I'm Back . . .

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I have lots of excuses, however, none of them are very good. I've been busy and have a lot to show and tell, so lets get on with it.
Shopping: now that's a good place to start. I'm afraid a lot more came in this month than went out! I went to two quilt shows, one in San Luis Obispo and one in Camarillo, Quilt Visions in San Diego, F&S Fabrics and Pavilion Fabrics in Los Angeles. Another worthwhile stop was at La Jolla Fiber Arts. There was a wonderful selection of hand-crafted fiber items. Here's a small sampling of what I bought. Bought these beauties at the Seven Sisters quilt show in SLO.

This is yummy micro suede. Jeanne and I found this fabulous store in LA, Pavilion Fabrics, that is going out of business. Everything is 50% off!!! GOTTA LOVE THAT. There were around 40 colors and I bought 16 of them. We also scored some polyester thread and trim. F & S Fabrics has a huge assortment of everything you could possibly want. Didn't get out of there empty handed either.In case you didn't know, I'm a book-a-holic. All three of these are great and I'm really happy to add them to my collection. I bought both of the Jane Dunnewold books at the Quilt Visions Museum, but you can buy them here.

Speaking of great books, Rayna Gillman's "Create Your Own Handpainted Cloth" will be available in June. Yours truly has a piece in her book as does my friend Jeanne Surber. You can pre-order your very own copy here.

Here's a few painted pieces that I made with my Fibervision group on Saturday. Lora did a great job organizing this workshop and everyone enjoyed it. The top two are fat half yard pieces and the bottom one is about 24 inches square.

I've been working on the costumes for the musical Pazzazz. The deadline is looming, and things are getting a bit frantic, dress rehearsals begin June 6th. This has been a fun project, totally over the top and colorful.

I've organized an Art Quilting lecture that will be given to the Fiber Arts Guild in July and have begun to compile images of Fibervision's fantastic art quilts for a CD. I've also signed up for a Fabric Challenge at Art from Scrap. I hope I get inspired in the next two days!

Other Activities: I went to the Mannheim Steamroller Fresh Aire Tour at the Granada Theater with my friend Kathy. If you get the chance, go see them, it was a great show. I also went to see CATS at the Arlington Theater. This is the best show I've seen in a while. Next on the list is LOVE in Las Vegas!!

So, as I said, I've been busy and I'm glad to be back!

More Printed Fabric

Here's some printed fabric that I've been working on this week.I carved 4 different designs from an erasers. The top green and yellow piece is printed using one of the carved stamps. The bottom piece has several layers of screen prints and paint.
This is thermofax screen print. The original was a photo that I took of the ocean and then performed some Photoshop magic on it, see here.

This is also one of my photos that I converted into a thermofax screen. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with all of this yet; but I'm having fun. Here are some of the ATC's I received from fellow artists in April. It's always love to see what designs people come up with. It's such a diverse group of artists, everything from textile, assemblage, painters, knitters (you name it).

Tomorrow, we're having our Fibervision meeting at Andi Perejda's house, then the whole gang is going to the Seven Sisters Quilt Show together. I've been told there are over 300 quilts. It's going to be a lot of fun!

Melting Pot Experiments

I finally got some time to play with the melting pot and UTEE. I made fabric beads, dipped them into UTEE, wrapped them in Angelina fibers and dipped again. They came out looking like fire opals inside glass. I had a few leftovers from the April ATC exchange and decided to cut some into 1" x 1-1/2" pieces. I then poured melted UTEE over them and heated them with an embossing tool. Looks like the designs are encased in glass. I'm going to attach pin backs to some of them and drill holes through others so I can attach them to a quilt with beads. Both came out very cool. Mike and I just came back from seeing CATS at the Arlington Theater. It was amazing, I'm so glad we went. Tomorrow night we are going to see a play at the Ensemble Theater. Ah, Life is Good!

Writing on Fabric

Last year, Rayna gave me a curved syringe similar to the one she uses to write on fabric. I put it away and never actually tried it. Then Sue wrote an article in Fibre & Stitch using the same tool. Again, it looked intriguing and I knew I would try it someday.

