MYSTERY QUILT SOLVED

I once owned a quilt shop in Renton....that sounds like the beginning of another story.  Anyway, we did a lot of 'Block of the Months' (BOM) and I have lots of them in little project boxes.  So this one was on the top the other day, so I grabbed it down and started in on it.   A lot of the times I used to have to make the blocks to show everyone what it should look like, other times I just made the blocks because I wanted to!  This one I probably made the blocks because I had to - they are not type of blocks I like - too country-looking.  But, all the blocks appeared to be there and there was a little extra fabrics.  

This BOM was a mystery quilt - you wouldn't see how it all went together until the end.  Every month you'd get a little pile of fabrics and directions for that month's block and at the end of twelve months you'd get the directions to assemble the quilt top.

I had all the blocks but, oh-oh, there was no directions for the final top.  I had no idea how it should go together, but I figured I could figure it out!  

I put the blocks up on the wall and started moving them around....and around....and around.  After about an hour of that I decided to give up, I couldn't figure it out, and it was going to be too small anyway.

I dug through my stash and found a yard of fabric that went with the rest of the blocks (that's the best thing about scrappy blocks) and started adding pieces of sashing to get the pieces to fit together.

And here it is - a finished top!  I still need to make a back for it, and quilt it.

It is a lap-size quilt, about 64" by 52".

Do you want it?

Whoever gives me the best reason why I should give it to them can have it (then I'll have to hurry up and finish it).

FIRST IN THE STEEL PLANT SERIES

OMG!  Did I just say I was starting another series?  You'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but seriously, I've been wanting to do some paintings of the Steel Plant.  I'm not going to say I'm doing a bunch of them.  I'm just going to nonchalantly say this is the first.

When I drove a truck every day I was going to Vashon Island a lot, mostly to haul the leachate runoff from the landfill with a tanker.  I would cross over the West Seattle Bridge (elevated above Spokane Street) in the early morning and see the Steel Plant and just be enthralled.  I can't say what it is exactly, but the way the sun hit all those pipes and metal buildings with steam coming out.  There are piles of rusty scrap outside, railroad tracks and cars, cat-walks, chimneys and occasionally, if you were lucky, you could see red-hot bars of steel coming out of one of the buildings.  The ground around the plant is black, there are mud puddles that reflect the light and the men are driving equipment around the yard.  It's all very.....I don't know....industrial?  

Now that we live in West Seattle I really need to put what I see on canvas.  Here is the beginnings, the underpainting - mostly I was using up what was left on my palette.  I really like it just like this, but knowing me, it will get too real-looking very soon.  This is 24" by 30".

My husband and I recently went on a tour of this place, the Nucor Steel Plant with a group from Historic Seattle.  I thought I'd be able to take pictures from the inside, but alas, it was not to be so.  They said I could take all the pictures I wanted....from outside their fence. Phooey!  Once the tour started I began to question why I was there!  It was scary, dirty, hot and smelly.  We had to walk on the cat-walks- metal grates suspended over the yard.  I hate walking on something you can see down through.  I have a very great fear of heights.  So, needless to say, I had a death grip on the hand railing, which was filthy with who-knows-what kind of dust.  By the end of the tour, most of that dust was either on my face or on my jeans.

It was a very interesting tour in that we learned a great deal about how steel is made.  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and generous.  Almost all of the steel made in America is made from recycled materials, hence the big piles of rusty scraps in the yard.  Nucor is very proud of the fact that they are 100% recycled material only.  We got to see the cauldron where they mix the metals and melt them down to make the steel.  It was a little like I would image Hell to be.  Hot, loud, dirty and it even smelled a little sulpher-like.  There were so many things I wish I could have photographed, but I restrained myself.  I'm going to have to walk down around that area a little more and see just how close I can get with my long-lensed camera.

LET'S CALL IT FINISHED

Okay, I came to a point where I'm going to call it finished.  I'll set it aside for at least a week, not looking at it and then look at it with fresh eyes.

I went back to the Buzzsaw quilt and started adding a border.

NEXT STAGE FOR "SITTER"

It's coming along...

Still needs a lot of work.

WORKING ON THE SITTER

I was able to put in several hours on my new painting "The Sitter" today, which is always so relaxing.  I seemed to want to use a little brush and work on details.  The painting wasn't really ready to go into the details, but I did it anyway!  You gotta go with what's working for ya, I guess!

