Tag: Quilts

Posted in anxiety, Brady, Emotions, Fabric, Photography

Filling the Bucket

Posted on by debthumanblog

There’s something weird growing on my arm. It changed colors. It grew larger. The border is erratic. The thing is scaly. All the stuff that indicates cancer. I saw the dermatologist. He said it wasn’t melanoma, the most dangerous skin cancer. He did a biopsy. I will have to wait at least a week for the pathology report to find out what this thing is.

In the meantime, I find myself making a bucket list. There are two trips I want to take. One is to New York City to shop at Mood. I want to fondle fancy fabric and buy the kinds of fabric I’ve never worked with. The second is a Hawaiian cruise. I’d like to spend a couple extra days and see Volcanos National Park. I want to see flowers and green in the winter. I want to swim in the ocean again. I will take Brady on both trips. I will have to have some forms filled out by the vet for the Hawaii trip.

My iPad is from 2017. It still works, but it does’t have all the bells and whistles the new iPad Pro has. I ordered one this morning from the campus bookstore. Along with educational pricing, I get a free iPencil. I need a more powerful drawing program in order to design more fabric. I also need to work on the second novel. I’m at the point where stuff gets written only to get pruned.

I have a few bra kits in my sewing room. I need to sew them. I need to sew slacks to wear to school. I’ve got a free pattern from Mood and need to make a muslin.

I am frozen. I’m finding it hard to get going on projects.

I still have photography. I got my first SLR for Valentine’s Day 1980. I took that camera everywhere and shot everything. I got my latest DSLR for Valentine’s Day 2020. I take the camera everywhere and shoot everything.

I did some landscape/outdoor photography today. I’m able to walk farther and stand longer although I still have limitations.

Fall in southern New Mexico doesn’t look like fall in New York. Instead of reds, yellows, oranges just before the leaves fall, we get green. We don’t get rain in the spring; we get rain in the summer. This is one of the wildflowers that grow and bloom this time of year.

These are chocolate flowers. You can’t eat them, but they smell like the finest chocolate. Because it’s cooler, I could take this shot after lunch. In the summer, the flowers go to seed within a few hours.

This is one of the desert sage growing in my yard. The shrub is triggered to bloom when there’s sufficient humidity. The bushes will bloom several times during the summer. The flowers only last a. couple days and then the ground is purple.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My online shop, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

Posted in Abstract Art, Child abuse, Judiasm

Trying to figure out what’s next

Posted on by debthumanblog

Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. I wear my heart on my art. I know what I want to say, but I haven’t figured out how I want to say it although I have some ideas.

I have my grandmother’s candlesticks. We always had candles on the table for holiday dinners. My family came from Dittersdorf, East Prussia cleverly disguised as German Lutherans. It took a lot of research, 120 years, and pure dumb luck discovering my grandmother’s bad German was Yiddish to see past the disguise. It wasn’t safe to be openly Jewish when my great-great-grandparents arrived in America although Jewish traditions were kept. Sort of. Cleaning had to be done on Friday and only on Friday. When I was little, we didn’t go anywhere on Saturday. And lit candles had to be on the table for holiday dinners. Jim’s family was different. On the rare occasions there were candles, they weren’t lit. We lost sight of who we are and what we believe since 1888 when my great-great-grandparents arrived in America. But we’ve kept our traditions. Now, I keep our faith and I don’t hide the fact I’m Jewish even though being openly Jewish right now is dangerous. This piece could work as either a quilt or a painting.

This is about child abuse and how I would hide from my mother and The Drunk. I would like it to be on three levels. Blue on the bottom, gray in the middle and green on the top. After the inauguration in 2017, I was so angry, I made a quilt featuring a life-size, nearly anatomically correct, 3-d depiction of a vulva – complete with a Swarovski crystal for the clitoris. It was quite the challenge to figure out how to sew it onto the quilt and then to actually sew it onto the quilt. I don’t think I want to try a 3-d quilt again. I’m not sure this would work as a flat quilt.

It could be a painting. I’d need Jim to make the “canvas” out of wood and float the gray and green levels. My painting teacher would like to see more work where Jim helps me fashion the “canvas.”

Eventually, I’ll get it all figured out.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/2025/01/american-art-and-portraiture-on-off.html

My store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

Posted in Photography, Quilts

The cure for boredom? Be a multi-media artist.

Posted on by debthumanblog

I find that the more art toys I play with, the more ideas I have. At the moment, I’m working on photography and a quilt. They seem to feed into each other. This morning, I spent quality time taking one photograph…..

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and seeing the different ways I could play with it using special effects.

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Light leaks.

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Playing with texture and color. I think there’s a quilt in here somewhere.

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An effect called tiny planet. There might be a jewelry design in there.

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Just for fun. The bottom one reminds me of the traditional quilt pattern Tumbling Blocks. The others make me think about what I could do with fabric and shape.

I’ve been working on the bipolar quilt, and I came up with an idea for a series of self portraits. I’m not finished with the bipolar quilt, but I did get the quilt sandwich put together and started doing hand quilting.

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I haven’t quite decided how to quilt the spaces between the leaves, but I’m toying with the notion of quilting leaf outlines using a metallic thread.

Some of the leaves I’ve finished embellishing since I last posted. img_5757img_5755img_5753

The tentative working title is: Assorted Parts of an Unintegrated Whole. Like so much of my work, this quilt is autobiographical.

Last week while we were in Albuquerque, NM, Jim and I met up with Rachael and Amir Roggel. Rachael is part of the International Jewish Quilters list. We had lunch, good conversation and showed each other our latest work. Afterward, Jim and I went to Quilts Ole in Corrales, NM. They had fat quarters on sale. It would have been rude not to buy fat quarters on sale. So I bought some. I was picking out colors for the sky and soil for the for real version of Tree of Life. I’ve been looking at landscape photos on the Digital Photography School Facebook page and paying particular attention to the sky in those photographs. I’m now having ideas for how to do the sky and soil and thinking about changing how I usually put things together.

Once again, I have a surplus of ideas and not enough time to work on all of them.

I’m linking with Nina Marie. Click here to see her work and the work of other terrific artists.