After the Rain, A Closeup

One of the assignments I've gotten to do for the Creative Sparks class with Gabrielle Swain , was to take a macro walk around outside with my digital camera. Looking for the details. The veins in the leaves. The essential shapes. Taking out the big picture look and lasering down to the basics. This is all to help us learn how to distill our designs down to what really needs to be there.

I found that the raindrops were an added bonus, added that unexpected circular shape to the more angular leaf and branch shapes. Also the contrast in texture between water and leaf is intriguing too. This first picture is a Pride of Madera leaf. It has a slightly fuzzy texture, so it can survive in the unprotected front yard. The deer don't like to munch on fuzzy leaves.
Click on this one to see the raindrop just barely hanging onto the redwood tips. This was a hard shot to get as the wind came up and the redwoods were dancing around. Which does not help when you are shooting on the macro level!
How about this rosemary branch? I love this peely texture with the smooth pointy leaves.
Good ol' rosemary. We have way too much of it now. And those flowers are almost always there, keeping the bees around year round. I think if I ever start bee-keeping I'll have rosemary flavored honey to collect.
A detail of the berries on the tea-tree (leptospermum).

The branch texture of the Pride of Madera.
Raindrops on the calendula petals.
A squatty warty lumpy kaffir lime. Why do I identify so much with this fruit? Anyays, oh man does this ever smell heavenly.
Another view of the kaffir lime. Such an intense brilliant color. Not like a normal lime, there is less green pigmentation, a translucence to the skin. I kept it by my computer to freshen up the air and remind me of the
And finally some raindrops hanging on to the palm fronds.

I Used to Love My Garden

here is the card I made to accompany a collaborative piece that is being sent around amongst several textile artists from around the world. We are working in the Exquisite Corpse tradition, covering up our work except for a margin around two edges to give a clue to the next artist to add to the piece. We each have a theme though to help with inspiration and direction, mine is "What is your definition of a weed?"
I was inspired by my garden or ahem, weed collection.
Thus the poem:

"I Used to Love my Garden" by C.P. Sawyer
I used to love my garden
But now my love is dead
For I found a bachelor's button
In black-eyed Susan's bed.

There are six artists in each group so it will be a while until I see my piece again. The rules are firm that I am not to post a picture of my original piece (no spoilers!), so I won't do that til I get mine back once more. It is very intriguing to look at the first piece I've gotten to work on, and to wonder what is going on with the starting design under that covering fabric. Very mysterious and very fun too!

Roll It Up

I needed a really good birthday present for friend J, and she had recently posted about a colored pencil roll she'd found online at PinkChalkStudio. I guess this is also in the book "Last Minute Quilted Gifts."
Luckily the blog post had some directions (not exact, but enough to get me going). The first step was cutting strips in each color. This was made to fit the Prismacolor 24 set. That was the most time-consuming part of this project! Pulling out the red box. Then the orange box. etc... as we march through the rainbow.
After that it went pretty fast. Sewing the colored strips together, finding a good fabric for the pocket (I used a thick woven cotton, almost to a light canvas. That was folded in half and basted along the sides and bottom. The filling was flannel so that the roll would roll up small enough. I chose some fabrics for the outside of the roll, right sides together, with the ribbon tie basted on one end.
After sewing around the outside, then turning to right sides, I did some pressing. Then the stitching in the ditch between each color, over the pocket to make the holder for each pencil.
This ribbon started out as just a boring white one, but I had this really thin trim that I thought tied in (haha) really well with the fabric I'd chosen for the outside of the roll. I sewed that on with clear thread.
Tada, voila', fini',done! And I'm happy to report that she really liked it!
And it turned out that I read the notes I'd made on assembly wrong and had thus cut the colored strips twice as long as I needed. So now I have one that I can assemble for me. Haha, I love "mistakes" like that, wonder if I really really wanted one subconsciously and thus changed the number around in my conscious brain.

