Time to move on ...

This is the electronic equivalent of the note posted on the front door.

Please follow me to http://textisle.wordpress.com

I moved to take advantage of the extra features Wordpress has to offer, like the tag cloud and categories so readers can read what they want and skip over stuff that is less interesting to them.

Also I changed the name from Chameleon's Nest but to find out about that you'll need to check out the new blog. Hope to see you there!

Theme Thursday

In the Raw Art Yahoo Group, Quinn McDonald suggested posting links to sites that may be of interest to fellow artists in our blogs.

sewq.wordpress.com
and
islamic-homeschool.blogspot
are two blogs by a creative and entertaining crafter in the UK. I feel I have a lot in common with her and it's a joy to read what she has to say.

At
intothehermitage.blogspot.com
Rima, who is a nomad in Britain, blogs about her life on the road with wonderful illustrations. She and her partner have committed to living their dream in a courageous way.

Savanna Redman is one of us raw artists. Her website is at www.savanna-art.com
You also HAVE to read what she says here at the Dharma Trading website (if you're not a fibre artist, trust me on this one! Dharma is THE go-to store for fibre art supplies)
http://www.dharmatrading.com/autogen/featuredartists/html/401/?utm_source=newsletter_2009_05&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Fingers crossed that these turn into live links!

Memory, Family, History Opening, Plus a Detour

The Memory, Family, History art show opened at Coast Collective last Saturday afternoon. This was a great opportunity to meet other local artists and see what people are doing.
Only two fibre art pieces are in the show, my "Enuff on My Plate," and Laine Canivet's "Rock, Paper, Scissors." Laine wasn't in town, so I was the sole fibre artist in attendance.
I was amazed at how impressed everyone was with the idea of making art in fabric. One lady said "So you painted the chefs onto the fabric?" I had to tell her it was all in the shopping. Which is true, someone else might not buy that fabric, and another person might buy it and just make napkins and placemats.
The painting below my piece, "Womens' Work" by Suzanne Jensen, also deals with similar concerns. The painting is of a young woman in a construction site, but Suzanne gessoed doileys made by family members onto the canvas before she started painting, to reflect different types of womens' work. Several women said they could relate to my title!
One neat thing about this particular exhibition was that the artist statement prompted everyone to write a narrative explaining about their work and its significance to them personally. This added a lot to the show and encouraged lingering and paying more attention.
Artists who impressed me, in no particular order:
Imke Pearson, Kate Seymour, Sheryl Gusauskas, Robert Anderson, Vicki Postl, Karen Furey, Suzanne Jensen, Lorraine Thorainson Bettes, Deborah Czernecky, Radmila Gorjanovic Nunez, Rachel Windson Lawson-Gurevitch, Lisa Riehl, Linda Simrose, Marcela Strasdas, Rose-Anne Matte-Munro.
My contribution to the refreshments was applesauce gingerbread from Joy of Cooking. This was the first time I made it and it was all eaten up. At home we are seriously trying to cut back on refined sugar and starches, but as cakes go, I would think this is fairly healthy.
The afternoon was enjoyable and somewhat compensates for the disappointment that my piece for the Elements show was not hung. I need to make smaller pieces I guess. And that is a question of developing the techniques to be able to do that.
In a discussion on size with painters at the opening I pointed out that larger pieces are harder to sell because they are harder to display. It's not just a matter of price but of having a space that you want to transform with that particular piece. Both the artists said that had not occurred to them before! Maybe it's because quilting and fibre arts are so linked to decorating and home-making, that gives us that more practical perspective.
Of course no trip is complete without a detour and Saturday was no exception. My strategy was to go as far west as possible by bus and then take a cab. The bus stopped right by Cloth Castle and I was in TONS of time, so of course I got off to explore, YAY! This was my first time there, and I was pleased to see they have some items not available at other local stores, plus the bargain attic.
The fabric I bought is shown above. I've already used some of the blue and yellow stars in the baby quilt. It's a batik-style fabric. The multicoloured fabric has machine stitching on it, that is not printed loops. And I have in mind to use the top one for backing. I'm a big fan of unconventional stripes.

