Spiral Peyote Stitch Ring

An afternoon of physical therapy – I can now step up a 1″ high block – was followed by some beading time.  I’ve been wanting to make a beaded ring I saw in Bead and Buttons for a couple of weeks now.  It was a project to use up small amounts of beads from other projects.  Wouldn’t you know?  I didn’t have any of the sizes in the instructions.  So a project designed to help use up leftovers, ended up costing me $49 for all new beads.  LOL  I now have lots of lovely leftovers for other projects, and I do love these colors.

Here’s a picture of the first beaded ring I’ve made for myself:

It’s spiral peyote stitch, and while it’s not perfect, I like it.  Mostly matte beads were used as I like the earthy – or should I use the more artistic description of “organic”? look to beaded jewelry.  Honest to goodness gemstones are good too, but I can’t afford real gems, I don’t go anywhere to wear them, and I guess I’m lucky, because I actually prefer the subtle look of matte beads anyway.

These are very easy to make, the instructions were terrific, and I might try a spiral peyote stitch bracelet or cuff next.

Hugs…

Update on 6″ x 6″ Fiber Art Piece

I haven’t felt much like posting to my blog as I injured my knee and it’s been a long, painful recovery.  The sofa and I bonded, I’ve seen everything on television that remotely interests me, and have read a prodigious amount of books.  Physical therapy started 2 weeks ago, and while I still can’t manage stairs, I’m walking much better, and have hopes of totally eliminating my limp by the end of summer.

My goal is for the end of summer, as foot surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday – same leg as the injured knee – and that’s going to be bit of a set-back.  I’m going to be quite a sight sporting a big honking hinged black knee brace, and a black protective boot for my foot.  As I’ve told the doctor, I’ll be color co-ordinated. 

That’s enough of health updates.  Now it’s time for a fiber art update.  Some of you might remember I created a 6″ x 6″ piece of fiber art for the Rochester Contemporary Art Center.  Well, someone purchased it!!!  Yippee!!!  The Art Center will benefit from the sale of the piece, and a perfect stranger liked something I created.  That satisifies the philanthropist in me, and nutures my artist’s ego. 

The url to see the piece – along with a bright red SOLD sticker – is http://tinyurl.com/krrln4   Please take the time to look through a lot of the other pieces.  You just might find something you’d like to purchase to help support the art programs in my wonderful city of Rochester, NY. 

Hugs…

April Ogden Fiber Art Meeting

Lots of pictures today.  It’s taken me forever to post them from the April Ogden Library Fiber Art meeting, but ta da, here they are!  There was lots of painting going on at the last meeting.  It was a great meeting and different fusibles were used so we all learned how they behaved. 

Karen (first picture) and Lucy (second picture) tried a fusible that had a plastic backing to it.  It works great for fusing fabric, but not so great for painting.  The paint pooled on top and dripped off when the pieces were moved.  It was disappointing but I still think they can be used for project:

 

The Karen switched to Wonder Under and painted this piece:

Pat used Misty Fuse and placed a piece of fabric underneath.  This way she got two painted pieces for the work of one:

And Maggie, our newest member – welcome Maggie, painted something we all wanted to frame:

 

Hugs…

Leaf It To Me and Thoughts on Creating Art

I’m behind in posting to my blog as I’ve been busy creating.  It’s a good thing I took lots of pictures, because some of the pieces are no longer in my studio.

Here is the first one I made:

This is a 6″ x 6″ piece made for the Rochester Contemporary Art Center in Rochester, NY.  There will be an exhibit of original works of art to raise money to support the center, and to help with the costs of running the excellent programs offered to the community.  It will be open from June 6 – July 12, 2009, and each piece of art will sell for a mere $20.  This is the last year for the show, and my first time contributing a piece.  Hopefully, someone will like it and purchase it.

Some of you might recognize the background.  This was one of the blocks I made when I was experimenting with slicing, dicing, and fusing fabric this past February.  I didn’t have a clue what I would do with this piece, and I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to make for the show.   I had 2 days to complete the piece, and was blessed by a sudden burst of inspiration. 

