Cosmos (detail)

Cosmos (detail)

I’ve been spending a good bit of time the last several days thinking about the new year and what I want to accomplish in 2010. I’m not big on resolutions, but I’ve been intrigued by blogs by Lisa Call and others that talk about choosing a word for the year (www.blog.lisacall.com). So I’ve decided that my word for 2010 will be Expand. I want to expand my work beyond my comfort zone, I want to grow as an artist and try new things. And I want to have fun with the possibilities.

I started on this path to some extent in 2009, when I was accepted as a member of the Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery www.potomaccraftsmengallery.com and gained a new venue to show my work.

At right is a detail of “Cosmos,” one of my newer pieces and the latest in my Playing with Colors series. It’s an example of my new quilting strategy to make my quilting designs more complex and interesting. If you look closely you can see two or three different design motifs in the pattern of the thread. I deliberately chose to do this on a fairly busy piece so if I wasn’t happy with the result the quilt wouldn’t be ruined. But I am happy with it and I wish it showed up better! I tried this idea on my next piece, “Color My World,” which I just had photographed today and can’t wait to show you because you can see the detail much more clearly. It’s more challenging to quilt this way, because I add the quilting designs myself on my home sewing machine–there’s no computer involved! But in the end it’s more interesting to work on and to look at. I want to Expand and do more of this kind of work in 2010.

Happy New Year!