Posts from the ‘Artwork’ Category

Winds and perhaps a Gentle Breeze

I’ve decided to be more aggresive in promoting my artwork. That also means I will have to produce.

I’m working on getting myself organized (Again!).

I don’t mind sorting, filing, looking through art supplies…In fact, playing with those materials–and I have a lot–I really don’t need to buy much of anything for a long time.

Organizing my digital files and photos—that is another thing. I’ve taken the photos but my labeling is haphazard and I can’t find things—maybe I just don’t know how to work the search part of the photo site—so I end up taking repeat photos.

But I think I have come up with a plan to get those organized so I can find things.

Today I entered a call regarding ‘Wind’. I have in mind two other pieces that will be fun and not so serious.

Here are the three pieces I submitted.

This was a challenge to portray the Wizard of Oz in such a way the viewer would want to read the book.

with a birthday in March, I have always been fascinated by the imagery of kites. One of my husband’s early adventures with my brothers was driving his LandCruiser over a hayfiled to generate enough win to fly a huge box kite with a brother hanging on for dear life out the back window.

Sometimes a gentle breeze is all we want–and this piece of silk with ink splattered and leaves from some young trees falling on the sidewalk in Houston functioned as templates and stamps.

It’s hard to predict what will happen. There are usually a lot of entries, the competition is quite stiff. But no-one will come looking for my artwork unless I enter. Even if rejected, it has been seen by jurors who might just remember my work.

At last!

For the past three months I’ve had an art piece on my design wall—in progress.

I don’t work fast.

I’m always experimenting with a different way to accomplish my end goal.

I’ve started making part of the piece off the finished piece. This is something I learned from some traditional applique classes. I also put a foundation under the top. doing a lot of stitching on it first and then putting on the backing and quilting.

This time I also experimented with a different way of finishing the sleeve and the bottom. I add washers to the bottom to ensure it hangs straight. This is a home decorator device for curtains–a chain is put in the bottom hem—I put washers in a sleeve at the bottom. The guys at the hardware store are surprised to hear my end purpose……In the past I sought out sand paper to sand cardboard…!!!

My workspace is always a mess while I work on a piece. I save every little bit of fabric until the piece is finished. I use a variety of threads, pulling them from my substantial collection of thread–sorted by color. Usually I use an old deli tray–the one with a central round depression for the dip with sections around it for the various vegetables—I sort the threads by color into those sections. But sometimes there isn’t enough room and I resort to a lid like this.

While a lot of folks scoff at my use of Coats and Clark–I really like the consistency, the colors–there is a purple that no-one else has….and now there is a purely poly thread with incredibly low lint production.

That piece is now quilted, photo’ed, and entered into a show—I can’t show it until I hear if it has been accepted—I don’t have a great deal of hope that it will be—but you never know.

Here is a small section.

Note the sittching goes both horizontally as the stabilizing stitches to a piece of corduroy and the vertical stitches as the quilting.

Typically I work on a pieced background of some sort–choosing the block pattern as part of the piece–this background is composed of ‘crumb’ blocks. These blocks are my leader-ender pieces sewn while working on a more traditional quilt or garment. It doesn’t take long before I have a huge stack ready to iron, trim up and add the next piece.

I’ve been asked to present a program on these blocks—and I may just do that. They are easy and appeal to those of us who enjoy using up what we have.

Flying High with a Lotus Blossom

One of my least favorite parts of being an artist is taking the formal portraits and then remembering where I stored the digital images. I haven’t figured out a good process for that yet; it’s probably because I’d rather move on to the next project.

Here are the last two art pieces I have finished. They are not re-sized or cropped or stored anywhere except on a SD card—but then I still have the pieces and can re-take photos. Alas, that is typically what I end up doing as my photo site is rather a mess.

Flying High will be one of my entries for ‘wind’

and this piece was supposed to be a guild challenge. I did not read the rules properly–it is the wrong size and not done in time—it was due January 2022. I’m planning to mount it on stretcher bars—but as of now it is still hanging in my photo studio setup next to Flying High until I process the photos.

Frying Eggs

When newspaper reporters were interested in news, one decided to see if it was really hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.

It was–but it took most of the day as I recall.

I’m not eager to be outside long enough to try it again–in true scientific fashion….an experiment should be reproducible to believe the outcome.

It is hot here, very hot. Our mini-splits are struggling even though I prefer much warmer temps than most people…rheumatoid arthritis will do that.

Our life has been busy with garden duties, lawn-mowing, tending to a very ill dog—who is now back to her usual naughty self, house improvement projects—garage roof was sagging–had foundation work and then the roof repaired. The RV parked outside the shop is now gone—gone to a new home to be refurbished. The new owner seems eager to take on what looks like a huge piece of junk.

I’ve been working away at projects in my sewing room.

For several years I’ve compiled a list of UFO’s from 1 to 12 with the idea of completing one each month based on a random number drawn. A group I am in is doing the same but allowing 2 months to complete a project. That makes 18 projects!

Instead of sorting through boxes I had stuffed multiple projects in, I put down the number of the box. 1 through 4, two months are binding months–I seem to get behind on that.

This month’s draw was from Box No. 4.

