Wonderful eye candy

Today I delivered the Fibre Art Network show, Canadian Content, to the gallery in Neepawa, and hung around to help hang the show.  I had seen this show once before,when it was hung in Narramatta, but this time I was able to see every piece up close and for as long as I had wanted.  This is the only way to really see a fibre art show.  I think that when you walk into a gallery, all of the pieces can result in a visual overload, that can prevent you from really, really looking and seeing.  Since I had to describe many of the techniques involved, to the gallery staff and a passing newspaper reporter, so that they can  communicate the show to vieweres and  readers, I had to take a really good look at the pieces myself.  I learned so much!

Perhaps this is why fibre artists are the biggest fans of fibre art!  You have to understand the compexity of what you are seeing, because the end result of the process often appears as such elegant simplicty

Broke the cycle

Yes, I've moved beyond the little quiltlets, and started to work on my entry for the next FAN show.  This one involves rocks.  I've been saving pictures of rocks and pictures of quilts showing rocks for several years and I'm finally going to put them to work.  I wanted to use a technique called "poverty piecing" which involves sewing hundreds of tiny scraps of fabric together , every which way.  But I didn't have any fabric scraps--so just cut up fabric to make scraps. This meant that my scraps were a little larger than necessary, but the technique worked very well, and I now have all of the rocks cut up, ready to baste into place.  Does this sound like I'm reverting to more traditional work?  Yep, you guessed it, for this piece, at least.  The rocks will be hand appliqued to a base fabric, something I haven't done in years.  With my sore hands, this may take awhile, so I'm starting now, even though the deadline isn't until August.

new challenge

Last evening was the monthly get together of my small fibre art group, Ravenesque. We had a guest who brought 59 hats, that came from the estate of an elderly lady. It was explained that this is the beginning of a new community arts program.  The hats are being given to various artists with the instruction that they should do whatever they want to change it, but that the final result should reflect something about the artists's own life. Naturally, just about everyone in the group took at least one hat. Mine is actually a very nice royal blue felt one, styled exactly like the one worn by Walt disney's Pinocchio.  I know this because there is a label inside stating so.  I hope to find some way of transferring the label to the outside, during the transformation.  We have until September to have them finished, but I will work on it as soon as I can.  I hate deadlines.

Otherwise work continues on my little 12" by 12" quiltlets.  I finished one yesterday, but wasn't sure about what I had.  I showed it to the group and got a positive reaction, so I'm very re-assured. The group can be counted on to give and honest critique!  This one included a triple spiral, but is basically a fairly subdued and quiet piece.  I tried to take a picture, but my camera is not behaving and I believe it needs to go for repairs.  I now have about 8 of the little quiltets, and should stop, but I'm still having so much fun!

Back to Lee Valley

got more bead containers, but we also went a little further and bought a second hand office chair to use in the studio. My old one was bought many years ago at a garage sale for $25, but is now quite broken and really quite dangerous.  We went to a reputable store that specializes in used office furniture and paid a good price for this, but it is by a well-known reputable manufacturer.  Since I broke myshoulder last winter, I've had trouble working for any period of time on my sewing machine, mainly because of the height of the table amd machine combined.  With a height adjustable chair one again, the problem should be solved.

More Beads

Drove across the city to buy more containers for beads. Bought 3 times as many as I had thought I might need. I get them at Lee Valley and find that the price is right and they fit and work well together.  Got the left over beads put away, including the ones in the shoe box. That took a couple of hours as there were four slightly different colours of seed beads that needed to be sorted.  After getting everything in the corner cabinet ( 6 feet high and 24 inches wide and FULL of beads), I discovered yet another shoe box full of beads!  I must have been out of my mind when I bought or acquired all those damn beads!  Anyway, this means yet another trip to Lee Valley--but not today.

No title yet

I finished the most recent "quiltlet".  This is the piece that drove me crazy with tieing off and burying the ends of the machine quilting.  I ended up putting two hanging rings on the back as it turned out more rectangular than square.  This started as a gelatin mono-print, which was cut apart and pieced back together again, including the curve of red.  Every line is machine quilted with invisible thread, some machine embellishment and then the beads.  It isn't bound but has been finished off with satin stitch.

Order out of Chaos

The beads are all safely put back in the corner cupboard.  I won't say they are sorted because I approached it a different way.  Since I usually work in colour families, I put all the glass beads within one family together in a huge bead soup.  The chip beads were stacked together in my stackable containers, again with one colour family per stack. I was stunned to find out how many different chip beads I have in shades of green.  The number of colour families was a surprize as well.  Blue quickly separated itself into two very distinct families--darker royal blues and the more teal ones.  While gold a silver were pretty easy to tame, I also found orange, red, pink, purple, black and white families.  Another surprize was the stack of seed beads containers in metallic colours other than gold and silver.  The biggest surprize was a large colour family in yellows, beiges and browns. These worked very well together, so ended up in the same bag, and just looking at them and fondling the bag has sent my creativity soaring.

The work took part of yesterday and most of today.  Once finished, I took a nap, then came to sweep the floor ( yeah, some of them got away during the sorting).  What did I find while cleaning up, -- a large shoe box full of containers of beads that had been completely missed in the sorting--a whole new colour family--and I can't even give it a name.  Grey/green/khaki?? Sounds awful, but it's one I really enjoy working with, and have couple of projects on the go using it--which is why they were segregated in another part of the studio. 

Well, nothing more will be done until I can buy more containers.