Since our return from Spain I haven’t [...]]]> or trying to. I suppose there are two things that are currently competing for my attention apart from my day time job. One is our intended move to Spain and the other is my trying to get more focussed on my textile art. Both are related to each other.

Since our return from Spain I haven’t felt like getting into the studio at all. We still have lots of decisions to make about the new house and all my free time has gone into activities around that, when I’ve had any energy at all. We are trying to downsize although not drastically, but we still want room for our hobbies and interests. We will be sharing one big room as an office and studio. The other rooms will be smaller than in our present home too. We’ve spent some time trying to imagine how the house should be furnished, which pieces of furniture should go with us and which be replaced. It’s not easy. I can understand why they say moving house is one of the biggest stress factors one can have in one’s life.

What’s the connection with textile art you ask? Well although Sqeze is now in early retirement, I am not. Being freelance my work depends on my contacts and they are all in Germany. However when the house in Spain is finished I should like to be able to live there too. So what would be nice would be to earn some money somehow with my textile art. Just how this should happen needs some thought putting to it – another task on my to do list.

And then come all the little voices that tell you you are mad and it won’t work and ask why I am having a studio built into the house when I can’t even get my act together to use the one I have here. And the competition entry I was going to make for the 16th Carrefour Européan du Patchwork in France has not left the ideas stage and just won’t get made in time now. And then it feels like time to pull the covers over your head.

I did however order the book Living the Creative Life by Rice Freeman-Zachery and when it arrived I got stuck into it. Although it hasn’t got me back into the studio it has got me thinking. One thing it confirmed is that you aren’t going to get rich making art. You either need some other source of income or a rich partner. So some more thought required there too. I also learnt (again – as Twyla Tharp says the same in her book The Creative Habit that I have read too) that you must do something creative every day. Even when you have no good ideas and no inspiration, just make a start, just do something.

At the same time I was trying to give some thought to colour schemes for our new house. A bit premature I know as we’ve not even got a completed set of plans yet, but I thought it was something creative and useful I could be doing. I was flipping through books at the bookshop on Interior Decorating, when one called Simplicity caught my eye. The style of rooms didn’t appeal much, but the colour schemes did.

Back home I went into my usual research mode and searched the internet. The website Zen Habits popped up. First of all with this interesting post on the Four Laws of Simplicity. This was a very timely post to read, because we really have got too much stuff in our present home and will need to get it pared down to fit into our new home. The idea was so simple and appealing that I took the time to browse through the site and came across some other posts that gave me more food for thought in my ponderings.

These posts are so good I thought I’d share them here:
The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People – I certainly find myself wanting some solitude away from the bustle and hustle of daily life, not just to get creative, but to find time to relax and think. I often think my ideal holiday would be to stay in a little house near a beach and take long walks by the sea. No television, no distractions just good books, good company, good food and peace and quiet.

The Little But Really Useful Guide to Creativity – More good advice here, some of which also turned up in the Living the Creative Life book. Just getting started and taking small steps appealed to me.

Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump – This one came as a timely reminder for me, most relevant was the advice to concentrate on one goal. I have a tendency to get involved in too much. I was trying to learn Spanish, take piano lessons and take my textile art seriously, all alongside a full time day time job not so long ago. Something had to go and it was the piano lessons then. Now I realise that I am seriously in danger of doing too much again. So I’ve dropped the idea of entering the competition in France. It’s not the right time for me this year. (Pity though because I liked the theme and thought I had a good idea – might still make the quilt but not in a hurry and not to a deadline – just taking a few small steps at a time.)

I’m not finished in my cogitations yet, but I am feeling more positive towards the changes going on in my life right now. The panic has subsided, as I knew it would, but couldn’t quite believe it to be true. No-one likes change and the first reaction is to resist. Me too but I think I’ve taken my first small steps to accepting it, thinking positively. We are on the road to simplifying our lives and I hope that will give me more time to be creative. Take it from there. Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

This was my first attempt – a bit wobbly.

The second [...]]]> I have decided what to do about the quilting on my hexagon spiral. I’ve collected lots of neat quotes about colours and am going to quilt them onto the quilt. It’s not something that I’ve done before so I thought I’d better get some practice in first.

This was my first attempt – a bit wobbly.

The second attempt was better. I fished out my quilting gloves and reread the advice in Heirloom Machine Quilting by Harriet Hargrave. She recommends trying quilting barefoot. It was a bit cold for that, so I left my socks on It does seem to make a difference though. I also upped the machine speed a bit.

