What to do

Time for a blog challenge again, it seems to work so why not start this month.
Not sure if I should write in Dutch or English. I come across small responses to find out what's best. So the following is in Dutch.
I have a little pain. About a week ago, I hurt my back by doing nothing really, and working on a very large wall hanging makes it very disturbing. I want to finish it for an exhibition at the townhall of Echt-Susteren, a small village in the south of the Netherlands at the end of October.

Usually I work 3 to 5 hours a day. It is all Handmade, stitch through the stitch. My work space is a big disorder, but as long as my beloved man does not complain, it's also good for me.
Tomorrow I have to go to Valkenburg, together with KC61 an artist community we had a 3 month long exhibition there in the Museum "Land van Valkenburg" and tomorrow it is time to bring our art back home again.

Berlin Wall

The last two month I was busy making the Berlin Wall out of textile. 6 Month ago my friends and fellow artist from KC61 desided to organize an exhibition around "Vrijheid" Freedom.

The left part I made out of silk and painted it red white and blue
the right part was made bij Joep van Kerkom and was printed

Not knowing that now each day, thousands of people leaving there country because of war and are looking for freedom.
Freedom, the most important feeling for anyone in this world.
So here we are at the city hall in Echt. The opening was at the 18th. of september, and I had the honor to welcome the people and to open the exhibition.
People from Syriaë were invited too to present paintings and poetry's
Mohammad Garout played beautiful the flute and the ut (an arabic lute)  Even poetry in the arabic language was performed and althought we did not understand the words,  we felt his feelings and people were quiet and impressed

Berlin Wall Textileart Coby Lange

Entree

Evelien Wink

Lei Hannen and Jeanne van Hest

Joep van Kerkom

Marion Baaten

Raymonde Sampers

Leo Kornip

Opening

What will be next?

I brought in some leaves in november. This beautiful colors which only autumn can give. I read about dyeing with leaves fallen from the trees and I like to give it a try. I have put them in a book to flatten them a little. Next I will put them into some silks I still have in my stash and steam them for one hour. I can't wait to see if I am lucky and get some results.
Than in the week of Xmas I had together with 6 artist an exhibition in the Gallery Trividha, that is in a Dutch Windmill, so very special and the show was opened by the Mayor. The participants of the expo:

Hugo Nelissen with Glasart 

Huub Rouschen with Paintings

Arjen Bakermans with Sculptures

Toni Bauer with Marbel sculptures 

Clementine Houben with Airbruch

Marleen Hansen with Paintings  Marleen is also the owner of the gallery.

Coby Lange, that is me, with Textile Art


Here some pictures

Mayor of Roerdalen at the opening

Marleen left and myself right.

I'am very satisfied

Not writing much lately, but whow I was working a lot last month. First I did some silkpainting to make a large kind of balloon, which is working very nice in the wind and for the next weekend Dieter my hubby and I will be showing our art at the castle Aerwinkel not far from here. Dieter will show 3 of his Faces made from wood. 

One of Dieters Art pieces.

And I made one on canvas printed tree designed from my textile art and that will hang in a very interesting large tree in the park.

Silk Art by Coby Lange

Then I got a nice letter from KC61 a group of very good artist and I am accepted in the group which is great. They too will have an exhibition  soon, but this time not yet with work from me, so I hope to be invited next time. I wil write about the artist from this group after their exhibition.

KC61

Yesterday I finished my latest artwork contemporary textile. I started in februar and did a lot of stitching. First I made a pattern from a landscape and than I worked small pieces all hand made and stitched them from top (sky) to bottom together. I am very pleased with it, as mostly I work very secure and precise. This time I wanted to work more freely. I took a workshop from Jude Hill, she workes a lot with raw edges and I tried to put this work a little into my piece.

Handmade and stitched contemporary textile art by Coby Lange

Keep going

To keep on going is all I really want to, but now those wishes are there but not always possible to fullfill. Anyway my life has changed a little and it feels like I have to move faster and do more and more. Restless is what you could name it. But what is nice about it is that I make many stiches every day and that means that my art work is growing everyday. Here a picture of that piece. 