New Business Cards

Good news ~ my piece IS in the Memory, Family, History show at Coast Collective. So tomorrow afternoon, off I go to meet people! Realized that I need business cards for networking, so came up with this simple method of creating unique cards without getting too precious or spending inordinate amounts of time/money.

As you can see, each individual card is one of a kind. Hopefully this conveys fibre and a sense of playfulness combined with good taste (that would be the gray cardstock ~ I've always had gray business cards).

This is simple to do. You start with the sheets of cards that will go through the printer, set up the information in a Word document with two columns, making sure the blocks of text line up with each other in the two columns, test print (which may take a couple of attempts) and then run the card stock through the printer.

After that, I took watercolour ink from my EZ-Tintz on a q-tip and ran wiggly lines across the whole sheet of cards, then separated them.

The other advantage is you can have as many or few as you want, unlike with commercial printers who can only do small quantities for a high price. I understand why, but this is an ideal solution for me.

A Step Forward, hopefully

My "Enuff on My Plate" wall hanging has been accepted into the juried art show at Coast Collective, Memory, Family, History.

They do say that acceptance does not guarantee that the piece will actually be hung, which I can understand given that submission was via e-mail photos. But this is the first time I've tried to be in a juried show, so it's all pretty exciting.

It's especially exciting because this is an art show so most of the pieces will be paintings -- I feel like I'm on the cutting edge (make that the rotary cutting edge!) of working for acceptance of fibre art as "real serious" art.

HOURS/PRODUCTIVITY

Last week: 38.40 hours
week before: 34.40 hours

I don't expect anyone else to take much interest in that, but having it out there for all to see encourages me to keep making the effort, even on the days like yesterday when everyone's schedule went to #~!! in a handbasket!

Which End is Up??

They do say that the mark of a good composition is one that works in any orientation, so perhaps I've achieved that for once.



While in the workshop with Susan McGregor at Satin Moon last week, I felt that the piece would be turned this way (second photo). That was how her sample piece was displayed and I was not aiming for a landscape effect, just wanted to learn the technique and play with the subtle batik colors.
At the end of the day, Susan and I were looking at my work and she suggested turning it sideways, (third and fourth photos).

At home I thought about it some more, and discussed with a family member, and we decided that the third photo was most suggestive of a landscape. Based on that, I laid a piece of fusible embroidery thread across the bottom of the piece and fused it on to use as a cutting guide.

This piece is still not finished because as mentioned earlier it's to be embellished. While talking about the logistics of embellishment with fellow FAD members, people challenged me to hold it up in different orientations to rethink it, and I'm now leaning towards the last photo, with the curved edge at the top.

Who knows, perhaps in the course of embellishing some other epiphany will come? But I'm thinking to take that as the orientation for the embellishment.

In any case, this technique, which is topstitching the curves and matching the top thread to the fabric (in most cases) has many possibilities and I plan to play and experiment. Although my stash doesn't contain that much batik, I'm thinking paisley prints, commercial marbled fabric like Moda, and some of my hand dyed fabric. So I look on this piece as the first of many ~ this is a great technique to have in the repertoire.

A Star is Born

The Victoria Quilters Guild has launched a new challenge. To encourage the production of more baby quilts which go to babies and children at the local hospital, and to tie in with the theme of next year's quilt show, Quilting with the Stars, two challenge fabrics were chosen to be in a baby quilt top. This is a scan of the fat quarter I chose.

This is a teaser really because the rules are that our work must be kept secret from other Guild members until November!

Various ideas are flying around my head, but nothing will be online until after November. Math is involved in my thinking because we have a fairly tight size range and I don't want to design something using more than I have of this fabric.

Feel like I'm returning to square one in a way, there are many old sketches on graph paper where I would figure out how to use all of a certain fabric. And the graph paper is out again this morning. Even wished for a moment that I had a quilting software program but that is velleity rearing its seductive head!

So far, so good -- what next??

This is a scan of some silk cocoons I've had for a while. Now I actually have a wall hanging I might use them on, but does anyone have a clue as to what you actually DO with them?

I have looked online but have not seen anything with specific directions. The sites that sell them say things like "wonderful for embellishment" and leave it at that! Aaaaarrrrggh!

Appealing for your help here, folks!

