Magic Beans

I've just finished this little 13" square piece I call “Magic Beans.” I made it for an online challenge group called The Baker's Dozen. Every few months we choose a theme and sign up. This time, the theme was caffeine.

Rusted I

Here’s what I made out of my bottle-cap rusted fabric. I’m calling it Rusted I. While brown is not a color I usually work with, I'm liking these orangy-brown rust stains. I think I'll probably be making more pieces from rusted fabric in the future. This may get some additional embellishement, maybe buttons or embroidery...



I used a new kind of batting, EcoCraft by Mountain Mist, in this quilt, and I liked it very much. (I requested a small batt when I was at Quilt Market in Portland in May.) It contains Ingeo™ fiber, which is made from corn! Here's what Mountian Mist's website says about Ingeo™: "It is also known as PLA, a polymer is made from lactic acid, which is a natural product. Lactic acid is made from fermentable sugars, sugars that are found in plants and more specifically corn. This process is both revolutionary to the textile and fiber industry and patented by our partner, Nature Works LLC."

The one problem I had is that I usually iron my batting to get it smooth before I layer my quilt, batting and backing. When I touched the iron to it, it stuck slightly, and left a residue on my iron. So I just steamed it heavily with my iron and patted it flat instead.

I probably won't be washing this piece, so I can't give you my opinion on washability. Perhaps I'll use it again in a small project, and test that out sometime later. The company recommends washing in cold water and laying flat to dry.

“Home Planet”

Since the 2009 Quilting Arts calendar is now out, I can reveal my piece, "Home Planet,” which was selected for the month of April, because Earth Day falls in that month.

12" x 12"
Cotton fabrics, cotton and rayon threads, fabric paint, Angelina fibers, watersoluable wax pastels, Tyvek, cotton batting, machine thread painted and quilted.



You can see the Tyvek (gold mountain ranges) and the Angelina (wispy clouds) in the detail shot above.

Cloth Fiber Workshop

I went with some friends, Cathy and Michele, to see the Asheville Quilt Show this weekend, and after that we wandered down to Cloth Fiber Workshop, which offers workshops and classes, sustainable and organic materials and supplies, home furnishings and wearable accessories. Cloth’s owner, Barbara Zaretsky, was there, and we enjoyed talking to her about her shop, and the classes offered there. Here is Barbara with some of her beautiful work for sale at Cloth:

It is a very nice retail space, with lovely art and art supplies to purchase. (I came home with some Indigo dye, a special button and some gorgeous wool embroidery thread.)

Next to the retail space is a large classroom, with lots of wonderful art exhibited on the walls.

If you are visiting Asheville, make sure you don't miss Cloth!

Cloth Fiber Workshop
51 Thompson Street, Suite D
Asheville NC 28803
828.505.2958

Foothills Quilters Guild

About two weeks ago, I spoke to the Foothills Quilters Guild of Shelby, North Carolina (a wonderful, friendly group, by the way), and I started out by telling this story:

I was going in to do a presentation at a guild meeting, and overheard two women having a conversation that went like this:

"Do you know who the speaker is tonight?"
"No, I didn't look."
"I hope it's not one of those art quilters again!"
"Me, too..."

I explained that I hoped that no one at this meeting felt that way, and assured them that I loved traditional quilts AND art quilts, and that I made a lot of traditional quilt patterns. After the meeting, a woman named Leah Day came up and introduced herself. Leah is an internet marketer as well as a quilter and pattern designer and teacher. I later discovered that she had posted about me on her blog (and you can read her comments about my presentation and her thoughts on art quilt/traditional quilt issues here).

I also met Harriette Grigg, who showed me a photo of her art quilt, "Baskets – Two" and told me that it was going to be displayed at the Asheville Quilt Show. It was gorgeous, and I told her that I thought she would win a ribbon. Sure enough, when I went to the show on Saturday, her quilt had a blue ribbon on it, a first place prize in the "Art Quilt, Established" category. Hoooray for Harriette!

Here's a photo of her winning quilt:

Rust dyeing experiment #2

Yep, vinegar works better. Tying the rusty objects into the fabric also helps. Here are the same rusty bottlecaps I used yesterday, only I used rubberbands to tightly tie them into the fabric. Then I put vinegar into a plastic bag with the fabric and let it steep for about 12 hours. Voila! The shot above shows most of the fat quarter.

And here's a detail shot:


The stains are darker and more well defined. And the rest of the fabric is a light reddish brown color, too. Next time, I'm using vinegar instead of salt.

