The Blog at Randall Cook Studios

Home from IQA Houston 2009

Randy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:56:46 +0000

I had a wonderful time in Houston, though I dreaded going. I didn’t get a piece finished to submit this year due to the shoulder issues and I knew there would be an endless number of “do you have a quilt in the show” questions asked. There were. It was terrible, and each time I shrinked back more. My standard answer was “I was lazy this year” as it was easier and shorter than anything else.

I taught my 3 stretching classes. I derive my energy from the class energy, which often means that the larger classes are better. During one class (size about 60), a photographer came in while we were all bending over. We heard “click” and I shot up to see who dared take a picture of our butts. I quickly had us return to chair exercises until the show photographer left. We had lots of fun.

I volunteered my time helping out the Imagine Hope exhibit (www.imagine-hope.org). The exhibit is going to start to tour late 2010 and will feature 12 of Hollis Chatelain’s art pieces along with some wonderful photography. Each piece of the exhibit conveys a message and the idea behind it is to help bring social awareness through art.

Tonight I am going to dig out the piece I was working on when the docs gave me the infection back in April. I hope at least to get the top finished before my November 17 shoulder surgery.

Shadows of Me, website updated

Randy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:15:44 +0000

Thanks for all the name suggestions. Some of them were made on the blog and some of them were via email. I named the newest piece “Shadows of Me” and I have posted a new picture in the prior blog posting. If you click on it you will get a bigger image and one of great quality. Brian Sprouse took professional pictures for me….thanks Brian.

The website has also been updated with the 3 newest pieces (which goes back close to a year):

Newest piece done

Randy — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:22:08 +0000

Shadows of Me

Aug Detail

Today is a good day, I finished a quilt. This is the first thing I have finished since January. John helped me hang it in the living room and I snapped this pic, and then opened a bottle of wine (at 1pm…go figure). I am hoping to get better pics soon and then get this on the website.

The piece is whole cloth dye painted and includes some brush painting and water color techniques.

It sure feels great to do some fiber art, after a very depressing year with shoulder issues.

I need a name now. I have one I am toying with (don’t want to list it here yet) but tell me your suggestions and how it makes you feel.

Stretching Classes – Houston 2009

Randy — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:34:19 +0000

I will be teaching 3 “Stretching for Quilters” classes at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this year.

They are scheduled as follows:

• Wednesday 10/14 from 8-9am – Class # 300

• Thursday 10/15 from 8-9am – Class #401

• Saturday 10/17 from 8-9am – Class #700

If you are coming to Houston and are free one of these times, please sign up and take one of these classes with me. The classes will focus on gentle stretching and range of motion exercises to help reduce tension and stress often associated with sitting and sewing. The class is suitable for everyone. It is not a class that will make you sweat and can be done in normal street clothes, though you might not want to wear anything too restrictive.

Stretching for Quilters

Note: I know I have blogged a lot about the shoulder issues I have had due to the extreme overuse I have put them through over the years…but I have structured my surgery around Houston…..it is an important event for me…so I will be fit as a fiddle for these classes and to be able to fully enjoy Houston 2009.

2009 so far – fun stuff!

Randy — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:05:01 +0000

After a rough year in 2008, this year proceeded to get worse.

When I last posted in January, I had hoped to return to normal life, and I came close for a while. From January to late April I was very busy with my full time job, teaching a bunch of classes at the gym and actively working on a new quilt art piece to submit to some shows.

In late April, I went for a diagnostic test – an MRI with arthrogram. An arthrogram is where they inject a contrast agent (dye) into the joint capsule. For certain types of injuries this supposedly provides for better imaging on the MRI. The doctor ordered the same test for both shoulders. The reason was we suspected the left had the same injury as the right had repaired last year, but the right never fully recovered so the test was ordered for both, to see what could be learned.

The left test went smoothly and indeed showed that I did have a rather large cartilage (labral) tear on the left shoulder. The right test was executed with much difficulty, requiring many needle stabs against the bone (by 2 different doctors) to try to get the dye into the capsule.

