You Have To Blame Someone: Dammit Dolls

Dammit Dolls

It’s been a tough week. I’m a machine down and my right knee isn’t working. So I’ve been working on that small blue and white moonlight piece with moths and fireflies. Which means lots of fireflies and tiny moths.

Sewing the body

But my week didn’t really top the charts. I have a friend having a triple bypass next week. I know she’s scared out of her mind. I also know I’m too far away to do very much. So I’m making her a Dammit Doll.

Her friend suggested I make clothes for her. It’s a nice thought, but I’m not really a sewer. And it will cost more than buying clothes. I told her friend that I had gone to the Omar the Tentmaker school of fashion design. My speciallty at moments like this is something silly.

Embroidering the face

I don’t care how much your doctors care, and how kind the staff is. Surgery sucks. Seriously. So there will inevitably be alot to be upset about. All that energy has to go somewhere. So you can take your Dammit Doll, wack it on any surface near by and speak the time honored chant: “Dammit, Dammit, Dammit.” Those of us with a more Shakesperian eduction may be able to elaborate on that.

Pearl cotton hair

It’s true. The feelings need to go somewhere. There’re not a lot of ways to express that in the hospital. It’s adrenaline from being surgically attacked and the inabilty to move for the same reason. It shakes down badly without a way to express it all.

I’d say I could use one myself, but it’s enough to make them. And they need silly hair which is half the fun. I’ve made two so that her caretaker can have one as well.

In the end you have to blame someone and there’s no one to blame. So it’s San Andrea’s fault and a place to dump all the anger, fear, and pain that goes with surgery. An act of serious silliness.

Contemplating Cacti

Remember when I said I needed to calm down the mockingbird quilt I’ve been working on? The background was pretty wild. I don’t quite know what to do with deserts. so I don’t know when I’ve gone over the top.

But I do know how to put out a visual firestorm. You go for the complementary color. The eye gets excited by all that contrast, but it cools off all that flaming color blaze.

With all that red, the complement is green. Which means cactus.

I’m not a cactus person. I’m not a desert person. So I’ve spent a week looking at pictures and identifying how I want to make cactus. It’s all about the texture, so it’s all about the stitchery, which means it’s all about the angle of the stitch.

We’ve talked about stitch angles a lot. The Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book has an explanation of that you might find helpful. Moving straight through the machine gets us a hard thick line. Moving out from side to side creates shading. Moving through with an angle gets us a curved line. Here is a link to the blog about Zigzag Stitching.

Straight stitching in spirals creates textures on paddle cactus. The outside is shaded with an outline on the angle, stitching side to side to shade, and some straight-through smoothing.

I used a spikey shading headed upwards to give the feel of rough texture, and used straight stitch for the spines.

Straight garnet stitch finishes off the edges of the holes in the cactus. See last week’s blog , Making Holes: New Contonstuctions.

Of course the colors of cactus flowers come into the world of color as an antipressant. Which is a good thing for the raw edge of spring.

I don’t have it quite arranged yet. But I’ve got a bevy of cactus to make the desert bloom. Next stop, sand.

Don Has A New Book!

I’m delighted to introduce you to Don’s 5th book in his According To His Purpose series, The Substance of Things Hoped For.

I maintain that art is life and life is an art. It’s true this week for sure. Forgive me for not having an art blog for you this week. A plumbing incident and an uncooperative leg have pulled me out of the studio for most of the week. The leg is slowly healing. The plumbing is easier to fix but much more likely to be moldy. But on the upside, Don’s book is available on Amazon in Kindle form, soon to be in paper print.

Don came to writing later than most At 57 he began his series that enlivens the Galesburg of the 20s. His viewpoint reflects his faith, but also creates an alternative historic view. He pulls things out of Galesburg’s past, but offers his characters ways to change how their lives in the real world worked out. He offers a knowledge of Galesburg, IL, a gentle world, and a Christian perspective. He also writes a good romance,

Why do we write? I would maintain it’s how we retell our stories. When we retell our stories, we can put things right, make things make sense, hope for something better, and plant the seeds of that. I believe Don is doing that as well. He’s having way too much fun to stop. I am so proud for him!

The Substance of Things Hoped For is a walk through a Galesburg that never quite existed, but should have.

You’ll find it for sale at Amazon. You’ll find more information on his Series, According to His Purpose on Amazon

Where Does the Art Come From: Feeding Your Eye

Books currently on the desk

This has been a counter-productive week. My leg went out ( still not sure why), and I’ve had some low-grade flu. So my studio work didn’t happen. Instead, I worked a bit in my library.

