Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday. She is 97 years old. I hope that I inherited those longevity genes. I know I inherited a lot of other things from her, for which I am very happy.



She lives in Chicago, a long way from me but we have webcams and can talk to each other with pictures and it's great. I wish I could be there today to celebrate. I used this picture to make a screen and printed us out onto fabric. She lives in a one room apartment in assisted living, so she doesn't have lots of room for more stuff, so I made this into a pillow. She can move it around and it won't take up much room, but every time she looks at it, she will think of me. How great is that?



So, Happy Birthday, Mom, and may you have many more!
Love,
Cathy

Chemistry Exercise Part 2

As promised, the second part of the dyeing exercise, using what Elin Noble calls "Jewel Tones". I used Fuchsia, Turquoise, and Sun Yellow (ProChem 108). The greens, oranges, and purples produced were clear and bright. These used only 2 dyes in combination. When using all three dyes, the results were less bright and moved into browns, some nice and some less so.



As I examined the results of the combinations of all three colors, I wondered how Elin came up the proportions of yellow, blue, and red that she chose. It certainly wasn't an arithmetic progress, like 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. And it didn't seem to be geometric, like 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. I'm certain that it has much to do with the relative strengths of the dyes and that the numbers she came up reflect that. I'm just curious.

Part 3 of the exercise combines the earth tones and the jewel tones to see how they differ from the straight combinations done so far. I could really get carried away here but I'm going to just be content with what I have. And maybe someday I will take Carol Soderland's class.

Chemistry Exercise Part 1

I love the excitement of dyeing fabric and watching the wonderful colors emerge but I've never been very precise or scientific about the process. I have Ann Johnston's Color by Accident: Low-Water Immersion Dyeing
book and refer to it constantly, particularly for the dye concentrate formulas and occasionally to get a particular color. It's always been hit or miss, with the emphasis on the "accident" part. When aiming for a particular color, sometimes I'm successful, sometimes not.

I also have Elin Noble's book Dyes & Paints: A Hands-On Guide to Coloring Fabric, which is also a great resource. I refer to her color pyramid with the percentages of yellow, blue, and red needed when I'm trying to get a particular color. She talks about "earth tones" and "jewel tones" and herein lies the basis of my chemistry exercise.

(I know I could take Carol Soderland's color class and end up with a marvelous resource of color recipes, but I know I will never be that precise when dyeing fabric. I'm just looking for generalities here and to see how the various primaries affect the final color.)

Part 1 - the plan is to use the "earth tones", which are somewhat subdued from the "jewel tones". I used the three dyes she recommends, or at least something close: Golden Yellow (Dharma 3, which is nearly orange), Light Red (Dharma 12), and Intense Blue (ProChem 406). The orange tendency of the Golden Yellow has a big influence on the final color.

I took her percentages and translated them into milliliters of dye concentrate, which I made using Ann's formula of 2T dye powder in 240ml of water (talk about mixing measuring systems, but I only have measuring spoons in teaspoons and tablespoons, and it's easier to use milliliters when calculating percentages.) I used fat eighths of fabric and labeled each piece according to the color it was going to get. I knew I had to get everything arranged ahead of time in order to not get mixed up. I used little syringes marked in milliliters to measure the dye concentrates, if not exactly, at least pretty close. Here is the color pyramid from earth tones:

This is not a very accurate color presentation, but you can certainly see how the yellow tends toward orange. The outside edges of the triangle are combinations of 2 colors only: red and yellow, yellow and blue, blue and red, with the points being the pure color. I find the colors on the inside of the pyramid much more interesting - these use all three dyes in varying amounts. It's equivalent to adding the complement of the color to the color to mute it somewhat. If I mix yellow and blue, I get green. Red is the complement. Or mix yellow and red to get orange, then add blue. Or mix red and blue to get purple, then add yellow. It was really interesting to see how little or how much of a color was needed to make a change. The color in the middle of the third row from the bottom is the brown that results from equal intensities of the 3 dyes. But not equal amounts, since red is about twice as strong as blue or yellow.

Part 2 of the exercise is to use the "jewel tones", which I mixed up last night. Those colors are Sun Yellow, Fuchsia, and Turquoise. I haven't rinsed those out yet, but I can see that there is a huge difference in the results. The colors are definitely more brilliant, like jewels. I have to be a little more patient before rinsing these colors out because turquoise takes longer to fix.

