Hands 032313

Earth pigments, gesso, ink, oil bar, and fabric paint, on cutch dyed cotton fabric. Will be discussed in depth tomorrow on the Natural Surfaces Forum, and hopefully with a higher quality video than tonights session yeilded.

Raw Sienna and Raw Umber

I streamed tonight, such as it was... I say that because the audio kept dropping.  I will be streaming tomorrow evening from another site and hopefully that will work out.  Until then I posted in the Natural Surface Forum on the fruit fermentation reduction vat and about the earth pigments above.

WIP's - Sandstone Series

 

This Sandstone piece has been in a bucket for the past decade, every once in awhile I dig it out and stare it it on my design wall (in my case my design wall is a bookshelf).  Today's it's day, I've decided to seperate the two pieces of fabric and overdye the top piece with kutch, and maybe some kamala.

 

Detail, the reddish fabric is cochineal and rust dyed silk fabric.

Another Sandstone WIP that has been languishing in the storage bucket for the past 10+ years.  It's mostly hand stitching on the surface, tonight I have plans to add some machine stitching and possibly a few layers of constructed cloth.  This piece is small enough to experiment with pushing the surface.

WIP's - Constructed Cloth

Made sometime around 2000/2001 when I was on a pod making journey.  Threads on water soluble fabric.

 

Front view of the pod sides.

 

Back view of the pod sides.

Now that I've found these pieces, and my pod pattern, I'm thinking of persuing these again.  I stopped due to lack of time and lack of materials, i.e., at the time I didn't have the soluble cloth I really needed and now there are gobs of options available.  Aquabond is my favorite water soluble stabilizer!

Queen Anne's Crows

Queen Anne's Crow's available in my store.

Digitally printed cotton fabric, painted timtex, machine stitched.
Size 7 7/8" x 9 7/8"
Matted and framed to 11x14x2 inches

WIP Hoodoos No. 4

This piece is starting to come together, and it's trying to tell me it wants a horizontal orientation. 

Natural Dyes on Silk Fabric, machine stitched.

Website Horrors 031203

There is a good chance that my websites may be down come Thursday.  At this point in time I'm figuring out a few things about my server farm and about WordPress, my websites are currently published using Front Page.  Hopefully I will have an anwser tomorrow, and hopefully there won't be any down time... stay tuned for updates.

Stitching Inspiration 030713

 

Slurry dyed, natual dyed, silk fabric, stitched into narrow rows, I will be adding the wool batting and backing fabric this evening and will start stitching tomorrow, I can't wait to see what emerges out of this piece.

Love the subtle undulations of the lines on this piece of chert, or is it flint, I don't remember.

Small Geode Project

 

Some fibers to chose from for needle felting.

Auditioning fibers.

Finger spun osage orange dyed silk carrier rod.

Now for some machine stitching and then more needle felted fibers.

 

WIP - Silvers and Grays

On my wall, the silvery gray strips are now stitched together.
Natural and slurry dyed silk fabrics.

WIP - 022213

More later... natural and compost dyed silk fabrics.

Inspiration - Rearranged

My Valentines Day gift this year from hubs is for him to make me a couple of trays, like the one in the image above, for displaying my nature items.  Until then... enjoy.

A box of rocks.

My studio bestie.

And matching is way over rated!

Rock Inspiration

Needle felted wool and silk fibers and silk organza fabric dyed with indigo and natural dyes.  Agate type rock for inspiration.

The rock is mostly purples, red violets, golds and cobalt blues, though you'd never know it from this photo.

Since this is the last piece of my machine needle felted constructed cloth I thought I'd do something special with the piece, lots of hand stitching and knots.

I just need to decide which side I want to use, it's about six by seven inches in size.

Sample of Wonder

This sample piece is working on becoming something special, after dinner I will retire to the wet studio to surface the pink piece which may or may not be of the same colors as the one in the lower left hand corner.

Dyed and painted cheesecloth that coordinates beautifully with my sample piece.

A basket filled with coordinating threads, trims, constructed yarns, etc.

Why Make Art in Series? Advantages for Artists

If you are an artist, or a collector, then this article is a must read by Susan Sorrel "Why Make Art in Series? Advantages for Artists"!!! I myself love working in a series. Doing so allows me to work out a design idea/theme but very often it allows me to see how far I can push the surface within a series as well.

Hoodoos No. 5 aka Hot Flash

I could enter this piece into an exhibition as it stands but there's so much more I want to do to this piece so it hangs on my studio wall for another day.

Hoodoos No. 5
Natural dyed silk fabrics, batting, machine stitched.

WIP - Barn Detail

Natural dyed silk fabrics, machine stitched, shiva paintstik on silk.

Hoodoos No. 3

Hoodoos No. 3
16x24 inches
Natural Dyed silk fabric, wool batting, cotton backing.
Machine Stitched.

Am working on my monthly newsletter, stay tuned I'll be posting later today about the exciting events coming up at The Natural Surface! 

Organizing Fabric Stash Leads to Found Samples!

Believe it or not the fabric in that suitcase really is organized!  While I was searching for piece of unfinished silk fabric I found my long lost stitched sample I had been looking for late last fall. 

Due to the sample of the rights disappearance, deep into a pile of folded fabrics, I made another sample to pratice some machine stitching on.  Both sample pieces consist of cochineal dyed cotton fabrics and are machine stitched.  The left sample, however, has been surfaced further using fabric paints, oil bar, and ink.  I'm thinking the sample on the right could use a good dose of color as well.