Quilting Retreat Weekend

I recently attended the CQFA weekend retreat in Capitola, it was over a very stormy weekend, so it was a great one to be inside sewing. I found that it was super fun just to get away from my sewing room for a while and talk to real human beings in person! We were right off the lobby as you came into the hotel, and if the door didn't get closed, guess who got to be peered at first by curious non-quilters? Luckily I was "in the zone" most of the time and it didn't bug me too much. In fact I didn't even know that that J had taken this picture of me!

The first project I decided to sew on was to set together the black/white/red blocks I received in a Quilt Mavericks "swamp". I set them together with a recently purchased batik panel and some other black/white piecing. I made little sections to set all the different sized blocks together. Yet another quilt top that goes into the make some more blocks to make this a bigger size so that then it can be a useable size bin. I don't think it is good enough to want to hang on the wall and it is too small to be a lap quilt (close though!).

I got this together in a few hours worth of sewing. It involved crawling around on the floor in the hotel conference room we were all sewing in. Fun! There were a couple portable design walls that people were using that sure would have been great to have in that situation, I don't think I can justify getting one as I just don't take many classes or workshops. But never say never, right?
Then I started cutting and piecing some star blocks (a real challenge for me!) to use in putting together the blocks I ended up with from my participation in the last CQFA round robin (mine was a celestial theme). Believe it or not, that took me most of a day! For like 5 blocks completed. Five 6" blocks. Sheesh I'm slow at piecing and cutting, especially when the measurements are 3/8" this and 1/8" that. Oh well, it will look good once it is done. I hope. I don't know if I find block making so hard, just that I'm not that great at it, so I don't practice, so I don't get better, etc., and repeat..

So it got to the last day and I just couldn't stand working on the star blocks anymore so I made this from the donated fabric pile that our members had brought, as well as my scraps from the weekend so far. It was Then that I found that I was happy and relaxed working in the improvisational and raw edge free-wheeling collage-y style that I have worked out for myself over lo these many years. I put this top together right on the backing and batting like I usually do. These two pictures show the editing process I go through as I assemble the quilt picture. Can you spot the differences??

I quilted it once I got home to my normal quilting machine. I didn't have any batting with me at the retreat, so I went next door to Cabrillo Sewing and they didn't have the fusible batting I usually prefer to use. That makes it much harder at the quilting step, but I managed.

And finally, one of our members brought fabric postcard making kits with pre-fused fabrics and fusible and timtex and postcards. So here is the one I made. I sent it to her to say thanks!

Now That's A Title!

Thanks ever so very much Laume or should I perhaps have said "Reverend Lady Laume the Purple of Burton-le-Coggles"? My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Reverend Countess Julie the Introspective of Fiddlehope in the Marsh Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Fun Presents Get Used First

My friend J, gave me these very fun creative packs and rubber stamps from Artgirlz.
The creative packs have cool papers, words to cut out and use as well as some fibers and beads that coordinate.

This is a journal page spread that I did where I used two of the words "Promising" and "cultivate" as well as some of the graphic border things too. Thanks J! It is so fun to get a gift that is instantly useable.

Citrus Colors

This is the next in the collaborative art project that I'm doing with a group based on the book True Colors. The artist who owns this particular journal chose citrus colors as her theme. The book we worked in, was like an old style cookbook which she had done a fabulous dimensional leafy cover for and we contributing artists were left to art up the cardboard dividers. See on the right there is the the little metal tab sticking out. It made a nice sturdy base to work on.

I started out by gessoing to get some texture built into the surface, painting in greens, then I started layering imagery. The peas,leaves,peppers and cucumbers are from a paper napkin which I peeled apart until I had the top layer only, this is a nice way to get some images with a lot of transparency. I had just used up yet another package of incense, this one is Japanese, and I liked the colors and Japanese printing, so this is on there, some origami paper, an artChix atc which I altered, and then a swag of furry fibers through some punched and eyeleted holes. As a final step I slathered on the gel medium and pressed into it a plastic netting (probably from fruit).

