The Week Ends Well

It will be a quiet weekend here while we hope and wait for rain. Last week's downpour didn't really help as much as we had hoped.

On the good news side, this little test piece, which started out simply as an experiment, has so charmed me that not only have I added beading...


... but I also think I might mount it on a small painted canvas and donate it to Art Now For Autism. If I'm going to do that, I need to act quickly, though- all submissions are due by September 1st.

I actually did it, I actually sent in my entry application to the abecedarian gallery (the lack of caps is their choice, not mine) for a juried exhibit they're hosting November 6th- December 19th.

I was horrified to realize after I'd made the decision to submit these two pieces that one of the photographs, which had been done by a professional photographer, was utterly blurry. As ticked as I was at the photographer (this was just one thing in a long list of things he did badly), I was more angry with myself for not having noticed it in time to correct it.

I panicked at little, then, because the application clearly stated that they wanted museum quality photos.

I gathered my courage together, grabbed my camera and tripod, and did what I could to re-photograph the piece. And miracle of miracles, I think I nailed it.



Anyway, they'll like me or they won't... it's all in their hands now and I just have to wait.

Have a happy weekend!

Tuesday Afternoon

I posted this over on the Quilting Arts Reader Forums, but thought I would post here, as well.

I started this piece with some of my hand-dyes a couple of weeks ago, went like gangbusters on it for a while and now I seem to have fallen off the inspiration train with a splat. I just don't know where to go from here- if anywhere (I'm asking myself if the piece even worth it. Not sure, yet.)



The original idea was to do what I do- rely on very linear elements and stitching (which appeals to my need for order), combined with fraying edges, unexpected materials and colors, and high contrast (which appeals to my need for chaos) to inform the piece as it developed. I figured that eventually I would add some curving elements to help pull all of the individual linear elements into one cohesive story- but that's not happening. Right now, all I seem to have are objects floating in space that don't particularly relate to one another. The curvaceous chaos I want for the finished piece is hiding itself from me, I can't see in which form it should take or where it should be located.

And I think it's because I'm bored with this color palette, all of a sudden- or with this theme.

Any suggestions?

These are close-ups of some of the detail stitching.



In other (strangely related) news, the little test piece I told you all about yesterday, the one I finished this weekend and then so fell in love with, has come out of the dye bath and is absolutely adorable.


And weirdly, it's almost the exact same color as the background fabric in the above art quilt. I REALLY need to try out some new color palettes!

It measures about 8"x10" and even though it was never meant to be anything but a test, I'm thinking I might start beading on it. I've got some lovely bead soups and a bunch more beads that I've made myself and I can see some of them on this delicate, floaty little thing.

While I had my beads out, I thought I'd take a quick snapshot of the way they're organized.


I have a small collection, I've done very little beading so far, but that isn't the reason I'm showing it to you. I have always saved and used all kinds of little containers that looked sturdy or useful and I've never been sorry I have, because whenever I start having storage problems, I go straight to my containers and fashion a solution. I believe that by doing this, I've saved thousands of dollars over the years that could have been wasted purchasing a lot of expensive specialized storage units.

The above kit is created using sturdy box tops nestled inside a large plastic garden flat (a shallow, rectangular crate they use to start new plants from seeds). Each box top is fitted with plastic trays from commercial cookie and cracker boxes, many of which have neat little divisions in them. Now and then, I make up bead soups for particular projects and I store the leftovers in little condiment cups with lids that I get at party supply stores.

Now when I need my beads, I just grab my little caddy and carry it with me.

Happy Creating!

What's Keeping Me So Busy!

Hi everyone!

I know it’s been a week or so since I last posted, but I’ve been busy with all kinds of projects, some of which I’d like to tell you about today. But fair warning, this post is photo-intensive, so if you have load time trouble, I apologize.

First on the agenda is that I’ve decided to enter two of my assemblage pieces into a Call For Artists from the abecedarian gallery, in Denver. I found this listing on the Fiber Arts Calls for Entry blog. The theme of the show is “assemblage and collage” and gives free reign on the materials used in each piece.

