Creative Play Newsletter – What is the Muse Asking of You?
There are moments in the creativity journey when we seek inspiration—when we brainstorm, pin ideas, and wait for the spark. And then there are moments when the Muse arrives uninvited, tapping us on the shoulder with a message we never expected to carry. The idea for the Victims Quilt Project …
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Creating What I Love: The Joy of Making for Myself
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between making art for external reasons—shows, sales, expectations—and making art simply because I love it. As much as I believe in the value of creating for joy’s sake, I still catch myself falling into the trap of shoulds: I should work …
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Creative Play Newsletter-Creating in Tough Times
In my last newsletter, I told you about a series of work that I called my “Accidental Protest” series that I began in January of 2017. It wasn’t planned—I hadn’t set out to create “serious” pieces with strong social justice messages outside of my Victims Quilt Project. But as the …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Art and Politics
Politics. Don’t stop reading! I promise this newsletter will not veer into policy debates or end with a fundraising request. Instead, I am thinking this month about the ways politics and elections have often inspired creativity. Our current Presidential election is certainly inspiring some impressive TikTok videos, but long before …
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Latest in the Cyanotypes Series
Cyanotype work continued this week with this 5×7 piece. I cut this section out of a larger cyanotype on fabric that looked just like a big mass of blooms since this was the section with the most definition. It got some background quilting to emphasize the flower images a little …
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Cyanotypes Series – Ferns
Working on my cyanotypes series continued this week, albeit without any sewing at all. These two pieces are cyanotypes I made over the summer. I decided that they were great on their own without any stitched embellishment so I stretched them over canvases and called them done. Are you wondering …
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Cyanotypes Series Continues
I have continued moving forward this week, adding another piece to my Botanica 2 cyanotypes series. I gave this maidenhair fern a very simple treatment with just some outline quilting to emphasize the leaves. I even left the rough edges of the fabric as is because it had an irregular …
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Cyanotypes Series – 3 Maples
My re-energized cyanotypes series is off to a good start. I dug into my box and started pulling out small pieces to work on, starting with these maple leaves. They were pretty perfect as they were so they just got some background stitching to make them pop just a little …
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Here Comes the Sun…to the Shop!
Now available in the online shop – “Here Comes the Sun,” a quilted cyanotype. This quilt is an original cyanotype (sun print) of a late summer Berkshire bloom on cotton fabric. It’s hand quilted with variegated blue thread, radiating out from the center.
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Stone Eden Starry Night
This is a piece that has been in my mind since I was a teenager and envisioned as a quilt since I first started quilting in my 20s. It just took a few decades to be able to do it. This quilt began with a photo I took one morning …
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