Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio

Moving Day

2012-01-09T15:47:00.000-06:00

No one ever believes

I'm organized.

That may because I'm

not.

I live simply in howling

chaos.

I also know where

mostly everything is.

Unless it's my camera, my scissors,

my glasses, or perhaps my wallet.

Perhaps you can see the hole in that

theory. I'm trying to be organized and

that may well be the best we can do.

With that in mind, I'm moving my blog

over to my web

page at www.ellenanneeddy.com. It's

easier for you to find and easier for me

to share with you.

Look for all my past blog posts, on the new site at www.ellenanneeddy.com

Practical Thread Magic: Building Beautiful Color

2012-01-08T14:23:00.005-06:00

Most of the time when we think of mixing colors, we think of two colors becoming one.
Working with thread is so different. The machine work lays one line of thread next to each other. Our eyes mix the colors together, but they stay separate, clean, clear and beautiful.

This tulip has ten colors in it.
Why so many? Because real tulips have multiple streaks of red, orange and yellow. That large range of colors lets me shade from side to side, giving my flower real depth and detail.
Here are some of the process shots.

One layer of zigzag stitching after another builds us to a flower with dimension and full color range.

http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/store-detail.php?cat=1&ID=1

Want learn more about building flower colors in thread?

Thread Magic Garden has a whole chapter on color theory for flowers. Why?
Flowers ARE color. It's what it's all about.

Thread Magic Garden is available for sale now on Ellen's web page at www.ellenanneeddy.com

Bad Raps, and Bad Wraps

2012-01-06T09:53:00.000-06:00

I grew up reading the Jungle Books by Kipling, so I've always loved wolves. The wolves take this baby in and raise him as one of their cubs. Like most adoptive processes, there's a bit of cognitive dissonance about the whole thing. He doesn't fit in well.

So this video touched me. It's about perception and reality. For all of her obvious concern when she sees the wolves, they scatter when she says "Git!" The wolves are not evil. They're just wolves.

This last year I've been working on the issue of bullies. I really don't want to go to my grave grieving over things that happened when I was seven. And like all really good emotional issues, the opportunities come back again and again until I can find better solutions. There's two schools of though on this. "Oh no! Not another learning experience!" And, "There you are again!"

Bullies function on a wolf perception.Someone has to be perceived either as a wolf to be driven away or a wolf who will probably eat you. Like most binary systems, it has some serious limits.

It occurs to me that two things have to happen to create a wolf perception. We have to give someone a bad rap. We give ourselves reasons why they've done what they've done. Maybe it's true. Often enough, that's a fantasy too. We just convince ourselves of their bad action and intent.

And then we dress them as villains. Give them a bad wrap to wear: a black hat, a swirling evil cloak, an evil glint to their eye.

I've had it happen to me as well. I've had people hand me my black cloak and hat and tell me why I'm a danger.

It's not that I believe there is no evil in the world. It's there. Nor do I believe it my job to change people's choices. I wouldn't take someone's path away from them like that. If we don't walk our path as best we can, we won't learn from it.

But after years of dressing people in bad wraps and giving them bad raps and being dressed in the same, it occurs to me that they might just scatter if I said, "Git!" My perception is power I give or take, all by myself.

You'll find the Jungle Book at Amazon.com. Skip the Disney copies. They're cute but a completely different story.

You'll find people who want to dress up in funny black cloaks and be icky and people who want to dress you too in all kinds of odd places. I hope you can say "Git!" to them too.

Find the Flakes

2012-01-03T10:52:00.004-06:00

Every season I offer three quilts on my web site at a silly low price, just to see if you're watching.

I just posted up my three winter ones. We're calling it the Snow Flake price because I really flaked out on it.

Here's a secret: They're all in the new Thread Magic Garden Book.

See if you can find them! They're at
www.ellenanneeddy.com
Thread Magic Studio Gallery

Not Quite Ready for Prime Time Theater

2012-01-02T16:49:00.002-06:00

I was wandering around on the web today and found this great segment that AQS taped for me at the Des Moines Show this Fall.

This is a very nice tutorial for making flowers out of simple shapes. They taped this the last day of the show. I ran in and babbled like a brook.

But I found it and listened to it today. I didn't ummm. And it felt as good to listen to it as to do it.

Build some cool flowers. For heaven's sake leave the patterns out. Build something wild, while you're under the gun. It is, after all, time honored.

Thread Magic Garden Is Ready for Pre-order!

2011-12-30T11:32:00.001-06:00

Thread Magic Garden will be arriving for shipment around January 20th. You can pre-order your copy today!

You never really know what a project will take until you see it done. Perhaps that's good. A good dream well done should take your whole heart's effort and give you your heart back in return.

When I started this book, I had no idea it would take 2 years to finish. Part of that is that I had to learn so much to do this book. Part of that is the meticulous process C&T puts into every book. I got my premier copy a week ago.I'm still scraping myself off the ceiling. It's past my expectations. I'm hoping you'll feel that way too.

When I started this book, I wanted to continue what I'd accomplished with Thread Magic. I wanted to show folk ways of adding wild free motion to quilts that set things hearts and imaginations on fire. I wanted to set up instructions that would take you through your own process with this. You'll have to let me know how I've done when you read the book.

But for those of you who've known me in class or in print, you know I don't give recipes for cakes that don't rise. I tell you everything I know. I also don't do anything really hard. I just do things that are time consuming and compulsive.

So here is what we have.

Fifty eye popping new quilts in the gallery
A patternless approach to design
Intuitive applique that makes creating flowers easy and fun

Tutorials in

Color theory for flowers
Corded buttonhole binding
Angelina Fiber
6 Free motion zigzag stitches
Machine Beading
Globbing
Sandwich stabilizing

I'm hoping I've done a good job of opening doors, traveling a new path, leaving good bread crumbs for anyone who wants to follow, and breaking the best rules I could find to break. See you on the trail.

You can pre-order your copy of Thread Magic Garden at

www.ellenanneeddy.com

The Sprinkles on the Donut

2011-12-26T09:19:00.001-06:00

After years of drawing bugs and frogs it has occurred to me that I'm a bit odd. All artists are, mostly. The ones who look normal pass well.
I'm not that good an actress.

I was at church for Christmas day. The choir at this church takes off for Christmas. I could have sat in the choir pews, but I ended up in the general congregation.

I'm not an alto as a show off. It's simply where my range is. I can't sing the high notes reliably. It happens occasionally, but like Tuesday, anything could happen. So I was singing the alto line, against the bulk of the congregation on the melody.

It's different within the choir. You expect to hear the part above and below you. The blend is planned and it's where you belong.
This was much more separate, and more isolating.

At the end of the service it occurred to me that much of my life is that way: a counterpoint to melodies I can not reach. My plans for the holiday collapsed and I ended up more alone than was comfortable.

I was speaking afterwards to the choir director who said, "You know, you'll never be the donut. You're the sprinkles on the donut. And that's why we want the donut anyway.

Now the nicest thing about the sprinkles on the donut is that they come in a range of color. They're practically an edible color chart.

I don't get to eat donuts either, but I've learned to appreciate allergy foods as a visual experience. And I'm an edible color chart! There are worse fates and worse goals.

2011-12-25T07:33:00.000-06:00

God bless us, one and all.

The Wizard of Odd

2011-12-23T11:22:00.000-06:00

Having fun being weird today? Thank an artist!

Lately, they've been playing the Wizard of Oz again. It occurred to me just how much of our language comes from that amazing movie.

Most movies are a cultural moment at best. They expand on a moment in time. What is a classic changes with the wind, but I think we can say that it's about how it changes the way people think.

I was going through the number of phrases that the Wizard cemented into my verbal landscape:

"If I only had a brain."
"Ding, dong, the witch is dead."
"Over the rainbow."
"And your little dog too."
"I hope my courage holds out. I hope your tail holds out."
"I'm melting."

