Off to Glendale Quilt Show

Leave for the Glendale Quilt Show tomorrow, and a two-day class with Barbara Olson called, "Responding to the Surface." I painted some fabrics yesterday with Pro-Fab Textile Paint from ProChem. Turned out nice, but I think I still want to hand-dye something for the class. No pictures today...I should have some after the weekend!

The Photo that finally righted itself!

The Sanding Tables
March 8, 2007

Ok, it's a long story, but I tried to no avail last night to insert this photo--right-side up! It refused to cooperate, I tried re-rotating, I re-loaded it at least five times--nothing worked! This morning I have been trying again--no luck. Then, I saw on my new Picasa program a button that said, "Blog This." Hmmm...I wonder if this would work (you'd have to know that the photo looked correct in Picasa, but not when it went to Blogger). As you can see, I've been supremely successful! I wanted to make sure to get a photo of some of the workers who were sanding and varnishing last Saturday!

New VISIONS Home

March 7, 2007

New Quilt Visions Home--San Diego

Last Sunday, I drove down to San Diego to help with the community build for the new home of the Contemporary Quilt Organization, Quilt Visions. I helped sand wooden planks which will be used in the ceiling of the new museum space. There was a great crew working inside, outside, and even at home preparing food to bring to serve the workers for lunch! What an organized group! Here's a photo of work in progress inside the space (this room will be the gallery, but there is additional space for classes and an office):

Future Quilt Visions Gallery room

If you go to their web page www.quiltvisions.org, and click on "Learn More," it will take you to a page which offers you a wide array of informative options. The NTC (Naval Training Center) Promenade is just going to be a wonderful, wonderful destination point--you will want to visit and spend time there!

If you live in the LA/Orange County/San Diego area, please consider lending a hand to their community build project. The first exhibit is slated for, I believe, the third week in April 2007--that's only six weeks away! To volunteer, e-mail: visions@quiltvisions.org. I highly recommend investing of your time and energy for a facility that will be home to such a prestigious fiber art organization.

Where have the last two weeks gone?

March 7, 2007

Amazing that almost two weeks have passed since my last entry! What have I been doing?

Here's a little pictorial explanation:

This is a photo taken of one of my father's paint pallettes. I think it could be an amazing piece of fiber art! I love the colors and the shapes. I like it best vertically (counterclockwise), but for some reason, it continues to load to the blog in a horizontal format.

Last week I played around with a bleach pen on some black cotton fabric--just some geometric shapes. I left the bleach on for maybe five minutes initially,then rinsed. No real dramatic change, just a dark brown. Then, I decided to re-bleach the piece, and left the bleach on closer to an hour. I checked the underside of the cotton every fifteen minutes, until I was satisfied. Today I actually took at Pigma pen to the shapes (not shown) to see how that would look--not bad!

These photos (below) are from a painted piece I did using a plastic template with all square shapes! I tried some Setacolor, but it was so transparent, it didn't work well. I took my Lumieres, and echoed the square shapes--much better. What DID look good is a mixture of the Setacolor and Lumiere--see far right row. I also used a word stamper (like the date stamper), and that seemed to work well as long as there was not too much paint on the rubber.

This coming week I will be back to the sewing machine! I'm excited, since it seems too much time has gone by since actually creating something.

Next week is the Glendale Quilt Show, and my class "Responding to the Surface" with Barbara Olson. I'm excited to try something new.

Last Art Quilt Class and Shrinky Dinks

February 24, 2007

Jane LaFazio and me

Well, hard to believe that six weeks of my Art Quilt class with Jane LaFazio have come and gone! That was way too fast! Thanks, Jane for a great class! We had a fun group, and I knew every Friday I was guaranteed some good laughs with these ladies!

Didn't get a finished piece done, but had a lot laid out to discuss--the hand-dyeds, the heat-distorted pieces, etc. After everyone shared, we got to play with Jane's new "Shrinky Dink Oven!" We used colored pencils to draw whatever we wanted onto the Shrinky Dink plastic sheets, and then we cut it out and "baked" it in the oven! Here is my experience:

Colored and cut out shapes ready to bake!

Pieces are laid onto an index card and put in the oven

Pieces begin to curl and shrink

Finished work (all in about three minutes)!

