Want To Go Way Back With Me?

     I was glancing up on my kitchen wall looking up at an art quilt I created over 10 years ago. At the time was teaching chemistry and had just started making art quilts for fun and didn't even come close to consider calling myself an artist. I was invited to join an art group and bring something for show and tell. I had never shown anyone anything I had created before let alone a group of artists. I was terrified. I almost didn't go to the meeting. But the women I met were very encouraging and friendly so I went. This is what I took to show.

Kitchen Concoction

     To create this, I took a photo of this bowl.

My wooden salad bowl

And a photo of this bottle.

bottle of flavored vinegar

Then I manipulated them in Photoshop Elements until I got layers of colors and I printed out the photos. I chose fabrics with those colors and cut out the shapes and fused them onto the base fabrics and sewed it all together and then quilted it. The difficult part for me was to machine embroider the words for the sauces. I actually ripped them out twice before I was happy with them. The "vapors" are painted on with Shiva paintstiks.

     Looking back at this beginning quilt, there are things I would do differently. It definitely would benefit from having light values in it. I didn't know about varying values back then. I would balance out the dark green more. It's all on the left side. I would also change the shape of the vapor trails and change where the fluid coming out of the bottle intersects with one of the vapor trails. But, overall, I still like this early quilt and that's why it still hangs in my kitchen. And I still cook and/or use the sauces that are named on it. 

     So that day way back when I stood up and showed my quilt the group was very nice and welcoming I decided to join and I am still a member of ArtsEtc today. It has been such a great influence on my artistic life and now I do call myself an artist. 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 they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

So What Do You Do With Your Mixed-Media Collages?

     There has been a lot of talk of making mixed-media collages and journal pages. So I decided to try my hand at making a couple of small collages. But since I'm a fiber artist, I didn't know what to do with the collages once I was done with them. They were made from papers and mounted onto cardboard.
     First, let me tell you how I made them. I was inspired to make something fairly quick and play with paint, paper, my gelli plate, and various tools, and just have fun in an afternoon.
Here are the ingredients:
scrap plain paper, an envelope, some gift wrapping paper, an old movie ticket, some pieces of a watercolor painting I made that didn't work out,  some postage stamps I had saved, some maps from a pocket calendar,  and magazines.

Here's the process:
1.)  I spread acrylic paints on my gelli plate and monoprinted a bunch of small papers and even an envelope.

monoprinted papers and envelope

2.)  I cut the monoprinted papers into shapes that I found in the magazines. Such as a bird shape and people shapes. I cut out words from the magazines.

3.) I cut out pieces from the gift wrap, from the watercolor painting, etc.

4.) I used matt medium to glue large rectangles of the monoprinted papers and gift wrap onto a cardboard background to create a background. This was a mistake, it turned out, because the cardboard warped when it dried. I should have also applied the matt medium to the back of the cardboard. I applied gesso to the back and then matt medium when I was finished with the whole thing and that did the trick to unwarp it.

5.)  Then, for me, the quick part was over. I couldn't decide where to put the elements. I'm a slow designer. It took several days to decide. But here are the finished collages. I glued all the pieces down with matt medium underneath and then another coat on top of the whole thing.

Big Horizons on cardboard

Big Horizons represents my husband and I as travelers, because we do travel a lot. The movie ticket is from The Adventures of TinTin which we saw in 2011. We discovered TinTin together in a used book store in Nepal in 1984 so it is very special to us. We had never heard of it before that. My husband is from Argentina, hence that part of the map.

Outside the Lines on cardboard

Outside the Lines came about because of the background of the sky. I drew in the dark lines with a gel pen after it was finished.
 
     So the question was still there. What to do with them? They are paper on cardboard. My latest meeting with my art group, ArtsEtc., was about image transfer so that idea was in my head. I decided to scan these images into my computer and print them onto cotton muslin. I knew from experience, that I needed to play with the images in Photoshop Elements before I printed them. What needed to be done, was to enhance the saturation quite a bit because the colors always print a lot more faded than they look. Also, I needed to increase the contrast on the words on the ticket a lot more so that they would show up on the fabric.
     I printed them, made quilt sandwiches, did some free-motion quilting with black thread, made a pillow-case binding, machine-embroidered around the edge. I ended up having to write on the ticket with pencil to make it darker and then paint on matt medium to make it permanent. Here they are.

Big Horizons finished

Outside the Lines finished

I'll sew on a pop top thing from a can to each back to hang them and hang them in my studio.
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.

Taking Photos Of Quilts Part 2

Last week, I told you how I solved the problem of getting all of my quilt photos in focus. Now, I’ll tell you how I solved the problem of getting my camera to read the correct colors of my quilts. For some of my quilts, the camera didn’t seem to have any problem at all. The colors in the photo matched perfectly the colors of the quilt. But, for some reason, the camera has a problem reading teals and other blues.

     To counteract that, I always used to set the camera into its “program” mode instead of auto mode. And then I set the white balance by aiming the lens at a white surface like a white piece of paper or the white design wall and setting the white balance. Then I took the photo. The photo came out ok, but not great. The other thing I did to counteract the problem was to try to adjust the color after I took the photo using Photoshop Elements. Sometimes, I could get the photo to get very close to the actual colors of the quilt. But every now and then, I just could not get it right. It was very frustrating. Taking the photo outside when the sun was out, but not in the direct sunlight worked the best, but that meant that I had to wait for a good weather day and I had to have a spot with no shadows that would fall on the quilt. 

