Tiny books

I have recently recovered from a stiff neck that kept me from doing anything for a few days.  I could not turn my head at all.   Super frustrating,  but while I had trouble doing everything, I did realize just how much time is in a day, and more in a night.  I vowed to make better use of my time.   I have been drawing every day, which is helping too.    Getting the drawing muscles back in shape feels good - like the start of a new adventure in a favorite old location. 


I had been thinking about the little books I had those students do ( see the previous post)  and all the benefits.  So I took a small strip of white muslin and folded it up like a fan,  stitched down the center and made a little book that has 8 fabric pages, each about the size of a baseball card.   I left the frayed edges and I have been using a scrap of cardstock to support it while I do little drawings with markers or colored pencils.    There is something really nice about this tiny thing.  It is an interesting object on its own, and with each little drawing I add it gets better.   I may have stumbled onto a good thing.    For me, working on fabric as if it was paper has helped re awaken a part of me that had been asleep fro a long time.   

to sketch for a minute

There has been a conversation going on the Quiltart list about sketching. Very timely for me as I have been trying to get at least some sketching done every day. I have been missing that activity in my life and it is beginning to pay off. Anyway, the discussion on the list has been very interesting, but as always it is punctuated by the "I can't Draw" dilemma. We need to be reminded that sketch and draw are both Verbs. You create A sketch, or A drawing, but without that helper word, they are both action words. The key is to do it. Draw and sketch, doodle, just get your eyes and hands moving even just a minute a day can help.

When I was still teaching Art, I had one middle school class that had a number of particularly angst filled students in it. They almost always had trouble getting to work, so I decided to give them some warmup time. I had each one of them make a small folded book from copy paper and keep it in their bins. At the start of each class I would give them one minute on an egg timer. They could draw anything or even scribble but they had to be making some kind of mark on a page of that little book for the entire minute. They thought I was crazy at first ( and I may have been ), but after a short time, they looked forward to it and even reminded me if I forgot to set the timer. The other part of this little exercise is that I never once asked to see what they had drawn, I simply called them on it if I saw then not mark making during the minute. Small scale and private, those little books began to make a big difference to those students. Not only in their class behavior, but the finished results of the official projects, and the guidance counselor told me later that grades for some of them went up in other subjects as well.

So, get out your egg timer, set it and get your pencil or crayon or brush moving. No one needs to see it.

Empty nest???

I never understood empty nest syndrome until last night. My daughter was out, sleeping over at a friends house, My stupid dog was at the vet overnight for observation, and my hubby fell asleep on the couch during American Idol, so deeply I turned off the lights and left him there. I totally couldn't sleep. I can adjust to missing one of the occupants of my bed at night, but both of them, and knowing my girl wasn't down the hall on top of it. It was weird.

Did any of you notice that Stephen Tyler had on a crazy Quilted vest last night? Are vests coming back? I have lots from my art teaching days that I know my daughter would be mortified if I wore in public. But are they coming back?? I wonder if mine still fit.