Today I spent the morning working in my sewing room--taking things off the design wall, cleaning up, pressing fabric, etc. I'm ready to start something new! Actually, I made a list of all the smaller projects that have been started in the classes I've taken since January. I 'm going to choose several to take to completion, in some form or fashion. Some just need a border, others need quilting, and some need to have "the works!" My next class is not until mid-March at the Glendale Quilt Guild Show, so I've got some three weeks to re-group and do some sewing.

Last night a group of high school friends and I went to Dream Dinners. One of the friends has a husband in Iraq, and we decided to treat her to some fun and some meals! I came home with eleven meals ready to go with minimal effort! We had our first tonight, and it was so easy!

Dream Dinners night

Does this mean I have more time to work on art?

Silk Organza Art Quilt Class Project

February 22, 2007

It's a work in progress all right! Here are some of the components of what is to evolve as my last Art Quilt Class project with Jane LaFazio!

Various hand-dyed fabrics: silk organza, silk dupioni, cheesecloth. A few rows of knitted boucle'.

Hand-dyed cheesecloth and cotton pearl thread, along with a heat-distorted crocheted metallic eyelash yarn.

Jane gave each student a half-yard of silk organza to work with. I decided to hand-dye most of it. Our local art store had a sale on the little 2 oz. jars of Procion MX the other day, so I bought a jar each of gold, bronze, rust and black (see top photo for results). I had hoped for a more mottled look, but I think the organza and the cheesecloth were just so highly absorbant, that it didn't take much to dye them full-strength! I'm still learning here!

Additionally, I used some black PRO-Fab textile paint to stamp bubble wrap to the silk dupioni. Hmmm...not sure what I'll do with that, or if I will stamp some other things to the silk, etc. As you can see, this is totally a work in progress! AND, I have less than 24 hours to "Make it work," as Tim Gunn (Project Runway) says! (By the way, I've been recording all of the shows from the previous seasons--Bravo cable channel has been running them back-to-back on Wednesday afternoons). So, I will be off now to "Make it work!" I don't want to go to our last class empty-handed!

Before I go...here's a photo of how Jane used some "Lutradur." I would like to incorporate this--once I find my piece of it (it must be hiding behind all the Timtex and Pellon stuff I bought last week!). Jane hand-dipped the Lutradur in acrylic paint, and let it dry. She then stitched the Lutradur to fabric in a grid shape. Jane then used a heat gun to burn away the Lutradur to show the fabric beneath! Love this!

Ok, enough inspiration! Time to get to work!

"Making Faces" Workshop with Ann Turley

February 22, 2007

Last Saturday I decided to take a "just for fun" class! While researching classes, instructors and guild-offered workshops last month, I came upon one by Ann Turley called, "Making Faces." It sounded like pure, whimsical fun--just what I needed!

Ann Turley, class sample, and me

Our first assignment was to brainstorm at least ten words we would use to describe ourselves. Then, we had to pick a background fabric and two fabrics for our face. Ann provided a kit we purchased in class, which included directions, several face-shaped templates and various types of noses, ears, lips, noses and some fun accessories. We used fusibles to adhere our faces/parts, and then we were to satin stitch each of the pieces. It was fun watching each person's face take shape! Here are some other classmates' faces:

Below is my almost-finished face! I'm really happy with it! Ann showed us how to use a heat gun to melt/distort various sheer fabrics and other textiles. I had some gold sheer with me, and I cut a big piece, distorted it with the heat gun, then cut it up to look like blonde-flowing hair! Now, I'm still working on attaching the hair! Trying to figure the best way to make it look good! I decided to make a part on top by folding back one layer of the hair to one side, and another to the other side. My big question now, will be how to attach the last layer so it looks good (how to stitch the top row?). Any suggestions out there?

My Face

Any suggestions on how to attach the last row of hair on top for the best-looking results? Here's a close up:

Tomorrow is my last Art Quilt class with Jane LaFazio. The past six weeks have flown by! It has been a good experience to experiment with various different techniques! Our last project is to work with a half-yard of silk organza Jane provided! We can do whatever we want with it. My youngest has been home sick the past two days, so it's slow going here!

Almost forgot...Ann gave us some "Tyvek" to play with! I had heard the buzz about Tyvek on various quilt art boards, but had never tried it... Got home, used my heat gun to melt/distort from the opposite side (paper side or outside of the envelope). Then, I used some Jacquard Lumiere paints to paint the "rocks" (as Ann calls them). I applied a bit more heat to the same areas, and this is what I got:

Tyvek (material in certain mailing envelopes) distorted with heat gun