I’m going to enter this piece (if you click on it, you'll see a larger photo of it), a collage of painted fabrics and paper, fibers, my own hand-made beads, a little bamboo and a bit of wire. It measures 12.5" by 16.5" without its frame and is now hanging in my husband’s office.

This is the second piece, which is a collage of painted fabrics and papers, lots of hand stitching, dyed scrim and thread, and hand-made beads and buttons. It’s mounted on white cotton.

The entries will probably go out tomorrow or the next day. Wish me luck!

The next project I’d like to share with you is some of the research I've been doing on a commissioned textile/quilt piece which I will be starting officially in late September. My hope for this abstract quilt is that it will be heavily textured, mostly linear but with a touch of chaotic movement- which is sort of my trademark- and wonderfully touchable. I will be attempting to force the piece to distort so that it will undulate gently off the wall, rather than laying flat, and I'll be stitching it before dyeing it.

Towards that end and for the last few months, I've been assembling quilt sandwiches using all different types of materials, such as paper, various shrinkable and non-shrinkable batting and interfacing, and synthetic fabrics. Each piece gets machine stitched, painted, dyed, shrunk, distorted... anything I can think of to alter the surface in the way I envision for the final piece. All of these test pieces are small; I'm keeping them in a 3-ring binder inside plastic page protectors just so I can keep all of them together with the notes I took while constructing them.

The first two pieces were stitched and then dyed, and even painted a bit after quilting. Not thrilled with the style though- too homey for my client, who wants clean, modern lines and edgy materials.

By now, though, I'm realizing that I want more densely-packed stitching, not less, so I start moving in that direction. Also looking for more distortion, I stitched the next piece to Tyvek and then melted it (NOTE: all reasonable safety precautions should be observed with this process... including the careful use of a respirator!)



I liked that look a lot but continued to experiment. I tried different stitch patterns in the hopes of moving the fabric around more, dyeing first and then stitching to emphasize the thread choices. and using rayon and other melt-able fabrics as backing materials.


I was getting closer to what I wanted, but just wasn't there yet, so I kept experimenting, this time with paper.

The first paper test was on an unpainted grocery sack that had previously been gesso'd (a white primer), and stitched to Tyvek. Then it was painted with acrylics and shrunk.


Pretty cool, though because it was brown paper and not fabric, the Tyvek met with some distortion resistance.

The next paper piece was painted first and then sandwiched with batting and muslin. I used various weights of thread on this, mostly just to see what they would do, and all of them preformed beautifully considering the thickness and texture this had.


The next few experiments surrounded the idea of using directional stitching to produce puckers and ridges. Some of these pieces were dyed first, some painted after stitching.


Finally, I hit upon the idea of adding movement and texture to the piece not just with stitching and foundation distortion, but by taking advantage of the damage the raw edges of fabrics suffer during the vat dyeing process.

By the time a piece of fabric has been soaked, dyed, soaked again, rinsed multiple times, laundered in the machine, and finally dried, the raw edges of even the highest thread count fabrics are mangled and frayed and absolutely lovely.

Occasionally, depending on what product you used to color the fabric, the fringe even collects a higher concentration of pigment than the woven fabric itself, which produces such lovely, soft, vibrantly-colored textures.

Wanting to play on this raw edge notion but still wanting to have a finished-edge quilt, I hit on the idea of stitching my surface treatment directly onto a finished and bound quilt sandwich.

I constructed a small quilt sandwich with a PFD white cotton top, wool batting (still in the hopes of producing some shrinkage and distortion later on in the process) and a white muslin back. I did a pillowcase turn to finish the edges. I stitched everything with white cotton thread because I want it to dye right along with the fabric.

To the finished backing, I stitched narrow strips of torn white cotton fabric. I placed them close together so they would shoulder each other around for space. The texture I achieved is almost too pretty to dye!



But dye it, I will, probably today or tomorrow. I expect that those fragile fabric edges will take qite a beating in the process and I can't wait to see what the final result will be. I will post photos in my next blog entry.