And of course,

" Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Frank Baum, the author, had a rather unsuccessful life outside his books. He bounced from one thing to another until he wrote this odd and lovely tale, largely about politics. The politics have disappeared in time leaving a wonderful story about friendship, challenges, appreciating weird and very kind help, and finding your heart. Who would any of us be without it?

That being said, I take heart in this. When someone says, "You quilt, right? Can you make me a bed quilt? In beige?"

I remind myself that my glory and my crown, my hope and my consolation is that I be as gloriously odd as I am. And that if I do it well a small part of the world will shift for it.

Those of us doing our art shift the archetypes. Not purposely, or with cause, but simply by bringing our vision to the world. It's not something one picks and chooses. It's simply an act of trust to bring what your heart demands into being. We bring it all to the table and let time sort it out.

Silent Night: Waiting for Wonder

2011-12-19T11:24:00.000-06:00

The season of Christmas is hard and fast, a vicious wild river of people and vehicles vying for more gifts, more money, parking spaces, more immeasurable and impossible holiday glee.

I'm convinced this is a reaction to the dark of the year. I can't speak for any one else. It has an addictive edge to it I don't trust. When I try to strip myself down each year to the celebration of Christ's birth and basic kindness to the people in front of me, without the endorphin pump of extra shopping, sugar and alcohol, I find myself facing all kinds of edgy truths about myself. Much of what runs through your mind in the dark.

Not that I'm a stick about sugar and extra spending. They're just not good for me. There's an old saying, "Up like a rocket. Down like a stick.", which pretty much covers my mental health after any Christmas-New Years week. Since I don't have the family obligations, I can and often do choose to opt out of the commercial aspect. And anything that takes extra vacuuming, or must be put away unless it's up next spring. Ick.

I'm an escaped Catholic. I go to an Anglican Church largely because I love the rituals and can think what I like. They don't green the church (translate: put up the tree) until the Sunday before Christmas.

It leaves time for waiting in the darkness. To push back against the darkness, and it's nastier little whispers and say, "The Light is coming." There's a value in saying that before the light arrives. It reminds us that good and bad, broken and whole what we need is there and right for us.

That all said, I think I'm going to put up an origami bird tree. One I don't have to take down after the season. There's nothing wrong with lighting a candle in the dark.

All of the best of the blest for you and yours for the holiday.
Ellen

No More Color Police:Creating Flower Colors

2011-12-17T10:08:00.000-06:00

"Roses are red. violets are blue. Angels in heaven know I love you." Down in the valley

What color is a flower, actually?

In spite of everything your kindergarten teacher told you, it's not a simple answer. If she made you color all your roses red, give me her name and I'll go have a little chat with her. Or better still, you might want to tell her that she can't live in your head anymore without paying rent.

That's not a white tulip. Nor is it really red or yellow. It's a wonderful swirl of a number of great colors. Leaving any of that out is a loss. But how do you do it in fiber?

We have two great tools. Well, we probably have hundreds but these help with this.Hand dyed fabric has all those great streaks. It's a great way to start a flower.

Machine embroidery also speeds us on our way.The wonderful thing about stitching flowers is that thread really is minutia. We can slip in that dash of green, that edge of orange or purple that flowers either do have or should.
When Mark Lipinski asked me how important color was on his show this week and why I put so much emphasis on it, I almost fell of my chair. Color IS the media. We see everything through the color and the texture. You can here that conversation on Mark's Creative Mojo show, December 14th.

Thread Magic Garden has a full chapter on creating colors for flowers. It's a magical thing. And you can do it too.

Blog at C&T Publishing

2011-12-14T12:10:00.003-06:00

I'm the Guest Blogger today at the
C&T Blog.
I've posted a blog called My Studio Garden.

See it at http://www.ctpubblog.com/

Thanks, C&T!

Announcing My Computer Radio Show Premier at Creative Mojo!

2011-12-13T12:17:00.000-06:00

I'm going to be on Mark Lipinski's Creative Mojo Radio Show on
Wednesday, December 14th, at 3:00PM -5:PM EST
(2-4 CST, 12-2 MST, 11-1 PST),
Live for two hours with Listener Call ins.

Mark is one of my favorite creative quilting lunatics. He brings immense talent and a wacky sense of fun to us all.
On of his gifts to the quilt community is this fabulous show.I'm so honored he's asked me to join him!

Go to www.toginet.com on your computer and click on the live button on the right hand side of your screen. Or you can listen to it later at http://www.marklipinski.com/

Come and join us. Call in! I'll answer

anything (well almost.)

Lauren Strach: A Botanical Lunatic with a Plan

2011-12-12T12:28:00.001-06:00

Lauren doesn't look like a lunatic. She looks like a pink cheeked soccer mom. Look out! Stand back!

She's an emerging art quilter who attacks new approaches and techniques with gleeful ferocity. And masters them with passion. Every time she visits me, I find myself flying to my machine, inspired by her intensity.

Lauren says,

"My inspiration, like so many other quilters, comes from nature.

As a life-long biologist and Master Gardener, I thought I saw nature, but it wasn’t until I embraced my artful journey that I began to really see. My inspiration is found in the whorls of snail shells, the miniature worlds of mosses and lichens, the rugged nooks and crannies of the bark of the fallen tree, and the intricate shading and nuances in the early spring wildflowers. And, the more I see, the more I see.

The act of translating that vision in line, pattern and color into textile recreations introduces the next level of AHA! It is an ever fascinating challenge to take the experience of seeing with eyes wide open, to shape it into form. From the fantastical realism of exaggerated insects, to the abstracted likeness of the quintessential flower bud, I seek to uncover the universal codes, to bring them to life with fabric and thread. Tactile, textile translations of the mysteries of nature, celebrating the wonders of life, that is where I find my inspiration.

Lauren's work has been showed at both Paducah and Houston. She was a finalist in the $100,000 Quilt Challenge. Where will she show next? It could be anywhere. If she doesn't send it in, it's likely
to fly in on it's own.

Maharishi of the Vacuum Cleaner

2011-12-07T07:37:00.000-06:00

I would like to say that my cats taught me to be terrified of vacuum cleaners. I'd like to say it but it's simply not true.

No one actually cleaned much of anything in my childhood home. We lived in a pleasantly shabby small house carefully insulated by mountains of books. So once every five years or so, someone would put some effort into finding the floor and once found, vacuuming it. Of course that took in my case, huge quantities of ice cream. In my mother's case, similar quantities of gin. Either way we never faced it chemically unimpaired. It may explain why she thought it was funny to chase me around the room with it. It may also explain my complete dread of them.

But at a certain point you decide that your childhood is past. The floor is in shambles and it would be nice to see what color the rug is. So I went on the search for the vacuum I wouldn't hate.

This was not easy. We went through a Royal, several Hoovers, a Eureka canister that lasted a week.We have a dog cookie under every rug and mattress and wisps of thread escaped from the studio. Some of them whole and some in crumbs. Admittedly, this is a hard life for any vacuum cleaner.

I was bemoaning the Eureka when Pat Winter told me she'd gotten a Bissell that pretty much ate babies for lunch for $44 at Walmart. Desperate with the image of my new godbaby wading through the crumbs, fur and crunchies, I bought one.

OMG did this thing whirl fur and fluff around. So it was with tears in my eyes I watched it die today.It was almost a whole month old. Could I find the receipt? Of course not. So I went online, and found the manual. While I was looking for the belt, one of the hoses fell off spewing crumblies everywhere. When I looked in the hose there was a small plastic bottle.

What could it be? I poked at it with broom handles, my croquet mallet handle, the fire poker, the skewers we use for roasting marshmallows. It finally gave it up for particularly long mop handle.

