scribbling

Thanks to Terry G. for reminding me about ZFranks Scribbler which has uncovered a new, more flexible black hole for my time, V2.

You'll curse me for following those links.

Left is a scribble that sketches the bare bones of a small piece that came together on the design wall at the WhineMine last night. No denying it's representational. Suburban landscapes, a series perhaps.

The central element, a pool, came from the  last batch of hand dyes -  a wonderful bright teal from something ProChem called "Bonnie Blue" over some pale yellow cotton, another gift that's full of promise. I think I finally used the last of all that vintage linen and coarse sack cloth, all wonderful in greens, gold and rust. A grove.

family

Baby sister Patty and her daughter Kim, now grown, married and soon to be back in the US with her hubby and Babu-Rio on board! We are all looking forward to their safe return.

Will trade fabric for digital camera?

That's right, my poor Canon A95 has shuffled off this mortal coil. Well, mostly. I just read about a recall and fired off a pitiable email to the Canon powers that be to see if they will indeed fix it including the round trip postage. Time will tell.
Every single picture  I have every posted anywhere was taken with this little gem.
Can't say I didn't get my money's worth, for sure.

Until it's been repaired or replaced which would be high on the list of luxury items I don't give a lot of thought to, there won't be much heard from these parts. I've taken pride that my blog has been equal parts eye candy and nattering. Lately, I've not had enough to say that was fit to be published so posts will be few and likely archival.

Faithful readers, just pretend off I'm vacationing somewhere with no internet connection. Someplace beachy and serene. I'll be back when the time is right.

PS---Hold the presses and pass the popcorn. An Angel has come to the rescue again. I'll be back in picture taking business before the movie is over...well, maybe the trilogy. Can you picture happy?

studio archaeology

I don't want to start anything new right now - there are so many UFOs, false starts, and bad actors laying around the studio I just have to take each as they come. Some things will go through drastic changes, some will be kitty hammocks at the animal shelter (not the first time). I found another fling, this one only wanting several hours worth of hand quilting - that I can do. It may take weeks but oh well.

This piece called "Needleturning at Sunrise" goes back to 2005 and was one of the first pieces I ever exhibited. I was nervous about sending off something so small with just a sleeve and little green stick for hanging. I'm thinking  it's going to be a different thing once mounted and painted in.

It was a great monday - my dyes came from Prochem and my team, the Atlanta Braves, opened the new baseball season in fine fashion.

Ocean Going

There's nothing like having a good studio assistant!







I painted this one into it's ocean yesterday. I finally gave up on the stained and dirty linen that it was stitched over. What was I thinking? Even after embroidering over dozens of little spots of rust, it still just looked dirty. I like this so much better.   You can see some closeups here, and here.

Safe as Houses

Here' the fling that I kept for myself - my nap blankie these days.

Some history here, here and here

The Stars Out of Place

This one is finished. I sat with it in my lap for an hour last night trying to choose the next color thread. There were no answers.

I'm going to set it aside for a while before I decide whether to mount in on canvas like the other recent pieces, or leave it soft, in the cloth.

Easter/Ostara

Ostara - Goddess of Renewal. I like better than chocolate bunnies and peeps.
We haven't done much about this holiday since the boys have outgrown thinking it was a sort of mini-Christmas, minus the tree and wrapping paper.  Oh, I'll still bite the ears off Jake's bunny and put it back in the box and of course, I love to dye the eggs if I remember.

This one kind of looks like Easter colors. Untitled and about 42"x42" from back in 2005 I think.  I was disappointed at how several pieces of very soft muslin refused to take the colors the way I was expecting. That's how I learned that the even the cheapest muslin from HoAnns had to be boiled in prep for dyeing.  Once I got over the color failure I hand appliqued these bars and hand stitched the whole thing. There was a lot of music involved.

last large work

"Front Runner"
is the last of the large pieces that I completed early in 2009.
I think its 7 feet long.

The real trouble comes when it's finished - trying to find a place to display and photograph the piece.

Spring & Summer flings

I've decided to sell this series of unlined, "summer" quilts . Most of them are machine pieced, hand appliqued and hand quilted. Just enough cloth to keep off the chill.


I've add a new page  called "Flings for Sale"
That should add an element of excitement to the spam I already get.

They might as well be living a useful life somewhere, as I intended.

the crayons that got left in the box

I've just ordered a batch of clearance priced dyes from ProChem . Given the way monitors will distort colors, who knows what these will look like in person.