A section of the block was cut away, and I had a couple of embroidered leaves left over from a project I made in the 90’s.  Yes, I save everything.  It took a long time to machine embroider those leaves on tulle, then to trim around the edges.  I had made oodles of them for the original project and these were the very last leaves.  The threads I used worked perfectly with the colors on the block.  Voila, Leaf It To Me was born.

This small project reinforced the idea of creating something everyday.  It’s important to work in your studio even if you don’t have a specific project in mind.  Trying new techniques – building a supply of embellishments – dyeing fabric, threads or yarn.  It might all seem to be random “busy” work at times.  But I’ve discovered practically everything I make eventually turns out to be just perfect for a totally unexpected project. 

I truly believe our subconcious guides us along the artistic path.  Connections are being made on a level I can’t explain.   This piece was created intuitively and quickly – for me.   I normally agonize over colors, placement, balance, etc…  It was the first time everything came together for me – in fabric, and in my mind.  I finally got it.

Create something every day.  You might not know why you are making something, but if you feel the need to try something new, if you need to have your sewing machine humming, or to embroider by hand, carve a stamp, screen print some fabric, etc – do it.  You don’t need to justify your actions.  Simply enjoy the process.  It will all come together someday, sometime, somehow. 

Hugs….

Happy Easter

What a beautiful, sunny, cool spring day.  I’ve been out of town for the last couple of days, but couldn’t resist taking a photo to share with all of you – a blooming crocus – complete with honey bee:

My husband raises honey bees, and one of the benefits – aside from very good tasting honey – is our flowers and vegetables thrive. 
Hugs…

15 Completed Pillowcases

As promised earlier, here are some pictures of the pillowcases I made for my local quilt club GVQC, Inc   These pillowcases will be donated to local non-profit organizations that serve a wide variety of people from small children to elderly veterans as part of our Quilt Festival 2009.  

Hopefully, these pictures will do a good job of describing how they were made:

I did skip taking a photo of the second to last step.  That was when you sewed a 1/4″ seam – with WRONG SIDES together – along the open side and top.  I capitalized those 2 words because I managed to sew them the wrong way on 3 pillowcases.  It’s just not normal for me to sew seeing the right side of the fabric while I’m sewing a seam. 

After you sew that seam, you turn the pillowcase inside out and sew another seam, as shown is this next picture: 

Assembling them this way results in all enclosed seams – a really neat way to make a pillowcase. 

And here’s a picture of the completed pillowcases:

I used 2 regular sized muslin sheets for the pillowcases on each side.  Having the band already sewed on the sheets, made it much easier to make those.  I hope whoever receives these pillowcases will have sweet dreams. 
Hugs…

More Snow Dyeing

Oh WOW, am I ever thrilled with the last 2 days of snow dyeing. The colors are amazing and the crystalized designs are wonderful.

The snow I’m using is very powdery, and I’m not drying the fabric after it has been soaked in soda ash. I simply squeeze it out, and scrunch it on the plastic basket. It seems everyone else is drying the fabric before they put the snow on top, so I thought it was important to let you all know I’m not doing that.

The following pictures are Kona’s cotton/bamboo fabric from my website:

I used only 2 colors – black and rose. The black really broke down into lots of blues and greens, and turned the rose various values of mauve.

These are Kona’s Pfd bleached white 100% cotton fabric:

Wanting more color, I mixed up some yellow dye concentrate this time. I used 2 colors on the right side – yellow and rose, and 3 colors on the left side – black, yellow and rose. I absolutely adore this color combination.

And the last one is a Kona black and white print:

I used the same 3 colors and again, I absolutely adore how these colors blended. My husband is so sick of hearing me say, “Can you believe this? Aren’t these colors gorgeous?” LOL 

More pearl cotton was dyed along with some cotton lace trim – for my crazy quilt projects.  One of the ties on my pearl cotton skein came apart, and it’s going to take me quite awhile to salvedge this skein.  Lots of patience, and some Pepperidge Farm Extra Cheddar Gold fish will be needed to get the job done.  Wish me luck!!!

Hugs…

Snow Dyeing

We had a lovely gentle snowfall the past couple of days, and I succumbed to the allure of snow dyeing.  It’s been a topic on the dyer’s list and I didn’t think I’d like dyeing fabric this way.  Was I ever wrong. 

