Gone way too long.........

It has been a very hectic and crazy fall and the blogging has definitely suffered!!  To keep this short and very visual I am going to give you a picture review of some of the things that have been keeping me busy since my last post!!!

Stitching journals with my own sun prints and creating Art Quilts.

Creating some fun textile necklaces with my fabric/paper/resin beads for sale at Artful Dimensions Gallery.

Managed to squeeze in a trip to Cape Cod to visit my Mom over a long weekend in October.  I even managed to catch a glorious sunset at Rock Harbor in Orleans, MA.

Got some shots of some sea gulls hunkering down for some blustery weather!!

We took a wonderful little drive to a friends organic sheep and veg farm!!

Once back in VA, I have taught several classes, Collage Jewelry classes have been very popular.

I took part in Fredericksburg VA, first experiment with Yarn Bombing!  Hopefully more events will be coming this summer!!

I was very involved in the Presidential Campaign for Barack Obama !! Becca and I were able to get VIP tickets to go to a Rally featuring our wonderful First Lady, Michelle Obama!!  What a thrill that was!!! She is such an amazing woman, incredible Ambassador for our Country, a wonderful Mother and an amazing speaker!!

Unfortunately we could not get close enough to shake her hand or to give her a hug.

Becca and I had a wonderfully inspiring time with all sorts of like minded Democrats and Obama supporters!!

Election night was so very exciting as our candidates,  President Obama and Senator Tim Kaine, easily won their respective political races!!!! I spent many hours working the phones and knocking on doors to make sure that Virginia came out in the Democrats column. Such a relief!!

Buddy and I spent several hours sewing and getting things organized in the sewing room .  I have been making finger-less gloves using cashmere and wool sweaters that I have recovered and re purposed after felting the sweaters in the washing machine.

This group of my gloves have already been sold but I have just listed several new pairs in my Etsy shop.  You can take a peek here.

I created some collaged fabric with silk fibers, silk fabrics, wool fibers and recycled cashmere sweaters to create this swing vest.  After needle felting , lots of free motion embroidery and then wet felting, this garment is now available for purchase at Artful Dimensions Gallery in Fredericksburg, VA.

Creating this piece was a wonderful adventure and I plan to work on many more garments in the near future.

So that is a quick wrap up of what I have been doing with some of my time!  I promise not to ignore my blog and my wonderful followers for such a long period again!! I have missed you all!  I hope that everyone has had a wonderful Fall and Thanksgiving , Spring if you are among my Down Under buddies!! 

ART ON EVERYONE!!!! 

Playing with Color

Today has truely been an amazing weather gift, here in Central VA!! The sky is clear blue with fluffy white clouds , a bit of a breeze and temps in the mid 80's. We don't get many days like this at this time of year!! After taking care of the neighbors dogs and cats, I spent an hour in the garden, dead heading Daisy's, Brown Eyed Susan's and roses while drinking my morning cup of coffee. The birds were keeping me company as I put fresh water in their bath and the hum of the Cicadas had not even begun!!

As I ahd started my day with color I decided to stick with the game plan. Out came the sunpaints and the fabric. I have finally chosen a theme and idea for a Quilt Challenge that I am participating in. This is for the Power Suit Challenge being run by Textile Artists Judy Gula and Cindy Souder . The 18 x 18 quilt is due at Artistic Artifacts by the end of August so my decisions are bordering on last minute!!! I will be using a sunprinted background and altering the shirting fabrics that were provided to create my piece. I am going to hold off on more details as we have been asked to not talk too much about this before the celebratory Reveal at Artistic Artifacts in October. But I will share a few crumbs here and there. (Yah, I thought that would make you all just so happy!!) Part of this finished sun print will become my quilts background.
In the top most picture you can see that I had golden rod, basil blossom spikes, verbeana, daisies, clover and grassy weeds covering the painted damask table cloth piece. I am really happy with the results so far. Now for the shirting.

All of these pieces are from a sample book that I took apart and painted with the paints. I used palstic doilies and a cut up onion bag to cover the fabric while it dried in the sun.
I used all sorts of samples here many have plaids and stripes that are so common in men's dress shirts. They all came out really well and, with the weather, they dried in about 20 minutes!!

Now on to the cutting and construction!!

I hope that wherever you are you are having wonderful weather as well!!

A Glorious Day For Sunprints!!!

