Quilting on the Sweet Sixteen

Fibervision has a exhibit at Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center in Santa Barbara in June and I need to finish some new work for the show. Here are a couple of close-up photos of my second piece in the Looking Up series. It's pin basted and ready to be quilted on my Sweet Sixteen.

 The fabric on the left side was created using soy wax and paint. The purple fabric on the bottom is one of my Shibori dyed pieces.

The purplish fabric that is inside the orange stripes are photos of a skylight that I printed on cotton fabric. Hand-painted, hand-dyed, photos printed on fabric, batik and commercial fabric all combined in one piece. Quite the variety!

Here's a close-up showing the quilting in the area that has the hand-painted fabric.

Stay tuned . . . plenty more to come.

Inside Out: Hormones is on its way to Houston!

Yippee, Inside Out: Hormones was accepted into the IQF Festival in Houston! And I'll be going with two of my girlfriends too.
It'll be my first time at the Houston show and I'm totally prepared to be overwhelmed. I've attended PIQF in San Jose in the middle of October for many years, and two large quilt shows in one month is just too much for me. This year, I'll skip PIQF and will go to Houston show instead. I signed up for a quilting forum and an HQ quilting class and didn't get into either of them. So, now I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I might sign up for a raw edge applique class with Ann Johnston, but haven't decided. Will any of you be there? If so, let me know and we can set up a time to meet somewhere. It would be a lot of fun to meet some of you in person.
Fibervision will be having a special exhibit at PIQF again this year. I forgot the name of it, but you'll find it in the program. Here is a preview of my quilt that will be in the PIQF exhibit. "Ancient Artifacts" incorporates a photo of an old gas station that I shot in Los Alamos, CA. It was printed on cotton fabric on my Epson printer and is combined with other unique elements from this rural area.

Sunprinted Fabric

Last weekend, my Fibervision group decided to have a sunprinting play day. I used Dye-na-flow paint instead of the usual Setacolor. I've found that both work equally as well, so use whatever you have on hand. There was a fourth piece which was more subtle than these, but one of my good friends admired it, so I gave it to her.

 I feel like I'm in an airplane looking down on the scenery.

 Love the jewel tones.

I will never have too many circles.

One of the questions in my FV group was "How do you know when a piece of fabric is finished?" Honestly, I don't think there is one answer that will be right for everyone. Some people might think that my first layer is over the top! I believe that if you follow your gut instinct you will generally make the right decision for you. How do you decide when to stop?

You're All Invited . . .

Over 60 pieces were submitted, many of them quite large. I only had three small pieces to submit, but they are all quite nice.
If you are within driving distance, I hope you find some time to see the exhibit. I would love to meet any of you, so let me know if you're coming!
Saturday, May 18th at 10:00 am will be the guided tour.

Cloth Paper

Each month, after the Fibervision business meeting and lunch, we have a mini workshop. This month, Lorna showed us how to make cloth paper.

I rummaged through my closet, gathered all sorts of paper, foil, dyed paper towels and painted dryer sheets. We slathered the papers with generous layers of diluted Elmer's glue, stuck it to a muslin backing, and set it aside to dry.

It's very colorful and quite stiff. I really have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but I will probably make more of it. It's the perfect technique for all the "stuff" I've saved over the years. Lorna has done both machine and hand stitching on her cloth paper and says the more you stitch, the softer it gets. She has made some wonderful mixed media pieces using the cloth paper.

One more tool to add to the tool box. Thanks for organizing the workshop, Lorna.

Hormones: Divide and Duplicate

My intention was to finish this quilt for the Faulkner Gallery exhibit, but I just wasn't happy with the design. It needed something, and I just couldn't quite put my finger on what the something was. It hung on my design wall for a while until I realized that the hormones should be divided. I was afraid it was a mistake, and didn't want to start from scratch. So, I decided to do the cutting in Photoshop, and see how it looked before I took scissors to fabric. Once I played with the pieces, and saw the many possibilities, the scissors came out.

The hormones were cut apart and rearranged. But it still needed something . . . More Hormones, of course.So, here I am back at the beginning, creating even more hormones. Here's a close up of the plain yellow hormone fabric before the embellishment began. If you want to see the whole process, click here. The green strip in the middle is dyed cheesecloth that will float around the hormones. There are some other surprises in store, but you're going to have to wait a while to see the final results. It will debut in a group exhibit at PIQF in Santa Clara, CA. The exhibit is called "On the Way" and it will feature 20 Journey pieces made by Fibervision members. This will be our first group exhibit at PIQF and we're all very excited about it. Hope you get a chance to see it in person.

