More Dyeing Results - Finally

It's been a while since I've had the energy to post. I ended up with the crud that is going around work, although I don't seem to have gotten it as bad as others have. Just hope I don't speak too soon and end up getting worse.
I finally got up enough energy to take pictures of some of the second batch of dyeing I did. Although, I can't find the pieces that I dyed using Robbi Joy Eklows technique. I don't know what has happened to them while I've been sick. Frustrating!!!
This first piece was a cloth I used to pick up the excess dye on one of those misplaced pieces.

This was a run of fabric going from fuschia to sun yellow. Again with this, I added a second piece of fabric to the bag 15 minutes after the first piece went in. This was a light to dark run of raspberry dye. The 3 darkest, I added a little black. I had done this run once before and really liked the colors. This was a light to dark run of some blue color. Can't remember the name.

I haven't had the energy to do anything else since this. I'm hoping I feel well enough to go to quilt group tomorrow. We had to cancel the last meeting because of snow and rescheduled it for last Friday. Had to cancel that one because we were meeting at Lynn Elkinton's house again and she became sick. Hopefully tomorrows meeting will work out.

I find it very frustrating to be at home and not feel well enough to work on any of my projects. I was doing so well and have so many things I need to be working on!!

Dyeing Results

Here are the results from the dyeing I did on Monday. I think the second and third pieces from the top actually belong in the purple run in the next picture. In each group I did I put 1 piece of fabric in right away and then waited 15 minutes and put a second piece in. It's interesting how the different dyes are used up at different rates.

The gray piece on tip is a gray piece I over dyed with black. More interesting. It's also interesting how the pieces that have more red in them are more mottled than the bluer ones. I don't know if the colors would have come out differently if my dyes weren't so old but since they look fine, I'm not too worried about it. I just won't do anything that I'll want to duplicate down the road.

This piece and the next I put dye in the bag directly onto the fabric and then added the soda ash solution. I love doing this because you never know what the results will be but they are almost always really neat!!

I did some more dyeing today. Started out early in the morning since everything was already out. Couldn't go anywhere since we got at least a foot of snow last night. Now just have to wait to rinse everything out. I also tried Robbie Joy Eklow's method for direct dyeing but did it on a lot smaller scale. I should have taken a picture of my set up with everything draped in a plastic tarp. Still have some dye left over that I may use to over dye some pieces but had to quit for the day to get something done around the house!! What am I doing? Blogging - not housework!!!

Dyeing Day

This is what I have to show for today. I've been really wanting to get some dyeing done but it takes so long for me to get everything set up that I keep putting it off. I don't have a space that I can use just for dyeing so everytime I want to dye I have to pull everything out and set it up. I will rinse these out tomorrow after I get home from work. I've kept everything out so I can set up easily again on Wed. and dye some more. I have the bags sitting on top of the pellet stove so they would stay warm.

I'm really hoping these come out ok. My dyes are getting really old. I can't believe some of them have 1/02 written on them!!! I also want to see if I have some fabrics to over dye. I should be able to get more dyeing done this summer since we shouldn't have to worry about the water level in the well with all the snow we have!!!

Old and New

The kids had another snow day from school!! They are never going to get out for the summer the way things are going! Alex doesn't care but Kara is really getting frustrated. It was so icy last night that Gary couldn't make it home from work. He made it part way and ended up having to stay with some people we know. There were lots of accidents and I93 was closed. Glad I didn't have to go into work today!!!

I already showed this postcard in an earlier post but I really like it and decided I would finish it up and send it to Susan Lenz for the Cyber Fyber swap. She really has put alot of work into this swap and exhibit!!

This is my piece that I made from Anita's picture for our round robin. I had a lot of trouble figuring what I wanted to do for it. I finally decided to to do a sillouette (spelling?) of the mountain against a night sky. This picture came out lighter than the actual quilt. For the mountain, I fused stips of blue fabric to some muslin and then put black tulle over it. I made wrinkles in the tulle to make it look like shadows on the mountain. Once I had the mountain sewn onto the background, I added gold beads for stars. You can see a few of them on here.
I'm working on my quilt from Marilyn's picture. I used Shiva Paint Sticks to make the ridges for the shutters. I couldn't remember how long it had to sit before I could iron it so I let it sit 48 hours. I now have to figure out how I'm going to put this together.

