Skin detail 1. Copyright 2005 k. baxter packwood 

Skin. Copyright 2005 k. baxter packwood 

Quilt Shows & Honesty

I went to a quilt show today, in Ankeny Iowa. It's a nice little show, it's small but that's fine I can do the whole show in an afternoon and not be exhausted. There are quite a few vendors there, considering it's size, and there's the usual variety of items to be had.

At the show portion there was a goodly amount of quilts, mostly of the traditional vein. There were a couple of art quilts present, mainly of the pictoral variety, nicely executed. I have to admit I'm sick and tired of the same old machine quilting pattern that I'm seeing everywhere. I swear 9 out of 10 quilts had the same squirrely quilted pattern, whether it fit the style of the quilt or not. How about some originality here, I mean talk about following the pack.

What I really longed to see was a hand quilted traditional quilt. I know these are a lot of work as I've done one or two in my short life. But couldn't they even rustle up an antique one???

Honesty... Honesty is not walking into a vendors booth and copying down the saying on a pattern they are selling (and telling your girlfriend your going to put it on tee shirts), even if you think it's too expensive for the pattern. Talk about a total disregard for copyright law! If the vendor of the booth hadn't been such a self absorbed pig I would have told him what was going on, but he kept brushing me off like I didn't matter. Needless to say I didn't buy much from him. I'm thinking the woman who was stealing his designs should have been working with him seems like they are a match made in heaven.

White Buffalo Calf

I found this link on a forum I visited today. I'm wondering how long she will stay white, I know other buffalos have been born white but haven't followed up on color changes. There's a story about the white buffalo woman linked on this page as well, and is well worth reading.
http://www.buffalocrossing.com/index.php3?pageid=20

Updates

I updated my art website last night http://www.kbaxterpackwood.com I will be doing a major update on this website early next week. I have a lot of artwork to photograph and priced this weekend, I actually have a large body of work - hidden here and there- I just need to photograph the pieces.

I've decided to liquidate a bunch of art work, not because I want to but I need to. I still have my spring 2005 tuition to pay for, and my fall 2005 tuition is coming up due as well. I spent my spring money on my mothers funeral, part of the funeral money was going for the new store front for the business. Needless to say I've been playing catch up ever since. I have also given up on having a storefront, for now anwyay.

Unfortunately as a graudate student in Textile Science there is no money, if I had chosen to study a "real science" such as computer science I'm sure there'd be tons of money. But alas fibers and textiles have been relegated odd and peculiar persons such as myself, and has been doomed to fossildom!

My brain is still foggy, from my monthly visitor - getting older is such a riot! Therefore, I've decided that there was no sense in forcing myself to do things that I would only have to redo or undo in a week. I'm creating artwork instead, since there's no real way I can screw that up. I did manage to get a bunch of orders packed and ready to go to the shipper. But no invoices, trust me on this one - you really don't want me writing one up and ivoice today - I'm doing really good getting my email read.

I have to ask what is it about hormones that turns my brain into a pot of mush once a month? What am I missing in my diet? Is it a lack of water? I'll go drink more I'm thirsty anyway. My mother is dead so I can't ask her and she had ovarian cancer at age 23, so she wouldn't have been much help anyway.

If you think I can screw my artwork up, well maybe I can... but I reserve the right to stick it back into my compost pile if I don't like it!

Silk Velvet

As you can see in the one pic I posted, "what I started with", the velvet is very lumpy and thin looking. It was some work to get it to lay flat onto the aquabond.

Gotta run now, time to get gas it's going through the roof again, eeeee gads!

Hand-Dyed Silk Velvet. What I started out with before backing and stitching. 

In Progress 

I'll guard your wool for you! Pepper at nap time today. 

Today

Today is one of those days, and if you were expecting anything out of me today... its not gonna happen. If your a female you'll understand and I need not say more, sorry guys but this is one thing you get to miss out on in life and be glad you do.

So since my brain ceased functioning at about seven this morning I decided not to fight it anymore and just become the human vegetable I really am today.

This afternoon I got a big burst of creativity, the technical usually goes out the door when I'm a vegeatable and creativeness comes to reside in it's place. I got a wild hair to work on a new piece and it's coming along jolly fine, if I really like it I may even sell the little bugger. I'm still in my rock phase so it's looking a bit like a rock face. See in progress pics, somewhere on my blog.

