Do You Need An Idea For An Art Party?

     Do you sometimes run out of ideas for group activities? I wanted to have an art party at my house and this idea popped into my head. 

Everyone will started with an identical piece of fabric  10 x 10 with the same line or a mark on it. (That I provided.) 

cotton with felt underneath and line drawn with a marker

I put a box in the center of the table with threads and other objects in it. The other guests brought things to contribute to the box.

These are the directions I sent out ahead of time:

1.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric.

2.) They pass their fabric to the person on their right.

3.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric. Or by adding something of their own accord that they brought.

4.) They pass their fabric to the person on their right.

5.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric. Or by adding something of their own accord.

On it goes until we declare it finished. Each takes one home.

Sometime in there, we'll break for lunch.

What to bring:

Items to put into the box that would be good to add to the fabrics to make for fun compositions.

Items to not add to the box that you might want to use for yourself on the fabrics.

Scissors, sewing needles.

Things I had in the box: buttons, found objects, fabric scraps, Inktense pencils, markers. Off to the side I had a container of water for the Inktense pencils, a paintbrush, and a huge container of embroidery floss.

There were 6 of us and we spent about 10 minutes on each step. Sometimes I forgot to look at the clock and we spent longer. By the time the cloths came back around to the original person, we were hungry so we called it finished. It was interesting that some people rotated them as as they went around. At the end we put them in a bag and randomly chose one from the bag to take home. Then we enjoyed a nice lunch. Here are the results.

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

Sample 5

Sample 6

     Now I have no idea which side is up on any of them except for Sample 2 with the bird and cat. I think all of them are pretty impressive especially since we worked quickly. One of the members already took hers home and did more work on it and is sewing a fabric edge around the four sides and is planning to hang it. We liked it so much that we may propose to do it with our art group ArtsEtc., also.
     I even dressed up my Xian warrior for the event.

in the entrance hallway

     So if you need another group activity, this is one that can be done in a little over an hour if everything is set up ahead of time. It worked well for a group of six.  I think it could work for up to nine people. If you have more than that, you might want to split up into smaller groups. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find more art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Like A Challenge?

     Do you ever make art as a result of a challenge? One of the things my art group, ArtsEtc, does periodically is set a challenge for ourselves. At our January meeting, we went on a field trip to a local park and we walked and took photos. Our challenge was to make an art piece 8 inches by 8 inches as a result of our inspiration from our visit and our photos. It's due at our March meeting. The park is a really cool place. Not only does it have amazing plants, but also has ruins from a sugar mill, dinosaur sculptures about 10 feet tall, a few cement ponds, some buildings here and there, and lots of pathways. Here are some of the photos I took.

lots of Spanish moss

from the old sugar mill

from the old sugar mill

I like circles and use them a lot in my art so I wanted to incorporate the shape of the bowls somehow and definitely wanted to use green and capture the texture of the Spanish moss. There were also several rusted remains there, too. As I wandered the pathways and took and took my many photos, I immersed myself in the feeling of the place.
     At home, I tried several arrangements of fabrics and in the end I used two of my monoprinted fabrics, a commercial fabric, a sheer that a friend hand dyed, a cotton that I had rusted, a piece of a dryer sheet that I had painted, and some cheesecloth that I had dyed. I even used a car part (I think) that I found in a parking lot a long time ago. The circles I embroidered represent the many pathways and also represent a stack of rocks (which, to me, represents reaching a goal). I embroidered stitches around the rust marks of the washers in the lower left and that also represents pathways. The archway is an open passage to somewhere. The piece is called "Passages".

Passages

     This kind of challenge is a good one for me in that it makes me put together images in a meaningful way. It's a small piece so it doesn't take a lot of time. And perhaps it could lead to a larger, even more meaningful piece in the future. We will probably take another local field trip later this year that will lead to another challenge if the group likes how this one turned out for our members. 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.

Using Found Objects

My art group set a challenge a while ago. We would collect found objects for one year. Then we would bring them in to show everyone what we found. After that we had three months to make an art quilt using many of the objects. Since I was a teacher at a high school, I had no problem getting interesting things left on the sidewalks. If anything looked valuable, I turned it in to the lost and found. Other things, I told the office about but no one ever claimed them. Here is the quilt that resulted from this challenge.

The Cast-Offs
I put a bleach product onto some of them and pressed them into the fabric to discharge it and get some of the patterns.  To quote part of its description on my website: " I wonder what data is on that CD? I wonder what love story is attached to that heart? I wonder what's up with those castles? It's an enigma as the plastic tag says."
Here are some more objects found on campus and around town waiting for their spotlight.