Two Steps Forward . . . you know what follows

This past week I “slipped back” a little into last year’s habits of sort of aimlessly wandering when it came to working on projects. I have a class starting later this week (Lyric Kinard’s Artist’s Toolbox at Quilt U) so I don’t really want to start anything new. So . . . .not a whole lot to share with you right now.

I experimented with some bleach and wood pieces and clamps; that was a colossal failure, so no need to take pics of those pieces.

All my sketches this past week were pretty awful. I haven’t felt well and I was forcing myself to sketch anyway, just to make it a habit.

I did run across these purple and green blocks that I had made WAY back when I started piecing traditional blocks. I started to stash them away and realized I was so tired of running across them, so I impulsively slashed them up and inserted some hand-dyed orange fabric, then sewed them together.




Definitely an improvement, but I’m not really sure what I’ll do with this block now.

So, there you have it.

On the other hand, I do have a couple of book recommendations for you. I just finished Mary Karr’s Lit: A Memoir. This book has been out for a couple of years, but I just got around to reading it. Karr is a brilliant writer, and she held me captive with the tragic, poignant, and funny details of her recovery from alcohol addiction. If you’ve ever know anyone who suffered from an addiction, you won’t want to miss this book. Even if you haven’t, it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve read.

For you Kindle people, I happened to run across Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. These letters were written beginning in 1909 by a young widow who traveled to Wyoming with her 2-yr. old daughter to work as a housekeeper. I’ve only just started reading them, but Stewart is a gifted and funny writer who paints a detailed picture of life at that time. And, the best part is, this book is free for your Kindle!

I haven’t been completely slug-like. In addition to that great wonky block above, I went on a marvelous adventure this weekend across the web, learning lots about one of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke. Next time I post, I’ll tell you how I started at Rilke and ended up at Ad Reinhardt’s black canvases.

Wholecloth Painting

This is the year I’ve promised myself that I’ll start putting all those wonderful techniques I’ve been learning and reading about into practice. One of those techniques comes from an interesting book called Bold and Beautiful: Artful Quilts from Just One Fabric by Judi Dains. The basic idea is that you draw images (in her case, flowers and leaves) onto fabric (typically, hand-dyed or batik); you then stitch the images with thread and color them with paint. Click the link above and take a look at the cover of the book if you’re interested in an example of the “artful quilts” Dains creates this way.

It’s a technique I’ve wanted to try to for a while, but I didn’t quite trust myself to draw the images from scratch. I ran across a sort of “cheater” fabric in Salado that was on sale for 1/2 price. Not only is it lovely in its own right, but I knew right away I could start with this and just fill in a little for my flowers & leaves:

So, that’s what I did. I started with a very small test piece (my weekly 6x6” journal square), drew in some details on the fabric, then thread-sketched them in with heavy black thread. Then, because I wanted to make sure the fabric paint covered up the green, I undercoated the images with white:

Once the white was dry, I added color. I decided to go with Tsukineko inks rather than paints, since they’re so easy to apply. I also added in some fabric markers here and there. Here is the piece with color added:

Then, onto the thread-painting. I used variegated rayon threads for this phase. I had already made a quilt sandwich with thin cotton batting and backing fabric, but the inks bled through to the back, and tension problems left the back looking not-so-nice. Plus, all the thread sketching had flattened the piece a lot. So I re-sandwiched with more batting and new backing fabric, and this time I left a wide border that I could roll into a self-binding. Here is the finished result:

This was a fun technique, but I’m not as thrilled with the results as I thought I would be. I may have missed something in the process by starting with the floral fabric. Rather than transforming colored hand-dyed fabric into a floral art quilt, I transformed floral fabric. Not quite so satisfying, I think.

At any rate, I probably will try this again on a larger piece of fabric; I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll use the same lovely green floral fabric, or whether I’ll throw caution to the wind and try my hand at my own floral images on some hand-dyed fabric.

Fabric Embellishing: Book Review

Somehow we managed, this afternoon, to squeeze in a trip to the bookstore after a holiday lunch with colleagues (the company paid; I should have gotten the salmon, but that’s a different story) and before attending a holiday open house tonight, then meeting friends for our annual Christmas dinner out.

I had been looking forward all afternoon to a hot, creamy latte and a new quilting magazine. You know, just a little treat to help with all the holiday stress and anxiety. Once at the bookstore, I picked out my quilting magazine, ordered my coffee, and caved in to irresistible temptation of a red velvet cupcake in the display case.

All of that was lovely, but then I REALLY got a treat. While checking out the craft & quilting books, I ran across one I hadn’t seen before. Fabric Embellishing: the Basics & Beyond: More Than 50 Techniques With Step-by-step Photos (what is it with gargantuan titles these days?) by Ruth Chandler, Liz Kettle, Heather Thomas, and Lauren Vlcek is a fun, fun book. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a compilation of techniques for manipulating, joining, and decorating fabric and other things we’re pretending are fabric these days: Tyvek, Lutradur, paper, etc.

I’m familiar with quite a few of these techniques: beading, printing images on fabric, and using materials such as Angelina fibers, for example. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve been around the block a time or two when it comes to embellishing fabric. So I was surprised to find some techniques in this book I had never even heard of. Even those techniques and materials I’m familiar with are used in ways I hadn’t thought about. The step-by-step instructions are excellent, and the book includes tons of photos, both to accompany the directions and to show off the finished techniques in all their lusciousness. Works by the artists that incorporate the various techniques are shown throughout the book in “gallery” photos, as well, to illustrate ways to combine the techniques to create art quilts.

