Stitching on "AI"

It's a wonder I'm getting anything done these days - I can't seem to tear myself out of the pool. After doing the cleaning chores and the obligatory "I'm exercising" laps, I find myself just drifting. I have been reading the sunday paper in soggy sections laid out on the deckboards. There is no bigger waste of time than reading a week-old newspaper but the cooling antigravity of the water compels me to stay a little longer. Once I am pruned to the max, I settle into the studio which gets hot despite the fan overhead and the AC. The stitched mouths are too subtle to see beyond a few steps away. I may add a few black vertical stitches by hand just for emphasis.

Cascade Discharging

A number of people have asked me for a quick tutorial on using dishwasher gel for discharging, or removing dye from fabric. I'm no expert but I'll tell you what I have learned through experience.

My "Law & Order" law degree dictates that I give all the inane and obvious warnings up front - Don't drink dishwasher gel. Don't make it into meatloaf and don't use it to cure crabs. Being a carbon based life form myself, chlorine bothers me so I work outdoors and wear gloves and glasses. Duh. This stuff will kill you as quickly as most anything else under your kitchen sink. If anyone chooses to disregard common sense (so what else is new?) the gene pool thanks you for getting out.

Cheepo store brands work as well as the more expensive stuff but because they are thinner, I find the store brands easier to work with. I started out by putting the gel in a plastic hair color applicator bottle and squeezing it out where ever. On the last batch (pictures above) I painted the gel on with a fat brush which later died an early death because I forgot to clean it *

The gel is harder to see once you start moving it around with a brush. Putting gel on wet fabric will give a different result than on dry. I like the creeping halos that you get with damp fabric and used a spray bottle of water to keep things damp as I worked. Half the fun of discharging is not knowing what's happening under the gel as time passes. Time? Anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more depending on too many things to go into. Remember, it's voodoo.

If you are deeply in love with the fabric (sick puppies, alla ya!) do some testing on a little piece of it and take notes. In the batch pictured above, I was working with PFD cottons that had been dyed and overdyed to death disastrously so the color came off in layers. I HAVE NOT SUCCESSFULLY DISCHARGED OTHER FABRICS! Warning - I did eat some cool holes in a silk velvet scarf a while back.

Some Procion MX dyes come away quicker and more completely than others. Some commercial fabrics discharge well while others seem impervious to the bleach in the gel. And finally, get a bottle of Anti-chlor or Chlor-out from the pet section in the grocery store for the final rinse. It's cheaper than the gel and it chemically cancels the chlorine. If you don't stop the bleaching action of the gel your fabric will ultimately resemble old underwear - gray & holey. Vinegar to cancel chlorine? No. Don't argue. The folks from the dyers list have already bitch-slapped sense into my head over this issue. Any questions? Feel free to ask.

Atavistic Inclinations

I cobbled this together from one of the discharged pieces I did last weekend. Added some details with a Clorox bleach pen and then broke out the paints. So far, so good but I see a lot of hand stitching in the near future, perhaps even some beading. I brought home about 4 pounds of juicy glass beads from Grand Rapids and they are heaped up on my work table just beggin' for action.

Committed Now

It must be our lizard brain that makes us think that machine quilting is easier than hand quilting. Of course I started out with some foolish metallic white thread that the Janome just hates so the backside of this quilt is going to have to be covered up like so many turds in a sandbox. Once I switched to rayon thread, Big J settled in and stopped fighting my moves. Now I feel like I am building a huge cheese and it's going to take a while.

More Discharge Devilry

I guess this is called a monoprint. I used the plastic squeeze bottle to apply the dishwasher gel to the green piece and laid the blue one right on top of it. Somehow I have to use both of these in one piece. And Jimmy, here are two of your kat crew, sleeping it off. Miss Karma is off having her hair and nails done somewhere and charging it all to you. We miss you.

Sleeved, Hung & Shot

"Sunny Jim" (59x42, hand dyed and commercial cottons, antique cotton damasks machine pieced and hand quilted) Now now that I take a good look at it, there's a little more work to do -nothing a good squashing with the steam iron won't fix. And then another round of pictures.

