Fiber and Pulp

This and That

I spent a couple of hours yesterday at my store making samples for one of the classes I'll be teaching this fall. There is a pattern that has been out for years called the Humbug Bag. I made three of them as examples of possible gifts for kids. One is made from yellow-gold ultrasuede, one from Pirate fabrics and one from a very girly-girl combination of a bright yellow print with cupcakes lined with a dark print that has shoes -- kicking high heels, in fact. :) They were fun to make ... but now _that_ task is done! (whew!)

I've been pretty much going in circles and trying to swim upstream since I got home from the MidWest. At least, it feels like that. :) I can't really tell if I'm making any progress 'cause every time I turn to look/see, I drift backwards. :P

Tomorrow some of us (seven or eight of my staff and I) are getting together at the store to barbecue and sew. I"m thinking I'll work on my Asian posy piece -- I want to frame it (off-center, of course:) with a graphic b&w print and quilt the devil into it. (grin). Maybe I"ll get some photos?

Whew! Whatta Day!

Today was my day 'off' this week. Wow, what a great day it has been! Four of us (Debra Gabel, Sue Campise, Sue Vanvorhees and I) went down to DC to do some museum crawling. Debra, intrepid soul, drove -- and with the aid of her on-board GPS, we had the slickest trip I have ever personally made into and out of D.C!

We went first to the Textile Museum to see the exhibit Blue -- a collection of indigo dyed fabrics from around the world. It has been years since I've gone to the TM so I was surprised that it was so familiar (admittedly, in my walking days, I went there regularly:). One highlight was the oldest textile piece I've ever seen with my own eyes -- 900 BC, Incan (and I learned that the Incas had indigo, something I had not known before:).

Here are two photos of an exhibit of panels dyed by a Japanese man named Shinjo (I _think_).

Then we drove to the Museum of Women in the Arts (where I had never been before) to see an exhibit of improvisational quilts by an African American artist. This was my favorite quilt (the exhibit is called 'Something Pertaining to God'):

Debra needed to stop at G Street Fabrics in Rockville on the way home to pick up a special order. As we were driving up Massachusetts Ave, we spotted the National Cathedral and decided to stop in (yet another beautiful place I had never been before). 14th century English gothic architecture, what was not to love? :)

Particularly impressive stained glass windows, including this one which has a piece of moon rock in it -- the theme is Celestial Creation and the center of the red circle (you can see the clear spot with dot of rock in the middle of the circle) is a moon rock brought back from the Apollo 11 mission to the moon:

More photos:
I _think_ this is a view of the hall way in the Gallery tower on 7th floor -- a circular viewing area that goes all the way around the tower:

The creation of human kind from the chaos of nothing-ness:

I feel over stuffed with dazzling images. ;)

Revealing the Rust

Yesterday I had fun! I slept in until 10 a.m. and then we got up and went to the store.

Yesterday afternoon the Metrothreads Mixed Media SIG (special interest group) met in the afternoon for the first time since May. Kathy Okuly lead the meeting -- we did painting on fusible webbing and rust dyeing. Great Fun!!

I have some photos to show of my rust dyed results. Here is a piece of aqua colored mulberry paper I bought from Dolphin Papers while I was in Indy with steel wool rust:

Mulberry paper is pretty strong stuff but, as you can see, I managed to rough-hand it a bit too much at the edges. :)

Here is a piece of brown-and-yellow checked fabric (cotton?) that Cindy W gave me at the meeting. It reminds me a bit of the hat that the Bob's Big Boy logo character wears (without the rust, of course:):

I like the results of this one but I think I might rust it yet again with some other objects.

Here is a piece of silk that I had previously hand painted with a sort of sky blue dappled effect. I _love_ how this came out:

I am pondering what to use this piece for -- I think at least a piece of it will be a background and maybe the rest pieced into patchwork? :)

Now, for those of you who love to do paper crafting, like me, here are three improved and higher resolution images you have my permission to use (would be nice if you'd give me credit or send me a photo of what you use it for:). Click on the thumbnail to get the larger image for printing out:

Home Again!

I had a very nice trip to Indianapolis last week. Hugh and I drove (well, I drove, he navigated:) from Baltimore to Indy in one day (it's not a hard trip -- maybe ten hours, including stops). We traveled last Wednesday and dead-reckoned our way to the Omni Severin hotel downtown. Very nice (prob. four stars?) place with a truly friendly, helpful staff. Expensive, of course, but worth it -- the food was good, the beds ultra-comfy, location excellent for GenCon, and the staff unfailingly helpful. :)

I spent all day Thursday lazing about in the room, watching TV and eating room service goodies. There was a thunderstorm (or maybe two) in the late afternoon. Watching this from the eleventh floor was a new experience for me! Nothing like looking at lightning fairly near to the source -- kinda scary in that glad-I-have-a-good-roof-over-my-head way. (whew!)