Soy Wax Workshop

I have an electric wok that wasn't hot enough for stir frying, but it's perfect for soy wax. I also have a little melt pot and Anne has a crock pot filled with soy wax too. I have tons of stamps, spatulas and found objects that are perfect for stamping.

What is all this for? A soy wax workshop with my Fibervision friends. I gave them the basic information about soy wax and off they went. They grabbed some fabric and tools and got busy.

There are little things you learn along the way about the different tools, but there is very little that can really go wrong. This group doesn't want or need many directions. Even if I told them exactly what to do, they would do whatever they wanted anyways! That's why I LOVE this group!

I really don't like starting with white fabric, so I dunked it into very diluted setacolor (before the meeting) and set it outside to dry. Here's one of the pieces drying in the sun.

This is what it looked like after it was dry. Much better than white.

This is my collection of kitchen tools that I use for stamping. It's amazing how many different mashers you will find once you become aware of them.

Xandra had some pieces that she painted in a different workshop. She brought them along to add a layer of wax and more paint. It looks like she really likes the swirly whisk.

Here's the fabric after a setacolor dunk. Kind of cool!

Here's the same piece after I took a mono print of the surface of my board. Don't you love it?

I'll have more before/after photos to share once my paint has cured.

It's Challenge Time!

My Fibervision challenge piece is due in a few weeks. Nothing like a deadline to get me moving! This year, I found the challenge to be, well, very challenging! I think there were too many rules and I had a hard time starting. You need to use a specific letter of the alphabet, mine is "O", it has to be mounted on a specific size canvas or stretcher bars and it needs to have some recycled element in it.

Here's a sneak peek of a couple of the elements. So far these two squares have gelatin printing, screen-printing, rubbing, stamping, painting and beading and I still have a ton of handwork to do. My recycled element will be one of my thread circles. I never know how a piece will turn out ahead of time. I start with a general idea and let it evolve. This one has evolved many times already!

I just added a new page called Art Gallery. I thought you enjoy seeing some of my finished work. I'll try to add more as time allows. I didn't realize you could add additional pages until I read a post at Through My Eyes. I also added a tab for Tutorials, but haven't had the time to post any. I'll let you know when it's ready.

We had a lovely picnic at Goleta Beach after work and then went for a walk on the pier. It was very peaceful and relaxing. It was just what I needed.

Fun Friday

If you ever wondered what I look like, here I am at Ostrichland. Yep, that's right . . . Ostrichland. If you like being frightened by large animals, this is the place for you!

My daughter is home for spring break, so we decided to head north to play tourist! We stopped at Creation Station where Dawn and Patrick have created a fabulous fabric store and gift shop. Then we went on to this fun garden store. There are so many wonderful items to choose from.

We're about to start the remodeling the backyard and I'm collecting garden art. Today we bought a rusty Venus fly trap catching a bug that's made from a spark plug! I know it sounds a bit strange, what can I say. I'll take a photo for the next post, you'll love it too.

Guess where our final stop was? Can you tell what kind of bottles these are? They're all stored on their sides in a dark room that is temperature controlled.

Give up? We went to Gainey Vineyard for a tour of the facilities and then wine tasting. What a great way to start the weekend!

Tomorrow, I'm leading a Visual Texture workshop with my Fibervision group. Should be another fun day!

Group Quilt

Several months ago, my Fibervision group got together for a funny face portrait workshop led by Rene Jennings. Our friend and Fibervision member, Susan West had just lost her home of 25 years in the Tea Fire. We decided to combine these small quilts into a group quilt for her. Each portrait is an 8-1/2 x 11 finished quilt that is attached to a quilted backing. It turned out great! Here's the finished quilt.
We gave the quilt to Susan yesterday at the Fibervision meeting. Needless to say, she loved it. It's probably the most laughing she's done in the the last 6 months. If you want to see a close up of my quilt, look here and here is the second funny face I created.

A Creative Weekend

I love the weekends. I usually get some free time to spend with my fiber friends, but this weekend was all play and not much work.

