What Do You Do When You Need To Sooth Your Soul?

     Do you have an art activity that helps sooth your soul? I've found two things that give me some relief when things are bothering me. One is to repair torn or old cloth items and put them back into good use. The other is to sit down, listen to natural sounds of birds and wind rustling leaves or turn on music while I hand sew free-style embroidery stitches. I learned this peaceful type of meditation when I took an online class with Jude Hill. Until then I only did machine sewing. Now I love doing both. I find that each has its place in my artwork.
     Awhile back I posted here about how one of my favorite shirts got ruined by bleach.

My "boyfriend" shirt

In that post, I showed how I put some patches of cotton fabrics on it and started to boro stitch to give it character. I've been so busy working on my dyeing projects, that I haven't had time to work on the shirt much. But this week, I needed some calm time and I sat down with it and stitched away and it's finished.

Better than Ever

     Now I like it better than before. It actually belonged to my husband and I borrowed it to wear it.

detail of the stitches

I stitched a floral motif in the upper right because that was on the fabric and it was fun. I chose not to cover all the bleach  with fabric because when I auditioned fabric in those places, it looked too much like a bib. So now, I have to wait until at least late October to wear it. The temperatures here are in the high 90's (Fahrenheit) and will be until then. I doubt my husband will want to wear the shirt anymore with its new style. 

     There are things we can all do to get involved in fixing ills of our ailing society and we should, but  we also need to take care of our own mental well being while all this craziness is going on. When I can fix one small thing in an artful way, it is soothing and satisfying. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Make Your Own Christmas or Holiday Cards?

     Should I make my Christmas cards this year or should I just buy a set and send them out? That's the question I pose each year. If I make them, I like to do it in the summer when I'm less busy and then they are ready to go. But I forgot to do it this summer. And I'm not one of those artists that can just slap a collage together. I take a long time to make design decisions. I'm getting quicker about it than I used to be. This week, I decided that I would give myself two days to put together a design and finish a small art quilt for a card cover. If I didn't accomplish that, then I would purchase cards.
     I began by choosing a previously monoprinted fabric for a background. I thought I wanted it to be zen-like. So I chose another previously monoprinted fabric in a complimentary color and cut out a sun shape and hand embroidered it onto the background which I had placed onto batting.

in progress

     Then I got the idea to put a bird and a saying on it. For inspiration, I browsed through my book Inspired to Quilt by Melanie Testa, which has helped me often. And I reviewed my notes from a class called Spirit Cloth 101 which I took from Jude Hill. That class not only showed me many marvelous techniques in hand stitching, but it also passed on the art of story telling in cloth. And the great news is that the class is now open to all for free. Here is a link to it.
     So I finished it up by thread stitching a bird with my sewing machine onto commercial fabric, cutting it out close to the stitching, and hand sewing it onto the background. Then I embroidered branches using two colors of embroidery floss (3 strands) in a wrapped back stitch. I printed out text onto white cotton muslin, cut them out and hand stitched them on. Next, I cut out a piece of commercial fabric an hand sewed it on with embroidery floss. To finish it up, I added a piece of fabric on the back, and then I used two colors of embroidery floss and whip stitched around the edges (6 strands of the dark teal and 3 strands of the rust).

Joy and Peace

     I plan to scan the image in the computer and add a frame. I'll use that for the cover of the card. I'll put some text for inside the card and take it to a printing company and have them print the cards for me. That's the plan, anyway. We'll see how it looks as a printed card. Of course, the watermark won't be on it.  If it doesn't look good, then this year will be about store-bought cards. At least I tried and I ended up with a small art quilt. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

     

Doesn't It Feel Good To Wind Up Loose Ends?

     I've been in the procrastination mode with finishing up art pieces I've started. I decided to get them finished so that I can feel free to begin with new ones that I have brewing in my head and on the sketch pad. One of them that is sort of an art piece, although not really mine, is a marionette that I bought in Burma in 1984.
     The country is now called Myanmar. Back then, I was backpacking there and bought this puppet for me as well as another one for my brother. I was also carrying two large bronze sculptures from Nepal in my backpack waiting for a safe place to ship them home. I was hesitant to add two more large, heavy items to my pack to carry but they were so beautiful I thought it would be good for my soul to add the weight and I was young and full of energy. I finally shipped them all from Bangkok and they all made it safely. Over the years, the moths got at my marionette and destroyed her clothes. I've been hesitant to redo them because I hate repair sewing work.
     I began by prying off a sequined bib that was nailed on over her clothes. Then slowly cutting off the first layer of silk jacket around her strings, followed by a wrapped pant-like thing around her waist and legs made of upholstery fabric. Underneath that was silk pants that were almost totally disintegrated from the moths. After cutting those off I discovered a layer of cotton underwear. All of those items had her puppet strings going through them that I had to cut around. Here's what I did to sew her new clothes:

1.) I tried to recreate patterns from paper from the clothes I had cut off.
 2.)Then I pinned fabrics to the patterns and cut them out.
3.)The easiest thing for me to do was to pin the pieces onto the puppet
4.)Hand sew the pieces on to her.
5.)Find where the strings were attached and cut holes in the sleeves, pant legs, etc. there .
6.) Untie the knots in the strings.
7.) Feed the strings through the holes, and retie the knots.
8.) I started with the cotton underwear and then sewed the layers on up; redoing the strings each layer.
9.) Dab matt medium around each hole in the fabric so that it wouldn't fray. (I did this as I went.)
10.) Nailed on the sequined bib.
All in all, quite a job. I'm glad it's done. And I used mostly fabric I had on hand. I had to buy the fabric for the jacket and the pants. But I used silk for the wrap, her belt, and her hair ties,  that I had picked up in Cambodia a few years ago. And I used cotton for her underwear that I had as remnants.

 By the way, she has human hair. As I worked on her, I wondered about the person or persons who created her all those years ago and whose hair she has. Her country has experienced great turmoil and I hope all the people involved have managed to have decent lives. When I visited, I was treated so wonderfully by everyone I encountered. It is a beautiful country and has several marvelous cultures.

My Burmese Marionette

     I also finished hand quilting the small quilt The Puppeteer. I used a single strand of embroidery floss in various colors for each area of the quilt. I used a running stitch that shows in the background areas. In the foreground areas, I used a very tiny stitch on the front, only grabbing a few threads and a regular sized stitch on the back to keep the "grab" even so that the quilt will lay flat. Jude Hill calls this a Wizard Stitch. I like that name.

The Puppeteer

So I have one more unfinished art project I hope to finish this coming week. Then on to the new ones. It feels good. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Have Favorite Fabrics You Are Hesitant To Use?

     Do you have a stash of special fabrics that are too precious to use for anything? When I went to Festival for my first and only time in 2012, I bought a few baggies of hand-dyed silks. Some were from saris and some were not. Some were very small pieces maybe 5 inches by 5 inches and others were almost fat quarter sized. Unlike my other fabrics, I held onto these for awhile and just took them out and admired them; afraid to use them up. Then, a call for entry came, and I got very, very inspired (like never before), and made a quilt using many of them. I had never used silk before and they were perfect for this quilt. Perhaps because it was very much different than all my other works and I wasn't adept at this style, the quilt didn't get chosen and my friends had somewhat subdued responses to it. But I had never had an experience of working like I did on this one.  I was obsessed with inspirations and revelations while I was working on it and got up in the middle of the night to work on it when I awoke with ideas. I literally worked on it hours and hours on end for three weeks. It was an amazing process for me because the work came from deep inside my psyche and I hope to have another like it someday.
     As for the quilt, it hangs in my studio. It is for sale on my website, but I'm not sure if I'll be happy or sad if it actually sells since it was such an emotional process to make it. I'm in the process of renaming it. I've never been happy with the name it presently has of Circle of Emotions

Circle of Emotions

     Also, it doesn't at all fit in with my other art so I don't know where in my head it came from. But there it is. Anyway, the reason I'm showing it again is because of all the precious hand-dyed silks I used on it.
     This week, I decided to make a prayer flag for my studio with my word of the year EXPLORE on it. And since it will hang on the door to my studio where I will see it every time I walk in, I decided to use very special fabrics. So I took out what's left of those silks and I used them to design a flag.
    Here's my design.

In-process

-The elements are pinned on the background silk. All are silk, too.

 -The circle thing is stamped on sheer silk and cut out. (It's a symbol I've developed.) 

-The wood stick is one I picked up on a beach when I was observing penguins in Argentina in November in 2014. 

-The key is from a photo I took of an actual key and then manipulated in ArtStudio on my iPad and then used the Waterlogue App on it and then printed it onto cotton muslin.

- The word Explore is printed on fabric but will be embroidered directly onto the silk.

 And of course, as it proceeds, I'll probably make changes as I go. I think the whole thing will be hand stitched. (A carry over from my online class with Jude Hill .) 

     Speaking of classes... I don't take many. I'm pretty picky about which ones I sign up for. I just signed up for one with a fabric artist I've long admired. Her name is Pat Pauly and she's teaching a wonderful class called Slash and Burn: Techniques for Improvisational Design in New Smyrna, Florida March 18 - March 21.  There is still room in the class but the deadline to sign up is Feb. 1. The accommodations are marvelous and beautiful in a natural setting. Here is the link to read about it and register if you are interested Focus on Fiber Florida Style

     So I do still hold on to my precious stash of fabrics and only use them for special things when my heart calls out. But when it does, out comes the scissors and I don't hesitate to cut them up and it feels so good to see them being used. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.
    

What Do You Get Out Of On-LIne Classes?