Part 3 of the exercise is going to be smaller in scope, because I could drive myself crazy here with all the combinations and permutations. But I am going to combine earth tones and jewel tones to get the secondaries (green, orange, purple) and the middle brown.

Then I will put all the information in a notebook along with color swatches and have a marvelous reference!

Cover Girl

This month's issue of Professional Quilter is using my Quilt National piece Family Reunion as its cover.



Other good news - two possible sales, one through Artful Home and the other to the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities. Both are still on an approval basis, so I can't spend the money just yet. Keeping my fingers crossed.

It's July?

I could tell you this fantastic story about my adventures since my last post, how I've been to the Antarctic and dog sledded to the South Pole, or maybe how I've made the ascent to Mt. Everest, but I'm pretty sure nobody would believe it. So what have I done lately? Been to QSDS, came home, unpacked, got back into the routine of ordinary life. What did I bring home from QSDS - my class wasn't a stroke of lightning where I discovered some amazing new artistic direction to pursue. But I did bring home a tool of sorts: we made little 4"x6" compositions, some in black and white, some with color. These served as exercises and some were put up on the board to illustrate principles of good and not so good composition. Elizabeth Busch, our mentor, selected some from the group and arranged them on the board with the good compositions at the top and moving down towards the not-so-good ones at the bottom. We discussed what made these work and why the less successful ones didn't work. It's difficult for me to verbalize what is a good composition, but I know it when I see it. I think. Anyhow, whenever my little cards showed up on the wall, they were in the top row, in the company of the "good" compositions. Doesn't mean all the cards I did were good, of course, but at least some made the grade.

This is a greyscale version of one of my cards. While at QSDS I attempted to make this piece on a larger scale and did put something together. It didn't quite have the same impact as the card, mostly because the proportions were not the same. I needed to find some method of enlarging the image to the size I wanted. Elizabeth suggested an opaque projector. Others suggested scaling up using a grid. Both of these had to wait until I got home. I was able to borrow an opaque projector from someone but I wouldn't get my hands on it for a few days, so I did the gridding technique. Oh my, how tedious can you get? Trying to keep track of which little box I was working on, and figuring out the fractional parts of lines nearly drove me to distraction, but I did finally make a full size cartoon of this piece at about 40"x60", and then made patterns for the various pieces. It's finished now and I'm please with the results. I haven't photographed it yet so I can't share it at this point.

Now I'm ready to begin working on the second card that I did. (We actually did about a dozen in class, but as I said, not all are worthy of prime time.) While still at QSDS I pulled out some fabrics trying to pull this one together, but what I couldn't quite get were the subtle shape and line variations that make this work so well visually. Using blocks of fabrics with straight edges made the design clunky and much less interesting. I need to have a "pattern" to follow.


This is the card in the actual colors I used, little swatches of fabric that were right at hand. By now I have the opaque projector and wanted to try it to scale this up. The projector came with no instructions but it's supposedly simple enough that directions aren't really needed. Which means I spent some time figuring out how to get it to work and get the image in focus. It was not a successful venture and I will be returning the projector to my friend. What I did instead was scan the postcard and bring it into Photoshop Elements where I could enlarge it to the desired size. Usually, enlarging images is not recommended because the image quality degrades severely, but in this case, image quality is not an issue. Then I printed it out onto about 35 sheets of paper, one 8"x10" section per sheet. After trimming the margins down to the edge of the image, I could tape the papers together, and voila! my full size cartoon. So much easier than trying to draw it or grid it up.

I have some of the fabrics selected and will be working on this for the next few weeks. I'm excited about this new (to me) tool of little card compositions and have been making a few here and there as practice. One is already selected to be the next piece.

I have a new book in my library - Ann Johnston has re-issued her book The Quilter's Book of Design. I have the first edition and really thought it was well done and this one adds a lot more information and examples. It doesn't seem that there are many design theory books that are geared towards quilters, many of whom do not have art backgrounds (like me). Ann's book relates the theory to a medium that is familiar and that makes it very much more understandable. If you're well acquainted with the principles of design, this book is a good review with lots of illustrative pictures. If it's all new to you, this is a great introduction.

Packing in Earnest

All week long I've been putting stuff in boxes, getting ready for the Quilt Surface Design Symposium. We're leaving tomorrow and I'm taking a 7 day class with Elizabeth Busch. Today it's time to really get serious, finalize my packing, move stuff up out of the studio and into the car. This class I'm taking is called a "Master Class". It's more of a mentored studio where we have the benefit of input from both the instructor and all our classmates. We bring our own projects and pretty much do work of our own choosing. There are usually group critiques and one-on-one critiques plus other art-inspiring activities. We're also going to be doing some painting on cotton duck, something I don't usually do.

