On hold and bored
March 22, 2007
I am still on hold, apparently my call is important and they are experiencing a high number of calls. Well yes if the web site isn’t booking collections I would think they are. Still I also suspect that a competent bug report will be appreciated so I will stay on hold a little longer.
To try and overcome the boredom I have taken a photo of the face I painted this afternoon. I am not entirely happy with it, the lips are far too dark. I wonder if I would have been better off just working in a sepia tone through out as his lips are pretty much the same colour as his skin. Still it is a lot better than I would have expected to be able to do and didn’t take that long either so I am quite happy. It also gave me the chance to go through all the steps again so hopefully I will remember them now. I find I have to do things at least twice before they start to sink in.
I do plan on doing a few more to try and really get this into my brain, but I am struggling to find willing victims. I guess I will have to stick to famous people for now.
Hmm, so having finally got through, it was a glitch. No they aren’t going to look into it afterall I have organized another collection, and it hasn’t happened to anyone else. If I book by phone it won’t happen again. Well Duh! Got to love help desks.
Argh!
I am paranoid, I know this, but I have a quilt that really needs to get to a show. I asked for a collection between 1pm ans 5pm, so at 4:30 I start to get worried. I have been sitting painting very quietly to be sure I won’t miss them. So I just though I would phone and check that I had a collection booked. The web site said I had but well… I call and guess what, no record on their system. Oh! The good news is that because I didn’t wait till 5 I will still get my collection today but I was cutting it fine. They were very nice and will be sending me out my shipping supplies and have put me on hold to talk to the team responsible. It’s starting to look like this quilt doesn’t want to go to the show. Do you suppose she is getting shy?
Burning Chrome
This morning has been a lot more productive.
Burning Chrome is quilted, for now at least. I had to call Robin and tell him that although it is finished I had tension issues. They didn’t look too bad while the quilt was on the frame but having taken it off they are more obvious. I can’t decide if it is bad enough to need unpicking so I will have to wait for him to come home and take a look. In the meantime this is a quick peek at it.
It is really quite hard to take pictures of quilting when it matches the background but I have had a go. If you look closely you can see that is it quilted with flames all over. They are quite large and worked up very quickly. I am really pleased with the front of the quilt, and if I do have to take it out I know it will be quick to put back in. Hopefully it wouldn’t take that long to unpick either. The picture of the back show the quilting a bit better and gives an idea of the tension problems.
Couriers
After several days of very frustrating phone calls I got a lovely call this morning. At least one person in DHL now understands the process of temporary exports, and on my behalf has been pointing out to others that they should too. I will be refunded the customs charges on In Full Bloom and I have the email addresses of people to contact next time I need to do it. Just as well as it won’t be long. Not a bad start for a day that looked far too busy to be fun.
I got the Nude Triptych packed up and ready to go to Trentham. The Makower project packed up and ready to go, my passport application ready to send except for the photos and left the house with 3 hours to post all of these before I needed to be at the dentist. Sounds pretty doable doesn’t it. So why are the nudes still standing by my desk?
I have asked the post office before about this package and they say it is too big for them, so off to Parcel Force I go. I know there is no problem there as the package is a roll 1.8m long and 0.5m in girth less than their maximum of 3m. No problems, and they do 48hr shipping with is perfect. See I had this all planned. So I get there and try to hand it over. The chap on the desk points at the wall next to me, where there is a new poster. Any package longer than this will not be accepted. Well guess what, mine is longer. I would guess the line is about 1.5m (I suggest you check if this is important to you). However to his credit he says he can’t see why the shouldn’t take it and goes off to ask a manager. The manager says no. They just can’t handle something that big. Bear in mind I am carrying it around, I am moving it in a car. How hard can it be with a burly lad and a large van. Besides why state one set of regulations online then surprise you with extra restrictions when you arrive.
