Creating Your Own Quilt Series

As an artist, I really love making my own unique creations. And there's nothing really that will teach you more about who you are than making original work. Art is simply a mass of questions that we answer each time we go into our studio. I wonder if... How could I possibly... Or can I make this happen? One of the best ways that I know of to speed up your growth as an artist is to work in a series. Working in a series simply means that you eliminate a whole bunch of the questions that are out there and really hone in on just a few. So if you're trying to learn a technique or trying to understand how contrast works or how value works. Those sorts of ideas. If you pull together a small selection of techniques and a small selection of problems, if you will, that you wanna answer while you're creating and working in your studio. That's how a series is formed. One of the things that we do when we work in a series is we basically map out parameters. We say that our quilts are all gonna be about this size. They're all gonna use, you know, this particular technique. And while I'm doing this series, I'm striving to learn whatever. I'm currently working in five or six different series. I really like series work because it allows me that opportunity to really thoroughly explore an idea. And one of the series that I'm working in is a series that I'm calling Art Every Day. And that's what it is. I'm trying to make a small piece of art for this series every single day. I'm also making other art during the month. But this is something I try to do every single morning and then I blog about it. So I'm not just making the art. I'm also reminding myself and talking about the art. When we work in a series, we get to tackle these questions. And when we have the answers, that series has done. And it's wonderful and we can move on to some new idea or explore new avenues. This particular series, this Art Every Day. each piece is nine inches by 11 inches. So it's very small. But I'm trying to pack a lot of information into that nine inches by 11 inches. One of the things I decided is that, for me, the parameters would be that I would only work for about an hour to an hour and a half on each piece, which isn't very long. And it has to be done during that time. So I use this batting that I've done. It's called dye-painted batting. That allows me to have that batting edge show. And I don't have to worry about finishing the edges of my pieces. So that makes it a lot quicker to get it done too. Then, one of my parameters is no piecing. So I'm doing a lot of laying things on top of the batting and then stitching. A lot of stitching. Because what I really wanted to understand when was playing with these pieces is how quilting affects the quilt. I'm always talking to my students about how important that is and I really wanted to explore that. I'm also not using any commercial fabrics. All the fabrics that I'm using are fabrics that I've created. And you can do the same sort of thing. You can choose what parameters you want to work in around what it is you want to learn. So if we look at these pieces and look at them from the viewpoint that we're trying to understand how the quilting is affecting the surface, it's really kind of clear. And it's kind of cool to be able to see in such a small piece of work how the quilting looks on the surface and how it works with the fabric choices, the color choices, the value choices, and how important that quilting choice is. So if we start here. This piece has high contrast in the colors. Black and white. That's the highest contrast there can be. And then I brought those colors together by repeating the thread color. They're both stitched with red. And here on the black, I repeated straight line stitching. Whereas in the white, I put curves in there. That juxtaposition helps to delineate space. It says, even though we're both quilted with red thread, I'm still white because I'm stitched with curves and I'm still black because I'm stitched with straight lines. On this piece, I added a new color. Bold, bold, yellow. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to see if I could force that bold yellow to stay in the background by quilting it very heavily. Yellow wants to come forward. But black and white is a high contrast also. And so it would fight with that yellow for the forward position. So I heavily, heavily quilted the background and I didn't quilt the black and white nearly as heavy. As you can see, the black and white is staying forward. On this piece, my goal was to see if this background area here could stand up and get noticed above this really bold painted area. And so I quilted this one much less. Some lines in the background, but just around the circles. And then this has absolutely no quilting in it at all. And then our background is heavily quilted. When I was finished, the piece wasn't very interesting and it didn't really prove the things I wanted to prove. So I came in with some contrasting thread and added these circles here and here. And once those were added, it drew the eye back into the center. On this piece, I wanted to see whether or not I could make these red squares, which are all thread. If I could make them stand out and above the black and white. Again, black and white's a really high contrast so it draws the eye there. So I decided that if I stippled the background here and made it very, very simple, that it would draw your eye to the red. I think it's sorta successful, but not as much as I wanted it to be. Another strong black and white. Here I have very, very fine lines of black fabric and then lots of fine lines of white stitching. Then the stitched circles. My goal was to see what the relationship of those stitched circles was going to be with all of those very thin, fine lines. And I was really kind of excited to see that they held their own, even though there's only three of them and there's lots and lots of the black line. On this piece, I wanted to see if I could unify a background that was made out of different colors. So I've got black, green, and white in the background. And in my foreground, I've got some really nice blue-green accents. So I decided to quilt the background with blue-green. And I simply wanted to make sure that I could force that whole entire background to sit in the background, which I think I was very successful in doing. And I'm not sure if it's because of the blue thread or if it's because it's so heavily quilted and it's quilted with a continual line that crosses over the sections where they join. On this piece, which is mostly black, and the rest of them have been mostly white. I wanted to know how that black was going to affect our black and white. And I really like it with a black background better than the white background. It really allows that black and white to pop off that surface. It also, because the contrast was already there, allowed me to put more decorative quilting in the background. And when it comes down to it, quilting's my favorite thing. So anytime I have that opportunity to put something a little spicier in the background when I'm quilting, it's a lot more fun. So I really liked the way this piece turned out. On this one, I wanted to play with that negative space again and our positive space here with the flower coming forward. I put it on top of the red bar. I could have put it over here and I could have put it farther over here, but I wanted to see how well the red pushed it up. And I think it did a really good job. And this one's quite similar. Here I've got a background that's the black and white again and it's a mixed. All white and then black and white. And again, I wanted to see how I could push up this leaf. And by putting this red underneath there that mimicked the edge of the batting, it really helped that leaf show. Then I added leaves in the quilting, mostly cause it's fun, but also because I wanted to heavily quilt those areas and push them back. And then this is one of my favorite pieces. Very different from the rest of them because here we have lines that are very organic. All the lines in the stitching before were very, very geometric. And these are kind of following what's happening in the fabric. And here I'm just making up lines. The lines themselves in the quilting are echoing the wonderful organic shape here. And so we end up with a piece that has a lot of unity in it. And for such a small piece, it really kinda packs a wallop. So these are some of the pieces that I've been making for my Art Every Day series. I've got over 245 of them done now. And I have the rest of the year to finish off what I'm going to do. It has been teaching me so much about myself as an artist. So much about the medium that I work in, fabric and thread. And it's been a wonderful experience. If you wanna grow and you wanna grow quick as an artist, try working in a series. It's gonna be a lotta fun.