Creative Life Sampler

A List of Contrasts Whether one works with paint, words, musical notes, clay, fabric, or any other medium, creatives are always looking for new ways to generate ideas for their work. It doesn't matter if you are brainstorming for a project you have been given or one that you have set for yourself, most artists, craftspeople, musicians, poets, authors want to push beyond the obvious solution for the challenge at hand. We all work to come up with something that is different, original. Back when I was generating ideas for illustrations, I began a list of contrasts and kept it close at hand. I thought of it as my own personal nudge to think "outside the box."  It started with simple opposites; at the top of the list is right/left, back/front, light/dark. This enabled me to look critically at the image I was creating. Sometimes it served as a reminder to consider both of these qualities, for instance, the light and shadows that provided the light/dark contrast in the image. A

This shawl was created in 2014 with a pattern from knitsimple: 33 knit Shawls by SoHo Publishing Co. It's a collection that ranks the projects on complexity with a scale of 1 to 4, which means that with one book the beginner can progress through each project and eventually tackle the "experienced" category. The advantage of knitting shawls is there are no complicated edges, like the armholes or neck edging of a garment, to navigate. The simplicity of the shawl shape focuses your attention on the pattern itself, (and sometimes it requires a lot of attention to get lacy patterns right.) It's been a while since I've posted a knitting project. So, as I was collecting my thoughts to write, I googled quotes on knitting for a little inspiration and ran across this one from writer/knitter  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee : Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be is almost spiritual.  Gears started turning and I rem

  Some time ago I ran across the work of Yoko Saito in her book House Warming Patch Work and put it on my inspiration list for things I want to try. So, when our quilt guild gave us the challenge to create an architecture inspired quilt in a month, I was excited to put all other projects aside to use her "basic house" and "basic tree" blocks in a small project.  The house and tree are pieced but the little heart is machine appliquéd. Embroidery floss was used to add texture to the background with echo quilting that follows the contours of the subjects and outlines the text boxes. The text was borrowed from a needlepoint given to me many years ago and was also embroidered with three strands of floss so it would stand out. This relatively quick project was quite satisfying. Working on a smaller scale was a great break from the focus required by the larger projects I usually work on. In fact, many quilters use this smaller format for a test run before starting on a fu

Linen Closet- Insect Themed Baby quilt If you spend any time in a fabric store you know there are shelves and entire rows dedicated to novelty print fabrics. You could find a fabric with just about any favorite team, character, animal, object, the list goes on and on. Somewhere along the line an inventive quilter came up with a cute way to use these fabrics for a themed quilt... I do not take credit for this idea, but I did borrow it for this insect inspired crib quilt about ten years ago.    This is a very simple pattern; the jars are rectangles cut at the corners with a right triangle of the background fabric. It is topped with a horizontal rectangle that has a square of background fabric on either end for the lid. That's the block.   Now that I look at it, it seems to me that the blue jars are the most effective because they look like they're made of glass that has distorted the blue of the background. I chose a consistent spacing for the sashing- the lengths of fabric betwe