What's hatching

I got this one sandwiched last night during the (yawn) home run derby. Jake helped me square and smooth it at the kitchen table - work that goes so much better with another pair of hands. After pillowcasing this over W&N, I find the edges are crisp and regular - nothing to distract from the front of the piece. He is a patient and thoughtful assistant who will find himself pressed into service regularly in the future. I may wind up painting and/or appliqueing on this one to recover the intensity of the darks as they were when the fabric was wet. Colin suggested that I quilt the white parts and leave the rest in relief. Sounds promising. It's about 42" square. Working title, Kodamas 1.

Real Fiber Stuff!

Take heart all you dyers. If some of your last batch was just Ho-Hum, don't forget that Cascade and Anti-chlor can come to the rescue! It was a great day at the Lawrenceville Dyeworx undoing the misery of the losers of the last big dye-fest a few weeks back. As you can see, secret formulas and ancient, esoteric practices are involved here. My neighbors think I run a boot camp for clown school dropouts.
I think I'm six for six this time out and having just finished the ironing (and everything is just a great looking dry as it was wet)I figure there's at least four whole cloth pieces in the wings.

While I was away

This came in the mail from Nancy Javier of Banar Designs. That's me, lower right - a Cover Gal! And a nice full shot of a little piece I did last year. One of those journal sized pieces I did just because I needed some handwork to do. . I'm in some great company here: Sue Reno, Lesley Riley Jane La Fazio, Betty Hirsh, Lynn Krawczyk, Connie Rohman and Louise Thompson Schiele. It's a nice overview for people who may have never heard the terms "art" & "quilt" strung together. Here's the image from the inside of the book - better than the one I had left in my files

A New Vice

Yep. That's just what it looks like. Knitting. I paid TWENTY US DOLLARS for a pair of beautiful wooden sticks that I planned putting my hair up with. Then I happened by a vendor who was selling a large bag of sari silk at a very reasonable price. Marcy Petrini took pity on me being stuck in the HGA office and gifted me with her directions on learning to knit and a wicked new habit is born. I have to read further to see how to end these things. This silk is almost as coarse and ungiving as jute but once washed it goes all soft and fluffy. I still have to work hard at getting each stitch right and count them at the end of each row. By the last stitch, I find my tongue all sticking out and dried up. No pictures of that, thanks.

Convergence 2006

It's getaway day in Grand Rapids. I have been working at Convergence '06 for the last eight days (12 hour days) and just have not had time or energy to post anything but now I have an hour to kill before we leave for the airport. It's been quite an experience. Grand Rapids is a beautiful city, what I saw of it and the Amway Grand Plaza is the old school Cool Queen of hotels. I've met some wonderful people, contributed to a hugely successful convention and shopped my buns off. More about all this when I get back to ATL.

New Thoughts on Working Big

Not getting started on this piece (Nook 1) has been bothering me like a blister. There's been some discussion on the QA list about how various artists go about working LARGE - why they do it doesn't interest me, it's the HOW that got me to thinking about how to overcome the reasons I haven't attacked this project yet. That ole "jest so many hours in the day" doesn't matter to me - when I am on a project, everything else goes to hell a day faster than usual around my house, so time is not an excuse. I haven't been able to dye up the "Black Hole of Calcutta" black fabric that I want and can't afford to buy as much as I need so I am going to turn to the paint. I did a little retrospecting and found this little quirk-o-gram that I did while I was still holding down the night-fort for AT&T. Imagine sitting at your desk painting on fabric all night while watching a bank of monitors that never changes. It was the perfect job. Anyway, I'm looking at using space defining stitching and paint on larger pieces like the Nook. So that's one of the new directions once I finish off the blankets - I have decided to hand quilt Sunny Jim - watching the Braves play on TV has become too painful so I am listening while I sew these days.

