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.

An intrusion!

Sunday evening, after a very busy day, DH came down to the studio, saying that he was falling asleep in front of the tv, and thought a bit of puttering might help him stay awake.  He fooled around with some picture hangers, in the other end of the basement, and then came right into the studio, and started pulling down the flannel wall.  I had casually mentioned that the flannel was getting dirty and we would have to take it down and wash it. Say What!! When did I agree to that?? I was in the middle of sewing pieces for a project, so had to quickly clear that up and get involved.  

We found the flannel torn and a little rotten.  Not surprising considering that it's probably been up there for ten years.  So we've been busy since then buying new flannel, finding and buying wooden slats, as I had asked that the sides of the flannel be held in place as well as the top and bottom.

Today, the final part was mounted and the wooden slats screwed down over it.  I've been spending time arranging things to my satisfaction, and have put up the three pieces I'm currently working on.  The Moon quilt I've already talked about.  The cats are for a very different purpose, and will hopefully be sold at the yearly craft sale next December.  I've been working on it, more off than on, for the last two years, carefully beading every pearl-like part of the design.  It has been far more a piece to take along to stitching days, than any piece of "fine craft", and I'll be glad to see the end of it.  I think I've also talked about the orange and black discharged flowers, which will be put together as a long hanging or table  runner.

The Moon Quilt and table runner will benefit from the black batting I recently bought, as it was purchased for just that use.  Now maybe I can get back to that piecing that was so abruptly interrupted.

Moon Quilts

"Moon" quilts have been around for years.  I think that just about every art quilter has, or will, make one at some point. This week it was my turn.  

In my purging, I found 22 pieces of good quality black cotton, each roughly ( very roughly) 9" square.  I put a circle in the center of each, using a variety of techniques.  Then they were trimmed to size and sewn together.  I will sandwich them, machine quilt them, and then bead some of the circles, before adding a false back, and binding the piece.

The techniques used include rusting, painting fusible web and then ironing it on, machine embroidery, using programmed stitches, and finally discharging.  The one discharged square is second from the left , in the top row.

I used a stitch and wrap Shibori technique to get the piece ready for discharging, but the dense wrapping made discharging with a discharge paste unworkable, and I had to use bleach.  I don't like using bleach as it is so much more difficult to control.  The piece above turned out well, but, unfortunately the other two pieces I tried--didn't.  The bleach "wicked" into the surrounding fabric to the extent that the pieces were not usable.  But, oh my, how very pretty they are.

So pretty, that I have now done four more the same way and am waiting for them to dry, so I can see if there might be 5 usable  squares that would work into another piece entirely. Maybe a table runner??  I'll let you know how that works out in another post.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Something new

Over the past little while, there have been ideas in my brain.  Not necessarily new ideas, but maybe a re-visit of older ideas.  Pleased to have ideas of my own, I've given myself permission to play a bit and explore those thoughts.

This is one of them.  I started quilting it with the idea that it might possibly be useful in the gallery show I'm exhibiting in come May.  But I soon realized that the necessary skill may not be in this, and I decided to just make it an exercise in FMQ'g.  But this gave me permission to play with it and explore options.  So that is what I'm doing.

I think it was a poor effort from the beginning. The discharging was too complex, and the first thread choice, in the quilting, that echoed the swirls of the discharging, was poor.  It would have been much better if I had done a lot more discharging, giving me extra fabric  for stitching samples, before I started on the piece. But I will persevere.  I may be able to salvage something out of it.