Nothing is Wasted

This piece started life as a piece of plain white felt which I used during the Colour Hues session at Satin Moon to test the various colours before using them on fabric. On fabric they do not look at all the same as in the mixing bottle.

I read somewhere that the flower foot is easier to use on heavier fabrics. Having reached a point where I needed to see positive results I have been playing with different threads, including metallics, varying stitch width and length and trying out various stitches that my machine has. The very large circles and curves were done by tracing round plates. Once again I have to wait for the marker to vanish.

What to do with this next? I was contemplating using it for a book cover, but the book would need to be 7 inches high by 4-1/2 inches wide MAX. Maybe better to keep going with embroidery and perhaps beading and make a small wall hanging. Interesting, compared to many fibre artists I think I tend to underembellish, perhaps this is a new departure for me?

Am now kicking myself that I didn't get amethyst and malachite chip beads from Eileen Neill at the Symphony of Quilts. Oh well, maybe she would do mail order.

Heavy Metal Heaven

Here's a selection of metallic fabric scraps from MacPhee Workshops which I've been eagerly awaiting. There is more in the bag. All the pieces are big enough to be usable as accents or trim on a garment.

This serves as a reminder that I'm in dire need of two more plastic bins. My non-cotton fabrics need to be separated so that silk is in one bin and everything else is in another. And the second bin can be the home for a current project.

Test Piece for Latest Toy

The latest toy is the flower foot I bought at the Victoria sewing show. It has a ratchet on it that lets you sew flowers in a perfect circle using any zigzag stitch on your machine.

These flowers were sewn using rayon embroidery thread in one of my favourite colours, onto the sheer fabric I posted about earlier. The fabric was stabilized with newspaper. If you click on the image you can see much more detail. The scan doesn't really do it justice.

After removing the stablizer, I cut carefully around the motif and then fused it to commercial cotton background with Bo-Nash powder glue. This may become a tiny wall hanging, but if so it will be a byproduct of Shy Beast, because I want to put flowers on that piece too and I needed to test Bo-Nash first.

Blooming Marvelous!

As we were driving to the Coast Collective on Esquimalt Lagoon yesterday, my first impression was that someone had stuck little yellow plastic flags into the ground for some reason. Later Yvonne told me this is skunk cabbage. They are dramatic and we didn't get close enough to experience the skunk scent.

The Bloom exhibition at Coast Collective was inspiring and thoughtfully laid out in colour families. Seeing what the Victoria Flower Arrangers Guild had done with the pieces that inspired them was particularly interesting, and we commented that some of the flower arrangements could become the inspiration for yet another new artwork, either painted or in fibre. Hmm, that could be the basis for a new kind of round robin perhaps?


Being new to Victoria, I jotted down names of artists whose work particularly intrigues me: (these are in random order!)

Zara Lau - fusing

Beth Cruise - soft sculpture

Lynda Slater ("Bean") - fibre

Mary Giordano - foiling

Kathy Cameron - gold leaf

Sandra Fowler - glass fusion and other artwork

Barbara Giuliany - fibre

And a bouquet to Yvonne for the ride, and for wearing her new flower jacket too!

More Baraka

I'm sure I've seen this yardage at Ikea before now. The white is opaque and the brown is sheer with a slight golden glow to it. This is the kind of thing I want to buy but don't because I'm never sure what to do with it.

However two lengths of it materialized in the laundry room so now I'm thinking of various projects and ways to use it -- stay tuned!

We also found a treasure trove of scrapbooking supplies including some very nice rub-offs and chipboard and transparent letters. A family member finished embellishing a painted wooden tray and I've done a little journaling.

It really is so cool that people are sharing and repurposing more than before, especially since we live on an island! Whoever left all those goodies must have been moving somewhere far. I wonder who's enjoying the goodies I left at Goodwill before my move?

Progress Today on Shy Beast

The top photo shows the beginning of the layout for Shy Beast.

The lower photo shows its current state, with a strip of leafy treetops sewn across the top and a short tree in the foreground. So far everything in the piece was produced in one marbling session, which is one way to have a coordinated palette.

The piece is up on my wall right now so I can mull it over and wait for the marker lines to disappear. Had I stopped to think about it, all that marker was not really needed.

