Fabric Princess

Blog Triage class

2010-10-27T14:08:00.001-07:00

With a commitment to building a more vibrant blog, I signed up for the 4-week Blog Triage class with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield. Today’s assignment is to describe the people I want to visit and read my blog.

-Other creative and artistic people who are interested in my work and process

-People who are not artists, but are interested in art and learning more about textile art

-People who enjoy creativity and design

So then what do I want to get from writing a blog? Well, that's hard, as it's not at all where I started. I used to write my blog as a journal to document my fitness plans and fitness lifestyle. But that became so boring, and honestly, it felt preachy. I also got a lot of criticism about my fitness and diet choices, and the last thing I want/need/like is criticism (this applies to everything in my life, so should we meet in person, please don't tell me I'm looking chubby or need a new wardrobe...I can't handle it!).

In the past few years I've let my blogging slip as one of the other problems I've come up against is just feeling like all that I posted was too personal, and while when I first started blogging that was fine, it's now unacceptable and unprofessional to share anything personal that isn't positive and uplifting. And that's where I fell off of the posting wagon...I didn't have anything to post along those lines.

I also didn't produce much work in the past two or three years, or at least none that I really wanted to show to anyone. So I didn't feel motivated to post about my process or many completed projects (and I figured it wasn't very exciting to show readers a trashcan full of junk art!).

What I want now is to turn all of this around and start posting about my process, the physical process and the contemplative process. And I want to be able to create posts that someone finds interesting to read. Hopefully this class will help me put all of that together.

And just so this isn't a totally boring post, here's a picture of a lovely Japanese Maple I took in San Jose last month:

deColourant discharge

2010-10-13T14:42:00.001-07:00

Some of you may be on the Complex Cloth yahoo group and may recall the posts from a couple of weeks ago discussing the new discharge product deColourant. The owner of the company generously offered free samples to those who wanted to try them out. The specific discussion on the list related to the safety of discharge processes (I won't repeat it all here, but you can check the archives of the group for it if you're a member.)

I wrote to the owner of the company, Dave Riba. He wrote me back and sent me 2 little samples to try. One was the plain color remover and the other was mustard, which removes color and adds color in one step (in this case, mustard).

I thought I would post my little review here for anybody who is considering trying the product but isn't sure yet.

Here are my two samples, done on silk broadcloth, which I'd dyed and overdyed a few times last month. It had turned into a rather unattractive piece, just sitting on my table, which made it perfect for this experiment!

The top piece, with the dragonflies, is a small scrap. I first tested out screening the color remover and then the color adder. I screened the dragonflies and let it dry. I then ironed, using steam.

The discussion on the list was about safety and discharge, and my concern with this product, and any other, is that I have asthma, recently diagnosed, which has caused me problems in the past with discharge agents. Wheezing and coughing. I wanted to know how awful and chemical this product was.

I've used another brand's paste and the smell is awful and ironing it out is worse, much worse, and can't be overcome with even just open windows or a fan. It causes me irritation and the whole upstairs work area stinks of it.

So deColourant has a citrus scent, which is not terribly noticeable and I felt no irritation just screening it. When I ironed it I stood next to a fully open window, had cross windows and doors to the porch open, and the overhead fan on. I noticed nothing. This was just a few motifs that I was ironing and I felt no irritation, nor did I notice any smell.

What I did next was to immediately wash the piece. I didn't see any instruction to wait any amount of time (I may have missed this, as I've since seen someone write to say that you're supposed to wait 24 hours after setting before washing), so I washed it and brought it back to the board to iron while damp.

I had a lot of the mustard come off, at which point I realized in my next test I'd wait before washing. But I was still pleased with the results. As you can see in the following picture, part of the mustard did wash out, but it had removed color underneath which left the motif with a distressed, grungy look. I like that effect and will try to work with it in the future.

The second piece was larger and I stamped it with the color remover and with mustard. I used an awesome little trivet made of silicone I found at Target, if you're curious about the pattern.

When I ironed out this piece I did notice a smell and I felt slightly irritated, though I had all of the same windows open and fan on. I had to step out of the room for something and when I came back I didn't notice any lingering smell, though, which is different from the other paste I've used previously.

So, next time I use this product I will be using a respirator. Especially as I would likely be using more of it as I did on the bigger piece. But I think having all the windows open and fan going was probably enough to get the remaining fumes out.

The color removal isn't total, I don't think I'll ever be able to get a piece to go back to white, but that's not much different from any other discharge agent. I like the effect I was able to get, where it's lighter in the places I used the product, but you can still see a slight ghosting of the pattern that has previously been there.

I am going to purchase more of this product. And I'll order some of the color, too, as that's a cool process which has lots of possibilities.

And here's one last picture of this lovely October afternoon, with my dogs lazing about on the porch, watching the neighborhood go by (I will be so glad when we move and they can't see anything outside, they actually will jump up and bark every few minutes while sitting up here as people and cars go by...a tad irritating!)

p.s. to those who've wanted larger images...well, I don't know why, but even with me choosing "large" for my image upload on blogger they are still small. My images are not this small. They are large images. Blogger is shrinking them and I have no control over that. If you know of a setting in blogger to change this (other than the one that says "image size"...doesn't work) please let me know. I tried to make it better, I promise!

Where did September go?

2010-10-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know. I know I was busy, but it flew off so quickly. I went out to San Jose to meet with 11 other members of the Art Cloth Network. It was a nice event, getting to meet the older members and other new members (there were 5 of us new members), and joining in the planning for the future growth of the group as a whole.

After that I did some work, on a piece that is currently on my design wall, but I'm not sure how to finish it. I had plans, big plans, to get it done in time to enter in time for a deadline next week, but as I'm now stumped I probably won't get it done in time.

I've also been working on projects for the mastery class. I should've done all of this months ago, but there was a lot going on this summer, and I wasn't sure this past spring if I was going to continue with anything, so of course nothing got done. But I can do only what I can do, and I have my own challenges to overcome, so I'm just doing the work now.

I have pictures from the show in September where all my hard work was on display! One of the pieces sold earlier that day, which was thrilling. And though the rest are still available, the gallery decided they want to keep them and put them in another area to see if they sell (the show was just for 2 weeks). I was so very happy to hear that they liked my work well enough to keep it a while longer!

Here's how the work looked hung in the beautiful gallery:

There's the little red dot. Sold!

A month

2010-09-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

...to do what I thought was impossible. Only, when I took it on, I didn't know or think it was impossible. But towards the end I saw that it nearly was.

I made 8 pieces, start to finish, overdyeing and waxing of fabric included. And they are now mounted and wrapped and waiting to go to a beautiful downtown gallery here in Austin. Here's the event info:

http://www.arton5th.com/events/ArtBuzz2010/Preview/Preview-Buzz.html

I am the only textile artist, which is cool. I heard about this event through a local textile group email, otherwise I'd never have even applied.

It was all a big whirlwind, and the 2 pieces shown on the site under my name were done the week before we went to Santa Fe. The gallery wanted to see some of my work in person, so I did those two and dropped them off. When I got back from our trip I was asked to participate, but had to have at least 10 for the show. They had 2 on hand, so I figured I could do another 8.

I was able to do it, but it took 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week for the past month to get it done. And there were times I thought I'd never get it done. And times when I thought I'd stab myself in the head with my scissors if I had to sit at the sewing machine any longer to sew yet another piece!

I learned so much. So much about myself and my work and where I want it to go and where I don't want it to go. Since this was more work produced than I did all of last year, I think it gave me nearly a year's worth of experience.

But first, heres the photos (taken just yesterday...another something I learned about...I don't like taking pictures of the work. I'm terrible at it, so be warned!)

Circles 7

24x12

Circles 6

20x16

Drift

23x35

BeeBopDot

23x37

Around

20x26

Icee

24x12

Wave

20x20

Pebbles

24x37

Gem

31x36

StraightUpDot

32x21

I can post detail pictures later. I'm so tired of looking at these images I don't have the patience for it right now.

They are all of my own dyed fabrics. Most being of cotton, except for Pebbles which is linen, with reverse applique revealing dyed/painted silk.

The first 2 I did weren't reverse applique, but that's what came to me at I pulled out piece after piece of fabric. I wanted to do something that would incorporate both types of fabric, as I love the contrast of the smooth luscious silk next to the rougher cotton or linen.

I also wanted to do something very very simple. I didn't want too much going on, not a lot of piecing etc. So the reverse applique being a simple technique fit that. However, I will tell you that reverse applique while being a simple concept is not easy, and certainly not quick! It took hours and hours on each piece to plan and quilt the silks (no batting, felt, it lays so nice and flat!!!), and then to position them under the main fabric.

Once in position I stitched the basic shape and then spent more hours very very very carefully cutting away to reveal the silk underneath. This is also a tiny bit stressful as each cut could mean devastation if accidentally you cut the silk below!

After that tedious process I pressed the heck out of it, and then fused/backed with more of the lovely flat felt. Then more stitching to hold it in place and to add more interest, either with contrast or complimentary line.

It became very clear, in a way that I had understood before, but now was really truly a part of my design process, that the stitching is a visual line that holds together the design and theme of each piece. So the lines on the silk underneath make a statement and the lines on the cotton make another. It became something I really did think a lot about.

Some of these pieces you may notice are odd sizes. Only the 4 smaller pieces are mounted onto canvas. The rest were mounted onto artist foam core (an extra strong variety that shouldn't bend or dent) cut by me, with an exacto, and then mounted, by DH with power tools, onto heavy duty 1 1/2" deep stretcher bars. Its a nice effect, making the piece seem to float off the wall. I will do it again because it looks good and allows for odd shapes and sizes that standard stretched canvas doesn't come in. I also think it will be a way for me to move into more shapes and dimensional work.

The most important thing I learned is that less is more. And I love keeping them simple. I think some of my past work is too fussy for me now. Maybe I will pare this down more, but not right now.

Also, I really have 2 things I enjoy very much. The dyeing and overdyeing process with silkscreens etc, that mostly is known as Complex Cloth, as inspired and taught by Jane Dunnewold, is a joy for me to do. But I like smaller pieces, about 1 to 1 1/2 yards that I can easily use later. Using soy wax and tjaps or painting it on is my favorite. Silkscreening is awesome, too!

I also adore silk painting/dyeing. Mostly I love to stretch out the silk and paint out a design with my brushes. Not very planned out, but more organically. And I'm very interested in taking that process further with the Rozome technique (the Circles 6 piece was my first attempt at that several years ago, it's not great as a Rozome example, but it's good piece on it's own). That's more wax, and not gutta. I do love the wax process. And the smell of the little warm pot!

I think in the future I will plan work out to be a combination of these two processes. They can be made to compliment each other, which will be a fun challenge.

Whew. So very much work summed up in one little blog post. Well, I have to scoot. Need to dry my hair and then pack everything into the car and take it to the gallery.

If anybody is in Austin next week, please drop by and see the show. Or if you're interested in one of the pieces, please contact the gallery, Art on 5th.

Santa Fe

2010-08-11T17:47:00.000-07:00

...was lovely. Such a beautiful place. My workshop was great and the hotel we stayed at was exquisite. It had courtyards! Here's a few pictures of our room and the courtyards just outside our door

I took pictures of all of the wood carvings (the posts, the tub surround, the closet doors) as well, because they were so beautiful. There was a store in town that sold all of these pieces (they're imported from the far east), so I'm planning to get some similar things to put into the new house. I'm thinking gates, stone for the bathroom, carved posts for a pergola, beautiful hangings for the walls. A touch of the exotic for our new contemporary home (to be built next year...I don't have any exciting details yet, just a basic floor plan and plans for a supersized studio).

My workshop was held in conjunction with SPIN, silk painters international, at an arts school campus south of town. That was an incredibly beautiful place, too. I took some pictures there as well.

The workshop was shibori with Yoshiko Wada. She was wonderful! Such a kind and sweet lady and so generous with valuable information. I was very inspired and have actually done some work with the techniques since coming home (more on that tomorrow).

Here's a picture of Yoshiko teaching:

And here's one of my little experiments (silk organza) after going through the process.

And heres a picture of me holding it so you can see just how small it was still bundled up (and you can see how tired I was...that 12 hour drive was something I wont do again!)

And this is a picture of a Japanese tool that we learned to use. It was invaluable for doing some of the tying work. I've made my own sort of version since getting home, using a fine knitting needle (recommended by Yoshiko).

I was told by someone in class about the local fabric store, which I stopped at (I had the car!). Here's a picture of my goodies in their bag

Yep, all white undyed fabric. Mostly silk. Some handwoven cotton and a silk/linen blend. I couldn't resist. I was in a dyeing mood. This store was fabulous. Santa Fe Fabrics. I will probably be calling her to get more of some of these. She also had some adorable zippers with the tape laser cut to have frilly edges. Very cute. Great store. You must go if you're in town and looking for fabric.

It was a very nice trip. Except for the zero cell phone reception. Our iphones got almost zero reception. Will was very angry. Very. I didn't care, I still thought it was a great town. I will go back with some girlfriends who don't care about cell phone reception.

We only got to see a few galleries, ones I'd made a list of. First stop was Jane Sauer Thirteen Moons. Only a couple of fiber pieces, so I was disappointed. There were other galleries I enjoyed more. And so many I didn't get to see.

Oh, and food was great. I love red chile sauce! The breakfast at our hotel was also superb. Huevos Rancheros, Breakfast Burritos (choice of sauce, mine was red!), french toast...everything you could want to start a lovely day.

That's it for my trip. I got some great news when I came home, but I'll leave that for my next post.

a bit of work

2010-08-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who wrote after my last post. I am finally feeling better. I think it was taking a trip to Houston, where my allergies only bothered me a little bit after the first day there (I also found that being very tired while on some of my other meds can make mereally dizzy and completely spaced out, so I will have to be careful of that in the future), and my mind was focused on the workshop techniques I was learning.

I don't have many pictures from the workshop as I was busy taking notes and

practicing the techniques, but here are a few. The teacher was Kiranada Sterling Benjamin, and she taught us Rozome (a Japanese technique you may know as batik, though the application of dye is totally different).

The first picture just shows some wax on my silk, the second shows part of the class, with Krianada speaking to students at the front, and the last one is of our wax pots being used.

I got some good tips, like using 50% soy, 50% beeswax to create a less soluble wax (good for Rozome, which uses brushes to scrub in dye, with soy being too soft and allowing dye to seep through). Though it does still require dry cleaning (but I found a local dry cleaner this week who will clean my pieces and leave them as soft as fresh silk!).

The other thing I learned was how to use the brushes (you can see pictures here on John Marshall's site) properly to scrub in dye. This was great for me as I'd tried years ago to teach myself this from a book, but it's not possible. I needed to know the details to make it work right, and now I do.

I really enjoyed this class. Taking with Kira is something I've wanted to do for years but wasn't able to make happen. I am hoping to take with her again in Jan. and after that see about applying to be in her independent study program. I really love this technique, the way it looks and the process of working with wax and the brushing on of dyes. It's a very time consuming and meditative process, which has been missing from my other dye work. It fills a need in my creative soul to work in this fashion and I really want to do much more of it.

While I was gone for the workshop I was contacted about bringing in work to a local gallery for consideration of entry into their local artists show this fall. I had nothing completed on hand, but promised to work on 2 pieces and bring them in before going back out of town (we leave tomorrow).

So I worked as hard as I could, shutting off the heinous little critical voice and just going. Here are the 2 pieces I finished:

Circles 6

20x16

Silk, cotton, dye, colored pencil, silkscreened, stitched

Circles 6 closeup

Circles 7

24x12

Cotton, dye, wax, paint, silkscreen, monoprint, hand stitch, machine stitch

Tomorrow Will and I leave for Santa Fe. It will be our first trip/vacation together in 3 years, and only our second in 13 years of marriage. I am going to be taking a 2 day workshop on silk shibori with Yoshiko Wada, while Will is working (programming, emailing, taking calls). Then we'll have one day to see the town and galleries. We're driving so Monday and Friday will be spent in the car. 12 hours. Not something I look forward to, but he got a new car recently and I thought he'd enjoy taking it on a long trip. I hope to have lots of fun and see some new and different things out in New Mexico (and west Texas as we speed by!).

hello...goodbye

2010-07-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

It's been quite some time since I've made a post. I was quite ill and then I was just non-creative, and now I am unsure of what I plan to continue doing.

I woke up last night very upset, with the words running through my mind "you are not an artist, you are a failure, who are you kidding?". It was 2:45am and that's all I could think until I finally fell asleep again. I am afraid the little voice is right, which is probably why I haven't really produced anything in the past few months and why I have no new ideas and why I haven't put up any posts here.