Yesterday I ahd the pleasure of enjoying a wonderful play day with my good art pal and partner in junking crime, Leslie Brier. Leslie is very busy these days creating her own art and teacher various kid's art classes with a group of artists called The Creative Side. (This is the group that t teaches the drawing classes that have turned my daughter Becca, onto drawing!! They are a terrific bunch of gifted teachers!!) I managed to get Leslie over to show her the in's and out's of sun printing as she has seen my sun prnts and wants to work up a lesson or two for her teaching duties with her students.
Above you see just several of the prints that I created, eventhough we had one of those in and out sun kind of days. I was not sure how crisp our results would be, but I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. Now If I can only be so lucky to be blessed with todays sun shine and light breezes for my Sun Printing Workshop that is scheduled for next Saturday, at noon, at Liberty Town!!!! I would love it if you could all send me sunny thoughts for next weekend!!!

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If it is Sunny, With No Wind, Then.........

it must be time for sunprints!! Besides sun, no wind, (not quite so much heat) another necessary element is something to shield the dyed cloth with as the dye dries in the sun. I like to use natrual elements, preferably from my garden. You know how much I love my garden!!! Several of my climbing roses are sprouting lovely loads of new green leaves so I combines a smattering of rose leaves with some honeysuckle vine and some Japanese Iris and Daylilly pods. At the bootom you can see that I added several of my plastic doily's for a lacy texture. The whole reason for this piece is to round out a collection of hand dyed fabrics that I showed you and talked about in this post.
So I suppose that you would like to see the result???

Here it is!

And here is a close up!

I love the way that you can achieve nice hard crisp edges with the leaves that really stick down to the fabric while the things that cast shadows but don't adhere tightly to the fabric, give nice soft lines- texture, texture, texture!!!

So my new yellow fabric has now joined the other pieces that will become a shirt in the very near future. I have also added several pieces of hand painted lace that I will collage onto the shirt in as yet to be determines spots, probably shoulder and back yoke areas. Iam really excited about this project and I plan to have it ready to wear to the Art And Soul Retreat in Hampton, VA in May. Will any of you be attending Hampton Art and Soul this year?????If so, send me a line and we can make plans to hook up!!!

Now , as it is getting late and I have ahd a busy day I will leave you with a picture of my Rat Terrier Buddy, otherwise known as King Of the Couch! He gets himself under the covers.

Playing with Color!

We are having an extremely dry Fall here in VA. Our second round of water restrictions goes into effect this Monday, that means no more outside watering.It has also been very hot- we are all ready for some real Fall weather!

That said , the weather has been perfect for some fabric dyeing and sun prints. One must take advantage of weather conditions since we really never know when things will change!

These two pieces were done using a vintage linen napkin. I used ferns, Creeping Jenny and grasses to mask the dyed fabric. These pieces will be used in upcoming Journal Quilt projects for my Surface Design Group.

These pieces were done using regular muslin. The lacey effect is from a paper doiley and the flower prints are from Zinnia blossoms.

With the last bits of dye left in the pots, i dyed some laces and rims that I will use in various projects. I love having bits and pieces of dyed lace on hand as I never know when I will need it!

Most of these bits were purchased as odd pieces at antique stores and flea markets.

I finished off another Round Robin project today. I have been fretting about this piece for a long time. This Round Robin really sucked the artist right out of me- so many dropped out and several books were lost- it was very disheartening and very depressing. The gal whose book I was working in was very willing to wait for me to get motivated and to find my RR Muse again, so that was cool. I finally got inspired.

The book is large and has heavy black pages. the black pages were a bit dawnting. First I collaged some text pages and airline baggage tags on parts of each page. Then I did some paint scraping. this is what things looked like at that point.

So far , so good. At this point i decided that I was ready for some stretching- it was the perfect situation. If I really screwed up, I could just rip out the pages as there were many pages and I was the last artist to work in this book. I decided to play with some gesso with the thought that I would stamp over the gessoed parts. I did add the gesso but then I picked up a Sharpie Marker and didn't look back. Up till now I have felt so unsure about doing this sort of thing, but now the gate has been opened and the perverbial horse has left the barn!!!! I had so much fun with this piece and it is sooo different from things that I have produced before.

I will be doing many more projects like this one! I just hope that the gal who owns this book will like it as much!!!!