When I married Don and moved, I stripped my library down. I have several libraries. One is for personal information and entertainment. Small kitchen library. And a pile of art books. Somehow that has continued to grow.

Where does our art come from? We’d like everything to be completely out of ourselves. I’m not sure that’s possible.

We have several illusions about art. We’d like to believe all art is original. But it’s not. Art comes from our response to other images. All art is in some way derivative. Different pieces of art hold a conversation over time. Art changes how other art is made.

We are told only artists are artists. That’s just wrong. Art is not unique to artists. It’s a part of our genome. It’s the ability to view our world differently. In our view of the world, we begin to change our world. when we work with those images, we change ourselves, and that changes the world. Just a little bit. It’s the creation of sense, beauty, and order. We have to silence the voice that says we are not artists. Because it’s the voice that tells us we can’t. Because it strips us of power that has always been our own.

So how do we kick start art? We need to feed our eyes and refuse to hamstring ourselves. What our senses bring gives us all kinds of inspiration.

But back to art being derivative: We work with the images that set us on fire, move our inners, pop out our own eyes or perhaps someone else’s. And there is never any reference like a book. The zoo is closed. The science program moves too fast. The web pictures are tiny. Your own library is a wide world portal that never closes; Not even at three am.

So I look for books with enough animal pictures to know how many toes a frog has and what angle the leg is at. I look for landscape books, garden books. pet books, pictorial archives, amazing art artists, and how-to techniques. And beautiful kid books.

I love my library. It fills my eyes. it fills my head. It fills my life.

I jus made myself bookplates for the Galesburg address. This is sneaky. I get to open every book, if nothing else but to put the plate in.

Take your inspiration where you find it, but build up inspiration where it waits for you, like treasure in heaven.

Health Update: Serious Wait and See

I saw my new cardiologist yesterday. Nothing has really changed. I still have a moderate leaky valve. I still have an aneurysm. I still have a blocked artery.

But none of them are actively causing me pain or difficulty. None of them are acute or active. They’re just there. And they’re not quite bad enough for surgery.

So for the moment, I’m off the hook. They’ll monitor. I shouldn’t lift anything heavy or strain, or lean over very much. That’s a very moderate group of limits, considering. I’m afraid I can’t help anyone move at this time.

Is it coming someday? Inevitably, I suppose. But not today. Today we make quilts!

And a Dutch baby for breakfast.

Thank you for your care, your prayers, your concern and your love. You’ve always held me up. I hope I can always do that for you in return.

When does It Change? When Does the Art Start?

I spent yesterday in a whirlwind of classroom at the Peoria Art Guild. The Guild supports a number of artists in so many ways. But one of the things they do each year is give a handful of teens an art immersion experience, with all kinds of working art and artists.

It was a privilege. It made me wonder. These kids are 14-17, maybe. But they’re already there. They know they’re doing art and they are unabashed about it. And what they could learn in technique is more than made up for by their passion, their courage, and their already formed vision. They spent 5 hours building images in sheers and hand dye. That may have been new to them. But the creative spark is something they are already solidly committed to. It was a delight to see them work. I’ll be back in two weeks and we’ll do the stitching part of it.

When does that switch happen? I run into a lot of people who tell me they aren’t artists. Usually, that’s because they’re more verbal than visual. If you talk with them they can explain their images and the concepts in a way that brims with art.

Perhaps the problem is how do we define art?. If it has to be set in a mold, like figure drawing, or landscapes, that’s a pretty big limit on a much wider world.

But if art is, vision out of chaos., order out of disaster, and the creation of beauty and sense in the retelling of ourselves., that may be where my definition hovers. Art is life. The way we live creates our own beauty, our own songs, soothes our worst fears, and helps us to see ourselves in a different mirror that focuses on our strengths and beauty, instead of our failures and misgivings.

Art simply flows out of that. The things we produce our wonderful. But they are largely the byproduct of the process of restructuring who we are through our imagery. These kids already have it. I believe we all do, from birth.

The Peoria Art Guild is a haven for artists and people who love and live art. You’ll find it at

203 Harrison St,

Peoria, IL, 61602,

Monday – Friday: 9 am – 4:30 pm

Saturday: 9 am- 2 pm

Sunday CLOSED

How Do You Measure an Artist?

This has been a tough week. I couldn’t get in to the studio regularly. My cardiac surgeon called to tell me he’s leaving his practice, and referring me to another doctor. And I had a friend die.

