Month: July 2007 | Crazy for Fiber

July 2007
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Archive for July, 2007

Keeping My Cool

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

It has been very hot in our town. This means taking walks earlier in the day, drinking lots of water and staying in the cool basement studio getting stuff done.

Before I show you what I have been doing, I just want to say this. Why in heck would I give a rat’s patooty to know anything about Victoria (Posh) Beckham. I am sick of the hype!! (Edited to remove the suggestion of profanity!!)

These are Texas Bluebonnets, in honor of Lady Bird Johnson. I adored her. I remember when she started the wildflowers along the freeways campaign. Every time I saw them in California, I would say a silent thank you.

Today, I decided to use some screen printed bamboo with some of my antique Japanese textiles. The first one has a lot of pink and probably does not look very wabi sabi, but I like the combo of fabrics and colors. The screen print is done on one of my discharged fabrics from the class last week. I don’t know whether to face it or do a binding in black or green.

The next piece is fused to black felt. After I quilt it, I think I will do the satin stitch edging. There are two screens on this. One is a discharge which discharged to blue. I decided to screen over it with textile paint to look like a shadow.

Wednesday is my weigh in day at Weight Watchers. I am happy to say that I have now lost 5 and 1/2 pounds in my first two weeks. I feel pretty good about that because this past week, I did a lot of eating out.

Tomorrow, we are having our Stash meeting at Gale’s house. She lives in Astoria, over on the coast. So I have to get up and be ready to take off at 8 am. It will be much cooler there, so it should be a good day. Well, any day with the stash women is a good day!!

Posted in My creations, Rant, This and that | 7 Comments »

Bamboo Fence

Monday, July 9th, 2007

I decided that the best presentation for this piece was to wrap it around stretcher bars. Finished, it measures 12 X 24 inches. I faced the bamboo with a piece of turquoise fabric to give it more stability for stretching over the frame. I like the hint of turquoise showing through the burlap. I have only tacked it so that I could take a photo. I have to do a tighter stretch. I like how it looks and am anxious to move on to something else.

Here is a closeup:

This morning I wanted to print out a bamboo graphic so that I could make a thermofax screen. Oh, oh! I haven’t printed anything since I got my new Intel inside Mini Mac. It took me until mid-afternoon to finally get the new drivers installed and the computer to recognize the printers. It requires a restarting the computer, unplugging the printers, saying several curse words and eating chocolate to get everything to work nicely together.

Here is the result, once I got the printer to work. This is a test on muslin.

I am going to use this image to make some small simple quilts, combining the bamboo image with some antique Japanese textiles.

Posted in My creations, screenprinting, Surface Design Techniques, thermofax | 3 Comments »

Happily Exhausted

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

Lisa left this afternoon to go back to San Francisco. I am very tired, but a good kind of tired. I realize that I do not have the stamina of a thirty-something!!

Today, on the way to the airport, we stopped at a couple of up and coming neighborhoods on the north side of Portland — Mississippi Street and Alberta Street. We had lunch at Grand Central Baking, thank goodness they don’t just serve sandwiches on their great bread. I was able to get a salad with chicken. Steph and M & M came along for the outing, too.

We stopped in at Bolt, and some reddish brown burlap caught my eye. I bought some as a possible background for the bamboo fence quilt. I think it works, but now I have to decide how to finish it. My inclination is to stretch it around foam core.

Yesterday, we had a girls day out. We went to Oregon City to take Mia to the Museum of the Oregon Territory. She loves anything about pioneer life. Here she is in her sunbonnet, bravely getting weighed in front of everyone.

I loved the reproduction of the pharmacy with walls of bottles and tins.

There were several quilts at the museum. Some were displayed on beds and they looked good enough to crawl in to for a nap.

These log cabin quilts were my favorite. The bottom was made from silk scraps.

We also did lots of antiquing and thrift shopping. In the afternoon, Lisa and I checked out NW 23rd. She loves all the trendy little boutiques. Last night, Steph made fish tacos for all of us. It was a delicious end to the day.

It was great having Lisa in the house. She took lots of walks with Maggie and I. We sat on the sofa and watched HGTV and read our favorite blogs together. She even dieted with me. I don’t know why she thinks she needs to lose weight, but I guess that when I was that age and weight, I always felt like I needed to lose 15 pounds. I am going to drag my tired old body off to bed.

Posted in Eating out, M & M, My Brilliant Daughters, My creations, Quilting Purchases, Stuff I Buy | 3 Comments »

A Quiet Day in the Studio

Friday, July 6th, 2007

Today, Lisa took M & M to the zoo. Mr C went to the Cathedral to man the pantry — handing out lunches to the homeless. After a nice long walk with Maggie, I settled down in the studio with one of my ufo’s. I started this in Rayna’s class at Art Quilt Claremont. The background fabric and some of the pieces are screen-printed. The others are African batiks. I want to finish this for the wabi sabi show at the Japanese Garden, so I thought that adding some bamboo might look interesting. First, I did some hand stitching with Perle cotton.

I would love to keep the frayed edge of the background fabric, but am not sure how I can do that. I have thought of attaching it to painted canvas. I could cut back the batting and then stitch it to the canvas. What do you think?

Yesterday, I walked to Westmoreland to the Haggus McBaggus shoe store and bought a new pair of red Keen’s.

M and M were going to spend the night so that their parents could go out with Lisa, but Mia got a tummy ache so Miles came to stay with us by himself. He was so happy to come and stay by himself. Look at what I found for him at the Harbor Freight store. He is going to help Grandpa do some work around the house tomorrow while the girls have a day out on their own. Here is builder Milo.

Posted in M & M, My creations, Stuff I Buy, Surface Design Techniques | 7 Comments »

A Happy Fourth of July

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

Hope you are all having a happy day, celebrating our Democracy. We must never take it for granted, as we are now finding out. That is my itty bitty rant for today.

I am having such a good day. Time to relax, make some food for a dinner on the deck with Lisa, the anticipation of M & M returning to Portland tonight, with their Mom and Dad, and seeing all my work from the discharge class on the design wall.

I am so inspired by this cloth and can’t wait to work with it.

Here are some close-ups of the work that I had to bring home to finish. The first is the construction fence resist discharge. Next to it is the second skinny tape on the silk screen piece.

The next two photos show the pieces that were done with the linear pieces of tape on the silk screen. I just love how that ugly piece of brown discharged.

These two pieces are silk that has been over-dyed – also the piece on the right in the above photo. The fabric on the right below was gift from Jeannie who comments often on my blog.

This piece had torn masking tape on the fabric so where the tape was, it is darker.

The next piece had squished discharge paste the first time around so I added new elements, using turquoise dye in the paste.

These are samplers using turquoise dye in the paste.

These are silk pieces that had been over dyed. The piece on the right was from Jeannie. The bottom piece is cotton. The silk on the left is raw silk that has been over-dyed. These all used found objects.