This post has gone on long enough for one day, I've no desire to monopolize your very precious time, so just let me remind y'all that not only is there still time to sign up for my grand opening give-away, but you can also enter up to three times by commenting on that post on three different days!

Keep flying high and happy creating!

Hummers!

They've returned!




I believe this is a male subadult Lucifer's Hummingbird. If anyone knows differently, please feel free to speak up!

Things I Love

Thread schmutz


(The threads that hang off the edge of fabrics after they've been washed, dyed, rinsed, soaked, washed again... well, you get the idea. Yes, I actually save this stuff... the birds love it for their nests and as often as not, some of it will end up in my quilts, too.)

Cheapest Alter-able Tool Ever:


(A wallpaper seam roller with sticky-backed fun foam shapes attached to it to create a continuous roller stamp. The plastic rollers are about a buck in the hardware store and the heavy wooden-handled ones, which are my favorite, cost about 6.00 but they last for years. The sticky-backed fun foam shapes can be bought in craft stores by the bucket, in the kid's departments. Each bucket is about four dollars. Use the shapes as-is or cut them up to alter them. My favorite way to "ink" them is to squirt paint/reinker/dye/textile paint/dye-na-flow/etc into a small polyester sponge- the yellow ones they sell in the grout or automotive departments that don't get stiff when they dry- work it in a little with a craft stick to even out the pigment and then roll the stamp roller onto the sponge. It's just like using an ink pad- which also works, btw.)

Over-Flowing Stamp Drawers


(This one contains as many of my favorite tribal stamps as it can hold. I've been carving stamps for years... can you tell I'm a little obsessed with it? These work great on fabric or paper.)

A Size 90 Topstitch Needle


(With ANY thread.)

Rain



(After months of drought.)

More Gradation and Odds and Ends

Mornings around here are quiet and soft. I'm an early riser and I like to hit the ground running... It's the perfect time to get a lot of work done before the heat really cranks up and while my energy is at its highest. But yesterday morning I woke up feeling restless and unfocused. I couldn't settle in and decide what I wanted to do. I wandered from space to space- the studio, the sewing desk, the garage- and nothing leaped out at me. I was on a slow build to a cranky day.

And then I noticed the terrible, mangled living room curtains. For various reasons (I have cats- 'nuff said), these sad, limp little sheers, which I had loved when they were new, have seen their last fabulous day and have been in a slow decline for a while. Looking at them made me crankier... until I flashed on that three-yard expanse of white cotton in my stash, begging to be turned into curtains.

Suddenly, my energy spiked and I forgot about how grouchy I was all set to be.


So, another gradation, this one intended to match the decor of my living room. Now, understand- my walls in that room are yellow . That's right, yellow. Stop laughing, they look great! The accents in the room are in rich browns and reds. So it made sense for me to do a scarlet ~> lemon yellow fade.


The colors turned out even more vibrant and beautiful than in the last batch, but this run had some difficulties. The two darkest pieces somehow wound up with small spots of a dark dye on them- I suspect the green dye from earlier in the week. I'm not sure how that happened because I had totally cleaned out the dye area before starting this new batch (even the tarp had been laundered). Nonetheless, there they are, little irksome spots. I hope I figure out where they came from before it happens to another batch. It doesn't matter in practical terms for this batch- it's just curtains for the living room and those spots will be easy to conceal- but it would be good to understand what happened, for future reference.

When I get the curtains stitched and hung, I'll snap some shots and post them. It's going to be all ragged edges for these babies... no tidy seams, no cut edges. I'm going to "collage" curtains. Sounds like fun, yeah?

That's the good news. The bad news is that we're now officially in a drought situation. We haven't seen rain in months and our city has clamped down heavily on water violators. Even if they hadn't, my own conscience would not allow me to continue using as much water as I have been in these last couple of weeks. So no more immersion dyeing for me for a while- at least not until this drought breaks.