Better View of Beast

I fused the Shy Beast with Steam A Seam 2, then carefully cut around him. I wanted to emphasize the outline of the animal without making it too obvious or cartoonish. The photo is not as clear as the actual fabric.

Improved T-Shirt

No doubt if I were to design fabric, some of it would look much like this.

A simple concept, bright colours, and a little tasteful embellishment. This much-loved T was shedding seed beads here and there, so I've added a few flower beads in matching colours. These came from Eileen Neill, who was at the Westshore Symphony of Quilts last week, and was one of the stores people recommended going to!

The neat thing about this style is that I can add more beads on as the whim takes me, yet it is still wearable no matter where I leave off. Given my challenges with finishing projects, that's a Good Thing (as Martha would say).

The T was bought at Steinmart (a store I really miss!) and came with extra seed beads in a little baggie. I might dig them out since the flower beads are red, yellow, and blue, but not green.

Eileen also sold me some really cool black and gold sequins. I will have to think of something to put them on.

Brave Beast

When I moved to Victoria, I was intrigued to discover the world's first laundry soap made from the leftover soap in hotels. Having run a B&B for a while I know how fast it piles up! The artwork is by Jimmy Wright, a Victoria artist who has passed away. It reminds me of my Shy Beast except he's looking the other way and has more natural colours.

Fingers Crossed!

This is Enuff on my Plate, my response to the mandala challenge the Mavericks had. I've entered it in a juried art show at the Coast Collective. The theme of the show is Memory, Family, History, and this piece fits all three, so we'll see.

It's the first time I've entered a juried art show so who knows what will happen. I won't know until April 19th. I'm aware that my pieces are one-offs and distinctive looking, so it very much depends what the jury is looking for. It was exhibited already in Phoenix in 2007 in the Mavericks show.

Starting a New Piece

The provisional working title for this is Shy Beast, he is on the pale blue background. All of these fabrics were created in one session using the marbling technique taught by Susan Purney Mark. Have been mulling ideas over for a while and had him up on my wall so I could think about what needs to happen. Even pressing the fabrics to start auditioning and scanning helped me come up with more ideas of how to do this piece, which I want to keep to fairly small dimensions. Although the beast is 12 by 7 inches and there has to be significant surroundings or he won't look shy!

I have auditioned other fabric, both my own altered/hand dyed and some commercial, but at this point I feel the fabrics shown here are going to be the main parts. Plus scanning is time consuming and less fun than designing!

Colour Meanings

This is a fascinating study done at University of British Columbia about how red improves cognitive performance while blue improves creativity ...

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/uobc-cbb020409.php

Marbled Madness

Hard to believe this was a first attempt using shaving foam and Dy-Na-Flow. So often the very first attempt at a new technique is fine to keep in the sketchbook but not something you can really feel proud of.

Susan Purney Mark gave the workshop and I was delighted with most of what I produced. It's fast and I quickly got into a rhythm of primping the foam, laying down the fabric, smoothing it out, lifting it up, scraping off the excess foam, and laying my finished piece to dry. By the end of the afternoon I was like a kid at the beach, exhausted but begging to do "just one more, PLEEZE PLEEZE!"

Apart from the ease of the technique, the other great thing is that it is truly not messy. In fact I have had another session at home using my Jacquard Setasilk colors, and there were no splashes on the rug or the walls.

and since inquiring minds want to know ...

this past week I worked for 33-1/2 hours
the previous week, 39-3/4 hours (this counts attendance at the Victoria Sewing Show)

A Calmer Chameleon!

This is an African linocut from Kitambaa fabrics. See www.kitambaa.blogspot.com, which is Pippa Moore's blog. I heard her presentation at the Victoria Sewing Show last weekend (the room was filled!) and she is at the Westshore Quilters Guild Symphony of Quilts show this weekend, which is where I picked up this little critter. I plan to do something with him and perhaps have him on the front page of the blog when finished.

And a shout-out to "Dragon Lady" Laura for the ride yesterday! Thanks!

Gleeful Celebration

This is a rendition of a collage I made in January. The original is actually a lot more gleeful because it's on orange construction paper with gold chocolate truffle wrappers. Suffice it to say that the celebration involved unwrapping the truffles ...

