My other bead collection. I went to the local bead shop, risking smelling like pachulie for the rest of the day, so I could get some findings for my turquoise necklace, the piece at the top. The leather has become worn and brittle, needing replacement. While there I had the owner fix the head pin on the stone to the left. I tried three times last night, and broke three head pins in a row. I finally concluded that I don't do this enough to know what I'm doing! She, the shop owner, created the loop on the headpin for free, it helped that I was buying findings. Needless to say I had to wipe the drool off of my stones when she was done fondling them. 

Glass Beads. If I were to admit one thing about my self it is this, I am a thrift store junkie! I bought these glass and wood beads today, I thought it was a bracelet actually, for a whole $1.06!!! I have plans to make them into a bracelet. I like to colors of the glass beads the best. I can only wonder what they were hanging from before. 

Drought and Garden

While I should be resting I decided to go work in the yard this afternoon. It is dry here, really really dry. Seems that everyone to the north and west of us are getting rain and or snow but not us! So hubby and I raked up all of the dead and dry stuff from around the house, we have about half the job done.

We live on a very busy street, on the way to the grocery store, and people like to toss their cigerrette butts out their windows, I know this because I find lots of them, of all brands and sizes, in my front yard. And I really don't want my house burning down because some jerk doesn't have the decency to use the ashtray that came with their vehicle!

The up side to having done this is I can see that my flowers are coming up, and I have lots of them. We need to get our fences up to keep the rabbits from eating all of the Iris, Tulips, Hyacinths, and Jonquils. My Coral Bells survived the winter, as did my Black Hollyhocks. I am not sure what happened to my Hens and Chicks, but I'm thinking they may need thinning and transplating. I'm hoping, later in April or May, to transplant my Hosta's from the backyard to the frontyard. Then we can fence in the backyard for the sheltie, giving her some room to run, and she needs it.

Next weekend, if the weather is nice like today, I will have dh repair the grape arbor, which is a glorified 1 x 6 nailed to 4 x 4 posts. One of the posts has rotted off at grass level and needs to be replaced. I trimmed the grapevines back, and hard, way back in January or so. And we will tackle the blackberry bushes, that I"m now starting to regret having bought and planted. I wish I would have bought more grapevines instead. I may be feeling like this about the Jerusalem Artichoke I planted last year as well.

Aunt Sondra

Hey Sondra, as I know you'll read my blog I got the message last night.

My aunt lives in Springfield Illinois, where the tornado hit last Sunday, she went several days without power and wasn't ever really able to get out of her little cul de sac due to all of the trees and big power poles that were down. She's now staying with her daughter, which is good we won't have to worry about her freezing to death now!

Life Columns I in progress still, I know why I waited to put the rest of the red dots on, they were quite difficult to tie. 

The bottom of Life Columns I. Now I know why I have been putting off putting the rest of the red pieces onto the quilt. The hand tyeing takes forever!!! 

Old Works New Ideas

I'm a thinker. When it comes to my work I'm very process oriented, I have about 85% of the work done in my head before I ever touch a piece of fabric. Also I find that it I work best, on a piece, if I think about it while working on other pieces, less I overwork the piece I'm currently working on. Hence I tend to have 5 or more pieces going at once.

I actually work better this way. My work is of higher quality, and I produce more of it if I'm not fixated on it at the time of execution. Usually when someone interrupts me and starts asking me questions I start to overthink the situation and that's when the grand mistakes begin. My husband noticed this about two weeks ago when I was painting some images of buffalo. He started talking to me and I started screwing up. Now he stays out of the studio if I have brush or needle in hand. Need I say that the piece I ruined was a personal favorite of his so now he really understands.

I'm journaling again, I have found that coloring the pages has an interesting affect on me, if it's colored I can't write anything bad on the page. An interesting phenomenon to say the least. I've also started glueing things into my journal, some things obviously won't work as they are 3-D but I can draw their likeness and put that on the journal pages instead.

Well I'm off, though I'm still suppsed to be on bedrest, with my feet elevated no less, I have tons of work to get done that won't wait for the fat lady to sing.

Detail of the last piece, the lighting is bad in my studio today and I did not feel like putting up the lights. It needs more embellishment. I have an idea for something more to be added to this piece, I just haven't resolved the execution yet.  

Again, months later I'm still staring at this piece as well. I know what it needs but yet can't seem to bring myself to drag out all of the beads and such and continue stitching.  