Fibervision had their monthly meeting on Saturday. The business meeting was pretty quick for a change. We had art talk, show & tell, a quick lunch and bead shopping at a store that is going out of business. I can understand why it's going out of business . . . this store has been open for one year, directly across the street from where we hold our meeting, and none of us ever knew it existed. Huh? How can that be? I saw a going out of business sale on Craigslist, so 12 of us piled into the shop. I'm sure she was as surprised as we were!

Here's my haul . . . there's several types of glass beads, a fused glass pendant, a cross section of some type of nut, semi-precious stone beads, copper bells and some funky happy face beads. How's that for an eclectic assortment?After the shopping, Lucilla led a fun workshop making a collage out of photos and text from magazines. It was a round robin format with only 2-1/2 minutes to work on each collage before it was passed on.

On Sunday, I went with three friends to the Glendale Quilt Show. I'm sure you're not too surprised that I found some items that I just had to purchase.This book really grabbed my attention and begged to come home with me. It has some interesting techniques that I hope to incorporate into one of my upcoming challenges. And look at these beautiful soy fibers. Silk fusion is a technique that I've been wanting to try for a while. One of the vendors had a kit that contained the silk fibers, textile medium and instructions. Her instruction said that The Ultimate glue works well for heavy duty uses, so I decided to buy a bottle and give it a try.

After the quilt show and lunch, it was onto a SAQA meeting in Brentwood (LA). It's the first informal meeting of this type that I've been to; but plans are underway to have one each quarter. It was a fun afternoon spent with some very talented artists. Lucky me!

Funny Face

Check out this face! Isn't it a riot? I had a lot of fun playing in my studio last night! Just need to embellish, layer and quilt. You may remember that my friend lost her house in the Tea Fire. My Fibervision buddies decided to make her a quilt to cheer her up and let her know we're thinking of her. Susan Italo will mount these little quiltlets (8.5 x 11) onto a Wild Onion quilted background. I'm sure she will love it . . . wouldn't you?

Hope you all have a very happy and prosperous New Year. Given the state of the economy, I'm sure that 2009 will have many challenges, but I'm optimistic that we will be able to reverse some of the damage.

I'm grateful to have such a wonderful stash of art supplies to help me make 2009 a very colorful year!

Revision Quilts

For this second year in a row, Fibervision had a Revision Challenge. Each participant put a quilt or quilt top that they made, but no longer want, in a brown paper bag and trade their bag with another participant. The challenge is to take whatever piece your receive and Revision it into a new, wonderful, useful object or quilt.

Some people remove pieces and reuse them in some way. Some make additions and turn them into useful items like bags or boxes. Some change the look by dyeing, discharging or painting the fabric.

I received a finished quilt, complete with binding, a label and a poem. It's a pretty traditional pattern, but it had bits of yarn and tulle running through it a lot of beads. I had a very difficult time with this piece, because I know it took many hours to make. I didn't want to destroy it. I stared at it for months and often used it to cover up when I was chilly in my studio. I knew I had to do something dramatic to change it but what? Cutting it wasn't going to be enough and I couldn't take it apart because the quilting was quite dense. I decided to paint it.

Here's the quilt after it was painted with Setacolor, stamped with Neopaque and rubbed with Shiva sticks. It's very different, but it still isn't quite finished. Now I'm needle felting wool roving on top in a swirling circle pattern.

I told everyone that I was going to turn it into a bag, but they all thought it was great as a quilt and didn't want me to cut it.

What do you think? Keep it whole or turn it into a large tote bag? Hmmmm

The big reveal was today at our holiday party. Everyone made fantastic Revision pieces and fabulous food. We spent the afternoon at Cathi's beautiful house enjoying each other's company. It was a great day . . . a very welcome break from the ever present landscaping project.

Design Exercises

I'm off to Pacific International Quilt Show in Santa Clara for 3 days. I thought I would leave you with a fun design exercise to try. Last month, Jeanne Surber, shared this exercise with our Fibervision group. It's an exercise that I find very useful and have been doing for years.Cut a hole out of an index card, I have 4 different sizes that I use. Move it over a magazine page, fabric, etc. until you see a composition that you like. Jeanne traces the design, but I have a hard time seeing the details through the tracing paper, so I just draw what I see.Turn each one around to see if a different orientation looks better. Choose a composition that you like and develop in whatever way suites your style.
Sorry about the photo quality, I'm in a rush . . . I need to get ready for our road trip. Yeah!