     Have you ever taken an on-line class that you have found very freeing and refreshing? Well, I've just finished a piece from one that has done just that for me. Before this class, I've done most of my work on the sewing machine. This class and this piece was done totally by hand. It was pieced by hand, basted by hand, appliquéd by hand, embroidered by hand, and quilted by hand. I never thought I would do such a thing, but I was so inspired by the artist's blog and art, Jude Hill at SpiritCloth that I signed up for her class Spirit Cloth 101. I started it in February by reading through all the text of the class and pondering about what my theme would be for quite some weeks while I worked on other projects.
     If you haven't followed my blog before, you can go back and see how I progressed on this piece here  here, here, and here.
     And here it is finished. The story is that the rocks fell from the moon into the river. There are eight rocks shown on the quilt. The river has eight eyes in it and that symbolizes the eight rocks peaking out of the river as they dance about in it.

Moon Dance

The background fabric is indigo I dyed several years ago with my art group. Most of the rocks I gelatin monoprinted and then hand painted the veins, two of the rocks are from commercial cottons. the "tree" is a piece of commercial silk, the multi-colored strip across the bottom is commercial cotton, and the borders are commercial from Marcia Derse.  I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.
     I don't take many classes or workshops, but I'm glad I took this one. I learned some new techniques, but most of all, I learned about storytelling. And to let go more in my work. Thanks for visiting.

Moon Rocks Falling

     I'm continuing with the hand sewing project from the on-line class with Jude Hill on the Spirit Cloth website. I've sewn a bit of prose using a split stem stitch and added roots to the tree symbol. After I took this photo, I started to embroider a river. The river is going to wind around the quilt from rock to rock. So here's an update.

Falling rocks in progress

In between planning the next steps for this project, I've made two more wheelchair covers. I'll post those photos on a future post. And I'm working on an iPad cover. I may never post a photo of that. I'm not too talented with functional items.

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.

Moon Rocks

     I'm so loving the hand-stitching in my Spirit Cloth on line class. Since my last post, I added rocks that I monoprinted and then later added veins with paint. (Two of the rocks are from commercial fabrics.)  I sewed them on by needle-turned appliqué, which was new to me. Then, I needle-appliquéd a moon from fabric that I had printed on my printer. To represent a tree and get some complimentary color in there, I used a method of raw-edge appliqué from Jude Hill on some commercial silk fabric and on a fussy-cut leaf fabric.
     I left one of the blocks empty so that I could embroider some prose into it. Actually, I started doing that tonight. My husband left me alone for the evening so I cranked up my iTunes and set my playlist for female vocalists and I have several thousand songs there. It played Lena Horne, Sheryl Crow, Reba McEntire, Ane Brun, Maria, Taylor, Sarah McLachlan, Ella Fitzgerald, and so many others. I love how you can shuffle the songs on iTunes and get surprised by what comes up. Do you have favorite music you like to listen to while you sew? Here's a photo of the piece before the text got added. The white cloth at the bottom is where I'll be adding more fabric later.

Still in-process

So, I still have much embroidery to add, more fabric to add at the bottom, and things that I haven't yet thought of yet. It's turning into a story about rocks that have fallen from the moon and end up in a river.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please leave comments on their blogs to let them know you stopped by.

Indigo Impression

     Now that I'm working slow for a bit, I'm taking an on-line class from Jude Hill at her site, Spirit Cloth. The class I'm taking is Spirit Cloth 101. It's all hand stitching and basically about making a sampler and I'm really enjoying it. I spent several days just reading through the posts on the class and watching the videos. Then I spent a week just thinking about what my theme would be for my sampler. And then it came to me. No surprise if you're a reader of my blog... Rocks. And Blue.
     I went through my bin of blue fabrics and found two pieces of indigo cotton that I had dyed with my ArtsEtc group many years ago and had only used a small portion of. I treasured this fabric and this project would be perfect for it. I found some commercial fabrics that went well with it and some oranges that would be good accents. Here are some fabrics that may get used.

Indigo with possible accent fabrics

     Then I monoprinted some fabrics in various grays in rock textures using a procedure I developed
to mimic having a moldy gelatin plate using a permanent gelatin plate. You can visit this older post to see the procedure here.
     Here's a photo of the fabrics I monoprinted.

Monoprints sitting on Marcia Derse fabric with
a previously painted rock on top

     Finally, I got busy and actually hand-pieced a nine patch. As I was sewing, I was thinking that I could machine stitch it so much faster. But then I would be missing out on the idea of spirit cloth so I got into the rhythm of the stitch and it went well. The next step was to do an invisible baste onto a thin cloth instead of batting to stabilize it and get it ready for the appliqué step to come.

Nine-patch basted onto its stabilizing cloth

     I have several ideas floating in my head of how to place the rocks, what accents to add, what to embroider, etc. But these things change one by one as the pieces get added and I see how one thing affects another. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.