So I need another idea. Fortunately I know people who ship daft size packages and I am recommended to try City Link. I called another friend for directions and off I go, fortunately they are pretty close to Parcel Force, unfortunately I get lost. I do however find interlink, I know they are OK so I try there. You can’t actually pay on site you have to phone their booking line, but still not a big deal. Except they won’t accept the package. The quilt is designed to hang on the wall, so it is art and they don’t ship art. OK, back to hunting City Link. City Link think they might ship the package (hooray) but not without an account. An account takes 4 days to set up and then they will look it up for me. I need the quilt to arrive on Monday. I give up, my only option is to use DHL, but at least I can book a collection for tomorrow from home. Moral of this story, art quilts are really hard to ship if you need the carrier to insure them. If you don’t you can just call them fabric and they will take them. Oh yes, Parcel Force don’t accept art either.
By this time I was running very late, so the slightly washed out passport photos had better be good enough, because I didn’t have time to take another set and I really want to get my forms in before they change the regulations again.
The dentist was pretty good though and gave me time to write a new pattern, I will be trying to get the sample made up this week, so watch this space.
Two more Turning Twenty Again
March 19, 2007Well I now have all three of my bread and butter quilts. I just have to get them all quilted. I am very lucky to live with a quilter so when I need to commission someone to make me a quilt top I don’t have to go far, and he has done me proud with Burning Chrome. I love it and it is so different to the other two.
As with mine this is actually a turning 30. So it is pretty big. According to the Warm and Natural wadding we have put aside for it its a queen size. It is laid out on our Ikea king size bed to give you some idea of the size. It is inspired by a book , have a look at Robins blog for a quote from it. It will be quilted with flames in a very cool varigated thread. I just have to be careful to keep the quilting very open and flowing. Really if it goes to plan (and it has to or I will run out of thread) I should get it quilted very quickly.
This is the third and final Turning Twenty Again. It hasn’t told me it’s name yet, but then I haven’t been working on it long. I should point out that both these tops were started yesterday afternoon and we have both been out all day. I guess it will tell me as I quilt it. I wanted to see what effect 1/3 black would have on it, and I like it. If I do make another I think I will try 2/3 black. It should give very sparse blocks of colour which I think will be really interesting and a great canvas for quilting on. I like the idea of random disjointed areas of colour. I also think it would be a good pattern to modify to get a very Mondrian look. I can see a lot of that style in this one and I would like to take that further.
Bonnie Lyn McCaffrey – Painted Faces
I have had a copy of Bonnie’s book Portrait Quilts – Painted Faces You Can Do. I read through it. I decided I couldn’t and put the book on the shelf. This should not be seen as a reflection of the book, it has far more to do with my fears of art and drawing. I now know this is the case. You see now I have done the course I know the book says, do what you do with fabric but in paint. It is pretty much exactly the technique I use for all my nudes, yet when I first read the book I missed that entirely. I put that down to panic, and the voices in my head telling me I can’t do it. I still don’t quite believe I did, and I keep thinking I must have cheated or got lucky, so I plan on doing another as soon as possible. In fact I plan on buying some more fabric from her tomorrow so I can get to it right away. Maybe once I have done a few I will start to believe I can. It’s worked with the nudes, I am now sure I can do anything I can think of.
The face is designed to be cut out and applied to a background, it also needs hair and clothes, but I think you can get the idea. Bear in mind I am really not a painter, and I am terrified of anything this artistic. In fact it was quite a stressful day, even though I enjoyed it enormously. Every time I picked up the brush to paint my hand was shaking, not helpful for drawing fine lines. Then to round of the day I got videoed again. Eeek, that is even more scary, but very worthwhile, I love Bonnie’s pod casts and I would love to make it onto another, especially as it was with Decadence. I guess I will learn to get comfortable with cameras too. It helps as well that I have seen how good Bonnie is at editing, if anyone can make me look like I have a clue it is her. She is a very good teacher, and I’ve learned a lot today, not just about painting faces. Thanks for all the advice and encouragement Bonnie.
