Virginia A. Spiegel

This is the artwork-in-progress I left on my design wall almost three weeks ago. The white dots are pin heads, not design features.

I left it at this stage because I was stuck. It was so different from the other Boundary Waters series pieces; where did it intend to go? I was thinking rock and rock textures, but really didn’t have a specific scene in mind.

Then we camped next to this cliff

and I took MANY photos. I am very interested in this texture, this line, this colorway.

Did the cliff interest me because of what was already percolating or did the artwork I had started cause me to notice this particular cliff at this particular time? The ways of artistic inspiration continue to amaze me.

ADDITION: This is Susan Kennedy’s Sabinal Sunrise from the comment below. Thanks to her sister, Karen Krull Robart, for sending the photo.

I paint all the fabrics I use in my artwork EXCEPT for the fabric I use to back art quilts or other textile art. Painting fabric is so time-consuming that I just can’t bear to use painted fabric for the back of anything.

So I fired up the dye buckets and dyed seven buckets full of fabric in two days (a sampling above). I use the submersion method detailed in Jane Dunneworld’s excellent Complex Cloth.

I always put the dye buckets out on my black driveway for maximum heat retention.

I love the feel and the smell of paint; here’s a previous blog entry about my tips for fabric painting. I, alas, lack an equal affinity for dyeing.

After a show has been shipped, I always like to clean my studio. I can’t imagine re-starting in July after all my travels in this chaos.

A little measuring, a trip to Ikea, and here’s my new under-the-counter basket towers (from the bedroom closet section) in progress. The directions said to pound in the connecting panels on a wood surface; the back of my large ironing surface worked great.

What seemed like 400 hours later - my “new” studio! A little scary in its neatness. The sewing table has to go in that exact spot so my view is only of trees and fields and not my neighbors.

I always need a second work table. I “borrowed” this one from my book arts studio which is now going to be strictly storage of “stuff” not being used in my current work. I always bring my book projects to my textile studio anyway. All my painting stuff has gone to the basement. It’s a chain reaction of organizing yet-to-do.

My husband had to convince me to buy this clip-on rack - whatever would I use it for?

The white fabric covers basket towers with all my hand-painted and hand-dyed fabric - they are still a disaster. I have the two baskets of fabric for the Boundary Waters series under the table behind my sewing table. Two design walls are stacked one behind the other.

Other Ikea items besides the work tables — a bedroom dresser for yarn, found objects, etc.; collapsable fabric containers in a variety of sizes for inside the new baskets and on top of the dresser, and a metal wastebasket to store rolled Lutradur, interfacing, etc. I still have artwork to hang, but this is a studio that I will be happy to return to in July.

I’m still finding interesting fabric from my Virtual Studio at Make It University with Cloth Paper Scissors magazine at IQF-Chicago.

Both of these pieces were painted, dried overnight and then rubbings using Shiva paint sticks were added. For the rubbings, I used my own E-Z-Cut (available from Dick Blick) stamp (the spiral), a rubbing plate made from small wooden letters glued (E-6000) to a piece of plywood, and a cardboard lunch tray given to me by Peg Keeney (small square grid).