I wasn’t very happy with the Rs though, especially at the end of words. I couldn’t figure a neat way of joining up to the next word without having great loops in between. Back to the internet and more research on handwriting styles. I changed to using cursive script because it always takes the letters back down to the baseline (with a few exceptions such as v and w). After a bit of practice with pencil and paper and tracing over the letters on school worksheets (!) I did some more practice quilting. This time on curved guidelines because I want to quilt along the spirals on the quilt. You can see I wasn’t as focussed today – I got some of the quotes wrong. I’ve been feeling a bit spaced out all day. I did remember to cross all the Ts though, which I didn’t on the previous samples.

I think the Rs are a big improvement. I changed to using cursive Ss too.

You can see on the last image I’ve changed how I am marking the guidelines too. I didn’t want to have to wash the quilt after I’ve finished all the quilting so using pencil lines or some other kind of marker pen wasn’t an option. I’ve used my dressmaker’s tracing wheel to imprint the guidelines onto the quilt sandwich. I don’t possess a Hera marker, which is the official way of doing it. I think you could use the blunt side of a knife too. I wouldn’t recommend marking up too much at once though, since I don’t think the lines would remain visible for too long if you have to scrunch the quilt up to get it under the harp of your machine.

I just bought myself a sketchbook. Up to now for my C&G course I have just been using a spiral bound pad of paper for my course work. The new sketchbook said it was a sketchbook and told me the weight of the paper. I [...]]]> Well not in the books that I read about keeping sketchbooks anyway.

I just bought myself a sketchbook. Up to now for my C&G course I have just been using a spiral bound pad of paper for my course work. The new sketchbook said it was a sketchbook and told me the weight of the paper. I chose an A3 size because I quite like to work big. This weekend I was putting on a colour wash using acrylic paint when the pages started going all crumply

Seems like you are supposed to know that sketchbooks are only for use with dry medium like pencils and biros and charcoal sticks and such like. Well I didn’t. Since I had been looking at illustrations of sketchbooks, which had been used for watercolour sketching, the thought never crossed my mind that I needed special paper for wet stuff. I then got out the catalogue and looked at the information there. Almost all the sketchbooks say only suitable for dry medium. Pity that information wasn’t on display in the shop or on the sketchbooks themselves.

I’ve abandoned my new sketchbook and am back to using my block, which says specifically that it is for acrylic paint and watercolours. It doesn’t have a pretty cover, but it does the job. Since one of the books I’ve been reading also said the content was more important that spending hours prettying things up, I’ve taken the advice to heart. Maybe I won’t get the award for the best sketchbook, but at least mine won’t be a disaster area.

These are the two books I’ve been reading:
Creating Sketchbooks for Embroiderers and Textile Artists by Kay Greenlees. This was a recommendation from Helen and I can definitely pass it on.
And this one I found on Amazon while looking at the other:
Artists’ Journal and Sketchbooks by Lynne Perrella

Kay Greenlees’ book is full of sensible information for those like me who have no idea what to put in a sketchbook. (Although she didn’t mention needing to watch what paper is used in your sketchbook.) Lynne Perrella’s book is more a treatment of the books as a piece of art in their own right but has some interesting examples that can get some ideas flowing.

The one on the left is from 1987 and has some interesting ideas for using different materials in appliqué such as cords, ribbons, beads and buttons. There are also ideas for ways of using [...]]]> I had a nice surprise today when the postman came. These two books arrived from my cousin Bernadette in the UK. Thank you!

The one on the left is from 1987 and has some interesting ideas for using different materials in appliqué such as cords, ribbons, beads and buttons. There are also ideas for ways of using the appliqué itself from lampshades to leather jackets.

The one of the right is from 1957 and is called “Werkliches Schaffen”, which is a wonderfully quaint title in German that I am having trouble translating. (Leo my favourite online dictionary had never heard of werklich!) It roughly translates as artistic creating. It covers all kinds of handcrafts from the usual knitting, crochet to leather work and pottery. According to the introduction it is aimed at girls, women and mothers (are they not women?), kindergarten teachers and teachers. They should not spend their free time sitting their hands in their laps but should develop a creative hobby.

Despite some rather old-fashioned and somewhat strange ideas –

for the non German speakers “This laundry bag is useful for storing dirty laundry not just in the household, but particularly for single girls” Why single them out? – it has lots of interesting and yes useful things to try out.

Here’s another quaint photo showing girls weaving tapes and ribbons.

I actually really like these old fashioned books. Despite the rather strange language and ideas they are usually full of techniques and handicrafts that are in danger of dying out and getting lost altogether. I have a few pamphlets that were my mothers with things like making shepherd’s smocks and some handicraft magazines from the 1960s from the next door neighbour to my parents.