Earthquake on Third Street

Our little fiber art group started this project several months ago. Someone came up with the idea of doing a sliced quilt; you know, where you take an image, dissect it, and each person does a section. We wanted for the final image to depict the area that we live in and be recognizable as Humboldt County.
There is a street in the Old Town section of Eureka, CA, that has a row of houses built in the late 19th century. All of the houses were relocated there by the state when a plan was enacted to reroute Highway 101 and bypass the city. These lovely old homes would have been demolished in the process, but thank goodness they were saved. They now house several small businesses.

I will give you a brief rundown of how this project materialized. First, Ruthanne Rocha and Nancy Branch photographed the houses individually. Then, Ruthanne used a filter in Photoshop to convert the photos to line drawings. Next, the images were pasted next to one another, and another effect was applied to disort the image and create the wavy curves.
We had the image enlarged to 70"wide x 36" high and then cut it into 5 sections. Each person got a section, and we began building our houses. None of us had ever done anything like this before, so it was quite challenging. I think one of the most difficult aspects was that with the distortion of the images, there was not a rational, relatable perspective.


My house while under construction, appx. 20"high x 12"wide.

So, for the most part we made the houses in sections on a stabilizer base using hand appliqué. We each strip pieced a background, quilted it, and appliqued our house on. Now we are sewing the sections together, and then Patty Demant will work her magic by adding embellishments in the form of flowers, shrubs, and trees to complete the piece and tie everything together.

I am always trying to zoom in to see the detail work, s here is a close-up for anyone else who is interested.

 

The trim on the house was made by cutting bias strips, pressing them over freezer paper, and then adding the detail with an Identipen.

Note: The name, Earthquake on Third Street, was prompted by the fact that we live in an area that is especially earthquake prone.



Watercolors

I have signed up for Jane Lafazio's online workshop Sketching and Watercolor: Journal Style, and I just completed the first assignment. It is funny, but I have wanted to learn to do watercolor for a really long time. I have a sizable stack of books on watercolor techniques and botanical illustration by many wonderful artists, but they have sat there unused for years now.

This was my first assignment and my first watercolor as well. My shadow got way too dark, so I added the dark brown border to try to balance things out a bit. I know nothing about using water colors or pairing for that matter, and I am looking forward to learning more. This is really a lot of fun.

Pomegranate and Satsuma Mandarins.

Here is my second little painting. These paintings are quite small; they are only 5" x 7". It's so odd how I could never get up the gumption to simply do this on my own, yet now even at this crazy busy time of the year I am somehow managing to forge ahead.

I would love to be able to transfer some of my line drawings to fabric or paper so that I can either hand or machine embroider them, but I have not found a really suitable transfer technique as yet. For the marking for my machine quilting, I use a water-soluble fine-tipped blue pen on light fabric and for dark fabric I use the Staedler white water-soluble pencil. 

I have heard from knowledgeable people that the iron on heat transfer type pencils do not always come out. And Solvy won't work as I do not want to wash the project after stitching.

Any tips or suggestions on transfer methods from you readers would be greatly appreciated.

Bolt, Cloverdale: Remarkable!

 

Bolt, a new quilting and home store, has opened in Cloverdale, CA, and owners Kate Barrett and Peter Rosson have paired their interests and talents to offer an eclectic blend of quilting and sewing fabrics combined with an excellent selection of housewares.

Bolt is located right in the center of downtown Cloverdale in a beautifully restored historic building. The interior space is beautiful with its high ceilings and light flooding in through the windows, and my first impulse was to sit down in one of their beautifully upholstered chairs and take it all in.

 

As for the fabrics, you will find an eclectic collection of goods including many organics from Cloud 9 and Clothworks along with linen blends and gorgeous prints. The shop boasts a sewing area in the back that will accommodate 8 people for workshops. Many more classes will be added to the roster after the holidays, so please check on the schedule on their website.

Peter's keen eye for quality and style is immediately apparent in his selection of home décor and housewares that grace the shop. Bolt offers a lovely selection of linen toweling, flatware, and powder coat serving ware along with a great deal more. I was awed by the collection of goods, the well-presented displays, and the overall ambience of the shop.

