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Archive for the ‘Surface Design Techniques’ Category

Good Things

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Things are looking up around here. I have several good things to report. First, my energy is coming back. I can put in a full day on my feet doing errands, cooking a meal, working in the studio, and I am not hitting the wall at 7 pm. I have managed to rack up 12 -13,000 steps in the last few days.

Secondly, my sinus allergies are sort of under control. I am being very good about following the regime prescribed by the hunky doctor.

Third, Lisa is coming tomorrow to spend a week in Portland. I get her to myself for a few days as Steph and family won’t be home until late on the 4th of July. We have some fun things planned.

Fourth, I am taking a thickened discharge class at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts for the next two days. Reva is taking the class, too. (Thickened discharge sounds like a severe sinus problem- yuck!!)

Here is my stack of fabric for the class:

I had some dye in the fridge that was left over from dyeing silk scarves last month so I overdyed some less than attractive fabric. Some of it was successful; some of it just proved to me that I need to toss it or just use it on the backs of quilts.

Here is the overdyed silk; this was the most successful. I should have taken before photos.

These are the overdyed cottons:

This is the largest piece that I did. It was a wimpy blue that had lots of white in it. I really like how it turned out.

I have managed to survive my fist two days on Weight Watchers. I am doing the Core plan which means that I have a list of food that I can eat as much as I want until comfortably full. I have 35 points for the week for goodies that are not on the list, like wine, bread, etc. At the end of day two, I still have 33 points. You can earn points through exercise. I have felt hungry and tell myself that this is a good thing, too.

Judy asked if anyone has hydrangeas blooming. I do, but they are not spectacular like many that I see in the neighborhood. I think they need more sun. We moved one to the back yard and it is really slow coming back. It used to be so pretty in the front yard, but didn’t go with the new landscaping. Anyway, here is my Hydrangea and a couple of closeups, which I think are quite spectacular. The thumbnails are clickable for larger views.

I’ll try to remember my camera tomorrow and post some pictures from class of Reva and I in our fashionable respirators!

Posted in Dyeing, Family, Flowers and plants, My creations, Surface Design Techniques | 6 Comments »

Karesansui

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

This is finished. I am calling it Karesansui which is Japanese for a dry rock garden. I originally called it Pathways, but since it is going into the Wabi Sabi Japanese garden show, I thought I would give it a Japanese name.

Here are a couple of close-ups:

This piece has some discharging and screen printing done with the same linear screen design. I also discharged some circles. The other section is circles of vintage Japanese fabrics with an overlay of metallic silk organza which has been stitched and cut away to form a pattern. The other fabric is a commercial batik.

This is one of those pieces that I have been working on for a long time. I sort of started it in a class with Charlotte Yde at Art Quilt Tahoe back in November. It has changed quite a bit. I find that the longer it takes me to finish a piece, the less happy I am with it. I’m not sure why.

I checked this site and found out that the pollen count here in Oregon is the highest in the nation. The rest of the country is green, and there is a big orange circle over us. So I guess that is why I had this major sinus attack. I am feeling a bit better, but I am here to tell you, this is one nasty ordeal.

Posted in My creations, Surface Design Techniques | 6 Comments »

Sunday Potpourri

Sunday, May 6th, 2007

First, exercising my need for sympathy, I must let you know that I have one of those crappy viruses — sore throat, chest pain, coughing, snuffling. Mr C gave it to me. He keeps telling me how I am going to feel and what my symptoms will be each day. And, so far he is right.

Steph and Lili had a very successful opening of their show at Doe. Stephanie just about sold out and Lisa had great sales, too.

On Thursday and Friday, I picked up Mia and Miles from school. I have renewed respect for what Stephanie does every day. It pretty much eats up an afternoon. By the time everyone is home and has a snack, it is time to think about what to make for dinner.

I spent much of the week-end getting quilts and silk scarves ready for the Artist’s Among Us show and sale at the Cathedral next week-end. The deadline for turning in stuff was at 5 pm today. I walked in at 10 to 5. I was working in slow motion today. The quilts were from my inventory, but needed sleeves, labels and hanging devices. I forgot to take photos of the scarves that I did. I managed to get 6 done, one will go in the silent auction. Here are some hanging outside my studio, next to the mess that Mr C has made, building a fence.

And here is the fence masterpiece. That is the saw on the right. Mr C was happy to have Jack and M & M show up on Saturday afternoon. Jack ripped the fence pieces while Mr C used the power hammer to pound the nails.

I still have some bumper stickers left for the Virtual Peace Rally. Send me your snail mail on the contact form above and I will send you one. Then, you can e-mail me a photo which I will post on the Virtual End the War Rally on my Flickr site.

Posted in House and home stuff, My Brilliant Daughters, My creations, Surface Design Techniques | 5 Comments »

Turquoise Fingers

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

I mixed up some dyes today so that I could squirt some dye on my white shirt that I batiked with soy wax in Rayna’s class. I now have turquoise fingers! Here is how the shirt looks. I am going to let it sit overnight and wash it out tomorrow.

Here is a closeup of one sleeve.

I also dyed some silk scarves yellow. I will batik them with the soy wax and over-dye them with some other colors.

I forgot to show you all the gorgeous Kimono fabric that I found on my trip to Santa Rosa. There is a store in Healdsburg — Yasuko — that sells clothing trimmed with Kimono fabrics. She also sells scraps of the fabric in the shop. I really miss being able to select them from the bins in the store. Here is what I came home with.

I will have lots of fun making fabric collages with these.

If you have read my blog for any time, you know that I have an on-going problem with my hair. I lost my favorite stylist back when we lived in Santa Rosa and never did find someone to replace her. Since we have lived here, I have tried two different stylists. Today, Frances, a lovely Chinese woman, cut my hair and I really like it. She listened to me. I said I don’t want to have hair I have to fuss with unless I want to. I now have a simple pixie-ish haircut. She seems to be quite knowledgeable about color, too. Mr C seemed to like it, too, which is important.

Speaking of Mr C, he is in the midst of a big project — building a fence in our backyard. A load of building materials arrived today and he has already started sawing wood. I’ll try to get some photos of the project in progress.

Posted in My creations, My hair, Quilting Purchases, Surface Design Techniques | 4 Comments »

AQC Day Two

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Internet service has been spotty and so I finally paid for Wifi so that I can keep up with things and work on the SDA website when I have a few minutes.

Yesterday, we did soy wax batik in our class. Here is the Rayna du jour:

We melted soy wax in an electric frying pan and used all sorts of found objects and printing blocks and tjaps to make wax markings on our fabric. Here are some examples of the stuff we used.

Here is the orange fabric with lots of wax markings.

Here is my paint palette:

Then you wet the fabric and add lots of water to the paint and slather it on with a foam brush.

You can wait for the paint to dry if you want instant gratification or you can put it between newspaper and iron it. It removes the wax, dries the paint and sets the paint.

I will post the final fabric tomorrow. It is very cool.

Here is another piece that I did.

This is the muslin that was covering my work space and had wax imprints and paint. I painted it and love it!

I added some more torn paper forms to this piece to flesh it out.

And for those with a sweet tooth, here is last night’s dessert. I am not sure what it was called.

Today we had a field trip to Stone Mountain and Daughter in downtown Berkeley. We had a bag lunch and got to do some shopping. I can’t believe that tomorrow is our last day of class.

Posted in My creations, Quilting Friends, Surface Design Techniques, Travels | 6 Comments »

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