Fabric Fun

Here are some of the fabrics I made at the class with Jane Balshaw. This first one was using gutta resist. It would really take practice to get it so the paints don't bleed through the gutta lines. I would love to do more but don't think I will. My hand was really bothering me with squeezing the gutta out of the bottle. Because I do alot of cake decorating at work, I'm really aware of what bothers my hand.

This is a piece of painted shibori. The blue/green fabric was a piece I had painted. I added dark purple paint (looks black) when I did the shibori. I love the look.

This is another piece of shibori and a piece that I discharged with Jacquard Discharge Paste. When I was ironing out the shibori piece at home, I just happened to put it next to the discharge piece and loved how they looked. The discharge piece wasn't quilte the right red so I set out to see if I could make a similar piece to go with the shibori piece.

This is what I came up with. I just love how they look together. Now I just need to figure out what to do. I'm thinking some sort of collage so I can leave these pieces whole.

This is my work in progress for the round robin. It's all fused together, I just need to figure out how to add some highlights to the vases and add lines to the bottle to show the square corners. I'm using paper with a rectangle cut out to figure out how I want to crop the piece.
I'd better stop procrastinating with my blogging and start working on something befor I have to go to work at 1.

New Round Robin Started

I haven't had a chance to post anything since we had our meeting Friday. It was so nice to get together again. We showed what we had picked out for our pictures for this years round robin. A few of us had the chance to get pieces made. We took the idea for this round robin from the Frayed Edges "5 Artist's 5 Views". We Changed their idea to fit our group. Each of us has picked a picture and everyone will make an interpretation of the picture. Each person will recieve all the "quilts" made from their picture and will figure out a way to attatch them so they can be displayed as 1 piece. We can interpret the pictures literally, crop them or make an abstract interpretation. Anything goes. So we don't have a certain size we have to make each piece. Will be interesting to put these together at the end. We are hoping we can have a show this year. We are still trying to figure out where. We don't have alot of options in rural NH.

This is my picture. I decided to go with a simple still life.

I didn't get a chance to finish my quilt to go with my picture but this is how I cropped the photo to make my interpretation. I think I will cut out the small bottle on the bottom. I love the shapew of the vases and the shadow in the back.

This is Susan's interpretation of her photo, which was a field of lupine.

Meant to show Marilyn's picture first but here is her quilt. The picture is below. She took the picture in Italy (I think) and always wondered what was happening behind the shuttered windows. Her quilt show what she imagined. If you can't tell, it's a lady bathing in a tub.

I have Marilyn's picture to work from next. I have and idea just need to finish mine and then get started on Marilyn's. I do have an idea.

Saturday, I took Painting 2 at Jane Balshaw's studio. It was a fun day and I have alot of ideas from that. Too many ideas swimming in my head and not enough time!!!

I will post more about Saturday when I get some pictures taken.

Something New

I made these postcards last week. This is part of a class I'm taking with Myrna Giesbrecht. We were supossed to create 3 postcards and pick a theme to work with and create a little series. I started out with a theme of "houses" but the cards developed a mind of their own and my theme became "pathways".

This one is one of my favorites. The backgrounds for all of the pieces started out with strips of fabric from my scrap bag. This one I stenciled through sequin waste and then added some painted cheesecloth and some beads.


This one, I quilted the background and didn't really like the results so I added cheesecloth to cover it up. As I was playing with it, I put a folded strip of cheesecloth on top and thought it looked like a path. This is where the "pathways" theme came from. I decided to add the black and tan fabric as "trees"


This is one I didn't like. I made a path out of gold fabric. I like the path but then I decided to quilt it in circles but really didn't like the way it looked with the cheesecloth. Also, the bottom tension was off so the stitching on the top half is funky. I decided to try coloring over it with Shiva Paint Sticks. The side with the bad tension turned out terrible. The stiching pulled up to the top. The path and the bottom half looked good so I cut off the top half and will put the part I like into my idea notebook. So even though I didn't like the piece, it wasn't a waste. I did learn something!

This is the piece with the house on it. It's ok but sort of blah. Maybe if I add some hand stitching to it.

Friday, my art quilt group is finally meeting again. It's been a long time since our Christmas party. I'm really looking forward to it. Although, I still haven't picked a picture out and made a quilt from it for our next round robin. I just can't find any of my pictures that I want to use. I have tomorrow off and I think I will make a still life with some bottles or vases or something. It's amazing that you can take a picture and instantly print it from your computer. Lucky for me!!

New Work

This is what I've been working on the last couple of days. Although I did start it months ago. I applied wrinkled tissue paper onto a mounted canvas and painted it. The colors here are alot duller than the real piece. After I painted it, I couldn't decide what to do with it. I brought it out from the cupboard the other day and just started playing. I added the red stenciling through sequin waste and then stamped gold leaves on with a stamp I had made a while ago.

After finishing the background, I made 3-D leaves and added some twigs. This is a close-up to show the details. Not the best but my batteries died so I can't try again. I think I will make the middle leaf again. The veins are a little funky and even if no one else notices, I will.

The colors in the close-up are a little better but still not as bright.

2008 Goals

I lied yesterday, I did make this over the holidays. It wasn't much but at least I did something. I pulled out tissue paper and grabbed the closest thing on hand - my journal from Sue Bleiweith. I had colored a few of the pages with water color pencils before Christmas so the pages wouldn't be blank. On the first page I made this flower with torn tissue and used colored pencils to highlight it. Not a work of art but at least I did something creative.

At the beginning of each year I try to set some goals I want to try and achieve during the year. I don't hold them like resolutions where you either do them or you don't. During the year, I will review them and modify them as needed. If I decide, my work is going in a different directon than I had written at the beginning of the year, I will change them to reflect the new direction.

Some of my goals are as simple as taking a class to less concrete like developing my own style more.

I write these goals down in my journal - don't know if that is really the word for it. I keep ideas, pictures, samples, drawings, doodles, etc. in it.

It's interesting to look back at some of the goals I had a couple of years ago and see how different they are to what my goals are now.

Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008

I can't believe another year has past. The older I get, the faster time goes!! I haven't had a chance to make anything over the holidays. I actually cleaned up my work space for my husband. Since my work space is in the livingroom, I cleaned and picked up my stuff so the livingroom was neat and tidy over the holidays. My husband is a neat and tidy person and he married me!!! Having a neat and tidy livingroom meant I couldn't do much. Really didn't have the energy to do much anyways. Working in a bakery at our local grocery over the holidays is exhausting. This year was really bad because of all the snow! The snow is fine but it brought up all the skiers from points south and made us busier than usual for the holidays!

I entered a contest on Terri Stegmiller's blog for naming one of her paintings. I won! I couldn't believe it. This is the paper painting that I won. I love it.

My friend, Susan, who is one of the ladies in our art quilt group, has a website now. Click HERE to see it. Her work is great!