On the reverse side a similar process was used with some repeating of the elements. First gessoing, painting, then a chinese character doily, cucumbers from the napkin again, the same origami painting, as well as the same fiber and eyelets. I added a small quiltlet which I made in the citrus colors intentionally for this collage. Lastly, there is an artChix image which is a intensely tinted photograph copy on some interesting papers. One of the interesting papers behind the image is made from spritzing bleach onto a plain colored paper, makes a nice mottled texture.

A Matter of Scale

As promised yesterday here is just some of the **output** from my newly renewed flying fingers:
A teeny tiny quiltlet about 3"x5"
Many Pages ( 28"w 30"h ) not quilted yet.
Black Hole Sun (40"w x 32"h) not quilted yet.

Buddha Moon (12"w x 25"h)

Buddha Swirl ( 13"w x 19"h )

Neatness Counts

Sorry I've been blogAWOL,
life intervenes sometimes, doesn't it?! Between trying to not spend so much of my time on the computer, (a good thing, I've gotten so much done in the studio!) and teenager issues which involved a trip to the doctor for stitches, sigh(yes I was warned it was going to be tough, but I didn't know until I'd experienced it myself), the blogging just fell by the wayside.

Anyways! Moving on! (as Stephen Colbert would say)...

Turns out that one of the biggest things holding me back from getting anything done was my messy worktable. (see picture above).
I came to this conclusion as part of the work I'm doing in my mentoring class Creative Sparks with Gabrielle Swain.
She basically asked us to look around in our lives and figure out what is stopping us from getting going on making, doing, creating. And so I walked into my studio and thought to myself:
"Ok, what is it in here that makes me just do a u-turn and go read more books, magazines, blogs, watch movies, go outside, even, gasp! do the dishes instead of sit down at my worktable and **begin**.

And the number one thing was the messy surface. I couldn't see a place to start. Because there wasn't one. There was no space, too much besides just tools was out and taking up real estate on top of my worktable.
So I took a few minutes and cleaned up, I moved the scrap bag off and under the table, I emptied out the baskets, stowed away the projects in their designated boxes.
Now the only five things remaining are:

1. the cutting mat,
2. rulers/rotary cutter in the corner,
3. basket for scraps (which now gets emptied into my scrap tub under the table),
4. my thread jar (where all the threads, and broken needles go until I make them into witch balls, I find it visually exciting and inspiring so it got to stay.)
5. And one little wooden tray which currently holds the charm patches I'm cutting for J and myself as I go.

Seems too Simple huh?

Now my routine is when I'm done for the day I just tidy up after myself. So that the space is ready for me the next day. Geez, I know this is completely simple, and I don't know what it was that finally made this click in. But I sure am grateful and glad that it works for me! I used to scoff at those that kept hyper-neat spaces, seemed like a waste of time that could be spent creatively. Turns out, once I'm beginning with a clean space that it isn't really a lot of time to keep it that way. d'oh!

Times up, I'll share some of my work *output* with you tomorrow!

Atomic Pillowz

I was sorting through some fabric today and came across this faux bark cloth "atomic" print. (Faux because barkcloth is definitely not cotton nor is it polyester or silk or whatever the heck this is made out of!)Anyways, it was just the right size for recovering an old throw pillow that has been hanging around bugging me on the studio couch. Here it is cozying up with the other two pillows that I've whipped up in various shades of alarming orange. I always liked that kind of print design, felt like I'd missed out on the atomic 50's being a 60's baby and all. So it is fun that it comes back around once again. Plus the texture of bark cloth is always fun, I like seeing it next to the more prosaic cottons and cotton/poly twill here. I was just googling to see if I could come up with a fun atomic retro barkcloth resource, and here is Retro Fabrics by Melinamade, cool!
Labels: home sewing, pillow