Fruits

Here are the reapings from my solo dyefest. As I halfway suspected, the muslin came up pale and limp (1-4). 5 & 6 are small pieces of flannel that had been dyed before and 7-11 are overdyes of that great fabric we get from Dye Artists in NC that dyeing seems to improve. The last is a large hunk of commercial fabric that I know I loved when it was hot fuschia and acid green. Looks like there's another Green Monster in my future.

finally, 25

Here is a link to the latest in what was the Bedworx series until I found out that the name is being used by some retail giant. Yeah, gotta scroll up to see it all. 25 x 25 units that are about 12+/- inches each. Ever fond of wacky titles, "Mudpuppies in the Voting Booth" pops to mind. So did "Big Muddy". Having never seen the Mississippi, that one feels fakey. Something will manifest and I will probably change the layout but for now I need to get these sized a bit more uniformly. Sure would be nice if it turned out squarish. Doing the design wall thing on the computer with Dreamweaver is a whole lot easier than sticking pins in the styrofoam wall all afternoon. There's an AC vent right under the computer desk - I have to wear my fuzzy slippers here even in June.

New from the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx

Some of you might wonder about that title. What it refers to is my penchant for making things up as I go. Since I don't plan on offering any of my hand-dyes for sale on a regular basis (call me, I can be had) consistency is not something I pine for. To lift a line from one of my most favorite films..."It's a Mystery." And not knowing is half the fun. Since most of this stuff is destined to be backsides I'm not all that concerned with repeatable results so it was a handful of this, a dash of that, stir, spill and slosh. Of course, Murphy's law and the Full Moon in play, this batch will turn out spectacular, begging to be front and center in something and not hidden away. A Confession. I broke that rule about not buying any new stuff. I've pieced one back together for the Green Monster and am not entirely happy with it but I am happy that I am at that stage, making backs, which means these tops are not going to languish with the other UFOs awaiting completion. I just didn't have enough large expanses of anything to make nice backs for the current series so I broke down and bought five yards of 90" Roclon muslin with a discount (thanks, Ryan) from HoAnns. I haven't been thrilled with it in the past but the price was right and I scoured it to death first. Now to leave the stuff alone long enough. It's pool cleaning time - my gills are drying out.

Functionaries?

"You're out of PROCESS HERE!" my manager used to holler back on my corporate days.I keep starting new tops before getting on with the tough stuff - the sandwiches, the quilting, the sleeves. You know, the Moan & Groan part of quiltmaking. This will be fourth in a series of pieces originally intended as bed-ware but complete with sleeves so they can double duty as art and entertainment. I really thought I had plenty of browns - every hand-dyer must have a pile of MUD - but I am running out! Jan says to come over and pick through her stash and I must hold off making any more of these elements before I add new colors into the mix. Of course, you know that if I don't get over there right away, I will be off and running making the Big Blue One, because I have more blues than anything else.

Progress & A Big Birthday

Tada - a sandwich waiting to be quilted. It's finished out to be 42"x58". Not as big as the other two but I was getting besotted with yellow and had to restrain myself from wandering into orange country. Enough for now - we are going out to dinner to celebrate Jake's 21st birthday. My youngest chick.

Sunny Jim

Right now I am in love with designing these little elements one at a time. This must be the same jazz that drives the folks who make the journal quilts. I'm just making sure that there is something magical in each one of them before moving on to the next one. Some of the more vivid yellows here came from the old damask I just bought on Ebay and the first summer crop of hand dyes that Jan and I worked on yesterday here at the marvelous Outdoor Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx. I have finally found a way to kill a particularly nasty patch of weeds growing in the back yard - dump the salty water on them. There's a full basket upstairs waiting to be ironed but the pool is blue, it's pushing 90 degrees outside and the Braves are about to take on the Dodgers here at Turner Field after sweeping Chicago. I think the fiber will have to wait a bit.

