Archive for the 'Books' Category

Olympics in China: That’s Not All!

Can anybody read Chinese?

Can anybody read Chinese?

The Olympics aren’t the only exciting thing occurring in China. This package arrived on my doorstep from Hong Kong: the bluelines for Color Mastery. I sure wish I knew what this said. I’m sure it’s something quite boring, like “folio 1 of 7,” but the writing looks so elegant.

Color Mastery color proofs

Color Mastery color proofs

I’ve been poring over (thanks Marla!) these proofs to make sure the colors are dead-on accurate. I drove Gregory Case, my photographer, crazy with my questions and his constant assurances that, yes, the colors would be accurate even though they didn’t look that way on my monitor. Gregory was a therapist before being a photographer, and he told me I needed to take the leap and experience the result, even if I made a mistake. Wow, therapy and photography all from one guy!

I took these proofs with me everywhere this week: home, carpooling, even pee-wee football practice. Quite the contrary to Alicia’s experience when she and her husband Andy secluded themselves in a quiet diner to look over hers for her book. I remember those days, bc (before children).

My pee-wee football player

My pee-wee football player

Here’s son #2 in his pads and uniform, ready to hit somebody! This is a new experience for me, and not an easy one. Watching my son get knocked to the ground repeatedly during practice is tough. And for 7-year-olds, there’s no such thing as a clean hit: they grab onto anything they can to bring you down: shirt, mask, hit from the back. My husband tells me the goal for son #2 is to get through practice without quitting or crying. He will, but I might not.

From Sketchbook to Art Quilt

(You’re gonna want to scroll down for this one.) So what does all this stuff about sketching have to do with quilting? It prepares you for the single moment that inspiration strikes. I want to make a quilt of a house, a bird, a cup of coffee. I want to make a bow-tie quilt, log cabin. I can’t wait to use that new fabric. Now you have a rich repository from which to draw images from. You’ve “filled the well” as Julia Cameron would say in her seminal work, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity [10th Anniversary Edition] .

Here’s one path from sketch to original art quilt. I started with several thumbnail sketches, not really sure how I wanted to capture this gorgeous valley.

First Thumbnail

First Thumbnail

Second Thumbnail

Second Thumbnail

Third Thumbnail

Third Thumbnail

Fourth Thumbnail

Fourth Thumbnail

I went with thumbnail #3, as I loved the vertical composition and the feeling I was at the top of the peak looking down. I captured the image on muslin using watercolor crayons, and here it is being auditioned for a border to serve as a frame:

Final Piece:  Which Border?

Final Piece: Which Border?

And here it is on my design wall ready to be quilted:

Art Quilt on Design Wall

Art Quilt on Design Wall

All the preparation in my sketchbooks readied me for this quilt. Funny, it didn’t feel like preparation. It felt more like time was flying by, being the in flow, capturing the images and moments that held meaning for me. Truly, the best part of being an artist. Dreaming, sketching, and quilting.

I love my job, don’t you?

Note of interest: The tiny building in the background (best seen in Thumbnail #1) burned to the ground months after I did this sketch. It was a local restaurant that held many memories for me and neighbors in my community. Now it has been immortalized in a work of art. See what I mean by capturing meaning? I had no idea of the unfortunate event that would come, nor do you ever know all the layers a work of art potentially holds. Until you actually create it.

Capturing the Moments

A family day at a Braves game

A family day at a Braves game

At some point in my sketchbooks, I stopped using them as a place for only my ideas and inspiration, but also as a place to capture the daily moments of my life by drawing them. My husband had given me the book How to Make a Journal of Your Life , and it really enhanced my journaling style. Dan Price has been detailing the minutiae of his life for decades, drawing things as simple as the interior of the car as he rides with friends. His drawing style is simplistic and far from perfect, but that’s what makes it beautiful. He’s not attempting to create a masterpiece; rather, he’s making art of his everyday life in his own hand, his own style.

I still drew only sporadically until last year, when again my sweet husband gave me another book for Christmas: Danny Gregory’s Creative License, The: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are. Danny begins drawing his days after his wife is hit by a subway train and becomes a paraplegic. Like Dan, he draws the little details that make up our lives: what he has for dinner, his dog, the interior of his medicine cabinet. And he is insistent that you make drawing a daily habit: do bad drawings, sketch things wrongly, but just do it and learn as you go.

I don’t sketch daily, but weekly, yes. Sometimes more than once a week. I draw more often when I’m on vacation, as I have more time and I want to remember the places I’ve been and what we were doing.

Eating out in St. Simon's Island

Eating out in St. Simon's Island

This journal I made by hand, after reading on WhipUp about a great book called How to Make Books (see the link in my sidebar). I made this little journal from old blue jeans, drawing paper and watercolor papers. It is always with me in my purse, and holds my sketches, summaries of books I’ve read, and even my grocery list. It’s a little journal of my life.

And now I draw things I would never have imagined as important or even beautiful.

