home
about the artist
gallery
blog
links
contact

Archive for February, 2014

How to Print a Mosaic (or not)

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

mosaic3inch

Lesley Riley is the queen bee of The Printed Fabric Bee this month. She asked for a mosaic theme using yellow/orange, purple and fuchsia.

My original plan was to use potato dextrin spread on fabric to dry and crackle.

potatodextrin

I did this once in a workshop and had some great results.

finishedpotatodextrin

However, I think I did not spread the dextrin thickly enough so I did not get a good crackle. So I went to a backup of making a thermofax screen. My first screen was 4 inches square and since Lesley asked for a 12 x 12 inch finished piece, I could do three across and down. I am really missing the big padded print table that I have had since we moved here. I am working in a much smaller space and since I am a quite messy, I had several blips. So this is the first printing that I did. I used a pale turquoise fabric for the background

mosaic4inch

I dropped a splotch of yellow on the print and had to do a fix so I brushed more yellow, pink and purple across the piece. I kind of liked it. Then, I saw that I had put the fabric down on a splotch of yellow paint on the print table so the back looked very untidy. I had another problem, I needed to do a 6 inch piece for our give away. The four inch screen did not work for that so I made a new 3 inch screen. Here is what I printed. It is a darker turquoise. So, I printed another 12 inch piece using the 3 inch screen. That is up at the top. I think I will send them both to Lesley.

mosaicgiveaway

That reminds me, I just got all of my wonky lines pieces so I should photograph them so you can see what great pieces I got.

On another note, I am not going to get my piece finished for the master class. I was turning into a crazy lady because Mr C decided we would buy a new car this week. I will be driving it quite a bit so I had to be involved. Spending time with car salesmen is an interesting activity. Not one that I enjoy. We ended up buying a new Prius 5 which we will pick up tomorrow. I drove it this morning and really loved it. I picked sea glass pearl for the color.

We have interviewed one estate sale person. A second one is coming tomorrow. When will my life return to a semblance of normalcy, and what will that be like?

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014

WW 2-26

Making Progress

Monday, February 24th, 2014

abstractmovementprogress

I have so many projects going on that I can’t possibly get bored! I am making a bit of progress of filling in the movement piece for my class with Elizabeth Barton. It is tedious, but I think I will like the end result. Here is my workspace:

abstractworkspace

I have a teflon sheet over the pattern that I printed and my sketch nearby so that I can work on the values.

I am also quilting Paige’s quilt. We are going to CA in mid-March for her birthday and it needs to be finished. I am doing tedious straight line quilting on the diagonal through the squares.

paigequiltprogress

I have been plagued with aches and pains. First, I have had a flare up of carpal tunnel in my tight hand. I tend to cramp my hand at night when I am stressed so I have found that if I wear a wrist stabilizer to bed, it really helps. I also have developed a cantankerous lower back pain. I am icing it, doing stretches and bought some new walking shoes.

On another note, we have decided that a condo or townhouse to purchase may not become available any time soon, so we are renting a very small (718 sq. ft.) apartment in downtown, near the art museum ane the theater where we attend the symphony and  close to the light rail and the street car. We move in April 7th and will have a moving sale soon after that.

Only four more posts until my 2000th. Stay tuned for some nice giveaways in celebration!

Life Gets in the Way

Thursday, February 20th, 2014

abstractmovement

I was supposed to turn in my blocked out movement piece for the master class today.  This is as far as I got. I have had a really bad sinus headache for 3 days. I had a SAQA meeting yesterday morning. Today, we had to go to the title company and sign all the papers to sell our house. Then, we went to our realtor’s office to discuss our options since there is nothing on the market for us right now. Tomorrow, we are going to look at a potential rental that we can rent for as little as 2 months. We have to  be out of here mid-April.

Here is how I attacked this layout. I printed a rasterized version on 15 sheets of paper and taped them together. Then I cut freezer paper patterns for all of the black pieces.

rasterprint

I fused all my fabrics while watching figure skating on tv. You can see Paige’s quilt waiting for me to return to the quilting!

fusingandtv

I laid a large teflon sheet over the pattern and ironed the black pieces in place. I am now adding the color pieces. Here is my palette.

abstractpalette

I checked the values because this is someting Elizabeth Barton drums into the heads of her students.

abstractvalue

Unfortunately, I did not get as far along as I had hoped.

The highlight of my week was attending a screening of Tim’s Vermeer. The Tim in this documentary is the husband of my good friend and co-curator of the Dinner at Eight exhibits at IQF, Leslie Tucker Jenison. He is an extraordinarily talented engineer. He read a book about Vermeer and the speculation of how he painted the photograph like images. He became obsessed (so to speak) with this and set out to duplicate the process. It was amazing to see how a non- artist, untrained oil painter ultimately painted a replica of a Vermeer painting. I highly recommend this movie. It was wonderful.

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, February 19th, 2014

WW2-19