In the coming weeks I'll use all these wonderful fabrics to print and screen onto, for experimenting with discharge pastes and soy wax batik, and of course, to make art quilts.

Odds And Ends

- The International Quilt Festival/Houston catalog arrived yesterday. It will take me the whole weekend just to read through it all and decide which class(es) I want to take. There's a three-day class on dyeing and constructing art quilts with silk (a fabric that I must admit intimidates me somewhat) which has me drooling into my bra, so that could be the winner.

- The hummers have returned. It's a little early for them so this could just be a lone rogue but I put one of the feeders out, anyway, and will keep it maintained until they migrate back across this area in the late summer/early fall. Wish me luck snapping photos- they're quick little guys who fly like they're on rails. The odds are in my favor, though... by September we'll be knee-deep in hummingbirds.

- I started a new quilt with some of my hand-dyed fabrics. It's not large, maybe 22" x 26".

This is a down and dirty photo of it in its planning stages. I take these photos once I'm satisfied with a layout, so I can disassemble the piece and then reassemble it properly with fusing, stitch, spray mount, or usually a combination of all three. The photo quality doesn't matter at this point- it's just a visual map.



This piece consists of a hand-dyed background in green, fused to Timtex for stability. It incorporates more hand-dyed fabrics as well as a dyed paper towel. This is a detail of some of the stitching:



(P.S. I hate knotting threads at the back of the quilt. Yeah, I do it anyway, but you can't make me like it).

- I've written an article about revitalizing your creative muse and have submitted it, along with a few photos, to the magazine Cloth, Paper, Scissors in the hopes that they will want to publish it. If not, I'll post it here, instead. Wish me luck!

- I've also decided to enter into The Eye of the Quilter: Inspiration contest, sponsored by Quilts, Inc., the amazing folks behind the International Quilt Festivals. This is a photographic contest- you submit three of your best photos (they don't have to be quilt-related), the ones that you feel inspire you the most. I've only just begun taking photos but what the heck? I'll never know what it's like to try these things if I just sit and watch them pass me by!

Have an awesome week and happy creating!
- Judi

Gradation Dyeing, Because It's Fun!

This week's dyeing experiments have gone very smoothly and it's only Monday. I hope that bodes well for the rest of the week. Is there anything prettier than puddles of brightly colored fabrics in their little containers, waiting to be washed and dried?

These Procion MX dyes I’ve been working with are spectacularly vivid and beautiful. Every time I pull another piece of fabric out of the washing machine and shake it out to examine it, I am in awe of the dramatic effects one can achieve.

Yesterday and today, I followed along with a book published by C & T Publishing called “Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Dyeing: Create Colorful Fabric for Quilts, Crafts & Wearables.” The book was written by Lynn Koolish, an incredibly talented textile artist who encourages the very thing I’ve been doing: experimenting with quantities, fabrics, and various compression techniques. The book is easy to follow and keeps the process from becoming too scary. And so far, there hasn’t been a question I’ve asked myself that wasn’t answered by this book.

Taking a lesson from Ms. Koolish (and adapting it slightly), I did a 2-color, 6-step “mostly solid” color gradation. I started with bleached white muslin and essentially blended one color into another on six different pieces of fabric. (Buy the book to learn the technique; you won’t be sorry, I promise.) Yesterday I got the fabrics into their dye baths and allowed them to batch overnight, and today was dedicated to rinsing and washing everything and then, of course, hanging it all on the line to dry.



For my first attempt, I chose Magenta and Lemon Yellow as my starting colors, hoping to blend them into a vibrant orange. I’m very happy to report that it worked perfectly; I am fond of all of the pieces I finished today, but particularly of the mid-range colors, as they reached a tone and brightness I’ve been trying to achieve in fabric for a while.



As you can see in the photo, each piece looks remarkably as if it was tie-dyed, the result of being scrunched into a small container to batch set. This effect varied from piece to piece, with some showing strong "tie-dying" and others showing less. I absolutely love the way the dyes split to reveal not only both of my starting colors, but the full range of colors in between magenta and yellow.

