Landscaping Overload

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I'm afraid my life has been taken over by my very own DIY landscaping project. Just when you think it can't look any worse; you find out you're soooo wrong. New irrigation, paths and plants weren't enough . . . we've also removed the ledges and ranch style trim. It's looking pretty bare right about now. Yuck!!Mike is building a new fence and gate. When will it end?? I'm hoping most of it will be done by Christmas. I'm pretty tired of all the mud being tracked into the house. Well, the new paint job probably won't be finished, we may just have to slap a quick coat to cover all the ugliness of the missing trim.

I've managed to bond with a needle felting tool I recently purchased. This little pen can be adjusted to hold three, two or one needle. The instructions were pretty sparse, mostly keep the needles straight and don't stab your fingers. Warning: the needles are sharp! Don't ask.

What do you think about my first piece? If you have any instructions or know of a good link for needle felting, drop me a line. This piece measures 6" x 9", just the right size for a small purse to carry your camera or cell phone. Stay tuned to see if I actually find some time to put it together.

PS: Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was fantastic. All three of my kids and one lovely girlfriend came home for the holiday. I'm really thankful that my kids have become kind and thoughtful young adults. Life is Good!

Giveaway Winners

I asked my husband, Mike, to choose two numbers between 1 and 38 and he chose number 2 and 17. Congratulations Fulvia and Lisa S. Please email your address to me and I'll get your prize package in the mail.
A bit of good news: Many of the evacuation orders have been lifted, so a lot of people can return home. The bad news: A really good friend lost her beautiful house and everything in it while she was on vacation.
I'm working on a couple of projects that can't be shown yet. One is a Revision Challenge for my Fibervision group and the second project is a collaboration on a Wedding Tallis. I will applique some white on white silk doves. It's going to be gorgeous.
I'll post some photos tomorrow!

Another Fire!

Who would have ever guessed that we would have 3 major fires in Santa Barbara county within a 15 month period. The first was the Zaca fire, then the Gap Fire, now it the Tea fire. Unbelievable . . . yet it's true. And this one is by far the worse of all. It's in a heavily populated area in Montecito and Santa Barbara. Multi-million dollar mansions are burning to the ground. The unofficial count for the first 24 hours is 150 homes lost, and the fire is 0% contained.
I helped my boss evacuate last night and talked to several friends that also had to evacuate. It sounds like one may have lost her home, but we can't be sure yet. And of course, the air quality is horrible again. I wore my mask today and I can honestly say that I am over my mask phobia.
Tomorrow, I will draw 2 winners for the 100 item Giveaway. If you haven't left a comment yet, you still have time. Make sure to leave a comment here.

Giveaway

I've been waiting patiently for the 100th country to visit my blog. Well, it finally happened on election day! It was quite the historic day for the USA and my blog. Now it's time to celebrate this memorable occasion with (2) Giveaway Prizes of 100 items from my stash.

There's a variety of buttons, paperclips, beads, shells, wrapped sticks, hand carved stamps, a bead tray, several types of cording, dyed, painted, screenprinted and discharged fabric . Two lucky people will receive a package similar to the one above.

All you have to do to WIN is leave a note. I'll randomly select two names on November 15th. Good Luck!

Painted Fabric

As promised, here are the results of my layered fabric painting. This sample shows two layers of stamped fabric and the plain fabric that picked up the excess paint.

This stack had one stamped fabric and two pieces of white fabric. It really picked up some really interesting textures. It would be interesting to use the same stamp on top of the painted background to see how different it would look.

And what is this? Perhaps a piece of beautiful granite. No, it's my new printing mat. I assembled it today using insulation board, carpet padding, vinyl and duct tape. It's 2 feet wide by 4 feet long, so now I'll have a great surface to print on and clean up will be a snap.

As I was getting ready for work this morning, my boss called to tell me our main highway was closed. I turned the radio on and heard that a gunman handcuffed himself to one of the highway overpasses. Traffic everywhere came to a standstill. The highway and surface streets become parking lots. So, I had a few unexpected hours to myself and decided to work on my printing mat. The SWAT team eventually took the man into custody and everyone went to work. What a way to start the week!

Gummy Body Parts

Here's one of my Halloween offerings, "Gummy Body Parts". Ewwww . . . . that was my reaction as I put them into my shopping cart. No chance of me eating the leftovers, that makes this the Perfect Candy. One Trick or Treater said, "Bloody Fingers Build Character"; he grabbed a handful and ran!!

More Stamp Carving & Fabric Printing

I'm back . . . Here's the second installment of my stamp carving and fabric printing experiments.The first two photos show the carved stamp and the printed fabric made with that stamp. I used Neopaque paint to print the stamps in an all over design and let it dry.I layered this batch a little differently than the last one. I put a white piece of fabric down first, then layered the blue printed fabric face up. I sprayed it with water and squirted apple green and blue Dyna-flow on top.Then I added the red printed fabric face down and squished. Here's a photo of the stack when it was still wet. This is a great way to add a bit of background color to white fabric. I'll show you the final outcome in the next post.