Green Monster

In pieces on the design wall but it's well underway. This will finish out to be about 50"x65". I've decided that I'm going to have to break down and buy decent fabric for the backsides of this one and Picnic in Hell since these are going as real QUILTS. Keep-warm-in-the-backseat, cuddle-on-the couch, picnic-in-the-park QUILTS that will come with sleeves just in case they look good on the wall too. {{{{Delicious shudder}}}}

Gardens

Every spring I grow jealous over postings of beautiful gardens from all over the world. Although I'd like to blame it on the miserable clay here in Georgia, I'm sure other southern gardeners would have me flogged so I'll admit that my lack of garden is due to my unwillingness to break a sweat over the whole process. Where I grew up in the Hudson Valley region of New York we had real top soil, the kind people pay actual money for down here. I just threw down the seeds or popped a plant into the ground and it flourished. Here, if you don't pour a fortune in cash & sweat into the dirt, you are not likely to reap much. After ten years I have finally figured out which perennials will get by on little more than dog piss and a brush with the lawn mower. I never water and only pull weeds when they get taller than the flowers. That's a coreopsis trying to escape into the street - I'm sure the mailman will run it over soon. A Confederate jasmine and a few different varieties of ivy that we rescued from a dumpster loaf around the pole that they refuse to climb. I have no idea where the poppies came from and the peonies on the back row were taken from a plant that my grandfather originally planted at my parents house fifty years ago. And this is Jinx doing her bunny rabbit imitation while stalking squirrels.

Series Wrap up (for now)

That's the Old Liver on the left and Blue Liver on the right. Don't count on clean living for long life! . I've run out of stuffing for now (thanks, Kitty!) so it's a good time to pull back and take a look at these as a group. Tomorrow I will scooter on up to the hardware store and buy a package of brass swivels so I can hang them. Piling them in endless configurations is entertaining but something is always obscured and I am not a good enough juggler to consider any performance art.

More Internal Exploration

There are so many different ways to say GUTS! These on the left are three different views of "Gall" which is about 14" at the widest point. I have decided to attach brass fishing swivels to these pieces and suspend them at different heights from an acrylic rod about six feet long. And this piece is titled "Parts Unknown " which is where I seem to be heading but is really old home ground for me. Last years "Alien Autopsy" has been sold. This is so cool I can't stand it and I may do some beadwork on it. Bigger than the others, it's about 18" long but don't ask me on what axis.

The Lost Week

It feels like a week anyway. I am upright for the first time in 24 hours. Some unknown malaise gave me a bad night's sleep Thursday with alternating fever and chills. I also ran up and down the stairs at work more times than my back would tolerate and so I wasted all of Friday in bed. I couldn't read, do handwork or even websurf with my laptop. Changing the channel became too demanding so I dozed and made imaginary pieces in my head where they don't generate a lot of enthusiasm or sweat. I have to thank Frieda for reminding me why I have a button linking to Danny Gregory's blog and this post in particular. I'd like it if he would expound on those "rare, apparent exceptions who don't give a good god-damn what anyone else says" but wouldn't that just be confirming his first notion that "Creative people care so very much what others think of them." It's a great article and it confirms my thinking lately about voicing my opinion in public places. Who cares what I think or have to say? If it wasn't for the fact that I am prone to talking to myself and listening intently, I wouldn't write anything, ever. Here's a true story. Jim told me that once I woke him in the dead of the night because I was laughing in my sleep. He asked me "what was so damn funny?". I said "I told myself a joke" and turned over and went back to sleep. The headache is gone, the fog is lifting and maybe I can get a start on the imaginary pieces I've been working on in my head. So instead of talking or writing about the work, I will be doing for a while.

Picnic in Hell

Picnic In Hell about 50"x70". Well, what if it is commercial? These days selling my work is my prime objective and I hope this will keep me from putting a DONATE button on this site. I made a cool one yesterday that read [Send Me To Art Camp] but then I decided to hold off. When I was attending school in NYC I was fascinated with the social politics of begging and would spend hours sitting and talking with panhandlers trying to figure out how one replaces pride with determination and take up street begging the way others take up carpentry or quiltmaking. Piecing this top took nine loooong innings on Saturday afternoon (Braves 8, Mets 5) and I loved every minute of it. It will keep someone warm and cozy before too long. I have made a vow to honor my frugal nature and NOT buy any new materials in the coming year. It will probably take me at least that long to use up what I have collected in my studio. These are hand dyes and some commercial overdyes and batiks, all cotton. I plan on using up the nine miles of Warm & Natural I bought at MaryJo's last year. I may wind up having to piece the backs of these bigger things but that will be in the spirit of things too.