A couple of my thermofax prints didn't turn out well, because the design was too busy, so I figured I would try using the syringe and add a layer of writing on top. What did I have to lose? I was going to throw both pieces away anyways. The first couple of pieces felt a bit forced. I was trying to figure out how to hold the syringe and how hard to press it. And what the heck was I going to write about anyways?

By this third piece (larger than what is shown below), the technique felt pretty natural and words just came spilling out. Every once and a while you can read a word or two, but for the most part, it is illegible. I think it adds a nice layer of texture though, don't you?

Originally, the syringe was used by vets to administrator medication to animals. Some creative person had a "what if" moment, ran an experiment and discovered a great new paint technique.

April ATC Trade

Here are the ATC's that I made for our monthly trade. I applied various yarns, thread balls and dryer sheets onto a sheet of stiff felt. I stitched everything down, then cut the sheet into trading cards. I added more embellishment, doodled with my permanent markers and stitched around the outside edge.

Arte y Pico Award

In the past few days, I received two different blogging awards. The first award came from Laurence in France. Her blog is written in French, but has a very cool translator. The second one came from Elis who is a fantastic mixed media artist in Canada. A huge thank you to both of you.
I would need to link to 15 blogs to meet the requirements for both blogs and I'm afraid I just don't have the time to do that. But I don't want to be a stick in the mud, so I'll follow the rules for the Arte y Pico award (that one only requires 5 links)!

Arte y Pico

Thanks so much to Elis Cooke for giving me the Arte y Pico award.
The following 5 rules are attached to this award:
1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and that also contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.
4. The Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte Y Pico" blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. To show these rules.
The blogs I would like to award this honour to are:

Purple Missus

Because I Said So

Deidre Adams

Whiffs, glimmers & Left Ouevres

Michelle's Stitch and Paint

Thermofax Prints

My friend and artist extraordinaire, Andi Perejda, make six thermofax screens for me. I'm not sure why, but I only used one of the images from the last post. I'm going to be sending you more Andi. Anyways, I learned a few things along the way. The most important one is that heavily textural graphics do not make good screens; they are just too confusing. I had two images that didn't work out too well, one was a cactus and the other was rocks. They were so bad, I won't even show you. Another important item is the thickness of the paint; thin = bad print! The third thing is that almost anything can be saved! I also did some painting and writing, but didn't get a chance to take photos. Next Post. Here are some of the prints I made today.

Last week I had the opportunity to be a guest at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. It was fabulous! The magicians we saw were top notch and each one has their own unique style. Everything from Red Skelton style to Las Vegas showman. I am friends with the owner of the Magic Castle. Her husband is a retired Hollywood writer and she is a retired costume designer, however, they don't seem to retire well. He wrote the musical Pizzazz and she is designing 180 costumes for the musical. Pizzazz will have its world debut at the Granada Theater in Santa Barbara in June. After that, the show will be on the road for 2-3 years. I'm helping her with the finishing touches on the dresses, beaded fringe, sewing on lace, etc. The costumes are amazing, completely over the top. It's really exciting to be involved with this.

I also went whale watching on the Condor in the Santa Barbara Channel. I saw Gray whales and Humpback whales. It was a lot of fun but the ocean can really churn up your stomach. Mike and I was fine, but my daughter didn't fare too well. I never realized how difficult it is to get a good photo of a whale while your boat is rocking. I have new respect for the photographers who manage to get amazing shots.

High Contrast Images

I have been busy, but I don't have any finished projects to share. I've been working on some high contrast images that I will use to make either a Photo EZ or Thermofax screens. I'm curious to see what the difference is between the screens, so I'm going to make both types of screens from one image and print a sample of each. Sounds like it will be a fun project.
Here are few of the many possibilities I've come up with. I have no idea how these will come out. The screens I've made in the past were very simple, bold and graphic, nothing at all like these images.
Which image do you think will make the best print and why?

I love the pattern and textures in these old doorways.

The bars on these windows provide a wonderful linear pattern.

Nature always provides a wide variety of interesting textures.

HAPPY DANCE!

