Our seven year old turned eight this week. So I’ve busy all week with birthday planning and celebrating. Then throw in buying a new dishwasher, delivery and install with the other usual weekly activities and it doesn’t leave much extra room for art or blogs.
But I have been working some art things a little bit. I joined a quilt challenge on the 3 Creative Studios site. I joined a little while ago and had neglected the blog aspect of it. I had to think on it first. The theme right now is ‘Puzzle’ and I’ve been working my current piece around that idea. I’m working off the first definition they posted: “problem, or other contrivance designed to amuse by presenting difficulties to be solved by ingenuity or patient effort.” The problem is how do I get these random objects I placed together and made a print out of to work together and form cohesive piece. There was no rhyme or reason when I put these things together, just curiosity.
I did some markers and pens on the piece a few days ago. Last night I stitched.
I’m pleased so far. We’ll see what happens next.
As part of my goal to use what I have, I pulled out my roving stash last night. This is just two of several lovely fiber bunches I’ve been holding onto for the last 3 or 4 years. Time to bring them out of the darkness.
I was not sure what direction I was going with the project, so I just started playing around with the stuff. Ended up pulling out this soft black fibers from the first mix and creating lines to play off the lines of the print. I’m far from done with this but I think it came out as good second layer. Adding some color the images is next. Stay tuned!
A present for a family member who got married last summer. We missed the wedding and felt pretty bad about it. But a trip to South Dakota wasn’t in the financial cards for us. Also, my brain had been sucked into the MSU Project Vortex and I couldn’t get it back. I started this project months ago, but with creative juice being gone I could not get it finished. It was sadly becoming a UFO. So with the new year I decided to finish it up and I can count it as a finished project. I call it “A Belated Wedding Present”.
Mostly commercial fabrics, stamped, hand stitched, machine stitched and felted. Also some colored pencils and markers in there too. I incorporated wood dowels from some old cloth calendars for the hanging method. Now I just need to get it to South Dakota.
Last screenprint for a little while. I need to deep clean the screen and actually make something out of the stuff I’ve made so far. I keep finding new surfaces to experiment with and curiosity gets the best of me.
Hello Zone! I’ve missed you! It’s been so very long. I promise not to wander off like that again.
Seriously, I did another printing, screening (whatever you want to call it) last night and they came out so good. I am so jazzed with the results. Yesterday morning I started sampling textures from all around my house. My three year old was trailing behind me the whole time asking “what’s that?” “why are you doing that?” “can I try?”. Anyways, I have started looking at everything in the house as possible design surfaces. It can be a little distracting at times!
Later in the evening I got to the actual printing part of the process. I mixed some fabric medium into the matte medium in hopes to soften up the ‘hand’ of the fabric when it dries. They still came out stiff but no where as much as just straight matte medium. I used an unbleached muslin fabric for printing. I actually washed and ironed the stuff before hand. I never wash my fabrics unless I’m dyeing them. But the stuff was so wrinkled that no iron would save them and I didn’t want any wrinkle lines invading my design. I’m telling you all this because I usually don’t do much prep work to my materials on projects. I just jump in and let things turn out as they may. But this process seems to need a little more control and attention. So I got all my fabric smooth and ready to go, glass of wine poured, MP3 player loaded and ready to go, goo mixed and apron on. Here’s the results:
Here are four of the six prints. I also did some printing on some purple pastel fabric that I was not real crazy about. That came out cool as well and may actually be usable now.
Here they all are drying in the laundry room. Bonus of the furnace being on is that stuff can dry pretty darn quick.
The detail of the lines just makes it really cool. I can’t wait to do more.
I’ve been busy today starting to put the Christmas decorations away. In doing so I try to pick different items to display on top of our 100 year old, upright grand piano (once I get the Christmas stuff put away). One type of art that I love to collect is anything by my Aunt Marie. She is an amazing artist. I would visit her and my uncle all the time in college, usually looking for some food, cable tv, a place to crash out and I never knew what she would be working on in her studio at the end of the hall. She mainly works in ceramics these days, although she probably is working in other mediums as well. Here’s a couple of her pieces I just put out today.
Comments (0) 
Themocracy