I'll Take Three

Here I am Celebrating a new camera! Just 10 minutes ago my refurbished Canon SD900 arrived. Hooray!!
And I assembled it, and snapped some reflective pics. I'm psyched that the battery came already charged!.
This is the replacement for the SD600 that bit the dust on the way to holiday celebrations. Poor thing couldn't retract the lens. I was going to just have them fix it, but it was only about $30 more to get this refurbished new super zoomy model. Woohoo 10 megapixels, watch out! The screen is enormous. And there are some new buttons, so I may actually have to read the owner's manual...
My first post for SelfPortraitChallenge this year. Did you see all 3 reflections of me??

3 Fish

I made this little quiltlet a while ago, back when I took a class from Pamela Allen at EBHQ. We were to use our scraps and make something with a fish, in 5 minutes. Thus, the 3 fish.
And it sat there and sat there in my notebook for half a year until it got uncovered when I was tidying up. I noticed it was about to fall apart as it was just gluesticked together. So I quilted it, and now it is a little postcard sized quiltlet.

Crabby Celebrations and Discipline

Sometimes you just have to Celebrate! With a New Year crab of course, it being the season for it and all. And when you're done digging out all that succulent meat, it is hard to resist making something out of the leavings. Let's just say that the cats were following around a certain someone for quite a while after this funny picture was taken. I was worried they'd be pouncing on him during the night and chewing on his fingers.. Turns out it is hard to get the crab scent off the skin once you've donned the shell and worn it around the house for a while. Never boring around here, letmetellyou.

I did make my traditional lentils and sausage (the Italian version of blackeyed peas for New Year's Day), but it got eaten up too quickly before I remembered to snap a picture. It wasn't particularly beautiful, but it sure was yummy. The lentils represent coins, aka abundance, bounty, lots o' moolah. Sounds good to me!

The other tradition for New Years' around here is blindly choosing a word out of the bag and then concentrating on that word for the year to come. We have this list that we got from Lunaea years ago, and all four of us choose a word. Mine this year is DISCIPLINE. Everyone else got nice and easy fluffy-bunny kinda words, not me man, I'm all about the hardline, hard-core stuff this year. I was feeling kinda negative and down about it really, like I need any help whatsoever beating myself up with my slack-i-tude and sluggish production...Then my friend and sister-priestess Rue posted her new year word with the visual thesaurus. Wow did that ever turn me right around. I hadn't thought to look up the word at all, just went with negative immediately, and I was really glad to have investigated the meaning(s) of the word.

Yes, of course there are some negative definitions to the word discipline (punishment, correction to gain control or enforce obedience). There are some neutral ones like system of rules. But then there are some much more positive leaning defnitions such as training (by instruction or practice) field of study, bailiwich, branch of knowledge and my favorite training to improve strenth or self-control. Well who doesn't need that?! Of course I do, probably everyone does, right? So, armed with a new spin on things I'm now much happier with the word that will help define and shape my year to come.

Luckily I had already signed up for Gabrielle Swain's Creative Sparks class which runs for the first six months of the year. And she strikes me as someone who really *gets* discipline as it applies to the life of an artist. Already she's got me working in my studio everyday (must show up!) and that is a huge deal compared to last year let me tell you! So I guess I was already primed for this year to be one founded on discipline.

Deck Flowers

Here are some festive holiday flowers outside on my deck. The tartan used to be our tree skirt for the Christmas tree, but it still smelled of "cat" from last year no matter how many times I washed it....so it is now an outdoor table decoration, which still looked nice even through the pounding rain. It is great during the dark season to be able to look outside and see something so bright and cheery.

Originally I bought these primroses and cyclamens to have indoors as a floral display. But then I realized they would be happier outside and I would be happy to see them blooming out my window. I jammed them all into one pot and they seem pretty happy together so far.

I never got around to getting a poinsettia or a rosemary tree this year, just still too crowded in the house. I also never made a greens wreath for the front door, maybe I'll still do that since it smells so good, as I use bay,redwood, rosemary and lavender from my garden.
sigh.
So many undone things. But that is ok. Doing what I do is enough. It has to be.

Working with No Power

Yes, I'm still working on stuff, in the intermittent dark of no power. Very hard to get going when you don't know what tools will be available to you. But I'm trying to be flexible, using collage and sketchbook when the sewing machine and iron aren't available.

Sure enough the promised storms were actually as bad as predicted, I didn't believe the weather guessers, so I wasn't quite ready! But after living in the rural mountains since 1990, we finally have a generator after much driving around by the man on the mission who is my husband. So that is good, especially if you don't want to try and eat the entire contents of your refrigerator and freezer all at once. Luckily I had a 20 pound turkey in the freezer so that kept things nice and cold in there. And the boys weren't too put out about having to devour the ice cream in a day. We did lose some milk and eggnog and leftovers. No big deal there.

These are two teeny tiny quiltlets 3x4" or 3x5", something like that.
There are two more but my scanner decided to stop scanning the entire item. sigh. And my digital camera is broken too! It is in the repair center, hopefully they'll figure out why the lens wouldn't retract. sigh. Not doing so well with the electronics at the moment. Oh and my mouse stopped working too. Just the left button. Time for a new one I guess!
Check out this cool pincushion I received as a gift from a friend this past season. It is from England and I just love it. The guy looks so worried, like he's about to be stuck with a pin!

The Sun is a Ball of Gas

Here is a much better picture of the sun/star ornament for Deirdre.

I really like this shape quite a lot. It is almost a flower, and it has my favorite spiral motif too. And upon closer inspection it isn't beaded, except for the one pearl in the very center. All the rest is metallic cording of different types, mostly sadi thread. That reminds me that I have some sadi thread that I never used, hmmmm, this gives me some good ideas.

Here are a couple shots of gifts that I made for friends. They are normally called "witch balls" and are believed to keep evil witches away. Haha!They are created with the intention of tangling up any and all bad stuff headed towards you, keeping it ensnared within the ball following the tangled threads and sharp broken needles and pins.I made an extra one for myself and am trying to decide whether to hang it up by my computer workspace or my creative workspace.

In the Rainforest

I just finished up my work in the rainforest book in the True Colors collaborative that I'm participating in. There are a few more months and books to art up.
This was a really cool book to work in as it was formerly some type of an LP record holder, with the sleeves bound in on one side.
Each artist gets one sleeve pocket with a piece of watercolor paper to work on.
This is what one side of my sleeve looks like. I mostly used stamps that I thought were rainforest-y or jungle-ish to go with the jaguar and monkey magazine pictures. The images brought to mind some funny word pairings "listen to idols", "a jaguar's papers", and "nature's machinery." Something about the intricate processes of the rainforest evoke machinery to me, I think that is where that one came from...
Here is the page pulled out by the cinnamon bark wrapped wire handle that I added. Along with the same stamps repeated, watercolor crayon background, special stripey paper, and hand sewn on with sashiko thread burlap. This one is titled "Always Hungry".

Here is the other side of the sleeve holder. Magazine pictures, fabric scraps, embellished fiber piece, stamping, pen doodling, colored pencil.
"The Heart of the Rainforest" is the reverse of the pullout, this one has a nice juicy orange/red heart stamped on. All the photography imagery comes from an Americas calendar (from way back in last year! haha) .

New Year's Peace

Some final holiday pictures, and me wishing you happy days of Peace in this newly born year.The holiday sheep hiding on the windowsill behind the funky tree.
A stuffed and beaded and embroidered purple velvet ornament.
A purple glass ball with gold glitter (says Peace).
A silver beaded script Peace.
A silver beaded sun.
And a song I was thinking about and heard recently, here's a video of it:

"What's So Funny 'bout Peace, Love and Understanding"