I been thinking about my years of attendance at QSDS. My first class was in 1993, when it was still run at the Josephinium Seminary, a college for priests in Columbus. The facilities were primitive, to put it mildly. Our rooms were the cells in the dormitory, no air conditioning, big enough for a single bed and a dresser. The showers were down the hall, and two rooms shared a toilet and a sink. One quickly became acquainted with one's "sink-mate". The class I took was titled "A Problem-Solving Approach to Design" and it was a series of small projects that taught us how to boost creativity. The best lesson I took away from that class was to not be afraid to experiment and to not let the work become so dear that you're afraid to try something for fear of wrecking it.

It was my first exposure to Quilt National and I was gobsmacked. These "quilts" were like nothing I had ever seen and I wasn't even sure I liked them. At that point, I wasn't even ready to call myself an artist. If someone had told me that my work would one day be hanging in Quilt National I would have laughed and laughed. Now I feel very comfortable calling myself an artist.

I didn't attend QSDS again until 1997, but I have been there every year since. For a long time I took different technique classes: low water dyeing, stamping, machine quilting, screen printing - lots of surface design techniques to add to my repertoire. After a while I realized that I also needed education in design principles and how to think like an artist. Luckily, QSDS began their Master Classes, just what I was looking for. At some point you have to really start doing your own work - take all those different techniques and make them work for you.

To digress a bit... I don't remember what quilts were the first ones I entered into Quilt National but I'm sure they were deserving of rejection considering the competition. Here is one of my entries from QN 2001. It's titled Rx: Chocolate. It's a self-portrait of sorts. I stamped words that come into one's vocabulary as one reaches a "certain age": menopause, bone density, mammogram, yadda, yadda. Quilted into the background is my own prescription for these facts of life: chocolate. Doesn't solve the problems, but it makes them more bearable.

Rx: Chocolate ©1999

51" x 40"

Here is a detail view, and I just noticed that the "g" is upside down in "mammogram". Must be some hidden meaning there, I think.

Rx: Chocolate ©1999

I've always thought this would be a great piece of art for an OB/GYN's office, but so far there haven't been any takers.

Resting

I'm sure all my fans are wondering where I've been these past two weeks. Or maybe it's longer, shame on me. I've been resting on my laurels, basking in my Quilt National achievements, but now it's time to get back to business. One QN success is terrific, but it sure doesn't last forever.

I've been working on a few things, partly to get back into the swing of things and partly to prepare for QSDS, which is actually starting this weekend, but I won't be going until next weekend. Sessions IV and V with Elizabeth Busch is what I'm taking. It's a "master class" meaning it's pretty much self-driven with lots of input from the teacher. We're going to be doing painting in the class and she wanted us to get cotton duck. We also have to print up color 8.5x11 pictures of the last 5 to 10 pieces we've done and they will become part of the class discussion/critique. Should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it. I've been going through my paints and throwing out the old dried up ones and trying to decide which ones to bring. It's tough to limit myself but there is only so much space. I also have to decide how much thread to bring. Last year I think I brought my entire collection and it's alot. But I hardly used any of it. If I decide to only bring a small selection, I will probably wish I had more.

Part of the QSDS conference is an auction of small works that benefits the scholarship fund. It took me a few years to actually contribute work to this auction because I was fearful that nobody would bid on my work. Last year there was a bidding war on the little piece that I contributed and it was a huge morale booster. This year I'm donating two pieces (they have two different auctions, each at the Friday Banquet). They're very similar: background from the same piece of fabric, the foreground is a positive image on one and the negative image on the other. Would make a nice diptych, I think. They're both 10" tall by 9" wide.

There will be an online gallery of pieces up for auction at the QSDS web site, probably starting next week. If you're not there to bid in person, you can contact them and place bids by phone or by setting a top limit. The entire proceeds go to the scholarship fund.

Inside ©2009

Outside ©2009

News from Athens

The opening to Quilt National '09 was last night. It was quite the event. First the artists had a preview of the show with no one else there. We could see everything without the crowds and it was wonderful. We had our books and pens in hand so that we could compare the actual pieces to what was in the book and also get the artists to sign their pages. About three fourths of the artists were present and that included many from other countries including Australia and Japan. That's impressive that so many made the trip.