I've never wandered far from the primary, basic colors before preferring to mix up my own mayhem, but these prices were irresistible - and I can't imagine I'd be using them straight from the jar anyway.  Strange, wonderful and new.

spring

 
Spring comes all at once to Georgia and lasts about a week before the heat and humidity set in.

I like to go to the big box store and pick over the plants that they left out to die in the unpredictable overnight chills. They get thrown into a basket, priced down to 25 or 50 cents. If rescued in time they manage just fine. These were all on death's front porch yesterday afternoon including the grape tomato plant that will soon take over the whole pot and give me tasty little treats all summer long as long as I remember to water it each day.

Sweetie has learned that the cat door is her key to the outdoors and she gradually learning the bounds of her territory. Unfortunately she thinks that the squirrels next door are somehow more interesting that the ones that live in our yard.

They are good neighbors and accustomed to our cats lurking about in their yard but I'll bet they think they are seeing Jinxs' ghost doing her usual thing.

Put & take

I'm really taken with the quality of that sheet that I dismembered.

Yesterday I put several of the less than stellar pieces through several other surface design techniques - some  kitchen chemistry involving Elmer's Glue, Soft Scrub and more dye, this time with a little heat boost. 

the more I look at this cloth the less inclined I am to cut it up.  I've been admiring Jimmy McBride's quilts and hammer & tongs way he goes about it.

Once I finish torturing the 8 different sections I may just put this sheet back together like Humpty Dumpty and make a bedquilt out of it.

dye results

Not so fierce anymore. It's hard to say if the intensity loss was due to the advanced age of the dyes or the temps outside which were chilly at best.

All subtle and interesting. Some destined for other treatments. You can see the woven pattern in those pricey sheets and the coarseness of the linen. You can click on the picture for a close up.

cleanup

It occurred to me that letting these dry completely and then shaking out the grains of cream of wheat and the bug carcasses would be much easier than trying to rinse it all off the fabric. Fortunately it's not sticky at all and is blowing off like so much colorful sawdust. If the sun would only come out for a bit I could have this bunch in the washer and dryer before I leave for work. Maybe. Remember, these are wet pictures. It remains to be seen if this old, old abused dye powder will take to the cloth for real but a preliminary rinse and wash by hand showed almost no dye run-off!

the early returns

I just couldn't wait until morning. Around midnight I was rinsing this one out in a bowl out on the deck, in the dark.

I did not examine the cream of wheat closely but it looks like the bugs (and their eggs?) took up the dye particles  and redeposited them according to their size - you can see the ghosts in blue here. the brownish lines came from the radiator where I draped this to dry for just a few minutes. Live and learn with that one.

It's a mystery!

It's the first dyefest of the season here at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx and new mysteries are afoot! I've had a batch of vintage damask napkins, a length of coarse linen, and a swanky 600ct stripey bedsheet from Goodwill soaking in soda as since, umm, Sunday (I think)

 There was no kosher salt in the cupboard and I couldn't justify wasting any sugar with hummingbird season about to open. Lurking in the back of the pantry was an old box of COW complete with mealy bugs - a charming protein boost that happens when you don't seal your flour and cereals in plastic. Is it just a southern thing or did I not notice them when we lived up north? It remains to be seen how the cream of wheat and bugs will interact with the soda ash, dye and cloth.

One thing is for sure, I won't be rinsing these in my washing machine. I'm out of time this morning so all of this will get to poach on the work table until this time tomorrow. We'll see what comes of all this mess.

Stitch heroics

Sometimes I sit with needle poised and wonder "Now what?"

Gerdiary continues to remind me that stitch really doesn't need to do much more than hold things together quietly. No heroics or gyrations are really called for.

juggling

I was relieved to find this one still hanging up at the office where I left it.

A notice was recently sent out instructing people about NOT  klepping  lunches from our shared refrigerators in the break room. Imagine having to write a politically correct interoffice memo about the moral issues surrounding BEING A THIEF! (read the bold letters in Sam Kinison's voice). There are no fast food joints within a reasonable distance from the office so if you don't bring something to eat, you go hungry, unless you eat something from the overpriced and under-serviced vending machines. Enough on that.

A few days away from it and now I'm pingponging back and forth between the two of them. Cousins, no doubt. Winter and Spring.  Do not wish for that which you can conjure for yourself through either hard work or deep imagination.

sweater weather

I'll even get to wear it today - it was snowing sporadically this morning! This is Georgia - and not the mountains - the weather has lost it's tiny mind.  I bought three of these cotton sweaters at Kohls years ago and wore two of them to death.

