My Angel of the Sea

Well, this is what I have been working on for the last ten days. She is for the Woodlawn Needlework Exhibition... my first time entering anything like this. She is based on the head of an angel on an icon, blown up and printed on my inkjet printer. Then I made several phototransfers of marine critters and used composite leaf. I covered everything with organza, stitched the features and hair. I burned away the organza over the face and critters, then I tore organza and used it to stitch seaweed, also silk ribbon. I used a netting at the base, and I painted and deformed Tyvek and sewed it on too. More stitching, ribbon anemones and seed stitched her hair some more. I pleated ribbon and sewed to the outside. The background is rayon-silk velvet backed with 2 layers of cotton flannel, then hand stitched in no particular pattern, then shunk in hot/cold water and the dryer. I supported everything with foamcore board, and finally sewed on a hanger. Phew, done. I am not hopeful of a prize, but want to get new kinds of needlework in front of people. Not many here do this kind of stuff, or at least in public. I shan't be embarrassed to show her off!

Color Class

So here is the first excercise in the new Color Class for my yahoo group The Artists Circle. The idea was to make a 9 bit scale between black and white... I can't follow directions, so my scale has 10 bits!

The wagon, or caravan more properly, is for a challenge. It is only half of it though, the interior is the part of the challenge that will be swapped. I haven't got all the pieces together, but most are cut out. These should speak to our own ideas of what a caravan should be like, what we would like ours to look like. Mine of course has to be fabric! I used a batik that I then foiled in gold, used a gold Shiva oil stick, and freemotion embroidered the top. The bottom was a box from Michaels, and the wheels are bookboard circles, wrapped in copper tape and soldered. My soldergun is not quite hot enough for silver solder, so it is pretty lumpy. Next weekend, a hotter gun!

A High Energy Day

I had a delightful class today with 15( highschool students and 3 adult students... That is more than I usually teach. The first part of the day was fiber identification, including appearence, burn testing, and accepting dyes. The second part of the class was dyeing! After doing a set of 7 fabrics to see how various fabric take dyes, I showed them a couple of ways to fold a long scarf to get cool patterns... it was a flash back to the 60's and 70's! I don't plan on moving the rest of the day, but it was great fun. The pic is where the class was held (though not in the aisles) and where I work, G Street Fabrics, in the DC area. Isn't it a heaven for us fabric lovers? This is just a bit of the home decorating side, theres so much more. Lots of very talented people around here, customers and staff both. Well, I now have more fabric than I can use, and I am pretty prolific in my use of it. It'll be my retirement!

Studio work

I finally have gotten my studio organized enough to know where things are... but then I had to search for fabric (you would think I have enough, but believe it or not, I haven't any white wool or white linen) and had to get to the bottom of my boxes, so I had to pile things up on the cutting table. Then I had to unpile it all. Sigh. I need a better storage system. But I did take some pics of the altered book I made my sister. Hope she likes it! Kris, if you read this, don't look!

She is a wonderful musician, having taken up music in her 50's, and playing the piano is her creative journey. Her husband bought her a baby grand, then built on a room so everything fit! Lucky Kris. Well, lucky Don too!

Guess I had better finish up the cleanup so I can have fun messing it all up again, this time, to play with paint and fabric and paper. That will be more fun!

Golden Autumn

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This morning it was sunny and crisp, then the day got warmer and greyer. I still got a couple of pics outside though. The squirrels are positively brazen, altough they keep a weather eye on us, they fully expect to be fed. They even chitter at us if we aren't forthcoming with peanuts. Little bandits. But feeding them provides kitty tv for the furballs, so its okay.

Thanks all for the "tiny project" file, I feel like I can now create a little, and not get bogged down, time-wise. I particularly love the little pincushion in a bottlecap idea. Gotta go by more coke!

It has been so very dry here this year that our autumn colors are a little less vibrant than past years, but still lovely. The fabric store I work in is in a strip mall that has several brilliant maples and poplars, and one in the mall I shop in has ginkoes all over. I have been capturing them to press; too bad the colors dull down after falling.

I have also just brought in the last (probably) cuttings from the herb pots. I got lemon balm, lemon verbena and mint, rosemary (that's for remembrence) and lavender. Friday will be make skin creams day, and maybe soap too. My three day weekend starts with a day in the kitchen, ends with teaching a class, and the middle is the making stuff for gifts. Not a restful time, but surely a productive time. And that's good!

Finally

Well, I have successfully gotten my first artwork on my blog. You wouldn't think it would be so hard, but it wasn't long ago that I wanted to go through life computer illiterate.

I also thought I would post a picture of the trials and tribulations of a cat mother trying to convince the cats to go elsewhere. Sigh. They simply ignored me.