30 December 2010

Doll faces and a smokey house!




These are a couple of the attempts to do doll heads. The one with the painted face - lesson learned: don't use fabrico markers to color a dolls face. The blank face - lesson learned: don't use cotton jersey to make doll heads.

I will not concede defeat making a dolls head. I will persevere so stay tuned for future attempts.

Now about the smoke.
I thought, "What a great opportunity to do snow dyeing. I have with feet and feet of snow (drifts). So I set out to snow dye (pictures coming) and most of the blog posts I read talked about nuking the fabric after the snow melted. Yeah, you can see where this is going.
All went well til the last batch. The container I was nuking in, melted and great billows of smoke poured out of my microwave. Nothing quite as good for the respiratory system as burning plastic. The last fabric - of course the most beautiful - stuck to the melted plastic and tore - a lot.
So three fat halfs are in the washer with color grabbers and synthrapol. I am a bit bummed because I was so close to actually having one, now in the trash can, that was really beautiful. The other 3 are OK I guess. Maybe I should wait til they come out of the washer before I call the whole thing a loss...

OK so I was mistaken yet again. Here are the snow dyes.





27 December 2010

On a purse binge

More along the same line. I made another purse, a clutch, out of the same old quilt. I added the stars and lots of additional quilting in a spiral sun in chartreuse thread. I chose this shape because I had purchased 3 purse snap frames about a year or more ago and had never made anything with them.. This purse is about 18" wide by about 9 or 10 " deep. Nice and roomy. I added the loops to aid in opening the purse.





Then I made another of those purses that I love so much and have now made 3 versions of. This last one is made of the lovely batiked linen from the batik tutorial. I lined it with some fabric from a failed dyeing experiment and bound the edges and lined the shoulder strap with some hand dyed (LWI) I did with Rosalita this past spring. I ordinarily don't like yellow but it does go well with the batiked linen.




I just realized that I forgot to upload the photos of the first purse I made from the old quilt. It was beautiful and very unique but wasn't working for me as a purse to I gave it to my friend Jessie, of crow cookie fame. Well, here it is:




23 December 2010

Crow Cookie


These are cookies my dear friend Jessie made. She hand cut the spiral and crow cookie just for me. They need to be immortalized before I get too hungry. The tree and stars are gone already - YUM!
This is a photo Jessie took and manipulated in a photo program. She printed it and made a card for me. Isn't this gorgeous???

20 December 2010

Molly


Call me crazy but I just love doing portrait quilts. I love my other stuff and abstract art but I get such satisfaction from doing portraits. I like trying to capture the essence of a being in fabric. I don't know if you can see these details but the white is cotton covered with organza and it sparkles. The black is a curly flocked satin with glittery bling.

In case you are wondering who Molly is, she is a full sister to Gabby about 5 years removed. They both have the same parents just not the same litter. I think Molly must be around 9 or 10 by now and she is the queen bee of my friend Donna (a.k.a. my springer neighbor). We were neighbors in Portland many moons ago.

07 December 2010

Volusia: Wrapped in Fiber

This is my ENTRY piece for the Volusia show "Carbon Footprint".  This is just the beginning of the process. I finished my piece yesterday and took the shots outdoors in dim sunlight, cropped and adjusted the photos in Corel and entered online. I took six pictures to capture the 3 dimensional piece but you can only submit 2 pictures: one full and one detail. I submitted the full environmental side and the detail of the industrial side.
I  had no options on pictures so I figured I'll either get juried in or not. I just left it up to the universe. I should know within a few weeks of the due date, December 15th.
Full frontal view

Environmental side - one of the views I submitted. This is what the earth looks like without man's interference.

Environmental detail
Industrial side
Industrial detail
                                                                        Sole of the shoe
I made this by making a pattern for a wooden shoe tree I had just gotten. Each piece (right, left and bottom) were made individually and then sewn together. It was a disaster. I took the three pieces apart and decided to glue them onto a real shoe. I liked the look of this clog (still in use but sacrifices had to be made for ART). The bottom piece was made by scanning money and printing it on to fabric. The backing is my favorite, natural linen and the batting, organic cotton and bamboo.  This also went along with the environmental theme of the piece. I machine quilted the sole with green ($) dollar signs. Each side piece was made with hand dyed cotton, cotton/bamboo batting and linen. After all the work was done, I used dry wall adhesive to attach the three sections to the shoe. The "natural" earth side was pretty much just embroidery with a tiny shell and three stones trapped under my tulle "sea". The industrial side was made with my flame colored fabric (hand dyed) a leather oval, black "slick" paint, black tulle, an embossed old piece of discolored copper for the factory with a rusted key for a smoke stack, another building made with blocks printed with a tiny stamp and rust and copper paint and that brass bit as a stack. I embroidered and painted oil derricks and three three red X's are the universal symbol for poison. Both side pieces had a beaded edge done with a blanket stitch and bead. The beads on the industrial side were perfect and menacing in color.
This piece came out EXACTLY the way I had planned so I am very pleased whether I get into the Volusia show or not.

02 December 2010

New Tutorial Tab

I finally figured out how to make a tab list of all the tutorials I've made just like the BIG bloggers. I want to start doing more tutorials but I don't want them "lost" in page after page of old posts. I am pretty happy. Yum?? Now, what tutorial to do next...