Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: September 2011

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Laura Krasinski: Out on a Limb

9:19 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

Laura's another quilter who shared images with me for the Beautiful Beast Slide Show. She wrote me this story about stretching, trying and changing that is the heart of the Lunatic Fringe.

This is "the story of making a quilt of my daughter. It's called He Loves Me He Loves Me Not.

I was asked by Wendy Butler Berns if I would like to participate in her exhibit for Houston. It is called Out on a Limb.

I jumped at the chance since I have never had a quilt in a big show before. So she continues to tell me about the challenge and then said it had to be at least 50".... My jaw immediately dropped. I don't think I spoke a word for a minute or so.. .. I have never made a quilt that large. So I thought about it and decided I needed to make this. I took a photo of my daughter leaning against a tree. I took the photo and with the help of Wendy's technique I turned it into a 52"x64" quilt. I added a wall so I could put her cat Mr. Snuggles sitting on it. ... During the time I was making this quilt I had some major family issues. I really didn't think I would get it done. But, with the help and support of family and friends I did get it done, and in time. This was one of the best experiences of my life. Since I have done this quilt I feel like I need to do something better and maybe bigger. ...But, I am bound and determine to continue to make beautiful quilts now that I have found my true love. "

Her motto is "Everything will be o.k. in the end... if it's not o.k. it is not the end."

Fringe people aren't reasonable.Nor is their art. They follow their hearts and do what their heart demands. It's loveliest when you find their people understand and hold them up in that process.

You'll find Laura Krasinski's work at

http://laurakrasinskiquilts.com

http://laurasartontherun.blogspot.com

http://laurakrasinskiquilts.blogspot.com

http://milwaukeeartquilters.wordpress.com

Labels: lunatic fringe |

4 comments

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Wild annie! Wade

7:29 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

Happy for No Reason

annie! Wade is a wildly creative lady who I first learned about when she lived in Florida. Her work reflects the colors and chaos of the tropics.

Happy for No reason is a fabric book of "...of scraps and bits and pieces I’ve tried different techniques on…and just made me happy…for no reason! Named after a book I read earlier this year by Marci Shimoff.

Gator Geezer
Gator Geezer started as a photo her husband took with the kids from an air boat. She says it was"…for my hubby of 33 years this weekend…was made of scraps that most people throw away. My son-in-law took some alligator pix when he was in the Everglades on a with my daughter and grandbaby and I knew I had to try to translate it with fabric. The original picture…which you can see on my blog…is quite different, and I still want to work on the eye…but otherwise, I think I’m done. LOVE using this technique to make quilts."

annie! spells her name just like that, and it's true. She's so unexpected and fun.

I love the idea of a book that's happy just for happiness. That may well be the best reality we make for ourselves. I love when someone claims it in their art.

annie! has also recreated her life. She has a grand daughter in Barranquilla Columbia and lives there with her husband so she can be with her. Catch her wild adventures in art and in life at www.bohemiannieart.blogspot.com

Labels: lunatic fringe |

1 comments

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Celebrate the Fringe!

11:43 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

Celebrate the Fringe!
We're doing a follower give-away to celebrate all our wonderful fringy folk! We'll pick one winner from the lunatic fringe followers on October 1,2011.

The winner will get kit including 1/2 yard of Ellen Anne Eddy's amazing hand-dyed fabric and hand-dyed pearl cotton to go with it. Sign up as a Lunatic Fringe Page Follower, on this page for your entry. Want to improve your odds ? Sign up as follower and do a guest post for the blog to have your name in the hat twice. Contestants must be in the United States.
Come join the fringe and get some fabulous fringy hand-dye to play with. Email Ellen to talk about putting up a guest blog.(It's not hard. It takes a couple pictures and a paragraph.We'll help.) Show us your Fringe!

Labels: lunatic fringe |

21 comments

Monday, September 5, 2011

Romance from the Edge of the Fringe

10:20 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

I Want A Man

I want a man who'll wash the dishes
I want a man who'll make the bed
I want a man who's not suspicious
I want a man who's halfway dead
I want a man who'll do the laundry
Vacuum the carpets, sweep the floor
I want a man who knows his boundaries
No one could ask for more.Uncle Bonsai

For two years I've had lizards on my wall. No. I don't live in Florida. Or any where else where that kind of ambiance is every day. I've had two Komodo Dragon lizards on my design wall for over two years. I drew them dancing and the butterflies to go around them and left them there on the design wall, either like desert or like an unripe melon, waiting for later.