Go with the Flow

Joanna requested some close-ups of my Go with the Flow quilt that won the blue ribbon.
This quilt was made for a Fibervision exhibit at the Big Sky Cafe in San Luis Obispo. The theme that we chose was Blue, but as usual, I had a hard time sticking to the rules. The blues were too cool; it needed some spark, so I added a bit of pink and purple to warm it up.

This is a close-up of the middle section. The pink semi-circle is Angelina fibers. The blue vertical strips on the right have been sewn together with the raw edges exposed.Hopefully, you can see some of the hand stitching in the vertical Tye-dyed section and in the diagonal lines in the middle. The top left section has a grid of pintucks.

Here you can see the beading in the smaller machine appliqued circles. This line of beading continues throughout the whole spiral.

Fibervision: New Views

I'm working hard in my studio, trying hard to meet all of my upcoming deadlines. There are so many fiber happenings coming up in the next month; it's going to be a blast!
What's this, you ask? A detail shot from my "Smoked Out" quilt that I started after the Gap Fire. I posted a rough layout here. It's completely finished and it is very colorful! I love, love, love the way it turned out. It will make it's debut at Fibervision New Views exhibit at the Cabrillo Arts Center, 1118 E. Cabrillo Blvd. in Santa Barbara.

The exhibit will hang from October 1st through October 24th. And all of you are invited to the reception on Tuesday, October 7th from 5:30 - 7:30 pm. It's going to be a fantastic show! If you can't make it to the reception, please call the gallery for their hours, 805-897-1982.

Fibervision also has an small exhibit throughout October in the display case at the Santa Barbara Main Library.

And if that's not enough, the Coastal Quilters is having their Harvest of Colors Quilt Show on October 4th and 5th. It is being held at the Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara. There will be over 200 quilts on exhibit ranging from traditional to art quilts. Ellen Ann Eddy is the featured artist. There will also be workshops with my good friend Andi Perejda and Joe Cunningham. Stop on by, Santa Barbara has an incredibly talented group of artists living here. The quilts are always amazing.

Texture Rubbings

At our latest Fibervision meeting, we did rubbings using all types of items. Some of the items used were rubber bands glued onto cardboard, bamboo table runners, hooked rug backing, stamps, rice, hot glue designs, placemats, paperclips, etc. Crayons, Shiva oil sticks, pastels, dye sticks and charcoal are among some of the materials used to produce the rubbings on either paper or fabric. Some of the rubbings looked great with pastel but didn't show at all in crayon. Some looked great on fabric, but awful on paper.These flowers were printed with a thermofax screen on a light, solid colored fabric. There was too much contrast for my liking, so I added multiple colors in the background, and now I like it a lot better.

I'm afraid I really didn't stick to the rules (nothing new there). In some cases, I layered several textures on each piece, so I don't remember what I used on every piece. I had a bunch of "ugly" pieces of fabric that needed a little something, so I used Shiva oil sticks and dye sticks to add a little texture. I used a commercial rubbing plate for the ginkgo leaves above.

I used plastic crewel canvas to rub a bit of texture here and there on this painted piece. I really like the depth it added.

Dyed in Ojai

I spent a fabulous day of dyeing with my Fibervision buddies, Susan Italo, Lora Martin, Mary Norton, and Linda Cassirer. I hope you enjoy looking at these beauties as much as I enjoyed making them. Look at this beautiful piece, I think it's my favorite. It's royal blue and turquoise with a touch of fuscia.
We went to Susan's house in Ojai (shhh, don't tell her husband that we made a mess while he was gone)! No . . . I think this one may be my favorite. Doesn't it look like a beautiful piece of agate?We had a great time dyeing, eating and drinking and I came away with some gorgeous fabric.
I've been trying very hard to resist the temptation of buying yet another set of supplies (I really mean dye). But look at the results. How will I ever resist the temptation?Each photo represents a very small section of the fabric. I didn't look for my favorite section, I randomly opened it and took a photo.They are all to beautiful. I feel myself becoming very, very weak. HELP!I'm a very good organizer, but I'm afraid there isn't any room for anything else. My studio is overflowing with wonderful stuff. I Love it all and couldn't possibly part with anything, so cleaning the studio again is not an option.