I have dropped my membership in a couple of groups and I think I may discontinue this blog, get rid of my website (which is an embarrassing mess anyways, with no direction or beauty) and just retire from any sort of online participation. It's not doing anything for me but making me fee worse about being unproductive.

I may also cancel my participation in a series of classes that I started this past spring. We are to meet again in November and through correspondence with the teacher I have realized that I have some personal faults, and that unless I can overcome those, I can't move forward as any sort of creative person. And since I've struggled with these faults my whole life, recognizing their destructive power, but haven't been able to move past the issue, then it's hardly worth me wasting the time of everyone participating in the class, much less the teacher who is a very busy and important person.

You would never know from looking at me as I go about my daily routine that I am feeling very adrift. But inside my little brain there is nothing but disappointment in myself, my poor work ethic, and the feeling that there is nothing creative for me to draw on now. It's disheartening.

But life goes on, and so I will just feed my birds, do a bit of gardening and probably clean out a lot of the junk in my studio. Perhaps I should take up another creative form of expression, as fabric no longer seems to be speaking to or through me.

Circles 2: Spring Speaks

2010-03-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

Here is my contribution to the Fiberactions group for this go-around:

Basically, Spring was speaking to me. This was the worst winter for me. And I am ever so glad that the wheel of the seasons has turned again and finally I, and Nature, are coming back to life!

The fabric was fused, then quilted, painted and then I added the copper, finishing it by mounting to a pre stretched canvas.

Here's a couple of before paint pictures:

front

back

Circles 3

2010-03-14T14:42:00.001-07:00

Here is a small piece I finished this week. It's mounted onto canvas, 10"x9". I call it Circles 3, as it's all part of the series I started in January with the Fiberactions group (where I chose to make all my pieces for the year in a series).

Muslin, quilted, painted, with polymer clay embellishments. I love these colors together. And right now I am very much in love with spring greens!

And where is Circles 2 you ask? Well, it will be up on the Fiberactions blog tomorrow along with a few detail pictures to be posted here.

Looking forward

2010-03-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

to spring? I know I am! I just spent the past 6 weeks working and worrying over a big project. I sent it off last week and today the sun has come out and I noticed that our plum trees have blossoms and leaves. So spring is coming and my project is behind me, so I feel great!

I was working on an application for the Art Cloth Network. It wasn't so much the application, but the pieces of work I wanted to send pictures of.

In the past any art cloth I've done has been chopped up and turned into some sort of artwear. But I've also just made lengths of cloth that were experiments in technique, however, in a fit of cleaning last year they were thrown out. I mean, really, what was I going to do with yards of fabric just hanging around here? LOL

So I needed a certain amount of work to photograph and that meant creating them and photographing them and then sending them off all by the deadline of Feb. 28th. I started right after the announcement for new members was made back in January. In about 6 weeks I was able to complete 5 pieces that I really liked (there were a few that were failures). Not too bad.

Here they are.

Crunchy O's

Crunchy O's closeup

Grungee

Grungee closeup

Plaidwing

Plaidwing closeup

Ruins Saved

Ruins Saved closeup

Spin

Spin closeup

All of these are about 2 yards in length, except for Crunchy O's, which is just over a yard and 1/4 in length.

I like them all, but I really like Spin. It was the last one, and I almost didn't do it. I wasn't sure about it but then I photographed it and saw it from a distance, and it really looked better than it did laying in my floor (the design wall isn't set up to where I can see big pieces from a distance, hence viewing on the floor).

Now that I've sent off my application (will hear back after the 15th if I am accepted), I am trying to get back into other work. I've started a piece for the Fiberactions group. It's a little different technique wise, but so far so good.

I am also planning on doing a bit of gardening. Cleanup, actually. It's a mess out there, and because of the extreme cold that we got (about 10 degrees for a few nights, way colder than we ever get) there is a lot of dead stuff I have cut and pull out. I will wait to plant until another week or two. I have been collecting new pots and want a few more. I have to put the annuals in pots as the raised beds are full of trees, and huge tree roots, preventing adding anything else at this point.

I am so glad that spring is around the corner. This was a miserable winter and I really need some cheer and sunshine!!

Circles 1

2010-01-15T09:02:00.001-08:00

Today is the day we are unveiling our first challenge quilts at the Fiberactions blog (it's over there to the right, the button that should take you there).

The word was Initiative. I decided this was a prompt for me to begin a new series because I totally need to focus. FOCUS. (sorry, that's me screaming at myself)

So my series will be on circles. We shall see if it takes me far. I hope so. I am so lazy, again, I need FOCUS.

Here are the pictures. Pretty self-explanitory. Wish I had something more sexy to tell you!

Oh, and I had meant to post pictures taken of me in my pretty holiday dress. Only today when I took these pictures and uploaded all of them from the past month I realized that despite the fact that my husband is a genius, and can do most anything technical or math-y, he cannot cannot take pictures. They were all blurry! Big Sigh. So, no pictures of me in the dress. I don't plan to wear it again, so it's a shame the pictures were totally crappy. Next time I will not be so lazy, and I will go upstairs and get out my little tripod and do it myself!!!!!

a necklace

2009-12-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks for all the comments about dealing with end-of-life pet issues. It's hard, but we're getting through each day. For now, Mulder is stable. He has more appointments this week to see how well he's responded to treatment.

In the meantime I've been working a bit. My gym group is going to be having a little dinner party and instead of getting a bunch of gifts we decided to each bring one gift and exchange. I hate gift giving for people I don't know well. It's just so hard to pick something nice that they won't hate.

So to make it easy on myself, and to give me something mindless to work on, I made a bib necklace. They're all the rage now, I see them in catalogs and online.

Here's what I put together:

It's made from things I had on hand...stretch mesh for the flowers, Swarovski crystals, a beaded motif cut off a cheap ring from Pier 1 (bought last month with the idea of eventually making a necklace), and duppioni silk, cut and sewn with raw edges exposed to give it a softer, more interesting look.

It looks a bit funny on the dressform, but I tried it on me and it looks really cool, especially with my hair up. I'm hoping that whoever receives it likes it. A bib necklace is probably best for someone with the je ne sais quoi to wear it.

I've also been working on my first challenge piece for the Fiberactions group (see button in the side bar). It's been up and down. I have an idea, but making it come to life the way I am envisioning it is quite a challenge.

I don't know if we're supposed to show pictures of our work, but so far I have lots of failed tries I could show you if the group votes for it.

I'm trying to take my previous work a bit further and do something more sophisticated, and that's where I'm getting hung up. It all is looking a bit too tired, or like I'm trying too hard, and I hate that.

But at least it's fun, all of the experimenting.

:(

2009-11-27T14:43:00.001-08:00

Thank you to everyone who left such wonderful and kind comments on my last post about the dress. It means so much to me to know that my work is appreciated and enjoyed by others!

But this week was different It's been a long difficult week. I have nothing nice or pretty show. I have nothing at all to show for the week.

Mulder, my oldest cat (well, he and his sister Scully are the eldest, both were our first kittens before we got married), who is 13 and 6 months now, went into kidney failure last Friday.

He is ok now, not great, but alive and at home. There was a lot of back and forth to the emergency vet (my own vet was unable to care for him, and I'm not sure that she can now that his records and info and history are elsewhere) which isn't very close. And then it was trips back and forth between another vet and the emergency clinic for overnight care and day care.

I wasn't sure if he'd make it through the weekend. I would go to sleep with my makeup on and wearing sweats with the phone by my ear in case I had to get up and go. Thankfully I didn't. But it was rough going.

I cried a lot. A lot. And I've worried and am still worrying. I'm taking him back on monday for a checkup.

I feel so bad for him. He's not great, somewhat unhappy, but happier to be home. He'll never be as well as he was even 2 weeks ago and I know that it's just a matter of time before I have to make a difficult decision that will break my heart and nearly kill me.

So when I wasn't driving around on autopilot, crying in the car (Will could only stand so much of my crying) I was fretting about the horrible cyst that developed under my arm one night (has since gone away), a sure sign of intense stress for me. And then I had yet another migraine, but at least that one was the day after I brought Mulder home and he spent the day in bed with me and every time I woke up all I could think was that I was so happy he was there, lying by my head and breathing.

So this year I was very Thankful for Mulder still being with us, for all of my pets, and for my husband and him being so great as to provide us all with a comfortable and happy life with the means to pay for emergency care for my babies.

I'm also thankful that we went out to eat and I didn't have to cook or clean or have leftovers here. I would just eat them and be mad at myself!

Next week...some work.

Fin!

2009-11-18T15:52:00.000-08:00

It's done! Well...there is one little thing I might do to it. Replace the zipper pull with beads. But that's maybe right now. My hair is long enough to hide it. But we'll see.

Here it is!

Front

Back 3/4 view

Skirt close up

Skirt better view of embellishments

Further view of skirt

So, that's it! I need to reattach the lining at the zipper. It seems to have pulled away during all of the putting on and off of the dressform. And I guess I'll change that zipper pull. I don't have anything to use, so I'll have to make something up.

But other than that, it's ready for delivery tomorrow. I'll be glad to put it up for display, even if it's late and they disqualify it from the voting in the contest. I think I get it back in early December and I'll wear it to Will's office holiday party. And I'm going to get some cute red satin shoes to go with it. I think I already found a pair on endless.com

Yay!

almost done!

2009-11-16T18:02:00.001-08:00

I have been working very hard since Friday, when my headache finally went away. I also felt better once I admitted that I wasn't going to finish it on Friday, but could (should) take my time to get it done right.

I completed a whole new bodice (thankfully I dyed a bit extra as I always do for this sort of project!), added piping at the arm and neck and lined it on Friday.

Saturday I reattached the skirt and inserted the zipper and remaining lining.

Skirt lining on the table by the machine... I decided to pleat the lining instead of gathering to cut down on bulk. The last place I need bulk is at my hips!

This is a picture of the hand basting of the gathered skirt to the new bodice. I had to do this to make sure this time it would all hang correctly!

Then I took the dress out to an art group I meet with occasionally. They were impressed, and remarked on my attention to detail.

This is something I'd never thought much about before, in an analytical way. I do love detail. What is the point of doing the whole thing if you don't find something beautiful at every glance?

Like the piping I added at the neckline and armholes, and finally, at the hem. It is one of the fabrics I used for the ornaments around the skirt. Here's a picture of it being stitched on. This is a 2 step process, after making the piping (which I guess would make the whole thing a 3 step process), attaching it first to the bodice, and then a second stitching to attach the lining, stitching over the same line very carefully!

Here you can see a closer view of the piping at the neck and armhole.

Here's the hem, with the piping. You can see the stitching on the ornaments and the yo-yo's clearly as well.

I take great pride in doing a beautiful job...though admittedly on this one I had a few hiccups, but it's something I've learned from, and the few defects that exist can be fixed by the time I make this again (which I am seriously considering...but that's another post).

Here it is this evening, with the hem stitched up (the piping had to be stitched by hand with a blind hem to keep it from turning back out

Right now I'm working on the crystals. Tonight I got about 2 gross applied, and will do the rest tomorrow. I want to have it done by Wed., as I might just take it up to the store that day to show them the results, though it's too late to enter the contest.

When the sparklies are all applied I'll have more photos. I may even set up the lights for it!

going backwards

2009-11-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

I've been working...every day! But today I've had some real issues. First, I have a headache that won't go away and is incrementally worsening. It will prevent me from accomplishing what I need to today. And that puts me behind, a lot.

I ended up adding yo-yos to the skirt, on top of the appliques, and it took a lot of those and a lot of appliques. So that process took more time than originally planned. But it looks cute, though it added a lot in time, it was the right decision.

Here are the yo-yo's.

And here I am placing the appliques, just the first step in adding layers of appliques and stitching.

But beyond that is an issue with the bodice that I didn't realize until last night when I put the skirt on.

This picture shows the problems as well as where I ripped off the piping to try to fix it.

See, the appliques on the skirt were going to cause a problem with the drape and hang of the semi circular skirt, so I ended up fusing on some nice knit interfacing, which beefed up the stability of the skirt, and added strength for the stitching on the appliques.

But, that also added a lot of weight, and all of the appliques and yo-yo's (which are little gathered circles sewn by hand) added more weight. Which when stitched onto the bodice greatly distorted the bodice, but also revealed a problem with the organza I originally underlined the bodice with. I think it shrank, and the rayon of the bodice didn't.

Actually, neither one should've shrunk, but though I thought I had preshrunk the organza enough, I guess I didn't. It shrank during all of the steaming I did to press and shape the bodice. And that meant when I stitched it to the very heavy skirt, the organza was pulled taught and the rayon of the bodice just draped and bubbled!

It's heinous. I've tried and tried to "fix" it, but fixes haven't worked.

The only thing to do is to take off the skirt and recut the bodice, fusing a knit interfacing to it the same way I did the skirt, and then sewing it up. This should eliminate all of the problems you can see in the picture.

The only problem is that I was supposed to be done with this and turning it in by tomorrow!

Whoops. I took this project on thinking that I could do it in 2 weeks. Exactly 2 weeks. That didn't allow for little problems or additions, both of which I've had. So, I'll probably be able to finish it this weekend, but then it's too late for the contest. I'll take it to the store on Monday and just let them display it, as I don't plan to wear it. It will just be a cute thing for me to pull out and show people.

Here's the skirt. It is cute.

If I didn't have the headache then I'd probably be able to push through and get this done with an all night sew-a-thon, but right now all I want to do is lay down to take a nap and worry about all of this later, when my little head isn't screaming!

more work on the dress

2009-11-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted for the AEDM, but I have been working. It just wasn't coming to much, or at least not enough for me to make a whole post about. But now I'm down to just one week to finish the dress and it's coming together well.

I did more muslin tests of the dress and came up with a decent fit (the front view came out too blurry, so this is just the side view...which I rather liked because I could see triceps definition!)

After I finished the pattern I decided to go back to the store to get some more fabric, as I just wanted a few more choices for the appliques, as well as some metallic thread to do the stitching.

I was expecting a visit from my dad, so I ran a bunch of errands and gave up a day for that. He wasn't able to make the visit, so I get back the time I had planned to spend with him. That meant I was able to cut out the dress and lining and sew up the bodice. I decided to underline the bodice with silk organza to give it a bit of body. It was too drapey and hanging too loosely. Now it's a bit stiff, but the weight of the skirt will help to smooth it all out.

Here's a shot of the bodice on the dressform. I need to rework the padding on the dressform because I realized after fitting it on there, and then I put it on, the width of my back is more than the dressform, as is the shape and curve of my bust. The pads help, but not enough to exactly duplicate my shape. But that's a project for later this year. I know I'll never be that skinny again, unless I totally stop lifting weights and try to drop about 20lbs of muscle and fat.

I decided yesterday that the skirt was going to be too boring with just a bunch of appliques and that I should break up the background of the skirt somehow. I chose the ribbon motif that is on some of my fabrics, wrapping up the gifts. Here you can see the painting on the skirt. It took all day to do. I hope it works as well as I imagine it. Some projects don't and that's always a bummer.

Today I am working on the appliques. I was going to do just all circles, with some having stripes of coordinating fabrics on them, but they were too flat. I will do some that way, but it still needed more depth. I tried stuffing them with batting, but that didn't work out, so now I'm going with yo-yos made of the same fabric. Like a tone-on-tone effect. It looks cute so far, but right now it's all just out on the table and not on the skirt.

It will take me the rest of today and probably tomorrow to get the appliques done and temporarily placed on the skirt. I'll have some photos of that tomorrow. So far, so good. I have 6 days left and I'm feeling confident about being able to get this done in time.

dress/art

2009-11-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

I signed up this weekend for a month long art event. You can see the logo to the right.

It's all about creating art every day. Something I seem to need motivation to do! It's way too easy to get distracted by every day stuff (or the internet) and accomplish nothing. Lots of thinking about making stuff, but not much doing.

I am hoping that participating in this event will make me feel more aware of the need to work creatively every day. I don't plan to make a piece of art daily or complete a piece daily, but to genuinely work at something daily.

And so yesterday being the first day of the challenge I worked on a new dress.

Not just any dress, but a dress for a challenge, hosted by the sewing machine dealer/shop where I bought my Bernina 830. The challenge was to purchase 3 half yard cuts of any holiday fabric they had in stock. And at least 1/4 of a yard of each of those 3 must be used in the project. Project in my case being a wearable, but could be a quilt or table runner etc.

Holiday fabric? Ick! Well, I thought it would be a great challenge, because how you can make something elegant and lovely if it's made with fabric covered in Santas or snowmen?

Well, I found some lovely fabric there and chose my three. I was also able to pick up my new Bernina cutwork tool, which I hope to figure out installing on my new imac (yes, the brand new 27" imac...not the quad...didn't need that...but it does have the absolutely fabulous magic mouse!). You can see the fabric, challenge rules and my new cutwork tool in it's lovely box in this pic:

I was drawn to the little branches of berries (I assume that's what they're supposed to be) in the interesting color way. A fresh take on the holiday red and green, it's a dark red with olive! The little presents on the coordinates is are the same colors, with some light blue and brown. Quite pretty!

It took some thinking and brainstorming, and some research into current trends, color and styles, but I came up with something quite pretty. A full skirted dress based on a fall 09 Jason Wu dress. His is a beautiful green, very much like the Pantone "Warm Olive" that the color predictors mentioned. I have dyed up some rayon in a similar green, though mine is more closer to an "absinthe" green. Bright, but not like lime.

I will be appliqueing the above fabrics onto the bottom of the skirt of the dress, and then stitching around them in a contrast thread. I plan to use red thread, which will match the red piped neckline and armholes. It will be a very striking color combination!

Oh, and the finale will be tons of hot fix rhinestones I'll be applying all over the dress in green, reds and blue. Softer versions of the colors in my fabric palette, which will give lots of shimmer and sparkle, but won't be too overwhelming (I bought the tiny sizes of stone).

I love rhinestones...who doesn't? I can hardly wait for them to arrive.

In the meantime, here are pictures of the dress (as muslin) in progress from yesterday and today:

This one was just the second fitting...pretty bad, but it gets better!

Today I am going to lengthen the bodice a bit (I am short waisted and really need more length in the bodice to off set all of the fullness of the skirt) and take in a bit at the waist, scoop out the armholes a bit and then try another, with a zipper so I can try it on me and not a dressform. Dressforms are great, but no matter how I pad up or down or mess with it, it's never exactly my shape, though it's close enough to get a good fit. I just refine it at the end on myself.

And here is one last picture of my dyed rayon along with my 3 holiday fabrics. I have decided to call this dress "Holiday Baubles".

silk banners

2009-10-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I decided to paint some silk banners for our bedroom. I wanted to hang them on either side of this pretty wood carving panel that we got from VivaTerra. The table, made of recycled railroad tie wood is also from VivaTerra.

Here's a shot of the bed (very plain room still, notice stack of books by my side of the bed!!!) coming from the hall entryway in the room.

I decided to go with a purple and a blue. I was going to make it into one piece, quilt it and then hang it as a reversible hanging, with a red/orange one on the other side, but Will liked them as is and asked me not to quilt them.

I used wax and several reds/blues and one purple to mix up my own palette for the purple banner. I seem to have not taken pictures, but you'll see later on that it ended up matching the coverlet I bought from Crate and Barrel.

The blue one was also done with wax and several shades of blue. I added a bit of olive green to add some bright contrast as well as a dash of red to bring in the purples that I loved from the other banner.

This was a fun project. I really really love painting on silk in this unplanned, freestyle abstract way. The wax is perfect for this and I find I use it much more than I do gutta. I like to start out by flicking the wax here and there, it really makes the final product pop!

You may think my colors are off in the above picture of the blue, especially once you see the finished banners, but no, the colors get really bright and beautiful after steaming. They look just as beautiful after steaming as they do when wet (most dyes dry less bright than they look wet, so you have to remember that when working with that beautiful colored liquid, Sennelier silk dyes are opposite!).

Here are the banners hung. They were originally cut and painted at the size of 6' x 22". They shrank a bit after steaming, and of course I made a narrow hem on the sides and pocket at the top and bottom for the rods.

Treasures

2009-10-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

The good stuff. Here's what I bought (be warned, lots of photos!).

Paint kits from Stewart Gill. The lady selling these is also the maker/manufacturer. She was so cute with her Scottish accent. And she said I was so thin and pretty and reminded her of Terry Hatcher. She's my new best friend. ;)

They had a great deal where if you bought 4 kits you got $40 worth of free stuff. I chose the fresco flakes (never used them before, can be painted over and resemble chunks off of an old fresco), extender and some stencils. One stencil is a fingerprint. How cool is that??

I have had 3 jars of Stewart Gill paint. It is awesome stuff, but there's a few different lines and I was never sure which to get. This way I can try most of them and then buy more of those I like. The colors are different from Jacquard's Lumieres, so if you're interested in metallic textile (and mixed media) paints, check them out. They can be purchased from a few vendors her in the US. Joggles.com carries them, I know for sure.

Ahhh, yes. Here are the scissors. The 2 pair unpackaged were my own Ginghers. The cheetah handled ones had a bad nick and were getting dull. The little ones were very dull. I keep scissors everywhere in my room (at the sewing machine, at the serger, at the ironing board, at the cutting table) so that as I move from station to station they are available and I'm not looking for them. With 2 pairs out of working order I was messed with my system.

Somebody on the quiltart list said go to a certain booth to get them resharpened, which I did. And upon pick up I was able to test them (how great is that???!!!) and I bought several more pairs which they will sharpen for free next year. I'm definitely going back for that!

Here is a cd I bought from a lady on Threadpainting. Terry White is her name. I know how to do the basics, but this was an advanced cd I thought I'd try. And I bought a new embroidery hoop which is rubber with a grippy ring inside, which should be better than my old wood ones.

And all of those packages of thread? She was closing out her stock of Wonderfil (which I haven't used but heard good stuff about) and was selling each pack of 2 threads for $5. A super good deal. I think I got 8 packages. That's 16 spools of thread for $40!!!

This is the book for the display "SAQA at 20". It was a beautiful exhibit, no photography, so I was pleased to buy the book. The "Sense of Humour" exhibit is also in this book, but I loved it for the "SAQA at 20" quilts.

My favorite was this one by Virginia Spiegel, "Boundary Waters 25". I loved the texture and blending. Gorgeous.

Here is a garment I bought from Elizabeth Jenkins. She was in my katazome class at SDA. She's a handweaver. This is made of rayon chenille.

It's lovely and soft and looks so cute on over a little top. I had on a tank top when I tried it on and it wasn't too warm. I could wear it that way in the fall, or with a t or long sleeve top in the winter.

This is an awesome little device. I just happened across this booth, on my way to another booth, while my friend Emily went outside for a break. I was going down the aisle and had to stop to wait for someone in front of me when I turned and a big sign that said "made for ipod" caught my eye and I went over.

It had little embroidery designs you stitch out on a garment or bag, then stitch the touch pad behind the designs and add the connector. Then you can connect any ipod to a garment or bag you've made! I have enough stuff with the kit to make 2 garments. Really cool!!

Thread from YLI. I've never used YLI and I thought I'd try it. Good prices on the small spools.

Lovely Asian fabric from a nice booth. I wanted some greens and blacks. And I couldn't pass up the reds.

Or these cute little dragon beads. I have to figure out what to do with them.

Ooooohhh, here's some good stuff. Bought all of this from a lady I visited at her booth a couple of years ago but then lost her card. She's actually here in Austin, no store front, but has a studio and will see people by appointment.

First piece here is real Katazome dyed with indigo. Early 20th cent., possibly late 19th cent. I bought this piece, rather pricey, and will hang it in my upstairs hall where I can see it every day. Stuff I put upstairs is for me, as most people never see it unless they ask to see the studio. This piece is too precious to me to leave downstairs where it might get more light than necessary.

These pieces are kasuri. An ikat weave from Japan. The gal in the booth told me that the old pieces (very old she said, though no exact dates on these pieces) are the smaller designs (pieces shown on the left). Bigger designs mean it's not as old (top right pile), and the ones in the front with red (or sometimes other colors) are made from the 1960's and on. Good stuff!!!

More little pieces from her. Silks, a wool, and another kasuri with dragonflies. The rough weave bag underneath I also bought from her to carry stuff and because it's lovely. Made from antique grain sacks. She has more of this stuff, too, which I want to check out here in Austin at her studio.

The last thing I bought from her is one of my favorite purchases (though I can't pick favorites, I love them all!!!).

A cotton yukata robe, made of real katazome. Very old, very beautiful and soft. A lightweight weave with some woven texture that doesn't show until you hold it up to the light.

Here you can see the pattern more clearly. It looks really good on. I just have to make a simple, sexy bias cut dress to wear under it and then I'll wear it out next spring or summer.

Last one to show you...a stop at ProChem!

Dyes and paints. I usually buy from Dharma, but I like ProChem because they put out a lot of mixes and different colors. And I also got some of their brand textile paints because I've been meaning to try them. The little kits should be great for that.

Two things I purchased but didn't get to take home as they will eventually be shipped once they are ready are the new Bernina cutwork tool, and the new Babylock Sashiko machine. I can hardly wait!!!

I was told the Bernina tool should be at my dealer's within 4 weeks or less. The Sashiko machine is so popular it may take upto 8 weeks to arrive. The facility manufacturing them can't keep up with demand!

That's it for my trip to Houston. It was a lot of fun. And I came home really inspired. I also feel like a lazy slob because I realized I just haven't been diligent about producing work or pushing myself or even finishing anything and trying to enter shows. But I will this next year. Maybe I just need some time off. I am ready to get busy working on things for the new year ahead!

Some of my personal favorites in Houston

2009-10-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ok. I will state upfront two things, one, I am very unabashed about giving my opinion on what I saw, and two, I didn't see everything. I will just comment on what I saw.

First, is this piece, by Marilyn Belford, "Medea Escaping". Warning...very big rant ahead, only the brave of heart should continue reading.

Here's a closer view of the magnificent dragon:

So, notice anything missing here???????

NO RIBBON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This piece was large, huge, magnificent, spectacular, superb, emotional, graceful and wonderful.

But no ribbon. That makes me mad. Hopping mad.

The winners....well, I will say that I noticed one thing about them...they were schmaltzy and trite and boring. This one had life, pizazz and an interesting subject rarely explored in our banal culture.

I didn't care one iota for the winners. One of them was very nice compositionally, and I appreciated that. But in the end, it came down to a judge deciding to go with boring concepts and mediocre emotional impact. "Medea" beat them all hands down and I'm sorry that it didn't get a win.

Whew. Rant over. If you've made it this far, please continue, as I am much nicer from here out.

This quilt was beautiful. I cannot remember the name of the quilt or the artist (ok, just looked it up: "Tribute to Tolkien" by Sue McCarty.

Yep, it's all about LOTR. And that gold stuff...just little tiny free motion quilting with gold thread (I asked, her favorite brand is MonTex). It was a beautiful quilt...really well done.

A better picture...the blue is also blue metallic stitching. Someone else asked (because I would never ask the question I'm sure a thousand other people were asking...the artist is the lady in the picture) how many hours, she said over 400.

And the big winner, Caryl Bryer Fallert, "On the Wings of a Dream".

(aren't those women hilarious in their matching shirts...I only see this at IQF...it's obviously a bonding/group thing...kind of makes me wish I had a group to wear matching shirts with!!!)

Just lovely. Please read the story here.

It must've been last month when I went to Caryl's site. I think when I am considering a trip to Houston for festival I start poking around my favorite quilting sites. I came across her page on this quilt and read it because I was interested in her current work, having always been a fan of her gorgeous art (btw, she also won an award in the digital category, but I don't have a picture of that one).

As I stood there, just 10 minutes before the closing of the show, I felt so emotional. I wanted to cry a little because it was a beautiful quilt and a beautiful story. I was so moved. She is a wonderful artist.

I picked up a brochure for her studio/retreat/inn. At some point I think I'd like to go there and take a private/semi private/group retreat class or just stay and visit with her (anybody out there willing to go with me?).

This next quilt didn't win an award, but I just loved it. "September Song" by Carol Taylor. Really striking. Art Naturescapes division.

This next one I adored. Judy B. Dales "Floral Form III". I love her work. I adore. Adore. Curves. And she's so great with curves. I used to have her book. It disappeared. I was able to download the ebook from amazon (regular book is OOP). I need to go back and reread it. Good design here.

Next one by Gloria Hansen. I didn't get the title. She had 2 in this category, I think both got ribbons, and one by Caryl B. Fallert also got the other ribbon in this category. I cannot remember who got which.

If you're not familiar with her work, it's all digital and printed on fabric. She is a genius. This stuff is so cool and soooo not easy!

Run, do not slowly click, over to her site to see more work and to buy her book (which I have and can very much recommend).

It is my goal/plan to have her build my new site in the next year. By the end of 2010 I'd like to make that a reality (but first I must make new better work, get my act together...etc)!

Next, this quilt I saw just 3 minutes before closing. Really cute! Annette Hendricks, "Hide n'Seek (Now where did that mouse go?)". And, yay! She won an award!!!

Last one. I hate to admit this, but I didn't even bother to take a picture of the artist's names (announcement had just been made that the quilt show was closed).

I really loved this Iguana.

That's it! My quick trip through of my favorite quilts at the show. Tomorrow I will upload pictures of my other adventure in Houston...the treasure booty from my shopping! Don't laugh, you know I had to spend half of my time there shopping, I know I'm not the only one who does this!!!!

Back from Houston

2009-10-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

I am back. It was a very long day. Up at 4:50 am, not home until 11 pm. I slept through my alarm and appointment at the gym. I guess I was in need of sleep!

I had a great time. I think Emily enjoyed it as well. I know that she was really surprised to see the numbers of people and just how big the whole thing was.

We shopped first (because long ago I discovered that everyone else looks at the quilts first, has lunch and then shops) and then saw quilts. I don't think I saw all of the quilts, but I saw most of them. I realized this morning that I must've missed the wearable art section, too, since I saw none. Not even in the Hoffman Challenge area (which had some really beautiful dolls). The gypsy doll challenge was great too. I love dolls made by people who are really talented and imaginative. Each one is such a little work of art. I was overwhelmed and forgot to take pictures!!!

There was also an exquisite display of Chinese indigo fabrics.

I really loved this display. I noticed that the designs are noticeably different from Japanese katazome and indigos. The designs, which must've been done by stencil, are like little dashes instead of solid lines like the Japanese designs. I wish I'd thought of taking a closer picture to show it, but I didn't. I was just so intent on trying to fit so much into our remaining hours in Houston that I didn't take pictures of all that I wanted to.

This was the centerpiece of the Indigo display. It was so cool, hung from the ceiling.

The next display over that really impressed me was this one of quilted trees. They were all the same size, and each was done to represent a different species of tree. Also hung from the ceiling, they were quite impressive and tranquil.

The other really impressive display was this quilt from Philadelphia. I didn't catch the story that was being told by the guide nearby, but I overheard something about each square being done by different people.

Honestly, I didn't care about the story or meaning, but what I did love was the display and beauty of it's simplicity. In the area where the quilts are the lighting is different, much more subtle than the fully lit shopping area. It's not something that I really noticed in past years, but this year with these displays I realized that it makes a huge difference to the emotional and visual impact of these beautifully designed displays. BTW, these quilts were displayed behind plexi, which explains the shine in the picture.

These are just a few of my pictures. Tomorrow I'll post the pictures of my favorite quilts that I was able to take pictures of.

skirt ick

2009-10-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

I just finished the Vogue skirt, the Marcy Tilton one. I hate it. Well, not hate, but very lukewarm. It's just not right.

I had thought it would be great, and I made it just a tad longer than called for, because I hate the skirt length that's too short when you're going for long. So the first problem from that is that there just isn't enough walking ease in it.

Second, I have no idea why, but the bottom bias pieces on the left side are swinging away from the sideseam, towards the front. This is strange because I followed the directions for pressing and stretching and recutting all of the bias pieces before sewing. This shouldn't have been a problem.

I also had a heck of a time fitting this side seam together, not on the bias pieces (which fit the same down that length of seam), but above. Perhaps my upper back side seam there was stretched out of shape, but wow, I had to ease in an inch! It was awful, and I am usually so careful with side pieces because of this. It may also be contributing to the swing of the seam towards the front, but I'm not sure about that, as the ease happened above the section of the seam that is swinging out.

Also, I hate this waistband treatment. It's done with the band sewn onto the front and then onto the back waist, before the side seams are joined. Which of course makes for yet another place to try to match up for perfect intersections (the top of the side seam join where the waistband is attached). One side is perfect, the other is not. I also just prefer the look of a waistband sewn in one circle around the top.

I could've worked around this easily, but I just thought I'd follow the pattern this once. Since I don't like other things about this pattern I am just not likely to make it again.

I think it may have been better in a stretch woven lightweight suiting. This is the hand dyed linen (which was allowing for some see through-ness below the waist...ick...so I had to underline it, an extra step involving speedy microwave dyeing of some silk haboti) I had planned for the failed pants.

I do like the stamped bias pieces, and just decorating an inset pattern piece section like this is something I will definitely do again, as it adds contrast without it actually being a contrast fabric. A bit of interest.

So in the end, this garment, while finished, also doesn't quite work for me. Maybe I really should just stick with much simpler knit pants and skirts. But I like linen a lot. I have another bias cut linen skirt I did years ago for a wearable art garment that looks great. I should work with patterns like that one more often.

Big sigh.

Why are all my garment attempts failing right now? Its frustrating and I can only think that I just haven't made something out of a non-knit in ages that wasn't a flowing skirt. And in the meantime I have changed my shape somewhat. I know I've added more muscle in the past year, as there are some stretch tops I can't even get past my shoulders any more, so the same must be for changes at my legs and hips.

It has me rethinking how much weightlifting I do. I don't want to stop, but maybe if I don't push to make gains in how heavy I lift, perhaps I'll not add quite so much muscle. And maybe if I upped my running instead. And maybe if I went back to fasting a couple of times a week I could slim down a bit.

In the meantime I think I'll just work on some tshirts and some artwork.

But I do have Houston and the IQF to look forward to! I've made arrangements to go to Houston for one day on Thursday with my new friend, Emily (she runs the cat rescue at Petsmart where I adopted Miyu). She's never been, so I told her that she was in for an overwhelming experience!

I haven't been in a few years and this year I didn't plan to go, but in the past 2 weeks I started thinking about it, and how it's inspiring to go and see all the work and visit my favorite vendors.

LOL. Just this morning Will and I were discussing if I should take the new convertible or my SUV. He said I should take the SUV because I'll have treasures I'll want to bring home and there's just no room in the little convertible. The seats in the Infinity are a bit more comfy, and it has 2 cup holders (important, as we're leaving at 6am and will need coffee, as well as some for the trip home late that night).

OK. Enough messing about...I need to clean my studio so I can start a new project!

frustration

2009-10-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

I have spent the past week making pants. Here's what my table looks like now:

I have been trying all to week to make this pants pattern. I have actually made 5 paris (that's the big mess of muslin piled on the table...5 pairs of pants):

I'll sell this pattern (it's uncut) to whoever wants it for $10, free shipping!!!!

Such a cute pattern, no? Hot Patterns Marrakesh Pant. Drawstring with fly front and elastic back. They even did a cute YouTube vid on it, which inspired me to try it out. But try as I might and make all kinds of changes (yes, I made all the changes possible, I really truly did!) I couldn't get them to fit nicely, straightly, smoothly or drapey like they should because of this:

That is my quadriceps. Quad. The front of my thigh. I was able to adjust the back of the pant to fit my more rounded bottom (I used to have a flat butt, made it easy to fit pants). But this I can't overcome, as the pant is supposed to hang off of the hips in a soft slouchy way. Because my quad comes out so far in front of my hip (which is flat, along with the tummy) the pant hangs off my hip and sits on the quad. it looks ok standing but there's some wrinkles in the fit, but moving or putting my hand in the pockets is just awful.

The only way that it fit was to make them huge enough to over my quad, but then I was just swimming in them, even with taking in the sides and all that jazz. I even tried to make an "athletic thigh" adjustment. Nope. didn't work at all. It was just one big "hot mess".

I asked my trainer this morning if she can wear non-stretch pants at all. No, she said. They never ever fit. So she wears leggings/yoga pants. Which is mostly what I already do, but for some reason I thought I'd try these.

After a week of my time wasted, as well as nearly an entire bolt of muslin, I am officially giving up on these and making a firm stand on pants...unless they stretch, they are not for me!

But skirts I think I can do. In fact, I love skirts. And they usually fit over all of my curves (except for the jeans skirts I bought a few years ago. I can't pull them up past my quads/thighs any more...guess I know why after looking at this picture I took).

So I am going to make this Vogue skirt. It came in the mail yesterday. I took advantage of the $2.99/ $3.99 McCalls, Butterick, Vogue pattern sale last week and bought a box full of new patterns! This skirt looks fun and should fit. I will make it today.

At least September wasn't a total waste. I made a quilt (finished last week). Its about 60" wide by 70" long. All asian fabrics. Pretty cute. I am going to make more to keep in the family room for this winter. Here it is:

And before that I did some fabric dyeing. I have a huge bolt of cotton muslin (dyers muslin) that I got from someone closing down their dye room. I got it for about a $1 a yard...250 yards!!! It's such a huge bolt. I decided to start dyeing up half yard and whole yard pieces in some gradations, just for fun. I think I'll do some more soon. Here's the picture of them all folded up so prettily:

So now I'm off to clean off the mess on the table and to cut out the skirt. And maybe I'll finish it and finally feel like I accomplished something this week!

pergola

2009-09-16T14:15:00.001-07:00

It's finally done. Well, except for being stained. It only took us since April to get this project done!!!!

Hopefully it will be stained in the next few days. It looks so good, and the weather is beautiful. It's in the 80's to 90's and slightly breezy. And the light has changed and it feels great to be outside. I'm just awaiting the new patio furniture, and then we can be outside to enjoy this!

I've been dyeing and dyeing yards and yards of cotton. I bought 250 yards of dyers muslin from someone on the dyers list late last year or earlier this year. I got it for about $1 a yard...a real steal. But it sat out in the garage in the box until last week when I realized I'd used up all of my pfd bolts inside the house. I hauled this hefty roll (70 lbs!) into the house and stuck it in the closet. Now I can just unroll it right by the laundry room and then dye it up.

I realized that I need a lot more plain cotton fabric in shades. I have lots of mediums, like everyone else, but not enough shades. And I decided to get rid of tons and tons of prints that I'll never use, that were taking up space, and were a mental drag on me. Now I feel I have room for more of my own colors!

Only I'm trying to work in a new direction and I'm not sure exactly what I want to do with these. I miss piecing on the machine, and am sick to death of fusing, so I have to figure out how to go backwards to piecing, but still creating a flow of hues and shades and texture. I'm almost tempted to do some painting over some of my new handdyes, in tone on tone colors to create more depth visually, and then I can cut it up and piece it and each piece will be similar yet different.

I have to think about this. But it's easier to think now that my pergola is done and the weather is making me so happy!

2009-09-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

This video made me laugh. A lot. I have 7 of these little preciouses and I've never seen anything like this.

pod

2009-09-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new look. It's a template. I tried to have someone do some work on the blog, but that so didn't work out. Next time I'll just have someone build me a whole new website and a tied in blog.

I have been messing about, painting and experimenting on silk, in preparation for my trip out to Mendecino to study with Susan Moyer in a couple of weeks. The problem for me is that I am not a planner. I don't do well with planning out a whole design and sketching it and transferring it to the fabric. I can do it, but it comes out flat and lacking any creative spark or artistic feel. So I usually just jump in and start putting stuff down. That leads to a lot of failures and a few interesting pieces.

But what to do with those interesting pieces? Well here's one that I was happy with while I was working on it:

Silk painted with dyes and wax

And here's what I made...a pod!

And here it is in it's home in the "basket" in our dining area:

The pod was formed with paper mache over a styrofoam ball and wire ridges. It was a fun project. It reminded me that I really enjoy sculptural objects, and I think that's the direction I want to go with my work.

All summer long I've been trying to tell myself that maybe I should just go back to making flat quilts, as it seems easier to put into shows. But everything I've tried just isn't me, and is flat and boring, none of it sings with passion. However, even a little crummy and weird pod thing like this I find interesting and inspiring. I just need to figure out a way to make things that hang on the wall nicely (my previous experiments look good but hanging them seems to be a real trick).

We've finally started cooling down and when I go out into the garden I don't cringe quite so much. I noticed that a lot of my plants are doing well, especially this pretty one:

It's a Japanese Maple. I bought it last year, but it got fried sitting on the porch waiting for this spot while the backyard was being finished. But I knew it would come back. This spring it put out all green leaves and I was disappointed to see that they weren't red. I don't know how this tree works but in the past few weeks it's started losing a lot of leaves and then replacing them with new red ones!

I am glad fall is here (well, in this part of Texas 94 degrees vs. 105 is fall!!!)

a few changes...

2009-09-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

Soon, I hope, I'll have a new look here, so pardon the dust! I am hoping to have some new work to post at the same time, so stay tuned!

dull and boring

2009-08-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

That's me. Very dull. I haven't done much all summer. Messed around a bit with some rice paste resist. I had big plans, but after going at it non-stop for a week, my experiments weren't so great and I took a break from thinking so hard about it.

The picture above is of the stencil I cut and used (and used and used). This next picture is of me actually making soy milk to size the fabric with (again, an experiment, need to work on this much more).

This one is of my steamed experiments. I tried to add dye while the rice paste was still on the silk, and so some of them have color in the background. that's what the soy sizing was for, to prevent wicking under the dried paste. But I didn't make my soy thin enough. I couldn't get the dye to go on smoothly so it was very ugly. Next time I'll make the soy thinner. You can see the bag of curds (tofu, anyone?) in the pic above, I squeeze it, oozing out the soy milk, and then return the curds to a blender to add water and then repeat the process.

I also found that I could sometimes add dye without soy sizing to a resisted piece, but only if my resist had penetrated really well. And that only happened once I discovered that i needed to apply it much thinner than I had been, and the consistency needed to be a bit thinner as well, for the paste to spread and penetrate the fibers. More experimenting is necessary!

I also messed around with the idea of batiking first, then applying rice paste resist. I was lazy and didn't mix up a new darker color of paste, so that didn't work out too well, but I think it might work. Again, experimenting further is necessary!

So my next step, and why I think I am waiting and letting the idea ferment in my tiny little brain, is to try layering all of these things, but in a more designed fashion, so that I can build up subtle layers. I also slipped in a bit of rozome on one of the experimental pieces, and I can see that it would be really awesome as a last addition to a piece.

The rest of the summer has been hot and dry. Every day it's 105 degrees. I love heat, but this is awful. Probably because we don't get any rain, and we're in such a desperate drought, the heat is sucking the life from everyone and everything.

Please, El Nino, come soon and give us some wet!! We've been hearing from the weather people (I personally think the weather gods are demanding the sacrifice of a weather person now to bring us rain!) that El Nino should bring us rain this fall.

But I do have good news. We adopted a new kitty. Her name is Miyu. Its Japanese for "beautiful moon". She's about 3, very sweet, doesn't like to be held, but she loves attention. She's been here nearly two weeks and this week I am introducing her to the kitties. So far, so good. No fighting, no snarling, which is excellent! I expect that by this weekend she'll venture downstairs. For now she's in her own little bathroom, with the door open for visitors or if she wants to check stuff out.

And here are her glamour shots. Very photogenic!

quickie on batik

2009-06-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

For my dearest CA and anyone else who is interested...

The tjaps are for batik. They are Indonesian. Here's a little blurb (one of the better ones I found) on how batik is made, using tjaps and by using the hand drawing tool, a tjanting.

Basically the tjap is a big copper stamp. The tjap is dipped into hot wax and then stamped onto fabric. The wax resists further applications of dye. Traditionally each round of wax was followed by a dip into a pot of dye, but there are also some who paint dye into areas. I just bought a book on amazon that detailed the history of Batik very well. It's got a very long history, and a lot of the motifs were specialized in their use and meaning. I don't think that's as true anymore since batik is no longer used in quite the same way.

I've looked online at real traditional batik, and there is still beautiful work being done. The hand drawn motifs are exquisite. I like the tjaps for their quick and easy use. I'm not so good with the little tjanting tool. I can do quick lines but nothing intricate. Though it's lots of fun.

My latest pieces had the tjap stamping as well as painted on wax, done with a Japanese brush. It was fun to do and something I plan to explore further.

tjaps!

2009-06-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I tried to order several tjaps from Dharma. I did not get them. It's like a giant lottery. If you place an order for them and you're the first one to claim it, you get it, otherwise you don't. All 3 of the ones I wanted sold.

This really upset me, as I jumped on it fast and didn't hear for a couple of weeks that I'd missed them (my fault, turns out there was a voicemail 2 days later telling me they'd been out of them...hey, I never check voicemail unless it's Will or a name I recognize!).

So I was determined to get some. I really really like working with wax. I have some gutta that I've messed around with, but it's just not my favorite and I don't enjoy it as much as the wax. And when you're creating you must enjoy your process!

A long google search turned up very little, except for a single store in GA that had no pictures of available tjaps. Just an "add me to your list" email. So I did, not expecting much. I then went on to a place out of the UK that had a few, and from there I bought one Koi tjap. Hopefully it will arrive soon.

But surprisingly, I got an email earlier this week from the store in GA with pictures attached of tjaps they had in stock! Some had sold, but they had a lot, and I was sent probably 30 pictures, maybe more.

And good prices, too!

Well, I could not resist. I splurged. Big time. I bought ...... 15!!!!

Oh, but they are soooooo beautiful. They came yesterday. Here's a couple of pictures of some. I've only opened 2 of the 3 boxes I got, so there are a few more to see. Some were damaged, so I got really great prices on them, but I think for the way I work (lots of overlapping to create texture and a vague sense of the motif), they will be just fine!

This last one was heavily damaged. The handle had fallen off! But for $30 I had to have it, figuring I could fix it somehow.

Pretty lovely, yes? I will be working with these soon. I just spent the past week with the wax pots on (I have 2, one wide one for tjaps and the other a fondue shaped one easier for paintbrushes) and the silk dyes. I messed around and had a great time. I have a few pictures, but the best pieces I just rinsed out this morning and don't have pictures of. So these are my so-so ones. Just working on technique here, but the latest ones I really did improve over these.

In these pictures they haven't been steamed, so imagine the colors even more vivid. That's what happens with the French silk dyes, they improve after steaming. And of course, the wax hasn't been removed in these pictures.

And these final 2 are on organza. They came out really cool. I love using the tjap on the organza (second picture is of the tjap)

This one is sooo beautiful since the steaming. I will take another pic, when I do the ones I rinsed this morning.

Now my challenge is to figure out how to sculpt them. I have some ideas I've been working on, but now I'm just going to jump in and experiment with these to see how it goes.

Oh! I forgot!

2009-06-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this last week, but with the pergola drama (I have pictures, if you're really interested in seeing how badly something can be manufactured), I forgot.

The best part of my trip was making a new friend!

This is Leila. She's from Canada. I can't really spell it, but it's Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

If I look terrible in this photo it's because I had the headache that day, so I was a bit out of it. I'd like to think I don't always look quite so out of it!

I don't have many other photos. I think that from this evening on I was just so busy having a good time and doing a lot of shopping (a lot, my box of fabric just arrived, and there's a lot of it!!!!) that I didn't stop to take photos.

some work and some whining (or wine-ing)

2009-06-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

I spent the past week in contemplation.

First, the pergola nightmare. I will say only that the manufacturer,

after making us wait 6 weeks for all the needed parts, is so bad about making the cuts fit (if your cuts are up to 1/2" off that is very bad) that we couldn't put the entire pergola together and now it sits, swaying, yes, swaying, in every little breeze, then you're a crappy manufacturer! And so we have to take it down, ask Costco for a refund (good luck to us!) and find someone to build us a whole new one (oooohhh so much more $$$$).

Big SIGH.

After a few days or worry over that, I decided to let it go

and move on to things that made me happy. A blog post I read somewhere recently prompted me to take a second look at a book I recently received and had tossed aside (it was a preorder, so you never know exactly what you're getting).

"Inspired to Quilt" by Melanie Testa.

Yes, I will admit that at first I tossed it aside as I told myself, huh, you can do all of that already. But she had a different approach to layering images and blocks of color that I'm glad I went back to investigate.

A day or so of sketching I came up with a little drawing which I layered with tracing paper drawings to get this:

It doesn't look like much, and I had to think long and hard about whether or not I'd go through with the design as is, or even follow her recommended techniques. But I've decided to really make it my own and instead of doing it monoprinted with dye as Melanie suggests, I will be working my layers with painted silk and just a bit or monoprinting. We'll see how this turns out, but I do think that this process works better for me with these adaptations, and in the end that's how you take a "technique" and make it your own.

Experiment experiment experiment. And have a glass of wine to let go of those tensions and frustrations. Helps me every time.

Cheers!

(this was taken last year after I got the new machine, today if you saw me with my glass of wine I'd be wearing a tank top and shorts since it's actually 100 degrees!!! I am having some wine, though, as it's been a challenging week. LOL)

Stencils in class

2009-06-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some more pictures from my class at the SDA conference. First are a couple of examples of stencils the teacher cut. These are beautiful in person and yield lovely results.

These were my favorites

And here is a piece of her work with one of her stencils sitting on top. This was a beautiful piece of silk, and quite large, several yards.