The sketch effect is from processing the scan through dumpr sketch, a free program with many possibilities, both creative and educational. It can create sketches from photos, so you could create personalized family colouring books, for example.

Go to www.dumpr.net and click on the links!

Modesty in different cultures

Identity by Design, tradition, change, and celebration in native women's dresses is published by the Smithsonian and HarperCollins. Edited by Emil Her Many Horses, it is lavishly illustrated and contains thoughtful essays, mostly by native American scholars, about dress. The perspective goes from historical times to the present.

I was fascinated that the metal ornaments which jingle have a social purpose (not just decorative). Women are not supposed to be alone with certain males, such as their father-in-law. The noise is to alert men that a woman is coming. In Islam, unrelated men and women are not supposed to be along together, but women are admonished not to stamp their feet and make their jewelry jingle.

Deconstructed Paisley

Although I've collected paisley fabs and often used them in quilts, I found I was somehow bored with some that have been in the collection for a long time, and they were among the fabrics I donated before my move, and traded at Fabric Traders in Sidney.

However right before the silk screening class with Susan Purney Mark, I bought a shower curtain with giant paisleys on it. I'm only sorry I had someone else do the hard labour of climbing up and hanging it before it occurred to me to pop it on the scanner.

I was particularly interested in the way several motifs meet, and based on that sketch I made this screen and printed it on pole-wrapped shibori from Susan's Colour Seduction workshop back in October. Of course this is the NEGATIVE space between the paisleys.

THOUGHT: Has anyone ever made a fabric really exploiting this? Wish I had signed up for Lily Kerns' QuiltU class on using PhotoShop on fabric. Oh well, (1) we don't have PhotoShop and (2) I am starting Filament Fantasy on Friday and that will keep me out of the bingo halls (as if!) and probably make more of a difference to my work.


And speaking of work, my hours are as follows:
through Jan 25: 33 hours
Feb 1: 34 hours
Feb 8: 28 hours
Feb 15: 37 hours
Feb 22: 40 hours

Q: When is ironing not torture?

A: When it's pressing fabrics I've dyed, painted, printed or otherwise manipulated!

Neat gizmo

Susan Purney Mark told us about this at the silk
screening workshop, as a possible way to generate
images for t-shirts, et cetera. 

To try creating your own, just go to
www.wordle.net and type (or paste!) away to your
heart's content.

This is a family recipe for lemon pie which almost
got lost in the upheaval of moving and the demise
of my old PC ~ I thought I had backed up my recipe
file which dated back to 1986 and had been
migrated through every PC I ever owned, but I was
mistaken.  The only reason I had this recipe was
because I had played around with fonts to
incorporate it into a collage.

Closest book to you

How to play:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note in your BLOG.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual... Use the CLOSEST

"We see a different person relating to spouse and children and wonder whether that was the same person we've worked with all those years."

My book was What's Right with Islam, by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Got this from Textile Traveler, whose blog is included in my list of blogs.

Screenprinting Workshop

Yesterday I took Susan Purney Mark's silk screening workshop at Satin Moon.

This was fascinating and a good start.

Things that surprised me:

How much paint it takes!

And that it takes longer than I expected it to.

In fairness I suspect that with practice and planning things would go faster. We had a lot of fun playing around and experimenting.

The photo above shows a piece of pole wrapped shibori (made in Susan's Colour Seduction workshop in the fall) screen printed with a repeated motif inspired by the negative spaces in large paisley patterns.

If it looks wrong, it must be right

This is the challenge piece I'm working on. Its current state is the top photo -- the strip on the right is auditioning and not sewn on yet, nor is the ExtravOrganza. In fact I flipped that strip around and now it looks better because the light green continues the motion in the dark piece to the left of it.

Everything is hand dyed except for the dark green/blue around the top and sides. Interestingly this framing of the top and sides is the same as in Ballerina, and even the impression of sideways motion coming from the right of the piece is similar. Wow, a series!