What else could it have been? It was a bottle of sewers aid!

So I am now, by right of my passage Maharishi of the Vacuum Cleaner.Chief bottle washer too. And I know where I put the Sewer's Aid. Life is good. Now where did I put the floor?

In Search of African Violet Colors: Anatomy of a Color Study

2011-12-04T13:00:00.000-06:00

I love that purple and gold combination. It makes me think of African Violets, my favorite inside flower.

I know I'm out of season, but all this rain makes me think of this song, and that makes me think of violets. They come in endless colors, all of them gorgeous. So let's go to our color wheel and figure out why.

We have some great complementary action here! The purple and the yellow are zinging off each other, with some analogous purples on the side. Of course it's irresistible.

Here's how that translates into a quilt. The metallic threads soften the yellow a bit, but they still play against each other. And the sweep of darker and lighter purples to either side makes it a richer combination.
Wrapping it up:
African violets are a great complementary purple/yellow color scheme, enhanced with some analogous purples on the side. If they make your heart happy, see what happens when you put oranges with blues. The color wheel shows us the relationships of these colors. Similar relationships will have similar effects. It's a great way to stretch your palette.

Getting Together

2011-12-02T14:46:00.001-06:00

Normally December would be a time of getting things into place. Getting them together. Tax receipts. Almost finished quilts. Articles that have to go out. The teaching is done for the year, and all those tasks impossible in the travel have to be done.
This December, add to that I'm getting ready for Thread Magic Garden, my new book from C&T publishing to arrive in January. There's a flurry of newsletters, articles and new work that has to be in place.
In the middle of that muddle, I'm trying very hard to realize that the best task is simplification. So with that in mind, I'm putting all my blogs into one place.

I know that some people just want information, some people want stories, some people want a place to check for schedules, and some people just want eye candy. You'll still find it all here at the Art Outside the Box at ellenanneeddy.blogspot.com blog. I've put in a cloud label so you can find what you need easier. And I'm very curious as to what you think. I'm hoping you'll let me know.

All the blogs have been fed into this one. I'll still show you wonderful Lunatic Fringe people, color studies, funny stories, fabulous techniques and amazing embroidery. But, we're getting together. Right now.

The Distraction Faction

2011-11-30T12:52:00.001-06:00

I live in dread of distraction. So it is with serious fear that I face the holidays. I have a really low attention span, and I multitask unmercifully, but I know I will leave three out of five of those tasks in the dust. So when the holidays come, I know I really ought to find the floor.
This year we had a particular reason why that was vital.
This is Tom and Sarah.

This is Tom and Sarah with munchkin. It's astonishing how something so small can hold your whole heart that tightly.

Keira is at seven months, a bright sunny soul who likes soft boiled eggs, bee bop music, and is working on toy tossing as an Olympic sport. We had visions of what she'd do when she found the dog bones so we at least had to clean that much up. After that it became the search for more suction in vacuum cleaner land.

The weirdest thing has happened to me. It was bad enough at the baby shower. I actually made a baby quilt. Since it's out of all my apron prints, it includes ghosts, tigers, hawks, spiders, and beetles. We thought we ought to start her early on those things.

But I'm knitting...............................!
I was really worried about having been distracted in this way and then it came to me. I won't really have to have someone pry the knitting needles out of my hands. They come in pairs and I'm bound to lose one sooner or later.

Either way, I've been given the ultimate delight of a tiny hand waving wet spoons and toys at me as I sing her bee bop. Pretty good for a maiden fairy godmother.

Keira lives in Austin with my God kids, Tom and Sarah, They better bring her back soon or, God knows what I'll knit.

To Kit or Not to Kit: A Teacher's Dilemma

2011-11-26T09:46:00.001-06:00

The decisions we make as artists are so different than the decisions we make as teachers.
I came out in the seventies with a primary degree, ready to teach first grade.
It was after several breathtakingly bad years substituting when I finally got a job, only to find I was really bad at crowd control. It doesn't help when you're personally leading the riot.

But your life finds a way. I worked in a fabric store and quilted insanely, until someone asked, "Could you teach a class on that?"
Well, when teaching adults, it's ok to be leading the riot. It's kind of what they hired you for. They want excitement and new ideas and that roller coaster feeling of a whole new stash of toys they've never tried before. I'm exactly where I should be.
But the decisions I make about class are almost in opposition to decisions about the studio.

When it comes to materials, I believe that more is more. More colors please. More resources. More options. Certainly more choices. So when I've taught, I want that for students too. So how much and what do you pack? I used to bring whole bolts of stabilizers, fusibles and piles of books for design.
Strangely enough, it comes down to weight. The new luggage fees have changed that world and I have to think like a teacher, not like an artist. It's very strange to pack what I'm sure you'll need. And to leave the things that you might want back at the studio.

So I am proud/sad/confused/and conflicted to announce for the first time in my life I'm kitting classes. I'm still bringing fabulous fabrics I personally dye, hand-dyed threads you can't get anywhere else, hand-dyed cheesecloth and a collection of the most beautiful commercial threads I can find. But I'm kitting up the stabilizers/fusibles/and patterns to make your life easier the day before class. I'm also producing small classroom books for project classes that cover the material, give you pattern, how to illustrations, tips, sources and gallery photos all in one one pretty little booklet. Simplification really is a math project.

This is my first year to do that.You as students and fellow artists will have to let me know how that works for you.

The downside is that you can't always be sure what that kit will cost. Your group will ask me for a cost for that perhaps a year before class, usually when they book the class. Prices can raise dramatically in a year, and I've usually sliced it down to give students the best break I can. So if shipping or the price spikes, I have no choice but to adjust the kit fee. What I've told students is that if the extra means you eat peanut butter for a week, I'll offer you a dispensation. I can absorb the extra for one or two, but for twenty it becomes a problem.
Like all works in process, I'm trying to figure this out. So as students and artist, what do you prefer? Do you want to strictly find and bring your own supplies? Do you prefer a kit? and can you handle a small price adjustment if it's needed?
This little dragonfly was started in my Dragonfly Sky class, a class built and streamlined with kits, a set pattern, and a booklet to help people on their way.

The booklet is available separately at
www.ellenanneeddy.com
Dragonfly Sky
or at Amazon
If you order from Ellen you get your book personally signed.
Or you can ask your guild to bring Ellen to teach you to make your own dragonfly sky. Ellen's Teaching information

To Kit or Not to Kit: A Teacher's Dilemma

2011-11-26T09:46:00.000-06:00

April H. Center: A Brilliant Painter with Words

2011-10-20T14:12:00.000-05:00

Holding up the World by Ellen Anne Eddy

April Center is a word painter in the Indiana Dunes area. Her images flow out of the page and grab you tightly. Sometimes they are warm and caressing. Sometimes they reach out in ways that are ferocious. But whatever they do, they always touch you somewhere deeply.

What Matters Now
Copyright 2011
By April Center

The trees know. The seasons require attention of different matters.
In spring they stretch their arms reaching for the light and the warmth,
With an awakening that follows throughout the millennium.
The sap slowly flows it’s lifeblood through their veins long before tiny sprouts appear
Like tiny fingers, whispering, reaching to grasp the hope and pursuit of sunlight,
Finding succor for the summer
Ever beckoning, wooing, breathing, soothing.
No need for wondering what matters now in the halcyon days of spring.

The trees know what matters in the glorious summer.
The trees are in full prayer and reverie – their chorus is heard easily
Above the canopy bestowing silent solace
Their arms with a million fans swaying, sometimes gently laughing, softly sighing
Sometimes boldly shouting, clapping and cheering
To the heartbeat of the wind – dancing,
Ever dancing with a grace beyond compare
The trees know what matters now in the ripe days of summer.