Friday I went out exploring and drove to Dolphin Papers (fabulous art supplies and glorious papers) and The Back Door (great quilt shop on the south side in Greenwood, just across the county line). Those of you who know me and my fabric tastes would probably be surprised how much I like The Back Door -- they specialize in Civil War era fabrics and wool-on-wool applique. I get my 'fix' every year when I visit them. (smile) One of the things they sell that I always buy is Valdani variegated hand-dyed perle cotton. Luscious!

I did manage a bit of hand sewing while I was in Indy -- I made myself three small zippered bags to carry stuff inside my purse. One for my cash, one for credit cards and one to keep receipts in. I used some lovely-to-work-with black boiled wool and three very nice 4" zippers I bought from Pinwheels at the Lancaster quilt show last spring. I just sewed the bags to the zippers, seamed up the sides and made triangle/squared bases for two of them. I have embellished one (the cash bag) but still have the other two to 'pretty up'.

Might seem a tad silly to use my hand working time to make these bags -- after all, I _could_ just buy a leather wallet and be done with it. :) I like using things I've made ... and it made me happy to be creating even such a pedestrian collection of items (no patterns, I just cut and sewed them). :)

We stopped to see my Mom and brothers in Ohio on the way back to Baltimore. Didn't have long to stay, but it was good to be sure they are ok. Mom looked pretty good -- and my brother Jeff finally got a resolution to the 2 year battle he's been having with the Social Security Administration (the judge who heard his appeal case not only ordered support for full disability but also assessed SSA two years of back pay!).

We saw a lot of lovely green countryside on our trip ... but I forgot the camera (sigh) so I have no photos. :P

I've been trying to pick up the pieces here at the shop since I got back on Wednesday. This evening I took a break and decided to play with the new needle felting tools I bought from Clover. Here is a photo of the pen-style felting needle tool, the claw-ended mat cleaner and the brush/felting pad:

If you look very, very carefully (and know what you are looking at:), you can see that I've already broken the three felting needles in the tool. (sigh!!) That's my m.o., Klutz supreme. :)

As is my usual way, I was too eager to wait for roving to explore with so I used some scraps of boiled wool left over after some other project and practiced felting -- fun! Here's the front and back of what I made:

As soon as I get some replacement needles (I _think_ Jolean sells them next door at Cloverhill Yarn Shop), I'm going to play some more with this. August's color postcards color is Aqua and I'm thinking needlefelting would be a good way to make some postcards, eh? :)

Wrestling With Designs

I'm not sure I'd call what I've been doing today 'having fun,' but it is. (grin) So, I have these twelve blocks for the various fan designs we've chosen as the Quilter's Quest freebies ... and I have to make a quilt with them. :)

Now, I've spent a couple hours already, before I got the blocks, working with various ideas on the computer. I _thought_ I was going to do something along the lines of a Mohawk Trail layout. When I put the blocks up on the gray design wall, this is what they looked like:

(hmmm) Quite a lot of disparity between the blocks, in both shape and coloring. (hmmm) Also lots of negative space (background) area. I had in the back of my mind the idea that there would be some applique shapes, maybe leaves, in that open space ... but this just seemed like too much space to me.

So, I tried another layout I had toyed with previously which is more compact:

This one appealed to me a bit more ... but still has shortcomings. (hmmm) Too static, too unbalanced somehow. Alice and Karen suggested turning it on point:

Aha, _now_ we're getting somewhere! :) I like this better. Now, how to finish out the square and set the entire thing? Here is one corner structure I do like (drew out several before sewing this one):

There is still a little ways to go -- I think it needs a piped edge in the central square ... and maybe something else? (hmmmm) Still working. :) Stay tuned!

Pleasantly Lazy

What a nice day off I've had today! Just pleasantly lazy, so to speak. :) Had to go to the post office this morning and Hugh and I went for breakfast. I caught up on my email, took a nap, did some reading, spent some time gathering recycling to put out tomorrow a.m. and picking up random trash in my bedroom....and then spent several hours catching up on my internet video watching.

I am a subscriber to The Quilt Show, put on by Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims -- which I highly recommend - but have gotten pretty far behind in my viewing. They are on toward the end of season 3 now and I faltered somewhere in the middle of season 2.

Was a really good way for me to get re-inspired. :) I watched an episode with Judith Baker Montano, the Queen of Crazy Quilting and learned two new-to-me flower stitches for silk ribbon embroidery (_gotta_ get out my crazy block and finish it!) ... saw a lot of gorgeous quilts from Jane Sassaman, (arrrgh!) the lady who wrote the book Linen Quilts (I have a passion for vintage linens:), Laura Wasilowski, etc... Jane Davila taught (or maybe re-taught) me something I know but forget often -- you can work on a design that is piece-of-paper sized! you don't always have to make honking big production pieces to enjoy your quilting. :)

(happy sighs) A little wake-up call to creativity is a good thing, eh? :)

Show Off

I want to show off this quilted wall hanging that just got finished late yesterday. This is a collaboration between myself and my employee, Alice I. We worked out the arrangement ... then Alice pieced the top (including that wonderful ultrasuede butterfly applique!) .. and I quilted and bound the baby (both by machine).

I really like how this turned out -- Butterfly Circles: