Paint Play Results

The painting of the cotton yarn from my paint play session on Friday did not work quite as I had anticipated. As you can see from the picture, the color is right for use on "Off the Grid" but the paint did not travel as much throughout the ball as I thought it would. I wanted longer lengths of really dark sections, and only bits of the very light. Perhaps the yarn wasn't wet enough before I applied the paint, or perhaps I should have spritzed it several times after applying the paint. I thought about re-wetting it and applying more, or perhaps trying another color on it, but the parts that are dark at this point are a little stiff - all the pigment settled in a concentrated area. I don't need to add to that. I planned to twist several strands together or twist it with another yarn anyway, so I think I'll just go with it the way it is.

The tints from the waste water, on the other hand, turned out quite well. When I dipped the first one, I forgot about pigment settling to the bottom of the cup, so I used the wadded up fabric to "stir" and it picked up a lot of pigment in a few areas. I was afraid I wouldn't like this, but it actually worked well on these two. The larger piece in a lovely orchid while the smaller piece runs more to lavender. Not sure how well that comes through on the computer screen, and not sure why the two would be markedly different having been dipped in the same solution. There are fine veins of darker color running throughout, and then a few intense areas - a true marble effect. I may use these as the base for my next experiment: rubbings.

Paint Play

It's Friday and I thought it high time to get the paints out. I do my painting and stamping on a table in the kitchen, which has played the role of catch-all for months. Earlier this week, I cleared it of mail, old ads, all kinds of things I forgot was lurking there. My goal for the day was to add paint to the texturized piece that was my New Year's Challenge piece and to try coloring some cotton yarn. If all goes well, the yarn may end up getting couched to "Off the Grid."

I started with the yarn. This is a cotton yarn that I bought tons of many years ago. It was for matching sweaters for me and my husband. I'd never worked with cotton before, and of course, it was not the type of yarn the directions were written for. Thus, I totally overestimated what I'd need. Recently I used up more of it knitting a prayer shawl, but still had lots left. I've read how to wind yarn on special apparatus to dye it, but I wanted to leave this end of the ball intact to see how the paint might migrate and change.

I did soak it in water and squeeze it mostly dry before applying Dye-Na-Flow paint. I was considering what brush to use when I remembered the eye droppers I'd bought (again, years ago). These are perfect for dribbling paint and poking between the strands in a fairly controlled manner. I considered dribbling a second color, but decided not to push my luck this first time out.

Now on to the texturized piece. Let me say upfront that its color is the dickens to get accurate on a computer screen. The shots taken with the camera are the closest. The individual scans of the quadrants are less so, even after manipulating them in Corel Paint Shop Pro. The muted nature of the added paints is lost. That being said, the color itself is pretty awful, thus my need to cover it up with more paint! Here's the end result.

I started in the upper left corner. The original paint on the cloth is Dye-Na-Flow, so I added more in Midnight Blue. I left the fabric dry and simply loaded a flat brush sparingly with the paint, lightly brushing across the section. The raised puckered portions picked up the paint and accentuated the texturizing nicely.

Next I moved across to the upper right corner. Here the stitching is running horizontally and I thought "landscape." I wanted to see how well stamping would work over the texture so picked a commercial leaf stamp and a simple willow leaf stamp I made from a Styrofoam meat tray. I switched to Versatex paints because they are thicker out of the jar and can easily be applied to the stamp with a brush.

The Bronze and Orchid showed up well, the Copper was too close to the background color and the gold barely showed up. These colors weren't doing anything to improve the base color; what I needed, I decided was a green, and the only green I had in this line of paints was definitely not right. I searched my other offerings and stumbled upon some Lumiere paints. The olive looked to be close enough, and I like what it added. This arrangement of leaves reminds me a bit of Wisteria and how it hangs.

What to do with the last two quadrants? I started with the lower left, dipping the pen in the first picture into the Midnight Blue Dye-na-flow and drawing a curving line down the wider of the columns formed by the stitching. Although the pen worked well to draw this kind of detailed line, the line itself didn't add much to the overall design. So I decided to wet the fabric in that section and apply more Dye-Na-Flow, this time in Periwinkle. I wanted to see if the color would migrate and pool, altering the base color, but it pretty much just stayed where I put it.