Fabric Embellishing: the Basics & Beyond: More Than 50 Techniques With Step-by-step Photos is not a book that I really needed. It’s probably not even a book that I should have bought when I was supposed to be shopping for others’ gifts. But this book sure does make me happy. I love both the techniques and the photos of them, and I’m inspired to jump in and start working through all of the techniques—even the ones I’m familiar with!

The authors suggest that you make a journal quilt for each of the techniques, then bind them together in book format. They’ve included instructions for doing that, as well.

Once my year of creating weekly 6x6 quilted journal squares is up in February, I may create a new challenge for myself to work through this book and practice every technique in it. There’s certainly plenty of material in Fabric Embellishing to keep me busy for a while!

Quilts and Clay Part 2

Sorry for the delay in posting this review. My only excuse is that my brain was so overloaded yesterday by my day job that it temporarily short-circuited. (Oh ok, and that the finale of So You Think You Can Dance was on last night).

Anyway, Polymer Clay and Mixed Media Together at Last: Incorporating Craft Materials and Found Objects in Clay Figures, by Christi Friesen is a fun and useful addition to your library if you like polymer clay. Or even if you don’t. I should start by saying that I successfully avoided polymer clay for years. I smugly fast-forwarded through all the polymer clay segments on my recorded craft shows; let my eyes slide right past the polymer clay books at the book store; and refused to even discuss it with my friends. Like PMC silver clay, metalworking of any kind (including the kind that requires big, scary torches), and raisins, I just didn’t have time for it in my life.

Deep down, though, I secretly lusted after polymer clay (as I do PMC silver clay and torches, but probably not raisins), so when my partner breezily announced one day that she had an “idea” in her head that had to be accomplished in polymer clay, I was relieved and a little giddy. I ran to the car, drove her to Michael’s, and proceeded to fill up a big basket with all things polymer-related. We bought clay in every color imaginable, and any tool that we could get our hands on, including a pasta machine for rolling the stuff out. Apparently my brain was paying attention enough to pick up on—and store indefinitely—a lot of that fast-forwarded information from the craft shows, which is a good lesson and a warning not to ever record and then fast-forward through horror movies or political speeches.

My partner, who is a casual but brilliant artisan (she seems to have no interest in art, but occasionally breezes in, throws together a magnificent stained glass window or intricate geometric drawing or mouth-watering piece of jewelry, then goes right back to reading novels about vampires) finished her polymer clay project and used all of about 2 blocks of clay. Which leaves me, of course, with drawers full of clay and a pasta roller just waiting to taunt me whenever I enter my craft room.

SO. All this is to say that I am a novice and somewhat reluctant polymer clay user. Polymer Clay and Mixed Media Together at Last: Incorporating Craft Materials and Found Objects in Clay Figures may be responsible for making me a little more enthusiastic, though. The book strikes a nice balance, I think, between offering introductory information about polymer clay and projects that can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. The “mixed media” part of the title might make you think that Friesen offers a lot of new and innovative ways to incorporate all that OTHER stuff in my craft room into polymer clay, and while I can’t vouch for how new or innovative the ideas are, her incorporation of other mediums lends a real depth and layers of detail to her polymer clay pieces. Friesen incorporates materials like fibers, paper, metal, glass, paint, and found objects into her projects (and mica powders! I have mica powders!). She never loses focus on the primary element, though—the polymer clay.

The two things I like best about this book are Friesen’s fun and casual writing style (though her occasional use of explanation points can be a little distracting! But she just seems so excited about polymer clay! So you know her enthusiasm is somewhat contagious!). Despite her casual style, though, her step-by-step project instructions are thorough and well-written, and I didn’t have any trouble walking in my imagination through each of the projects.

Which leads me to my second favorite thing about the book: the projects. Her style is fun and somewhat whimsical, so the chapter called “Oh, Grow Up!” includes pieces like thistle pins (complete with prickles and spiky “hair” from a chip brush) and leaf and flower designs. Friesen’s liberal use of beads, paint and powders helps push polymer clay beyond the basics in projects such as her imaginative and almost life-like “Aztec heads,” her whimsical gecko and sea turtle sculptures, and her “ammonite fossil pin”. Even better, Friesen sparks my imagination, and I can envision lots of variations on her ideas to make my little polymer clay pieces my own.

If you’re at all interested in polymer clay (or if you’re finally willing to admit there’s a little polymer clay figure in you fighting to get out), Christi Friesen's Polymer Clay and Mixed Media Together at Last might be just what you need to get the clay out of the drawers and into the pasta machine.

Quilts and Clay: Book Reviews

I stopped by the library the other day to pick up a couple of novels, and I was thrilled to see some unfamiliar craft books on the New Non-Fiction shelves. It turns out that neither of these books are exactly “new” (they were both published in 2008), but just new to my library, I guess.

The first one really got my heart pounding: Hand-Dyed Quilts by Marquetta Bell-Johnson. What could be better than combining two of my favorite things, quilting and hand-dyed fabrics? Plus, the author sounded familiar, and as I flipped through the book, I realized that I had seen her on an old episode of the tv show, That’s Clever! (or maybe it was Crafters Coast to Coast, the show’s earlier incarnation). In fact, I was so excited when I originally saw Marquetta’s episode that I immediately created some “hand-dyed” fabric based on her instructions. Here are the results:

Now, one reason I was excited was because, at the time, I knew nothing about dyeing fabrics, and I had no dyeing supplies. Bell-Johnson doesn’t use traditional fabric dye, however; instead, she uses airbrush paints (which I happened to have on hand), so technically her fabric is not dyed, it’s painted. However, Belle-Johnson claims in her book that airbrush paint, while an acrylic, migrates through the fabric and bonds with the fibers, which might explain why she classifies this technique as dyeing rather than painting.

