On vacation!  A stay at home week which I am spending preparing for my show at Strolling Village Artisans, which I will be hanging on Sunday.  So far I have cooked, cleaned, worked on the altered book, worked on the ocean piece, and successfully changed the light bulb in my sewing machine.  I also completed a set of Artist Trading cards for the group I belong to, Arts in the Cards.

I am now part of a small group making Artist Trading Cards, or ATCs.  They are one of my favorite things to create and I have a collection of over 200 so far.  I've made them with fiber and fabric, collage, drawing, using markers and really just experimenting.  Here's the blog, this month's theme is sky, and I've posted my ATCs there.

http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com/

over-dyed yarns

At a garage sale this past summer, I got some wool yarns that were various ugly shades.  I spent some time over-dying them to make them more usable.  I used Wilton's cake coloring and McCormick food coloring.

Here they are right after the microwave steaming:

Here they are dried and ready to be wound into balls.  The colors are much more subtle than I am used to due to the underlying original colors.  The orange and green were not over-dyed but were natural color amd for particular projects.  I am thinking that the subdued colors will make great scarves or felted bowls, or a knitted backdrop for an art piece.

and here is a view of my hand with lines, able to be seen because of the dyes... it eventually washes out.

I still have lots more to play with and dye.  One batch of four skeins turned out to be acrylic, but I will donate those so someone else can use them.  I want to try using Easter Egg dyes next.

Having a three day weekend is great for getting organized.  I know that this blog is not very active, but I am hoping to change that.

I recently finished a new wall piece.  Technically it's only one layer so I can't call it an art quilt.  The base is wool felt, that has been felted more and shrunk, and stitched with a grid.

The best part of creating sometimes is the gathering of stuff.  I have a lot of supplies, vintage things, yarns, fabrics, buttons....

This is a pile of round things, vintage buttons, belt buckles, metal rings, and buttons. This led to fabric circles:

The fabric is mostly hand dyed feedsack fabric, and I used a set of pastry cutters to draw all the different sizes.

This is about midway through.  I stitched the circles on, and added lines both straight and crossed.  This was definitely an improvised piece and looks nothing like the sketch I did.  That happens to me a lot.  I discover new stuff that adds something, so I use it.  I added some knitted circles and did a lot of beading and embellishing.  Here is the final version:

and a detail shot:

I am very fascinated with the knitted circles and ruffles and how they randomly shape themselves.  I am sure I will be using them again.

And when I made some mac and cheese I saw some other cool circles:

Finally, since his coloring fits in with this entry, here's Rowan contemplating what to write about next:

pictures and patterns

I always have good intentions of blogging regularly, however life always gets in the way... I am working on a larger piece with a base of felted wool, and will soon post some in-progress pictures.  In preparation for creating that piece, I spent a lot of time going through my 14K or so Flickr photos, looking at patterns and seeing what I photographed repeatedly.  Here are some pictures that I really like.

I love rocks.  I pick them up from everywhere.  I have rocks from the Atlantic, from Ireland, from hiking trails... rocks, if you are the kind of person who looks closely at them, have lines and shapes and colors.  I've even started a small collection of heart shaped rocks.

Trees and plants are important to me.  The shapes of sticks and roots, the tendrils and offshoots of a  plant, and the glorious colors of flowers can often inspire me.

Grids fascinate me - straight or curved lines, in layers and juxtapositions.  I use grids a lot in my art.  And I love drawing or writing on graph paper instead of lined paper.

And of course, color.  Right now aqua continues to be my favorite color.  This was a small color study that I did for a Cloth Paper Scissors reader challenge.  It didn't get in, but I still like it. 

I am so glad that I have a digital camera, and can take bunches of pictures without worrying about the cost.  Out of the many shots, one or two will be exactly what I want, but I have to take all of the shots to come up with those one or two.  

color combinations

I have been experimenting, well, actually, having fun dyeing yarns and fabric.  I am not at all precise and sometimes am surprised at the color combinations I come up with.  In an effort to be more organized, and to maybe be able to reproduce some colors, I've been collecting paint chips and yarn samples and sorting them into possible combinations.



lime, blue, teal, violet





lime, pink, purple





blue, lime, teal



khaki, brown, pink



lime, aqua, teal, pink, and will use black as an accent

I remember my mother teaching me about color - the blue purples and the red purples, and never wear navy and green together, unless it's plaid, my sixth grade concert dress of white lace and cotton, with hot pink tights and lime green jewelry... we had an avacado colored kitchen and a raspberry bathroom long before they became popular colors.  She had a great eye for color, and I think of her evey time I dye yarns and fabric. 

vignettes on red - a recap of my solo show

My solo show, vignettes on red, recently finished at Strolling Village Artisans in Ballston Spa, NY.  It was fun to create the pieces for the show - I got to play and forced myself to work in a color that is not my favorite.  Here are some pictures of the show, and then I'll show some of the little book I created during the process.

looking into the gallery, the red triangles piece is directly to the back.  It's all hand dyed fabric and knitted triangles.

mother's apron - hand dyed fabric, vintage apron and potholders, glass heart.

cherry tree quilt - a remnant of a commercial coverlet that my grandmother used on her bed.  Eventually it became part of our vacation bedding when we stayed at a cabin.  This is the only piece that survived.  Vintage doily and potholder, buttons.

detritus - hand dyed fabric and leftover found objects

no more dolls 2 - vintage hand made child's dress, vintage trim and buttons, vintage dolls and doll parts

and here are pages from the small book I made telling about the creative process I was experiencing.

 words

quotes about the color red, and all the different names of red.

thoughts about the way the pieces will look and loving the combination of teal and red.

on to the next set of projects!