This picture is of Akemi showing us how to apply the final coat of rice paste, which is the background color. In this technique you're working from front to back, so you have to keep track in your head of what you want to be on top, as that is the first to go onto the fabric. Its confusing to say, but once you do it, it seems more sensible. The paste acts as a resist to what comes after, which is why it's covering the entire piece at this point. The pattern below is still preserved.

This is a picture of one of mine in progress. This one turned out the best, so I won't bother to post the hideous failures!

And finished!

Just a few to start with

2009-06-03T10:15:00.001-07:00

Turns out I only took 52 pictures. I'm so not a picture person. There are zero pictures of anyone or anything in my home. Not A Single One. So it's no wonder that when i go out that i don't bother to take pictures. I'm not good at it and the photo only barely reminds me of the experience. I'd rather just remember it and leave it at that. My bad pictures just make me feel sad that I didn't do a better job of capturing the moment.

I know, if I did it more i'd be better. But I'm so busy with the rest of my life i don't have time to add photography to my list of things I must try/do/work on.

Anyways...here's a few shots of my class in progress. I took Katazome...rice paste resist. We did the Nassen technique, which is colored rice paste. It was fun! And once you get the hang of applying that sticky stuff, it's not too difficult. Getting to be good at it will take time and work, but it's a fun process.

Rice flour and bran being mixed with water into a dough

Same dough being shaped into doughnuts, and then placed into a cloth wrap.

Cloth bag full of doughnuts being put into a steamer. I think it steamed for 25 minutes.

After steaming the doughnuts have melted back into dough. It's removed from the cloth wrap

And stirred 100 times. Then it's ready to be mixed with dyes. We used acid dyes for silk. The teacher, Akemi told us that MX doesn't work, even for cottons, and to use direct dyes instead, but I think I will experiment with that.

The last thing I need is to buy another series of dyes...not that it didn't stop me from buying acid dyes this past week. LOL

Here it is, ready for the dyes to be added. At this point you measure out just a portion of the paste and add just about 1 tsp of dye that's been mixed with hot water. She had a cool thing for us to use, an electric tea kettle. Then you can add boiling water to the dyes anywhere (acid dyes need that for mixing up). I'm going to get one so i can do this process in the laundry room.

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of her stencils and you can see the very elementary ones I did.

I'm back!

2009-06-03T09:52:00.000-07:00

But I'm still catching up.

The SDA conference and workshops were great! I had so much fun and I made new friends. Yay!

Since getting home I've been busy here...cleaning, groceries, laundry. And then yesterday I downloaded a new toy. Corel Painter 11. Awesome. Will wants me to make the artwork for an app he's going to build. The app was my idea, so it needs to look the way I envisioned. The good news is that he said I can take all summer to learn the software and to create the art.

What is "app"? App store. From Apple. On iphones and itouch. He already has quite a few apps and they sell well. If you're interested, they can be seen here:

http://www.exactmagic.com/products/iphone/index.html

Messing around with the Painter software is too much fun! But I need to do some real work, too, so I will have to limit my time each day with the software, otherwise all of June will fly by and I'll miss it!

I feel so behind already!!!

I will try to get some pictures up this afternoon (though I didn't take many...too busy enjoying myself to remember to take it out of my bag)

SDA!!!

2009-05-22T10:25:00.001-07:00

I am so excited! Tomorrow I leave for the SDA event in Kansas City!

SDA... Surface Design Association, in case you weren't familiar with it. I am taking a class starting on Sunday. It's called katagami, but that refers to the cut stencil. It's a Japanese technique of stencil cutting, and pulling resist (rice paste) through the stencil and then doing further dye techniques. This class will cover adding dye to the rice paste, which has another name for the technique (Katazome is what it's called using the stencil, when the paste is uncolored), I think. There's so many names for the work that is traditionally done in Japan on textiles. Bound resists is a whole 'nother thing!

So in the past 2 weeks, instead of working on Tien (who I will finish this summer, and may submit to the Pacific Int. Quilt Fest...due in August), I have been making some clothes to take. I want to look nice as most of the things I wear here at home are ancient (as in some are ratty tshirts Will had in high school...they get really soft when they're that old, but this also makes them very holey. lol).

There will also be dinner and lunch events at the conference so I needed things for that, as well as if I plan to go out to dinner in the evening I need not look like a slob!

Here's what I've made:

1 smock (no picture, I packed it already...but it's huge and should keep me covered!)

6 skirts (5 of which are a pattern I took off of a skirt I bought years ago. It's cute and flattering on me and easy to sew, requires just 1 yard of knit):

feathers!

leftover scrap fabric, cut into a tube and elastic added at waist (well, hip, I don't wear anything at my waist...I'm too shortwaisted and anything sitting at my hips makes me feel dumpy and dowdy)

20 mintue skirt!

green with stamping

red with silkscreen and overdyed hem

purple with silkscreens and overdyed hem

blue with large hand carved stamp and overdyed hem

plain brown (I did this one first and wasn't sure I had time to fancy it up)

Then I made 2 tops. Same fabric print, but 2 colorways, purchased last year from fabric.com. This pattern is highly reviewed/loved on patternreview.com. It's a Simplicity. I read some of the reviews and made some changes before even cutting it out. I lengthened the body, added to the sleeve hem, took in the neckline a bit, shortened the neckband a lot and transfered out a neck dart (to prevent gaping) to the sideseam. I also took in the waist because I'm really curvy and the pattern didn't look like it would fit snugly, which I hate. I want it to fit and not look sloppy!

purple

green

Then I made 2 jackets. The first one (it's a vogue pattern) I wasn't too happy with the fit. Just a little too small in the bust, despite being a loose fit. I had to go back and make a full bust adjustment. Here's the first version...cute, but I'm not taking it:

dyed purple linen with stenciling and contrast piping

And the second one, with a full bust adjustment (patterns are made for B cup, and I'm about a C, but definitely more than B, also because I lift weights I've changed the shape of my lat muscles so I'm bigger around than I used to be and this also requires more room, and more than just a back adjustment, I've found.

denim, contrast binding with some silkscreen (not too visible here as it's black paint on the dark denim, meant to be subtle)

That's it! I could try to make another top this afternoon, but I want to pack and relax instead. I think I'll have enough between these things and some pants, shorts and new cheap t's I bought at Old Navy last week.

I'm taking my camera and new mini laptop (it's red, Will got it for me last month for my b-day...it's totally adorable!!). I plan to take pictures and post here to the blog while I'm gone. So check back for updates on Monday (that should give me enough time to get some pictures!)

Dear Anonymous

2009-05-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

Screw you. I don't know if the same anonymous is coming here and offering all sorts of (un)helpful advice and criticism and judgement about me, but please don't. Or at least have the respect for me to sign your name so I know who you are.

I am not self sabotaging. That is the most stupid thing I've ever heard of. And I'm sure you're so damn perfect yourself that you finish every project and never have any self criticism. Because that is what I put down in this blog...my issues, my problems, my self criticism. And maybe when I'm doing fine, too!!!!

I'm an ultra-perfectionist. When I don't meet my own standards it's not self sabotage, it's not meeting the standards I've set for myself. And I haven't finished the quilt yet, and maybe I will next month, and you know what... I'm fine with that because I'm the one sitting here who knows that there are some problems here that will make it so I don't meet my standards, and therefore I am choosing not show the quilt!

I don't think it's going to happen!

2009-05-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've been working towards getting this done so I can try to get it into IQF in Houston. But I have been having a huge technical problem that I can't overcome because of the design of the quilt. I'm also fighting off a terrible migraine and I've lost a lot of time waiting for it to get better, but it's not. I'm trying to work but it's really terribly painful to do so right now, to keep looking down or to keep my body in the position necessary to move the quilt around.

The dragon itself is nearly 1/4" thicker and above the surface of the quilt. This means that as I've been trying to go around it the quilt can't be manipulated enough to be folded and pushed around the needle. The same thickness is also an impediment to getting the presser foot to move evenly around the area near the dragon.

The quilting I've done so far looks bad. It's acceptable to hang on my wall, I'm fine with less than perfect stitch length, but for a quilt show this is totally unacceptable. I've been working and working at trying to figure out how I can move it better, but it's so thick in some of those areas it just refuses to budge and I end up with terrible little stitches.

At this rate, even if I ripped out most of what I've done (which I already did once) I don't have time to complete it in time to take pictures.

I've also discovered a few places where the edges of the dragon have frayed away as I've pushed and shoved it around this past few days, trying to stitch around him. I could try to patch it up, but again, this is just not good enough for a quilt show.

I know how they judge. I've put a quilt in that show before. The comments are unhelpful and rather critical. Nothing is ever quite good enough, unless it's perfect. And I definitely recognize that this is far, far from perfect. And I just don't think I can make it perfect, certainly not in the short time I have left.

I guess it's dumb to have thought that I could speed through this so quickly. And it's just as dumb to think that I really want to put all this time in to put it into a show I don't have too much interest in anymore.

That's a true confession!

I don't really want to put any of my current work into a quilt show, as it isn't representative of what I see for my future, but I had thought that because the dragon was originally intended to go to a show (I had started him with that plan years ago) that I should do that now.

If there was another few weeks I could perhaps do something different for the quilting, but there's not time.

And my head is screaming. If I stop now because of it, there will certainly be too little time to get it done.

Lattice

2009-05-10T14:01:00.000-07:00

I spent the past few days working on the lattice border for the dragon. Here's a picture of it all applied (and before I pressed it):

The process for creating these is very tedious. It took all of 2 days, working all day. Here are some pictures of the pieces in progress.

This is fabric I dyed earlier this week. The paper is freezer paper. The technique is sometimes referred to as freezer paper applique or invisible machine applique. The shiny side of freezer paper will stick to fabric.

I cut out the patterns in the freezer paper and ironed it to the fabric. Then I cut it out, leaving a scant 1/4" seam allowance all around. After that the piece has to be clipped, nearly to the edge of the paper, at the corners and around all curves.

After that I take small paintbrush dipped in liquid starch (the old fashioned kind that's really thick) and paint it on the 1/4" seam allowance. When the fabric is saturated then I use a pointed sewing stiletto to fold back the tiny seam allowance. You can see that in this picture:

Once it's folded back, to keep it in place I press it with a hot iron. The iron and the starch fuse the fabric down and into the fold, permanently until the starch is washed out (which I won't be doing). You can see me ironing it here. It's rather tricky to do this and to take a picture with my left hand!

This next picture shows the curved pieces, and all of the clipping that has to be done. Just cutting these out and clipping them takes at least 30-40 mintues. Painting on the starch and then pressing takes over an hour.

After all of this pressing the freezer paper is more firmly attached, too firmly attached. I don't want it in the quilt, so to get it out of the little applique I have to score it with a pin in several places and then tear it away. It never comes away cleanly so I end up doing that several times. The removal process takes time too, as then it has to be pressed afterwards to get it back into proper shape.

I could've done this by just fusing and cutting, but I didn't raw edges, and I didn't want to satin stitch the edges. I also knew that fusing sometimes allows seams below to show (or shadow). Since the background is pieced in so many pieces I knew that it would show through the appliques and I just didn't want that.

After all the work to create the applique it still needed to be applied to the quilt top. I used a little stitch with invisible thread. It took an entire day to do just the stitching.

In the end, I spent about 3 days, working from early morning to late at night to get this part done. It was exhausting. I just feel like I'm not going to ever get this done, each step takes so long!

Today I pieced the fabric for the back. It's really cool, as it's little hexagons like the piecing on the front and it's the same shade of wasabi green as the appliques on the front (I know the colors in the picture aren't showing it truly)!

The quilt is layered with the batting and backing and I'm quilting around the edges of the dragon. Then I will quilt around the appliques. All of this is done with invisible thread so it doesn't show. The rest of the background will be done with a cream colored thread that will show. I've worked out a pattern that I think will look interesting. Stay tuned for those pictures!

Dragon gets a background

2009-05-07T10:23:00.001-07:00

I spent 8 hours at the machine yesterday and got Tien onto his background! Yay! And with my new 830 the extra space under the arm made it a lot easier.

I haven't attached the nails. They need to be glued down. They probably also need another coat of paint because I noticed they picked up some glitter!

Here's a close up of the nail so you can see how I built it up with the gel mediums. And you can see how thick it is and why it wouldn't look good stitched down (little holes that show!)

Today's work is to draft out the border. It's another applique of Chinese style red lattice, with a bit of green swirl lattice interwoven. Here's a picture of my process for that!

Yes, boring. I scan it in, print it onto a transparency and do it the old fashioned way. This way I can enlarge it to the size of the quilt. You can't see in the photo but I've lightly outlined the shape of Tien Leong so I know where he fits and how big to make the borders.

I've also got some fabric in red dye right now. I put it in there at 8 am. Hopefully I can wash it out this evening and get it ready to applique down tomorrow. I'm not sure what technique I'll use for that. I was actually laying awake last night thinking about it.

Dragon continues

2009-05-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have been working and working on this dragon. Each step takes twice as long as I planned, and I'm so worried I won't get it done in time, but I'm trying, really trying.

I have just finished the details on Tien Leung himself. He had to be cut away from the white of the original cotton he was painted on. Then the batting and backing had to be trimmed away ever so closely so the front fabric could be folded back (for the applique).

Here are pictures of the back, with the batting cut away and before I trimmed the edges for turning back.

And here is a picture of a finished edge. You can see where I turned it under, past the stitching and then whip stitched the edges down. This was the only way I could think of to keep the enormous amount of curves and twists nice and neat, making the applique to the background clean and neat. I tried just ironing it, but that didn't do enough.

I determined after doing that for two days, in which my neck hurt like a ...well, you know, I realized that the little points of his horns, spine and beard would not fold back nicely. So after finally finishing turning back as much as I could, all of the little points were painted with glue. Once that dried I cut it away as close to the stitching as possible. Then I spent yesterday and today painting those edges so that the white of the fabric cut edge or the batting didn't show. It created a kind of shadow effect on the edge I really like.

Here he is, cut out, paint drying, lying on my cutting table. Oh, and he's about 47" long, just to give you an idea of his size (and why it's taking so long!)

This is a picture of the background. I wanted a hexagon shape because it's a motif I've seen repeated in a lot of my Chinese design books. I don't know if anybody else will notice that, but it was deliberate.

I also wanted a background that wouldn't be solid, but would be patterned overall, without being too much. That's how I came to chose all of these shades of neutrals, leaning toward creams. I really love the marbled one you see here in the center of the picture. It's just enough different to be interesting.

This was strip pieced and cut using some funky tool. I don't remember it very well, it was all borrowed from a friend just for this project. The pattern is based on a very old one from the 30's called Grandmothers Flower Garden (I think that's right).

I do love this background. It was a lot of work, too, all those years ago. It's about 60" long by 45.5" wide.

And finally, here is supervisor DustBunny. As you can see, this project has worn her out. She's ready for a glass of wine (or just a hit of catnip)

oh the nightmare!

2009-04-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

No big surprise, but the pergola has been a bust so far!!!!!!

It's missing an entire box of boards. And though we decided we'd be clever and put together what we had and fill in the rest when we got the MIA box (my shipping label only said I'd get a shrink wrapped package with my pieces...well, all I got was a whole bunch of separate boxes!), we then found that the main support boards were all mis-drilled. None of the holes line up. Not a single one.

Its 2 boards, parallel on each side. Total of 4 boards. Here's the pictures:

And yes, some of them were drilled and then filled in, and drilled again, in another incorrect spot!!!!

Nice. I've emailed them twice. I hope to eventually hear back. In the meantime heaps of pergola pieces are sitting all over the backyard.

I did get some work done on the dragon. He's looking good. All of the glitter and paint details are done and he's been spray basted to batting and muslin. I did a bit of quilting on him, but I had a lot of skipped stitches. Another quilter contacted me via quiltart and said that one possibility is that the paint wasn't totally dry. I'm guessing this is it since it has been really humid here.

Here's a couple of pictures of him now. I've decided to call him Tien Leung. It means Celestial Dragon.

I'm hoping that tomorrow it will be better and I can do more quilting.

More dragon work

2009-04-23T11:08:00.001-07:00

I've been working daily on the dragon. Here's where it was after all the colored pencil work was added:

I used watercolor pencils. I bought a bunch of them at my local Jerry's Artarama. I love that place! It's such a treat to go and buy real art supplies at a real art store and not Michaels or Hobby Lobby (I hate HL, the checkout for me and 2 people in front of me always takes 40 minutes!!!)

Anyways...the colored pencils go on nicely and I can really see how they'll blend once wet. The trick was not too much water or they do spread everywhere, which you can see in some of the pictures around the outline.

That's ok because it is being cut away from the white background. I used a mixture of mostly textile medium (Golden) and a bit of water. I found that bit of water was needed to make the colors really blend and not just melt. I think the picture showing the area along the spine demonstrates this best.