The trees know what matters in the fullness of time
In the slow fall from grace
No longer hindered, the trees and their kin shrug off their summer shroud
To be found scattered and strewn on the ground preparing a bed.
They sigh with a satisfied sleepiness after the dance.
A kaleidoscope of color shivers from their frames,
The painted beauty now leaves no trace,
What is left is the enduring body and face.
In the twilight of autumn the trees know what matters in the universe.

The trees know what matter most at this time. No longer concealed
Is their courage standing in place, always there but rarely seen while encased
In their garments of lace.
Not languishing, not laggardly, they brace
For the sharp, serrated winds that gust with the squalls of winter,
Withering all but the trees, for the trees know what matters in a world of much waste.
You'll find more writing of April's at Prudy's View.

Dancing with Design:A Little less real. A little more art.

2011-10-19T13:41:00.002-05:00

I fight with realism. I really do. I wouldn't say I win over often. I'm not against realism. I think that like fire, it's a good tool and a harsh master.

So it was with great glee I found myself with a new design tool. Like most great tools, it's not an object so much as a headset. When I realized I could make flowers out of shapes, I then realized they didn't have to necessarily conform.

Mind you, they could. And it's pretty when they do.This fish has lovely wisteria dripping over his pond.

But what happens if you just make a shape and have them follow that? They abstract in such a cool way. And if you embroider them? Here are the same teardrop shapes centered around a gentle c shape. The shape gives us a path, and the smaller flowers fill in the empty spots.

Everything is better with more thread! At least that's my philosophy. These were embroidered with polyester embroidery thread until they glowed.

I've explored this cool Dance of Design, in Jim West's Magazine, Quiltposium, pages 136-154 with a number of flowers. Go check it out. And take a shape out dancing today!

Pat Winter: It's Always the Quiet Ones

2011-10-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

Crazy for CQ.
The best Mermaids ever!

Tucked in a cute little farmhouse outside Chesterton Indiana lives a quiet wild lady named Pat Winter. Pat has to be one of the most inventive crazy quilters ever. And when I'm lucky she dyes fabric with me. This incredible mermaid book is one of her masterpieces. Here's what she has to say for herself.

"Once upon a time there was a girl who gathered bits and bobs and her friends made fun of her "junk" collecting...... Up until a few years ago I never considered what I did art. I had always wanted to paint and draw however I did not inherit that skill from my mother. I did inherit the desire to collect and this I did very well. From a very young age I began gathering every little discarded trinket, pretty fabric scrap and bauble I found unusual or interesting and slipped them into a chest in my closet for safe keeping. As a teen only my closest friends saw my strange collection of bits and bobs. Unfortunately those items never made it with me through life but my desire and need to gather remains with me still today.

This comes in handy for a crazy quilter. Vintage laces, doilies, buttons, broken jewelry and beads have made it into my current collection as well as velvet remnants from Holiday dresses, lace trims from wedding gowns, silk, satin and moire from cast off prom dresses and an ongoing stash of "fancy fabrics" gathered from my shopping ventures all find a home in my studio. I enjoy making unusual and useful items using the crazy quilt method, not traditional wall hangings or bed coverings.

I can't explain what drives me to create, I blame it on my muse. All I know is that whatever it is that makes me spend hours stitching and embellishing almost every day of my life is too strong to deny and brings me much pleasure. Imagine finding yourself locked in a chocolate shop and you were a chocoholic. That is how I feel when I walk into my studio and begin gathering items for a project. Lunatic? Yes, I believe so."

You'll find Pat's amazing work at Winter Gatherings, where you can also purchase her new magazine, Crazy Quilt Gatherings, full of projects, tips, teaching and of course, crazy beautiful work.

Laura Krasinski: Out on a Limb

2011-09-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

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

Wild annie! Wade

2011-09-08T07:29:00.000-05:00

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

Celebrate the Fringe!

2011-09-06T11:43:00.000-05:00

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!

Romance from the Edge of the Fringe

2011-09-05T10:20:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2011-09-03T08:47:00.000-05:00

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.

Janice Paine Dawes Delightfully Dead Fringe

2011-09-02T14:57:00.000-05:00

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

Linda T. Mintons Fringy Feet and More

2011-09-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

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

2011-08-31T18:03:00.000-05:00

Melida Boman Shows us her Fringe

2011-08-31T17:54:00.000-05:00

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.

2011-08-29T14:01:00.000-05:00

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

The Lunatic Fringe Rampant

2011-08-29T13:55:00.001-05:00

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?

The Secret Life of Symbols

2011-08-26T07:58:00.003-05:00

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?

Life in the Garden of Time

2011-08-24T08:32:00.001-05:00

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.

Designing Ways: Ornamenting Grids: The Zentangle Dance

2011-08-02T08:19:00.001-05:00

"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/

Designing Ways: Ornamenting Grids: The Zentangle Dance

2011-08-02T08:19:00.000-05:00

"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.

Musings: Art Outside the Box: Coming Attractions:The Thread Magic Garden

2011-07-07T07:34:00.000-05:00

As a gardener I have a love/hate thing with January. It's a month of frozen tundra, puctuated with ice storms and an occasional melted mud pit in back. I look longingly at dead stalks and seed pods and live for the seed catalogs that start to fill up my mail box.

But as a quilter, January is one of those best times. Dark nights and snowed in walks make it perfect quilting time. It's exactly the time to make the garden in the studio bloom.
So I'm delighted that C and T Publications has told me my new book Thread Magic Garden will be ready for release in January.

If you're familiar with Thread Magic, you know I don't write the traditional, "12 quilts for baby" quilt book. Those books fill a special place for quilters, but I'm constitutionally incapable of it. Besides, I don't know 12 babies who need quilts right now. Someone else needs to write that book.

What I do write are books that take things apart, show you new ways to put them back together and that focus on free motion, thread work, artistry and expression, so far out of the box that they don't fit in squares any more.I'm hoping you'll find that true of Thread Magic Garden too.

I've created a simple system for pattern-less flower applique that goes from deliciously simple to intricately stitched and embellished. And a new way of codifying free motion zigzag stitch that's changed what I can do with applique.

None of this is done with fancy machinery. I actually don't do anything that's hard. Instead, it focuses on simple zigzag and straight stitch to create a world of magic. It's just time consuming and compulsive.

There are 25 flowers for you to create, a full discussion of free motion stitching with different approaches for straight and zigzag stitches, 2 step by step teaching projects and over 50 new quilts.You're going to want to play.

It also means I have new classes and lectures to share with shops, guilds and groups. Check my web site for the new classes covering this groundbreaking material.

They tell me my book is coming out in January. Email me and I'll notify you when it's ready for pre-order.

C and T Publications have my first book, Thread Magic: The Enchanted World of Ellen Anne Eddy, available in a downloadable and a print on demand format. You can order it from them now.

Designing Ways: The Container and the Contained

2011-07-06T09:58:00.001-05:00

" Mother, Mother, May I swim? Yes my darling daughter. Hang your clothes on the highest pin and don't go in the water."

In the same way we read mystery and horror novels, and watch romantic comedy, we flirt with edges. Come hither, hold on tight, don't let go, what really is at the edge? There's a lot of drama to be gained from art in the process of making a box and then breaking out of it.

We need the box. We need the safety and the security of it all. But we crave the excitement and drama of the edge. Where one thing starts and something else ends. When that edge is clean, straight and clear, it's very tidy. But it leaves us wanting to break out.

Nature, life, the world, the universe is not full of a lot of straight edges. We impose those on our world, but they impose right back at us. A good example is mint in your garden. You may have planted it in a small plot in a straight line. Blink twice after a good rain and you'll find it across the yard and down the hill has well. My feeling is that I might as well just go along with it.