Rust dyeing experiment #1

I've been eager to try rust dyeing for a while now, and yesterday I came across Bonnie McCaffery's interview with one of the rust dyeing gurus, Lois Jarvis. This made me even more interested in testing it out.

I had been collecting some metal objects for a while. Some I found around my neighborhood when I was walking the dog. The crushed old bottlecaps were retrieved from the gravel parking lot at Charlotte's Verizon Ampitheater.

I wet the fabric first, placed the metal objects on top, sprinkled them with table salt, folded the fabric over them, and spritzed it with more water. From what I've read, vinegar can make the oxidation process happen faster than salt. I'm going to try it next.

Rust is iron oxide. The iron reacts to the oxygen in the water and the air and creates rust. Rust is a mordant, and remains in the fiber permananently.

Here's what it looked like after about 12 hours:



One of the biggest surprises is that some of the metal objects that were rust-free when I started (like the bigger square with the circle in it) produced the strongest rusty marks. This made me want to run to the hardware store and buy some other metal pieces to try. Maybe tomorrow...

And here's what it looked like after about 24 hours, before rinsing and washing:



Notice the blue-grey marks in the photo above? I think they were made by twigs from my maple tree! (Keep reading and you'll find out why they made a different color.)

Here it is after washing in Synthrapol, drying and pressing. This shot shows the entire sheet of fabric, about a fat quarter, and how the objects left different marks on the fabric below them (right side) and above them (left side). It is interesting that the marks are more solid on the fabric above. This may be because the fabric was dyed on my sidewalk, and the gritty texture pushed the fabric close to the metal in some places and not in others.



A shot closer up:



And even closer:



I also put a small scrap of white cotton into an old rusty pail with some salt. This time I also added some strong tea. Tea is a tannin, and it combines with iron to make a more color-fast dye. It has the added effect of making the color shades of gray.



Here is the fabric I dyed in the bucket, after washing and drying:


Want to know more? Kimberly Baxter Packwood of The Prairie Fibers Co. has great information on her website. And Paula Burch does a good job of explaining the chemical process behind rust dyeing.

Watercolor

I'm in the last few weeks of my online Studio Journals class, and I've been working on some ideas for some new art quilts. Our instructor has encouraged us to think about how we can translate our designs into fiber. This is a water color painting I did using the lines from a Painted Lady butterfly’s wings, but with different colors. This intrigues me because I have always found it easier to work in a realistic style. In doing this exercise, I am seeing how I can take something realistic and abstract it using color and scale.

RIP: Canon PowerShot SD400

Yesterday, I discovered that the LCD screen on my Canon PowerShot SD400 digital camera was damaged. I have no idea how it happened. Those photos I took on Wednesday at the N.C. Arboretum were its swan song. Snif, snif...

The repairs would have cost more than it was worth, so after a few sad hours, I started camera shopping. I got a new camera today, a Canon PowerShot A590IS. It is going to take a while to learn the features and get comfortable with it, but I think I will like it eventually. Here are a few photos I took this afternoon in my garden. I use the macro feature a lot; I love how you see things you never noticed before when you get that close.





Here is a photo I took with my old camera last week, and a colored pencil sketch I did based on the photo:

Looking for lines

Yesterday I was at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, and set myself the job of taking photos of lines. All but the bottom row of photos were taken there. It is a marvelous place that boasts not only gorgeous plants, but beautiful architecture, spectacular decks and fences, and great sculpture. I particularly like the shots where the lines frame negative space that changes (for example, the fence shots with blue sky in some spots, clouds in some spots, and grass or trees in some spots).

It is interesting to note that none of the line photos I took at the Arboretum are plants or natural materials. I guess I was looking for primarily straight lines, and the structures of the man-made things are mostly straight.

Going round in circles

I created this collage of circles for an exercise in my online class. This week's lesson is called "Looking, Hunting and Gathering with a Camera." I already do this a lot, but searching for a single shape in one outing seemed intriguing. I took all but one of these photos today in about a 30 minutes walk with the dog down my street.

From upper left: Drainage pipe in an old stone wall; air conditioner vent, doorbell, planter, electric meter, daisy, old cauldron, cast iron sewer grate, railing joint, drainage pipe in concrete block wall, cast iron water grate (painted blue for construction), stop sign post, soft drink can, hubcap, water handle, basket handle, palm, electric meter gauge, iron pipe joint, watering can spout.

Kaleidoscopes!