Today and yesterday were spent on details. Tomorrow will be more details.

Yesterday I got out the acrylics and did the whites and black outlines. The whites were the teeth and claws. I tried to use modeling paste to build up shape and definition, but with a brush it's not smooth enough. I'm thinking of going over it with soft gel medium, but I still had trouble with brush strokes on my test piece. I may try my finger and using a spatula to clean up the edges. At least with the acrylic mediums I can go back over and over it with no problem.

Then I did glitter. Tacky glue, with a wet brush, spread over the areas of the flame and glitter brushed on. I had bought tons of glitter for this project all those years ago and I'm glad I did. It looks really good. I'll be adding more to the spine area tomorrow.

Today I added scales. I used paintsticks and a rubbing plate I'd bought who knows where or even when, that resembles reptilian skin! I used green, blue and brown iridescent sticks and tried to put it on lightly enough to not be overwhelming. I think it looks good.

The only trouble with these Shiva oil sticks is that they have to dry. For at least 24 hours. I can't do any more work around them, even, as they easily rub off and all over onto everything. But I'll heat set tomorrow afternoon and it will be ok. I'll use some paper to cover the areas of the oil stick and heat it, so if some comes off it will be on the paper, which is fine, as that gives it a bit more worn look...good for an ancient dragon!!

After that, I need to add a bit more glue over the glitter to keep it in place, add glitter along the spine and work on fixing the claws. I expect I will be done with the dragon by the end of the weekend. Or maybe Monday.

Here's an overall shot of where he stands now.

I think we're going to an art show this weekend here in town. If the weather is nice (and not windy...my allergies can't take that!), I want to be out and checking out the work of some fiber artists in the show.

We're also expecting delivery of a pergola today which we'll need to assemble. That will be a nightmare, I already know. We argue when putting stuff together. Actually, he gets mad at me for not holding things high enough or steady enough or whatever. It boils down to he wants to rush and wants me to be as strong as him to do the same amount physically. Neither of which is possible!!! I am strong for a woman, but not as much as he. And I told him this is not a 60 or 90 minute job, we need to plan for it to take all day and he shouldn't get pissed about that.

I think I'll make some mojitos to keep him calm. Alcohol works wonders!

a different kind of project

2009-04-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

So last week I dragged out an ancient piece I'd started about 5 years ago. I made several pieces, one is a pieced background, the other is this, painted with dye:

Yes, it's a dragon. I want to hang it here in the house, but first I want to see if I can get it into IQF. The deadline for that is May 19th (application due in Houston).

Wow. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh?

At least this is an already planned design, with about half the work done. I'm working this week on the dragon. It needed a lot of shading and detail from where it started:

I've worked on it with colored pencils to add detail and then painting over it with textile medium to set it and keep the pigment from brushing off (which it does, all over my hands). Once that's done in another day or so, I'll go back and highlight with some acrylic paint, and finally a whole bunch of glitter, which I purchased just for this project years ago.

Then it gets quilted, cut out from the background you see here (just plain white cotton), and then appliqued to the pieced background. After that, there's a couple of added motifs to applique and finally quilt it.

Im thinking of facing it instead of binding it, just because I want the design to go all the way to the edges and the facing is the best option for that. But I know the "quilt police" don't care for such avant garde techniques. LOL

But I'll have to assess that when I get to that stage. I am hoping to have it done in about 2 weeks. 3 at the most.

The tight deadline is not just for the entry date on this quilt, but because......

I am having a solo show at the gallery in Fredericksburg!!

I just got off the phone with the gallery owner and we've set the date. Sept. 18th is the opening reception with wine and cheese.

Anybody who's reading this and is interested in seeing my work in person (I'll post pics in progress, but she made me promise not to show completed work to anybody!!!), is welcome to come!

More about that later!

Happy Birthday

2009-04-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

To me!

Yes, today is my birthday. I will celebrate to

night with a burrito. My food of joy. The one food that always makes me happy (and it will also cure most any headache...I kid you not!!!).

But today I finished this project:

It's a table runner for this funky table we put in the front entryway. I am also planning pillows to go on those metal benches (there are two, flanking each side of the front door there) and will do those this weekend.

My mom sent me this cool objet d'art for my birthday. It's from Thailand. I wanted to to go behind the couch on the 2 console tables we got from Crate & Barrel.

This cool small wood sculpture almost matches the big wood sculpture in the same room we have hanging on the wall behind our bar.

We got that one at ZGallerie. I love ZGallerie. If you ever see one, check it out.

And just because this dog cannot seem to resist having his picture taken, a glamour shot of Augustus.

I think I might have a glass of wine now. It's my birthday...I think I'm entitled!

needed a change

2009-04-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

Can you tell? I foud this site that offered cute blog backgrounds. I found one I liked and it coordinated with my banner, which I made to use in a future Etsy store. I plan to sell things there that are not my normal artwork for walls, but funky stuff with ruffles and prints...clothing, accessories etc.

I like it. It's kind of an alter-ego thing. I don't think the 2 offerings will compete, but they do appeal to different kinds of people. Now I just need to figure out what to put into my Etsy store. That's a project for May.

I finally accomplished something. I've kind of put dieting on the back burner this week. I didn't lose any weight last week, and this week my weight is the same, even without fasting or watching what I eat. But I feel crummy, slightly dizzy most days, and I think that's allergy related. If my allergies are causing me to not lose weight, or to just slow down, then it's nothing that I can beat or control and it will just have to be let go of. But I'll decide that next week.

And since Friday is my birthday, I feel that it's good for me to make one decision to make me happy.... no diet means I can have a burrito! I love my burritos. They are the ultimate comfort food for me.

I'm really looking forward to having one. I just have to decide where I want to go for it.

Here's a picture of an actual finished project. It's a cute top which I'm rather pleased with. I dyed the fabric (it had been an unflattering shade of grey) and silk screened the black branches and stamped the golden flowers. It worked up quick, so I will probably make another one.

This is a must see

2009-03-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

I just watched this video. It is so incredible to me. This man is absolutely the most incredible artist I've ever seen. Something about his work really makes my little bitty heart sing.

why bother?

2009-03-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a month because I never did finish that project. I really screwed it up trying to fix it, overdye it and then try to cut it into another dress. I didn't participate in the fashion show and I didn't even go to see it. I will probably not rejoin the group. Why bother?

This is the story of my life. I can't finish a damn thing to save my soul. I suck. I'm burned out on trying to do anything. I haven't even turned on my new sewing machine in 2 weeks.

In Feb. my trainer/friend asked me to go on a diet with her and compete in a bodybuilding show. She'll do bb and I'd do "figure". Fancy way of saying bikini contest, but with more muscle. Only I've tried this before and always lost it halfway through the diet due to self defeating thinking about not being good enough.

So here it is, nearly 8 weeks since I started the diet, I've lost 8 or 10 lbs, and yet, I don't want to go on. This morning my weight jumped back up by 1.5 lbs. Now, I know that 1 lb = 3500 calories. It is not possible for me to have consumed over 6000 calories more than what I burned off since last thursday. But that doesn't make a difference to my emotional state right now.

I've figured out part of the key to fat loss. Fasting. So, twice a week I eat breakfast and then don't eat again for 24 hours, or until breakfast the next day. I work out the same, about 1 to 1 &1/2 hours each day, heavy weights and cardio to keep my strength up and prevent muscle loss.

So far it's worked. Until this morning. I fasted yesterday and still my weight went up! I flipped out and swore I'd try to fast again today. That lasted until 12pm when I couldn't stand the shaking and shivering and dizzy feeling anymore. I ate and apple, some natural peanut butter (2T) and then some oatmeal. Not much different from what I'd eat over a whole day, but instead I scarfed it within 20 minutes.

Now I feel guilty. I hate myself. For several reasons. One, not being strong enough to keep fasting. Two, for eating. Three, for eating what I did instead of tuna out of a can. Four, for letting this get to me yet again. Five, for hating myself over this. Six, for ending up in a cycle of dieting and then freaking out yet again and again and again.

I can't tell you why I'm doing this show. I'm happy to have lost the weight I have, very much so. But beyond that...I don't know. Given that my friend hasn't come to train in the morning for the past 2 mornings, and missed at least 2 workouts last week...I'm really feeling like I'm doing this alone. And I'm taking no joy in it right now. And I've still got 6 weeks from this Saturday to go. I don't know that mentally or emotionally or physically I have it left in me to go that much longer.

Oh, and I'm supposed to go to San Antonio in April for a weeklong class with Jane Dunnewold. I'm looking forward to the class. But not the extreme stress I'm already feeling over worry about sticking to the diet/fasting while I'm there, lack of control over my ability to exercise (I'm staying at a B&B, planned long before my deciding to diet for this show) and fear that going there 4 weeks out from the bb show will mess up my weight loss and prevent me from losing all that I need to.

So, why don't I quit? Just like I've quit everything else this past year. No finished projects. I haven't made a stitch of clothing for myself. Nothing. I have a pillow for a chair sitting on my table right now to be stenciled. I did some, but I hate it and now don't want to bother. I don't want to do any more anything!

Basically I feel like crap. Maybe that's the diet, maybe it's something else. But right now I only feel miserable anytime I try to think just 3 minutes ahead.

yesterday was great....

2009-02-19T12:35:00.000-08:00

Today... not so much.

I have been working on an ensemble for a fashion show put on by a San Antonio fiber arts group. I've never attended this event, but I think it's kind of large, they have it in a hotel with a luncheon!

I actually joined the group last fall specifically to participate in this show.

Of course, I am working on it at the last minute as it needs to be ready by the 28th (application due date) for a delivery date of March 8th.

Heres a picture of the fabric stretched out on my table with a bit of dye on it:

I had made some minor changes to a Vogue pattern and then designed the way I wanted to silk paint the charmeuse. The test piece had an issue of dye migrating off of some wax that I used in part of the design. This wax technique (my cheezy take on Rozome) is important to the finished look of the garment so I couldn't not do it because of a small issue.

I decided after going through the test that the best work around was to wipe off all excess dye before removing the wax with the iron (between 2 sheets of paper). I thought this would eliminate the dye sitting on the wax and keep it from moving down onto the fabric in the melting off stage.

Well, I meticulously did just that with a q-tip, and after days of working on this project, I just ironed out the wax only to find that in 2 places this did not work! One place is definitely worse than the other. And they're both in places that can't be hidden in a seam or cut around, they were deliberately placed motifs. Of course, this being last minute, I also don't have time to repaint the pieces and am out of dye, besides.

So I'm really really upset. And not sure what to do. My concern is that I know I will be ashamed and embarased to show something that is glaringly amateur. Normally I put out a much better product and pride myself on very professionally done work.

But this looks bad and makes me feel worse. The horrible thing is that I'm afraid this is a big show and it will be seen by many people and not just far away, I think people will be seeing it up close.

Oh, and did I mention that I also signed up to be a model for this show? I really just wanted to make this and show the dress myself, but they use models and not just the garment's designer to show it off.

So I'm obliged to participate in a show modeling my garment and other's, too. And right now, I'm not sure I can put this garment in this show.

Sure, it's not such a mistake that I can't still cut it and make it into a dress and wear it out and about, but it's certainly not good enough to be in a show.

I am sitting here thinking how much I don't want to finish this and put it in the show. And how I want to just email and say I won't be attending, and then not bother to renew my membership later this year.

But then I feel bad about being a "quitter". This is exactly what happened to me last year when I tried to do the dress for the very last Bernina fashion show. I fucked it up and couldn't finish it and had to drop out (pardon the language, but there's no other way to describe it).

Maybe I'm just not any good at this. I can sew, and I have a vision, but I can't seem to pull it off. I know, I'm whining, but I feel like I've bit off more than I can chew and maybe I'm just kidding myself that I'm any good at this or have any talent. Why can't I get past these problems and make something decent and something I'm proud of?

Well, I've put the silk in the steamer. I can't cut or sew it up for 24 hours (it has to hang after the 3 hour steaming), so I can think about it.

I just can't figure out why something I enjoy so much (the silk painting and creating a garment from it) is something that I seem to totally fail at!

2009-02-12T09:23:00.000-08:00

I have been busy! Which is why I haven't posted in almost 2 weeks. I finished up a bunch of pieces and took them to the gallery last Thursday. After that I needed a break to clear my mind and work on trying to rest my mental balance.

CrossCut

22"w x 18"h

hand dyed cottons, copper, textile collage

Unexpected

18.5"w x 19.5"h

hand dyed cottons, textile collage, copper

PlumPointe

14"h x 20.5"w

hand dyed and stenciled silk, textile collage, copper

Dusk 3

10"h x 17.5"w

hand dyed cotton, textile collage, copper

Dusk 2

17"h x 10"w

hand dyed cotton, textile collage, copper

Dusk 1

17.5"h x 12.5"w

hand dyed cotton, textile collage, copper

All of these have my textile collage, and all of the copper pieces except for Unexpected has copper that is stitched on with little metal eyelets. Anything that looks like a shadow really is, as my pieces have depth and are raised off of the surface (not gonna tell you how I do that!). These aren't soft like a quilt, though they are quilted. They are firm and hang nicely on a wall, similar to a painting on canvas or canvas board.

All are available at Artisans at Rocky Hill in Fredericksburg, TX.

Ok, that's done. I'm ok, thanks to anyone who's emailed to ask. I've been using my new sun lamp daily, and on nice days going outside to get some real sun. I've also added a multivitamin to my intake and have decided to go back on my diet.

I think these three things are having a positive effect on my mood and now I only feel down once in a while, instead of all the time. I'm happy that I've been able to start controlling this for now without medication. If things change, I'll see a doctor about getting on something.

I'm now working on some silk as I plan to make and finish a garment for a fashion show for next month in San Antonio. I need to have it done earlier, at the end of this month, for the entry form, but right now my biggest impediment is making the final decision on how to paint the fabric. I have the pattern all ready to go and it's a fairly simple dress, probably with another simple jacket to match.

I didn't allow myself enough time to go all out on this project, what with my difficult winter and all, but there is the entry for IQF wearables division due in June that I will also shoot for. I'm hoping to fit in a few other projects between now and then, wearable and art wise.

As for the give away, I'm lazy and haven't done it yet. I am going to do it today and make another post tomorrow morning to announce it. Then I'll email the winner.

art give away

2009-01-31T16:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who contacted me after my last post. I have bought a sun light thing and am working with it. If it doesn't work by the end of next week I will look for a doctor (though I have such a mental block against doing that, or asking for help of any kind, especially from a stranger...I know I'm being judged and I despise that).

Anyways... I've been doing a bit of work but it's slow going. I have one piece finished but I'll put up pictures of that tomorrow. Today I wanted to post a piece I did last year before we moved. I was experimenting with ways to stiffen or shape my work and this was a failed piece in that attempt.

Basically it's my collage technique, with a little added motif on top, done like a quilt, but wrapped around a wire frame. I don't care for the floppyness (as compared to the extra firm pieces I do now), but I liked the colors so I saved this figuring I'd do something with it.

I thought of cutting it up and reusing it today, but I just don't want to get into that. Instead I thought I would find it a nice home.

It's a perfectly fine piece of work, 20" high x 18" wide, with a textural motif that includes copper wire. The color is red, with just a dash of others, some greens (very dark) and a bit of purple. This main picture is close to the color, though I darkened it a tad to get the copper wire to show up and take off the glare of the flash.

I'm giving it to whomever leaves a comment on this post. If there are more than one comment here by the end of the day on Friday from interested parties, then I will draw a name. I'll ship it to you free (unless you're international, then you'll have to pay for that. sorry) once I figure out how to pack it without it costing a fortune (since it needs to stay flat).

Not Sure I Can Keep Going...

2009-01-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted because my allergies were so bad that I wasn't sleeping through the night. It's hard getting less than 5 or 6 hours of sleep daily. Of course that also meant I had no strength to go to the gym, which of course made me feel worse. much much much worse.

And though we had a couple of days of sun, I couldn't go out because the allergies were so bad and would be made worse by breathing all that fresh air (I know because I tried earlier this month and actually didnt sleep for an entire 24 hours because of the congestion and sneezing and itchy eyes).

But what's worse is now it's cold. Really fucking cold. I will never be warm again. I took a screen printing class this weekend and it was cold. Cold inside and cold outside. And we were getting wet washing out screens.

I enjoyed the class, but by 3pm each day I wanted to curl into a little ball and disappear.

And today it's colder and though some rain (nearly frozen kind) has washed out the pollen, I'm miserable because it's been dark and cold for days and I feel like I'm dying inside. Really, that's how I actually feel.

I'm supposed to take new artwork to the gallery next Thursday the 5th. But I've only finished 1 piece.