I used a piece of hand dyed silk velvet, the fabric was dyed using natural dyes, all of my own creations I might add. The threads are a combo of hand dyed threads from Weeks Dyeworks and Aurifil Wool threadds. The fabric is for sale on my webstore, see link on the sidebar. I really should get the rest of the colors posted onto my webstore!

I had to put the velvet onto a piece of aquabond, it's too squirrely to slap onto a piece of fabric and just stitch away. The aquabond gives the fabric a stiffer hand, but washes out nicely. I'm using a plain piece of black cotton backing fabric as my base, not quilt batting. I had a piece in there but decided it was too thick.

I may spin up a tad bit of that goregeous wool silk noil I have and couch it to the surface, if I can get furball off my wool stash!

Tonights Sunset 

Neil Smith Prairie

If you get a chance to go, go! It's not the big wild prairie like the ones in South Dakota or in Kansas, but considering they established this place to long ago it's wonderful.

I only saw two buffalo today, they were not together, if you want to see a lot of them I've been told you need to show up very early in the morning. I have pics of the heard from about three years ago, the lighting wasn't too good that day either. It was kinda dreary today as it rained this morning, it rained pretty heavily actually.

I'm going back to the prairie next week, or after knee surgery, whichever happens first. I'm hoping I'll see more buffalo then.

Cattails at Neil Smith Prairie 

A scenic view at Neil Smith Prairie 

Brown Eyed-Susans at Neil Smith Prairie 

Cotswold Wool & Silk Noil Blend 

Make this thing work please! 

It Takes Talent

It takes talent you know, to play one of these gizmos! This is my husband John playing my mothers accordion, one of many she had. What I'd really like to know is what happened to her harmonica??? My favorite accordion was a smaller black one she had many moons ago, I could play it, not this one it's too awkward.

Name those plants

Name those plants and their uses if you know of any. I'm not sure if I have the correct names or not, I"m going on what my husband calls them, he is usually correct about their common local names, (Iowa).

I"m interested in making cordage with these plants or spinning them into threads, after I break them down into usable fibers. I also have Milkweed and Jerusalem Artichokes to work with, and a ton of Tiger Lilies. I'm sure none of the neighbors will mind my picking weeds in the alley after all they are constantly spraying them anyway!

I'm ready to get busy with my collaboration project, I've been collecting the parts to construct my 7 vessels, and have been journaling. And now that my wet studio table is cleaned off...

Good ole Virginia Creeper, or at least that what everyone around here calls it, and it's everywhere this year. 

Horseweed? People around here call this horseweed. I'm not sure, this stand is short because it's already been cut down once this year, it reaches about 6-10 feet in height depending on the year. 

The grape vine, or at least it looks like one, that grows on my fence each year. It never produces grapes but I like the way it looks. 

I'm not sure what it is. 

Blue Speckled Moon. Copyright 2001. 

Blue Moon Copyright 2001. Natural Dye Extracts and Earth Pigments on Silk Crepe de Chine, sized with soy milk. 

Sandstone 3 Copyright 2001 k. baxter packwood Compost dyed and earth pigment painted silk dupoioni. 

Body Perfect g

I need to find those three pieces and finish them asap, theres a show I want to enter them into that I think they would be definate qualifiers for.

Body Perfect 5. Copyright 2003 k. baxter packwood. The backing fabric was dyed with indigo. Top fabric painted with Earth Pigments and soy milk sizing. It is machine stitched. 

Body Perfect G - in progress. Copyright 2003 k. baxter packwood. Cotton fabric painted with Natural Dye Extracts and Earth Pigments. The fabric was treated with a soy milk sizing first. 

Play Time is Over

The water heater sprung a leak, it's 15 years old, so playtime for today is definately over. Oh well I got my 15 minutes in the sun!

The Old Man of the Woods is taking a well deserved nap. 

Images applied with Unison Soft Pastels onto a soy milk wetted background. The background was fairly saturated so the lines bled quite a bit. I will apply more of the pastels later when the fabric has dried some. 

Vine Charcoal in a soy milk suspension. This image was finger painted onto the fabric. Copyright 2005 k .baxter packwood 

Some Unison Soft Pastels, in earth tone colors. The hand print is French Red Ocher suspended in a soy milk suspension. Copyright 2005 k. baxter packwood 

French Red Ocher in a soy milk suspension on Pimatex Cotton. Copyright 2005 k. baxter packwood