My favorite early sign of spring is in full bloom in back of my house. They pop early. They pop really early next to the dryer vent. I don’t care, I’ll take it. The little weather bug icon on my laptop screen says it’s 54 degrees. That is so wonderfully close to 60 that I am almost giddy. Then add in that the three year old decided to fully get on the potty train today, well darn it, it’s a good day!
Been working on several things in the midst of all the excitement. I don’t have photos of everything yet but here’s what I do have. The new theme for the online quilt challenge group is passage. I knew right away what I wanted to do. I dyed an old map last summer with the MSU project. It was cool enough to be a project all on it’s own. Here’s a sneak peak close up:
I want to incorporate an image of a compass onto it. I haven’t figured out how I am going to do that yet.
Also preparing to help my in-laws photograph and catalog the many, many paintings that Victor’s grandmother created a long time ago. So this means some new lighting equipment and really learning how to use all the advanced features of my camera. I had to do some research on the best ways to photograph oil paintings in order to not have giant glares on everything. She didn’t paint them with oils but egg tempera, which makes the paintings very reflective. I think I got some good ideas but it will take some trial and error for the most part. But afterward I will have all the makings for taking some awesome pics of my own pieces!
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.
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.
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.
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