That's what I mean when I say I can't keep going. I just can't get up and do it. I can't work. i want to die. Not like I'm suicidal, but I don't want to see tomorrow or more cold or more gray or more misery. Or more bad news on the radio. I cried and cried this morning over a story I heard on the radio about a family in Gaza, while I was driving to the gym. I felt so overwhelmed with misery. I just want to lay in the bed for another 6 weeks.

And today I schlepped up to the furthest reaches of Austin to take the empty boxes for my non functional $12k sewing machine so they can ship it back to Chicago for service. I wanted to cry and scream because I'm so frustrated over that.

I'm miserable. So why don't I fix it? Go to a fucking doctor I'm sure you're thinking. Well, I can't. I'm so debilitated with this heinous feeling that I just can't do it. I've been reading this book about SAD and I know i've got it. Had it since I was 13. It's completely and utterly debilitating. If you don't know I can't explain it, but it's depression, though this part only lasts a few months. But I can't go that long. I'm so much like a lump of nothing. I can't hardly bring myself to get up from this chair.

I just looked at my work table. I can't face getting up and creating. There's nothing in me to create from. And that also makes me feel worse. And Will is out of town, so I feel incredibly alone. Not that I can say much to him because he says it's just a seasonal thing, you'll get better, you always do. It's true, but right now March and sunshine and warm warm warm feels like it's as far away as our former planet friend, Pluto.

Finished artwork

2009-01-16T09:53:00.000-08:00

This has been such a crappy week. My allergies have been terrible. Really hideous. I didn't get to the gym once because I'm so exhausted from not sleeping well and not hardly breathing (full of icky goo!). See this nice article for why Austin is so bad (we're number 2 on the list of the worst) and heres someone's blog post from last January, but it's applicable to every January here.

I get worse and worse each year. Most people here do. I never suffered until I moved here. I am doomed as bad allergies run in my family and now it seems I'm just as susceptible.

Anyways, in between migraines, sneezing, and gobs of goo, I did get one thing done:

Untitled (for now) 23"w x 21"h

hand dyed cotton, textile collage, metal

close up of metal and collage

I like it. I put a lot of work into this. I didn't keep exact track, but this was probably about 12 hours worth of work over a week. It's not a regular quilt. I make a quilt and then it's mounted so that it's firm. That takes a lot of work. It's also time consuming to mount the collage and add the hanging device on the back. I also add spacers to the bottom back so it doesnt tip or tilt downwards, as does anything hung with a wire (you know, your picture hangs ever so slightly away from the wall at the top so the bottom is touching the wall). I hate this look on my bigger pieces, so I make sure it hangs nicely.

I also use hand dyed fabrics, as do most art quilters. And I dye my own, so I realized I'll have to start adding that in, not just the cost of the fabric, but the time that goes into each fat quarter dyed. I haven't been charging for that, just a few dollars for the yardage used, which is a big difference when you're doing your own dyeing, as I found this week when I set out to try to dye up some new fabrics for work later this week:

It's a lot of time put into mixing and dyeing and rinsing and ironing, and then finally cutting into it. I know this, but never really thought about it until this month when I realized I have to get serious about dyeing enough fabric to work and create the amount of work I want to for my future goals.

Lots and lots of other quilters dye up their own fabrics, and perhaps they're smarter than me, but it just never occurred to me to factor in the time for this into my costs. I guess it's kind of like a painter mixing their own pigments. I don't think many do that!

And to take the metaphor a bit further, because I finish each little quilt and then further mount (the materials for which just got a lot more expensive!!!) and create the hanging system, it's like a painter stretching their own canvas. Again, not many do that.

All of this has made me realize that I am not charging enough for my work. I need to rethink it. I know that the gallery has a price point, and work that is more affordable will sell better, but I got a check for work last week that sold in December and it was another moment where I realized after all that I'm putting into each piece I just can't keep the prices where they were. Other people have told me that I'm probably not charging enough, but all that mattered to me was that it was selling. And now after having to replenish a lot of supplies, as well as setting up myself to get a resale license so I can buy wholesale supplies (and therefore I'm actually keeping track of stuff), I realize that I just hadn't been thinking about the details at all.

But that's very much me. Not too concerned about keeping track of everything. Since I don't need to (as in relying on the income), I didn't. Now I will because I need to be smarter and more professional. This is hard for me. Very hard. But I want to go further so I need to do the work, fun stuff and crummy stuff, to get there!

Hopefully I'll do more work this weekend with my new fabrics and have some pictures for next week!

home dec

2009-01-11T06:39:00.000-08:00

Here's what I've been working on for the past week:

Those pieces from my table worked up to be these, with the leaves we purchased after Christmas at Pier 1.

There's something funky about the way the green one hangs. I made it all square, so I think it's the weight of the leaf and how it was attached. These are not flat leaves, they curl and bend, so I couldn't attach them evenly, only in about 6 or 7 places where they touched the quilt. I think it distributes the weight a bit unevenly so it hangs strangely, but it's rather minor.

The leaf on the green one was black, like the red one. And it looked great on my table, but down in the light in the place where it hangs the black leaf disappeared! Even with all the lights on. So I got out some gold paint and a sponge and dabbed gold on it. It made a huge difference.

The finished pieces are about 40"x 40". The fabrics I did myself, dyeing, batiking with my new tjaps, and then overdyeing. I was afraid the red would be too bright, but it looks great on the wall. I finished the edges with yarns I twisted together and zig zagged down. It added some interest and texture. And the fuzz makes me happy!

Here they are as seen from the kitchen (that's Will's office you're looking into, and it's Scully sitting on the table):

I have actually been making some artwork (!!) since finishing these, so I'll have pictures of that in the next couple of days. I need to dye up a bunch of fabric if I'm going to keep working this week. I've realized I need more hand dyes, in more colors (not just CMY) and values. It's a huge project and one I'm not excited about as I'm not good about measuring and tracking...it's all too left brained for me. But I'll do it and maybe learn to enjoy it.

dyeing

2009-01-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

I have been doing a bit of dyeing. Will and I bought these, marked down from $35 each to $8.99, from Pier 1 last week. They're quite big, about 36" sq.

I spray painted them this dark color, they were originally silvery colored. My plan is to make a quilt for each one of a dyed fabric and then attach each leaf. There is a perfect spot for each one to flank the doorway into Will's office.

I started the dyeing on each with a light/med 2 color low immersion. One was chartreuse (love that color!) and sky blue, to be over dyed with darker blues so that it sort of matches the slate backsplash tiles we have in the kitchen and in the built in hutch in the dining area (which is the same area these will hang in).

The second one was fucshia and light red, over dyed

with black cherry/red wine (both my favorite colors!) and some oxblood red (a new one this past summer from Dharma...its divine!)

But in between over dyeing I got out my new tjaps from Dharma and did a bit of the old soy wax batiking. You can see in this picture where I have the final step done and all the dyes are on (this is the red one, the blue one is underneath). I hope this comes out ok.

The blue one i like, not so sure the reds came out the way I wanted. They looked a little pink under the soy wax. If I don't like it I'll over dye it with a bit of brown. Brown fixes everything, IMHO.

Oh and here's a few pictures of my supervisor. DustBunny was not willing to give up her chance to observe the process, or to participate.

new year

2009-01-01T06:03:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is. Happy New Year.

2008 wasn't bad for us, it was great. A lot of blogs I read tell me that a lot of other people didn't do so well. We did great, a new house, new car(s), new landscaping, new sewing machine (ok, that one doesn't count as good).

Will isn't thinking 2009 will be so great. He expects it will take some time for the economy to improve, but I chose not think about that at all. It's so out of anyone's control, at least, out of the control of regular people, that it's not worth worrying about. Same with worrying about the Mayan calendar running out in 2012. Just not worth it! So I will move forward with a positive attitude.

And so we reach the part of the post that all bloggers are obliged to write...goals. Ick.

How cliche. I know we've all done it. You may have your little pad of paper sitting next to you now as sip your coffee.

Goal 1: No goals!

Ha! Thwarted!

Yes, I have decided no goals. Instead I have chosen a word.

Ha ha! Yes, that too might be a bit cliche, but it's better for me than goals, which of course, are way too easy to forget. A word can be applied in so many ways and to so many things. Much more flexible.

My word for 2009 is .... ACTION.

Yes, that means do more. Do more now. More of whatever. Do do do do do do do. I'm tired of being lazy and doing nothing.

I want to do things like produce at least 2 pieces of art a month.

Make at least 1 garment a month.

Take the dogs for a walk at least 3 times a week (this is a real challenge, 3 dogs of varying sizes/speeds don't always walk together well).

Travel to a couple of workshops for intense study.

Do more yoga.

Hopefully some of this will happen. I also want action to apply to small things. Like when I think about taking a local class but then talk myself out of it for whatever lazy reason I have (too much traffic, don't know anybody to go with, etc). Or when I find an opportunity to apply to a juried show but then talk myself out of it claiming I have no time, or I'm not good enough. I will just do it. Action. Must take action!

This really will be a challenge. Like I said, I tend toward the lazy. I think it may run in the family...the tendency to sit and contemplate but never do. That must change.

Oh, I guess I had better stock up on coffee if I'm going to be doing all of this doing!

image from freefoto

happy new year?

2008-12-31T19:15:00.000-08:00

It's 9:15pm. December 31st. I am upstairs at my computer. DH is downstairs watching tv (actually it's AppleTV, we no longer subscribe to cable).

Why, you might ask am I not there, too?

Because he's watching "The Tudors", 2nd season. A raunchy excuse to show T&A in an historical setting. It makes me ill. I hate it, and normally I flip cartwheels of joy to watch any costume drama. But this one is deliberately "Showtime-ized" (not really a verb, but if you know Showtime, then you know what I mean).

It makes me feel gross and extremely icky. If that is what he wants to see, then why the hell would he want to look at me?

Vomit. Or vomir as I think I recall my French verbs (does it not sound so much more elegant???)

I guess it's also a self esteem issue (gee...who would've guessed I had that??? :/ )

So, I sit here. Happy new year. We had a very expensive steak. A wonderful bottle of wine. But he could only tolerate listening to me talk about my vision for my future as an artist for 8 minutes. Then he jumped up and ran to the tv to turn on this "show" (I use the term loosely, it's more like a very pricey and trumped up peep show.)

And so I welcome 2009 with open and joyous arms.

Right.

I think I may want another adult beverage.

Oh, and I signed up for Twitter. I don't really understand it, but if my friend Christine is recommending it to me, then I must try it!

no sewing, but some fun in the studio

2008-12-29T12:45:00.000-08:00

Thank you to everyone that wrote to me. It's so nice to be able to reach out and "speak" with someone when I'm feeling rather lost.

I have spent some time trying to think about what's important, and that is that I pull myself up and focus on authenticity. What is most important to me and makes me feel true to myself. I know that I love making art, but I need to move towards finding a creative sweet spot where I am creating authentic work. And I need to step away from external stressors, which that dang sewing machine definitely is, as well as the uncontrollable spinning of our Earth through the solar system and the change in seasons which causes...well...blah ick!

So, to escape some of my stress I've decided to devote my week to fabric. I set up my silk stretcher and dyes and just started grabbing up all of my white silk. It seems I have gobs and gobs of it, I must've been saving it all for some sort of drastic fabric shortage!

I've also plugged in my wax pot of soy wax and am happily painting and waxing and making a general mess. I'll steam some pieces tonight and they'll be lovely by tomorrow. For now it's rather messy, but fun and keeps me occupied and doing work that

makes me happy, as well as teaching me a bit about the process.

Here's a couple of pictures of my work table:

winter doldrums

2008-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

I have been in a sad bad mood for a week now. I realized that my artwork is mediocre, I'm lazy, I'm definitely getting older, have no social life or anyone to visit with, and I have a broken $12k sewing machine that I don't want anymore.

Other people are joyous this time of year. I am not. We don't do Christmas. it's a waste of time and money. My husband hates holidays and therefore we do not participate. Sure, I like no stress from the go go go stuff, but I would like to feel a little bit of specialness for the season, and I don't mean gifts.

I don't have anybody to visit or see. Nobody is much interested in visiting or chatting with me, everyone is very much involved in their own families and lives. I realized that since I no longer go to the gym for the group workout that I no longer have a group of friends! How sad is that? I had to pay to have those friends! LOL

And I'm so burned out on the artwork I was making I can't bear to continue with it and haven't made a new piece in months. I really need to go in a new direction but I'm stymied. I don't know where or how. Of course this means that my art career (ha) is going nowhere. I'll be 34 in April and who am I kidding? I have accomplished nothing. Certainly nothing in the past year.

I had all kinds of plans to enter shows this year, but really, if I have no direction for my artwork how can I do that? I was also going to do some wearable art, but really, to what end? I just lost so much time in the past month or so, doing who knows what, that I can't make the 2 deadlines in January for wearable art shows. I'm not even sure that I want to try to kill myself right now to do so.

And the sewing machine. Yes, it was that expensive. A total rip off. It broke. I know what I'm doing and this machine broke on me this weekend. That's after taking it in a week ago to have it get a tension overhaul. I don't want it anymore but I don't think the dealer will take it back. As far as I know, she doesn't take returns. So a "dream machine" is a nightmare, that even if replaced, is always going to make me cringe when I turn it on, unsure of what problem I'll encounter next.

There was a bright spot in this past week. We got a new piece of furniture and there are 2 new tables coming from Crate and Barrel this week. That makes me happy! Here's the chaise we got from Z Gallerie:

Well, I suppose thats enough whining for today. I do love the chaise, though!

2008-12-19T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have been working all week and finally it's done!!! It took twice as long as it should've because I was having a lot of machine issues. But check it out:

Here are some more detailed close ups.

Ok, so this is an icky example, but I put it in here to show that I really tried to get these painted to line up nicely. It was hard, very hard. I won't show you the back because above the slit it doesnt line up, and worse, I mixed up one of the rows of color and painted purple instead of teal and vice versa, so it looks off. But I'm hoping nobody looks too closely!

The sewing machine is mostly fixed. I took it in today and thank goodness they were great and spent a lot of time with me getting it fixed up. there are still buttonhole issues, but they will be resolved, I'm sure.

I'm just relieved to have the machine fixed and this project done. it was stressing me out because the machine was chewing up my fabric and I can't have that! I have important work to do in the next month. The tech asked me if I ever sleep. I said no. But really, I feel like I can/should be doing much more. I'm going to start drinking more coffee. So I can buzz through my day!

Also, I asked my dealer about any ideas or creative clubs she'll be having for the new machine and she said that I should do it! So I will! Fun stuff! It will give me a chance to get to know the machine really well and work on some ideas I'll need to test out. Should be a great deal of fun. I think I'll call it the "Crazy 8's Club" (the machine is the 830).

Well, I'm off...have to get ready for the party tonight! I'm sorry I didn' t have more joy to post this week, I'll start it back up tomorrow. I had some real "dress stress". LOL

iphoto is finally working!

2008-12-14T14:22:00.001-08:00

Finally iphoto uploaded my pictures to go with the previous post. Here they are:

This is all of the freezer paper templates cut out and ironed on. In this picture I've alreadt stenciled the iridescent charcoal and the finished with the iridescent gold. I peeked, it looks good underneath!

This is a very out of focus picture of the colored stripes or whatevers that I've painted on with the silk dyes. It's teal and purple (my shoes are teal!), with the body of the dress being ruby red. These stripes (what is a better term for this sort of design? I don't know) are at the bottom of the dress. When I finally get to cutting and sewing this up it will be a grand challenge to match these up. I planned it out on the design, but things happen!

Yet another out of focus picture (I'm messing with using the manual settings on the camera) of the same area. Here you might be able to see a bit better where the dark line I painted under the gutta wasnt very good.

I've thought about this a lot, it seems as if I should either make the line very wide (don't know, as that will show under another color later as a dark line), or just flip over the silk and paint over it from the back. All of this will have to be tested, as it's so new to me I can't pin point my problem. But as it is (was) it looks messy and out of place. The stenciling covered most of it up and adds a really cool dimension of shading and detail that I like. It's something I might deliberately add to the next try.

feeling better and grateful

2008-12-14T11:16:00.000-08:00

I am over the headache and back to work. But yesterday I had a terrible day. I realized on Friday that I would have to redo, or somehow cover the resist lines on the fabric for the dress. It's obviously a mess, since I am not a master of the technique, but I had to find a way to cover up my shortcomings.

My idea was to stencil over the lines with black or gold, Shiva stick or paint. Of course that means I need a mask, and the only solution for that is freezer paper. What I spent the day yesterday, and most of today, doing was tracing the lines of the crummy resist off of the dress onto the freezer paper, cutting the shapes out and ironing them on.