Trish Williams was an excellent fiber artist, a skilled quilter, and an astonishing story teller. She covered the black experience in her quilts in a way that drew you in and held you there, helped you to understand what had happened and how it felt. I was privileged to know her through Dana Baldwin and through the Peoria Art Guild. She died this week. I will never forget her work. I will never forget her.

What do we leave behind as artists? We leave a pile of art behind. Pictures, photos, quilts, it really doesn’t matter what the media is. You might think bei ng an artist is about artwork. I don’t really think it is. I think it’s about expressing what we see, our vision. We take what we see, we work with the images to retell our stories, to reinvent ourselves. And as we reinvent ourselves, sometimes, if you’re lucky, good or wise, sometimes we shift the world.

We also collect skills. Build new technology. Recover old technology. Open new doors. Pry open old ones gone and past. Take our own journies. Help eachother on their ways. Pass on what we know, about art, about stories about life. But it’s all in the end, a retelling of who we are, what we’ve seen and what we need.The artwork is a byproduct from the process.

Trish did all of that. You can see some of her magnificent work on her blog at https://trishwilliamshandworks.blogspot.com/. I figure God will put her in charge of directing sunsets, and I look forward to seeing her work.

merry Christmas! Health Update. What I get for Christmas is a stent.

Christmas this year is like a hurricane eye. It’s a spot of calm in the middle of chaos.

Don and I went to mass last night. We’ve been away a while, partially because of the knee surgeries and partially because of covid. And after that, inertia. It occurred to me that Christmas Eve is the time for what we wait for. The time things longed for finally arrive. Christ is Emmanuel, evident. Our waiting for the time of salvation is at hand. It’s here now.

I think what we’re really waiting for in some way, is the light to come back and the darkness to lift.

Tomorrow I get my stent. It’s the first of several procedures, Later they’ll fix my wonky valve and aneurysm. We’ve waiting for this for a while, through the medical procedural channels, which do grind slowly. With all good luck, they’ll send me home by evening, with the blockage resolved. One bomb out of three. Hey, the odds get better as we go along.

So after all that waiting, salvation is at hand. And I am past grateful to be offered a life longer than my parents, with options they never had.

I hope the people and things you wait for are there for you, at the right time where you can find them, I hope you find joy in the unexpected places as well as the ones we normally rely on. I hope you find answers and help that get you through the dark.  I hope you make things that astonish you. I hope you have all the love to hold you in the light. Most importantly, I hope we all get the holy sacred happy nappy this afternoon.

Bless you all through your holidays! Say a prayer or think a good thought if you can..

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a Thousand Cranes: Some Thoughts about busyness, Waiting and changing Our Stories

There is a legend that if you fold a thousand cranes, it will change you. Your pain will be relieved. Your luck will change. This repetitive action will change your life.

I had a visitor to the studio remark that there were a lot of processes in each quilt I made. There are. Dyed fabric, oil paint stick rubbing, painted sheers, dyed cheesecloth, free motion applique, direct sheer applique, and then we quilt.

That does represent a lot of busyness on my part. I like the complexity. I want a piece to be exciting when you see it from a distance and exciting if you are inches away from it.

With that said, there is a lot of donkey work. Yesterday, I cut rocks. I use the leftover pieces of fabric that are rock colored and cut them into rocks of several different sizes, waiting for the right quilt. Repetitive. So much of art is. A lot of art is creating a surface, a color, a shape, a texture that makes the piece something splendiferous. That takes a lot of repetition.

I have a price list where I document quilts by size, when they were finished and given a number. The latest quilt is numbered 1125-23, which means it’s the 1,125th quilt made since 1987. I’m going to claim them as my 1,000 cranes. What I’ve learned from 1,125 quilts is that the action of creating something over and over in different ways does change us. Art changes us because it helps us tell our stories in a different light and see ourselves in a different way. But we come to that by a series of actions that seem to be the same thing over and over. If we want the benefit of change and regeneration, it takes a sustained effort. In the Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis said we were not capable of any sustained action, only of the undulation towards a goal.  According to Screwtape, Undulation is the repeated return to a level from which we repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. God relies more on troughs because it makes us rely on God.

Art is a holy process. It’s a place of honesty, effort, and repetitive actions in hopes of reaching the peaks despite the troughs. What I have learned from 50 years of quilting is that the troughs simply have to be waded through like mud, with the actions over and over again that create our art and ourselves.

Tuesday, I’m going into the hospital to have a stent put in to fix my blockage. I have good hopes, but I can’t say I’m not nervous. But the waiting and the work on my quilts has soothed that some. It’s an office procedure. I expect to be home the same night.

So I do what I do when I’m nervous. Or happy. Or sad. Or confused. I make more quilts.