At any rate, Hand-Dyed Quilts is an extension of the basic techniques the author demonstrated in that television episode. She takes us through the process of coloring the fabric, and most of her patterning is accomplished through various fabric-folding techniques, which are detailed in this book and include nice illustrations of luscious patterned fabric created through lots of color and folding variations.

Bell-Johnson’s book also includes basic quilting information, but this section of the book is disappointing, to say the least. It’s not clear who the intended audience is here. For example, hand-quilting instructions include this information:

1. Begin your stitches by backstitching and burying the thread tail between the layers of the quilt on the back side . . .

2. Sew, using the running stitch and following your chosen design . . .

Now, if I’m new to hand quilting, I’m not sure I’ll know what a backstitch is, how to bury thread tails, or how to complete a running stitch. I’m probably asking, “what is my ‘chosen design’ and how do I get it onto the fabric?” On the other hand, if I already know how to do these things, I’m probably familiar with hand quilting and so don’t need this section at all.

The last section of the book is a compilation of simple quilting projects, none of which really caught my attention or inspired me to create. However, I can imagine that new or fairly inexperienced quilters might find them useful for learning basic piecing and for completing simple projects using the fabric they’ve colored.

For me, this book was, overall, disappointing. I think the detailed information on folding and coloring fabric makes Hand-Dyed Quilts worth owning if you’re interested in that type of thing, particularly since the cost of it is fairly reasonable on Amazon (and especially if you get a used copy). On the other hand, there’s probably not much even in the fabric-folding section that can’t be found in a book on shibori.

Tomorrow’s review: Polymer Clay and Mixed Media Together at Last: Incorporating Craft Materials and Found Objects in Clay Figures, by Christi Friesen. Despite the ridiculously long title, you’ll want to stick around for this one if you’re interested in polymer clay.

Beading Stuff

I received an email from a blog reader complimenting me on my beading and asking for help getting started. I quickly pulled together some information for her, and then I thought, wow, what a shame that I can’t share this with other people who might find it useful. Duh . . .

So, if you’re interested in learning to bead on fabric, here’s a quick rundown of some resources (note: I’m sure there are lots of other great books, classes, web sites, etc. to help people learn to bead, so please feel free to suggest those in comments, if you like). I’ve pasted the email here with a few revisions.

Hi [Interested Beader]:

I learned to bead by taking a class at Quilt University (http://quiltuniversity.com) called "To Bead or Not to Bead." Quilt U has very reasonable classes with lots of great information, and I've learned a lot from them. Susan Brittingham teaches this class, and she's a great instructor, but I don't think she's teaching it again until January.

If you want to get a book rather than take a class, I would recommend Beading on Fabric by Larkin Van Horn. You can read a little about it here: http://www.larkinart.com/shopping/bof/beading_on_fabric_book.html, but it's cheaper to buy it from Amazon. My local library also has that book, so you might check yours, too, to see what beading books they have.

I also found a great DVD at my library called "Mary Stori Teaches You Beading on Fabric." You can see a little preview on YouTube.

I actually started beading before I took a class or read a book. I bought some beading thread (Nymo D is what I use; don't use regular thread, since glass beads can cut it and your beads may eventually fall off; however, you can use dental floss, I've heard), some beading needles (these are very long, thin needles, but you can also use quilting or appliqué needles) and some beads. Then, I looked up beading on the Internet.

I wasn't very good at beading until I took the class and practiced a lot, but it was pretty easy to get started.

I just "Googled" beading on fabric and ran across these .pdf files that might help you get started:
http://www.sewing.org/files/guidelines/11_380_Beading_part1.pdf
http://www.sewing.org/files/guidelines/11_381_Beading_part2.pdf

You'll probably find a lot of other information, too, if you look around on the Internet.

I hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any questions, and good luck with beading! It really is a lot of fun.

P.S.: I also just ran across the site Beading Daily. It has tons of information and resources on all types of beading and bead-making.

P.S.S.: To see previous blog posts about my beading, look over the right under "labels" and click "beading."

Screen Printing with A.R.T.

More fabric from the A.R.T workshop based on Rayna Gillman’s book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth.

The above print is from a screen using masking tape and pieces of torn newspaper. The following prints used the same screen, but I pulled off the newspaper and threw in some paper “dots” from my 3-hole punch:

On the last print above, I used a couple of the wet newspaper pieces to “stamp” paint onto the fabric.

The following print was screened onto commercial fabric:

Then, I bleached the fabric to bring up the contrast between the background and the print:

Nope, don’t like that, so I added some DyNa-Flow paint:

That’s better, although I wish the DyNa-Flow hadn’t run so much, but that was the chance I took by wetting the fabric.

More fabric to try to figure out how to use!

Stamping with Rayna

I joined a workshop in one of my yahoo groups (A.R.T.) based on Rayna Gillman’s book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth.

For the first lesson, we’re stamping with household items. I didn’t branch out as much as I could have—I wanted to cut up a pool noodle and stamp with that, look for some interesting textured items around the house to stamp with, and find or make some stencils, but I just haven’t had the energy. I have quite a few hand-carved and hand-made stamps, so most of these pieces were stamped with those.