Should be quick, but it's not. Each piece has to be traced and ironed on indivdually as it affects the movement of the silk underneath each time. It's almost like it's going off grain, but it's not permanent as the freezer paper peels off. But it does change the shape of each line traced after. So each one must be traced, cut, applied and repeat. My simple design isn't so simple because the lines cross each other and therefore each one creates a small shape, not just large shapes. It took forever to cut out.

I'd be showing pictures right now but iphoto is not working and I don't know why. I hope the pictures have not disappeared off of my card!

Anyways, today I realized I am grateful that I have a large studio with space to lay out this kind of project and the tools and know how to fix this sort of problem. It's working out so far, and now my biggest challenge (before cutting and sewing up the dress) is to wait the 2 or 3 days for the Shiva paintstick I stenciled on to dry!

no joy

2008-12-12T07:20:00.001-08:00

I've had no joy for two days because I feel like this

I have had a migraine for 30 hours now. This is the second one in a week. It's killing me. I'm hoping that it will be over soon. I had to steam my silk last night. I was going to try to do it in the afternoon (it take 3 1/2 hours), but had to take a nap. I ended up steaming at 6pm and Will had to wake me up at 10 to go take the silk out.

Thank goodness it worked. This is the first big project that I've steamed using Susan Moyers directions and it worked perfectly. The color is divine. I will need to add some repair work to the poor gutta lines, but I've learned a lot from doing it and will turn out a very nice garment.

I cancelled the cleaning ladies for today, so hopefully with some more rest I'll be well enough by this afternoon to photograph the silk and upload it. I still need to rinse it out and remove the gutta before I can move to the next step.

a whole lot of stretching

2008-12-09T15:29:00.000-08:00

Here is what I spent my day working on:

It's silk. Just under 3 yards of charmeuse silk. Before it got to this point I had to wash it (done on Sunday) iron it (did that this morning), then draw out my design on the pattern, trace the pattern onto the silk, set up the frame (this took a while, I don't do it often enough to be fast) and then stretch it.

I've put on some gutta to outline the pattern pieces (you can't see it here, it dries clear). It's possible that tonight I'll be able to trace the design for the design on the dress tonight, if so, then I can put the gutta on it tomorrow. It's hard to do unless the light is just right. It has to be morning, or overhead light. Which if I wasn't tired at night, would make it perfect to use the overhead light then. But this morning my alarm went off at 5:10 (normal time), I hit snooze and slept until 5:45. At which point I woke up in a panic and then decided while in the bathroom washing my face that it was warm enough to go jogging with Will instead of rushing off to the gym (I go to the gym early to avoid people, way early).

Then I go out into the kitchen and find that someone (most likely of the 4 legged furry type with curious paws) had pushed the buttons on my clock and moved it forward by 30 minutes. So it was actually 5:20! I'd been up before 5. Ugh. So I'm way too tired to do much work tonight.

Now, here are the pictures that disappeared yesterday. I'm posting them today because it was again very warm (like 78 degrees!) and I was outside watering and sticking my hands in more dirt.

I love these pots with these bright flowers!

And here is the danger yucca tree that tried to take my head off yesterday (you can read the post, it's the next one down)

Deadly! Like a needle.

Well, the sad news is that tonight it's supposed to be 20 degrees with rain/sleet, possible snow. :( So very sad!!! I hate cold. I hate even more that today I was warm and tomorrow it will have dropped 50 or more degrees and I will be so dang cold!!!

(&%# camera

2008-12-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Well, I had some pictures for today's joy, but for some reason they aren't on the card and have gone poof! Oh well. Now I have to think of something joyful for today.

hmmm...

OK. I have it. Being outdoors. Yes. It's December and we've been running the heater because it was like 30 degrees over the weekend (that's cold for central Texas!). But today I had to go to Home Depot for some cleaning stuff and I remembered a book I read last year about gardening for the seasons in Texas. The author said we don't have to stop gardening here for winter, because its so mild, and rarely do we ever freeze, that our winters are like early spring for some northern climates.

To that end he recommended planting spring crops (spinach I think) and spring annuals. Of which I bought a bunch today. Pansies! Purple and yellow and lavender. I put them in the pots in the back yard along with something that resembles a mini snapdragon, only in purple and white. It is very pretty.

Too bad the damn camera ate the pictures I so lovingly took using my macro mode.

While I was planting these pots I had a death defying moment.

Actually, I may be exaggerating a bit. We have this big ass (sorry, but that's all I can say to describe it) Adams Yucca tree. It was a gift from the guy who did our landscaping. I didn't ask for it, but hey, it was free so I let them put it in.

Today I learned why he was eager to give it away. This damn thing has pointy ends, as you may know. What you don't know is that each "leaf" is hard, and that point, is like the point of a needle. So it's very much dangerous to one's soft areas.

Anyways...I was planting one pot directly underneath this demon yucca tree when I leaned forward just a bit. I'd been trying to avoid it because it looks fierce, but alas, I leaned into it with my precious little head and it sliced open my scalp and jabbed the heck out of me.

I started cussing and then I felt the blood. I immediately reached up, which is not good when you have just had your hands in potting soil, and sure enough...blood!!!!!!!

Gasp!

Then it started running down my face and dripping on the ground quicker than I could move up the stairs and back into the house.

I grabbed the kitchen towel and sat down. I felt like I was going to pass out from seeing the blood (ick, just like when I was 13 and started my period for the first time...ick...TMI, I know), and from the horrible throbbing coming from the icky wound.

It took a few minutes but it finally stopped and I went to the bathroom mirror to look. I was covered down the side of my face in blood, it was all over my hands and it had ended up all over my pants, probably as i was dashing up the stairs. I washed it off, but it's still in my hair as my precious little head is still tender and I don't want to re open it by cleaning it just yet. And I can' see through all of my hair to find the original wound. It will have to wait until Will is home and can look at it.

I did eventually finish potting my plants, and then I stayed outside doing little things, fixing the bird feeders and such. I realized then how much I'd missed being outside. While the never ending landscape nightmare was going on, I wasn't able to be outside enjoying the fresh air, birds chirping or having the dirt in between my fingers, things I dearly love.

So, despite the wind today, and grayness, it's about 65 and mild and I was able to be outside and feel some peace. Something which was lacking for me in the past few months and something that I am most appreciative of today!

joy!

2008-12-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

Today's joy is a project I completed on my new sewing machine (so it's like a lot of extra joy!).

A skirt. Vogue pattern 8296:

It's a cute skirt, very easy and flattering. All of the pieces are on the bias. I used a very lightweight brushed denim I'd had around for a while. I created freezer paper stencils and stamped with a swirly stamp in between (the brownish areas, they didn't photograph so well) the stencil. It's very subtle and echos the swirls on the bias strips.

The bias strips I stitched down with a decorative swirl stitch. All of the pieces were seamed together with a triple stitch using a brown variegated thread.

I haven't worn it yet. I haven't been out of the house in 3 days. Mostly I was sewing but yesterday I had a hideous migraine. I'm much better today, thank goodness!

We don't eat out anymore. In fact, we hardly leave the house at all together. Trying to not spend so much money on frivolous things. So I don't know where I'll wear this. Maybe next week if the table insert for my machine comes in I can wear it there. It will be really cute with boots.

Today I'm working on a dress to wear to Will's x-mas party. I asked him last week if we were going. He said no, he didn't even remember what day it was. Then 3 days later he says that a receptionist at work cornered him and got him to commit to going. He hates those things. I enjoy only the opportunity to dress up, otherwise it is boring.

Anyways, then someone we're friends with also asks if we're going, so by then Will is fairly committed. So I'm making a dress. Simple. Like a sack with a boat neck, but with a wide obi style tie belt. I plan to make it super awesome by painting some silk for it. This will be good practice for my upcoming project I plan to submit to Pacducah for the quilt show, wearables division. I can practice the design and see what works (anything will work for this holiday dress), and I can practice my steaming technique. Something that does need help! Thankfully Susan Moyer put up a great page on her site that will help me tremendously with this.

I'm off to prep the fabric for it now!

Today's joy day 4 (or is it 3? I must be getting too old to keep track)

2008-12-05T07:33:00.000-08:00

My new landscape. Honestly, I was so frustrated with the company that did this, and the head person that it was hard for me to feel joy over it other than it was done and they'd leave me alone.

Don't get me wrong, I love and appreciate what it is. But. It was such a trial that I couldn't think about it any other way. That is slowly changing.

Yesterday I went out and braved the chilly wind and temps to take lots of pictures.

This is from the yard looking up to the back door. This used to be just the 2 flights of stairs.

The extension where there are those pots is all new.

This is from the same spot as taken above. Looking at the pond, the firepit and the flagstone.

There is ground cover planted around that flagstone (thyme) which will grow and flower in the spring.

This is further along in the yard, taking in more of the view from the above picture.

This is taken from the patio (flagstone) just below the deck and stairs.

This one (forgive the shadows, it happens quickly this time of year) is from the bottom of the stairs looking at the patio I was standing on in the previous picture.

You can see the 3 columns and the planters on top in which I hope to put trailing stuff next spring.

Here is standing in the same spot at the bottom of the stairs, but looking left towards the pond.

Better view of the area taken above, but from standing on the landing of the stairs/deck extension. You can see here that the flagstone is red in the center with purple and green stones around it. The stones around the firepit are green, most of the rest of the patios (both are done this way) are the purple with a bit of green).

Again, from the landing on the deck/stairs, looking right out over the patio. The trees will grow and look better in the spring. I have 2 magnolias (the big one you can see above in the stucco planter on the left), 2 plum, 2 pear, 3 crape myrtle and 1 olive.

And here I am in the same spot but have turned so you can see the deck extension and the pots. I love love love that pot in the center of the 2 bouganvillas, it is from Greece. So very ancient looking. It makes me happy each time I see it!

here I walked up the stairs and am standing on the original patio that is part of the foundation of the house.

That's it! Your quick tour of my new landscaped backyard! I am very glad it's done and will be even more over joyed next spring when I can get out and plant all sorts of delightful things!!!

today's joy

2008-12-04T09:46:00.001-08:00

Actually it was last night. I steamed a bunch of silk in the steamer. I did some veils for someone but I also had some silks from my workshop in Lake Tahoe in October. I unwrapped those last and I was so happy to see this piece:

It was done with the rozome technique. It's not super impressive, I know. But I loved how the ombre came out and once the wax melted away I could see those bands of shading. Its small, about 20" square, but I'm going to try to use it in something. It's just too lovely.

It really made my heart sing to see it. That's pretty joyful!

Joy and appreciation...day 2

2008-12-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

Today I thought I would talk about my biggest joy (yes, even more than the sewing machine!)

Guess??

My pets. I have 9 pets. 6 cats and 3 dogs.

Mulder

Scully

Nimmie

Sunflower

Toonces

DustBunny

Hercules & Augustus

Caesar

They sometimes do things that make me unhappy (pee is so not cool!), but I really do love them all. And the best part is that they love me back. They all seem so happy to see me when I come into a room, or get home from being out, or when I come home from the grocery store (well, that doesnt really count since they know I have tuna cans and they want their tuna!)

I hug them all every day. And in their own little way, they hug me back (or purr or jump in my lap). All of them bring me a lot of joy and without them, my life would be empty. I know it's cliche, but they are like my children (I don't really dress them up, though!), and it makes me feel complete to have them here as my family.

happiness

2008-12-02T09:18:00.001-08:00

Is a new sewing machine!!!!

Here I am celebrating the arrival of my new Bernina 830. I put the deposit down on it waaaay back in August (or was it July). It was the day after Bernina University where this brand new machine was announced.

Given the state of the economy today I probably wouldn't have purchased it. But things were different months ago and we did get a great financing deal, so it was all put together. The hardest part was waiting and waiting and waiting for it to arrive! But I called the dealer yesterday as I knew it was there and asked when I could have it. They said come in 2 hours and 2 hours later I was there picking it up.

It's huge. And heavy. And wonderful! I'd be sewing right now but I'm washing up the fabric I want to cut out so I have to wait just 20 more minutes.

I just recently re-discovered (after switching feed readers this past spring and losing a lot) Lisa Call's blog.

Today her post was about 31 days (the month of December) of joy and delight. It struck me that I never think like that and I really should. So I'm copying her and going to do this every day.

Of course, today I am joyful because of, and most appreciative of my new sewing machine!!!!!!!!

uuuugggghhh

2008-11-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

I have been very sick. Icky sick.

Last week my mom was here and I spent a lot of time not getting anything productive done. Then she left and I had to catch up on chores and things and then I got sick. So I have accomplished nothing productive. This makes me very angry. And because of that, I'm even more miserable in my sickness than I should be.

I despise being trapped by my own physical frailties. It makes me despise myself. I hate sickness. Sickness = weakness. Weakness is to be reviled.

Can you tell that I am grumpy? Yes. Very grumpy.

I've been too tired for 4 days now to do anything. Standing for any length of time to work on patterns or cutting or anything makes me dizzy and tired. And my brain is barely functioning. I've read a bit in between naps, but even that wears me out.

Today is Friday and I'm feeling slightly better than I did yesterday. I may be able to get something done today.

I suppose one of the things that made me feel worse this week was that it's been 6 weeks since my landscape project started and it's not done. It will be done today, I hope. But earlier this week I was so upset I was looking to find out what my legal rights were when the company doesn't show up to work or answer multiple phone calls.

Eventually they called and showed up, but despite their many excuses (some very very weak!), I gave no quarter and said that it must be done as I was angry and disappointed in them. A 10 -14 day job had turned into 6 weeks of incompetence!!!!

But it shall finally be over soon. I will not be giving any sort of positive references, despite them giving me "gifts" of one sort or another. How can I recommend someone who doesn't complete tasks when they said they would? Especially when you give them a large amount of money upfront as part of the trust process!

I must stop thinking about it now. It just makes my blood boil.

In pleasant news... I received a box this week from DharmaTrading.

Tjaps!!! This flower one is probably my favorite. I ordered 4, but they'd sold out of one of them, which I expected since they go fast. I ended up with 3. I now have 5 copper tjaps, which makes me very happy. I plan to mess around with them this winter. If I can get over this cold and back to work.

Oh, and here's a link to a new-ish blog by Jane Dunnewold. It's really inspiring. It actually has me thinking that maybe I should do something creative every day. Maybe pictures or a quick paper collage.

I tend to get lazy unless I have a project. But maybe making myself do something every day not with the idea of making it into a finished product will just keep my creative spirit flowing.

I guess it's something to think about. Or maybe I should just do it. Sometimes I over think things. Like right now. I'm thinking "I'm crazy to want to do such a thing, who would want to see it? It would suck anyways. "

Ugh. This cold has got to go away so I can clear my little mind!

I'm not a twit, but

2008-11-07T12:45:00.001-08:00

can someone please explain Twitter to me? I don't get it. I feel like I'm being left behind on this one, which is rare for me, considering that my husband (who just texted me that he's lost his keys in San Francisco, and will I meet him at the airport at midnight with his extra set!!!) works on the cutting edge of social media and I usually am "up" on all the latest.

What is the benefit of Twitter? Is it another way to waste time online? If so, then maybe I should join! I can't seem to do much work right now...lots of research online...pictures of inspiring couture.

Does anybody care what another person is doing moment by moment? What's wrong with a blog for communicating random thoughts/activities?

Sheesh. Such crazy new technology. Makes me feel old!

Fabric Princess

Blog Triage class

deColourant discharge

Where did September go?

A month

Santa Fe

a bit of work

hello...goodbye

Circles 2: Spring Speaks

Circles 3

Looking forward

Circles 1

a necklace

:(

Fin!

almost done!

going backwards

more work on the dress

dress/art

silk banners

Treasures

Some of my personal favorites in Houston

Back from Houston

skirt ick

frustration

pergola

pod

a few changes...

dull and boring

quickie on batik

tjaps!

Oh! I forgot!

some work and some whining (or wine-ing)

Stencils in class

Just a few to start with

I'm back!

SDA!!!

Dear Anonymous

I don't think it's going to happen!

Lattice

Dragon gets a background

Dragon continues

oh the nightmare!

More dragon work

a different kind of project

Happy Birthday

needed a change

This is a must see

why bother?

yesterday was great....

art give away

Not Sure I Can Keep Going...

Finished artwork

home dec

dyeing

new year

happy new year?

no sewing, but some fun in the studio

winter doldrums

iphoto is finally working!

feeling better and grateful

no joy

a whole lot of stretching

*(&%*# camera

joy!

Today's joy day 4 (or is it 3? I must be getting too old to keep track)

today's joy

Joy and appreciation...day 2

happiness

uuuugggghhh

I'm not a twit, but

(&%# camera