I am sure I need to work on it at least one month more. At the same time I still want to learn more about textile, to combine different textures together and build up more layers. It is nice to see how I become looser in my work. I learned a lot from Jude Hill she creates lovely ragged pieces, and tells stories with her cloth. I also made an other collage from my sudoku papers.

 I like that a lot and gives me a smile when a piece is done. 

That is it for today. I have to get up and start stitching again.

Stitch by stitch

This cloth will be like a never ending story. I will call it bird(th)s, like new born, or birds, at least with a few wings. Wings that I would like to have myself. Like angels which I collect. I started this cloth many many years ago, at time I worked in my shop with silks and silkpaintings.

This one is painted on a beautiful silk crepe satin, but when it was painted, I did not like it so much and did not know what to do with it, so I put a solft wool lining underneath and machine stich in the ditch so to say on the gutta lines. That was not  good enough. Now its handstitching a lot and when I am sitting on the couch watching tv. I take this cloth on my lap and do a few stitches, so I believe it gets better every day. There is no rush to finish it. Just see what happens and when I feel that it is done! It could be within a month, or even a year, but some day I will love it.!

Detail

This is how it looks now.

just stripes, what to do with them?

My new sewing machinge gets in action again.

This is how it looks now. What will it be after that. Who knows, what is important is, to get rid of some of my stash. I collect and collect I have yards and yards of material still waiting to be used. My textile art pieces are small so I only use some bits and little pieces. But from all the stripes I have cut in different sizez I will create an other quilt. The size of the stripes are 1,5 - 2 - 2,5 - and 3 inch wide. The difficult part is that they are all different textures. Hand painted silks, some sheers and also wool. That means to put everything together as a quilt, some will need a white cotton underneath so it is not too fragile.

I have cut already some squares. It will be interested to put them on a designer wall to create something interesting.

Was I lazy?

Lazy?

Was I lazy last month, No not at all. I worked very hard on the quilt for my niece and it is almost raidy,  just in time for her birth day, I hope she likes it. It is a very large piece and  measures 2.30 by 2.30 cm.

Quilt top only.

On the other hand I was lazy writing. I did not find the time, there are so many things going on in my life that writing was not an option. 

But I know it is very important for me to keep going and writing, and use my brain. Today I tried Nordicwalking for the first time. I used to run everyday, but I heard that with nordicwalking You get a much better workout. I did not take any lessons, I was an aerobics teacher for many years, so I believe I do not need a teacher, but I found out there are some specific movements You should do correct and therefore I looked at some lessons on Youtube.

So now my arms and legs, shoulders and back are getting all the attention they need after sitting many hours behind my sewing machine.

New Quilt project

Still working with my new Macjournal. If You have an empty space with color you are not so distracted with everything You have to do when You write a blog, like making links and visit first a few websites. Also the pictures I want to put in will follow much later. Today is a lovely bright sunny, but still a cold day and I am not so sure what we will be doing, but we will find time to take a walk in our lovely city. After that it will be time to go upstairs in my studio and do some cutting and piecing work for my new project I started yesterday.

My niece Vivienne asked me many times if I would make a large bedquilt for her and I decided to do her this favor . Her birthday is at the end of June, so if I want to get everything done in time, I have to keep cutting and piecing some nice fabrics together. So here are my first 3 little blocks, I will make them larger, but at this moment I will make about 50 or so blogs all very scrappy but with her favorite colors.

Double Star Block

Yes!!! Done!!!

Recycling Art this is how it starts.

Last Saturday, I worked for the last time on my quilt made ​​of velvet. It took me exactly 3 weeks. After I first stich in the ditch, I decided to do also with the hand quilting in the blocks. Because it is a heavy piece, it was difficult to work on my small table, but after I put my ironing board under it, the handeling was easer.

Than the border OMG what to do with that, I am realy working hard learning freestyle machine quilting, but with this heavy velvet, would that be manageble. I put a quilting foot under my sewing machinge and practice many different lines and curves an a smaller piece. It worked fine. So there I go. Whow how fast that went. Incredible and it looked perfect. Almost ready, but than???? Needle broke and after thet everything went wrong. Only 50 cm more to go!!! But that took me hours. I'm glad I did not lose my temper but stayed calm untill it was done. Now I'm proud of my work, it looks great is a stunning piece which You can hang on the wall, or use it as a throw over the couch to keep You comfortable.