This piece was stamped with opaque fabric paint and pieces of Styrofoam plates that I cut up and drew into with a stylus:

This is a piece of painted fabric, stamped with a leaf pattern carved into a rubber eraser:

Here’s a piece of painted fabric stamped with a kid’s foam beads glued to a wood base:

This one is painted fabric, stamped with strips of plumber’s gasket glued to a wood base (ok, I’ll admit I cheated with this one; I actually created it a while back, but I think it’s a good example of interesting effects with very simple stamps):

Here’s a technique I learned in Lyric Kinard’s Playing with Paint class at QU; the “stamp” is a pear, cut in half and dried on paper towels, then coated with fabric paint:

And finally, this fabric-painted piece was stamped with a store-bought swirl stamp, then stamped with that rubbery grid-like shelf liner material. I added some hand-painted accents both over and around the stamping. I really like this piece:

Now, as always, I need to figure out what to do with these pieces of fabric, other than just folding them up and stuffing them into a drawer. I’m thinking I should start working with a pre-defined color scheme for projects like this, so at least everything coordinates and can be used together in a larger piece.

Book Review: Digital Essentials

I love taking digital photographs and using them in my work. OTOH, I don’t like all the technical “stuff” I need to know about working with digital images, and I usually have no idea what I’m doing with them. I would just as soon NOT know what a pixel is, or what dpi or ppi means, or what resolution to save my images at. I try not to think about compression or whether jpg or tiff is better. And the last think I want to spend my limited memory cells on is the best resolution to set for printing or scanning images.

But alas, digital images and files are becoming more and more important in our technological world, and I know that I have to better understand them in order to get the best possible quality out of my photos.

So I’m really glad that I have Gloria Hansen’s book, Digital Essentials: The Quilt Maker’s Must-Have Guide to Images, Files, and More. Not only is Gloria Hansen a talented quilter and artist, she’s digitally-literate and an excellent writer. Hansen’s book is well-written and edited, and the layout is really nice. She provides step-by-step directions, screenshots, and high-quality images to illustrate the information, and good formatting makes the information easy to understand. In general, the overall look and feel of this book is high-quality.

This book is crammed with over 200 pages of valuable information about all things digital. Hanson could have easily divided this into at least two, and maybe three books. Since so many of us have limited book-buying budgets these days, I really appreciate that this book is such a great value. (Btw, it really isn’t surprising that Hansen’s book is so generous with information; she’s on a couple of mailing lists I belong to, and she’s tremendously generous with information in those forums, as well).

But the best thing about the book is the answers it provides to questions that come up over and over again for me about digital files, images, and software. Here are just a few:

• Should I save my pics as jpg files? tiff files? gif files? What’s the difference?
• What is a megapixel, and how do the number of pixels relate to the size of an image?
• What is resolution, and how do I know what resolution to use when saving pics, or scanning or printing images?
• What is the difference between dye-based and pigment-based inks (a particularly hot topic with fiber artists who use printed images in their work)?
• How do I resize images?
• How do I work with layers and other features in image software? (Hansen provides information for working with Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, AND Paint Shop Pro, three of the most popular applications.)
• What does it mean—and why should I care—that the printer I’m considering buying says it will print “4800 x 1200 optimized dpi color”?

Plus, this books provides answers to questions I didn’t even KNOW to ask. Who knew, for example, that if your printed images don’t match what you see on your screen, you might need to calibrate your monitor? I do now! Hansen’s book has an entire section on color management.

I could go on and on about everything I’m learning from this book, but as I mentioned, it is over 200 pages. Instead, I’ll just point out a couple of chapters that might be of particular interest to quilters (or to artists in general): Chapter 11, Removing a Quilt From Its Background, and Chapter 12, Preparing Images for Digital Show Entry. As digital images become more accepted (and even required) for entering work into competitions, some of us (me) are really going to have to bite the bullet and learn how to create high-quality images for submission. With this book, I no longer need to fear submission guidelines that require digital images. And, because I do love incorporating digital images into my work, I think increased confidence from actually knowing what I’m doing with these images will make that even more enjoyable.

This is one book that’s going to get a workout for years to come, and I would suggest that anyone who works with digital images or files—or who wants to start working with them—make this book a part of your reference library. Even though Digital Essentials is not available from Amazon, you can read more reviews about it here. You can purchase Digital Essentials directly from Gloria Hansen’s web site at http://www.gloriahansen.com/

Learned Something New!

Sue left a comment on my post regarding my latest favorite book, Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art: Colour, Texture, and Distortion by C. June Barnes (see the previous post for a review of this book). On the US version of Amazon, there’s no “look inside” feature for this book. However, she noted that sometimes books published in the UK have the “look inside” feature on Amazon UK. So for anyone who wants to take a look inside Stitching to Dye, click here.

Another Book Review

After writing yesterday’s post about the way I tend to read craft books, I challenged myself to slow down and read the next one carefully, from beginning to end. Fortunately, I had the perfect book for this type of exercise.

I’ve made a couple of quilts that I stitched first, then colored with either Neocolor crayons or fabric paints. I really enjoy this “backwards” process and have been wanting to pursue it further. So when I ran across Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art: Colour, Texture, and Distortion by C. June Barnes, I knew I had to have it. I glanced at it when it came in the mail, but it wasn’t until I was scouting around for my next project that I remembered I had it.

Barnes’ book includes good, basic information about dyeing fabrics, free-motion stitching, the types of fabrics that work best with her techniques, etc. In addition, there are two extended technique sections in the book, both packed with information and exercises. The first section deals with stitching various fabrics together, adding free-motion stitching, then dyeing the quilt.