It’s really easy, you get wonderful colors, and surprise, surprise, the excess dye rinses out quickly and easily.  This is great for the ecosystem. 

I buy a lot of my dyes from ProChem – as I’m on the east coast and shipping is less expensive for me.  I used grape 801, navy 412, and created a nice blue green color by using equal parts of 402 mixing blue with 108 sun yellow.  The dye concentrate was 6% , and used I about 150 ml of concentrate on each batch. 

A  little plastic drawer with grid like openings in the bottom came in very handy.  It was placed upside down in a larger plastic container to catch the melted snow/dye solution:

The fabric was scoured in Synthrapol and pretreated with soda ash, then scrunched on top of the basket.  I tried to get a good 3″ of snow on top, but it was so light and fluffy, it kept on falling down the sides of the container. 

The first batch was a linen/rayon blend I purchased at JoAnns – one of their 70% off bargains I purchased last summer – and I placed a scrunched layer of cheesecloth on top:

 
The linen/rayon blend is a hefty material, but I still got some nice crystalized sections:

And you can see the plastic basket indentions in this photo:

 

The second batch was a couple of yards of Osnaburg:

I used way too much dye on this.  I should have left more white areas.  It looks good to me, but this fabric yielded very little crystalized sections – I think because of not leaving enough white on the snow surface, and because of the fabric properties – nubby surface and thicker thread than quilting cottons.

I swear, I see a green rose in this piece.  There is a light area behind it, but am I the only one who “sees” that green rose?

I also dyed some Perle cotton thread for my crazy quilt embroidery and used old men’s handkerchiefs to wipe up as I was dyeing everything.  It saves on using a lot of paper towels, and I end up with some gorgeous hand dyed handkerchiefs. 

I have company coming for supper tonight, but plan on trying one more batch tomorrow – this time with a fine cotton.  I think I’ll get very different results, and I’ll use some different colors too. 

Hugs…

Ogden Library Fiber Art Meeting

Yesterday was art group day and it was a very good meeting. 

Karen brought 2 “new to us” tools – a Clover folding pen and a scrapbook fine point glue pen.  Everybody was quick to write down the product names  as we all thought they could be used with lots of different types of projects.

Then she showed us a necklace she had made with a cabochon:

Is that not drop dead gorgeous?  The photo does not do this justice. 

Lucy was next and she showed us a couple of her necklaces.  The photo with a necklace where she used a cabochon has a big blob of light from the flash in the middle, so I didn’t put it up, but it was beautiful.  She was kind enough to show us how to secure a cabochon to a backing, so we could all try this for ourselves.  I love making purses and want to try her technique so I can use one as a closure. 

Then she showed us the necklace she had started at the last meeting:

Is this not another drop dead gorgeous piece of beading?  It’s so elegant. 

Margaret did some snow dyeing.  Her shirt came out great.  I love the way the colors mixed and it looks terrific on her:

She also helped me with my Strive for Five pillowcase project.  My local quilt club GVQC, Inc has asked members to make pillowcases for local non-profit organizations that serve a wide variety of people from small children to elderly veterans as part of our Quilt Festival 2009.    Margaret showed a neat techinque for assembling the pillowcases, and her demonstration today was terrific.  I’ll post pictures of all the steps as soon as I finish one.  It’s really neat and encloses the edging  band with only one step. 

I showed my painted fusible pieces and they were a big hit.  Everyone wanted to try it, so we’ll be painting fusibles at the next meeting.  Everyone should be back from vacation next month, so there should be quite a few pieces painted.  

Hugs…

Slicing and Dicing and Fusing – # 2

Another quilt block today using the slicing, dicing and fusing technique and one that I really don’t like.

I was attempting to create depth by using light colored fabrics for the background. Lights are supposed to recede in a design, and the vertical strips were also cool – blues, aquas and violets. I think they were a bit too bright for the background fabric and come forward more than I wanted.

Using a warm based color for the horizontal strips, should make them the most prominent part of the block, but it’s just not working for me. Keep tuned though, because I plan on using this as the base for the first quilt in Jane Davila’s and Elin Waterson’s Art Quilt Workbook.

Hugs….