So within art it's worth building both. You build the surface of your work, which is a container. Then you break out of that container,as nature itself is bound to do. The stripes here create a sense of order as well as filtered sun, but the leaf refuses to stay in place. It pops out and our ladybug comes right along with it.

The vine here creates the border here, and our lady bug nestles within it. But it too refuses to stay just on the surface. It pokes out just enough that we know it's a living thing and not about to follow a ruler.

This bug is contained by the flower she's on. But not entirely. She's clearly heading for the edge.

Finally this bug and leaf create the border together. They are the container and the contained all in one.

Wrapping it up:
As quilters we're used to square corners and straight edges. We depend on them. They make a container for our images. But as we make borders and let our work edge right off them, we can take our contained work and put it in motion, by breaking out of the border and refusing to be contained.

Designing Ways: The Container and the Contained

2011-07-06T09:58:00.000-05:00

" Mother, Mother, May I swim? Yes my darling daughter. Hang your clothes on the highest pin and don't go in the water."

This bug is contained by the flower she's on. But not entirely. She's clearly heading for the edge.

Musings: Art Outside the Box: Hiding in Plain Sight and the Musical Sandbox Squabble

2011-07-01T10:10:00.002-05:00

Every so often I tell myself that all I did was quilt a fish. How silly. Well, yes, I quilted a fish. And who is that fish? I find all art is incredibly ( and somehow mindlessly) self involved.

I've recently found myself in an especially stupid squabble with someone at my church. I won't say which one. We are all mostly alike and there's one of every kind in every church on the planet.You can put in the name of any church you've ever been to, and that's the one. It turned into a tug of war over the choir music.

There are two major ways to win a tug of war.With that said, there are a half dozen different dirty tricks. You can pull, let up, tell them to look over there and yank, talk about their mom's hygene. Those are all ways to win at tug of war. But the bottom line is simple. You either tug harder than they do or you let go of the rope.

But like all wars, you have to ask, "What's the prize? And what is the price?"

I'm a very faithful church goer for several reasons. Sheer loneliness is a significant part of it. A hunger for ritual, certainly a chunk. I believe God to be everywhere, but I'm hoping He hasn't left the building. Mostly, I'm hoping to be a better me.

But I didn't miss the fact that I'm in a room with people. Of course they're scary. I'm sure I am too to them. What was I doing in the choir? I was hanging out in plain sight and perfectly hidden as an alto in the first row. So when we got an organist who insisted I sing out of my range or stay silent, I lost my place to hide. He's a world class organist. I'm an alto in the back.He's also world class at other things I won't mention. If we're going to play tug of war, I don't think I have the pull.

Who wins at tug of war? I can't believe the guy with the muddy bottom who pulled hardest really won. His very own muddy bottom? What a prize!

So here I am in my quilt, trying to hide somewhere else.Here I am hunting a church with a choir loft or another place for an odd artist to fit in. Perhaps I can rethink that hiding bit. It's not like I'm good at it. I'm looking at several churches, none of which have a choir at all, and wondering if there's a space under the floor. It's all autobiographical, really.

Designing Ways: Dancing in the Grid

2011-06-29T19:10:00.001-05:00

Back to fabric design. We've all watched Dancing with the Stars. Once we're done with that and Steve Goodman, how about Dancing with Butterflies? Remember the Arther Mury patterns on the floor? Basically they were just moving in squares.

Just as an exercise in design, I took a butterfly drawing, colored it and went dancing with it in squares.

As I was playing with the placement, it wasn't long before I recognized that it was just like playing with a triangle quilt design.

Angling the butterflies as triangles and making them different sizes turned them into instant quilt squares. Who knew? Designing fabric is really designing quilts.

I did this in Illustrator, partially because I'm trying to learn the program and it was as good an exercise as any. But it would be so much easier in something like Electric Quilt 7. I flipped them, shrunk them, turned them, and made them dance.

Then I added a curlicue.

Fabric design is rhythmic pattern across a surface. It dances as it repeats itself, in the same patterns or in patterns that reflect or flip the original shape.

Like all dancing, it's endless, built for improvisation, but always in place with it's on rhythms. Am I there yet? I don't think so. I need to practice with Arthur Murry, just a bit more.Want to dance?

Wrapping it up: Designing both quilts and fabric is about rhythmic patterns in and out of a grid.

Find more information about designing fabric on Spoonflower.

Find really cool design software at

Electric Quilt 7 or Illustrator.

Designing Ways: Dancing in the Grid

2011-06-29T19:10:00.000-05:00

Just as an exercise in design, I took a butterfly drawing, colored it and went dancing with it in squares.

As I was playing with the placement, it wasn't long before I recognized that it was just like playing with a triangle quilt design.

Angling the butterflies as triangles and making them different sizes turned them into instant quilt squares. Who knew? Designing fabric is really designing quilts.

Then I added a curlicue.

Fabric design is rhythmic pattern across a surface. It dances as it repeats itself, in the same patterns or in patterns that reflect or flip the original shape.

Wrapping it up: Designing both quilts and fabric is about rhythmic patterns in and out of a grid.

Find more information about designing fabric on Spoonflower.

Find really cool design software at

Electric Quilt 7 or Illustrator.

Art Outside the Box The Care and Feeding of Quilt Shops #2

2011-06-28T18:50:00.001-05:00

I've written about quilt shops before, because I KNOW how vital they are. One of the treasures of getting to visit all over the country is that you get a chance to see all the wonderful little shops.

Now I'm a fan of little shops in general. I believe in small business as the way we hold ourselves together as a society. It's people taking good care of people and it's worthy of support. It's the store where no one tells you that you are the only one that wants an item, that the store only gets what the corporation sends them and that this is just what's in right now, never mind what you really want and/or need. Corporations are not good at customer care.

More than that, it's community. A good quilt store creates your place for information, gorgeous fabric, gossip,the latest tools, good advice, a friendly shoulder and an excellent cackle. In short, it's a place where quilters meet amazing people like themselves.

So a new quilt store, particularly in an area without, is a cause for major celebration. Thread Benders is a brand new quilt store at 613 Franklin Street, downtown Michigan City, Indiana. It features things for quilters of all styles. It's just an hour out of Chicago, and on your way if you're heading up to Michigan for the weekend.Threadbenders will be open from 5-8 pm for the First Friday Michigan City Gallery Walk, July 1st.

For the First Friday Gallery walk, I'll be at Threadbenders, showing off her new Sweet Sixteen longarm. It turns out to do excellent bobbin work. I'm in love.

I'll have quilts, my hand-dyed fabric and threads, and books available. We'll do some raffles of cool things to start out your hot summer sewing. We'll have plenty of brownies and wine to chill down your evening. We'll play with her new handiquilter machines and show them all that, of course! Quilts are ART!
Come join me.

Designing Ways: Gravity Meets Geometry

2011-06-08T15:12:00.001-05:00

What makes a shape move? We acknowledged that graphically on paper, things move strictly in our head. After years of things falling down around us, we can look at shapes at certain angles and say, "Yep. That's falling." We observe that it should be moving, and our mind makes it do that.
So what makes a shape itself mobile(moving) or static(staying still)?

In the same way angles make things move, symmetry makes things stay in place. A square is the ultimate stable shape. Nothing about it suggests movement. Because it's even sides it doesn't even move the eye from the center.

That changes a bit when we draw it in three dimensions. The third dimension adds an angle just in the drawing, and we see it move a bit.

If we elongate the square into rectangles, the shape is much more mobile. As we go further from equal sides and symmetry, our shapes are more mobile.

But when we put them in a line and change the size the movement is in place and active. The eye connects them into a shape with one side much longer than the other, making things move.

Of course if we put them in at extreme angles, they tumble across the surface.