     Then I found this link Shoot That Quilt! from Holly Knott (By the way, she also designs websites) and it made a world of a difference!  The key is to use the lights that she recommends.  The lights are inexpensive. They are so much like daylight and so economical that I installed one in a lamp on my craft table and one in an overhead light hanging from a ceiling fan in my studio. The only problem I have with the set up in the description from the link, is that the clamps on the reflectors that I bought had a tendency to slip off of the 2x4’s and one fell onto the floor and broke one of the lights. So to solve that, I tied a strip of fabric to the reflector and put a push-pin for extra security. Here is a photo that shows how I secure the light to the 2x4.

Secured with fabric and push-pin into 2x4

So now I can take photos no matter what the weather is outside. I set up the lights (side by side) just as Holly describes in her article in the link. When they aren't being used, I keep the lights (screwed into the reflectors attached to the fabric strips) stored in a drawer. And I keep the 2x4 stands against a wall in the studio.  It is very quick to set them up and get the camera on the tripod. I can get it all ready to shoot in about 15 minutes.

     Here is a photo of an art quilt I made called “Water Cycles” that I had a great deal of trouble getting accurate colors on the photo until I used these lights. It has a lot of teal and other blues in it. (I don't know why that particular hue is so difficult to photograph on my quilts.) When I used the lights Holly Knott recommended, the photo was perfect without any adjustments.

Water Cycles Art Quilt

     The other thing I discovered about lighting is that for quilts that have a sheen, foil, or have a glossy fabric, it helps to move the lights as far back as possible to reduce glare.
     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can see other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you visited.

The Making of Gardens and Galaxies

Since I'm unable to sew after having surgery on my shoulder (it went very well... the physical therapy starts later today), I thought that I would post about a quilt I made several years ago. It began at a workshop with my art group, ArtsEtc. on how to paint with dyes on silk. We were told to bring a drawing or a photo and that we would be working with brightly saturated colors. When I visited a plant market in Ecuador, I took this photo of a succulent. I liked the shape of the leaves and thought that maybe I could use it someday.

A succulent

To get it ready for the workshop, I manipulated it in Photoshop Elements 10 and added bright colors.

Colored-in photo

I printed that photo out on paper and took it to the workshop. The instructions were to sketch the main outlines on the white silk with pencil. Then we painted the pencil lines with gutta resist. Once the gutta was dry, I painted in the shapes with dyes that were close to the colors in the photo above. I ended up with a very pleasing silk painting that looked like a batik. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of it.

     The question for me, was what to do with it? I could turn it into a whole-cloth art quilt (but I had never quilted on silk before and I was afraid of ruining it). I could make it into a pillow cushion (but I didn't have a room in our house in which it would coordinate).

     Later that year, I traveled to Vietnam and bought a bunch of silk remnants literally off the floor of tailor shops and when I got home and was putting all silk fabrics together in a bin (including the one I painted) inspiration struck.

     I cut the piece into squares and paired it with some squares of silk from Vietnam, did some embellishing with sashing, netting, sheers, and beads. And so Gardens and Galaxies was born.

Gardens and Galaxies

Answer to the Thermofax Pattern Mystery

Here's the answer to what the pattern was in this photo from my last post:

Mystery thermofax print pattern

2

Sea fan

I found this sea fan on a beach after a bad storm. I took a close-up photo of part of it and played around with it in Photoshop Elements and then sent it off to have it made into a thermofax screen. I think I can get a lot of use out of this pattern as a background element in my art quilts. I actually was inspired to get this pattern by the texture on a cantaloupe. I painted a cantaloupe with black paint and rolled it around on fabric with the intention of scanning it in and using that to get a thermofax screen, but it didn't work out well enough. And the paint seeped into the fruit and I had to throw away the cantaloupe, too.

By the way, I just updated my Etsy shopFiberArtsByRegina  with new photos. My regular art quilts are for sale on my website, reginabdunn.com but I have smaller items I made for sale in my Etsy shop. I'm just now starting to promote it.

Two Art Quilts at Once?

     Even though I'm still working on my rock, monk, sun, quilt, SAQA has an exhibit coming up with a deadline in February that I want to enter. I thought I should get things together for this new quilt while I still work on the monk quilt, too.
     I have an idea brewing that involves a background using a pattern I developed a while ago from a can of black beans. Yes, black beans. I had a thermofax screen made from the pattern and several other screens made from other patterns I played around with in Photoshop Elements. (There are several good places where you can order custom made screens: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SmudgedTextilesShop   and http://www.lyrickinard.com/thermofax.html  I had never done any printing with the screens before so I was hesitant to do it. But after watching some YouTube videos Thermofax printing Part 1   and  Thermofax printing Part 2   and Creating Repeat Prints   and How to Wash a Thermofax Screen   and reading some articles in Quilting Arts Magazines, I determined this was the best way to get the results I wanted.
     In the videos listed above, Lynn Krawczyk shows to put the paint on the screen and use a sponge brush (cut off) and then just rub the brush around on the screen to spread the paint. I liked that idea and it worked well for all my screens except for one of them. Here are the patterns that the method gave good results. I used a combination of colors of regular acrylic paints and a little Jacquard Lumiere Paint, also.

Three prints on a torn piece of a t-shirt

Anyone guess what this is a pattern of?

I'll post the answer tomorrow.

I tried doing repeats. Could start a trend of "Put A Monk On It!"

But, for the black beans, the pattern was too detailed and the sponge brush method lost all the details. I experimented with different paint thicknesses, but to no avail. So then what I did was go to the old fashioned method of printing for this particular screen. I spooned the paint along the top of the duct tape and used a credit card to spread the paint down the screen. And it gave a perfect print with all the details.

Black beans and rice anyone?

So now that I know I can print it. I'm going to order the paint I need and plan out my new quilt and get back to work on my monk, rock, and sun quilt.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can see other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you visited.