My piece is actually one of the smaller pieces in the show, at least that's my impression so far. So much for my theory that a piece needs to be big to be accepted! But the really cool thing is that I won a prize: "Persistence Pays" - a prize awarded to the artist who has entered QN the most times before getting accepted. I shared it with Glenys Mann from Australia. It surprised me that she also won it because I was sure she had been in QN before. I've seen her work over the years and it certainly looked to be of QN caliber. So anyhow, we share the award. If you look here you can see the list of winners and images of their quilts, which don't do them the least bit of justice.

The catalog is pretty good and certainly worth purchasing, but catalogs never give you the real picture, so to speak. Everything is so much more wonderful than the book image. Colors might be a little bit off, metallics don't sparkle, transparent pieces don't show their transparency, and most of all, the textures just don't show up. You need to really see the show in person to appreciate how wonderful it is. I heard quite a few people say that it was a really great show, which of course I think also!

And this is really cool -- I knew this from way last October but could not say anything. Marvin Fletcher purchased my quilt. Marvin is the widower of Hilary Fletcher, who was the director of Quilt National for many, many years. She died several years ago. The Persistence Pays award was established in her honor because she always encouraged people to keep trying. I met Marvin last night and he told me how when he saw my piece, he just had to have it. And then the fact that it won the award made it even more precious.

The only down side is that they didn't publish that award information in the catalog. Perhaps if they republish it they will fix that. But I still get the prize money.

And the QN people are being quite diligent in enforcing the prohibition on prior publication. One of the jurors told me that after they had made their final selections three pieces were eliminated because they had been published. QN hires researchers to search the web and print publications. Publishing on your own web site is allowed but no where else. If they found an image on another web site and it was there with the artist's permission, it was eliminated. I'm glad they're enforcing the rule because I know people have gotten by with it in the past.

Today is another event, the artists' and collectors' breakfast. Then more SAQA stuff, including a talk by the three QN jurors, Sue Benner, Ned Wert, and Katie Pasquini Masopust. I'm looking forward to that. It's always interesting to hear the back stories.

And as I walked around the room I was in awe that my work was hanging in this most famous location with all these wonderful pieces!

It's time!

I can't believe it's finally here: the Quilt National opening, with my quilt in the show. We're driving out tomorrow to attend the SAQA Convention which starts on Thursday. There is a private reception open only to the QN artists on Friday, then the official opening, and then the banquet. The events of the SAQA convention and QN are sort of intermingled and I'm going to be missing some SAQA stuff. But this may be my only QN opening and I can always go to SAQA!

So now that the show is upon us, I'm posting my piece. It's titled Family Reunion and measures approximately 32" x 40".  The design is another in my windows series, but they're getting a lot more abstract and less like windows, which is okay. This piece has quite a variety of surface design techniques: in addition to dyeing, there is painting, screen printing and deconstructed screen printing, batik, monoprinting, paint splatter, and probably a few more things that I don't remember right now. The piece is heavily quilted with grid quilting and also parallel line quilting, which is a little more obvious in the detail shot.

Family Reunion ©2008

Gotta get back to packing! By the way, the catalog is already available on Amazon and I saw a copy last week. I think the color is a little off, but I'm thrilled to be in there. 

Thoughts

I go to the gym three times a week. It's a really nice gym with all kinds of weight training equipment, a huge selection of cardio machines, 4 swimming pools (including a whirlpool). It's always clean and since I go in the early afternoon, seldom crowded. It's also pretty expensive and I really wish that all I had to do was pay the money and I would automatically reap all the benefits. Apparently it doesn't work that way.  Anyhow, two of my workouts include resistance training with weights and all three have an hour's time on the elliptical trainer. The elliptical trainers at my gym have built in tv sets so I can watch a program while exercising. I plan my sessions so that I can watch Law and Order in its various incarnations or Without a Trace. It makes the time pass by more quickly. Except I wish that TNT and USA would get some new episodes, since I've pretty much seen all that they have.  I don't really look forward to doing these workouts but it's become a really strong habit and at this point I would have a difficult time giving it up.