While I waited for something to happen in that quadrant, I moved to the last one in the lower right. This configuration of stitching was perhaps the most successful in creating the type of texture I anticipated, and the open areas between the stitching begged for something dramatic. I turned to my set of Celtic inspired stamps, and a Versacraft fabric ink pad. I loved the clear crisp images, even with the uneven surface. I tried to stop myself before I stamped too many images - I have a bad habit of not knowing when enough is enough.

I was disappointed that next door, that extra paint on the wet fabric just wasn't doing anything. I was so excited about my Celtic stamps that I wondered if I could use them over the paint while still wet. I have several very small stamps in that set, just the right size for those columns. I eyeballed the spacing and alternated between two designs. The triangular one's details printed very sharply, in spite of the scan not picking that up. This worked well for me, I decided, because of the space being divided up by the stitching. If I were just stamping on a plain piece of fabric, I don't think this kind of arrangement would occur to me. I'd end up doing something more like I did with the other Celtic stamps or the leaves. I'll have to remember that. This sections was still a bit blah though, so I lightly brushed a little gold Versatex paint over it with a flat brush, just to add a few sparkly highlights. If you look closely, you can just make out those original curving lines made with the pen. The actual blue color is not nearly this bright.

Looking back at the other Celtic stamping, the black ink looked odd, so I considered how I could tone and blend it in a bit. I went back to the midnight blue Dye-na-flow and experimented with applying it with a fan brush. One has to be very careful about overloading the brush, as you can see in the upper right portion, and it takes a very light touch.

I liked the speckling effect and the hints of arches. This, I felt was very successful, although this scan does not do it justice.

This has worked out to be an excellent sample piece. The leaf section calls out to be incorporated into a larger piece, but I may just leave this intact for future reference.

Before I quit for the day, I dipped a couple of small pieces of white muslin into the Dye-Na-Flow waste water to tint them. I didn't squeeze out a lot of the water, so they may take some time to dry.

Just when I thought Christmas was over...

...packages arrived from my lovely niece in New York. She'd been a busy shopper, as you can see, picking up a Quilting Arts Magazine, lovely stationary by Brookfield (printed the old way), and fabric galore from a quilt shop in Soho - Purl Patchwork (they carry knitting supplies too - some gorgeous yarns there). Her wish was to inspire me, and I think she succeeded!

Oh, and she did not forget the dog. I think the gourmet dog cookies and the chew toy were meant to be diversions to keep Jesse busy while I go put some of that inspiration to good use.

New Work

I don't want you to think I'm not working on anything (other than shoveling snow...) just because I haven't posted. I declared the holidays over and told myself it was high time to get back to work. I recognized my reluctance to do so was partly due to the logjam in my studio. Since New Year's I've been sorting and tossing and organizing everywhere but in the studio. Yesterday was the studio's turn. I had some pictures to print and documentation to take care of from the last few projects. I had a lot of stuff taking up space on my table again, waiting for me to do a little prep on something I don't intend to work on for a few months, but needed doing before putting it away. Once I did that, a bin disappeared followed by a box of odd yarns, and suddenly, half of my table reappeared. It's amazing to me how the condition of my workspace can so effect how I feel when I'm in there. I didn't really need that table space to proceed with the next quilt, but darned if my mood didn't improve with the cleared space.

The picture above shows a piece of fabric I folded and applied paint to some time last year. I don't remember many of the details, but I do know I expected more of the paint to show in the folds to create more of a grid effect. I pondered what I might do with it for quite a while. I was particularly bothered by the two corners that picked up so much color, but on opposite sides of the fabric. I kept flipping down one corner to compare, and that's when I hit upon the idea of leaving that flap down and creating a piece call "Off the Grid." I finally solved the technical problem of that flap yesterday, having cut a triangle to fill the corner, its raw edge tucked under the fabric fold. I fused this to Decor Bond to keep it nice and straight when I quilt undulating lines across its diagonal as in some of the blocks in the pink quilt.

I'm not moving quickly on this because there are so many decisions. The yarn is there because I've decided to couch some kind of yarn around the outside and also along the flap edge. But I'm still wondering if I want to quilt those undulating lines or just stitch them before adding batting. There are a few spots where I intend to quilt along the straight lines. Maybe they should be the stitched ones, not quilted. I'm also considering that the couched yarn edge finish may not be enough and it may need to be "mounted" to a background that would act like a border or mat. There's a certain sequence depending on which way I decided to treat the various steps. Not a straightforward project for sure, but one I am pretty excited about, so I am willing to take my time working through these questions.

Colors

A Pottery Barn catalog came the other day, and the first page sucked me right in. Those are my colors alright.

I've never purchased anything from the Pottery Barn, but I sure do love looking through their catalogs. The gorgeous way they use color in the various rooms gives me lots of ideas - not for decorating, but for quilting. I particularly liked the reddish tone of the furniture here against that rich navy.

I sometimes stumble on ways of combining colors to jar me out of my usual rut. Here's more of the oranges, browns and greens in this tumble of pillows. See? I'd never think to throw in that blue with the green.

The catalog even had this nifty color wheel of sorts.

Unfortunately, they turned me off with their use of the term "Ecochic." Oh, puleeze! Besides, I hardly call adding a mere 5% organic cotton to their bedding qualifies as eco-anything. Nice try, though.

Playing with Paint Shop Pro

Last week I was downloading some pictures I'd taken of icicles. My camera has an automatic rotating function, so I often go through the downloads right away and delete any duplicates that are not rotated properly. This one was headed for the trash bin until I spotted the angles behind the icicles. This got me thinking of creating a design of bold angles overlayed with sheer horizontal strips. So I saved this orientation and took it over to my Corel Paint Shop Pro X program to reduce it down to a line drawing. Instead, I got caught up in a bunch of special effects. So here's what happens when you take icicles and solarize them:

Now try glowing edges:

They can be rippled:

And twirled:

Here's a wave:

And another wave:

And yet another wave:

And a different wave:

And one more wave:

That last one reminds me of the Palouse area I wrote about here. I'm not even showing you all the wave patterns I came up with using the random button. I moved on to patterns. Can you believe this was generated from the original picture above?

Or this one?

And this one too?

I finally quit at this one:

Now, what to do with all these ideas?

Better yet, what would YOU do with any of these? Feel free to download any of them for play, and please share your results. Consider it my New Year's challenge to you.

Sigh...

Dear BC,

I suspect that your definition of "sigh" as it pertains to my snow...

is quite different from my definition of "sigh" as it pertains to the 4 inches of new snow I faced this morning.

It seemed a bit unfair that the sidewalk I shoveled at 8:00 a.m. had the same amount to shovel again at 9:30 a.m., and it was still coming down. Somehow, it just seemed easier to crawl over the snowbanks to the bike trail and walk to church, rather than dig out the car and sidewalk again.

And while Jesse feels quite sorry for you and the rain you will be "shoveling"...


She still wants to know when "Uncle Bill" will be arriving to take over, so that "Mom" will stop making her sit out in the cold. This isn't stopping any time soon!


Sigh...

Texturizing Experiment

I belong to an on-line surface design group that has a New Year's Kick-Start challenge going on right now. Oh, alright, it was MY idea to have the challenge as I really felt the need for any kind of kick-start. I have so many ideas that I intend to try and never do. Sometimes a deadline with a group of people waiting for your contribution is just what I need to get moving.

I chose a technique out of Exploring Textile Arts that texturizes fabric through shrinking. It's a simple concept exploiting a fact that most quilters know: cotton fabric, especially muslins and flannels, will shrink when washed, so if you mix washed and unwashed fabric in a piece, you will get uneven shrinkage and puckers. Of course, if you are making a traditional quilt, you want to avoid this like the plague. If you're an art quilter, you may want to exploit this fact.

I started with a piece of muslin that I'd painted. I'd overworked the blending of colors and ended up with something I didn't like very much. It was an excellent candidate for further play. I layered it with a piece of muslin that had not been washed and zigzagged around the outside and through the middle.

Next, stitching is done throughout the piece. I wanted to see what different effects I'd get with different types of crossed and parallel lines so each quadrant is stitched differently. Here you can see I penciled some guidelines on the back.

With yellow cotton thread in the bobbin, I stitched along the lines from the back. The yellow is already making this piece look better.

Last step is to wash the piece in hot water and dry it in a hot dryer. The unwashed muslin on the bottom shrinks up while the piece on top does not, creating the puckering that provides the texture. This piece started at 15 inches and finished at 14 inches.

