Ghost Tree, in progress

"Ghost Tree" in progress. I started this quilt by playing in Photoshop. I blended a photo of a bare branched oak tree with a cloudy sky. In blending mode I used several options to change the effects and the colors. I also used a negative, which gave me white branches on a darker background. I printed several photos onto treated fabric with my computer printer, and spent a lot of time just admiring them, before I figured out what I wanted to do with them. I decided to use them for a background, as they are sort of foggy, blurry, ghost images, very ethereal looking. I pieced them traditionally with a sashing, but not in a symmetrical pattern. This added a grid, to contrast with the flowing lines of the branches. I really admire the trees in the book, "Nature's Studio" by Joan Colvin, because of their organic flowing textures on the bark and branches. So I decided to use a large tree over the tree photos in the background to keep the theme going. I used light fabrics to give it a ghost like appearance. There is not a lot of contrast, but I hope that quilting with white or light threads will help define the tree against the background, and add more highlights and a glow to the tree. I was going to add an eagle to the top left corner, to balance the tree. But my niece loves owls, due I think to the "Harry Potter" movies, so I found a Dover book of "Birds of Prey" with very nice line drawings of eagles, falcons, owls, etc... The eagle picture was perching, but the flying owl pic was just right. I especially wanted the wing tips to extend into the border, and be individual feathers, quilting it will be a challenge. I have started to quilt this with rayon thread, and it lightens it up and gives it a sheen. I can't figure out how to quilt the background, I think it will be just to sit down and let my fingers decide intuitively what it needs.

The New Year, 2012, part II

My usual New Year's resolution is to finish two old projects for every new one I start, and to finish the new ones that I do start too. This has done me well in years past. It has encouraged me to complete projects that have been around for a long time, sometimes YEARS, and others more recent. It also slows me down on starting something new, with out really thinking of where my time is best spent. I tend to jump into new projects with increasing frequency, something will catch my attention and I just HAVE to try it right NOW!! This is ok if it is just play time with new materials or techniques, but then I always want to make a project of my new ideas or samples. This creative impulse is FUN, but I have to show some restraint, or the project I put so much time and attention in to, will just sit in a bag and clog up my sewing room. Now that it is clean, I want to avoid that. My Christmas present to myself was to get my blog published into a book. The advertisement kept popping up on my blog, and I thought since it was the end of the year, it was a good time to do it. I have been blogging for 2 1/2 years, about my quilting, inspirations, creativity, photography and photoshop. I have really enjoyed the writing and sharing my thought and photos with everyone. I don't have many followers, but it doesn't matter to me, it is about expressing myself and sharing my quilting experiences. The book came quickly and I just love it. They did a beautiful job of it, the paper is beautiful and shows off the photos very well. They added a table of contents, and I got to choose the front and back cover photos and add a dedication. I am just thrilled, and very proud of it, everyone who has seen it, loves it, I just wish my Mom was here to share it with her. It has a few typos, and the photo captions, didn't always stay with the photo, but those are my mistakes, I wasn't planning on publishing when I was just blogging. So I highly recommend it to other people who blog, it is a permanent record of your thoughts and writing.

The New Year, 2012

2011 was a challenge to get through, I'm glad it is done! I am looking forward to the new year, lots of exciting art projects and creative people. My first challenge was to clean my sewing room. We had new windows put in the house so I had to clean and remove everything from one wall and half the next, so the window guys could get in. I spent 3 weeks before hand, rearranging, cleaning, going through STUFF! Sorting, filing and getting rid of stuff. Putting something in a shoe box and labeling it, isn't good enough if you have no place for the shoe box. The furniture was moved, including my sewing table, argh, filth behind it all. Cleaning, new windows and painting the available wall and window frames took up the next two weeks. Next on the list was to make curtains for a big double window and the side window. I had a bolt of fabric with big pastel roses and lilacs on it from a garage sale. There were 9 yards on it, so after pre-washing it, I had enough for 4 panels. I made 3 panels for the double window and one for the side. It looks so clean and new and light and bright. I can see out the window at the birds in the bird bath, I can't wait for the Stellar Magnolia to bloom right out side my window, with daffodils and crocus below it. I also have a view of the big lilac bush, and some iris and tulips. Spring can come anytime! Another two weeks of cleaning continued to make the place usable. Getting rid of more stuff, sorting and putting stuff where it belongs. I got the whole floor around my big desk cleaned up, lots of bags of miscellaneous stuff, the half finished projects on the ironing board, and most important my work space table. I can now do some "ART" with some elbow room! :) This was NOT a New Year's resolution, but it became one. The feeling of cleanliness and order is wonderful, I can now mess it up again, clutter, paints, buttons and scraps, rubber stamps and thread, the list is endless. Maybe, I can then put it all away where it belongs?