The second section was a surprise for me, since I primarily bought the book for the previous technique. In the second section, Barnes details ways to differentially shrink fabric, which I’ll come back to later in this post.

The book includes exercises that progress in difficulty, so after reading through to the end of Exercise 1, I decided to jump in and give it a try. I pulled out various white, off-white, and cream-colored fabrics and pieced them together. I made my quilt sandwich and free-motion quilted it using cotton thread so that it, along with the fabric, would take dye. Here’s a pic of the small quilt:

I then dyed the quilt in a mix of Sky Blue & Magenta:

As you can see, the various fabrics take the dye differently and create an interesting mix of textures and colors. Barnes recommends that you dye your pieces flat in a shallow tray or pan, or in a large bucket. I didn’t have a pan large enough, so I tried squishing this piece into a container and periodically squeezing the dye through. As you can see, I ended up with a few mottled spots, so before I try the technique again I’ll head to the store for a large, flat tray. This piece is now ready to be further embellished; Barnes also includes ideas in her book for additional embellishments.

As I mentioned, the second half of the book focuses on layering different kinds of fabric that shrink at different rates, stitching them, shrinking them through washing and drying, then dyeing them. For the first exercise in this section, I started with wool and layered silk charmeuse over it. I heavily stitched the piece with cotton thread (Barnes includes some excellent information on the effects of various kinds of stitching)

then washed and dried the piece

I haven’t yet dyed this, but I’m very happy with the texture that resulted. Barnes includes a lot of information in this section of the book about various inclusions to get particular effects, so I’m anxious to continue these exercises, as well as those in the first half of the book.

I’m really thrilled with this book and looking forward to continuing to work through it. In fact, I’m so excited about it that I’m considering starting a group to work through the exercises in the book and to share questions, ideas, concerns, and results with each other. I won’t be able to do that until I’ve recovered from my surgery, but let me know if you’re interested in participating, and I’ll get back to you within a few weeks.

Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art: Colour, Texture, and Distortion by C. June Barnes is available on Amazon. Unfortunately, it’s not one of the books you can “look inside” of, but you can find more information through that link.

Addendum: Although there's no "look inside" feature on the US version of Amazon for this book, Sue left a comment on this post letting me know that sometimes books published in the UK have the “look inside” feature on Amazon UK. So for anyone who wants to take a look inside Stitching to Dye, click here.

A Book Review, and The Lego Test

I recently ordered two new crafting books from Amazon. My bookshelves are overloaded, and I’ve been working hard not to buy more books. I’ve been really good about going to the library, instead, and I’ve become much pickier about which books I actually buy.

As one of my few recent purchases, then, I had high expectations for Melanie Testa’s new book, Inspired to Quilt. Initially, I was disappointed when I flipped through the book. Yes, I am a craft-book “flipper”; I look at the pictures first, check out the project instructions, and only read the large chunks of text when forced to (see the second half of this post for some thoughts on this issue of reading). I tend to jump into a project before I really understand the ideas behind it, because I’m so reluctant to actually READ the book.

Anyway, I was disappointed because it seemed that most of what Testa includes in her book are techniques I already know about: stamping and printing with thickened dyes, for example.

But then my eye caught a few intriguing words here and there: “layering,” “organza,” “freezer-paper stencils.” I kept looking at the wonderful photos of Testa’s work and wondering how she got those lovely effects. I knew there had to be more to this book than initially meets the eye.

As it turns out, Testa actually provides quite a bit of information about how she creates her art quilts, but it’s not laid out in a simple, step-by-step project format. Instead, much of the information regarding design, inspiration, and experimentation that Testa loads into the book can be found by carefully reading the text.

Don’t get me wrong: Testa provides a LOT of step-by-step direction for adding imagery to art quilts: creating monoprints, stamping dyes onto fabric with hand-made stamps (which she tells readers how to make), applying soy wax, using freezer-paper stencils and masks, and many more. I’m familiar with most of these techniques, so I didn’t find much new information there.

However, when I forced myself to slow down, start at the beginning, and read the book, I indeed found myself being “inspired to quilt.” My sense is that Testa wants to both provide people the tools (in the way of techniques) they need to create art quilts, but also the ability and desire to design art quilts. She wants to avoid having people reproduce HER work. Instead, she wants to inspire them to produce their OWN work.

The other thing I really like about the book is that each of the photos of her work is accompanied by a short description of the techniques she used to create that piece; even if she doesn’t give us a step-by-step process for recreating her pieces, she does provide road maps that show us how she got to where she was going.

I’m glad that I bought this book. Not only is it a valuable addition to my library, but it’s helping me in my never-ending quest to slow down and be patient.

To summarize then, here a few pros and cons of Melanie Testa’s new book, Inspired to Quilt:

Pros

• High-quality, slick pages with high-quality photographs of Testa’s work
• Loads of information, both “buried” within the text and in a step-by-step format
• Coverage of several different dyeing techniques: direct dye painting, monoprinting, stamping, working with soy wax, using stencils and masks, and more
• Inspirational ideas about how to layer imagery on fabric to create art quilts
• Encourages experimentation and “rule-breaking”

Cons

• Few step-by-step “projects”
• Important information is sometimes buried within the text, so getting the most benefit from the book requires careful reading.

And now, what do LEGOS have to do with this post? Well, here’s the story:

I am a technical writer by profession. Most of my writing provides instructions for people who need to perform a task quickly and efficiently. A few years ago, I took a workshop on minimalist writing, which is, essentially, providing only the information people need, when they need it.