How does this translate to quilts that never have a square in them? All shapes are geometric shapes we manipulate into organic shapes. But the shape of the quilt itself, is the strongest one. A quilt designed with an elongated outline is in motion from it's inception.

Wrapping it up:
Symmetrical object are stable. They do not move unless you put them at an angle or unless you use them to create a shape that is longer on one side than another.
Non-symmetrical shapes aways have the suggestion of movement built in to their form.

Designing Ways: Gravity Meets Geometry

2011-06-08T15:12:00.000-05:00

That changes a bit when we draw it in three dimensions. The third dimension adds an angle just in the drawing, and we see it move a bit.

If we elongate the square into rectangles, the shape is much more mobile. As we go further from equal sides and symmetry, our shapes are more mobile.

But when we put them in a line and change the size the movement is in place and active. The eye connects them into a shape with one side much longer than the other, making things move.

Musings: Art Outside the Box: Laughter for Drama Queens

2011-06-04T08:19:00.000-05:00

I am a redirected Drama Queen, Daughter of a Drama Queen Delux. My mother was not a happy girl until she had a drama 10 feet high and too wide to get through the door. It was all about telling stories.

Now Margaret Eddy was the queen of all stories. And a serious fan of silly. She told amazing whoppers, one-liners, true tales spun into gold from straw, hopeless lies and astonishing steaming piles. She loved her drama. She had a somewhat loose relationship to truth. She was a devastating school teacher, because much of that could indeed come out in a teacher conference meeting or a family reunion. But she had a special gift for looking within and without. First she's build you a verbal image of herself as she felt about the story. But then she'd draw you into an outer view, where you could see her spinning in what she knew was a silly situation, build for howling laughter.

It happens to me in my quilts. I'm quilting along and I realize that this silly thing I've drafted is someone I know. Or worse, me. There with all my rather small fears and desires. I'm not overly deep. I'm just noisy. At that point, it seems just to the point to let it be silly. I am. It is. And the world is better for it.

This quilt, The Orchid Olympics, wasn't meant to be funny. It just happened. I'd found a great picture of a frog in an odd pose and worked with it. One afternoon in a class demo, I was placing it into the piece and trying to put a sun over his head. It wouldn't go. It just wouldn't go. Not over. Not to the side.

I looked again at the frog and thought, "If you get into that pose, it has to be for something like the Olympics. No one would willingly bend like that otherwise." The sun fell into her hand like an award and there we were.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all. But I try never to tell a story on myself until I've found the funny part. Perhaps it helps to be short, round and have a pug nose. My gray hair also makes any silliness forgivable.

Designing Ways: Gravity and Motion, Movement in Design

2011-06-01T10:27:00.001-05:00

We talk about designs moving. But in reality, unless you're dealing with a series of images, they can't. A two-dimensional image is stuck in one place forever. What moves is not the image. It's our imagination of what happens next to the image. We imagine the movements that must, in our experience happen after where the image is now.

We have a life long experience of gravity. We know when things are going to fall. We also can see from that same life experience when something appears balanced and stable. Our life experience supplies the suggestion that something is moving. The picture itself stays stable.What is the defining element? The angle of the object.
Our tree moves here because she's off balance. Her yellow background is at an angle against hers and the feeling is that she's in extreme motion.

Our tree here is reaching up at a slight angle. But she's not really moving because she's stable against her background.

This tree is completely rooted and solid where she is. Her angle is straight and vertical to the sides of the work. She's

not going anywhere.

Summing it up, all movement in design is an illusion formed from our memory and experience of gravity.
If we recreate the feeling of falling or motion in a design, the design will appear to move.
All movement is created in the angles we apply to our designs.

Next, Moving in on and around a grid.

Designing Ways: Gravity and Motion, Movement in Design

2011-06-01T10:27:00.000-05:00

Our tree here is reaching up at a slight angle. But she's not really moving because she's stable against her background.

This tree is completely rooted and solid where she is. Her angle is straight and vertical to the sides of the work. She's

not going anywhere.

Summing it up, all movement in design is an illusion formed from our memory and experience of gravity.
If we recreate the feeling of falling or motion in a design, the design will appear to move.
All movement is created in the angles we apply to our designs.

Next, Moving in on and around a grid.

Designing Ways: East Meets West

2011-05-31T09:01:00.001-05:00

It's almost impossible to talk about our art without talking about the art that comes before us. Before we talk about design, it's worth saying that there are many different design aesthetics. It's not that a design is good or bad necessarily. It's designed to be part of the statement. The notions that fuel our art choices are a statement loud and clear past subject matter and past our technical handling of fabric and thread.

As quilters, a lot of us have backed into art by accident. We started with squares and one day found ourselves with an odd quilt that somehow was an art quilt. Maybe it had too much orange in it or you found yourself like me, embroidering frogs and bugs into the borders.There's a tender soft spot in most quilter's artistic persona. The part that said that you should have gone to art school or studied water color. So our first designs spring out of a personal view. Later, as we become more facile, we realize that the choices in design are a huge statement all their own.

My first artistic love was the impressionists. I grew up near Chicago, and there was a pilgrimage every year to the Art Institute. I strolled through the halls looking for paintings like old friends. Since they were my first real introduction to art, they felt bland to me. Safe. Something soft and soothing out of my childhood.You know it's become mainstream when you see it on a birthday cake. This astonishing cake is by Megpi, a pastry chef in Silver Lake. California. You can see her work if you follow the link to Flickr.

impressionist cake, a photo by megpi on Flickr

Since you can buy Van Gogh's work on umbrellas and coffee cups, it's easy to miss the point that he was a raving revolutionary in his time. His work nauseated the current critics, got him hospitalized, was refused for all the important salon shows, and the subject of ridicule in the press. Time and familiarity have made him a lionized artist, but that was not who he was when he began.

I was immediately in love when I discovered Japanese prints. It was a while before I realized why. The Impressionists took much of their new artistic vision from the prints out of Japan. The first prints that came out of Japan hugely influenced them as beginning artists.

In contrast, this is a painting called Nocturne from around 1825 by Turner. Turner would have represented the design aesthetics from the early 19th century, that Van Gogh and the other impressionists and Post Expressionists blew out of the water.

Early 19th Century Western art was about permanence. It honored stability. It was a world of people in their proper places, forever and ever. It used Greek and Roman scenes and portraits of nobility as an way of saying we had an eternal understanding of a world that stayed the same.

Japanese art was about the moment. It moved. It created a path for the eye to follow. It went off the page. The impressionists saw it, fell in love with the concept and incorporated it into the designing of their art. And changed us all.

The decisions behind design are the most telling. Without a word they say so much about what we create, what we find important, and what we value. The way we structure our art is at least half the story we tell.

Designing Ways: East Meets West

2011-05-31T09:01:00.000-05:00

impressionist cake, a photo by megpi on Flickr

Designing Ways: An Exploration of Design in Fiber Art

2011-05-30T08:36:00.001-05:00

http://youtu.be/eNAcJ9o4XP0

Just recently I've been looking at the Spoonflower website. At Spoonflower you can design your own fabric.

That sounded simple. You add cool elements from your quilts on a neat background. How hard can it be? How cool can it get?

Well I don't think it get's cooler, but it's not as easy as it looks. I'm not ready for prime time yet but it's reminded me how important design is, and how it changes when we have different things we want out of our designs. So I'm going to take some time to explore design myself and to talk about that in some posts.

So often when we create we get all caught up in what we're creating. A flower, a frog, a bug, a picture. But design is the hidden framework under all of that. There are different aesthetics to design, different theories, different approaches. So when we talk about good design, we need to ask the question, "For what purpose."Designs that repeat are a whole different set of considerations from designs that don't have to. I'd like to look at design over a series of posts, from the point of view of pathway, rhythm, framing, and balance. Next time, East Meets West.

