with his permission

It's my only day off this week and I just finished making black-out curtains for the slider to the back deck. The afternoon sun is brutal now that my tent went to the 311 concert at Lakewood and never made it home. Uninspiring at best. Here's some inspiration for you.

This illustration from the Sunday NY Times book review captivated me. The article was amazing unto itself (read here) and made me less concerned about paying my Comcast bill  on time, in full.  The image fairly sizzled for me so I wrote to the artist. Paul Sahre ,  and asked for his permission to interpret it in cloth.

He graciously agreed. I visualized it huge of course, little areas of discharge on midnight navy cotton with glowing rectangles of white satin overlaid. Somehow this fits in with the beach pieces. somehow.

after a pleasant interlude

It's back to the fiber mine!  I found a drawer full of manila envelopes each crammed with a selection of scraps - sets that I made up some time ago and forgot about! Now to get them all photographed and posted. Here's one and here are the rest.

The chunk of silk skirt waistband was a find from a thrift store in Chappaqua from my last spring trip to NY over a year ago. It was vintage 60's by the style and the cloth it self was like a bowl of cream until I got my  hands on it. A wonderful garment but maybe a size 4!
It should be extra interesting if you pick out all the stitching and deconstruct it. Surprise shibori maybe?

wayback

I was looking for a picture of someone else and opened an album that I haven't looked at in many  years.  This is my personal pirate on one of our first official dates - we took his brother and my nephew to Mystic Seaport. Do I really remember letting two 5 year olds split a  Fosters Lager so we could be alone? Probably.




This is Jim and Colin down at my folks house. That truck turned a humiliating pink with a year of being brand new. The dealer was amused.

demon alginate

"Oasis" 2006

I was telling Arlee about my failed attempt at using sodium alginate  with dyes in this printing experiment. I got the ratio of dye to goo wrong and the alginate seems to block the dye off from the fabric. What you see here is the result of hours of over painting with fabric paint and it still didn't look the way it did when it was freshly printed and wet.

I've since gone nuts and chopped it into the elements which are stiff with paint.
Poker anyone?

Link Love - updated

Since nothing much artistic is happening in my world take a look at what some others are up to.

Thank you Judy for Bloomfelt.
This marvelous piece from Terry Grant.
Hugs back for Heather.
Thanks to Phyllis for reminding me why.

This sketch has drawn me back and I remember that there is an unfinished fiber version languishing upstairs.

Now that I am once again seeing these iterations side by side, I know why I lost the thread on interest in finishing the piece. I recall that I was in a hurry to put something together so I could take it to work and stitch on it but in my haste I lost the design elements that so appealed in the sketch.  There's  nothing to keep me from taking it apart an starting over. The curve and the huddle are missing here.