As part of the workshop, we were organized into groups and given a simple task: using the provided instructions, we were to assemble a small Lego tow truck. The “winner” of the contest would be the group who correctly assembled the tow truck in the shortest amount of time. Everyone had the same assignment and the same Lego parts. What we didn’t know is that each group had very different instructions.

The first thing I noticed as my group worked to assemble the tow truck is that we skipped any text in the assembly instructions. Instead, we went straight to the illustrations. If we couldn’t determine the next step in the process from the illustration, we backed up and read the instructions.

My group finished first, not because we were any smarter or more mechanically-minded than the others, but because we were fortunate enough to receive the “best” instructions. It turns out that, every time the instructor taught this class, the group that received the same instructions we did assembled the tow truck first. These instructions had very clear illustrations, supported by clearly formatted and concisely written step-by-step directions. The group that finished 15 minutes or so after us had instructions with fewer and less clear illustrations, and less clearly-written directions. The group that never finished had instructions with NO illustrations, text that was formatted only in paragraphs, and lots of “background” filler information sprinkled in among the directions (long, rambling passages on the the history of Legos, for example).

Now, here’s the really interesting part. It turns out that people read according to what their goal is. If it’s to perform a task as quickly and efficiently as possible, they “read” just like our group did: going straight for the illustrations, then to the numbered steps or bullet points for clarification. On the other hand, if people are reading to educate themselves and really learn something, as many of us did in college, for example, we’re more likely to read long passages of text (think about the way college-level textbooks tend to be written).

Unfortunately, we’ve become both a much more impatient society, as well as a more visual one. People claim that reading is actually on the rise, and point to the increased use of the Internet, and particularly the enormous popularity of blogs. But pay attention to your own reading habits: I’d be willing to bet my lunch money that very few of you have read this post all the way through. More likely, some people dropped in and, seeing no pictures, left immediately. Others skimmed the text, looking for the pictures or the “important points,” and slowed down only when they got to the “pro” and “con” bullet points above. Then, they resumed skimming, and perhaps lost interest before reaching the end.

What about your own reading habits in craft books, on blogs, or on web pages (I’m not counting books such as novels here, since they assume from the beginning a different motive for reading)?

• Do you go right for the pictures, and read the surrounding text only when the picture interests you?
• Do you look for the visual formatting cues to “important” information: bullet-dots, numbered lists, quote offsets?
• Do you skim the text, looking for points of interest, then go back and carefully reread only when the topic seems sufficiently interesting?

I know I do. But sometimes I wonder how much I miss this way. I wonder whether I’m overloading myself with information, but skimping on the more thought-provoking reading experiences that require attention and patience. If we’re all doing the same thing, what are the short- and long-term effects of this way of reading on our culture? On our verbal and visual literacy?

Framing this in term of my craft books, I’m wondering whether what I’m looking for when I initially skim them is the short-term “project” that I can jump into, rather than a longer-term learning experience. Is this one factor that holds me back in being able to design and produce the thoughtful work I hope for?

If you HAVE made it all the way to the end of this post, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this subject. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Back on the Path

Here's a quilt that I just finished binding. It was inspired by one in The Quilting Arts Book: Techniques and Inspiration for Creating One-of-a-Kind Quilts.

The background fabric is hand-dyed, with acrylic ferns stamped on using gold paint. I quilted the piece with free-motion stitching, then added the leaves. Those have fabric on both sides (fused together with SaS2), are satin-stitched around the edges, and are attached at the top with a few stitches so that they sort of "float" off the background. Then I couched some fun fibers on and sewed some beads on. The piece is 19"h x 16"w.

It was fun to do something sort of different. I really like the dimension and texture that this one has!

A Happy Find

I finally broke down and bought some books I've been wanting. I figure, if I'm going to be at home with all this time on my hands, why not have some great craft books to inspire and instruct me?

One of those books is called Acrylic Revolution: New Tricks and Techniques for Working with the World's Most Versatile Medium. Not only does it have great information about and techniques for using acrylic paints, but it explains what all those acrylic gels and mediums are for, and what you can do with them. Who knew that Golden's Tar Gel was so cool? Or that pumice gel created such a wonderful effect?

In addition to the standard painting techniques (washes, brayering, sponging, etc.), the book provides detailed instructions for techniques I've never even heard of. Did you know that you can peel dried acrylic off of a slick surface and reuse it? Or that opaque acrylics can be made transparent?

I've seen some of the techniques in various books and magazines in the past: alcohol over acrylic to "pull" the paint up; using acrylic gels to mimic the look of encaustics or oil paints. I could probably spend a couple of hours looking through old magazines to find the instructions for those techniques (assuming I didn't get sidetracked and go off on some tangent, which is likely). This book, though, brings those techniques all together. It also has a hard cover and that cool spiral binding so that the book lies flat so that you can reference it while you're working.

If you work with (or want to work with) acrylic paints, gels, or mediums, this book should definitely be in your library. The only thing I regret about buying this book is that I didn't do so a very long time ago!

And now, I'm off to play with acrylics!

Down a Rabbit Hole

I've been bitten (smitten?) by the dyeing bug. Yesterday morning I was so excited to get started on this project that I woke up at 5. A good thing, too, since dyeing takes so long. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

The colors did turn out lighter than I expected, which I attribute to one or all of the following:

• I'm using bleached pfd fabric (rather than unbleached--apparently the bleach never completely comes out of the fabric, and can affect the dye)
• I strained my dyes through cheesecloth, which worked really well to catch the gunk and unmixed particles, but may have removed too much of the color
• I only let the fabric soak in the dye for an hour
• I'm using the "lighter" set of primary colors from Dharma (fuschia, lemon yellow, and turquoise).
  