 

Cloverdale is only 90 miles north of San Francisco, and you might also want to check out Plank Coffee next door for a great experience. I did, and I will certainly go back again.  I wish both Kate and Peter continued success in their new venture, and am looking forward to seeing this business thrive. You can read more about Bolt and check out their workshop schedule here on their website.

 

Indigo Shibori: A Great Success

I finally have some photos together of our Indigo Shibori workshop at the Natural Fiber Fair in Arcata, CA, in September. Linda Hartshorn and I co-taught this class. We usually offer it as a  3 day class, but this was condensed down to 1 day, so the students really had to work hard!
One of the things I love the most about teaching the Indigo Shibori class is that pretty well everyone is assured of instant success. It is always the factor of the unknown results that I find so appealing.

I taught the Shibori segment in the morning, and I was amazed at how much everyone was able to get done. In fact, everybody was so enthusiastic that most worked right through lunch until Linda was ready to start with the indigo outdoors.

This is a quilt top from Afghanistan that Rabia  O'Loren procured for a fundraiser for her non-profit organization that raises money. The organization is the Roshni Centre for Women. The piece was made with a reverse hand applique technique with the colored fabric underneath. The white fabric was placed on top of the colored fabric, cut away, and then hand stitched with the edges turned under. I think each block was about 20" square.
I machine quilted it for them, pro bono, which was quite a task. I used thread matching the background and outline stitched around each shape. It took a very long time, but at least now it can be used as a quilt.
Rabia set up a lovely display in the foyer of the building and sold lots of raffle tickets for the quilt over the weekend.

Here I am doing a demonstration of my painting techniques with the stencils in our booth. I always kick myself afterwards for not taking more photos of the booth. My friend Patty Demant and I shared a big booth, so it was a really fun weekend. Patty is doing eco-dyeing on silk, cashmere, and wool clothing and it is gorgeous. She is dyeing a cashmere sweater for me right now, and I can't wait to see it.
 I love doing this event each year. The people are great, the food is wonderful, the teachers are incredibly talented, and the vendors are exceptional. And, it is only 45 minutes from my home. I am indeed very fortunate.
 

Baby Quilt: Great Galloping Grasshoppers!

Just over a year ago, my niece Stacy gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. She had a very difficult time getting pregnant, but she finally succeeded after numerous fertility treatments. I don't think that any child was wanted more than her son Kolsen was nor loved more once he finally arrived.
He turned one recently, and I was happy to be included in the celebration for his first birthday.
I am a bit slow, but I finally made a quilt for Kolsen and gave it to him at his party. I used my Grasshopper Stencil, scanned the stencil, and enlarged the image from 5" to 16" wide ( a little over 300%).
Although Kolsen looks pretty angelic, I think he is really contemplating who to throw cake at next.



My Grasshopper Stencil

 

Here are a few detail shots of the quilt in progress.

The grasshoppers are machine appliqued on, and I am choosing the fabrics for the other shapes.

The shapes are all stitched on and the borders are ready to be added. I could hardly wait to start on the machine quilting.

Detail of Applique

 

TA DAAAA!!!! Finished at last.
I have some pretty fond memories of grasshoppers. We had a summer place in the mountains when I was growing up, and there were always loads of grasshoppers everywhere during the warm summer months.

Also, when I lived in Canada with my husband, the grasshoppers were so thick sometimes that the farmers would use a fine screen in front of their radiators so that that it wouldn't plug up and overheat their engine when they were driving through a swarm of the lovely critters. I used to go out and dig up fresh potatoes for dinner sometimes, and they would dive bomb me as the air was filled with a deafening clicking sound from the whir of the wings around my head. Those are very fond memories indeed!

Bloom: Painted, Stitched, and Embellished.

I am working on a new piece titled Bloom. It incorporates many techniques that I have been working on improving lately including painting, stitching, creating depth and dimension, and color value.
 I am almost finished, and I am down to the final hand embroidery now. This has been a really fun and challenging piece, but I have had a lot of fun creating it.
 It all began with a little square of fabric that I started as a demonstration on how to create a central motif without any marking in a workshop last summer at the Mendocino Art Center. I wanted to do something different, so I painted the dimpled longhorn beetles in metallic pink and purple with Lumiere paints.
Then I decided that I might as well add a few embroidery stitches to it and use it as a little sampler.
The piece floated around my studio for the past year. It would surface occasionally, and I would often think that I should do something with it.
This first image is a mockup I did in Photoshop to help me decide on the proportions and composition. I call this my cartoon, and it is actually the most important part as far as I am concerned. I often do a lot of preliminary sketches just to help my ideas gel.