The reason for the title is this is the first piece I've made with curved seams, which has been a learning experience. I finally put the on-line instructions up on my computer screen and reviewed them carefully before sewing each piece. The instructions are at:
www.equilters.com/library/techniques/sewing_curves.html

Soon I will be reaching the point where the top is finished, and since Susan wants to take photos at the next FAD meeting I will need to decide whether to layer and quilt it and have it completed by the 19th or leave it as is and then pick it up after the 19th. Probably I should stick to my motto and complete it.

Swatches are finished!

So that's one thing completed, although they are a tool and stepping stone to silk screening and other projects down the road ...

Embossed Velvet

This is printed rayon acetate stretchy velvet from Gala Fabrics which I embossed by steaming the velvet over a silicon trivet. This was done a few weeks ago and I'm pleased at how it's holding up. It was quick and easy to do.

What I did on my day off

... apart from cutting loose by setting the ironing board up in the living room and getting out an end table so I could sit in my favourite Poang chair by the window and enjoy snack and reading breaks ...

This is a 24 by 24 set of colour mixing samples, in preparation for the silk screening workshop this weekend. I have 24 pots of paint suitable for silkscreening on fabric, viz. Setacolor opaque and shimmer, and Lumiere. The table is supposed to show what happens if you mix each colour with every other colour. It takes longer to do than I expected, so I still have the 24 paint pots lined up in order on my window sill with a note on masking tape warning everyone not to mess with the order!

Not sure how effective it will be because the Setacolor opaque particularly tends to cover the colour underneath instead of blending with it. However blending all those colors would take even longer and be messier and use up a lot more paint. The Lumiere in particular are in tiny bottles. Once they are used up I plan to buy bigger pots, I can just see running out while silkscreening!

In any case the shimmery colours may not be the best on t-shirts, except I've just remembered a sleep top that would look perfect with something or other screened onto it, and that could be shimmery!

Practicing with the x-acto knife just now I cut a zigzag-arat.

Is Two a Series?

This is a 12" block I made for a swap in Arizona using indigo and hand-dyed fabric and following the theme of the first zigurat I made, which is the lower photo. This was made in a Cynthia Corbin workshop and the square blocks were cut with a rotary cutter but without a ruler. The dotted background and the brown dotted fabric used on the top block were originally gray but I hand-dyed those and the dots stayed white.


The Journal quilt class lesson this week includes several journal quilters talking about making things in series, which is something I find hard to do, maybe because I don't have enough time/space to devote to quilting. I see a progression in my work but I tend to have pendulum swings or spiral (many pendulum swings really ARE a spiral motion, by the way!) and come back to something I've tried earlier but with some other creation in between.

I did sketch a zigzag-arat yesterday, just because the play on words is so irresistible!

FACTOID: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was a zigurat.

Hour last week: 33

Decluttering

Just added a link to Rhonda Ganz's new blog Get Rid of One Thing a Day, which is pretty self-explanatory. Rhonda has set herself the goal of doing this for a year, blogging about it and showing a picture of everything.

She lives in Victoria so for local people there is extra interest in following because she will accept donations to a girls' school in Africa for stuff she doesn't have a home for.

Last year I just know my average must have been one thing a day at least, but it was all crammed into a three-week fling and pack frenzy in Mesa. No way could I have taken a photo of every item, let alone blogged about it!

What, if anything, have I learned from all of this?

1) Replacement costs here are higher than I expected, even figuring in the exchange rate

2) Rubber stamps are even more expensive than that

3) Despite all the purging I have still given stuff to the Sally Ann here

4) I discovered a man's raincoat which I brought thinking it was a woman's coat that I would need

5) Someone used a really ugly orange crochet cushion as packing material

6) I nearly lost a pack of old, old family photos and did not even miss them until someone mailed them to me

7) I truly believe in baraka and paying it forward -- we have been blessed with more stuff including a baby activity car, a silk blouse in my colours, a Marilyn Brooks "Insane Clown Posse" tunic, really cute fuzzy non-slips socks, and just today some extra teaspoons that are similar to what we have

8) Am learning to minimize knickknacks and have NO, zip, zilch, nada fridge magnets. It would be nice to pretend that the fridge is pristine and elegant a la June Cheever but that would be fibbing. But it's all done with masking tape now, no magnetic fields, no choking hazards, no scratches in the enamel!