Still staring at it. I need to add more of the red at the bottom of the piece, and then it needs more, but it's not finished however, once the red is added. It needs more depth, the likes of which I don't have time to give. Hence I keep staring at this piece, months later. Who knows maybe I'll get a whisp of inspiration and finish it in the dark of the night.  

Watercolors

Anyone know what the shelf life of watercolor paints are? I have a
bunch left over from my undergraduate years, they are about 12 years
old now. The tubes are still soft and the color would appear to be
able to come out of the tube. I they are Windsor and Newton Cotman
Watercolors, which may be student grade.

We went to see the buffalo a few Fridays ago, I needed out of the house and rather badly. It's really quite out there, the buffalo were grazing heavily making the most wonderful chewing noises. It smells like spring out on the prairie. 

Storage and Monoprinting

Check out the book I posted a pic of, the author wrote another book called Where Women Create, I can't wait to see this book as well. I'm one of those people who are very affected by their surroundings. Junk, clutter, and a lot of noise are quite distracting to my creating process. I also thrive in an asthetically pleasing enviroment, read pretty into this equation.

I'm still having a hard time transforming my wet studio, in the basement, into an beautiful enviroment. It still looks like a basement no matter what I do. Plus all of the storage necessary for the studio looks really institutional as well. And that's because my hubby got it from the University for something like a dollar a running foot. Not bad for cabinetry. But it still looks institutional. Painting, later this spring, will cure a lot of those woes.

Monoprinting:

I bought vinyl for my screenprinting table today, at wally world. I no sooner walked out of walmart and the stuff was brick hard. Gross temperature change. We brought it home and immediately put it onto the table but alas there were creases already set in the vinyl from it being folded by the helpful staff at wally world.

But not to worry we came up with a way to get the creases out! Hair Dryer on the hottest setting works miracles on what would seem to be a hopeless piece of vinyl!

The vinyl is for my table for printing with the natural dyes. I can wipe up the surface when I'm done. Not so with a canvas table top. I know it has been suggested to use felt but here's a little truth about natural dyes and screen printing. While you can print with them, and while they can be made to be permanant, once they are imbedded in the table there's no way to heat set the color. I may put felt over the vinyl, I will experiment and get back with this. In the past I did this straight onto plastic, but plastic doesn't behave like vinyl does and just lived with the creases that were printed into the fabrics.

Here's a book to run out and buy! I have tons of things that need storing, and live in a house with no closets! So this book is a blessing as it gives you a lot of storage ideas, especially for items stored out in the open, that cost very little money.  

And yet another storage idea, hate those little tins everything comes in? Cigar boxes baby! I was going to alter this one hence it's wood. I still may do so, in another life time maybe. You can pick up the board boxes for really cheap, paint and deco them to make them look nicer, and less like a cigar box. I'm smitten with covering them with finely printed papers that I've manipulated in Photoshop. 

Another storage idea, just a very inexpensive basket from the discount store to hold my bigger bottles of Setacolor Transparent Paints. The bottles came from Sally's Beauty Supply. I've been using this set up for 5 years now but thought I'd share the idea with everyone. 

Inexpensive storage for all of those little paint bottles. I need three more of these units, as I have that many more bottles of paint to corral. Each tray holds between 21 and 27 of the smaller bottles of paints. These will soon be living on a shelf unit (with drawers) my wonderful dh is building for me. That's one of the perks of his remodeling my wet studio and he didn't need about a third of the materials we bought. I have left over wood for shelves and drawers!!! 

Forest Floor - in progress. I've added more color to this piece since this photo was taken. I'm using Setacolor paints to work out some ideas. I will then use the process with natural dye extracts to create a similar piece of cloth. The extracts can be costly to use in that they only last a few days, so if I'm uncertain about an idea I will use inexpensive paints first. My paint collection is going on ten years old now. I can't believe that much time has passed. Then again it's still a shocker that I've been married 5 years now! Wow who'd have thought!!!  

Journal Time

I've started experimenting with painting and drawing in my journal. It's probably not the right kind of paper to be painting on, especially with water color paints. I'm using the Caran d' Arche Neo Color II water color crayons here. I keep forgetting to bring my water color pencils down to the studio.

Once it's dry I think I will put some metallic waxes on the piece. I kinda feel the need to actually glue something to the surface. The paper is archival and the journal is "Paperchase". They have a website, I picked mine up, months ago, at Borders. I'm just now getting around to using the book.

I like coloring in my journal, someday I hope to have one of those tiny little water color sets that you can take with you everywhere.

