Catching Up

I’ve had a burst of energy after a rather draggy February. Fortunately, I know that around January/February my creativity tends to hibernate, so I’ve learned to be patient with it, confident that I can benefit from the creative “downtime.”

But the weather has turned all spring-like: warm, sunny days that make me want to tackle all those projects I’ve been thinking about but haven’t gotten around to. Of course, the problem is that the more time I spend working on projects, the less time I have to document or share them. And when I have lots of time to write blog posts, it means I’m not getting any work done, so there’s nothing to share (this is a corollary of that money/time conundrum; when there’s money for art, there’s no time, and when there’s time that usually means there’s no money).

Anyway, here are some of the things I’ve been creating/working on:

I finally got around to creating a portrait quilt, which has been on my wish list for a while. I’m using Maria Elkins’ technique here, which is a lot of fun and not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I’m not particularly thrilled with how this turned out, but I learned a lot about both fabric and portraits that work, and those that don’t:



Btw, this is my lovely daughter, Amanda. I’ll be making more of these. I think I may make one for every member of my family, then stitch them all together.

This past weekend the weather was so gorgeous that I had to get outside. That always makes me think of dyeing/painting fabric for some reason, even though I typically end up doing it in the house. But I ended up creating some screens for deconstructed screen printing and then setting them in the sun to dry. Here is the result of my first deconstructed screen printing project:



I’m really happy with this and loved the process. I’ll be doing more of this, as well.
While I had thickened dyes mixed up, I decided to paint on some fabric:



I’m not sure what I’ll do with this yet; I may cut it up and reassemble it.
And, I finally got around to ordering some Citra Solv (and some magnesium, which my body is always low on, while I was at it) so that I could try a technique for creating cool art papers. This is a messy process and the Citra Solv has a strong odor, so it’s best done outside. Plus, a sunny day helps the papers dry quickly. Essentially, I started with a National Geographic magazine and brushed concentrated Citra Solv on the pages, then closed up the magazine and let it sit for a while. I squeezed out the extra liquid/ink, then tore out the pages and laid them out to dry (this technique was in a recent issue of, I think, Cloth, Paper, Scissors). Here are the results:



Aren’t these scrumptious?

I’m almost finished with this small (about 8x10) piece I started a very long time ago. This is silk that I painted after applying a resist. I stitched it with wonderful 30wt. Trilobal poly thread, and added a dyed silk border. I’m still debating on whether to add a binding, create an envelope finish, or stitch around the edges:



Here’s a sneak peak of a wall quilt I’m working on; you’ll just have to wait to see the whole thing when it’s finished:



Let’s see, what else? Oh, here’s a wall quilt I finished a month or so ago, but I don’t think I’ve posted it yet. This is reverse appliqué made from batik-fabric charm squares. I added some beads and hand-stitching for embellishment, but it’s hard to see them in the photos:



And a close-up:



And finally, here’s my 6x6” weekly journal square, #50:



#51 is from Valentine’s week; it’s finished, but I haven’t taken pics yet. #52 is from my birthday week, and I haven’t finished it yet. And that brings me full circle—a FULL YEAR of weekly 6x6” journal quilts! I’m excited to stitch them all together. Stay tuned for the final results of that year-long project!
And don’t forget to check out my other blog, A Year of Pleasures, to see my latest fascination with cotton yarn.

I hope the weather where you are is showing some lovely promises of Spring, as it is here in Central Texas!

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."

Does This Path Have Heart?

I’m avoiding working on my flower quilt. It’s ready to stitch, and I’m in the “fear-of-messing-it-up” phase, so instead I’m finding ways to procrastinate. This is a piece I finished a while back, but it needed to be trimmed and have the binding sewn on:

A close-up of the beading at the top:

I quilted this piece on plain, white muslin, then colored it with Neocolor water-soluble crayons. Then I started beading, and I just couldn’t stop! The finished size is 10x14".

I call this “Does This Path Have Heart?” from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. This is what kept running through my mind as was working on it. Castaneda, quoting don Juan, a Yaqui Indian, writes:

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Does this path have heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t.

One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

A path without heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy, it does not make you work at liking it.”

This idea, of questioning whether a path has heart, is one I try to live by every day. At the end of my life, I hope that I can say that, most of the time anyway, I at least tried every day to choose the path with heart.

And speaking of, today is my one-year “anniversary” (I hate to use such a positive word for such a negative event) of being stricken with a brutal case of pancreatitis. I feel lucky to be alive, since the doctors say I almost died. I’m still wrestling with the physical after-effects of the ailment, but I feel stronger every day and more hopeful for the future. I’ll be having major surgery on June 1st to clean out some infected debris in my pancreas, and the thought of another hospital stay (after several months in the hospital last year) terrifies me. I’m trying not to panic or let that weigh too heavily on me right now. Instead, I’m working on meditating, deep-breathing, and positive visualization of the experience.

Two Down, Twenty-seven To Go

I always feel good when I complete a project since I’m so much better at starting than finishing them. I feel especially good today because not only is it a perfect Spring day, but I’ve completed TWO projects! And to top it all off, neither one of them will get tucked away in a dark closet.

The first one is a piece I started back in January (you can read about its birth in this post). Later, I added some color to it with Neocolor crayons:

I beaded this piece while watching (or mostly listening to) TV. When it was finally finished, trimmed it to 8”x10”, added a back and binding, and fused on a label:

This is going to my sister, Suzanne, and her partner Judith, who both have birthdays coming up. If you’re reading this, Judith, Surprise! Happy Early Birthday!