Almost Christmas

I have been busy! It seems time keeps flying by, if you blink it will be 4th of July. Our weekend retreat in Bandon, Oregon was fabulous, I hosted 5 art quilters for 2 days and nites. We all worked on our own projects, had potluck for dinner, and went out for lunch. We took a field trip to "Art 101" and "Washed Away" South of town. Everyone was very impressed by the walk-in Sea Cave of textile art, and by the recycled art projects Washed Away makes with found objects from the beach. Also a visit to the Wool shop in Langlois, a few miles further South, gave us a collection of beautiful fibers for the needle felters. I wanted to just play, so I worked on a black background, and free hand cut my beautiful hand dyed fabrics. I made 3 large flowers in pinks/purples, and gold/yellows, with bright lime green leaves. I added spirals and small colored circles in the background to fill in, in a dropping sweep across the black. This is going to be awesome to quilt, and I keep thinking it NEEDS beads too!

Dear Jane on the Kitchen Floor

the top pic is A-1 on the bottom left corner, 1-8, the bottom pic is the right hand half of the blocks.
Below... all my finished "Dear Jane" blocks laid out on the kitchen floor.
At the top left is A-1, with the rows going across 1-13. Some blocks are missing, because they need applique, or they were just too complicated, and I will try them later, when I can really concentrate on each individual block.

My friend Sue came to visit from California, she has been working on the "Dear Jane" blocks too, so we had a chat and show and tell. We went thru my vintage fabric stash and I shared some with her. Her Jane quilt uses older reproductions from the civil war era, and I had some "Smithsonian" repro fabric that I gave her, and some of my vintage stuff for a tumbler pattern she is making with vintage fabrics. Since I had my vintage stuff out, I decided to go ahead and make some more blocks. I drafted about a half dozen more patterns, and started to select fabrics and cut them out. Quiet a few are applique, and needed some piecing first, to have a base for the applique. They ended up in a stack to be a "take along" project, to be finished whenever. I pieced about 8 more blocks, some easy, some not so much. Considering their 4 1/2" size, they are a lot more complicated and detailed then I thought they'd be. But I did not skip any of the tricky ones, I preserved and did them all! I am over half way done!! yeah!! But then I realized I still had 70 more blocks to do! Yikes! All the work I have done and I still have lots more pages in the book. I do love going through my vintage fabric, selecting just the right pieces, and hoping I have enough of a scrap to do the block with. I have come up short several times and had to piece the fabric together, to get a piece big enough to cut out. But this is ok, 'cause they did that back in the "olden days" too. I can see in the photographs where Jane had to piece a scrap together, to make the pattern piece. I also made a couple of blocks with more than one print and one solid. Two matching, close enough prints, make a good block, but I try not to do this unless I have too, or a piece is too good to pass up, and I just don't have enough of it.

Fabric Dyeing Workshop 2011 part II

Dyed cotton yarn, "Sugar and Spice" made into 3 and 5 yard skeins, soaked in soda ash, and drizzled with dye concentrate. Also a large ball of cotton yarn, with the dye just poured on. I should have squeezed it some, to get the dye to penetrate into the ball.


My dye prints and painting drying on the line and on the bushes.


A large queen size sheet from Marnie, that we hung on the fence and splashed leftover dye onto it. We smeared it dripped it, sprayed and made hand prints, we sprayed it with water to make the dyes bleed too.

Some of the dyed fabric I made in a 3 layer "parfait" technique, the sets of 3, on the left, top and bottom, were all in separate dye pots together as a 3 layer batch.

Peggy and I got to have a second visit with Vera, she called and said she had a lot of dye concentrate left and would we like to come down. Several of our pieces needed to be redone or layered with additional dye printing, the colors had washed out, probably cause I did not pretreat with soda ash. Also they just needed "More" color, texture, etc.. they just looked unfinished. So we spent the day adding extra layers of color to pieces we had already worked on, the difference was astounding, a lot of depth and texture created a more unified piece, more interesting to look at, with good color contrast, sometimes we just added highlights or contrasting color to give it "Pop." I could really see the difference that adding more layers made in the pieces, it was worth the extra work! I think I really like the pieces that are more textural, the ones with large prints are difficult for me to work with. I don't know what to use them in or how to cut them up. They are fun to make, but now what to do? An all over pattern or texture is easier for me to envision in something, large abstracts are not my thing.

Fabric Dyeing Workshop 2011 part I

Our group "Fyber Cafe" spent two days dyeing fabric at Vera's, Fun! FUN! FUN! 8 of us gathered, set up tables, mixed dye concentrate and soda ash water. We "did our own thing" mostly dye painting with thickened dyes. Vera had taken a class with national teacher Ann Johnston in Lake Oswego, Oregon, at her home studio. It was a 5 day class, in painting, printing, resists, transparency of dyes, and color interaction. She tried to help us understand some of the principles, but I think we just had to play with the dyes ourselves. Her process involved drying between paint layers and adding additional layers of color, we were too impatient for that. We had to/wanted to, paint several colors, wet on wet, her process was rather controlled and slower on dry fabric. Several of us did manage to create layers of color and texture, we used foam stamps, and different plastic mesh, stencils, and kitchen tools to print patterns.