CAPI

A few days ago , I came across the website of Milliande, a woman born in Germany, but I understand she lives now in England. her site name is CAPI, which stands for: Create Art Portfolio Ideas Course. I got curious about her work progress. She brings up ideas of how to proceed in your artwork to get your very own style. I always like to keep my mind open for different approaces so I started to look at her classes.

First assigment nr. 1

The first assigment was to doodle with a pencil into a square as much as You like. Then take an other coloured pencil and see if You find some interesting lines. It looks easy, but I made a few doodles and it took me a while till I could find some interesting lines.

First assigment nr. 2

Later on you have to take one of those images and start creating many different drawings, just for the purpose to see what You can do with it. I will see how far I can go.

2e assigment nr. 2

I'm still hard working on my quilt, I do about 3 hours a day hand stiching and therefore it is good to get relaxed with my doodles.

Stitching in the ditch

 I was working on my quilt and I am stiching in the ditch. With that heavy velvet it is a difficult task to get this big piece under my normal household sewing machine. I would love to get one with a larger opening on the right hand side, but they are very expensive. I am only halfway finished so nothing to show off. Than we had visitors in the house, they asked me if they could work in the attic for an hour or two. It has something to do with carnaval, but also from this happenng I am not allowed to talk yet, because it is for our newspaper which have this placed on saturday.

 Every evening when I am doing my blog, Dieter is sitting next to me and makes drawings. Today it is a face and yesterday a sleeping beauty.

No no no this is not me!  It is a paraphrase from a painting he saw somewere. Tomorrow I will finish my stitching in the ditch, what means I do not make any quilting figures but only in the seems of the different blogs. That is it for today. Tomorrow the last day of the ulimate blogchallenge, I did well and missed only 2 post. I prommissed myself, to keep writing more often, it is good for me and maybe also for some of my readers.

Dieter in his element

Write a Map?

Yesterday I was looking at the webcast with DJ Paris, I believe he is a good guy to listen to and I think I can use some of his arguments. He says: Write a Map , well that is something I never do. I see what the day brings me, mostly if I want to do something specific it does not work out. Suddenly TV Arte brings a good program or my husband start to do something in the house, so I feel quilty and start to help him. So not even an old lady like I am, can work after a MAP. But maybe I should.

All pins

Today I found time to work on the quilt again and made some mistakes with the borders of it. I had just some leftovers from the velvet, but I calculated it wrong.

I know you should measure twice before cutting and I thought I did. But oh no,  I cut wrong site first, so now it was too short. Luckely I just had enough to do it all over again. Took me an other hour. Well nobody can tell when it is ready. Isn’t it?

could be a carpet too.

Digital work

This is a picture of my very first quilt I made for my daughter. I designed it myself. I wanted to give it the impression of feathers in the center part, because our son in law is native american and a dancer as wel and his costumes are all beautiful and with a lot of feathers.

Handquilted very large quilt.

For my next project I was thinking about a painting on silk and quilt it, like i did before. But this time it will be an underwater theme.

I love to work with photoshop elements on my computer and that gives me many possibillities to digtalize and experiment with my photos. Sometimes I just use some colors and work around with triangles and flowers. than I figure out if something will work for me to paint of quilt.

With my sewing machine on the table, ready to use it is so much fun to try freemotion quilting and it is improving.

How sweet can life be

Look at our cat, she always finds the best place in the house. She looks like a princes laying on one of my beautiful quilted pillows and I believe she thinks I made them for her! Wrong!!!

I have made several large bed quilts and some wallhangings and now that I got my new studio, that will be one of the projects I do this year, make another quilt.
Today I made my costume for the show more beautiful and practice on my machine Free Motion Quilting. It takes a long time before the stiching goes smooth. There is a young woman on the web Leah Day who has a workshop called:
"The Free Motion Quilting Project" Have a look at her site, she explanes very good the possibilities and the importance of practice. Just as with everything in life, if You want to become good at something
                                        IT TAKES TIME !

One of my large bed quilts machine pieced and hand quilted.