frantic friday

In an effort to avoid the ceaseless zombie and vampire nonsense on every TV channel we spent yesterday with back to back episodes of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel.

Only a few steps removed from nonsense, the show is hypnotic in it's effort to be sincere and scholarly.  From the looks of this Mayan alphabet, they watched too much TV too.

I've always found Mayan imagery very compelling. The balance and proportion of line to shape, the boundaries all appeal to me and some of the images of ancient wall constructions got me to thinking about how I want the machine stitching on this piece to look. 


But that's down the road some.

I've gone back to using the original instigator, that golden tongue. Still working it out.

















Meanwhile, last night between customers, I got busy with what was  merely within my reach. My grandma really did use to say

"Idle hands are the devil's playground!" just before she set me to doing something like cleaning out the parakeet's cage. I can remember looking at my hands for the playground and thinking I was missing something.



Now I have to kick it into high gear and round up whatever I am taking to Elizabeth Barton's studio tomorrow.

There is cloth to drown in soda ash because we are having a Halloween Dyefest!

back to the WIP

The background is set in stone, I mean cloth. Machine stitched together with batting and backing as I've planned to machine quilt this one and the others to follow.

I've found that hand stitching on large pieces has seriously derailed my creative momentum. I'll keep hand stitching smaller works but will build the larger pieces with the sewing machine.

additional design elements photo shopped in to look like white silk organza. Cool cheat this...

Action Figures!

You are all probably glad that I've run out of cotton string. I'm jonesing already but rather than risk the dread carpal tunnel syndrome I'm going to put the crochet hooks aside for a while. 

You saw the FILM! now you can have one of the stars.  I've posted the entire cast (except for Sweetie)  over here for sale. If you know someone who works small, these could be great gifts.

Each one is crammed full of fabric snips from that glass pot I keep on the work table.  It's not that I don't throw stuff on the floor. I put the really tasty bits of favorite fabrics , some not much bigger than postage stamps, in this jar. The jar was jammed full so it was time to let go.

narrowing it down

I don't think this is going to help much, but I have leanings and discovered
that  b and j  are really close cousins. I may have to make more of that gray
fabric with the big ghosts on it. Seems I like big spooky ghosts.

g keeps calling me back too.

auditions (more)

As much as I want them to, these pieces just aren't getting along...not without scissors coming into play.








Just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, what compels, what insists....


For the eye's reference, these are all
  40 to 60 inches on whatever long side..throw your arms wide. THAT  big.


One is moving me to look again, come back and make it real. Why?
Questions I have to answer myself before I'll commit to moving ahead.



The troubling and overriding question right now is "why?"



Time to hide out with the Sunday NY Times I think.












Two more hours of this and I can see this could go on forever.  I'm going to arrange this images on a single page and start the elimination process. It's good to know that even after I choose, there will be lots of uncut cloth left to expand with. Also, know that there are other planned and significant element for the pieces based on sketches I've made. These are the grounds for the rest of what's going on.

Getting ahead of myself in in thinking about that these will be machine stitched but the how not yet clear or decided.













See..this could go on for ever