I also dyed one large scrap of the muslin with some of last week’s left over green dye, and another with yesterday’s left over magenta/yellow dye, blended together. Again, I found it fascinating in this piece how, despite carefully mixing both the magenta and the lemon yellow solutions together in one container before pouring it onto my fabric, the dyes still manage to break apart from one another and strut their stuff as individual colors.





Can you tell how completely absorbing this process is for me? These days I am really feeling grateful for my previous experience with mixing colors because if I’d had to learn both the technical side of dyeing and the lessons needed to understand how colors will behave with one another, I might be pulling my hair out right now. Still, if you’re a newcomer to color-mixing, there are a million excellent sites on the web designed to help you better understand it, as well as those, like DickBlick, that offer color recipes for MX dyes. Personally, I’m taking notes and keeping records like mad.

Later in the week, I’ll be trying dye thickening and painting. I’ve been reading about using 100% aloe gel as a substitute thickener for sodium alginate, so I’ll give that a spin on some PFD wholecloth.

Also, don’t forget to comment here to be entered in my free fabric and goodies give-away!

Happy creating!
- Judi

Two Creative Studios

If you haven't been over to Two Creative Studios yet, now's the time to visit.

The site is run by the extremely talented artists, Terri Stegmiller and Sue Bleiweiss. Terri and Sue are endlessly energetic, writing amazing articles on all manner of mixed-media creations, offering classes- both online and single download pdf's- and of course, creating beautiful art.

Each lady has their own special style, and having taken several classes from Sue (and wanting very much to take a class from Terri soon), I can tell you that they are warm, receptive and incredibly helpful as teachers and as artists.

And today I'm really juiced, because not only did they publish a new FREE tutorial on soy wax batik'ing, they have also announced a special give-away of all kinds of fun goodies for three lucky winners. All you have to do is go to their site and sign up for their newsletter!

Trust me when I tell you, this is not one of those hokey spam things, these ladies and their writing, techniques and talent are the real thing. So go sign up and be entered in the give-away. You won't be sorry.

Happy creating!

P.S. These beauties arrived today... license plate covers for my car!

Cool, huh?

Grand Opening Giveaway!

It's time for a giveaway to announce the "grand opening" of my new blog!

If you've been reading this blog you may have come to know that I am, and have been for many years, a paper artist who is now moving into the world of textiles. My blog will hopefully record that glorious journey, and my results with various techniques.

So to celebrate one of those techniques, I'm offering a give-away of one 2- yard piece of my hand-dyed cotton fabric, a copy of a great little book that helped me get started, and a large baggie of fun painted paper and fabric scraps from my huge stash!

In order to be eligible for this give-away, all you have to do is comment on this blog and tell me how YOU got started on your own art journey! If you want a better chance to win, comment more than once (but please no more than ONE comment a day, up to three comments total)!

Then on August 9th, one month from today, I will assign each comment a number and use a randomizer to choose a winner. Please remember that if you don't leave a name and email address, or offer some other way of contacting you at the end of the give-away, I won't be able to include you.

Simple, right?

Looking forward to hearing for all of you and good luck!

- Judi

Dyed Batting Art Quilt

If you've been reading my blog, you've seen the results of my dyed cotton batting experiments. Almost immediately after drying and ironing these little beauties, my mind started working on how they could be used.

I played with them a bit and then started cutting and spray basting them together and today, I finished stitching the piece I created.


The process was fairly straightforward. To strengthen the quilt, I layered two coordinating batting pieces together with spray baste. I intentionally played on their uneven, wavy edges by tugging them gently to help flute them and by layering them in such a way that the edges were shown off to their best advantage.

On top of this sandwich, I layered another strip of wine-colored dyed batting and a piece of painted watercolor paper that had been heavily wrinkled.

Also on this piece is a dryer sheet that's been pressed flat. I used a white oil stick and a hot glue rubbing plate I'd made years ago to create a white-on-white effect. I allowed the dryer sheet for cure for a few days and then ironed it between two pieces of parchment paper to set the paint.