I used to be a marathon runner and an aerobics instructor but I ruined my knees with all the pounding. I've run 6 marathons in my life, including the Boston Marathon. For those who aren't familiar with the marathon distance, it's 26.2 miles. In order to qualify to run in the Boston Marathon, I had to complete the distance in less than 3 1/2 hours, which I did. I did all this in my 20's and 30's and it's now been more than 25 years since I had to stop running. Sometimes I still miss it. I always watch the Olympic marathon and it gives me chills when the lead runner enters the stadium. 

So why am I blathering on about this stuff, probably more than you really wanted to know? Because I often wonder why I do this. It certainly isn't giving me the body of a fashion model. In fact, judging from the other bodies at the gym, I'm lucky I've got the body I have. Gravity and the aging process are merciless tyrants and all we can do is hold them off a little. I always think of the quote from the Red Queen in Lewis Carrolls's Through the Looking Glass. She says to Alice: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"  That's how I feel - that I am running as fast as I can just to stay in the same place - watch the diet, take the medications, exercise regularly, wear a seat belt, yada yada yada. My doctor says I'm doing very well (although she leaves unsaid "for someone your age.")

Longevity is in my genes - my grandmother lived to nearly 100 and my mother is fast approaching 97. So I had better take good care of this body because I know I won't be getting another one. And I want to be able to watch my grandchildren grow up and have my great-grandchildren. And still be doing art.

Here is your reward for reading through all this - the azaleas in my back yard are nearly in full bloom.

Finishing off the dyes

I still had some dye pastes left but I was done mentally with doing screen printing. I hate wasting dyes so I thought that I would just add water and do some low water dyeing and that would use up what was left.

These first two pieces are some green that I had mixed up and some gold/yellow/brown that I combined. The green looked pretty awful when wet but got much better when it was dry. Usually I like the colors better when they're wet, so this was a surprise.

The one on the right is fuchsia (no surprise); the one on the left is scarlet. I love red.

This was the surprise. The dye color is Deep Cherry and in the dye pot it looked nearly black. The wet fabric looked very very dark purpley-red and rich. The dry result is less so and is destined to be the base for something else. I don't much care for this color.  The light grey piece was dyed in the same container but added after about 15 minutes had passed (like Ann Johnston's parfait method). It looked lilac when wet, but all of the red washed out and the fabric is a lovely grey. (Eat your heart out, Linda in Belgium!) This was a reminder that red always fixes very quickly and isn't be available in subsequent layers of parfait dyeing.

I had 4 different blues left over: navy, intense blue, turquoise, and I don't remember the name of the 4th one. I always have lots of blue left over because it's the color I use least when dyeing. So why do I mix up so much? Can't resist having a selection. And blue is necessary for green and gold and purple; I just have to remember that I need relatively less blue than I need red and yellow.

These last two pieces were done with screen printing, using 3 different screens. I cut stencils from newsprint. The first one was the outline of the connecting squares. The other two were the squares that were slightly offset from the outlines and also sized and positioned so that they didn't quite fit inside the boxes.  I like how these turned out, but I did them on white fabric and there was too much white. I put each of them in a very dilute yellow solution just to take the edge off the white. 

I'm thinking that I will make some thermofax screens of these boxes and outlines. This kind of stuff is quicker to do with paints because there isn't the batching time that's needed with dyes. Also, doing these designs with dyes meant I had to wait to let the dye paste dry enough that it wouldn't blur when more layers were added, a step that isn't necessary with paints because they dry so fast.

The real surprise was in one of my dye containers. I have a collection of 1/2 gallon sized plastic milk containers with the tops cut off that are terrific for the layered dye method. They're stored in the closet, which is next to the crawl space, home to various and sundry uninvited wildlife. Imagine my delight when I found a mummified mouse in the bottom of one of the containers. Must have fallen in and couldn't get out.  At least it wasn't a snake. Yuck.

What the turquoise did

Thanks for the great comments! Sometimes it takes me a while to appreciate what I've done and I know that each of these fabrics will be perfect somewhere sometime.

Linda asked what the turquoise on the blotter fabric went into. This is the piece. It's turquoise and also another deep blue, either Intense Blue or Navy Blue. With some pale yellow to soften the white. It's very difficult for me to leave white areas. Even a little bit of color is better than pure white.



This morning I took all the dye pastes that were mixed and used on soda soaked fabric and slopped them onto a piece of fabric. It looked very very dark. It's batching right now and it will be interesting to see just how much color was left in those pastes. Stay tuned.

