Do You Multi-Task?

     When you create artwork do you do several at once, several types of things at once, or work on one piece from start to finish before starting another? I used to do the latter. I didn't feel comfortable enough to start a second (or third) piece until the present one was completely done. I didn't like my mind to wander onto other projects and lose my focus. But now that I'm in the Art Cloth Mastery program, I find the need to have several things and processes going on at the same time. There are a lot of things I want to accomplish before my next session in October and I find that one process helps another.
     For example; while I'm waiting for a cloth to batch in the dye bucket, I can hand-stitch another piece or do some color studies with paint. If I'm not sure how I want to hand-stitch a larger piece, I audition stitching on a smaller collage with the same imagery. While I'm trying to choose imagery for an artwork I have in mind, I assemble the background fabrics and have them hang on the design wall to stare at for inspiration. Here is my design wall today. On it is an almost finished piece in gray on the left, the middle one in blue is done printing and layering but needs to have hand-stitching added and be put onto a felt backing, and the green one on the right is waiting for inspiration for imagery to add to it.

The small pieces on top are collages I made with leftover prints and dyed fabrics from the larger ones. They are waiting to be mounted onto a yet undecided surface. 

waiting for stitch and backing

small stitched collage in progress

another small stitched collage

     So I've changed how I work on art and I think I like this new way of having several things going on. It's more relaxing for me to spend part of day hand-stitching and another part of the same day dyeing fabric, and another part of the day in designing mode. It felt more intense to spend the whole day in the studio working on the same process. Live and learn. 

     I'm linking this with Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you visited. Thanks for stopping by.

Design Wall Up

I finally have a design wall in my studio. I bought 2 insulation boards. Each was 8 feet by 4 feet. My wall is 8 feet by about 7 feet and has one electrical outlet on it. Here are the steps I followed:
1.) I measured and cut the boards with an exacto knife.
2.) I cut out the rectangle for where the electrical outlet will be.
3.) I want white felt on one side and want to flip the whole thing over to have black felt on the other side so I cut out another rectangle for where the electrical outlet will be when it is flipped over.
4.) I have a lot of black velcro that was given to me. I cut 8 feet of it lengthwise and glued it onto the edges of one side of each board.
5.) I connected the boards with the velcro.
6.) I sewed the white felt to size.
7.) I laid the white felt on top and realized the black velcro showed through. AUUGH!
8.) I painted the black velcro with white acrylic paint.
9.) I laid the white felt on top and it still showed through.
10.) I put silver duct tape on top of the seam. (The coating on the insulation board is silver, too.)
11.) I laid the white felt on top and the duct tape showed through. DOUBLE AUUGH!

12.) I put a white sheet on top and then the white felt on top of that and all is good.
13.) I brushed a coating of wood glue on the edges of the insulation board as I went around it and pressed the felt onto it and pinned the felt and sheet onto the edges. (The sheet only got pinned to the top edge of the design board; not to the sides or bottom.)
14.) I set the sheet up so that it didn't come as low as the electrical outlets so that I could cut out the hole from the felt and not have to cut a hole from the sheet, too.
15.) I cut out the holes for the outlets from the felt leaving enough extra felt to fold over the edges.
16.) I glued the extra edges of the felt over the edges to finish off the outlet openings and pinned them.
17.) When I put the design wall in place, I realized it had a tendency to fall forward, so I hammered some hardware into the wood wall and pressed hooks into the design wall to hold it in place.
18.) When I'm doing regular work in the studio, I'll run a string from hook to hook to keep the design wall from falling. When I'm doing photography, I'll remove the string.
(I haven't put the black felt on the reverse side yet.)

Design wall with works in progress

edge of design wall with hardware and hooks

Design wall with holes for electrical outlet