I wasn't sure how much the thread would actually show - from the picture in the book, I thought maybe not very much. But as you can see, it does show, so if I were to do this for real, I'd be a little more careful about those straight lines. There wasn't as much texturizing as I had imagined (it looks more so in the picture than in real life), and I'm wondering if curving overlapping lines more closely stitched would do that. Perhaps even a meandering stipple might work. Just stitching the two pieces of fabric together started to pull the piece up and provide a little texture.

This piece isn't done. I think the next step will be to apply more paint - either to pool in the wrinkles or to highlight the ridges.

A Little More Holiday Cheer

Two more presents arrived the other day - the last of the Christmas bounty, I'm sure. I love my friends...they know just the sort of books that will spark my creativity. Journal partner, Judi, sent this one on trees, saying "May you make many more quilts on your favorite subject." A quick paging through it got my imagination going - it is a beautiful book for any lover of trees. I'm guessing a few of these images make their way into my work this year.

I love my relatives...they know just the colors and textures that speak to me. The book is lying on a Tibetan shawl of cotton/silk that my sister-in-law, Karen, picked up at a market in conjunction with a visit from the Dalai Lama himself. It is soft and light and silky and rich and woven with a textural design. I'm sure the Dalai Lama blessed it, right Karen? Well, I'll pretend he did and feel peace emanating from it whenever I throw it over my shoulders.

The Snow

I haven't wanted to complain too much about the snow, but it did seem like I'd been shoveling about every other day since that 16" at the beginning of December. But the weatherman confirmed my suspicions: We had 18 days of measurable snowfall in December, which is close to the record. Usually, it was only a couple of inches at a time, but a few days it was more. There haven't been any warm-ups either, so it has been stacking up. Here's my stubby dog standing in what was a shoveled sidewalk, but now needs working on again because snow has slid off the roof.

I've had a bit of a reprieve - last night's 3 inches was the first since Sunday morning. I hardly knew what to do with myself those three days. ;-) It gave me a chance to dig out around the car a bit. Don't know how long these snowbanks will last. It has gotten above freezing and started raining tonight. I really hate it when it does that.

Treasure Box

I keep my wrapping paper supplies in a cardboard box. At some point, it seemed like a good idea (or maybe the only place I had room) to store this old Lipton "Jewel Casket" tea tin from the late 1960's or early 1970's in it too. For most of it's life with me, it has held the overflow of pens and pencils we seemed to collect. Periodically I go through it to test the pens, tossing any that have dried out and restocking my pen holders around the house. I hadn't looked in it for quite a while, so when the box came out to wrap Christmas presents, I took a few minutes to sort through it again. There were magic markers, pens for writing on overhead projector acetate, lots of free promotional ballpoint pens, and even an old fountain pen that I think belonged to one of my brothers back when he was in high school.

There were surprises. Like a second Shaeaffer cartridge pen. I used to use these in college - I could get refills in pretty colors like turquoise, and I liked the calligraphy-style nib that scratched across the paper. I hadn't used mine for a long time, having run out of cartridges, but I just got more a few months ago. I didn't remember having more than one of these pens. I also didn't remember having this many drawing pencils. I don't know where they came from really. I did take a summer school art course when I was in junior high; could they be that old?

There were a lot of felt tipped pens, about half of them dried up. Do they even make the Bic Banana any more? They were all the rage in the '70's. A few rollerball pens survived as well. As old as some of these pens are, it's a wonder any of them still write.

And after all the pens were removed, here is what was left - lots and lots of lead pencils. This is probably enough to last me the rest of my life, since now I tend to use mechanical pencils. Oh, and there were a few hi-lighters - I got so addicted to them in college and still use them from time to time. You can see the brown fountain pen in there too, and a cheap plastic thing that had a nib on the end to dip in ink, just like in the olden days. This was another fad from the 1970's.

It's New Year's Eve...

...and I need to open some bottles of something so I can put my new wine stoppers to good use!

Brother Mad Max fulfilled my wish for "something made from birch wood" even though he complained that birch does not have an interesting or very visible grain, and is very hard to come by. "I don't care," I countered, "The Birch Lady needs something made of birch!"

He came up with the clever idea of trying birch plywood, and what stunning results that produced. But I like the "plain" one too. Now I have "color coded" wine stoppers - a dark wood one (similar to ones in this post) for reds, and these for whites - Thanks! (Proper hand-written thank you note is speeding on its way via Pony Express...)

And Happy New Year!