Susie Monday

Artist, maker, teacher, author, head cook and bottlewasher.

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The art I make is the result of a life-long love of pattern, texture and color. How I teach is a skill honed by experience (I started teaching creative arts to younger kids when I was 12). After earning a B.A. in Studio Arts from Trinity University, I helped lead an internationally recognized educational foundation, designed curriculum exhibits for schools and other institutions, wrote and edited for a major daily newspaper, opened the San Antonio Children's Museum and then, a dozen years ago, took the scary but essential (for me) leap to become a fulltime artist and art teacher.

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This weblog is about the maker's life. The teacher's path. The stitching and dyeing and printing of the craft of art cloth and art quilt. The stumbling around and the soaring, the way the words and the pictures come together. Poetry on the page and in the piecing of bright scraps together. The inner work and the outer journeys to and from. Practicalities and flights of fancy and fearful grandeur, trivial pursuits and tactile amusements. Expect new postings two or three times a week, unless you hear otherwise. 

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    « Working in a Series, Lisa Call | Main | Textile/Art/Intensity/Focus »
    Saturday
    Feb112012

    Therapy Strips, Thanks to Rayna

    DateSaturday, February 11, 2012 at 09:45AM

    Rayna Gillman's new(ish) book, Create your own Free-Form Quilts, has inspired me to try my very first all-pieced art quilt. Yay, Rayna. For an art quilter who has come to textile work from the art not the quilt world, this is a big and scary step for me.

    But, thanks to Rayna, I now know: The 1/4" seam rule is not so set in stone. Sometimes crooked is good. A piece is a piece is a piece and it can always be cut and pieced again. 

    That's just the start. Here are my "therapy strips" waiting to become something else. I also actually have a nice set of pomegranite "blocks" put together and am trying to decide if they are done or need to become my own version of a 9-patch. (And, they are very therapeutic, just the thing for me to do when I need studio time, but don't know exactly what to work on next -- or ever again).

     

    Hurray for writers who take us out of our fears. Thanks, Rayna.

    AuthorSusie Monday | Comment5 Comments |
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    Reader Comments (5)

    Susie...I am currently putting together a piece using a cloth from the 50's supplied by Karen Musgrave..a challenge that was to be based on the instructions in Rayna's book. Synchronistic to see it here this morning on your post. I have things ready for some cutting and piecing together today after joining strips...and still more strips to join. An adventure that pushes me into a process totally foreign to my comfort zone. I plan to be finished and send the pictures to Karen this week....my blog is not yet up and running; one more task on my plate for this first year after retirement from full-time employment...loving the shift.
    Love your blog!
    Kristin
    February 12, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterKristin McNamara Freeman
    I wonder if you've ever come across the book 'Magical Fiber Arts'. It's a sweet little book, a bit 'new agey' but the information is quite relevant. Makes you remember to be mindful as you create--it's like a guideline where you springboard to amazingness.
    Makes me want to pull out my bin of fabric and start sewing...
    February 12, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterRobin Nowak
    I have looked for this book in the bookstores for about 2 months now, to no avail. I think I will just order it, without the benefit of previewing. It looks like you had fun with this!
    February 13, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterMargaret
    I have had a great time. I'll post the first "results" later today!
    February 15, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterSUSIE
    I really like Rayna's new book- it is in the back of my mind to begin one with all
    my odds and ends. I'm thinking of screening or stamping bird images as a unifying
    element within the quilt with a spotlight block of what else...a bird.Right now I
    have four other pieces in the works so, it will have to wait. Love your colors
    Susie!
    February 18, 2012 | Unregistered CommenterLinda Rael

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