Stamp Carving and Fabric Printing

I led the Fibervision design workshop this month. It was loosely based on Jane Dunnewold's book Finding Your Own Visual Language. A creative group of artists really doesn't require much in the way of instruction. Place materials in front of them, give them a general idea and off they go. Everyone enjoyed carving their own stamps; some used Exacto Knives, some used carving tools. I used Jacquard Neopaque to print my stamps on cotton fabric. After drying for a couple of days and heat setting, I began to play with the printed fabric.

I sprayed the fabric with water and squirted some violet, blue and green Dyna-Flow on top. As expected the Neopaque acted as a resist and the Dyna-Flow bled together around the stamped area. It was pretty juicy and I didn't want to waste good paint, so I added a layer of fabric on top and squished (technical term) the layers together.This was pretty good, but it needed a little something. Hmmm . . . Apple Green and Red should do the trick! It was pretty juicy again, so I added another layer of fabric and squished.
I couldn't wait to see what it looked like, so I peeled back the layers and took this photo. I can't wait for it to dry! I also painted two other pieces that I'll show in the next post.

More Fabric!

What can I say? I'm weak and I know it! I know . . . I always say my studio is ready to explode, but yet, I cram more in. The trip to Pacific International provided lots of opportunity to buy beautiful things. I was pretty good, but couldn't resist everything.This first photo has some purchases from a store in San Jose that Ellen Anne Eddy recommended called Fabrics R Us. If you like fabrics that stretch, shimmer and shine, this is the store for you! Actually, they have two other stores in the same mall, one has upholstery fabric and the other had and odd mix of stuff. I bought the lime green ultrasuede and three types of silk, and some plain white canvas fabric that is waiting for some paint. The three fabrics on the right came from PIQF.This is a sampler pack from Cherrywood Fabric. Cherrywood is the only solid fabric I ever buy. Well, I suppose that isn't completely true. I buy white to paint and dye and black to discharge. Anyways, if you've never seen their fabric before, you're missing out. It's all hand dyed and has a beautiful, suede like finish to it. Each piece is around 8 x 10" and there are a zillion colors.
I also bought some white on white fabric to paint and two patterns which I forgot to take a photo of. One is a Quiltcoat by Tabitha Quilts and the other is a Bellino Bag by Ghee's. I seem to collect patterns but never make anything! I'm sure I'm not alone . . . please, tell me I'm not alone!

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!

Photo Manipulation

After a full day of gardening, I needed a break. I decided to play with Photoshop. The image that I started with is very different that what I ended up with. I thought you would be interested in seeing the progress. This is a close-up of the bark of a palm tree.This is the original photo with a little contrast added.
I wanted to change the color dramatically, so I decided to solarized it.Next, I posterized it at a setting of 5. It didn't change it too much, but it added a lot of depth.Here I've changed the colors by changing the master saturation to +60, the hue to +52 and the lightness to 0.I've decided to displace a photo of circles. The horizontal and vertical setting was 70. The displacement map was stretch to fit and the undefined areas are wrap around. I like how the circles added texture to the large areas, but it's a little too obvious.

So, I added a tile filter. The number of tiles was 50, the offset was 20% and the background color was black. It knocked the circle back a bit and added another layer of texture. I like it, so I'll stop here.
Photoshop is a lot of fun. The more you play with the tools, the better you will understand what they do. Just remember to rename all your changes and Save As.
Image how surprised I would be if I opened the palm tree bark photo and found the altered image above!

Pyramid Pazzazz

I watched Kathy Rose piece zillions of colorful triangles together. She seemed to have a plan, but I didn't know what the intended outcome was. When I'm not making the quilt, I kind of like the final surprise. This quilt top was on my bed as we auditioned the inner border and I saw it again after it was quilted. I wasn't prepared for how different it looked hanging vertical on the wall. When it was flat, I hadn't noticed the plaid design, the triangles within triangles, the diamonds,, the hexagons, etc. Every time I look at it, I see different shapes! The colors are gorgeous and the color values were handled beautifully. Great job, Kathy!

Here's a close up of Pyramid Pazzazz. Kathy added the misspelled Pazzazz in honor of the musical I worked on earlier in the year. It took Second Place in the Large Traditional Pieced, Commercially Quilted category. Nancy King from Santa Barbara Quilting is responsible for the beautiful all over quilting.Here's our next project. Not quite so beautiful, huh? I didn't really get the "before" photo. All the Juniper bushes have already been removed. Those itchy bushes should have been removed 20 years ago! All you can see in this photo are the stumps. Yeah!

We also removed the Veronica bushes along the curve. We still need to remove all the dead grass/weeds. We ended up with 55 trash bags full of green waste.

Now I've got to come up with a design. Something that incorporates curved paths, drought tolerant plants and pretty colors. My husband thinks planting a garden is like designing a quilt. Do you think they are similar?