Designing Ways: An Exploration of Design in Fiber Art

2011-05-30T08:36:00.000-05:00

http://youtu.be/eNAcJ9o4XP0

Musings: Art Outside the Box: The Green Eyed Monster and the Time Machine

2011-05-28T12:38:00.001-05:00

Dancing in the Light
National Quilt Museum
Opening night, April 24th
Paducah, KY 2011

I got to go to Paducah to see the unveiling of my quilt. They bought Dancing in the Light, last year for their permanent collection. The opening was its first viewing there.

I wish I could say that I've had so many experiences like that that it felt normal or natural. I felt like Cinderella, thank God without the shoes. I arrived from my flight in Chicago, 15 minutes before the opening. I threw on my dress and ran ( as well as any lady my size with my knees can) to the ball. I met people who loved my quilt. I met people I'd loved forever for their work. I went from throwing- up-scared to simply sitting in a room with fellow artists I love.

I think any artist who's committed themselves to showing and to selling their work hits a point where it matters desperately what other people think.We all say we don't. It's whistling in the dark, as far as I can tell. It has to do with paying your mortgage at some point. But before that, you commit to your art it such a way that it has to pay you back in terms of some response. Those who are supported externally have a leg up on this, but they also lack some of the edge artistically.We're all waiting for the response. We do our artistic best and put it up the flag pole to see who salutes.

When I began doing art quilts in the late 1970's, there was an explosion of excellent people fighting to be seen. That's still ongoing. In fact it's so much harder to be recognized or for that point, remembered. We create, we show, we publish, we teach, and in that river of activity, we wait for the response.

In those early days, I remember the agony of not getting in. This show. That book. This opportunity. That also hasn't changed. There are only so many slots and there are many more pegs. It's a real danger sitting with a friend who's just gotten into Quilt National when you haven't. Your happy for her. Right? Right? Well, yes but. And the but is sour and has a long after-burn.

I realized at a certain point I was using these moments of win or lose, inclusion and exclusion to define who I am. Shallow as that is, it's hard not to. The green eyed monster affects all of us, no matter what color our eyes are.

Of course, outside the quilt world, who cares? The quilt world is a very tiny pond. I can't imagine anyone writing on my tombstone, " She finally got into Quilt National when she was 89." Of course they also won't write, "she had an immaculate house", or "she was always a size 3 jeans". I hope they say I did a good job continuing my art and of loving the people in front of me.

Time is a slow moving machine. But it does move. I've come to be grateful for the fact that it moves slowly. Attitude adjustment takes a long time sometimes. Somewhere after I'd written Thread Magic, I realized that I would have honors all my own. And that no one should collect them all. The green eyed monster seems to need the time machine to tame it into a glint, rather than a Gordon's stare. Perhaps what truly tames it is enough sense of who we are that we no longer are so hungry for definition. Or so willing to take it from external sources.

I sent in my IQA offering this week, with the green eyed monster locked safely down by the laundry machines in the basement. I don't always get in. I don't always get anything. But I have had mine. And so may we all.

Musing: Art outside the Box:The Call of the Less Wild than It Was

2011-05-23T12:11:00.002-05:00

Every year I find myself drawn into the veggie garden. This little plot of land was part of my parking lot until I begged my godson Tom to dump 500 pounds of Sam's Choice

( and I do not mean potatoes) on it. This year, Lauren Strach and my neighbor Liam Oberlander offered me special help that made my garden much more organized, green and growing. Every year it provides enough lettuce, spinach, squash, peas and beans to feed me and every raccoon and bunny in Porter. We even manage to feed a neighbor or two. My crop of Japanese Beetles each year is magnificent.

Of course it's awfully hard to get out of the veggie garden and into the studio. Here is Bedelia Birdy Buttercup, greyhound in charge, trying to herd me out of the garden. She's not having much luck this year.

Ah well. She's not having much luck with the bunny either. Which is why I finally quilted the bunny in.

Sometimes your art is your life, that great river of creativity, clutter and projects. Then suddenly your life is the art of the moment, the placing of pots of plants or the need to find clean forks. It all gets unbalanced if it's simply one or the other. So as I sit in the veggie garden, watching the plants grow and hearing the happy munching of bunnies I know I"ll find my way back to the studio, but probably after lunch. And aren't I glad I planted all that lettuce?
Blossom in the Moonlight is one of three quilts on special sale on my site at http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/gallery.php. Can you find the other two? They're part of the river of art that goes on, once I get myself out of the art of my life.

Fare well, Jean. And Thanks!

2011-05-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

March 3, 2011 10:25 PM

Jean Ray Laury, 1928-2011

By Donald Munro |

Some sad news: We've lost Jean Ray Laury, Fresno's most beloved fiber artist. She died Wednesday after a long illness. From the obituary in Friday's paper:

Her most recent local project was an installation at the new headquarters of the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust: five 9-foot banners that depict, in alluring colors, the array of plants, wildlife and other inhabitants of the river region. The project took two and a half years.

"I can't imagine any commission that could be more fun or more rewarding than this one," she told The Bee.

A graduate of Stanford University, Mrs. Laury developed an international reputation in the world of quilting and fiber arts, and traveled as a guest lecturer, including to Australia, Belgium, France, Norway and South Africa.

In 1999, her work was included in a Houston installation titled "America's 100 Best Quilts of the 20th Century.I'll be putting together an appreciation of Laury in the days to come, so if you have any thoughts on her artistic contributions or personal memories, feel free to share.

Several weeks ago when I was on facebook, I found Jean Ray Laury had died.

Jean was not one of the names I remember most from my beginning quilting. I watched the "quilt artists" with a lot of interest and passion. I don't remember seeing her name that much.

But it was there. What I do remember is seeing her quilts. Advice from Your Mother. Cowgirls. Political statements. They represented a huge change in the art quilt world. They centered around her printmaking skills and wacky sense of humor.They were strictly about women's work, ideas, lives fears and hopes. They were an education. I was at a conference several years ago with her and had the time to see her lecture. What I found was that I did know mountains of her work. Year after year, piece after piece, this quiet woman with a loud artistic voice made an astonishing statement about art, femininity, and self expression. Her work had lifted me to a level where I was brave enough to begin my own.

So many of us as quilters have a trick, a tool, a viewpoint of our own that makes us unique.Perhaps that was the beginning of the movement from quilt to art. I think Jean may have been part of the first of that. Her prints, so unlike quilts, but clearly quilted showed us that path. Now she shines on.

Do we have quilting saints? I hope we do. People larger than life, full of a path and vision that changes us all? I think we do. Saints are legends, not necessarily holy, so much as they are wholly what they are. Their lives illuminate ours. Their clarity clears away our clutter and confusion. Do they watch us to see what we do in their wake? God knows, we learned from watching them. I think she's a grand Saint Jean, of the quilt.

Fare well, Jean. And thanks!

Musing: Art outside the Box: The Voice in the Dark

2011-04-09T09:18:00.001-05:00

We all have a voice track in our head that never goes away. It's full of all kinds of nonsense: music that plays in endless loops, the thing we could have said at a bad moment if we'd been more quick on our feet, the arguments, never said, with friends long lost and gone. The auditory flotsam and jetsam of our lives, scraped out of an old verbal closet that haunt us.

My worst fear is that I will die saying the same cruel things to myself that were said to me as a child. I am in no way alone. If you teach you get to hear exactly what people were told as a child. Because when their blood sugar drops or they get frightened or threatened, they'll start saying it to themselves. It's an agony to listen to. It never should have been said to anyone in the first place.

"I'm so dumb."

"I'm not an artist."

"I'm not creative."

"I can't draw, see colors, try, find time, find space, do this ............"

The words hardly matter. It's almost always about the tone of cruelty. It's an echo of bullying.