Tomme Fent is doing the Grab Bag Challenge again this year. I'm really excited about it. I had a blast doing it the last time. Each person puts together a grab bag of fabrics and beads, yarns, found objects, etc. This must fit into one of the cardboard Priority Mail envelopes. We send this to Tomme and she swaps them out. We then have a couple of months to make a quilt using someone elses grab bag. You can add from your own things. Once the quilt is done, you send it back to Tomme and she sends it back to the owner of the grab bag. I've already sent my grab bag off to Tomme. Can't show a picture of it though since we don't know who's grab back we get and we don't know who has our grab bag until the quilts are done.

Pictures from Quilt Group

Well, a week after our meeting I'm finally getting pictures posted of our round robin. This first one is Lynn Elkinton's picture. It was taken up in Maine. She e-mailed us this picture and I already know what I want to do for it but have others I need to get done first.

This is what Lynn did from her photo. This was done on her embellisher. She did a really great job with it. Really makes me want to go out and get an embellisher. I can't though. I have enough I need to focus on and perfect right now as it is. Don't need to add something new!

This is Lynn Elkinton's piece from Carmen's picture. I don't have a copy of Carmen's picture yet. Again Lynn used her embellisher. Lots of texture to her pieces.

This is Carmen's piece from her own picture. Hers also has a lot of texture in it. She used all sorts of neat things in hers. A crumpled paper bag painted green, cloth wrapped pipe cleaners for the logs, 3-D leaves that she made. The red one was out of some silk paper she made at one of our meetings and alot of other neat stuff.

I did this backwards, this is Anita's quilt from her picture. Her picture is at the bottom. It came out really good.

This is Marilyn's piece from Anita's picture. She used all sorts of different kinds of fabric for this. I can't remember what they were though.
Here is Anita's picture. I think she said she took it in Nepal. I have her picture now and am stuck on what to do that isn't just a landscape. I'm still working on Marilyn's picture. The nice thing about having the pictures on my computer is I can pass on the original and still be able to work from them.

For Marilyn's I'm making a piece of paper fabric for the background, which is a building. I will add a door and windows with laundry hanging out. It took me a while to come up with the paper fabric for the building. I wanted to do something different for the building instead of just plain white fabric. Took the liberty of changing the building color from white to a brownish tan but it does look more interesting.

Better stop blogging and go and actually get some stuff done!!

Cyber Fiber and Round Robin Quilt

My card from Susan Lenz for the Cyber Fyber swap and exhibition came today. I really like it!! Now to finish up mine to send to her!

This is my quilt I made from my photo for our quilt group project. It's a little dark since I forgot to take a picture during the day!! You can see the actual picture I used here

I will be posting more photos from our meeting soon. I forgot my camera so Lynn Elkinton took them and e-mailed them to me. There are so many creative ideas and quilts coming from this. It's really interesting to see all the different ways the photos are interpreted.

Cyber Fiber Trade

No pictures today. Just wanted to let everyone know about the Cyber Fiber Trade that Susan Lenz is organizing. I've already signed up and and will recieve postcard number 96. Now to get busy and make a postcard to send in exchange. What a great idea to organize a trade and exhibition like this!! Click on the above link to get more info about it.

Mixed Media Quilt

I was inspired by the "Go Green" article and challenge in the newest Quilting Arts Magazine and made this 5"x5" quiltlet. I call it Remnants of the Past. I made paper fabric from old patterns for the background. I colored it with some paint and when it was dry, I went over it with my ink pads in brown and tans to highlight some areas. I added old lace that had been cut off of some piece of clothing. This I also highlighted with the ink pads. The old buttons are from my button box. I added some cross stitches to hold the lace down on the button side but you can't see then very well in this picture. I used a piece of old linen from a stained and torn dresser scarf for the back. The binding is an old paper tape measure. The tape measure was folded in half down the length and sewn together. I was able to take the stitching out and open it up and use it for the binding.
I even have a square frame that I picked up a long time ago at a yard sale or second hand shop that would work perfectly with it. I'm always keeping my eyes open for frames at second hand shops or yardsales. I have found some really neat ones this way.

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!

