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Archive for January, 2015

Getting It Done

Thursday, January 29th, 2015

EBJanfinal

I am happy to say that despite my aches and pains this past week, I have made progress on many fronts. I finished my value assignment for the master class a couple of days early – woo hoo! I think it is a very successful piece with value doing a lot of the work and nice negative space in the dark areas.

I also finished my print for this month’s Printed Fabric Bee challenge. I will reveal that in a few days. I used the left over paint on a piece of silk and splattered it with purple.

funsilkpainting

The drawing class is over and we are on to reduction printing. It is really challenging to think ahead and do the carving in the order you need to get the colors and patterns in the order that you want. Her you can see my sketch and my initial carving. I am going to use the back side to make a rectangle of one base color.

reductioncarving

I found it very meditative to carve my block.

Fifteen yards of silk charmeuse and lots of Dynaflow paint arrived from Dharma Trading yesterday. I have spent time at the studio for a couple of days and finally have the fabric organized and put away. I am almost ready to set up for painting the silk. I am excited to get started.

On the pain front, I finally figured out the the knee pain is related to the trapped nerve in my butt for which I saw a physical therapist a while back. I stopped doing the exercises because I was no longer having pain. I have started doing them again and it is helping.

All in all, I am a happy camper for now.

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, January 28th, 2015

WW01-28-15

This and That

Monday, January 26th, 2015

QAstitcharticle

I have neglected to mention that my little Fiesta quilt was featured in this Quilting Arts Magazine article on using hand stitching in quilts, written by Jane Davila.

I am sitting here, icing my knee. I think I have tendonitis or bursitis in my knee. It is painful and so I am trying a home remedy of icing, ace bandage and Aleve. I am also limiting my walking because, well, it hurts when I walk!!

I did manage to get some stuff done today after spending the morning on SDA work. I got started on quilting the leaf quilt for the EB master class. I quilted the dark background and edgestitched the leaves. Tomorrow, I will turn them into leaves with veins.

leafquiltstitchstart

I also did some photoshop work to create some thermofax screens for this months Printed Fabric Bee project. Tomorrow, I will limp on down to the studio and do some printing.

petrothermofax

 

Oops! I Forgot to Blog…

Sunday, January 25th, 2015

onefootfigure

It has been a busy week! I had a SAQA meeting on Wednesday and lots of SDA work. Here is an update on the drawing class. We had our last session this week and he showed us how to draw the whole body and show different postures. Drawing a skellie first can help you get the right angles on the body parts. For instance, the above drawing was taken from this skellie.

skellie

Did you know that the perfect proportioned body is 8 heads tall, but most of us are 7 – 7 1/2. The torso is two heads, the pelic area is one head and the legs are 4 heads. So you can take a piece of paper and divide it into 8 portions to draw your pefect human specimen. The photo’s perspective is off because the drawing was on the table.

8headfigure2

Another interesting fact is that an infant is 3 heads tall. Many paintings of babies have the head too small. As a child grows, the number of heads change. We also practiced other figure positions. This one is supposed to be standing on his right foot.

leaningfigure

Here is another figure that I did.

8headstall

I doubt that I will be doing a lot of figure drawing, but I so enjoyed this process.  It has made me look at figures in paintings with a whole new eye. Next week, we start reduction printing. I am going to assist the teacher. I hope I get to participate, too.

I was able to get to the studio one day and made a lot of progress getting the fabric stash under control. I also painted some silk samples. I think I am going to paint silk for my solo show instead of dyeing. I worry about the cool weather and getting the depth of color that I want. I used Jacquard’s Dynaflow paint on silk charmeuse and silk/cotton blend. I decided that I like the heavier weight charmeuse best. It is on the second fabric, below.

silkpainttest1

wilkpainttest2

So, today, I ordered 15 yards of silk charmeuse from Dharma and copious amounts of Dynaflow paint. I can’t wait until it gets here.

Thursday was Mr C’s 75th birthday. On Friday night we went out with Jack and Steph to a marvelous French restaurant in our neighborhood where we had a most excellent meal. Then we had birthday cheesecake back at The Congdo with M & M. It is always fun to catch up with these two and hear how well they are doing in school and life.

My new glasses came in early and I must say, they have really made a difference. So  happy to be done with the eye strain and headaches. Who knew?? LOL

Yesterday, Terry Grant and I drove south about an hour and so to see the Stitches in Bloom show at the Oregon Garden. We both had work in the show. It was an interesting show with art quilts and traditional quilts sharing the same crowded space. There were quite a few vendors selling quilt fabric and notions. We had a nice lunch at the resort restaurant and then listened to a lecture by Cynthia Corbin from the Seattle area. I so love her work. Click here for a look at her website, if you are not familiar with her work. She has great sense of humor, too. I am looking forward to her workshop with the guild in March.

Here is a blurry photo of my leaf quilt at the show.

blurryleafphoto

It was a beautiful day to drive through the bucolic Oregon countryside. We saw Mt. Hood showing itself in all different directions.

mtHoodjan15

My goal for tomorrow is to do some more work in the studio and quilt my January EB piece.

 

Master Class Update

Monday, January 19th, 2015

janmockuprev

I decided to do the one color value study of the leave photo. Here is the mockup from the sketch. I need to get it quilted and finished by the end of the month. It is 12 x 12 so I think that is doable.

I tried to work on this here at home in my multi-purpose room, but I have way too many things going on here and I work better at a higher table like I have at the studio. I have been avoiding the studio. It is such a mess, but I went there today and I got this done and I feel energized and ready to clean house, er studio, and get on with my creative life.

I pulled out these sort of icky yellow green pieces, but truth be told, I love working with colors like these.

valuefabrics

valuefabricsbw

The looked like a good enough value change to do what I wanted to do.

I started cutting leaves and laying out my piece.

valueleaves

valueleavesbw

Here is the mock up that I sent to EB.

janmockup

I felt the lightest value was to light and was not working in the composition. EB agreed. I was following the values in the sketch. I used some color pencil on the light yellow/green and used it in smaller pieces in the central area of the piece. That is what is up at the top of the page.

I spent the week-end doing SDA work and living on Aleve. I was in serious pain after working on the studio at Trinity! I did get my hair cut and the color freshened on Friday and also saw the eye Dr. I went in because I lost my red glasses in San Francisco and needed to get new ones. I am glad I went in as I had a big change in my prescription. I have been having headaches and irritated eyes of late. Here are the two new frames I selected.

red glass frames

blue glass frames

Can’t wait for them to come in next week.