I'm going to experiment more by changing some of the variables above, but I don't want to use up my pfd muslin since I'm supposed to be using it in my Quilt U class and don't want to order more right now.

Last night I mixed up some sodium alginate and let it sit. I followed the directions in the Kemshalls' book, The Painted Quilt and mixed 2 t. SA with 1-1/2 c. of water, and proceeded to try to whisk this sludge. I kept adding water until the entire tub was filled, and that stuff just kept getting thicker, it seemed. I finally let it sit overnight and took a spoonful this morning and mixed it with more water to get a thick honey consistency. Then I added in some of the leftover dye concentrate from yesterday, and proceeded to stamp, roll, and brush. I played with 3 pieces of fabric--1 undyed, 2 previously dyed--and rolled them up to set for 24 hours, so I'll see tomorrow what I turn out with.

In the meantime, I have to get a grip. It's awfully hard to go to the day-job after getting up at 5 and putting in a couple of labor-intensive hours dyeing fabric!

Discoveries

Is there anything better than taking a few days off from the day job to focus on the work I really love? And, my timing couldn't have been better to finally pick up a copy of Vikki Pignatelli's Quilting by Improvisation. I love this book!

Vikki's technique involves drawing patterns onto freezer paper, cutting out one piece at a time, and assembling the pieces onto stabilizer. Then, everything is topstitched together, quilted, and finished. I really do feel like I can create my own original designs without worrying about piecing problems.

The first project I completed from the book was a copy of Vikki's design, "My Star Dances." I haven't added the hanging sleeve yet, so it all looks a little crooked, but it's not.

The second project I completed from the book was a poppy piece. I had a little problem at one of the curves--I thought I could straighten this little pucker out with the iron, but was mistaken. Lesson learned: make sure every curve is clipped correctly and fully! I sewed washers to the back to hang the piece, which worked well.

I was a little intimidated by this book at first, because there's a lot of text that has to be carefully read. My tech writer training often leads me to skip directly to the numbered instructions, but that's not a good idea with this book. Much of the important information is buried in the text, so I recommend taking the time to read everything thoroughly before starting a project. You'll probably feel completely overwhelmed as I did, but once I started actually working on the pieces I was amazed not only by easy the techniques really were, but by how fast these pieces went together!

What really inspires me is that I've been able to so quickly take the ideas in the book and apply them to a project that I was stuck on. A few months ago, I printed a photo of one of our back-yard baby birds onto fabric and hung it on my design board. It's been staring reproachfully at me ever since, but I had no idea what to do with it. Once I completed these projects, I knew exactly what to do with it! I've finished the quilt top and need to quilt and finish it. Stay tuned: the finished piece may be the topic of my next post!

Babes in Toyland

Or, in this case, one babe in a very messy craft room. I bought a couple of books on doll-making a while back: Creative Cloth Doll Making, and Creative Cloth Doll Faces, both by Patti Medaris Culea.

One day I got a wild hair and decided to see if I could paint a doll's face, and when that worked, I felt obligated to make a body for her. I sewed and stuff and painted her body with textile paints and stamps. I'm still working on the hair; I rather like her without it, but we have some not-very-attractive stitches to cover in the back of her head. I think I may go with a turban.

At any rate, she's not ready for her debut quite yet, but I thought letting the world get a glimpse of her might spur me to finish her.

Atlanta Finds

Ok, I didn't really find these so much as listen to other people's advice. At any rate, I was in a conference in Atlanta over the last few days, and I was hoping to have a few minutes to slip away for "fun stuff."

That didn't exactly happen, but I did have a little extra time before heading back to the airport, so I went by Fiber on a Whim. What a great place! Jan was very nice and I wish I had visited before I ordered all the supplies for my upcoming class, Elements in Fabric at Quilt University. I bought some Golden quinacridone paints, which I've only read about and never actually SEEN in person, some ExtravOrganza that I've been wanting to play with, and a really great book about painting on fabric, Skydyes by Mickey Lawler. The book has a lot of information about fabric paints, how to mix and use them, and how to create beautiful painted skyscapes on fabric.

Afterwards, I headed over to Nicholas Kniel. Now, when people said I should visit a "ribbon" shop, it wasn't high on my priority list, but since it was next door to Beadazzles, I popped in. I was amazed. The shop itself is a work of art, and the ribbon, velvet birds and leaves, feathers, and glass glitter are stunning. Nicholas was fun to talk to, and is incredibly passionate about ribbons and embellishments. I bought some beautiful feathers and some German glass glitter.

Next door was Beadazzles. I don't buy a lot of beads, since I have tons and don't use them that often. I was, however, wondering what the best thread and needles were for sewing beads to quilts, so I asked. The shop owner or clerk (not sure which), asked a group of women who were working on beautiful beaded jewelry pieces what they advised. One very nice woman gave me her suggestions for both beading thread and needles; she seemed apologetic, as if she were being bossy, but I was thrilled to have her advice.

From the Pasture

moooooooo . . .

My Moo cards have arrived from across the pond! They're every bit as wonderful as people say. I love the quality, the texture, the crispness of the text on the back, and the fact that I chose the pictures--pictures I had taken of my own work. I can't wait to start passing them out, and I seriously doubt that this will be my last order!

And no, I don't know why they're called Moo cards. But I do where you can get a set of your own: www.moo.com, of course.