Finally, I added a strip of left over, dyed paper toweling- seen in the detail photo, below- which I stiffened by brushing with Paverpol and allowing to dry fully.



The piece was free-motion stitched with a deliberate attempt to reinforce a straight-lined theme and then a machine-wrapped cord I made of eyelash yarn was machine couched in a spiral pattern to break the tension and off-set the linear free-motion quilting.

The edges will be left raw and uneven, as was the original intent. The completed piece measures approximately 18" x 24". (And yes, it's available for purchase! :D)

I believe I will try mounting it on a painted stretched canvas.

Coming up this week, I will post an article I'm writing about revitalizing your creative muse, and - drum roll, please- post a free giveaway to celebrate the grand opening of my new blog.

Happy creating!

Dying to Dye!

Tell me, is there anything more satisfying and soothing to the soul than watching freshly hand-dyed fabrics flapping in the breeze on a hot, sunny Fourth of July? If so, I don't know what it is. Seeing laundry on the line always takes me back to my childhood when my mother would dry all of our clothes on many long clotheslines strung across the yard, and now as an adult a small zing of excitement goes through me when I see my own handiwork up there on my modest little clothesline.


The fabric above is a 2 yard, off the bolt, high thread count cotton that I compression dyed a couple of days ago. It started out simply enough... an accordion pleat fold and some fabric scraps to tie it all off (the fabric laying underneath is a cotton scrap that I figured would be useful for soaking up any excess dye)...


The intention right from the start was to overdye it with turquoise to bring it up to an electric green.

It sort of worked:


I'm not totally thrilled with the result, but I know I have to be patient with myself: it didn't take me just a couple of months to learn how to paint or to blend paints, it took years, and it won't take me just a few months to master fabric dyeing techniques, either.

However, it never hurts to balance out a semi-success with a total success:


This piece started as 2 yards of unbleached muslin, which I pleated and tied in the same manner as the one above, but this time, in an effort to make the "tie-dye" effect more prominent, I used rubber bands instead of cotton strips in the hope that the rubber would resist the dyes more. That didn't really happen, but the fault, dear Brutus, lies with us: my lousy hand strength just isn't powerful enough to get a good, tight compression. I'm thinking of investing in some narrow latex tubing, the kind you find in medical supply stores, in the hopes of being able to get a little more torque when pulling the knots tight. I'll post my results with that once I've tried it.

This piece was dyed with some lovely cotton and canvas scraps I had lying around and has also produced reams of wonderfully dyed plain white paper towels, which are still drying in the garage.


While it may seem extreme to blog about two little piece of fabric when there are amazing textile artists out there spending weeks out of every year dying pounds and pounds of fabric, I am a newcomer to fabric dyeing, and my hope is to help encourage other newcomers like myself to explore things outside their creative comfort zones, too. Plus, it'll be a hoot to look back on these journals in years to come and see how far I've progressed.

So that's been the last few days. The rest of the weekend will probably be textile-free; it is a national holiday, after all!

This morning, after tragically watching a neighbor's cat make off with one of my backyard baby doves in its mouth, I was able to pull myself together enough to snap these shots of a daddy woodpecker feeding two chicks who were staying safely up the tree until he'd come offering goodies (notice the cardinal looking on- those guys are real characters!).


(The soft focus comes from shooting through the window screen, but I kind of like the effect.)

Daddy was diplomatic in his feeding practices... despite one of the chicks aggressively chasing the other one away, Dad always managed to have a bite to feed to each hungry mouth.


And in the "holy cow!" category, this little squirrel sat poised for a VERY long time on an electrical cable that runs outside our fence.


And just to give a little perspective of exactly how far away from the ground he really was on his swaying perch...


The black arrow points to our tiny friend way off in the distance. And yes, I love the optic zoom on my camera!

So for tonight, it's boiled shrimp, which were swimming in the Gulf just this morning, and then we will watch our city's fireworks from the pool.

It's a charmed life.

Happy Fourth of July!