventeen paintings of da Vinci’s still in existence, a number of them are also incomplete.

Yet despite all this unfinished work, we still consider Leonardo da Vinci to be a man of genius. He was the original “Renaissance Man,” a person whose incredible imagination and creativity spanned a broad range of disciplines such as engineering, architecture, art, and science, to name just a few.

As it turns out, I have a lot in common with Mr. da Vinci, and I’m sure that you do as well. Consider the incredible imagination and creativity we need to handle the broad range of disciplines such as child rearing, culinary arts, domestic engineering, personal management, and psychology (just to name a few) that many of us are expected to be proficient in. Not to mention the artistic talents we seek to nurture.

I find it reassuring to see the similarities between this great man’s life and my own and to know that he left many unfinished projects scattered across France and Italy. No one considers da Vinci’s life to have been a “failure.” No one consider his unfinished works to be “failures” because they were left undone. They were all valuable attempts to create a meaningful life. And they certainly didn’t stop da Vinci from his quest to find truth and beauty in the world around him, much as you and I do everyday.

So it’s time that we stop berating ourselves for starting Project B before we’ve finished Project A, or for feeling guilty for buying supplies for both tole painting and card making. And when we’re torn between cutting and pasting one more image down on that collage or putting in another load into the washing machine, we need to remember Leonardo da Vinci. Let’s look in the mirror, honor all our efforts to find truth and beauty in the world, and reward ourselves with our very own Mona Lisa smile.

© 2005-2007 - Karen Hatzigeorgiou - all rights reserved

See Karen’s tutorial in The PCQ about her beautiful Altered Books.

About the Author: Karen Hatzigeorgiou is a wife, mother, seventh grade English teacher, and an artist and writer. This is a revision of an earlier article. You can see her art work, find tips and techniques for creating your own art, and read more of her musings at her web site at karenswhimsy.com.
You can email her at karen@karenswhimsy.com. Thanks, Karen!

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: Space and Spaces