Screen Door Quilt Entry

     I finished my screen door quilt and entered it in the call for entry Redirecting the Ordinary. I named it "Screen Door With a View".  I'm very happy with it. I like it so much that I may make another one in a different size with a similar theme. But not right away. I made three large (for me) quilts since the beginning of January and want to take a break. I know I don't have a great chance of getting in the show with this quilt since it is a SAQA show and so many talented artists will enter. But if you don't enter, you have a zero percent chance. Here, again is the photo of the main part of the screen door and here are two other photos of detail shots. The whole quilt measures about 46 inches high by 31 inches wide.

hole in screen door reproduced in stitch

scarf from Guatemala pieced onto the side
and fabric swatches added as embellishments

other fabric swatches added as embellishments
to symbolize rust and keyhole

So now with time and no deadlines, I cleaned out the studio. So therapeutic! Next, I may clean out my clothes closet and line up the clothes that need to be altered and repurposed. I want to make some very small art quilts, too.  I have a large one with rock cairns and a tree of life planned, but no timeline so when the mood strikes, I'll take out the gelatin plate and get the fabrics ready. And, of course, there are the monthly wheelchair covers. I feel so lucky to be able to have the time now to play with fabric and paint. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists posts to let them know you stopped by.

Screen Door

     I've been busy working on another larger quilt. This one is about 30 inches wide and 48 inches tall. It doesn't fit in with my body of work, but it does come from my heart. I was in a restaurant in Panama several years ago. It was on a one-street town. The street was a dirt road with horses going up and down it with the occasional car. It was a very "basic" restaurant. Cement floor, only one item on the menu... beans and rice and chicken. And the screen door had a large hole in it with flies going in and out. But the hole was beautiful. I liked it so much that I took photos of it. I knew that some day I would use that hole in my art. The day/s has/have come.
     I decided to use crinoline as my base fabric to get more of that screen door effect. My cat, Opus, loves crinoline. He dives underneath it and thinks he can't be seen and then dodges out at me. So the first thing I did was let him have his play session with the crinoline.

the invisible Opus

making his appearance

Then I cut up panels from it and monoprinted them on my gelatin plate and sewed the panels together. After that, I stitched patterns on them using different types of thread. For the main hole, I used some parachute thread and did bobbin work from the back because this thread is too thick to run through the needle of the sewing machine. Here's the panel of the quilt stitched with this thread that is an exact copy of the hole in the screen door in Panama.

Screen door hole

The paint colors I chose have blues and rusts and this scarf from Guatemala may be cut up and used on this quilt.

my scarf

I'm having great fun creating this quilt. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments to let the artists know you stopped by.

New Wheel Chair Cover

     Now that I am retired, besides enjoying making art, I want to do some kind of volunteer work. I have lots of commercial fabric that I have saved up and that people have given to me. For most of the work that I do now, I paint my own fabric so the commercial fabric just sits in the bins doing nothing. I decided to try to make one wheelchair cover a month for the residents in one wing of a local retirement home where I visit a friend. I made one for him for Christmas and posted a photo of it. A female resident a few rooms down the hall from him saw it and wanted one with flowers on it. So here is one I made for her. It is my contribution for January. Here is a photo of it hanging over a chair in my studio.

This is the part that will face the world.

This is how it would sit on the chair. The ties are on the top
to tie onto to knobs on a wheelchair. NOTE: the
reginabdunn.com is a watermark on the photo
It is not on the wheelchair cover.

This is the part that would be against the back of the
person in the wheelchair.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments to let the artists know you stopped by.

Yet Another Gelatin Plate Update

     If you regularly read my blog, then you'll remember that I made two permanent gelatin plates. I made a small one in August using expensive pure glycerin that I bought in a health food store. That plate has been stored at room temperature and is just fine and has been used for printing several times. I also made a large plate using cheaper glycerin that I bought at a hobby store and the label on that glycerin did not list its purity but did say that it was not edible. That plate eventually grew mold on its surface. Well today I threw that gelatin plate away.

    I recently found a bottle of pure glycerin on Amazon (32 oz.) free shipping since I belong to Amazon Prime. The label says 100 % pure glycerin, USP grade Kosher.  So I made a new large plate today. 11 inches by 17 inches.  And, I have leftover glycerin. I calculated that this new plate cost me about $14 to make.  So tomorrow, I'll mix up some paint and get printing for a new quilt. I'll be using a new palette of colors on this one. Fun.