I haven't even started on the overhead 'things' - I don't know what to call them and they are the reason I keep painting this building.  Hmmm.  I need to find out what they should be called. 

Now that I see this little thumbnail image, I'm rather pleased with it.

Still a long ways from finished.  Stay tuned.

"FLEETING BEAUTY" SHOW AT SAAM

Darrell and I have wanted to go the exhibit of Japanese Woodblock Prints at the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) since it opened in April.  Seems like there was always something keeping us away.  So, when the weather turned so miserable this Memorial Day Weekend, we decided it would be a perfect time for an indoor activity and this show was right at the top of the list.

We both really enjoy Japanese Woodblock prints, Darrell from his passion of everything Japanese (which relates back to Greene & Greene and his furniture designing) and me from my love of printmaking.  I've taken a class or two about the traditional methods of Moku Hanga (woodblock printing) and am a regular lurker at one of the best web forums on the subject www.barenforum.org .

We were at the museum in Volunteer Park soon after the doors opened.  Its always a pleasure going to SAAM, the Art Deco building is a treasure all in itself and the park is one of Seattle's jewels.  (Afterward, we took Lucy for a short walk through the squirrel infested grounds, so she was happy with the outing also).

Both Darrell and I agree the show was phenomenal.  It was curated very nicely, with an exquisite selection showing the changing styles and eras.  We were thrilled to see the excellent specimens with their rich colors intact, and the educational information about the prints, the process and their makers. 

The collection, a promised gift to the museum, includes Hokusai's Great Wave, shown here with Darrell admiring it and seeing things he's never seen before.  Wow.

Hurry-  the exhibit closes on July 4, it's a must-see.

BUZZSAW WITH SASHING

I spent most of this rainy Friday before Memorial Weekend putting the sashing on my Buzzsaw blocks.  This is how it stands now.  I'm not sure if I should proceed or put it back in the box for another ten years.

I don't have any idea in which direction to proceed, so that points to 'the box'.

But, since the week is almost over, I'm just going to leave it on the wall and look at it and let it stew in the cranium until my next week off.

While making the sashing, I rediscovered that I thoroughly enjoy the almost-mindless task of chain piecing.  I had a nice afternoon piecing and listening to my Zune play an eclectic mix of just good music.

BUZZSAW QUILT FROM LONG AGO

I opened a project box.  These are hand-pieced twenty point star blocks that I'm calling Buzzsaw.  I can't remember their real name.  Anyway, I pieced these years ago, probably ten years ago or more and put them away for some reason.  I can't remember if I had a plan on how to finish them or not.  The box contains fabrics, templates, but no plan.

Maybe one of the reasons I put it away was because I ran out of one of the fabrics and I had no plan.

I put the blocks up on the wall.   I was surprised at the placement.  If I was making them today, I would have made five full blocks.  That would have made it rectangular.  But here it is - square.

I stared at it for a while and decided it needs sashing - or something...

I started auditioning some different sashings:

I went for a walk and when I got back I started cutting fabric and piecing sashings.

And here is what I have so far:

Now I'm thinking about what to put in the cornerstones.  I was thinking about some kind of whirling star block that goes the other direction.  Whirrr,  whirrr....

Maybe I'll add something to the ends to make it rectangular, too.

NEW PAINTING STARTED

A painting on my easel!  It's been a long time since I started a painting.  I've committed to hanging my paintings in August and I thought I might see if I could get a few more big ones done before that.

Here is the first roughing out of another scene of 17th & Roxbury.

This is acrylic on canvas 20" by 30".   Wish me luck.

HOME FOR QUILTS

The last two quilts I've finished, April Flowers and Catch Me,  found a home. 


I offered them to someone I know from work and he gladly accepted them for his two children, a boy and a girl.


Perfect!  


Back to the pile of UFOs to finish and find homes for them.

CATCH ME QUILT

Here's the mate to the April Flowers Quilt I just finished.  This one is 66" by 55".

I've named it Catch Me because of the fabric on the back.  It's an ugly fabric that matched the colors of the front very well.  It has bears and fishing lingo on it and somewhere it says something about catching fish.  It was in my bag of 'please-go-away' fabrics that I was going to donate somewhere, when I realized the colors matched!  It got rescued.  I still think it's ugly!

I used a blue denim for the little inside border and corners in the outer border.  And I erroneously used the denim as binding.  It is definitely too heavy.  I knew it was wrong as I did it, but I did it anyway.

