Becky Goldsmith's Blog, page 5

Magenta!

I subscribe to Now I Know, written by Dan Lewis. I get an interesting email about 5 days a week and on Feb. 4 I learned more about magenta.

We all know that magenta fits in between red and blue, so why don't we see it in a rainbow? Now I know! 

The short story is that when visible light is broken down into colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, Indigo, and violet), red is at one end and violet is at the other. They don't connect so the blended color between them (magenta) isn't there. Click here to read the longer story.

It's also interesting to note that magenta isn't on a standard, 12-wedge color wheel. Violet is what you will find next to red there too.  

In related news, I only thought I was done with the manuscript for the Color book. My editor called Friday with several suggestions. After a deep sigh, I realized that her points were excellent and that the re-writing will make the book even better. So that's what I've been working on instead of blog posting. 

One of Lynn's suggestions was that I look again at Joen Wolfrom's Ultimate 3-In1 Color Tool. You know what? It's really very helpful! She includes a 24-part color wheel that includes magenta and more. Cool. But what's really nice about this tool is that it takes each of the 24 colors and shows them in a variety of tints (lighter versions), shades (darker versions), and tones (grayer versions).

It is the addition of tones that I think is the best part of this tool. If you work with grayed fabrics (like Civil War prints) this is really handy. For example, if you have a grayed red fabric and you want to put green with it, you can look at the greens and you will find a variety of grayed greens. Take the tool with you to the quilt shop and you can look for the best match to the color you want.

I've got the 3-In-1 Tool on order and will have it on the site soon.

 

I'm back!

I can't tell you how happy I am to report that the color book quilts are made and quilted, and the manuscript is finished. I'm smiling, Steve is smiling, I heard my first cardinal of the year this morning and the sun is shining! Oh happy day! 

I have been working non-stop on this book for more than a year—could it be two? I don't even want to think about that now. My editor tells me that I wrote way too many pages but that's better than too few. 

I suddenly have some free time. Not really 'free' but I don't have immediate deadlines weighing me down. I almost don't know what to do next, except that I've got lists telling me what's next. 

For today, I want to share some news from Jan Krentz. Jan, who some of you may know, is famous for diamond piecing (among other things). One of her books, Diamond Quilts & Beyond, was published in Russia some time back.

Amazingly enough, the Sochi Olympic graphics are also very diamond-y.

Jan isn't suggesting that someone there used her book as a inspiration but rather that, if you like what you are seeing as you watch the Olympics, she has a book that can help you make a diamond quilt of your own. (I'm tempted to make one myself!).

Jan is selling Diamond Quilts & Beyond at a special 30% off now. Click here to go to her page to order.

Just for fun, try googling sochi diamond quilts. There's a lot to see!

 

 

How to decide...

I'm quilting the last big quilt for the Color book. Before I could begin, I had to figure out what pattern to quilt into it. I pinned vinyl over a block and started doodling. First I tried a curvy pattern with some flow. Not a stipple, but something maybe with leaves or curls, or flowers... 

It didn't take long to decide that that was not it. Next I tried vertical lines.

I've used this before to good effect but there is a lot of moving around shapes. That means a lot of sewing over lines of stitching and I didn't really want to do so much of that in this quilt so I started drawing horizontal lines to get me from one spot to another. I didn't love that so much but it did point me in a better direction...

I really like this! It's a kind of squared stipple. I think it looks very 1950's retro which fits nicely with the clock fabric. And it's fast!

 

 

Come to A Small Town Quilt Show - In A Big Town Way...

Have you heard about this new quilt show? I'll be teaching, along with many other nationally known teachers, June 26-28. Now is the time to make plans to attend!
 
It is going to be held in a beautiful spot, the luxurious Zermatt Resort and Spa in Midway, UT. A luxurious resort combined with quilting—sounds perfect, doesn't it?
 
 
 
Click here to see a list of all the classes and to register. Below, you will also find links for the Small Town Quilt Show teachers. I hope to see your smiling face there :-). 
 
Jina Barney
Cat Beckstead and Shantelle Cox
Natalia Bonner & Kathleen Whiting
Kimberly Bourne
Melissa Corry
Laurel Dillman
Amy Ellis
Joanna Figueroa
Becky Goldsmith
Kerry Green
Emily Herrick
Lori Holt
Kari & Becky of U-Create
Sandy Klop
Tina Lewis
Tricia Mathis
Sherri McConnell
Lorri Overson
Jenny Pedgio
Helen Robinson
April Rosenthal
Kati Spencer
Deonn Stott

It's not just men...

I know I do stupid dangerous things and I've gotten hurt because of them. Thankfully, I have lived and learned. But (thanks to Charlotte Warr Andersen) I found this page from Buzzfeed titled '25 Completely Scientific Reasons Why Women Live Longer Than Men". This is just one...

I promise that in my most crazy moments, I would never do this. Or use a tractor and a crane to trim a tall hedge.

 

Cute or just OK?

I've been trying to come up with an image of objects arranged to represent a color wheel. I've seen color wheels made out of sneakers, flip flops, cocktail umbrellas, hair bows... all very cute. However, I want to make one out of objects that I already I own, which is harder.

So far, I've got this:

I don't arrange flowers well—perhaps this is a similar skill? If I had more time to give it, I'd go out and about to shops and use objects there as props but I really don't have the time it would take. 

I was visiting with a younger friend the other night trying to explain that I have hit an age where I know I will not get to do everything that I would like to do. Even though I hope to live many more years, I am trying to use my days more thoughtfully—less frittering away of time. I do believe that this is not something I'm going to spend any more time on :-).

Yay! It feels nice to mark that off the list.

 

 

Oceanic patterns...

Oceanic art is that made by native peoples from the Pacific islands, including Hawaii and Easter Island, and Australia. I briefly visited the Oceana room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last week and took this photo of carved sheilds mounted on the ceiling:

And a closer look:

There are some good ideas for quilting patterns!

 

Finding the right balance...

I'm cleaning up my desktop, filing photos into folders where I hope I can find them again. As I look at images from our trip to NYC, I am struck once again by how different it is from Sherman, TX. This is not the view that Steve and I see on a daily basis and it's interesting for me to imagine what it would be like to actually live in a city this large, with so very many people. For one thing, I would not take so many pictures :-).

I hoped that I would not look like a tourist but our son, Jeff, assured me that I did not look like I lived there. I watched the other women my age on the streets and he was right... I needed a puffy coat for one thing. And surprising to me, many women wore color—pants, shoes, coats, something more than a colorful scarf. My black coat was warm, but not trendy. That said, I was really happy to be warm!

Below, we are standing here by the fountain at Lincoln Center. Jeff and Celia can see a part of this fountain from their apartment which I find to be astonishingly cool!

The closest, best grocery store to the kids is Whole Foods. We have a Whole Foods near us. Well, near by Texas standards; it's 30 miles down the road. We rarely shop there so walking through this one with Jeff was sort of an adventure. One thing is certain, food costs a lot more in NYC than it does in Sherman. 

As we walked the produce aisles, the blue eggs made me stop to pull out my camera. I'd never seen an egg like that before.

Then I noticed both what kind of egg it was and how much it cost. Really?!

These blue speckled eggs are lovely but is each one so good that a person would spend $30 on it? What kind of person spends $30 on one egg? Does an emu egg taste that much better than a chicken egg?

I will never know because no one in our family would never spend $30 on an egg :-).

OK... now I really need to get back to work!

 

Seeing the sites...

 

 

 

 

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's huge and great fun! We spent most of our time with the modern art. Again, I'm not sure exactly why this is museum-worthy, but I did love this wall of canvases that make a rainbow. And guess what? This is something that we could all reproduce at home! You can't say that about most things you see in the Met.

We've walked in Central Park...

And Top of the Rock...

We walked on the High Line, even though is was cold and wet...

We've shopped, and eaten well. I've taken pictures of my feet and picked up lucky pennies (which makes Jeff crazy)...

But mostly we have had a really nice visit with the kids!

And now, it's time to go home. It's always nice to go home but it also makes me a little sad to think that it could be a year before we see Jeff and Celia in person again. Thank goodness it is so easy to communicate now. I can remember when calling was so expensive that I wrote letters! 

 

Yes, but is it art?

Steve and I have been visiting Jeff and Celia in NYC. The Guggenheim was our first museum stop. The building is famous for good reason. We all really enjoyed out time in it.

Christopher Wool is the artist featured in the special exhibit now hanging along the curved walls on the walkway from floor to ceiling level.

What can I say? His works are visible from a distance which is good in this space.

I did like several of the pieces...

However, I enjoyed watching people look at the art more than I actually enjoyed the art itself.

It's easy to ask yourself exactly what makes this art. Certainly, that thought went through my mind. Maybe this artist was the first to do word art? Probably not.

 

I liked the starkness of the black and white pieces. A whole lot of his work reminded me not so much of quilts, but of printed fabric. He did base a few pieces on re-workings of his older canvases into new pieces which is an interesting idea.

As I said, I liked many of his pieces but if I had seen them out of this context, I would not have considered them obivious subjects for museum display. Without knowing more, I have to assume that a lot Christopher Wool's success comes from being in the right place, at the right time, with the right people. Once annointed, his art became ART.

This city is full of eye candy. There are patterns and textures and interesting things to see no matter where you look. Nearly everyone has a camera. The line that separates ART worthy of hanging in a museum from cool pictures that end up on a computer's desktop is a thin one.

Is this 6' canvas art?:

Or is it a just an interestly-cropped and tweaked photo of the poles and cords for the ticket line?

Looking at modern art is good for me. It is a reminder that I do not get to decide what art is for anyone except for myself, and that's enough for me :-).