En Route to San Diego

I'm glad I opted to get up an hour before the expected cab this morning because he showed up twenty minutes early (4:40am)!  Breakfast was a Boardroom muffin and a cup of coffee (did I forget to drink the coffee?  I think so..). 

My creativity these last couple of weeks has been pretty low.  Distractions from the studio were significant and consisted of co-hosting a baby shower and advancement on a parallel goal of decluttering.  I also admit I'm in that place where I don't have a clear idea of what I want to create next.  Step one:  write this post and admit my blockage!.  Step two:  look at other art.  Being on my way to Quilt Visions opening of "The Sky's the Limit", I should have plenty of oh wow moments, I just hope I can turn them into a direction.  Maybe visiting a museum or two will help. 

While this trip is ultimately about taking Carol Soderlund's dye class back at ProChem, that activity will be very process oriented.  When blocked from an idea or vision of what I want to do, I still like the crafting (is 'making' the new word?) and developing skills so I expect to be all fired up for more dying when I get home from Carol's workshop and will have oodles of useful fabric for AQT.  Warm colors are speaking to me.  I should listen.

I made a promise...

An outcome of taking Jane Dunnewold's "Artist Strength Training" workshop (which I highly recommend) is a personal commitment to three actions:  Schedule time for working in my studio, create one piece a week, and communicate.  I will use this blog as my primary tool for communication and the content will be what I make/do each week.  From past failures I've learned that I need to start with small commitments so I'm simply going to publish something weekly!  Ideally it should be about my art and there should be an audience, but for the near term I'm happy just to work on building a habit of blogging.

So, what did I do this week?  Well, I already took self-kudos for making [achievable] commitments.  I did spend time in my studio but I focused on completion rather than creation with a mundane task of attaching sleeves to a piece going into an exhibit in November, and the rather laborious task of quilting and binding three quilts as gifts.  I still enjoy the craft of making a functional quilt now and then, and I consider my designs part of my art so I'll let these represent my work for the month. 

The first is one I made as a birthday gift for our oldest daughter.  I put it in the TV-watching-huddle-on-the-sofa category.  I started with a top I made years ago and backed it with a new top I designed to be more contemporary and in the colors she's chosen for her living room. 



Original top, now the back

New Design for the top

The next two quilts were the outcome of a self-challenge to deliberately work down my stash in order to free up even a teeny bit of space.  While more conventional in construction and using commercial fabrics, I am happy with the outcomes and these will go to the brothers of my god-daughter. 



Marshal's Quilt

Zan's Quilt

And so ends week one of Post-AST!