Merry Christmas

Don't know if I will have time to post again before Christmas so just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We will finally have a white christmas like I remember from when I was a kid! It's been so long. This is what it looked like from our deck after all the know we got Thursday when the kids had the day off of school.
I don't have anything quilt related to post about. I gave myself permission not to work on anything until after Christmas. Just too much going on. Also gave myself permission not to stress out over not doing anything!!

Hope everyone has a fun day with their family and friends!

Stopped to check the mailbox on my way to the christmas party today and this journal was in the mail. It was from Sue Bleiweiss. She had a drawing on her blog and I was picked for this one. What a nice suprise!! She had so many people enter that she picked 3 winners! I love the button!

This is the inside. There are 3 signatures of different sizes and a pocket on the cover with fun paper stuck in. Some of the pages have pockets and the pages on the middle signature fold out. Now to figure out what I'm going to use this for.

The Christmas party was really fun. We had lots of food, talk and presents. Of course, I forgot to bring my camera. We decided on a what to do for our next round robin. We used the idea from the Frayed Edges of their five artists five views grid display as a starting point then we changed it to fit our group. We are each going to pick a photo and a maximum size we want the pieces to be. Each person will make their interpretation of the photo and make it the size they want up to the maximum size. So when I get my round robin back, I might have 8 pieces that are all different sizes. When I get it back, it will be up to me to put the quilts together some way to display them as a unit. We are hoping to have a show to be able to display them at.

Now to pick a photo and make my quilt from it. We don't meet until January 25 so we have time to get started. I'll miss that meeting since I will be taking a painting class with Jane Balshaw that day. I'm disappointed that I won't be at the meeting but I'm really looking forward to the class. It was my birthday present to myself since my Birthday is Jan 27. She also has a class on color theory that I want to take when she offers it next. I had a hard time choosing between the 2 classes and only picked the painting one because it was closer to my birthday.

Blue Box

I haven't had much time to make anything lately. Been too busy!! I did manage to make this box last week. Used the pattern on the Fiber and Stitch site. It will be filled with chocolate and given as a gift. Tomorrow my quilt group is meeting for our Christmas lunch. Wish you could be here Geriann!!! I'm really looking forward to this. I always look forward to our meetings. I'm making a spinach salad with pecans, dried cranberries, red onions, and crumbled bacon. I have poppyseed salad dressing to go with it.

Fridays meeting was fun. We had show and tell. All I had to show was the pieces that I made for Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. Lynn E. showed us some experiments she had done using the new paints she bought when we went to Lowell. Susan, showed us the new quilt she is working on based on dance. It is a lovely quilt. We made plans for our Christmas party in 2 weeks. Wish you could be here Geriann!!!!
After dessert we went to Susan's wet studio and played with Shiva paint sticks. The jagged stripes were done using torn pieces of paper as a mask. Before I went over, I cut a couple of small paper stencils to use. The vase was made using the stencil cut out as a mask.

These vases were done with the stencil onto painted fabric.

These were done using the stencil cutout on darker painted fabric.

I had seen the stencil idea in Linda and Laura Kemshall's book "The Painted Quilt". The torn paper idea I saw in Ruth Issett's book "Print, Pattern & Colour".

After playing with some of these ideas, I came home and ordered some paint sticks. Told Gary they were one of the Christmas presents he was buying me. This way I will get what I want!! He doesn't know what to get me in the way of sewing supplies, mixed media supplies, etc unless I go and show him or buy them myself. The hard part will be waiting until Christmas to use them.

Speaking of Christmas, it looks like we will have a white one unless we get a lot of really warm weather to melt the snow. School was cancelled today and both Gary and I just happen to have today off of work. Good thing, I wouldn't have been able to get out of our driveway at 5:15 this morning!

We are also hoping that our oven will be working by Christmas or we will be thinking of alternatives for Christmas dinner. Gary and my Dad think they know what is wrong and have ordered a part. It's been interesting to come up with easy meal idea that don't involve the oven!! I keep wanting to make something and then realize I can't because I have to bake it. Today, I even looked up a no bake cookie recipe and made those. I knew Kara would like them because they used chocolate and peanut butter.