I found these roughly cut diamonds left-over from my mother’s quilting days; I’ve sewn them together and trimmed to even edges—she was accurate in piecing but not in cutting. Although I think maybe my dad might have cut out some for her. She had trouble with her hands after chemo; and he did a lot of marking for her.

I also dragged out an old Art project. I pieced the top together with the idea of a portrait of my maternal aunt along with some photos from her life. Crumb blocks surrounding the main figure are supposed to suggest a lifetime of memories—she made my wedding dress along as well as one of my sister-in-law’s and a niece and her wedding party.

I have two photographs nearly done; on to the main character and a few more memories.

The white is cotton organdy; I use it as a stabilizer to build the applique; it looks rather cruel to have those pins stuck in the middle of their faces—and I’ve since redone the coat on the left and added a tie on my uncle.

I am not expert in applique; this has proven challenging.

Flying High

Yesterday I claimed I had not been working on any art pieces—sort of true but I was still mulling over this particular piece.

The background had been done for some time. A piece of ice-dyed fabric for the sky pieced with some others to suggest sunset and a field.

Rather plain!

I thought I might add a kite flier to the piece; How big should that kite flier be? And did I have a model?

My model was myself blowing bubbles.

Here are the mock-ups.

I worked away and came up with this. Note the pink in the hair–it was the second fabric I tried–and the first piece was too small. The image I was working from was from the front–and I wanted this figure to face the kite. After a couple of unsuccesses, I built it from the back forward.

looked at if for two weeks and did not like it. Took off the pants and substituted this;

I hand-stitched on part of the sleeve, the backing is a sturdy duck cloth fabric; gave up on the hand-part and machine stitched the top of the sleeve. Frequently for a piece I know is destined to be a wall piece, I add a smaller sleeve filled with washers to weigh down the bottom.

It is now destined for its formal portrait maybe next week.

Procrastination with a Capital C

Stowed out of sight in my workroom are 8 stretched canvases destined to be my new series of work illustrating the Miracles of Jesus. Perhaps I am in the contemplation stage of just exactly how I will do these—and not the way others have rendered their ideas. Sometimes I spend a lot of time looking at what others have done, but this time I have decided to make it strictly from my impressions as a bystander.

But instead of working on them, I have been procrastinating with crumb blocks.

Crumb blocks or mile a minute blocks have been my leader-enders for several years. Those unfamiliar with the term need to know they are bits of fabric sewn together at the end of stitching part of a quilt block or perhaps even a garment as a way of making sure the top thread does not get sucked down into that vast hole on the needle plate of a sewing machine to create a nest of thread—and so you don’t have to keep picking up the scissors–hidden somewhere on your work-table to snip the threads at the beginning and ending of a seam.

I prep the pieces while watching something really educational on television at night; sew them, press them when there is a big stack, trim them, and add on more fabric pieces while again watching those educational programs. Sometimes there is a section left-over from a quilt top–four patches or half square triangles. The final block size is 6.5 inches. It doesn’t take long to accumulate a lot of them…..I have a document box that was full.

I pulled out blocks that had pink in them to make a large star quilt. I pulled out pieces to add to an art piece—yes, procrastinating on that one too. But instead of working on any art project, I chose to sew these together.

Here is that box and how I set them up–two together, then twelve sets of two; the final piece begin 74 by 90.

here is my setup on my work table.. a few squares from somewhere that weren’t large enough to do anything with–but too pretty to discard

and here the top is—not quite completed–it is too big for my small’ish design wall. It is now in the stack to be quilted—three others are ahead of it.

Flying a Kite

I”ve been working on this piece for several days. Most of the working consists of thinking about the fabrics I want to use, looking through a lot of boxes of fabric to pick out just the right ones.

Some of you suggested the larger figure—and that is easier to work on than one less than four inches tall.

The fabrics had to sufficiently contrast with the sky and grass.

Choosing the clothing and shoes and the skin color was fairly easy. Choosing the hair much more difficult, I tried several different pieces and made three attempts at the head—taking them off—creating the head-less kite flyer. I’ll spare you that image.

Finally I decided on this fabric–it is a feathery small paisley type with just enough color to contrast with the sky. The face required several attempts—too much made it look like a Bobble-head—again I’ll spare you that image also.

I also sewed on the binding—it isn’t sewn to the back yet–so it still looks rather lumpy—but that will disappear when I take out all those pins.

there is more stitching to be done, kite tail to be added but I am pleased with the progress.

Chains

The fiber art group I started several years ago–now dissolved—had many challenges or assignments through the years. One of the most fun was the word prompt.

Each of us put a word or short phrase into a bowl, and every other month a word would be drawn out as our next challenge. None of the pieces had to be large and we were each free to interpret the word using whatever techniques we liked.

I cut up my ‘zipper’ prompt to make covers for hand-made books.

This is what I did in response to ‘chain’.

I did several pieces thinking about how we are linked to our past and to negative thoughts and finger-pointing and anger. The background is screen-printed with negative words, the chain links appliqued by hand, and the quilting is straight line horizontally on the background and vertically inside the links to suggest the difficulty we have in breaking free from those ideas.