My Gouache has dried up, after ten years of use and storage. I am going to try to cut one of the tubes open to see if I can dissolve some of the paint with water. This works with watercolors but I"m not sure if it will work with Gouache.

As you can see I have added more stitching, in a few more colors. For some reason they just don't resonate the way I want them to at this point. I look at the piece and I know what it needs - more stitching - and then I think to myself "what was I thinking"??? 

Busy Busy

I need to go purchase some photo grey fabric, or paper, to hang behind my design wall. This will help tremendously with the my photography issues. I have lights, I didn't set them up tonight, and I have the infamous black velvet curtain, but it won't work for most of my work as the pieces are too dark. I've heard that grey felt works well, it's cheap enough, and I have a JoAnns coupon so I may give it a try. Hopefully it won't be shiny like the black felt was.

Silk Chiffon scarf that I compost dyed 

More Silk Scarves that I have compost dyed 

Silk Scarves that I have compost dyed. Yes they are for sale! 

Stitching on bags

I suppose I should question my sanity for wanting to stitch on a brown paper bag. It has to be the furthest thing from being archival. But I have to admit the bag is developing a certain suppleness that is quite attractive as I work the piece. Since the bulk of my work revolves around the temporary, and the subject matter of which was once on the brink of non-existence, the use of the brown bag, which is sure to rot away, is quite fitting base for the subject.

The fact of the matter is I'm not even sure of the archivalness of the felt backing, which I think is either polyester or a wool rayon blend. I bought the felt at Joanns, off the bolt, so who knows. I do know that I have felt I bought 10 years ago, acrylic/polyester, and it is brittle already.

It's all dust anyway, so I've decided to make my pieces and enjoy them now for what they are. I'm sure to hate it after all is said and done anyway, that critical eye always looks at a piece and says we can do better next time.

Now onto the good stuff, I have my layer of base threads put down. 

I've decided to work on this one first, I backed it with a dark sage green felt, as it looked the most like the prairie grasses. I'm laying down a layer of stitches, the thread is a linen rayon blend I do believe. It smells and feels like linen but is incredibly soft. It could be a cotton linen blend. I have a bunch of spun grasses, and paper that I plan to stitch on top of the first layer of stitches. I haven't decided what to do with the buffalo yet, I may add a layer of quillwork, I'm leaving it for last as I'm not a hundred percent sure. What I keep telling myself is if I mess it up this is the one piece that I can definately recreate, well with the exception of the hand-dyed threads.  

Some samples of work we will be doing in the

Mark Making with Nature Class

. This class is online so you don't need to worry about traveling, it begins April 12th. 

Mystery Orange. This skein of wool was given to me last summer, it was dyed using natural dyes, the mordant was either chrome or tin. She couldn't remember which dye sequence or materials she used. Any ideas? 

Silk Crepe de Chine

I think I may have discovered a solution to my problem, quilt batting that can be ironed onto the fabric. Since I had intended for it to have a backing this may work. My other option would be to use aquabond another nice option that won't ruin the hand of the fabric, or leave a residue.

Here's the brown paper bag I printed on that I'm thinking of stitching. Thank you Dale Anne for the stabilzer idea, though I may use a piece of felt instead but that definately solves the problem of the paper being destroyed in the process. 

The rust dyed piece I printed on, I'll use it in something else. It needs a lot of something added to with it to give it the presence it needs. 

We went to the prairie tonight to see the Buffalo, ok they're really bison but whatever! This piece has inspired me based on what I saw tonight. I may do the whole lenght, but I definately like this end of the fabric. Anyway, I started out printing on bronw paper bags and then moved to my rust dye fabrics, but I like this piece of dye painted (with natural dyes) crepe de chine silk the best. I'm just not sure if it'll do well for hand stitching, so I'm off to practice on a piece of scrap first. 

Rust and Pigment on Paper

The coppery swirly line is metallic copper watercolor paint. The other colors are natural pigments that I mixed with soymilk. And rusted objects of course.

Kirry Toose

Recieved the latest issue of Quilting Arts magazine today, the artist profile is of Kirry Toose from Australia. Her work is incredibly interesting, difinately what I would consider art.

I notice that while folks were talking about the portrait challenge quilts (most have had their QA mag for over a week now) on the Quilt Art list not a single one of them mentioned this artist. I wonder if it confuses them?

I saw her work in a magazine recently but cannot find the link again. If I do I'll post it later. Google Kirry's name an many sites come up. I think the magazine was called "Fairie" Wonderful costumes and uses of fibers but some rather odd thinking. But I suppose for some living in a fairie world is stress relieving.