Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: August 2011

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

6:03 PM |

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Melida Boman Shows us her Fringe

5:54 PM |

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Cafe de Human

Melida Boman hales from Oklahoma. She has an inordinate passion for dragons and has worked on dragon forms for as long as I've known her.

With three children she's taken on the role of Mamma Dragon. As you can imagine, when Mamma isn't happy................. need I say more?

Here's what she had to say about this delightful piece.

"Have you ever wondered what other dimensions were out there? What would you do if there was a portal for hungry dragons looking for a little lunch? How you like to chat with one over some blood wine? It could happen!"

And it could. I think I'll look over the next restaurant carefully before I ask for a table. If it says "to serve man...." I may need to eat at home.

Show us your fringe too. Email me at ellenanneeddy@gmail.com and we'll set that up.

Labels: lunatic fringe |

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Monday, August 29, 2011

2:01 PM |

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It's official! The Lunatic Fringe is back in action.
If you are a former Fringe member you know it never goes away.
If you were in class with me and I gave you your badge, it's good for ever. Like every sign and symbol, we really wear them mostly inside ourselves.

The Lunatic Fringe Badge is

The Red Badge of Courage

Your Purple Heart

A Green Lunatic Fringe

Although I make these for people who take my class,you are completely welcome to make one for anyone who needs one, most especially yourself.

How do you know if you're a member of the Lunatic Fringe?

Do you do your art at odd hours and in odd ways?

Are people always asking you "What's that for?

Do you neglect housework, yard work, dinner, and paper work to do your art?
Do you see wonderful inspiration in really strange places and at odd times?

Does your heart hurt if you can't do your art?

Do you sew, paint, sculpt, write or whatever like a mad person?

Have you ever been rejected from a show or publisher?

These are just some of the signs that you are a member of an elite group referred to as the Lunatic Fringe. They are the artists, writers and crazy people out there doing something wonderful and weird only they can do. Great art comes out of the margins. It comes from people following their dreams in strange and wonderful ways.

Of course they need a red badge of courage. That kind of art takes guts. Of course they've earned a purple heart. Creative people like that get shot at. Of course it's lunatic. It's lunatic, brilliant, fun, wild,real, healing, scary and personally vital.

This is not just for artists. All life is art and your lunatic fringe may be in how you garden, arrange your life, cook your food, write your stories. The lunatic fringe is about acknowledging the art within your life.
I'm putting up a page on facebook for the Lunatic Fringe to strut their stuff. Your fringe is hanging! SHOW US YOUR FRINGE!

If you would like a guest blog on the Lunatic Fringe, email at ellenanneeddy@gmail.com and tell us how your part of it all.

We'll welcome posts both on facebook and guest blogs. I'm starting a new blog for the Lunatic Fringe for you to show it all off.
Check out the Lunatic Fringe Blog

Labels: lunatic fringe |

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The Lunatic Fringe Rampant

1:55 PM |

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The Red Badge of Courage
Your Purple Heart
A Green Lunatic Fringe

Although I make these for people who take my class,you are completely welcome to make one for anyone who needs one, most especially yourself.

How do you know if you're a member of the Lunatic Fringe?

Do you do your art at odd hours and in odd ways?
Are people always asking you "What's that for?
Do you neglect housework, yard work, dinner, and paper work to do your art?
Do you see wonderful inspiration in really strange places and at odd times?
Does your heart hurt if you can't do your art?
Do you sew, paint, sculpt, write or whatever like a mad person?
Have you ever been rejected from a show or publisher?

Labels: life as an artist, lifestyle, lunatic fringe |

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Friday, August 26, 2011

The Secret Life of Symbols

7:58 AM |

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When I was teaching in Tampa, at Keep Me in Stitches, I had the pleasure of talking with an old student.

I've been teaching now for almost 30 years, so it's not uncommon to find people who'd had class with me teaching, writing, creating amazing art and winning awards. Students in the quilt world are not like students in other places. They're often experts in their own right. They're there in class to pick your brain, but they've already got amazing skills. So it's not like that student owes you very much. They're another traveler, perhaps out ahead, perhaps a step or two behind. But you've showed them a cool trick or two and they may well have showed you as well. It's more like meeting a pilgrim on a similar path.

I used to give everyone three scraps of fabric:A red badge of Courage, a green lunatic fringe and a purple heart, because if you're doing brave things, of course they're shooting at you. At some point, in the four thousand things that have to get done before class, I stopped.