That was a photograph at the upper right of the initial painted and hand embroidered piece.

All of the hand painting was done with my Textile Design Stencils.

The stencils I used were the Beetles, Moths, Poppy, Small Stones, Lattice, Passion Flower, Moths, and Springtime. I love combining them in different ways.
 The finished piece is 36" x 52".

The inspiration for this piece was the amazing diversity found in nature, and how we are rewarded for taking the time to notice and appreciate the details of our surroundings.



The gold and blue circles were hand dyed silk that was appliqued on. I hand painted the two strips and the background separately before putting them all together. I was concerned that if I made a mistake I would have to redo the whole thing, so this was a much less stressful situation.
From there on it was all just filling in the blanks. Although it is involved, that is the easiest part for me.

 

This is the Indonesian lantern fly framed by the poppy. The curved vertical unstitched areas create nice little ridges between the rows of stitching.

These are dimpled longhorn beetles. The center was painted with the passion flower stencil, but I haven't decided how to embroider the middle of it yet.

Now you can see the detail of the background. The gray stripes are 1/2" wide. 

I will post a full image when the piece is done. I still have some hand embroidery to do on it. Here are the details of what I used to create the piece: Better Black Kona cotton, wool batting, Neopaque and Lumiere paints, Aurifil thread, DMC and Weeks Dye Works embroidery floss.

 I would love to hear from you, and don't hesitate to ask any questions.
Also, I have two WORKSHOPS coming up in the next couple of weeks if anyone is interested.



New Directions

Here is a little drawing of nasturtiums from last Friday, June 27th. This is my first time working with a dip pen with a nib, and I had fun with the scribbly lines. I colored it in with my Faber-Castell Watercolor Pencils and added a bit of water to it. This piece was quite fun, and it just feels happy to me.
 I had not been able to make it to my art class in ages, and I have really missed the opportunity to draw for three hours every Friday afternoon. I have also missed seeing my teacher Mimi La Plant and all of the other students as well. Everyone in class is so incredibly talented. I am so impressed by the skills of the others, and it gives me something to strive for in my own work.
 I could always draw stylized designs well enough, but when it came to realism I was at a total loss.
 it has taken a lot of hard work to begin to develop my eye and see the things that make objects come to life. I am still struggling with contours, but I am sure that will get easier in time.
 Anyone who thinks that artists can just automatically either draw or paint should see how hard everyone in our class works to develop their skills. I think that it takes an awful lot of perseverance for anyone to truly excel at anything: even creating art.
Although people often remark that I make things look so easy when I create my fiber art, I have been doing it for so long that I am not even consciously aware many times of all of the little steps that have become such ingrained habits.
 

It Must Be Spring: Almost a Tutorial

     I have been thinking about bright happy colors lately. In my weekly ongoing for art class with the fabulous Mimi La Plant, we have been doing color studies for the last several weeks. We have been doing LOTS of mixing, and learning to use warm and cool versions of each primary color to create the perfect mixable hues. It is challenging and rewarding.
     Mimi is such a great teachers, and color happens to be a specialty of hers. I am so happy to have the opportunity to study with her and learn from her vast experience as both a painter and an art professor.
     So, I am challenging myself to work in new color palettes and spread my little wings. Pink has never been a favorite of mine, but now for some inexplicable reason I seem to be drawn to it.
     This project was supposed to be a tutorial on painting, but as often happens I was too anxious to get started. I forgot to take a beginning picture of this t-shirt that I purchased for $8.00 at an outlet store. And then, by the time I started painting, I completely forgot about the tutorial. In case you wondered, I never ever get distracted.
Stencils used are my Textile Design Stencils, and the paints are from Jacquard.