Through the online class I'm taking with Sharon Boggon, I was introduced to an addictive piece of software on the internet where you can create your own kaleidoscopes! It is http://www.krazydad.com/kaleido//

Follow the directions at the bottom of this web page to paste a photo from the internet into the "Image" field that ends in .jpg, .gif or png. You can use the 5-way, 7-way or 11-way buttons to change how it looks. Move the portion of the image around to change the view further. Then you can click on the "JPEG" button and you'll get a screen where you can save the kaleidoscope you've created.

I created these kaleidoscopes using images on this blog. The blue one above is wet paint on a piece of Wonder Under. Below, the images are (in order): pincushions, "Harbinger's Hope", "Ferns", violets, and "A Dozen Hearts" (two different kaleidoscopes from the same image).

Bohemian Bouquet Block #7

It’s the fifteenth of the month, and that means it is time to reveal the next Bohemian Bouquet block in my mystery block-of-the-month program! I think this one may be my favorite so far. I'll have the patterns available for sale on my website later tonight. Here is DeLane's version on a cream background:

Christmas in July project

My local guild, Lake Norman Quilters, is having a Christmas in July bazaar at our meeting next Tuesday, July 22. We are all bringing items to sell (and money to buy, of course!). I decided to make some fiber art postcards. Here are two I did today.

Spoonflower

Have you heard about Spoonflower? It is a company just down the road from me in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that is building a company that will allow individuals to print their own designs on fabric. Imagine the possibilities!!! This is just another facet of the digital revolution that is really transforming the design world.

It's pretty expensive right now ($11 a fat quarter, $18 a yard, $90 for 5 yards, all printed 42" wide on Robert Kaufman's Kona cotton). And it takes a while to receive your fabric, about 3 weeks for the U.S.

The company is still beta-testing its process, and they are currently limiting who can participate. I applied about a week ago (the website says they are handing out a "handful" of invitations each week), and today got an invitation to participate! I am very excited. Now I have to decide what design to refine and print. The mind reels...

Here's what the Spoonflower website says:

“Spoonflower gives individuals the power to print their own designs on fabric that they can then use to make quilts, clothes, pillows, blankets, framed textile art and many, many other things that might surprise you. The craft world happens to be exploding right now. Tired of seeing the same products and the same designs everywhere, more and more people are drawn to the idea of doing it themselves, of creating things that are unique and carry within them a little bit of the passion of the individuals who made them. The folks who are waging the handmade revolution by and large do so quietly. On blogs, in sewing groups, on Etsy storefronts and in their homes, a growing number of people have decided to make and to share things they think are beautiful. Spoonflower exists to give crafters a powerful tool for expressing their creative visions using fabric.”

You can find out more on Spoonflower's website or blog. Another great blog with good information on Spoonflower is True Up. I'll post more about this after I’ve uploaded my designs and received my fabrics.

Snowflakes

I created this snowflake for this week’s Studio Journal lesson. The little diagram at the top left shows me how I did it, so I can repeat it if I want to later. Here's another one, under the Seuss Sneetches and Sylvester McMonkey McBean stickers (Love, love, love that Seuss tale!):

I cut these from origami paper, which is so great for cutting intricate snowflake designs because it is very thin.

NOTE: See my December 2007 post if you want to see a tutorial on making paper snowflakes.

Pandoras’ Dye Day 2008

The Pandoras had our annual dye day today. The day was blessedly less humid, although still plenty hot, but we had shade in Grace's garage. We dyed tons of cotton fabric, plus some other things we had brought along, including yarn, socks and t-shirts. I got a few too many pastels... not what I usually work with... because I was going easy on the dye at the beginning for fear that I was hogging it all.

But at the end, when we still had plenty of dye to use up, I started going heavier, and was more pleased with the results. Here is a linen shirt that started out as a stark white with a black design. I bought it recently with the idea of dyeing it, and it looks loads better now. Much more "me" and it will look great with black linen pants.

I really love the shibori dying we've done the past two years by wrapping the fabric around a section of UVC pipe, and then wrapping it tightly with string, scrunching the fabric down, and then dyeing:



Here are some fabrics done in jars, with a fat quarter or a half yard of fabric in the bottom of the jar, then dye, then more fabric and a different color dye, and so on. Then minimal scrunching to make sure the fabric all has dye on it, and a nice bake in the sun inside the jar.




Here is a white-on-white fabric I bought earlier this year specifically for dying. It has a nice bold design that shows up great once the fabric is dyed. Wish I had made these darker shades. I might overdye them next year!

What a fun day, with good friends, a fabulous pot luck lunch, and a great big mess!