I'm am so pleased with my Bernina, it just chugged on through all the layers. 


I love my Bernina.  I gave it a good cleaning afterwards.  Its all ready for the next project.

PRINTED SURFACE WORKSHOP

I just finished a three-day workshop with Cameron Mason at Pratt School in Seattle.

It was a very informative and fun class.  I met some really great people, whom I learned a lot from and Cameron was an excellent and generous teacher who really knows her stuff!  

Basically, we learned about 'printing' with fabric dye to make your own unique fabrics.  It was really fun each morning when we would 'show and tell' our fabrics we made the day before.  There were some extremely talented students in the class.  It's always great to learn from seeing other people's work.

Cameron showed us the basics of silkscreen printing and had some great ideas and techniques for fabric printing.  We even got to do some 'breakdown printing' which can yield very interesting and surprising results.  I definitely want to try more of that.

If you get a chance to take one of Cameron's classes or workshops I highly recommend it.  You will have a great time and be very pleased with what you learn.

APRIL FLOWERS QUILT

 I just finished this quilt I'm calling April Flowers this last weekend.  It's about 54" by 77".   I started it several years ago.  It is made from fabric samples that I got somewhere (so long ago, I don't even remember).  They were small pinked-edged squares in sample books.  I took the books apart and cut the squares down to six inch squares.  I used some of them as sashing.  I got the top done before we moved into this house, which was, what...2007?     Two weeks ago I pulled out the box with the fabrics, found this top and another top and went to the fabric store to buy an appropriate back.  I found a really cute light green with little flowers for this one - hence it's name.  And I found a fishing fabric for the blue quilt top I'm quilting at the moment.  I thought I could get the quilting for it done today or tomorrow, but I just put the sewing machine needle through my finger.  It went in the nail of my right hand pointer finger and came out the other side.  Yuck, it didn't really hurt until I pulled the needle out.  Anyway, not to gross you out, but it's starting to throb, so I better take it easy the rest of the day.  (It hurts to right click!).  I'll post a picture of the blue one when it's finished.

All these years of sewing and this is the first time I've ever done that.  Let's hope that's the end of that!

THREAD DANCING WITH ROCKY

I took the worst of the prints on cotton that I did with the Litho method, and over-sewed it with black thread outlining and creating shadows.  I was really concerned I wouldn't be able to do it and make it look 'right', that's why I started with the worst print.  I don't like the wrinkles in it. I think they are confusing and detract from the portrait - that's that vertical line in the middle of the forehead.  It shouldn't be there, but it's in the print.

I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out not too bad.  It was like drawing with a pencil, but a lot slower!  I had the machine going full-throttle, poor thing.  But it's a trooper and so far it's still going great.  I love my Bernina.  I might get out my other one though and abuse it and let this old one be used just for making quilts.

Next I moved on to the failed attempt to do chine-collé with fabric.  I had taken that horrible wreck of a project and overlaid it with pink gauze that I had printed with the portrait.  I lined the print up with the fabric 'face' underneath and then proceeded to draw on it with thread.  I didn't do as much sewing on this, I just wanted to outline, but ended up doing a little more than that.    Here it is:

You can see the colored fabrics underneath the gauze overlay.   I don't know where to go with it from here.  It's on canvas, I could put it on stretcher bars.

Hmmm...

SEWING ROOM UPSTAIRS

One more hard day of lugging a laundry basket up the stairs loaded down with fabric, I don't know how many times.  My knees are telling me it was a few too many times though.

When I finally got all the fabric up and sorted, then I started bring up the drawers from my sewing table and the leaves for the cutting table.  At least I got the men to bring up the tables, though.

It looks a little bare right now, but I'm sure I'll have it all junked up very soon.

In fact, I think I'll be out there sewing up a storm first thing in the morning.  I really wanted to sew tonight, but I'm just too tired.

One of the fun and interesting things about reorganizing my stash was getting re-acquainted with and counting all the pieces of fabric I have.

I will admit it, I am a fabricoholic.

I have some really ugly pieces of Elvis fabric - (I can't believe they let them license them).

I have 116 pieces of fabric with a horse motif, 2 that are zebras, 3 with cowboy boots, and 1 seahorses.  (Most of these are 1/2 yard pieces).

I was astonished to find I have 414 pieces of paisley fabrics.

I have a big stack of hand-dyed fabrics by Judy Robertson from her yard of the month program.

I am short on yellows, but I have golds.  And Diane B is right, I have way too many browns.

