Play Day

Today, my friend Gail, and I spent several hours making "Boho" beads.  Neither of us has had much luck figuring out what we might do with them, but we both felt the need for a few hours of play.  I spent Monday through Wednesday preparing, and set off to her house with a suitcase full of "stuff", most of which was used at one time or another.  Between the two of us, the only thing that we agreed we could have had more of, was copper coloured wire.  We did try to develop a cohesive colour scheme within each bead, even to the point of pulling out a colour wheel when we disagreed about colour.  what can I say?  A good time was had by all!

After three days of preparation and four hours of work (I spent an extra hour I have I got home) I have 6 Boho Beads to show for the effort.  Here is a picture with one of my pens along side for proportion.

It's been awhile

but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy.  The first of the Batik pieces is quilted, and faced.  I'm quite proud of it, and look forward to displaying it in May.

"Solar Flare" is bound and ready for hanging.  Neither of these has a label, but I'll do all the labels at the same time.

My Improv piece has come back from the longarmer.  I was aware that the design just wasn't working for me, and didn't anticipate any future for it, but as we were looking at it, she held it up rotated 90 degrees.  Wow!  What difference!

This isn't the first time this has happened to me.  I see this second design as being absolutely right for this piece.  My plan now is to bind it, and add a hanging sleeve, with the idea of taking it to the gallery with me in May, and using it if space can be found.

There is also a sketch book cover being made.  I found the bag of 3/4" hexies that I made from circles rather than using English Paper Piecing.  These had been pretty well sewn together at some point, but there are as many again, if not more, waiting to be joined.  Those last are back in the drawer, but the others have been appliqued to a black background, and will be made into a sketch book cover as soon as is feasible.  They were beaded using Miyuki drops in a blue/green before being sewn down to the background.

Lastly, one of my groups, Textile and Fibre Arts Manitoba, is organizing an exhibition on the theme of "River".  Previously, I have mentioned a third batik piece that, but never shown it.  I have a design for a piece to be made using it as a background.  This design would fit into the theme of "River", but, after doing a lot of soul searching, I've decided that the design I have in mind will just not fit into the size constraints this exhibition calls for.  So, I'll proceed with making this, but use it for my May Gallery Show, rather than enter it into the other exhibition.  This is how it looks today.  Watch for further developments.  It's already been turned 180 degrees.

Never trust Mojo!

Before I quilt the batik pieces, I want to finish the three black pieces I have on "the go".  The "Cats" piece is finished and on the display wall.  The "Sunflower" piece, which will probably end up with the title "Solar Flare", is finished, including beading, except for the binding.  The "Moon" quilt has been problem from the beginning.  Whatever could go wrong has gone wrong.  Today I started the beading, and now know that the darn piece doesn't want to be beaded.  So next was the quilting, anticipating that both it and the "Solar Flare" piece could be bound at the same time, and save me some cutting time. Well--while machine quilting, I was able to take a good look at it and realized that there are stains.  How in hell does one get stains on black?  Then I noticed that some of the fusing was loose, so plugged in the iron.  Then accidentally touched it to one moon that was painted fusible web, and burnt off a section of it.

So how to make lemonade out of this "lemon".  It sure isn't ever going to be suitable for the Gallery show I have in May--where it was supposed to go.  So I could experiment on how to remove stains from black fabric, the way I had to experiment on how to remove wax from cotton.  Or I could use it for practicing my FMQ'g.  But neither of those can be given any priority, as I have to find a different piece for that Gallery show, as I want that sorted out, given my hatred difficulty with deadlines.

My go to strategy for frustration is to head for Starbucks, and cool off.   Well, we currently have a minus 34 C. windchill, which in itself gives a whole new meaning to "cooling off".  Ar-r-r-gh!  Thank Goodness there is a pound of coffee in the freezer.

Maybe my Mojo is back!

Changing the flannel wall appears to have been a catalyst to getting my creativity back into the "groove".  The orange flower-like circles from the last post have been pieced, and machine quilted.  I am now adding the beads.  the white marking under the beads will be removed.  I apologize for the poor quality of the full view.

Then, needing some sort of challenge, I decided to try some batik using soy wax.  "Fools rush in", I guess.  I found an old slow cooker, and then found the wax at the local Micheal's store.  Having next to no idea what I was doing, I bought far too much wax.  I'll be doing this for years to come, if I try to use it up.  Not being a total fool, I hit the internet for instructions and found some good ones on the Dharma Trading Company web site.  Three days of artistic frenzy followed.  I completed three pieces.  Two appear usable, but one will have to be re-cycled into something else.  I found the biggest challenge in figuring out the use of different dyes to achieve a desired colour mix.  

This first one went into three dye baths.  It is about 24" square.

This second one only went into two dye baths, but the second one was the same as the third one in the above. Go figure!  It's about 30" square.

The most difficult part of it was getting the wax out. Tthis took a couple of days and involved four separate trips through the washing machine.  Each trip though faded the dye slightly, leaving me with two rather soft appearing pieces to take to the next step.  Given the softness of the colour on both of them, I decided to machine quilt them using 100wt silk.  This lead to a realization that I would probably have to buy more silk--Ka-a-a-ching!  But first I checked out what I have on hand and found five different colours that would work very well with the pieces.  One was not silk, but quite suitable for the type of quilting I plan on doing.  I don't have to buy anything!

But this means that thread bought on sale, on speculation, fits into my preferred colour schemes quite nicely.  Does this mean that my work is becoming predictable?  I had thought the green and yellow colour scheme was a new one for me.  Evidently not.  

On the other hand, I made a decision a couple of years ago that I would stop trying to work for salable pieces and just make things to please myself.  Looks like I've succeeded.  So I'm not going to worry, just continue to have fun.