Tomorrow is dedicated to creating (and perhaps even completing, who knows!) My camera is going out of town but will post pix early in the week I hope.

Testing, Testing!

My first ever curved seam, believe it or not!

Think this will give me many possibilities for future quilts as well as the current challenge.

Beginning of challenge piece

Here are the front and back of a piece of fabric Susan Purney Mark distributed at our last FAD meeting. The challenge is to create a piece using this fabric that is ready to be photographed by the next FAD meeting in February. Susan CLAIMED that this was originally a really ugly fabric until she did things to it, which is hard to believe.

I scanned both sides of my piece because they are so different. Of course due to all the processes Susan had tried out on the fabric, everyone's piece was significantly different.

Also printed the side at the top on a piece of ExtravOrganza. This will be in the piece somehow, not quite sure exactly how yet.

Have pulled out a bunch of other mottled/dappled fabs (and have not yet been into the green and purple bins!).

My thoughts are running on curved seams so I've made a practice piece using other fabrics because I don't want any flubs using the "good" fabric. Will post a photo or scan of that later.

Off to my green bin I go!

Journal Quilt

This is my first journal quilt that approximates the smaller size for these pieces. It was made as the first exercise in Lily Kerns' Quilt University class on Journal Quilts.

I was trying to express the idea of inner space and outer space by using some of the same elements inside and outside the head.

Space IS the final frontier, and that includes the space inside of us!

The white dots are cut from a home-made brocade skirt I found at a thrift store. Both front and back of the fabric are showing as I fused the right side of some and the wrong side of others.

Other materials/techniques are broderie anglaise, metallic fabric and yarn couched using Super Solvy.




IN OTHER NEWS >>>>

Perhaps because of the helpful telephone coaching I received from Quinn McDonald last week, perhaps because I was out and about interacting more with people than I had for a while, perhaps because the class started and I was looking forward to it, but last week I clocked in an impressive 43 hours and 15 minutes of work, both the bread and butter kind and the fun and creative kind!

Mandala Musings

This is "Enuff on my plate," created for the Mavericks Mandala challenge that we did after Nancy Green presented a workshop on mandalas and how to interpret them. It was one of the first pieces I exhibited, in 2007.

Although it's 25" square, it's really a journal quilt because my whole family is in it. Perhaps the class I'm about to take at www.quiltuniversity.com will enable me to make works on a smaller scale.

Yesterday I was reading Katie Pasquini's 1983 book Mandala for contemporary quilt designs and other mediums. What struck me was how she created beautiful vibrant pieces, yet individually many of those fabrics would be the ones left over after a quilt guild garage sale! Not "uglies" per se, just boring calicoes.

Today we have so many amazing fabrics in glorious colours that were unthought of even 25 years ago. Yet the curious thing is that many art quilters make very little use of commercial fabrics. Curious, isn't it?


PROGRESS REPORT: Did 27 hours of work last week.

Personality Quiz

This is a fun quiz that will tell you what font you are.

www.pbs.org/independentlens/helvetica/quiz.html

I turned out to be Times New Roman, "a class act all round" according to the website!

More on baraka

which is luck or blessings, things that happen at opportune times.

I found Kay Greenlees' book Creating Sketchbooks for Embroiderers and Textile Artists left in our apartment laundry room. What are the odds! Here's a link to the page:


http://www.anovabooks.com/products/product.asp?catid=8&subcatid=114&id=453#

Batsford Books have been going since 1843 and I remember them from my childhood. A lot of the textile books are tied into the City and Guilds courses, and this book is written somewhat from that perspective.

Other recent blessings:

• a perfectly good set of everyday dishes, saving not just money but lugging them home from the store on the bus
• a t-shirt with a slogan on that can be collaged into an art quilt
• dining room chairs that would otherwise have gone to the landfill
• store credit for the Beacon thrift store @ Quadra and Hillside - this gives me permission to pop in from time to time and indulge in collecting textiles. I found a sheer printed scarf (see the photo!) that will make a great layer in a quilt and a home-made brocade skirt which I've deconstructed for a wall hanging.

Progress with work/creation

My total hours for last week was 27 hours and 10 minutes.