I wish I could see images fully when I draw them. For some reason I can't. I need to sit with them. I can walk into someone else's drawing and often tell them, this is off, this is out of proportion. For some reason, it's like I'm in a semi-dark room where I just can't quite see what's happening. So when I'm unsure, I'll sit a drawing where I can see it for a long time, to see what I might have missed.

In this case, that was wise. I could see the neck was wrong on one. The back needed to be wider on the other. I adjusted the drawings and then still waited.What for?

They're really scary. Not because they're Komodo dragons. I've met one actually, and I loved her. She was a modern day dinosaur. Now mind you, I'm glad she'd eaten first before I visited.

They represent all the fear I have over the dance between men and women. Romance scares me green.

It's not that it's not of interest. Although I'll admit that as I get older the guys get less appealing. And though I have a bevy of strong supportive women friends, I can't help but feel that I've missed something. I was an odd and distressed young woman who went through a whirl of inappropriate men, landed in therapy, and came out 15 years later with a better adjusted attitude and no one in sight. By then, art was my survival. It was past my life. I'd pulled all of my issues into different quilts, and dragged them one by one into my therapist's office. And I had a habit of living every extra moment of my life at my machine.

It's astonishing but true that men don't come into your studio by accident or design to meet you. I've also found that every time I've tried to engineer that, it doesn't work either. Sooner or later, I'm back in my studio. At 58, I'm resigned. Cats and dogs are truly lovely roommates. Besides, I'd need someone who could do light housecleaning, gardening, household repair and not watch sports. I don't believe that paragon exists anywhere.

Over the years I've watched my married friends, sometimes in jelousy, sometimes with joy for their joys, sometime in anguish at what they've had to face. I've heard their stories, cried with them, laughed with them, helped fight their battles, cheered at their victories, taken in their children as my own, given them back in a heart beat when it was time. I can't say it was easy. It was infinitely better than living in a hell of one. It grounded me to the world, which I do need some help on.

So it was with some shock as I watched a friend acknowledge that her gentle, kindly marriage, that I've truly envied, includes special moments where her husband radiates black rage and terrorizes her with it. Her oldest son tried practicing grandchild blackmail. You can imagine. He learned it somewhere.

I find myself needing to take out my tattered images of love and romance and say, "Is this what you had in mind?"

And I looked up and saw my dancing, romancing Komodo Dragons drawn waiting on my wall. Terrified.

Now the things I draw sometimes happen. I do not know why. It isn't something that's always true. But I watch for it. So when I draw something that scares me, I have a choice. I can dig my head in the sand and refuse the image, refuse to be part of it or work with it. Mind you, it doesn't go away. But denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Or I can work the image and see if somehow the magic happens. Sometimes, if you work through the fear and the pain, it flips over. Something falls into a different place, and the object of fear and pain becomes something lovely, if scary. Or funny. It shifts something in my head and it shifts something within the piece.It becomes a glorified wound, a resurrection.

I started this year, realizing that I had hid from these large lizards on my wall. I told myself lizards don't win awards. They don't get in shows. Why would you do a large quilt that will take months and months, that no one will want to see?

You don't pin a drawing to a wall for 2 years and ignore it because it's not important. The denial is a very wide river, dark and cold. I plunged in, picked out thread and fabric, and started to stitch.

Last night as I pulled them from the machine, I could tell the magic is on it's way. They're ripply rivers of orange and blue muscle with scales. They're gorgeous.Though the dance is risky, dangerous, a bit too close, it's lovely.

Will my friend find a way to restructure her world? I've watched her do it time after time. She has the courage of mountains and stone.

I've taken my lizards and danced with them. That's my part.

I wrote this about a year ago.
As a complete surprise, these babes have gone to Houston. I don't have a good track record there, but I do believe that it's an honor to be shown. And it's my job to shock/scare/titillate/ and generally push people past some boundaries. I'd say my work is done.

You'll find the wonderful music of Uncle Bonzai at the Uncle Bonzai Home Page. They're irreverent, fun and wonderfully fringy.
You'll find Soulmates, my lizard quilt at in the humor section at Houston. Stop by and hum them a tune. I think they'll dance for you too.