This piece I did for the November challenge of the Fiber & Stitch Yahoo group. This group is for anyone who has a subscription to Fiber and Stitch online magazine.
Novembers challenge was to make a piece showing what home meant to you. To me home is a place where you feel safe, loved and accepted. Something I try to pass on to my kids. The background is a piece of paper fabric that I made, then painted. I then stamped on top of it. The heart is from a piece of silk paper that I made. I may try to stamp a few more words around the heart. When I did the stamping, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it and now there are some empty space.

Tomorrow my art quilt group meets. I'm looking forward to it.

Challenge Postcard

Today I attempted another quilt for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. This challenge was to use size and/or proportion in your work. I used a photo that was provided and attempted an abstract from it. I find it very hard to make abstracts. Pictoral quilts come really easy but working with abstracts I find very difficult. I keep second guessing myself and questioning my decisions. I even question my color choices. The landscape I showed in the last post came much easier.
Wish I had the original photo to show but that is on our yahoo group.
I had planned on doing alot of things but sad to say this little post card took most of my time. I did paint and stamp some paper fabric for another project but that is it!

Fast Friday Challenge #15

Fast Friday Fabric Challenge, isuued it's new challenge on Friday. Make a quilt keeping scale and proportion in mind. I made this in response. I still need to add some details like grass around the fence. I also think I will crop out some of the sky. I really wanted to do something abstract for this challenge but I really have a hard time making abstact quilts.
Right now especially, I seem to be in a funk. No matter what I start working on, I keep second guessing myself, telling myself it's not good enough. I had so much I wanted to get done today but it was so frustrating to have to clean an area off to work in and move my ironing board and table to get to my fabric cupboard. Now that I've done that, the livingroom is a mess and the kids will be coming home and messing everything up since this is where they do their homework and watch tv. Just really frustrated. I even got the new Quilting Arts Magazine, which usually inspires me but this time I leafed through it and just got depressed. Made me feel like I'll never be good enough. I know that I shouldn't be comparing myself with others, just focus on myself. But today I really feel like I should just stick with crafty stuff and following someone elses patterns.
Sorry about the ranting, I'm just really in a funk and can't seem to get out.

Motion Quilt

This is a journal size quilt I did for Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. At the beginning of each month we get a "theme" for our challenge and then have a week to make a quilt. Some, like me don't get it done in a week. This months challenge was to make a quilt that showed motion and use some type of embellishment technique. The quilt itself looks nicer than this picture. The yarns I couched down have gold metallic threads the sparkle more. I wanted to try something abstract instead of making some type of pictoral quilt.
This gave me a chance to practice my quilting and I tried a facing for the binding so that the binding didn't show on the front of the quilt.

Field Trip

Yesterday the ladies from my quilt group and I went to Lowell for a fun day out. I was finally able to meet Geri, who joined our book round robin this past spring.

We went to Western Avenue Studios and met Maxine Farkas and Karen Bettencourt. We had a nice visit. It was exciting to see and hear about Maxines art. Then we went down the hall to Friends Fabric Art and met Ann Lee. We had fun looking around her store and studio space. I did find some new things to play with. It was a very inspiring visit.

We had lunch at the Athenian Corner, a great Greek restaurant near the Lowell quilt museum.

Didn't have time to visit the museum.

On our way home, we stopped in Nashua to see the Quilter's Gathering quilt show. It was a quick run through. I did find some fabric and a book I've been wanting to buy. My big splurge for the day was a piece of hand-dyed fabric from Elin Noble. That's it in the poicture above. All the fabrics in her booth were gorgeous.

Journal Quilt

I can finally show my journal quilt: Colors of Autumn. I took these pictures before I sent it out to Houston but the picture of the whole piece didn't turn out that great. The colors in the close-up are more true to the actual quilt.

I'm trying to work on some new pieces but am still having problems working. I have ideas in my head and the pieces I make just aren't turning out like I want and then I get frustrated and don't know what to do. Maybe I'm just trying too hard.

Maybe it's time to work on a scrappy bed quilt that doesn't require any thinking and will use up fabrics that I don't use in my art quilts any more. I've been wanting to make one to replace one I made when I was a junior in college and it has been used and used and used. I hate to say it, it's 21 years old and is falling apart enough that I can't repair it anymore. Though my daughter did grab it the other night and has it on her bed again even though the batting is falling out!!