After six weeks, my daughter has regained complete control of her foot. On Monday, the neurologist said that she did not have any nerve damage and on Tuesday, she could walk. He believes that she had an internal infection and there was some inflammation pressing on the nerve. I am so happy and relieved that there is a happy ending!

I saw some beautiful handmade beads that looked like glass and wanted to make some myself. This melting pot is used to heat the UTEE to the perfect temperature for coating the beads. Stay tuned . . . maybe I'll have some wonderful items to share.

I really enjoy reading about creativity and trying different exercises to stretch my thinking and skills. You just never know where it will lead. The latest addition to my ever growing collection of creative tools is the Creative Whack Pack (book and deck of cards). Here is the text from the card "Exaggerate"

"Imagine a joke so funny that you can't stop laughing for a month. Paper stronger than steel. An apple the size of a hotel. A jet engine quieter than a moth beating its wings. A home-cooked dinner for 25,000 people. Try exaggerating your idea. Think big; what if it were a thousand times bigger, louder, stronger, faster, or brighter? What if the number of people who could use it were increased a thousandfold? Now think small; what if it were only one-thousandth as powerful, fast, costly, or complicated as before? How can you exaggerate your idea?"

Fire Storm Completed

It feels great to be creative again. I hoping that all the aches and pains are gone for good. I just finished quilting a wholecloth piece that I painted a while ago. I think it turned out really great. I really didn't plan on painting a fire scene, but when I stood back and looked at it, it reminded me of the Santa Barbara wildfire that burned for months. There are two fabric trees appliqued to the foreground and tulle, organza added to the top section to resemble the flames and smoke. Here's a photo of the finished quilt.

I've added a binding that has a very narrow piped edge along the inside, in this case it is purple. It's a technique that Ricky Timms features on his Grand Finale DVD. This little flash of color (it's about 1/32" wide) provide a big impact. I have to say that it isn't easy and wouldn't recommend it to people that get frustrated easily. It took more hours than I want to admit, but I'm in love with the look and the fact that it is completely done by machine is a bonus. This is the second time I've done a binding using this technique. I'm guessing that after doing it 5 or 6 times, it will become quicker and easier.

I bought this really fun package of paper clips and thought I could use them for rubbings but the hand is the only design that works well. The others have too many 3-D parts. They made me smile . . . so they had to come home with me.

March ATC's

I figured I better post something before you thought I abandoned my blog. I've haven't created much in the last few weeks and didn't have anything positive to write about . . . so I stayed quiet. That doesn't happen to often, but the last few weeks have been rough, both physically and emotionally.

A few weeks ago, somebody side-swiped my car (with me in it), so I've had quite a few aches and pains that started in my upper back and travelled down to my legs. No fun. On top of that, my daughter is having a problem with her foot and the doctors cannot figure it out. She has had MRI's on every part of her body, EMG's on the nerves in various parts, lots of blood work and a Spinal Tap and still no results. It's pretty frustrating and emotionally draining. I'm waiting to hear what they plan to do next . . . and trying my hardest to stay positive.

On a brighter note, Fibervision had a great turn out for the artists reception at the Architectural Foundation. The exhibit looks fantastic, if I do say so myself.

I did manage to make some ATC's to exchange with my group this week. It felt really good to play with the paint and markers. We had 15 artists exchanging cards this month. This photo will show you some of the cards I made.

Quilt on Canvas

Here's the newest addition to my canvas series. Hmmm . . . is it a series if all they have in common is the painted canvas they are sewn onto? The style of each quilt is very different. I blogged about the other two pieces here and here.

I love the way it looks mounted on the painted canvas and am going to explore this further.

At our last Fibervision meeting we had a workshop on Creativity. Brecia Kralovic-Logan discussed several different ways to tap into our individual creativity. This is a tracing of my hand that I decorated during the session. Brecia said to use it as a reminder that I am a one of a kind artist making REAL and one of a kind ART work.

Brecia shared several quotes with us, but this one really got my attention. "Given the chance, that place inside will speak to each of us." Mark Nepo

The workshop finished with a mini fashion show of Brecia's incredible wearables. They are very imaginative, colorful and textural.