So I finished up the 3 Creative Studios Quilt Challenge today. It’s about 12″ x16″, deconstructed rubbing on black fabric, lots of hand stitching with hand-dyed threads. I found that the stitching worked well with the print texture of the puzzle pieces. The whole process was largely about experimentation. With the theme of puzzle I decided to just go literal and pull out some actual puzzle pieces. I just figured out what to do as I went along. It is a departure from other work I’ve done and for that I like this.
My art group is doing a round robin art journal exchange. I’ve done round robins before but never built an art journal. So I did lots of reading and surfing around online, looking how other people construct these things. I absorbed the gist of how it all works and went about doing it my own way. It was a lot of work, but fun. Aside from a little Peltex, some eyelits, eyelit tool and cording I used materials I already had. All hand-dyed fabrics and paper. The paper was packing paper I dyed last summer during the MSU project. I really had no idea how it would look but figured it couldn’t hurt. It turned out pretty cool. I used this book as a reference. I read through various sections several times to figure out my best course of action. I went with the ‘Coptic binding’ for my journal because it seemed to be the best way to deal with all the thick page spreads. I’ll admit that I got myself a little worried at first because this binding sat under the heading of ‘advanced bindings’. Well, my worry was really for nothing. The binding was the easiest part of the project.
The theme of the book is modeled after the ‘books of hours’ from the middle ages. The idea is to have each person create a page around one routine in their lives. Seeing the beautiful in the mundane. So I worked to make the book look like something old, used, somewhat worn and imperfect. Everything is machine stitched, then painted, glued and so on.
I really like the results. Definitely something I will explore again, but maybe a few less page signatures. Now onto my other deadlines!
I finished one piece I was working on. Not crazy about it. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. And fitting it into the theme of ‘puzzle’ was weak. Here it is:
So I decided to tackle this challenge again with an idea I had been thinking about for a few weeks. How well would black fabric work with the deconstructed rubbings technique? So I borrowed some puzzle pieces from my kids and built this:
and what I got was this:
Pretty cool! Kind of reminds me of art from the 80′s. I then used some Shiva sticks to the edges with some more puzzle pieces. Fused it to some felt and then turned on the sewing machine. After some calm negotiations, the machine agreed to work. I’m not the most skilled at using sewing machines and it sometimes it takes me a little bit of time to get it working smoothly. So last night, on commercial breaks of Dr. Who on BBC, I got some free motion stitches in place.
Part of this challenge for myself is to see how quickly can I pull this piece together, without ditching the quality. I have some other things I’m going to attempt to do to this today. Stay tuned.
Whenever I start a new fiber art project, a graphic design job arrives on my doorstep. Victor’s comment was ‘well, keep starting new projects!’ And yes, I suppose he is right. When I keep both the graphic design and fiber going, both seem to do well. My fear has always been that I wouldn’t do well on either. Key word in that previous sentence is fear. Dangerous little word. It can keep me tied up for crazy amounts of time, more time than I want to admit. But recognizing it is a big part of the battle, right? So with lots of prayer and determination I am working through that scary little word and good things are happening. Never as fast as I want them to, but they are happening.
And I know, I know! I started the new year off with a bang on the blog and then disappeared. I was working on a volunteer design job for my church. I made several great new contacts, and possible future design jobs with this project. So all in all, not a bad deal. But it also deals with an area of the Catholic Church that has bugged me to no end, the graphic design, marketing and anything artistic for that matter has been visually pathetic for years. This person sums it up very well in his blog entry. So I am always happy to lend my skills to this area. Here’s a picture of what I developed for the religious ed department.
Then over in the fiber arena I’ve been brainstorming on how to produce more than one piece at a time. Maybe for an Etsy store, maybe a future art bizarre. Here I’ve set out several hand-dyed doilies on black fabric.
I then cut the fabric and I am working on embellishing the black fabric before I adhere the doilies. Eventually there will be six different pieces. We’ll see how that goes.
But in the meantime, I’ve got a book challenge to prepare for, a group challenge, a puzzle theme challenge from the 3 Creative Studios, plus a stack of my own ideas. And with all that I just got a new design job this morning. So if I disappear, don’t worry, I will return. But I will try not to disappear.
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