Virginia A. Spiegel

Pink

Oriental lilies! Short-lived, but such exuberance. It is so seldom that you take a photo and there is nothing needed in Photoshop. I held this bloom up against my front door on the way in from the garden.

A note for newsletter editors: I happily had my blogpost on working in a series reprinted in the current issue of Contemporary Quilt, the newsletter of Contemporary Quilt Special Interest Group of the Quilters’ Guild of the British Isles. Thank you to Irene MacWilliam for contacting me and making all the arrangements. It’s a great newsletter; I learned I need a Bernina foot #2.

If you are the editor of a fiber newsletter and would like to reprint an essay, technique talk, book review or any other item from my blog, send me a note. There’s no charge, but I do ask that you:
1. Ask.
2. Credit me and include links to my website and blog.
3. Print it one time only.

Of course, there’s a new post today on The Garbage Day Report. It’s an inadvertent self-portrait.

Coming out any day now will be Issue 4 of the online zine Fibre&Stitch.

Included will be my article Screen Printing Techniques and Inspirations. The joy of an online magazine is photos, photos, and more photos.

I demo not only burning a Thermofax screen and traditional screen printing using a squeegee, but also my own quick and quirky method that emphasizes speed, variability, and the layering of partial images.

Editor Sue Bleiweiss adds a listing of where to have Thermofax screens made and I also talk about how to find and prepare images for printing unique images.

Shrine of the Planting Moon
Collection of Jane Davila

Fibre&Stitch’s third issue has just been released and includes my article, From Studio Journal to Art Quilt. This article focuses on the way I researched my Moon Shrine series, sketched out ideas and developed a series. Fibre&Stitch is an innovative online zine. Each issue is HUGE; this latest issue has 70 pages of mixed-media projects. Sharon B. of the comprehensive textile blog “in a minute ago” has an annotated summary of this issue here.

My studio journals are a continuing record and treasure house from the time I first stepped into my studio full time ten years ago. They, and my Boundary Waters’ journals, are the only ones I have kept consistently, although I have tried and failed with many formats.

Here are two page from my current studio journal:

You can see I USE the journals - trying out my materials, thinking, doodling, working.

I answer that very question in the summer SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associate, Inc.) Journal. The issue finally made its way out of customs and includes my article, “Re-start your art through an artist’s residency.” SAQA is an organization to which all artists and patrons of art quilts should belong.

You can see from photos from my residency at Quilt, Inc.’s Great Expectations Creativity Center and at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts that I have found residencies to be an opportunity to take risks and create, create, create. Where else do you have 24/7 with nothing to do but think about and make art? Nirvana!

If you like reading my blog, treat yourself to my new online book, Art, Nature, Creativity, Life, AND benefit the American Cancer Society at the same time.

If you haven’t received your e-mail copy, please let me know. I am asking subscribers to let me know if they prefer an occasional e-mail newsletter or if this blog should become, in effect, the newsletter. Inquiring minds want to know.