Deconstructed Screen Printing once again

I've been working on some deconstructed screen printing again, hoping it will provide some inspiration for new work. I have to pull out my notes from previous sessions so that I don't spend days relearning what I already know but have sort of forgotten. In spite of that, I still did some things that produced less than satisfactory results. So here are some of my new fabrics. You can click on the images for a larger view.


I like this one. The dot images are from some kind of tape that I got at Home Depot. I have no clue what it's supposed to be used for but it makes a great screen image. I used a Deep Cherry Red to make the screen and then used a yellow print paste for the release. Or maybe two yellows.


Torn paper for one image and a design I drew on the screen for the cross hatch lines.


Furnace filter screens for the big circles, bubble wrap for the small circles, and hand drawn circles for the medium sizes red circles.


Torn paper striping, a thermofax screen made from a previous session with torn paper, and some squares made with regular screen printing and torn paper.


This was from a screen made with big bubble wrap and it didn't work too well because the print paste covered the entire screen. So not much of the bubble wrap design showed through. And the red was an experiment in doing a monoprint by putting the dye paste on some plexiglas, pulling a striping tool through, then putting the fabric on top. It smushed the dye paste so that the stripes disappeared, so I tried putting the dye paste directly on the fabric and using the striping tool. Which sort of worked but not very well.


Blotting fabric - when making the screens I used this piece of fabric to blot up the dye paste that goes through the screen. What I find so interesting (besides the fact that it's a pretty cool piece of fabric) is that this fabric doesn't get the special batching treatment that the printed fabric gets: wrapping in plastic and sitting in a warm spot. It just sits by the side of the work table, drying out, not covered, not warm. Obviously, it's humid enough that the dye is reacting with the soda ash that is in the fabric.


One of the first pieces I did. I had an idea for these overlapping rectangles with intersecting blue rectangles (which of course turn green on the yellow dye). Not sure this worked out all that well, but I can always cut it up.


This is construction fencing and it deconstructed really well. The first pulls started at the bottom and there is a good image of the fencing. By the time I got to the top of the fabric it's only a small portion of the original image left.


Not exactly sure what I did here, but I think it involved some direct application of the dye paste.


More dotted paper and torn paper. This turned out alot lighter in color than I expected it to. I violated one of the cardinal rules of screen printing with thickened dyes. Once the dyes in the print paste come in contact with the soda ash soaked fabric they begin to react and lose their strength. Any used print paste put back into the unused print paste will begin to react. So even though the color still looks good and strong, in actuality there is not much dye left to react. I was putting the used print paste back instead of segregating it. Live and learn.


Another blotting fabric, given the same treatment as the first one. Some really interesting sections on this one also.


Good color, the way it's supposed to be.


I might have gotten carried away with the dotted paper.



Very pale background. I thought it was coming out much darker but this was using spent print paste.


I thought I was screening with a gold color but only the yellow I added to the spent paste showed up.


This is the color it is supposed to be. The dye paste on the screen was medium blue and green and the print paste was clear. So the background color is what was released from the color on the screen.


Another one where the background was supposed to be a lot more golden. I guess I won't be making that mistake again.

I still have some good print paste left, but I think I'm going to finish it off with some direct dye painting onto the fabric. And using some thermofax screens also.

The End of March

This month has gone by in a blur. And I'm glad to see it nearly over because April is such a wonderful time in Baltimore. Every day something new is blooming. While I was in Chicago over the weekend (where it had the audacity to snow) my daffodils began blooming. I can see blooms on the new hydrangea bush I bought last year, day lilies are poking up, and buds are swelling on all the trees. Another winter has bit the dust. Hooray!

I've been doing something I haven't done in a very long time - sewing clothes. I want to wear something arty to the Quilt National opening so I thought that a shirt made out of some hand painted fabrics would be perfect. But since I haven't sewn for myself in so long, it would be a good idea to test out the pattern (and my garment sewing skills) on some not-so-precious fabric first. In my stash was some batik fish fabric that I bought years ago and would be perfect and with only a little bit of searching I found it. There was more than enough to make a shirt so I pinned, cut, and sewed and finished it in only a few hours. Originally it was not going to have buttons because I've never been very good at doing buttonholes, but at my retreat in mid-March I learned how to use the automatic buttonhole maker on my Janome. OMG it's so easy, why didn't I try it out before? So the shirt has buttonholes. And cute little fish buttons that you can't see in this picture.