I painted the pink strip down the center by drawing the curvy shape on freezer paper, cutting out the center section, and ironing it to the shirt. Next I just placed my stencil over it and painted. Once the paint dried a little, I peeled off the freezer paper and repeated the process on the sleeves.

Now I am starting the embellishment. I recently received a shipment of hand overdyed embroidery floss and pearl cotton from Weeks Dye Works, and I am in love with this stuff. The colors are gorgeous. It's interesting in these photos how different the colors of the floss look on the white background of the first photo versus the way the colors look on the green in the second photo.
 This is a sample for a workshop I am teaching next weekend at the CNCH 2014, a fiber artisan's conference, that will be held at the Oakland, CA, Conference Center. I am so happy to have been invited there, and there are already 19 students registered!
 I am participating in Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday blog roll, so please check out her site along with the other artist's involved. Thank you.

LINEN BAGS

For quite some time I have wanted to make some heavy weight linen bags. After searching for several months, I finally found some heavy upholstery weight linen that I am really happy with.

I absolutely love the weight, textural appearance, and the feel of this fabric. Sometimes I have a desired result in mind for a project, and the reality of the finished product is far from what I had initially envisioned. It was certainly not the cases with these bags.

Cotton Duck Cloth: Front

I had made my initial prototype with cotton duck; it was fine to begin with.

Cotton Duck Cloth: Back

Next, I made three bags in the heavy-weight linen. Even though the linen was very heavy, I knew that the bags would need additional support. I wanted them to  retain their shape even when sitting empty.

I went to the local fabric store to purchase what they had on hand to use as a stabilizer.

I happened to have a fair bit of Annie's Soft and Stable stabilizer on hand and decided to use it as I had been itching to try it out. Annie's bags are very beautiful, and her products are great.

I washed the linen first, and then dried it in the clothes dryer to remove any sizing. I then hand painted it with my Textile Design Stencils using Jacquard's Lumiere and Neopaque paints. After heat setting the paint with my iron, I assembled all the layers of the bags: outer fabric, stabilizer, and lining.

I finished the bags at 10:00 pm: the night before I left to setup my vendor's booth at the EBHQ (East Bay Heritage Quilters) Show in Point Richmond near San Francisco, CA. I think that I got to bed at 11:30, and I was up at 4:30 the next morning to prepare for the 6 hour drive.
 I didn't even have time to photograph the bags before I left, so here are some quick snapshots in my booth.

 These bags were a really generous size: 22" wide x 14" deep. The stenciling came out really well on the linen. The funny thing was that when I first painted a sample, the stencil stuck to the linen so well that I thought that something really sticky must have gotten on the back of the stencil. It was only the fibers from the linen grabbing hold of the plastic.
 I do have one bag left if anyone is interested: Linen Bags 

Special Note:
I am happily participating in Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday blog roll, so please check her fabulous blog out here: Nina Marie Sayre
Thanks Nina Marie! 

Sold!

Last Sunday when I came over to my studio to pay bills and catch up with my bookkeeping, I had a really nice surprise. I had an e-mail from the Sewell Gallery in Eureka, CA, who represent me, and they had sold one of my large pieces.
The funny thing is, it was an older piece that I had pulled out of storage to fill in space if need be amongst my newer work. This piece was made in 1999. You can see the details of this piece here along with other pieces that were in the exhibit: Exhibition Gallery

A New Realm Beckons, 44"h x 59"w

This piece started as all white fabric with the exception of the solid black. The background was overdyed with Procion three times, and then it was painted with black Versatex ink on the back side. The ink work was done with an Identipen, and the fans were paper-pieced from gradated hand dyed fabrics then hand appliqued onto the background.

Deadlines: Love Them/Hate Them

 For the past few weeks I have been in manic mode creating new work for an exhibit that opens today at the Sewell Gallery in Eureka, CA. I will post a few close up shots for now, and later I will post photos of the opening, the exhibit, and full shots of the work for anyone who is interested. I would love to hear your comments if you have any. Thank you very much for taking a look at my work.
 The work falls into two different little collections which I will expand later: Contemporary Wholecloth and Fun with Colors and Shapes.

 Impressions Close Up

 Noshi Close Up

 Beetles In Space Close Up

 Grasshopper Moon

 Escape Close Up