Decadence
March 17, 2007
Ta da! Another nude, I bet no one is surprised. I am hoping this one will be seen as a bit more sensual and less sinister than the last one (which I will finish and post detail pictures of). The title of this one probably gives the game away as to what I am hoping people will see. Soft warm opulent, sensual. I don;t think any of my nudes are really intended to be sexy, it’s not the point. People, and women in particular are so curvy and full of wonderful shapes, I just have to make them as quilts. I guess it is a common thing with artists, they look to nature for inspiration and this is what I found. Part of the attraction is the satisfaction I get from seeing the shape come together with just one colour and the challenge from trying to quilt it. Women are so smooth that putting quilting lines in that don’t detract from their shapes is really tricky, but I love doing it.
The colour is most true in the first image. None of them are perfect, but that is the problem with taking pictures indoors late at night. Even with all the white balance settings I have i still can’t get it quite right. Even though I took lots of pictures of this as I worked on it to try and get an idea of a distance view, I have just spotted something I don’t like, but it is there now and I have to live with it. I guess that is always the way. Every time I finish I find something I don’t like and will do differently next time. I suppose that is good as it means I am learning from each piece, but it is annoying too.
The quilting in the background is quite hard to photograph. It is in dark red thread on the black marbled background. I wanted to soften both the colour and the texture of the background and I am very happy with how that came out. The quilting pattern also felt good to do which fitted the piece perfectly.
I would like feed back on this. Is this one less disturbing? Does it have the feel of decadence I was looking for? Clicking on the pictures will bring up a larger version.
The quilt is about (not trimmed and bound yet) 45″ x 35″.
Come Back Tomorrow
March 16, 2007I’ve been really busy today but I haven’t quite finished it yet. Expect pictures tomorrow 
Fat Quarter of Paradise – Update
March 15, 2007
I’ve just taken this quilt off the frame, sadly not because I’ve finished quilting. I ran out of thread. I never expected a quilt to take more than a whole cone, but apparently they do. Still I thought you might like to see how it is going. I love it and I am finding the quilting pattern very soothing to work. It is also getting faster and faster as I practice. This quilt is more than 100″ square and I think it will take about 7 hours to quilt. That is longer than I hoped but still pretty good for a quilt that size. The idea of these bread and butter quilts is that they should be quick and easy to quilt and I think this fits the bill. It is hard to judge though as I don’t know what the ‘standard’ time for quilting this size of quilt is.
I have also realised that having an electric fabric advance would save me a lot of time on this kind of design. I am going to start looking at putting something on my frame to achieve this. I don’t use the APQS frame that goes with my machine because it won’t fit in the house, so I can’t just buy the system from them.
Hopefully my thread will arrive soon and I will be able to put this back on the frame, until then I have plenty of other projects to work on. The piece which is caling loudest is my new nude, but I can’t get to that until I have cleared some more paying work. Wish me luck to get it all done quickly. I have to admit that I will be quite enjoying a lot of the paying work anyway
Grr DHL
March 14, 2007OK, first the good news, my quilt has arrived safely in America. It is good to know, I have been worrying about it since I heard that Kathy York’s quilt, Jay Walk, hadn’t arrived. So it is at least safe. However I am not flavour of the month with the organizers of Celebrate Spring. I forgot to tick the bill sender box for the customs charge. I got the other ones, but missed it there, my bad. On the other hand it really shouldn’t have mattered. This is a temporary export and should not be charged duty. So why do you suppose the show has been handed a bill then? Of course there are no working phone lines to DHL right now so I can’t even ask. On the other hand I do know other quilters who have had this happen to them, and bizarrely DHL usually seem to be involved, so hopefully I can get some hints and tips on how to get my money back. The show suggested I should declare a very low value for my work, but then I would have been sending it uninsured, I don’t fancy that option. Next time I may have to use Parcel Force, I hate dealing with them but they can do this right.