The pattern has a collar but that got left out. So now I'm ready to paint fabric and make the shirt again. I have an end cut of fabric that I got from a shirt factory and decided this would be perfect for making a shirt. Painted several yards with yellow/peach/orange paint over some soy wax batik designs. Then screened a spiral shape with gold metallic paint. I was so impatient that I couldn't wait long enough for the paint to cure and washed it. Well, bad move, most of the metallic paint rubbed off. I had heat set it but really didn't give it enough time to cure. And I think the shirt fabric might have some kind of finish on it. Pulled out more fabric and paint and did it again, along with the metallic gold. Except I went ahead and made the shirt without washing the fabric and I've let it cure for 10 days now. This is the shirt before it's been washed. I'm going to wash it by hand and hope that the gold metallic paint stays put.

There is a carrier for a belt and I have a twisted fabric belt that Elizabeth helped me make while on our retreat. Not sure what I'm going to do if all the gold washes off again. Maybe I'll go with the antique look.

EXPO 2009

This weekend is my local quilting guild's biennial show. The membership in the Baltimore Heritage Quilter's Guild runs the gamut from very traditional workers who only do handwork to people like me who do all their own surface design and only use machines. This weekend we have more than 270 on display at Goucher College, Towson, Maryland. I've always volunteered to help with this show and this year I planned and oversaw the layout and hanging of the quilts. It's a very detail-oriented job that involves alot of blood, sweat, and tears trying to fit everything into the limited space that we have and also trying to make a pleasing presentation. It takes a lot of time to plan, but the plan only works when there are alot of volunteers who help make it happen. Yesterday the poles and standards arrived at the venue around 3:30pm.

This is what the gym looked like at 3:30pm. Empty.



This is the lobby area, nearly empty.


Here is the gym at 9:30pm, looking down one of the aisles. Show quilts are on the left and vendor booths are on the right.


Looking down the central aisle with all show quilts. I think that getting this put up in 6 hours is a tribute to organization, cooperation, and volunteerism.



This is part of the lobby area. These quilts are part of the Buy It or Bid event. Visitors can put down a silent bid on a piece or they can purchase it outright for a pre-set price. No waiting, take it home now.



This is the Guild's Raffle Quilt, titled Chesapeake Bay Treasures. You can read more about the design and execution of this original design here. I can't sell raffle tickets online but if you contact me directly we can arrange it. The quilt measures 107" L by 97" W. The drawing is next December; tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5. Email me

SAQA Auction 2009

I shipped off my donation to the SAQA Benefit Auction for 2009 the other day. I'm hoping it's one of the early bird donations and will be displayed at the IQF show in Chicago next month. The first 32 will have that honor and on the SAQA Auction page, mine is number 29, so chances are pretty good, I think.

Ventanas #17 ©2009

I am really taken by how the thread color can change the color of the fabric beneath it and have been playing with that on this one and the other 5 I did.

And I've been painting some cotton duck fabric to make purses these past few days and it's not quite as successful as I would have liked. First off, the paint on the duck is resulting in some very stiff fabric, which I don't like. Also, the pattern I used turns out to have a shape that isn't pleasing to me - it's too wide for its length. Picky, I know, but purses are very personal. I'll finish the stitching on the first one and then wash it to see if it softens up some. Then I might take some tucks in the side to decrease the width. It needs a big button for the closure and I'm thinking I'll get out the Fimo clay and make one.

Skunked

By the weather, that is. I'm looking out the window at 6-8 inches of snow that as far as I'm concerned, has no business being here. It can't melt fast enough for me.

But I have finished dyeing my sweater and here it is. This is pretty much what I had in mind, so I'm happy with the result. The colors are a little more intense in real life, but not too much.

This is the back.

And this is the front.


I spent at least an hour last night and this morning looking for some instructions for knitting childrens' sweaters that I have. I know where they are - they're with the size 8 double pointed needles that I was looking for in January. And there is probably a pair of size 6 double pointed needles along with them. After I finished knitting the kids' sweaters, I must not have put the stuff away and it's been shuffled around and is now at the bottom of something or has fallen behind something. My heirs will probably find it when they dismantle my studio.

UPDATE: Bingo! I found them. The stuff was in a basket that was in my bedroom. I've moved that basket around a gazillion times but never bothered to look inside it. Not only were the instructions and the needles there but also some scissors, a tape measure, and a pen and paper. And in the searching process I found a ton of stuff that I should toss. I would have a whole lot more room if I got rid of this stuff. Of course, the day after it gets hauled away, I will realize that I need it.