Book Review: Steal Like an Artist

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
by Austin Kleon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a super quick read as it is an illustrated expansion of a speech. It is full of good advice about nurturing your creative side (no matter what you do) and is charming and insightful. I highly recommend it and expect I will go back and re-read it. It would also make a great gift for someone whose creativity you want to encourage.

Creative Spaces

Does your workspace influence your creativity? Mine definitely does. I can't work in a space that is too messy and I am inspired by a space that is beautiful. Buzzfeed posted a great collection of images of 40 inspiring workspaces.
I love Cezanne's window; I could never work on the tiny table that Austen used; the contrast between food writers Amanda Hesser and Nigela Lawson is striking; and I am shocked by what uncomfortable-looking chairs most of them have.

Sew Thinky Thursday - Catch up

I was really trying to keep up with the excellent questions for Sew Thinky Thursday. It didn't work. This week I was all set to go and there wasn't a question--which actually made me feel better about missing so many. In reading back over the questions I had missed one of them jumped out at me as something I wanted to answer, so here it goes.

Bad sewing habits. Do you have them? Share with us, what are your worst habits when it comes to sewing?

There were quite a few posts linked up on this, and I have some of the same habits that others wrote about. I only consider some of them bad though. I definitely have multiple projects going at once, but I don't see that as a bad habit. It gives me options when I have time to sew. Am I in the mood to piece or to quilt? Either way I have a project going I can jump right into. 
I do have some bad sewing habits though:

1. I don't change my needle as often as I am supposed to. I did recently learn about the very effective zig-zag to quarter-inch reminder feature that was mentioned in Karen's comment on Stitched in Thyme.
2.  I put pins in my mouth. I have done this since I started sewing in HS and I doubt I will change at this point. My mom, who sews a lot and never does this used to tell me all the time not to do it. It is really handy. A friend of mine who just started quilting just leaves the pins on the surface of her machine as she slides them out ahead of the needle. I have tried to start doing this and have had some success.
3. Related to my friend's good example, I also sew over pins. I am working on this along with #2. In my defense on both points I use as few pins as I possibly can. I am NOT a pinner.  

Done!

I finished the new flag quilt for our front porch this weekend. It is a design I came up with after 9/11 as a contribution to the memorial project Little Quilts did. I made several of them at that point and one of the quilts has hung on our front porch ever since. That quilt had become a lot more pink-beige-and-blue than red-white-and-blue after more than a decade in the sun.

Here is the new one:

2013 - Designed and quilted by Mary Russell

Handbags as Images

I am working on setting up an Etsy shop and to begin with am researching (aka exploring) all sorts of stuff that goes into that.

One of the skills I need to work on is photography. Particularly I am trying to figure out how to compose good pictures of items I will have for sale in my shop. Lighting seems to be key as well as attractive, simple backgrounds. I spent some time recently looking at Etsy shops that have handbags for sale (one of the main things I expect to sell in my shop) and assembled a treasury of Quilted Handbags that I thought were well photographed. 

Which images do you think work best? Why? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Sew Thinky Thursday

Sew Thinky Thursdays is a linky project hosted at Mommy's Nap Time.

This week's question is: What is your favorite color of Kona Cotton? (Feel free to respond using your fav solid fabric type.) How much of it do you keep in your stash? Is there a solid that you always find yourself running out of? 

Moda Marble - Royal Blue

I don't pay a lot of attention to what line the fabrics I use are in. If the fabric feels nice and looks good in what I am making I get it. The exception to this is that for "solids" I love moda marbles. They come in a ton of beautiful colors and always play well with others. I use a lot of the black because it sets things off so nicely. My favorite is the royal blue, which works surprisingly well as a "neutral" in a scrappy quilt. My bee has been doing a block exchange this year with this as the common fabric in all our scrappy star blocks and they are absolutely beautiful!
I don't keep a lot of it in my stash, I tend to buy it and use it up.

Failure and The Dog Bed Bag

Scoutie Girl posted today about failure. If you try something new or different sometimes it doesn't work. I think her decision to take it as a learning experience and figure out how it helps the next time is the right one. Learning to cope with failure (or setbacks, or disasters, or unintended features, or whatever you call things that don't go as envisioned) is one of the most important lessons in life. When I was learning to walk (40+ years ago) my Dad would sing me the Jerome Kerns song Pick Yourself Up. The same song came up throughout my life as I ran into new and different challenges that required the same approach -- "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."  I think it helps to view any one failure, big or small, as part of a cycle of learning and improvement.


The series at A Happy Stitch called Fail Friday was linked in the comments on the Scoutie Girl post and is a great set of posts about things that didn't go as planned and what can be learned from them. The post from This is Marzipan talks about "the bin" which reminded me of one of my favorite ways to deal with sewing failures -- the dog bed bag. There are a couple of women in my Quilt Guild who make beds for shelter dogs and collect fabric scraps to stuff them with. I used to feel guilty about throwing away little bits of (expensive!) fabric and saved it all because I might use it someday. I also felt compelled to take apart quilt blocks that didn't come out right so the pieces wouldn't go to waste. No more -- they go into the dog bed bag. This is a tote bag that hangs on the side of my cutting table and collects cutting scraps and mistakes. Every time I fill the bag it gets emptied into a grocery store bag and taken to someone who makes it into something useful. If I don't make any mistakes the bag won't fill up and where will those doggies sleep? I think it is a good solution all around.

Sew Thinky Thursdays

Sew Thinky Thursdays is a linky project hosted at Mommy's Nap Time.

This week's question is: Describe your quilting style. Who or what influences you? How do you see your style changing over time?

My quilting style is eclectic, but with a strong streak of the traditional. I like colors--lots of colors--and am not drawn to pale, pastel, or neutral colors. I use them, because they make the fun colors look so good, but I never see pastels at the fabric store and have an overwhelming urge to bring them home with me. I love traditional blocks and am very interested in the history of quilt blocks and the connections quilting gives me to the past, which influences the designs I create. I am not good at following patterns, I always see something I want to do differently or change just a little. (My quilting bee members are laughing at "just a little" as they read this.) 

I am influenced by the beautiful and amazing work of the quilters in my guild and by professional quilters whose work I come across in books and magazines. I am also influenced by non-textile art and the graphic design I see everywhere every day. 

I think my style changes all the time in some ways and not at all in others. I try to stretch my abilities and my comfort zone and try new and different things with every project. I am always drawn to saturated color though, and I don't see that changing. 

How about you? Please share your answer to this Sew Thinky Thursdays question.

Getting Ready for Class on Saturday

This Saturday (2/16/13) I will be teaching a class at Patches Quilt Loft and have been busy making sample pieces for the class. I taught the class to my quilting bee (something of a test run) and they seemed to enjoy it and are loving the beautiful new bags they each made. The wooden spoon is with the samples so I don't forget to take it with me on Saturday. It is the key to the magic Heidi turn which saves a TON of time when making handbag handles.

Mary's Medium Handbag Class step-by-step samples.