The following morning I could not move the right arm….at all. AT ALL! I could not get in to see the doctors. They told me it “was in my head” and that that the “type of symptom you are telling us doesn’t happen.” The doctors would not see me but encouraged me to visit the ER, where I sat around for several hours with a slew of other people that appeared to be using the ER as a surrogate doctors office. Many hours later I was discharged without the ER doing anything and having never seen a doctor (as I had been promised) as my ortho surgeon had called in a MedPac script (steroid) to treat me for inflammation.

After 11 days passed, my arm was engorged and I made my 2^nd pilgrimage to the ED. This time they took notice…wouldn’t you with a huge swollen arm that had red tracks streaking out. They treated me for cellulitis and put me on IV antibiotics. But here is the kicker….for around 14 hours I could not get anyone in ED to believe me that the shoulder was the root cause. Finally someone performed a test that I asked for and then we were on to something. I had septic shoulder infection…..so badly that they did emergency middle of the night surgery to open and flush the joint. I spent 4 days in the hospital and another 4 weeks on IV antibiotics every 8 hours. Luckily I could administer those myself and was able to return to work.

I had about a month in between the infection and the left shoulder repair where I was able to do some painting, but not quilting. Then I had the left shoulder repaired, and all seems to be going well with it.

So…..despite all this, missing a slew of submission deadlines and being unable to complete art work that I had been actively engaged in for months…I am optimistic.

I hope to have enough shoulder function in September to start some work again. I hope to have a productive fall, with at least a few months of quilting and art work before they go back into the right shoulder to figure out what is still wrong with it.

Holiday’s, next piece, misc.

Randy — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:58:43 +0000

I hope that the holidays were fantastic for everyone. I had a very nice holiday season, largely because I finally had some time to sew.

Here are pictures of my newest piece. I have not named it yet, but it is done (except for labels and formal pictures). Dye painting is so difficult and unforgiving, but I am very happy with this piece. I have spent the last several days doing all the hand sewing in the evenings and on the holiday (the 1^st). Between the binding for this piece, and the upper and lower hanging sleeves for both this piece and the Toucan I have been hand sewing for days. I kept getting up to go and do something else, anything, like laundry and cleaning the toilet. I normally like the finishing process, but having to do the finishing work for 2 pieces together was not fun. Note to self…don’t do that again.

I have also begun to think about another piece that I wish to make. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to share that journey (should I undertake it) until after the competition is over.

Here is a small quilt I recently made that now hangs in my kitchen. It was a fun little piece and looks great hanging near the black fridge. I think the undulating waves are inviting, and the red fabric is one of my hand dyed pieces.

Shoulder news – I have completed my formal physical therapy course and have been given clearance to (slowly) return to normal life. I continue to have pain in certain positions, there is extreme tightness in the posterior capsule, as well as a healthy dose of clicking and cracking, but so far so good. The thought process is as follows: I am now at 6 months since the surgery and should be healed. If I am not healed and there is something still wrong, then I am not going to get healed. The resumption of normal life over the next couple of months should either show that something is wrong or else help with the tightness and clicking. I will be doing daily stretching and 3-4x week of self directed PT for at least the next year.

Roman Shade Experience

Randy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:17:00 +0000

I live in a very small house, only about 1000 square feet, and it only has a half basement, so space is at a premium. Two years ago, we redid the “spare” room. As it really was more of an office, and the small bed that was in there was shoved up against a wall and practically unusable, we decided to remove it and set the room up as an office with two workstations and some bookshelves. We emptied the room, stripped wallpaper, painted and moved back in. I promptly went out and searched for fabric for a Roman shade for the room’s sole window. Maybe you all have a similar problem, but I seem to do the shopping part well, but sometimes lack the follow through. Oh well.

That fabric and trim ended up getting placed in a pile with other fabrics and I lost sight of it. Whereas I knew that the window in the room was bare aside from a blackout blind, it wasn’t enough to prompt me to action. During the recent “cleaning up of the basement” activities, the fabric surfaced again. Amazingly, I still like the fabric I bought and decided 2 years was long enough to go with no window treatments, so I dug in. I have never made a Roman shade before, but assumed it would be easy and fast. I was sort of wrong on both accounts. It was “fairly” easy, but I had to make a bunch of modifications. The pattern said to make Roman shades only for windows up to 48” across. Mine was 61” but I blazed ahead. I needed to buy wooden dowels to insert in the back so that the shade lifted correctly. I came to find out that my local stores only carried dowels up to 48”. Maybe that was part of the reason behind the instructions in the pattern. I ended up finding some very thin aluminum slats that were not too heavy that I was able to use instead.