I also always used to wear a badge. At one point someone gave me the most wonderful bug pin. I put it on my badge and it was part of it. At another point, I lost it. No one seemed to miss it.
My old student asked me if I was still giving badges. I think I had him in class 15 years ago.
It still mattered to him.

Every so often, someone would stop me and tell me they lost their badge. I gave them explicit permission to make another for yourself or for someone else.

Perhaps the badges need to come back. Am I as brave as I need to be? Are my students? Are any of us?

A sacrament is an outside sign of an inward grace. A symbol can be one too. An ordinary person can stand behind a curtain, make a great deal of noise and convince people to be brave and have heart simply by giving them one. But if works???????????????

Should I start making badges again?
Do we need the lunatic fringe rampant?
Would you stand in the lunatic fringe?

Labels: story telling |

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Life in the Garden of Time

8:32 AM |

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All games are a metaphor for life. I think that's why we play them. They give us ups and downs, the wheel of chance, the successes we can celebrate, and what life never gives us, the reset button.

Lately I've been captured by a
Facebook game, Gardens of Time. My game choices are limited by several easy rules. It must, unlike Jungle Gems, be free. It must, unlike Angry Birds, not make me flinch. It can loop endlessly, like Fluffy, but it must offer achievable goals. As you can see, I've gone through most of them.

They surely are a way of turning off. Endless amounts of time get swallowed. Gardens of Time is a found object game. You win by finding lost and odd objects in unlikely spots. Then you build your own garden with all kinds of odd but necessary artifacts, buildings and decorations. Just like home. But it is, in a way, symbolic of my life.

First off, their housekeeping looks like mine. Yes I do have odd objects everywhere, including the banana peel on the couch. Sorry. I want to say the dogs do that, but some lies just aren't believable.

Secondly, you need to do thing over and over and over again, until you learn them. That's just reality. Everything worth doing is worth doing badly. You will do it badly until you do it well. So you might as well just do it.

Thirdly, you put in every silly thing they tell you to. After having filled in a quilt show entry, I can see how that relates.

Finally there are gifts people give each other.
At first I didn't get that. I think they didn't have it hooked up so you could see what the gift was and who it was from. So I sort of left them sitting around with the rest of the clutter.
Then I realized how much of my life is unclaimed gifts. The real gifts we get given, have no meaning if we don't claim them. I'm not talking about the lovely physical things we give each other over time and space. I'm talking about life gifts. A friend. A talent. A love. An opportunity. A chance. A space.

Within the spiral of life we go past these gifts like the golden ring on the merry-go-round.We may not even look up and see it.But there it is. If we don't reach for it, we cannot have, even though it's presented to us,time after time.

I can't help but wonder what I might accomplish if I walked away from my computer games an extra two hours a day. But my golden ring for today is that I'm going to find that out.
You'll find Gardens of Time on Facebook.
You'll also find the Ellen Anne Eddy Thread Magic Studio page there. Like it and you'll see what's happening in and out of my studio.

Labels: life as an artist, lifestyle, lunatic fringe |

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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Designing Ways: Ornamenting Grids: The Zentangle Dance

8:19 AM |

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"A good artist should be able to draw with a berry on a fence." Tim Powers, Reach for the Sky

Like everyone else, I'm in love with the whole Zen Tangle thing. I tend to find these things later than everyone else. I finally lift my head up and see what's been going on for a long long time.
But I've always been a full believer in more is more. I'm in love.

What I've enjoyed most about this is the division and ornamentation of space. I also love the whole low tech part of it. These are done with a ball point pen on notebook paper.

All of this started with a simple grid. We quilters tend to thing in terms of squares and rectangles, but really there are no rules.

Here are a series of different grid fills. Left to right, we've filled in with spirals, a wonky ninepatch, a spider web, scallops, and a larger spiral. How fun is that?

How does that translate to quilting? We're still filling in space. Only with thread.Can you say "stipple?"

You'll find some very cool books on Zen Tangling on Amazon. See if it doesn't expand your thinking about space, design and the filling of space.

You'll find more of Sandi Steen Bartholomew's work at http://beezinthebelfry.blogspot.com/

Labels: design, filling the grid |

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Designing Ways: Ornamenting Grids: The Zentangle Dance

8:19 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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"A good artist should be able to draw with a berry on a fence." Tim Powers, Reach for the Sky

What I've enjoyed most about this is the division and ornamentation of space. I also love the whole low tech part of it. These are done with a ball point pen on notebook paper.

All of this started with a simple grid. We quilters tend to thing in terms of squares and rectangles, but really there are no rules.