I have a lot of plaids.  I have some Kaffe Fassett fabrics I would love to use.

I need to start using this fabric.  Now.  

I'd like to make quilts, but I don't know what to do with them.  I'd really like to just make the tops and have someone else quilt them.  You wanna?  We could donate them.

FABRIC STASH - END OF DAY TWO ORGANIZING

I spent the first day cleaning up from the construction.  I got out the vacuum and went at it.  I decided everything either had to have a home or it was going away.  I started taking things downstairs and piling them up in Darrell's shop.  It's only a matter of time until he puts a stop to that!  But I will eventually do away with it all.  We need a big garage sale this summer.

Anyway, I started taking fabric up that afternoon, but I didn't take any pictures.

This is where I stopped at the end of day two.  

It all has to be re-folded and organized.  It' kind of fun going through it all and remembering what I have.  It's seems it's been a long time since I've been through it.  I'm finding things I had forgotten I have.  But, I need to start doing something with it all.  I have little stacks of fabrics that I had some sort of plan for....but most of it I don't remember what exactly. 

STUDIO FABRIC STORAGE

The above picture is the finished project.  Below are the process pictures.   I did some research about systems for storing my fabric stash.  I had criteria - I wanted to be able to see the fabric and get to it easily; I wanted the bins deep as possible because of the layout of the room's sloping ceiling.  That end isn't really usable space without stooping down.  I found this wire basket system through Organizeit.com.  It was expensive, but simple to install - a choice of time or money.  Being short of time, or should I say, Darrell being short of time, I decided to go for it.  

Darrell built the simple four section box, and installed the 'ladders' that the baskets slide on.  We found the other cabinets for free on Craigslist and he built toe-kicks for them, installed them and put new countertops of MDF edged with mahogany.  

I spent several days painting the inside of the old cabinets white and painting the outsides, and putting shellac on the top of the counters.  

At the last minute, I decided it might be fun to add some color - that short wall behind the new cabinets never really got painted properly.  I stopped at Rodda on the way home one day and picked up some dark yellow (gold) paint - it's called 'Hacienda Clay'.  I was surprised at how 'warm' it ended up being up against the already warm amber shellac.  Oh, well.

Now I just have to lug all my fabric up there, re-fold it, and organize it.

No problem.

YEAR OF THE TIGER PRINTED

Yahoo!  I persevered and got the printing done in one session on my Year of the Tiger print for BarenForum's annual Exchange.  It was originally going to have two colors on it, but I didn't like the way it looked, so went with just black.  I'll probably try hand coloring a few to see how they look.

I had the papers already cut and ready to go, there is quite a stack.  I can't remember how many exactly, probably about 60.  
It's Akua ink on a printmaking paper I picked up on Daniel Smith's Sale table - No Name.  The paper is cut 5" by 6".  I carved the image on a piece of Poplar and printed them using my Ettan Etching press.  Just the printing part took about two to two-and-a-half hours, with probably another hour testing and rejecting and setting things up.

Pretty good for one day....but I wanted to see how it would work to print on fabric.  So.... I cut some thin white cotton and printed on that.  It turned out really great!  Just like the paper, it was pretty clean and crisp. That encouraged me to try it on canvas.  I cut and ironed some raw canvas I had on hand  and printed nine lucky tigers.  Kind of Andy Warhol-ish.  Pretty cool!

This has given me some ideas for a project tomorrow!

MORE ROCKING FUN

I was in Borders bookstore the other night, just browsing and came across an interesting book.  It's called Image Transfer Workshop by McElroy and Wilson  I just had to buy it!  It contains a bunch of different ways to transfer images into your artwork.  

I read most of it that evening.  There was one process that really intrigued me.  The next morning, after a trip to Daniel Smith for some needed supplies, and stopping to get some copies made at Staples, I was all fired up and went up to the studio.

This process is basically a paper plate lithography method.

  

After saturating the copy with Gum Arabic, you roll ink onto it then wipe it off, and run it through the press.

I'm transferring the image to fabric, by the way!

There first one wasn't very good, it had wrinkles in it.  The wrinkles aren't in the print, the were on the plate, so they transferred to the flat image.  It's an interesting effect, but it's not what I'm after today.

So, from then on I was more careful about adhering the copy to the acrylic plate I was using.  Here are a few of the others I made that day:

I'm really pleased with the results.  My only worry at this point is how long will it take the oil paint to dry!?