Labels: lunatic fringe |

8 comments

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Fat Girl Boot Camp? I Don't Think So!

8:47 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

As Good as it Gets

It's no secret I battle with my weight. I am blessed with what the #1 Ladies Detective Agency refers to as "the traditional build." So every so often, I notice that I'm particularly larger and pull things in a bit.

Another thing I was blessed with was a small birth defect. My mother, being Irish and collecting tragedies the way other people collect Hummels made that into a huge issue. After being a March of Dimes reject, being fat is a cherry on top. It's almost a non-sequetor.

So I was appalled today to run into a blog that suggested Boot Camp for fat ladies. It was suggested that if you had extra punishments you carried with you at all times to remind yourself of what horrible thing would happen if you ate something other than a celery stick. As if you would miraculously not eat. They suggested you decorate a sign with your goal weight with glitter.

I will not give you a link to this site. I consider it toxic.

I'm tired of aversion fads, and I'm particularly tired of the fat aversion fad. It's like punishing people for having a birth mark. It's about fear and self loathing. The science isn't all in yet, but it's beginning to show that although no extreme is good for you, being fat is not a death sentence. The attitudes about it are faddish, not necessarily fact.

But most of all, I'm tired of the attitude that says you should do it to yourself. Pour that kind of hate on yourself.

Renoir's Two Girls

Fat aversion is a fad. It has come but it will go as well.I love this image of Renoir's. Would we want these lovely girls anorexic? He knew they were gorgeous. And in our own way, so are we all.

The difference in me gaining weight and losing weight is my ability to hear when I'm full. That translates to three extra bites on my plate per meal. Once I've been that mean to myself I need that extra three bites just to cushion myself from the sore spots on my butt from having been emotionally spanked.

I think I'm going to decorate my butt with emotional glitter. I think I'm going to say it's all me, and love it the way I love my sunflowers and morning glories, even when they grow way out of proportion. Then I'm going to love every bite of food I take and try very hard to listen lovingly when my body says, "Thanks that's enough!"

You'll find "The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" on Amazon and in your local book store. Read it. It's a delightful, loving portrait of vital, fun, kind decent people who just happen not to be thin.

Labels: lifestyle, lunatic fringe, story telling |

11 comments

Friday, September 2, 2011

Janice Paine Dawes Delightfully Dead Fringe

2:57 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

March Hare

I've been aware of Janice Paine Dawes wonderful work since she shared a lovely rabbit portrait of herself with me for my Beautiful Beast Lecture.

Day of the Dead

She just sent me these great pictures of her Day of the Dead quilt! Here's what she had to say about it. It was taken from a..."painting...originally done in tempera on illustration board for a Day of the Dead challenge.The piece sold right away... A few years after that I decided I needed to do this in fiber. I love the fiber version most. I was able to give real dimension to the sugar skulls and they look good enough to eat."

I love that she's come back to this image to rework it, the way all important images need to be revisited. I also love that they have no calories!

Her motto is: If you feel like a square peg in a round hole don't assume you should change, you need to find a square hole.
You'll find Janice's brilliant work at
The Distoriated Quilter

And a great fun site about finding fabulous fabrics and ideas for cheap at

Quilting on the Cheap.blogspot.com

Labels: lifestyle, lunatic fringe |

3 comments

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Linda T. Mintons Fringy Feet and More

10:57 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

Edit Post

Tragically Cool and Incredibly Hip

Linda T. Minton has Fringy Feet!

I love her shoes! And I never love shoes. But I want these.

Painted Mud Clogs

Big City Girl with Her Hair on Fire

Here is a pair of colorful hand-painted Artist's Mudd clogs that just make her happy, and the pair of black-and-white painted Z-Coil shoes is titled "Tragically Cool and Incredibly Hip". To go with it she has a fanciful-face fabric collage is built on a favorite pair of bluejeans and is titled "Big City Girl with Her Hair on Fire".

Eye Pod

Her"Eye Pod" was at the Journal Quilts exhibit in Houston.
Her motto is:
"Fail often in order to succeed sooner." -- Peter Sims
You'll find Linda Teddlie Minton's wonderful fringy work at http://fiberreflections.blogspot.com

Labels: lifestyle, lunatic fringe |

6 comments