2010 challenge

Here's the latest  entry for the online challenge. The theme is "Reflection" and I spent several evenings watching the sun go down on the Mississippi River to capture the right moment for this quilt. I took lots of photos and printed some onto fabric. Then I pieced the background and did a bit of machine applique for the face. After quilting I applied adhesive with a popsicle stick and fused on gold foiling. Hand stitching reminds me of the starlings that fly over the water eating the dreaded mosquitoes. Hurray for starlings!
  I am enjoying the challenge and really like the themes and am making every attempt to stretch myself as an artist.  Only time will tell that I have succeeded. Click on the badge for other submissions to the challenge.

More screen printing

green prints

charged screen

I did another round of deconstructed screen printing and used a greenish dye and a different motif on the screen. I used a couple of plastic lace coasters, bubble wrap and potato bag. The bag didn't show up as well as I hope but I can always go back and add some of it's texture with paint. There's a fourth screen ready to go that I covered with the dye then scraped in a freehand design with a palette knife. Fingers crossed on this one turning out as well as I expect it to.

Workshop

On Monday, my mental health day, I attended a workshop on making fiber/paper postcards. The session was led by Diane Herbort, an acclaimed fiber artist who is in town for a program with the quilt guild I belong to. She had another workshop on Saturday that she calls "Trash Bag Quilting". Both sessions dealt with mixed media and were great fun and learning experiences. I attended just the Monday workshop but friends who came to the class on Saturday had a wonderful time there too.

my stuff

all the postcards

Diane

   I made 5 cards and already have two of them ready to go in the mail. Everyone's cards were different and all were works of art.

Adventures in Fiber Art

my basement studio-the dungeon

screen charged with dye

the placemat

fresh screens

direct prints

In my last post, I failed to mention that Mrs. Gilman gives credit to Kerr Grabowski for the instruction for deconstructed screen printing. My second attempt was much more fun and fruitful. The consistency of the paste to mix the dye in is very important. I made 8 prints from the screen I charged the other day. No pictures of those yet.
 I used a plastic placemat for the design. I will give the friend who gave it to me first choice of prints. If she wants one that is. Of course the photos are all crazy and I don't know how to get them in the proper order, but here is all the stuff I've done for the last two days. Notice there are NO photos of laundry.
  The place mat was covered in dye after I squeegeed it on to the screen, so I soaked two pieces of fabric with activator, wrang out the excess, and layed them on the placemat and got a couple of direct prints, which look pretty good. The pieces I did today look good too. And I charged another screen with the same dye that has a little yellow added to give it another color. I used different objects for texture. We'll see how that works another day.
   I'm very proud of my screens. I made these three for less than $15. It took me about an hour to build them then I sprayed them with clear enamel paint before adding the screen fabric. I already had the supplies and got to use my miter box and stapler. Then I had to wait for the tape to "cure". Notice (or don't) that I forgot to put tape on the sides of the charged screen above. It's one of my old screens. No one died.

Believe it or don't

On the way to breakfast Saturday with my son, we spied this rare creature here in midtown. We were very amazed at such a sight as neither of us had ever seen an albino squirrel before. There are plenty of raccoons with this genetic make up around here and everybody's seen a white rabbit. If anyone out there has seen one of these guys, let me know.

I spent most of this day on cleaning and  laundry (bleh) and part of it making screens for future screen printing adventures. I'm experimenting with deconstructed printing ala Rayna Gilman (studio78 on my blog list). My first effort was not so wonderful but --fingers crossed--the next ones will be. I think the first time the paste for the dye was not quite thick enough. I made some more that is really stiff and so far is working and holding the image I used under the screen.  More on all this later with photos of the process.

For a baby in Dallas

This is the christening gown I restyled. I lengthened it, replaced the elastic in the sleeves with beading and ribbon, and replaced the buttons on the back. I was able to use a double wing needle to replicate the look of hemstitching so the work I added had a more cohesive look with what was already on the gown.

Picnic at Botanic Garden

stick house

what's for dinner?

have a seat

Last Sunday, we took Vincent on a picnic to the Memphis Botanic Gardens. There is an area called My Big Backyard that has been open for a year. It is so cool. And that is a good thing because it was VERY hot Sunday. It's like it was in 1980 (yes, I'm old), when the temp didn't drop below 90 for weeks. UGH!
  But we had fun and ate cheese and pickle sandwiches with chips and juice for the picnic. Yummy!