Every morning when I leave the house and go to my studio, Freida follows me. Once out the door, she waits for me at the end of the driveway ( I always remind her “no street”) then we cross the road together and she sits for a treat as soon as we get into the studio. I take off my shoes, open the windows and turn on the computer. Freida either goes to her crate or lies down in front of the wood stove.

Throughout the day, as I work, she moves between these two spots. If the UPS man comes or someone walks by she’ll stand up and growl or bark, but rarely leaves this small area where she spends the day. When I put on my shoes to go outside, if she’s not already there, she goes into her crate. This is how Freida and I spend many of our days together. Other than going to the Vet, she rarely leaves the Farm.

But tonight Freida went to the Red Fox Book Store in Glens Falls. She sat next to Jon as he told her story and how he taught her how to live on Bedlam Farm. And now it seems she’s learned how to be in a bookstore surrounded by strangers. Although she may have been a bit nervous (or was that just me?) no one would have guessed she was once a dog who I didn’t trust around my closest friends.

I think a big part of tonight was about trust. Trusting Jon and trusting Freida and trusting myself enough to allow it to happen.

Twenty four potholders done, twenty to go.

This is the second year I’ve planted sunflowers outside my studio. This one, right next to my door, grew from one of the seeds that dropped from last year. I added some morning glory seeds in the spring, which are growing around the door and are just starting to flower. The giant leaf below the sunflower is dusted with yellow pollen. Maybe this happens with most plants, it’s just too small to see. All my fish are buried here,their small bodies decaying under the soil fertilizing the earth. It’s all part of the invisible world around us. So much happening that we are unaware of affecting us in way we many never know or just can’t understand.

I went into my studio today not knowing what I would be doing.  It’s been over a year since I’ve done that and today it was intentional.  I wanted to see what would happen without any specific plans to create.

I thought of sketching, but was thinking of color and pattern so I took my basket of scraps that I’ve been using for potholders and started randomly  sewing them together.   It was a mess and I let it be, thinking by letting go of how I usually work I would discover something new.  I looked at it after I had sewn about 20 pieces together and really hated it.  It was just a bunch of fabric thrown together.  Nothing about was specific to me.  It was  ugly and messy.  I thought about doing more. I thought about saving it and looking at it later, but in the end I realized I didn’t have to do either.  I knew I didn’t like it and didn’t want to spend any more time on it.  So I threw it away. I threw out all the scraps of fabric too.  I realized I was tired of them and was just trying to get rid of them.  I did not want to create out of obligation, I wanted to create from my heart.

Yesterday a friend emailed me in response to my desire to do something different with my work.  She said that what we do well is a gift to be used.  As I considered what to do next I found myself pulling out handkerchiefs from a b0x someone had given me.  I laid them out and moved them around and ultimately selected four to work with.  I laid out a few quilts using the four then two then one.

Starting with the one I built a quilt around it.  Red and pink patterns with solid reds and printed blacks for accent.  I was patient with it, waiting for the decisions to come, not from my head, but  from another place inside of me.  I put pieces of fabric  down and waited until I knew if they were right or not.  Some were quick, others took many tries before I knew they were right.  When I was done I knew it.  I loved looking at it although I couldn’t say why.  It was like the places where  trees and plants grow in nature, everything was where it should be.

UPS delivered 10 yards of Insulbrite batting in time for me to finish the 20 potholders I was working on. Even though the Insulbrite doesn’t have any warnings on the labels, I’m still uncomfortable breathing too much of it in. When the sun is shining I can see the dust it creates every time I cut it. Dust covers the desk tops and floats in the air. After a day of making potholders, I smell like Insulbrite. So today I took it outside. I laid the 10 yards out on the patio behind the studio and cut out 20 potholders. I took them inside to sew, then brought them back out to trim and turn right-side out. I finished them inside the studio. Freida followed me back and forth and growled at, but didn’t chase, the jogger who went by.

So far, I sold 3 of the 6 quilts on I put up for sale last week. Black White and Red All Over, Trashy Victorian, and Feed the Hunger. Feed the Hunger is one of my early quilts and an emotional one for me. The title comes from the Indigo Girls song “Watershed” and the lyrics “….I better learn how to starve the emptiness and feed the hunger.” That’s just what I was doing when I made the quilt, feeding a need instead of trying to fill a hole. I’ll be shipping Feed the Hunger to it’s new owner tomorrow, and it’s going to the perfect home. I hung it on the outside of the studio today to look at while I worked. It’s wonderful to be able to share something so meaningful with someone I don’t even know.