I always shut it down in class. It's like watching someone dig a hole through their heart with a jagged knife. I tell them no one can talk to my students that way. Not even them about themselves.They'll tell it to you in a cold and clinical way at 9:30 in the morning. At 3 PM they're crying about it in the bathroom.

Oddly enough, it's never anything provable or true. Or it's true but utterly harmless. We are all, in our physicality, fat, or skinny, tall or short, and I think it's impossible to be alive and not be funny looking at some point. What gives it weight is not it's accuracy of the statement but the accuracy involved in having chosen that thing to say. No one could have told me I was dumb. It never worked. I knew better. But they told me daily I was the ugliest girl in the school.

There wasn't exactly a contest. It wasn't like someone proved that.But with the unerring aim of all bullies, they knew that had a sting. Having the normal number of hands, feet, arms legs and heads, I do believe as an adult that I look pretty normal and that this was chosen and said simply for the impact they knew it would have. It was nothing but bullying.

So what happens if we choose different words? What happens if like the video, we choose to define ourselves differently?

I do follow religious seasons and this is the season of Lent. For those of us who do, you usually do what is called a Lenten discipline. This used to be regularly fasting. The current view is that you give up something like chocolate or tv.

But it does me more good to do something rather than to stop doing something. This year, I promised myself to remember my meds and do my face care every day. It sounds like vanity, but it's not. There's a little girl in me who has heard too many ugly words and needs to hear actions rather than words. We're almost at the end of Lent and this time I've held on. A really good Lenten discipline is one you want to continue after Lent for the good it did you.

It's my own anti bullying campaign. It's my beautiful frogs. If they are beautiful, perhaps I am too. It's the ability to listen to that dark inner voice and change the channel. It's the ability to change my world with my words.

Musing: Art outside the Box: Un-entitling Entitlement.

2011-04-07T09:26:00.000-05:00

"Every life you lead does you good if you let it, every life you lead. Sometimes it's hard to take your mind off your mind"

I watched an upload on infertility today on Facebook. I will not link to that upload here. The woman's pain was so raw, and so real. She's in her twenties and just hit the fact that she cannot have a child.

I don't think she'd like to hear what I need to say about all of this.I remember her agony. My mother was given hormones during her pregnancy (You're over 40. You're not pregnant, this is menopause.) I was told fairly early that there would be no children. As there was no one to have a child with, and I think that's especially difficult, I simply had to wade it through and wait it out. At 42 I had the inevitable hysterectomy that confirmed it all. I would not make a child. I would never have my baby. Eventually I came to understand that I would never have family in the way others do.

There's this illusion that the world is fair. That we should all get a certain similar plate, decorated and filled with the same things in equal parts. Wouldn't that be nice? Shouldn't we arrange that? It's almost monstrous to argue otherwise.

But it's simply not how it works. Life is massively unfair, much of the time. There are those without money, intelligence, education, opportunities, loves, lovers, connections, health and strength. We can legislate some of these factors to a more even place. But much of it is simply what we have. It's the raw material of our lives.

I don't think we get to change that raw material much. As cruel as it is, there are people who I think should not have a child. I'm one of them. My mother had an alcoholic approach to child rearing that I want to make very sure happens to no child around me. The best way to be sure of that is for me to not be the sole person, raising a child.

Could I have said that at 20? 25? 35 when the clock was ticking hard? I'm not sure I could. My body said it for me. And if we wish to discuss what is fair and unfair, did some child deserve me taking that chance?

Oddly enough, I have children. I just didn't make them. I've gone through batches of neighborhood kids, god children, lost lambs, grown up 3 year olds in big bodies and 40 year old ten year olds. All I had to do was open my door. Because they came and went at will, there was a safety there for them and for myself. The things I feared I might do, did not happen. Instead, I got to love the children in front of me.

Life is not fair. It can be right, but it's never fair. Fair is a measure of average. Who of us is ever that?

I go through whiny places about being alone. I'm not someone who does primary relationships well. By the time I was 40, it was pretty clear I'd never pair up or marry. Recently I shared one with a friend who told me to shut up and count my blessings. This is the answer only a real friend can give you. My world is often very lonely but it is full of imagery, art, creation, space and time for the world of the mind and the imagination. It is not average. It has gifts for me. But the average world of what is fair, does not have space in it for the odd and lovely gifts my loneness hands me and then demands of me. For that is the other edge of it. The gifts life gives us all demand a commitment of time, strength and focus. You can't just hold your child at the photo opportunity. You also need to do that at 3 in the morning when she's crying and scared. You cannot love someone only when they've brought you roses. You need to find your love when they're incomprehensible and terrifying

(and we all are). You aren't just an artist at an opening. You're an artist when it separates you from much of what others do. Life is not fair. It is rich, it is odd and it's mostly our response to the very unaverage person we are.

I love the fairy tales where the fairy give us a cruel and unwanted gift or task that makes us braver, stronger and better. Like the two boys on Christmas,one given everything he wants and the other given a room of manure, it works out differently than we think. There's a pony in there somewhere.

So, to that woman, I want to say, " You can have children, just not in the way you hoped." To myself I need to say, "All your love is here, it's just not in the form you wished." It's cruel to say " Your art is your child." It's not true. Your art is your creation, but it is never a child who puts their arms around you or rejects you when they hit 17. They are very separate things. Both of them excellent. Perhaps if we can put aside the notion of what is fair, we can see the good in what simply is.

Print on Demand: Confessions of a Book Junkie Wandering the Printing Industry

2011-03-01T11:02:00.000-06:00

I can't help it. It's a disease that runs in my family. My mother was the president of the library board, and my father read me Gods, Graves and Scholars when I was three.We kept books in the same quantities my mother kept gin and extra undies. The answer was simple. Are there more books? Then we need more books!

One of the odd things within our current financial world is the book out of print. I didn't believe it happened when I was a kid. A book was a book forever. You could always find it. It wasn't until Ms. Driscoll, my junior/senior English teacher sent us scattering to find a bunch of out of print 1920-50s plays that I even knew a book could go out of print. My mother, president of the library still at that point, hunted each of those books down. They might have been out of print but our library had them.

Now it's a constancy. Fabulous books go out of print. Buy it now. You may never see it again. Or you may find stacks of it at Books a Million. It's an unpleasant crap shoot.

Publishers make their most money out of the first flush sale. A book that is classic does not make the kind of cash a best seller does. It can't. And it will, unless someone protects it, go under. A new book itself is a huge investment for a company. They sensibly go for the main chance, and that limits what gets into print.

Enter into that the print on demand publisher. This is probably just one step above the company that will print your loving-hands-at-home book in a beautiful leather binder, and post it on their web site with other titles like My Amazing Life as a Hardware Salesman or How to Bronze Baby Shoes for Fun and Profit. Shall we say, it's a limited market.

But for the cost of upload, and printing a hundred books, you can print on demand. And post it on the major book sellers market. I've done it. More than once.
Why?
Because in the same way I crave books, I crave putting out books. I love working with a professional book company. I've done it before and I'll do it again if allowed. But for small books that I think people need, and that I need to put out, it's an answer.

Here's the rub. They always cost more, for you and for your reader. You're not having 15,000 run from China. Instead you're paying an American company for a much shorter run. And the wonderful wheels of promotion that every publishing company has will not roll out for you. It's all your own.

In the end, it's your consumers who decide if it's worth it. Is it worth a bit extra to have the book that wouldn't get published otherwise?

So I've done it again. The Town of Torper and the Very Vulgar Day Lily is arriving today, according to ups. I'll start shipping them out to those who've ordered. We'll see if its a companion piece with the book on bronzing baby shoes.

The Town of Torper is a little cautionary tale about small towns, gardening standards, war and peace.You can order it at my site at www.ellenanneeddy.com.