Items on a side table next to a plan for a medallion quilt

Items on a side table next to a plan for a medallion quilt

But they are beautiful, because they are my life.

My Journals’ Humble Beginnings

Abstract drawing from my journal

Abstract drawing from my journal

Keeping a journal has transformed my art. It’s hard to believe initially I resisted keeping a journal of any kind, as writing is my profession and I didn’t want to do more of it at home. Surely I keep visual journals and sketchbooks as well, but I started by keeping a simple journal of things I was grateful for every day.

I tried to list 100 things to be grateful for in my life - went well over!

I tried to list 100 things to be grateful for in my life - went well over!

I got this idea from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach, and also the idea of a Discovery Journal. From these humble beginnings came my sketchbooks and quilting journals I’ll be sharing with you later.

Color Mastery: 10 Principles for Creating Stunning Quilts

Color Mastery Cover Sneak Peek

Congratulations - it’s a book! This is a sneak peek from the cover of the upcoming book I’ve been hinting at:

Color Mastery: 10 Principles for Creating Stunning Quilts

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know how passionate I am about color. Now, I’m sharing that passion with you, and giving you a glimpse at the book throughout the week.

Color Mastery will be available in your local quilt shop in February ‘09. That sounds like a date in the distant future, but it will be here before we know it! I’ll be attending my first quilt market this May to meet and greet with distributors to ensure the book will be available in your area, even if it’s internationally!

Note to international readers: send me the link or email for your local quilt shop and I’ll chat with them to find out their distributor who supplies their books. I’m at mariapeagler(at)tds(dot)net.

Look for a blog I’m developing that will be solely about Color Mastery. I’ll then be returning to the regular content I do on this site: quilting, creativity, life, and and how they all interact.

Next up: Color Mastery’s Table of Contents. Be the first to get a top-secret look into the chapters and projects that will open your eyes to the world of artistic color in your quilts!

And the Winners Are . . . .

And the winners of the bookmarks with the ruler on the back are:

Everyone!

I couldn’t pick just five, so I’m sending them to everyone who gave me feedback, as I treasure each of your comments. Please email me privately your mailing address and the gorgeous bookmarks will be on their way to you. You won’t believe how beautiful they are!

Thank you for your feedback on the color wheels. What astute readers I have! I’m quite impressed ya’ll noticed the color wheels didn’t match in having yellow at the top. We had changed that a while back, but I used an older version. It was actually quite helpful in communicating to my design team things that are important to quilters that others don’t see.

And stay tuned: next week, I’ll be posting the book’s title, cover, and table of contents. I promise you won’t want to miss it!

Vote on Which Color Wheel to Include in the Book

Color Wheel for Color Mastery Color Mastery Color Wheel

I need your valued opinions! I’m deliberating as to which version of the color wheel to include in an appendix in the back of my book: a fabric color wheel, or the illustration. Which do you prefer and would find more useful? The appendix will have a sheet of mini-color wheels you can cut out and paste into your journal as you’re designing your quilts. Fun, huh?

I’ll draw from the votes and award five people a bookmark for the book that has a ruler on the back. Quite handy for measuring seams, etc. Thanks for participating. I value your input!

Shipping My Babies

Tile at Epcot

Since I’m buried under manuscript pages, I thought I’d share this image from Epcot in DisneyWorld where we visited last year at this time. This is a design on the outside of a building in the India section of Epcot. Doesn’t it just beg to be a quilt design?

Back to reality. I shipped nine quilts last week out to California to be photographed for the book. I felt as if I were sending my own children in a cardboard box to be driven cross-country with no word from them until they get there. I shared my anxiety over letting go of all the hard work I had done over months and years with the shipping clerk, and the well-meaning woman gave me some advice. “Have you read The Secret?”

She then continued to tell me how I shouldn’t think about anything bad happening to the quilts or else it would happen, and I should think positively. I know she had every good intention, but I found the advice to be rather sad. I leave every detail in my life up to a much higher power than positive thinking, and you’ll be happy to know that the quilts are being delivered today!

Much of my posts in the next month or two will be about my book, because it’s taking over my life at this point. I’m still teaching classes, but today my head is swimming with numbers after reviewing the technical edits of my project instructions. I’m so thankful to have a fantastic creative team to collaborate with on this book.

My goal is to be done writing at the end of this month so I can send the manuscript to the editor in March. You’ll be seeing sneak peaks of the book along the way, so stay tuned!

Checking In to Say “Hello”

I’m sneaking this post in between bath and bedtime for my kids, writing on my book, coordinating with illustrators, graphic designers, the photographer, technical editors, and it’s all so fun. Life right now is one of those crazy busy fantastic times, and I’m trying to soak in every single moment.

This is the busiest month for me as my deadline is March 1. After that, the book schedule will be mostly revisions for me and will ramp up for the rest of the creative team. I can’t wait for you to meet the people involved and see the results. I can post bits and pieces as we go along. Can’t wait to share with you!