Had dinner with some friends recently who brought lobster back from Maine. It was delicious, and I was especially glad that the lobsters were already partly steamed ( not alive) when they put them in the pot. Their kids had done some rock painting inspired by their trip to Maine and I bought this one from their son Sam.

This is a lobster with personality. I’m not sure if it’s his sunglasses, or the way he seems to be snapping his claws like an confident beatnik. No one’s steaming him.

I started making the 44 potholders. It’s very different because the clothes the fabric is coming from is not what I would normally have chosen to work with. Most of the fabric is solid colors and I’ve become so used to working with patterns, using solids as an accent.
I get hints of the woman who used to wear the clothes by their style and colors . An apron with fruit, a tee shirt with “golf” written on it, a tote bag from Plymouth MA. Most of the clothes are simple, only one or two have pockets or adornment. I cut these apart first working the design around them.

These potholders are less about me and what I would choose and more about the person who is being remembered and the people who will remember her. I’ve realized that by making these potholders I not only become a part of the story, I create a part of it.

My latest quilt is pieced together although  it doesn’t have a title yet.  I didn’t realize how figurative the maroon form to the left was when I first designed it.  Someone told me the triangular piece looked like a woman and the  fabric with the blue flowers was like the ocean.  The small pink pieces are parts of the woman.  I like that interpretation.  All those unknown parts of herself still to be discovered.

If I were to put up a picture of what I did today, no one would want to look at it, including me. I spent the day updating my new Quick Books Pro bookkeeping program. Between the marriage, business name change and changing my last name I’ve had 5 bank accounts going at once. Bookkeeping is not my forte, but it still needs to be done.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in the studio creating new work and building an inventory of potholders, bags, eyeglass and cell cases quilts and maybe something new to put up for sale on my site. Christine Nemec from Redux Art and Antiques will also be selling some of my work. It’s nice to be represented by a gallery.

Yesterday, inbetween sewing, I cleaned out my thread drawer. I had a ton of old wooden spools of thread rolling around, unwinding themselves and getting tangled in everything else in the drawer. They had become worse than useless, (the thread is so old it breaks if you tie a knot in it) they were annoying. I was just about to throw them all in the garbage, but as I pulled them out one by one, I remembered why I kept them in the first place. They were beautiful. Their colors and sheens varied from dull to intensely rich and shiny. Each was unique and together they had the potential of becoming art.

So I put them on my shelf. At first I started lining them up in even rows, but there were so many of them and I was still remembering, with frustration, the mess they made in my thread drawer. I began impatiently placing them haphazardly on the shelf. Annoyance turned to enjoyment as I intuitively moved them around till they looked “right”, letting the tangled thread do what it wanted. Such freedom! what I was doing had no consequence. If I came back in an hour or tomorrow or the next day and didn’t like what I saw, I’d just move it.

Next I looked at the bottom shelf with the faded Holly Hock Ladies that Mary Kellogg made. I rearranged their “room” for the first time in over a year. (they must have been pretty bored looking at the same stuff for so long.) Not only is it more colorful, but it was fun to do.

I realized I had forgotten about the importance of play. When I was going to art school there was a woman in the studio next to mine who would distinguish between “playing” in her studio and “working”. They were both equally important, the playing lead to new ideas and eventually to work. I remember trying to play in my studio, but I was so serious at the time, the concept was hard for me to make real. I eventually drew a Jelly Roll game on my floor and had people come into my studio to play. (Jelly Roll is a game like hopscotch, in the form of a spiral divided into boxes. You hop around it till you get to the middle then hop back out) It was forced and not much fun, most people couldn’t even make it to the middle. Hopping on one foot in a spiral is easy and fun when you’re 7 years old, but difficult and jarring when you’re 35. I did eventually use the idea of the Jelly Roll game for a piece in my MFA show. I wove used teabag strings into the rug of the gallery creating a Jelly Roll. It was the adult version of the game, no one played it, they just talked about it.

So now, 11 years later, I’m finally figuring out how to play in my studio. Picasso said to be a good artist he had to learn how to draw like a child again. Perhaps it’s time to unleash the playful kid and see what happens.