On the work front, my job is still eating my brain, but I've decided I can't let that stop me anymore from working on my projects. I've fallen off my routine of devoting an hour every morning to arts and crafts, and it shows in my stress level (not to mention my crankiness level). Once that decision was made, though, I was having trouble with an even harder one: what to work on. So, I decided to weed out some of my recorded craft shows, instead.

The bad thing about a DVR is that it's really easy to record stuff. Lots of stuff. More stuff than I'll ever have time to watch. Even when I do have time to watch the hundreds of craft shows I record every day (ok, really only about 5 a day, but it might as well be 100 if I don't have time to watch them), I can't bring myself to erase anything because I MIGHT want to actually MAKE that project someday, even if it does require a blow torch, 20 tons of steel, and a hydraulic press.

Occasionally, though, I'm forced to "clean up" when we try to record something really, really important, like So You Think You Can Dance or Big Love, and then on playback realize that we've run out of recordable space and only have half of the show recorded and will never ever know why Lauren got voted off or Margene isn't speaking to Barb. As if that weren't bad enough, I then get "the look" from DP as she scrolls through the 60-hour list of recorded craft shows.

The fun part about "cleaning up" is that I get to watch all the shows again (some for the 4th, 5th, or 6th time). Plus, when DP asks whether I'm going to clean the kitchen tonight, I can always sigh and point to the screen and say, "but Honey, I have to get our DVR cleaned up or we'll never be able to record anything again."

Anyway, I'm whipping through the craft shows and reluctantly erasing those that require a blowtorch (even though you just never know what someone might give you for Christmas) when I run across Jan Bode Smiley making a fabric book. I know that I already have this show recorded and saved; in fact, I have Jan's book, The Art of Fabric Books. I've never made anything out of it, but I've spent many dreamy hours perusing it and admiring the pictures.

But suddenly it strikes me that I need to make a fabric book. RIGHT NOW. So I do. Actually, I started the book, and I'm still working on embellishing it. I'm not posting any pics yet because I want to surprise my DP. But I need to finish it before Friday because we're going to the coast for the weekend, and it will drive me nuts to be pulled away from a project after going so long without really being engaged in one.

Of course, I absolutely plan on taking a couple of things to the coast with us. Just my journal, some gel pens, and a pencil. We'll be busy playing in the sun and sand. Maybe some colored pencils. Oh, and my pen and ink. That's really all I'll have time for--a couple of quick sketches and some ink drawings. A glue stick. My moo cards, of course. My camera. And I suppose I could slip my fabric journal into a bag, along with some beads and buttons and other embellishments, some embroidery floss, some ribbon and . . . my gosh, who has time for a vacation? I have work to do!

Whirlwind Tours Continued

I'm still flitting from one project to another. I think it's because my job is consuming most of my time but all of my mental energy. Even when I find myself with a few spare minutes to play, I'm thinking about work and so can't really settle into or commit to a project. At any rate, here are some of the things I've been working on over the last week:

ATC backgrounds. I haven't made any cards in forever, but this was dyed paper-towel paper (from Traci Bautista's book, Collage Unleashed) so it was simply a matter of cutting and gluing. I'm not sure where to take them from here, of course.

Polymer clay: AAARRGGGHH. I've said for years that even though polymer clay intrigued me, I did NOT want to get into it, because the last thing I needed was another medium to work with (or to spend money on). Alas, my DP, who occasionally ventures brilliantly--if briefly--into the art world, decided she needed to play with polymer clay. Fortunately, it was on sale at Jo Ann's. Unfortunately, "on sale" is crafter's code for "have to buy tons of it while it's 1/2 price." DP made her lovely project, returned to her favorite past-time (watching movies) and hasn't touched the clay since, so of course, it's up to me to use it up. I have no idea what I'm doing, but that can be a good thing, I think, since there are no "rules." This is a small piece that was striated, and looked like a little ghostly landscape. I used some oil pastels to "paint it." I don't even know if there's any way to seal it now; I would add a polymer frame, but I don't know that I can bake it without ruining the oils.

Another poly clay WIP; I saw a woman on That's Clever (or was it Crafter's C-to-C?) make a large polymer angel over a copper mesh. I have copper mesh, I have polymer clay. Lots of it. So I made a little angel, then decided she needed a box to live in. I'm not happy with the box yet, but I'm not sure where to take it, so I'm setting it aside for the moment. I need to add arms to my angel, and I think I'll make a miniature art quilt for her to hold.

And finally . . . my first ever fabric postcard! I made the background using a technique posted by Wendy in the Cloth Paper Studio group; it's a great technique because I can use up all those little fabric scraps I can't bring myself to throw away. I'm mailing it today to my sweet Mom.

Wildlife update: the bunnies are on their own. We built a make-shift pen around them to keep the dogs away, then opened it up every night so that the mom could get to them and feed them. One morning, we happened to notice one sitting out in the yard; fortunately, we found them before the dogs did. We hunted and finally found a second one. After a lot of debate, we decided that they either needed to go back into the pen, or that it was time to leave. When I reached down to touch one, it zipped across the yard and under the fence to the greenbelt behind us. The second one didn't move, but when I picked it up it jumped and ran out of the same hole. We couldn't find the third one, so we were hoping it had already ventured out into the world. At first we covered the hole under the fence with rocks, but then decided that if they came back through another opening, they would need that hole as an emergency escape route if the dogs found them, so we uncovered it again. At any rate, the dogs are finally back outside, we've swept and vacuumed and dusted most of the hair out of the house, and life seems a little calmer now. The thing in the picture is my grandson's transformer action figure, which is bigger than the baby.