This one was originally cream colored and has been through several color changes - this being the only successful one.  it was really, really bad before.
That scrap of folded cloth is a half yard of muslin that was blue with soy resisted white spots, now burgundy and purple and wildly interesting.

rainy Sunday

In addition to leaving the current WIP at the office Friday night, when I tossed my stuff in the car I tore my right thumbnail to the quick and all day Saturday I kept banging it into things making it worse.

Last night it was all I could do to manager seven feet of a simple running stitch joining these two rayons scarves lengthwise. Why didn't I run it up on the machine in 15 seconds instead of taking most of "Lawrence of Arabia" to get this much done? It will be finished when I can cross each of those blue stitches in orange. Maybe later  this evening.

(Something new too)

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      It was so beautiful out yesterday I brewed a new tub of soda ash and submerged a large batch of cloths that I've been collecting all winter in anticipation of the first dye fest of the season. Did I check the weather report? Not.

There were a handful of bottles of dye stock that have been out on the deck since the fall, mostly blues, so I overdyed a cotton sweater that's been too horrible to wear in public (a combination of reds, browns and greens resembling road kill)      to see if the dyes still had some kick. Poor sweater spent today hanging over the deck rail getting rinsed in the rain all day long.

Baseball!

Sixteen days until Opening Day! I've don't bother watching the few spring training games that are broadcast on TV - the commentators seem to be so bored that they will yatter on about anything but what's happening on the field.

I dashed out of the office last night and forgot to take the current WIP off my cube wall. Unless I decide to start something new, there won't be any stitching at all this weekend which might not be a bad idea.
It's 'sposed to be sunny and 70 outside today. Sweetie took her first foray out of the house yesterday while Colin and I watched over her....just a few minutes around the front steps. While I was at work, she helped herself out the cat door and was staring in at Jim from the back deck demanding to be let in!

art rug

Like many people during these economic tough times, our family is "forting up".

The lease on Jake's apartment is up and instead of re-signing it, he's going to be moving home for a while. We have the room and it will be nice to have my favorite mechanic back in residence.

The trick was cramming this 8x11 (well, 7 something by 10 something) rug in a Honda Civic. I love a rug that is the same color as dirt - so sensible, so real. It remains to be seen what Voodoo, Karma and Sweetie will think of Juicy, who is a Maine Coon cat. He (?) looks like a beagle disguised as a black sheep.
Pictures to follow.

WIP languishing

Sometimes things just stall.

I found a little scrap of fire in the bottom of the sewing bag while I was looking aimlessly for something else - anything else, to move this piece along. I'm still shuffling things around.

The triangle is real and the smaller bits are digital. I realize that I could move these pieces around forever. Too many possibilities will keep me from making progress every time. I'm seeing the circle of things shaping up again and it pleases me.

Making way for the new

 I got the new Dharma Trading catalog in the mail the other day. Although the ink is smelly I can't help looking through it and making marks here and there knowing full well I'll be placing the order online and not on paper.

In anticipation of the new dye season, I've slashed all the prices for Raw Materials at Random Acts of Dyeness

lost 24hrs

I've finally taken the step of working beyond the mounted fabric. All that white space around the piece just won't do sometimes - especially when the standard sized canvas is not really right for the piece.  OMG, it's almost a painting.

Doing this made me very anxious - that old "artist faces blank canvas fever" came back like malaria. Then I reminded myself of the gallon of gesso I have languishing under the work table. There are do-overs aplenty in that can.


I did a little stitching on the current WIP last night but I was afraid to go too much further as I was still feeling pretty pointy headed and didn't want any blood on the design.

Yesterday (my day off) was lost to me. Tuesday night around midnight I took a new pill that's supposed to help my back pain and NOT render me deaf. Instead, I was a drooling idiot for most of my waking hours yesterday.

Jim and Colin had great fun mocking my stoned self and I will have have to revisit that tutorial, written heavily under the influence as it was. I know spell checker had a merry time of it. Wordy as hell for  a tutorial. Still, I had been thinking about what I wanted to say for some time so the thoughts were there just needing to be rounded up like so many rabid rabbits by the rancher with cotton candy for brains.

mummy making

As promised, here's my tutorial on making fiber mummies or fiber fossils.
I can't decide which name I like better.

Please read the whole thing through before you dive in and email me if you have any questions.