I'm planning to try different inks.  I would really like to try Akua.  They are not oil paints, so I don't know if they will even work or not.  But I love their inks and use them with my printmaking.

I'm not really familiar with lithography and don't understand the concept, so it's difficult for me to think beyond the basic instructions in the book and understand why something works and why it doesn't.  You know what I mean?

I've got some very talented and knowledgeable friends online. 

I'll have to pick their brains.

Please leave a comment, I would love to have some opinions. 

ON THE ROCKY ROAD

I've been inspired...

First I did this pencil drawing above with plans to do something in fabric eventually.  This drawing was really just to help me figure out the darks and lights placement.

Then I put the outlines of the dark areas on a piece of white cotton.  I thought I was going to use the sewing machine to make the portrait with thread.  But, I began to doubt I was talented enough to do that.

So, maybe if I painted the lights and darks in, then when I put the thread lines in their placement wouldn't be as important if it was just a white and thread picture.

I soaked the fabric in water and spread it out on my formica board and started painting with my acrylic paints with GAC 900 added.  I was having so much fun, and it was going very well.  I got carried away.  It ended up being more than just a suggestion of a portrait!

After I was done, I started dropping paint drips and splatters on it.  I don't know...

When I hung it up to dry, there was a ghost image left on the board from the paint that had soaked through.  I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and placed it on the paint and used a brayer to transfer the paint.  There are two images because I added more paint to the fabric portrait and took a second transfer image after that session.  I don't have a plan for this, but it's interesting:

Then, more fun.  I took some photocopies of the same image and randomly cut them up then arranged the pieces.  Here are two of the fractured portraits:

 I don't know what I'll do with these, but they were very fun to make.

SNITZEL CHANGE

In my last post I showed how the 'Lines' Snitzel looked after I had attached the pieces to the background using acrylic medium with GAC 900 added.  It wasn't dry yet so the colors looked completely different.  I wasn't sure it would dry looking like that, but fortunately it didn't.  When the acrylic had dried and I ironed it to set it, the colors were very close to the original look.

Here's the first photo I took of it:

And here is the photo I took after I added more lines around the eye on the left and adhered the pieces to the background.  They are more or less permanently affixed now:

The colors are very similar.  I think the only difference is in the lighting or exposure of the different photos.

I really think adding the additional lines to the left eye helps it alot.  I'm not sure where I'm going with it next.  I'm still letting it simmer.

SNITZEL FIXIN'

I needed to make some changes to a couple of my Snitzels - 

Yesterday I painted the green fabric, that was too bluish, with an overall wash of Cad Yellow Acrylic with GAC900 added, to the top one.  The bottom one  is how it looks today, with the lines zigzagged on.

It's definitely an improvement.

The next one I worked on is the Eyes.  I thought it needed lines added to the 'eye' on the left.  And as an experiment to see how it comes out I mixed some Matte Medium with a little water and some GAC900 to use as an adhesive to hold the batiks onto the canvas backing.  I needed to put medium on the back of the fabric also when it started to bubble up.  This made the black background show through, especially on the 'flesh' colored fabric.  I'm hoping it won't be so obvious when it completely dries.  I won't know until tomorrow.

The one on the top is the way it looked before...the one on the bottom is after I changed it.  I do like the added lines to the 'eye', but I'm worried about losing the fabric color, I think some of it is the lighting I took the pictures under, too.  I still might be able to fix it.  Remember - this is an experiment.  It's a learning process!

WRONG KIND OF PAINTING

Got a coat of primer yesterday and a coat of paint on the Fabric Case today.  Needs one more coat of white, and then I'm going to push it into it's corner and wait for the husband to install the hardware for the baskets.

Boring!               Turn the music up!

YEAR OF THE TIGER STARTED

I flipped over the plank of Poplar I used on the last print I carved and started afresh on the back of it.  There is room for all three of the blocks I need for this print.

I had tried to transfer the drawings before using photocopies.  It didn't work, the image didn't transfer.

This time I used print outs from my HP copier at home and it transferred just as it's supposed to.  Yeah!

I used diluted rice paste to glue the papers face down to the plank.  When it was good and dry, several days later, in fact, I moistened the paper and it just rolled right off leaving behind a beautiful reversed image.  Yeah!

 It left a very crisp and usable image.  Now I just have to start carving.

Hmmm...I can't remember if I sharpened my tools after I used them last time.  I sure hope so!