I choose fabric that was embroidered and had big puffy flower heads on it. Sewing across them my stitching line tended to want to veer off, so while I was only sewing straight lines, they took a long time. I had hardware problems, had to make a mounting board, get it hung, etc. So the “simple” project I had in my head took a lot longer than I had anticipated. If I ever have need for another one, it should go a lot faster. Here is a picture I took after getting it hung last night. The picture doesn’t do it justice and I am actually happy with the results.

Toucan is done

Randy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:02:40 +0000

I am happy to report that my Toucan piece is done (well nearly done). I just took a snapshot of the piece on my kitchen floor. I still have to make hanging sleeves and take formal pictures of the piece, but here are some snap shots.

The piece was inspired by a vacation I took a couple of years ago to Central America. I often take a spring vacation trip to someplace warm. Winter in upstate New York is long, and often we don’t feel “spring-like” weather until well after the calendar says that spring has arrived. To fight the long winter, I often go somewhere warm in March.

BTW, my trip next year will be the biggest and longest of my life (aside from the summer I spent in Austria when I was 17). I am going to China (Beijing, Xian, Hong Kong) and then on a cruise to Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. It will be very expensive, but I am exited about the experience.

Home from Houston 2008

Randy — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:24:36 +0000

Houston was a lot of fun, despite being at the tale end of a nasty head cold. The cold probably could not be helped as many people where I work and elsewhere in my life had colds the week before I did. It was bound to hit.

I taught 3 Stretching for Quilters classes. I am very happy to report that the class attendance increased every day. The first day I had 30 participants, then 50, and then over 70 by the 3^rd day. Everyone seemed to enjoy the class. My friend Hollis was pumping the class, both to her email list in the weeks before Houston and to her classes at Houston. I think the classes went over very well, with many people telling me that they felt strangely relaxed yet energized after and many wished for me to return next year. I sure hope to be invited back next year.

I test drove every longer arm, table mounted machine that was at the show (5 or 6 machines total). I really loved the new Bernina 830. It had the control over stitching I was used to on my Bernina 430, but had a full 12” of space to the right of the arm (instead of less than 7), great for the larger work I do. It was amazing. But, the show special, with free table included was $12,000, so there was no way I was going to be getting one of those bad boys. I also test drove several other machines, many of which I also liked. I think I liked the Bernina 830 instantly because it felt and behaved the same as what I am ready used to, but with lots of space.

Here are 2 pics of me at Houston 2008 beside 2 of my quilts. I never got a picture of me by the 3rd piece I had hanging there, but you can see Escape here. I didn’t win any prizes, but I was thrilled that my work was accepted.

Bee’s Knees

Reflection

Progress – very slow, but progress

Randy — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:25:39 +0000

I am making progress in my life in an attempt to get back to some art.

Obstacle #1 – Disaster in the garage. Back in the beginning part of the year, I had to leave the dye studio space that I was using. So I packed all my dyes, brushes, assorted chemicals, plastic, buckets, measuring tools, etc. into a huge set of boxes and moved it all to my garage, where it sat, on the floor for the next 9 months, making the garage an absolute disaster.

Obstacle #2 – Disaster in the basement. Over the summer, we replaced a 40 year old furnace and also added air conditioning to the house (which was a blessing….no more sweating my butt off all summer long). I work in the basement, right next to the furnace, the hot water heater and the washing machine. Replacing the furnace meant I had to dismantle my cutting table, and throwing everything (I mean everything, fabric, thread, rulers, rotary cutters, everything in a sewing/quilting room) hither and yon to make room for 2 guys to work in the basement. I didn’t get to picking this back up and this left the basement unusable for my work for 4 months.

It has taken several weekends, but I am happy to report that the garage space is now cleaned up, with my dye stuff being sorted a little more intelligently and put onto shelves in the garage and basement. If I ever find a place to dye paint again, I should be able to pull my stuff together in a jiffy.

The basement is now usable as a sewing space and the cutting table is back up. Yeah!