"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent; with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."~~Henri Matisse
So, in November, I put together a t-shirt quilt ordered by a customer. I hired some help too. A friend of mine helped put it together. I ordered a $200 piece of equipment to help get the backing fused to the t-shirts in less time. The steam press is totally awesome for doing t-shirt quilts.
Sometimes I just have to try my hand at it….8 x 10 on canvas board. Acrylic and paper. No name.
I LOVE making ACEOs…those are the 2.5x 3.5 inch small pieces of art that I make a lot of. I use papers, bits of fabric, paper towels and other fun things. I use a product called Fast2Fuse interfacing. It’s fusible on both sides, which is great for layering stuff, then fusing it, then I cut it up, and then I work with each piece individually with paint, inks, gesso, etc. Here is a group I finished recently. Making these is just too much fun! They are $40 each. (First row, on the right is not for sale.)
Where have you been, you say? Nowhere. Just extremely busy with job and all of the sundry other things life hands one in the way of errands, holidays and shows. Not that anything has slowed down now!!!! Bwahahaha!
But I do have pictures. Pictures of all the things I have been doing since Nov. 27. I guess we’ll start there.
This particular piece of art has been in a cheap little black frame for years while I hauled it around from show to show. Last year there were some people that expressed interest in it but they never made the great leap to taking it home with them. (Heh, heh) I read something about art one day that said a nice frame sells everything, so I decided to get it put in a nice frame.
I am still waiting! That was almost a year ago! The frame and the framing job is lovely. A master framer lives just outside of town and she did it for me. She is also an awesome pastel painter. Stop in my shop and see some of her work! This little gem will be here too…maybe….
Work is progressing on the collaboration piece…
…using butter yellow thread. I like the looks of it on the off white background. I am over 1/2 way finished, but have had to quit and do something else. This is free motion “straight” lines. I like the unevenness of it.
This week a friend and I have been working on a t-shirt quilt that has to be done by Christmas. We made great headway yesterday getting it pieced together. Good thing I bought a heat press or we would still be working on fusing the interfacing to the shirts. It will be going to the quilter EARLY next week. And THEN I have to get ready for an art spree the following weekend at the Rend Lake Center. No rest for me!
Basting today. Don’t want to hold up my fellow collaborators more than I already have. We have to get this show on the road! I am working on raw silk, front and back.
But how to stitch? The onion skin marks cry out for “do not ignore me” stitching? I like to do utility line stitching on most things just to get the layers together, but this? The onion marks are talking to me…so I guess I must listen. Check back later to see how I’m doing.
For the past 5 years, I have been involved in a group studio tour. We are taking a “breather” for the moment as a group. That tour was always the 2nd weekend of December. We have run into some bad weather on that weekend that has hampered our efforts.
Since we are taking a breather as a group, I decided to have my own open studio in October (to avoid the bad weather!) Joining me will be Kay Wiggins who weaves baskets. I would love to have other quality fiber people with me too and perhaps that will come in time. Saturday, October 25 is the day. From 10 am-5 pm, Kay will be demonstrating basket weaving and I will be demonstrating some type of printing. It’s what we both do best.
We will have refreshments, discounts and a couple of drawings as well as the demonstrating. Come on out and see us at Sands Studio at 104 E. Main St., downtown Norris City, IL. There are lots of other fun shops open and opening up in our little downtown too. You could at least make a morning of it, then have lunch at one of our local eateries.
Ok, so for months now, I have missed my category cloud on the sidebar of my blog. The wonder of the cloud is that any reader can come here and choose a category and instantly see all of the blog posts I have written about a certain subject. I think it’s the greatest invention since sliced bread. I had the category cloud on my old blog (and still do), but it didn’t materialize here when I got my new website/blog set up.
Today, I found it and how to put it back up! I hope my readers will once again enjoy browsing a topic using the category cloud on the sidebar. Try it! Read about using Citrasolve, carving stamps, breakdown printing, gelatin printing, and so much more! Blogs are a wealth of history and mine is full of all my playtime since 2008.
Well, my bad. I see there has been a category drop down list all this time. But seriously, does anyone use those? I’m not sure. I’m not sure I ever have.
I am officially in love with raw silk.
A couple of posts back I posted a photo of a piece of raw silk that I dyed with onion skins. I am going to post some closeups of the patterning here, because I am not convinced the other photo did it justice!
I held two classes at the Studio last Saturday. In the morning class, called Creating your own Papers for Collage, we had quite the adventurous time…
Two papers I dyed with leftover dyes… after I made a Shibori folded pattern with the paper. The edges were then dipped in three different dye colors. Wonderful! This was plain white copy paper. Such nice contrasts.
The next paper is charcoal drawing paper that has been crumpled up and straightened back out. The texture comes from brushing ink pads over the bumps.
You simply MUST try it, darling…