The second finished project started as a piece for Lily Kerns’ Fractal Fragments class at QU; I blogged about it here. I wanted to add a lot of fractal elements, but I just couldn’t get excited about it, so this morning I free-motion quilted the piece and made it into a pillow. I’ve never made a pillow before; it was fun!

And now, I think it’s nap-time . . .

ATC Frenzy

I've been making lots of ATCs the last couple of days, partly because I needed to get some out for two swaps, and partly because I've discovered that making ATCs is a great way to use my "experiment" paper and fabric--you know, those pieces you make to try out some wonderful new technique, but that you never make large enough (at least I don't) to actually use in a project.

These ATCs are for a yahoo group swap; I used the fabric I made a couple of weeks ago from scraps.






The others came about because I wanted to try out my new Tsukineko inks. I stamped geckos onto fabric, then used the inks and Fabrico markers to color them. Then I very lightly spritzed the fabric with water, and dripped some transparent fabric paint around the geckos (the paint ran since the fabric was wet, but didn't really affect the ink-painted geckos).







I cut the fabric up into ATCs, and used three of them for another yahoo group swap. These had to be embellished, so I added lots of beads and some french knots with embroidery thread; and, they had to have a fabric back, which I'm not crazy about. I like the stiffness that cardstock or watercolor paper gives to a card, so the others are backed with cardstock. They're all sandwiched around craft felt, because I've really been obsessed with using that lately instead of batting for small projects.

So . . . now I have 9 gecko ATCs available, if anyone wants to trade. Leave me a comment with a way to get in touch with you, or email me (see the "email" link on my Profile over to the right). Feel free to specify which ATC you would like (Row 1, Column 3 for example), but I can't promise you'll get the one you ask for if someone else requests it first. Here are the available ATCs:

ALL THE ATCs HAVE BEEN TRADED; THANKS EVERYONE!

I started writing this post about 4 hours ago, but somehow I kept getting sidetracked . . . I looked at my email, which led me off onto wild google chases until I saw something interesting, which took me down another path to learn everything I could about "drapplique," which made me remember that I still haven't opened my new Tsukineko inks, and so on and so forth. You know how that goes.

Anyway, I decided just before my birthday a couple of weeks ago that I was going to make a "square-a-week" quilt. I think I saw where someone had done this in a QA article. I decided to make 52 6x6" squares, one a week for the next year, then sew them all together with a beginning square and an ending square for a total of 54--I think the quilt will be 6 squares wide and 9 squares long.

I thought my birthday would be a good time to start, and I made that week's square to commemorate it. It's a little dark, but the kind of birthday it felt like--one of those mixed-emotions ones. I added beads since I had been doing a lot of beading that week.

This week's square was based on a design that I created during an exercise at a friend's creative circle gathering. I had hand-dyed some fabric for another project, so I used some of the scraps here. I'm going to try to incorporate several things into these squares: the techniques I was working on that week, the materials I was using that week, and a design that reflects something that was happening.

Of course, my lovely partner snagged my first square to hang in her office, so I had to make another one. This one is just slightly different, but that's ok, too :-)

Something Old, Something New

Here is an ATC I made to exchange with Terri Stegmiller (Stegart). I had some really UGLY fabric I had painted a while back, so I covered it with Angelina & sheer fabric, all fused together with Mistyfuse, which was cool because then I couldn't see the ugly fabric anymore (I've noticed that if I have something I don't like, I can usually keep adding stuff to it until it looks good!)

I stitched the paper heart on, then hand-stitched some tiny seed beads. The first pic shows the seed beads better, the 2nd one the color.

I made 2 of these and had an extra to trade, but my DP immediately claimed the other one and seemed a little miffed that I hadn't thought to offer it to her.

I haven't made an ATC in forever, so I went looking for some I made a long time ago. I might as well post those here as well (the first one some of you may recognize as my icon on various sites):

Bits and Pieces

You know those dreams where you're trying to run, but it's like you're trapped in quicksand? That's what I feel like now. I've been in a lot of pain the last few days, so I'm trying to do just enough to take my mind off of it, but not so much that I wear myself down and risk getting really sick again. It just doesn't feel like I'm getting much done.

I'm actually accomplishing a few things, but not much of it is visible as finished projects. I've been organizing my class notes, doodling a lot, and posting pics and such to my various web spaces. I also started an inspiration journal, so I'm tearing out bits and pieces that inspire me or evoke some kind of emotional reaction from the piles of magazines I have stacked everywhere. I tried this once before, but I kept losing everything I tore out ("losing" in my house means putting it in what seems like the most logical spot so that I can find it again, then promptly forgetting where that spot was).

I've been beading a little; I just finished this little doohickey (I'm not sure what it's called). I've started another one, and I think I'll figure out a way to attach them to a journal quilt.

I painted some heavy-duty mulberry paper with setacolor paints. This is some BEAUTIFUL paper, and I'm definitely going to use it again. I started trying to put together a paper quilt using the mulberry paper as a base, but I just can't concentrate well enough to finish it.

I'm hoping the pain goes away soon or that my meds start working better (though there's not much chance of that after all these months). In the meantime, I'll just keep on with my "rat-killin'" as my grandfather-in-law calls it.

Sometimes I just annoy myself to no end. I go back to try and figure out how I made something, and I think, "why in the world didn't you write it down???" So then, of course, I recreate the wheel, but it's never quite the same. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I've been beading this sampler for my QU beading class. I picked the fabric because it was a light color, and I thought the beads would show up nicely against it. Now, I'm finding I hate the fabric. I think I'm going to try painting it around the beads. Either that or rip the beading out; it's pretty wobbly and bobbly anyway! I'm trying to cut myself some slack, though, since I am just learning and hope to get better with practice.