Great surface design giveaway!

If you're like me, you get excited over trying new things, especially when it relates to fiber arts. One of the blogs I follow daily, "And Then We Set It on Fire", is having a drawing, and the winner will receive Lisa Kerpoe's book "Visual Texture on Fabric" You can put your name in for the drawing here if you're interested. All entries must be in by 8am July 31, so hurry!

Last time I posted about my Taos fiber art piece was here, back in May. Well, I finally got back to working on it earlier this month, and finished it! I had already purchased a frame for it, and after I mounted it I put it in the frame and hung it. Trouble is, the glass glare was so bad it really took away from being able to view the scene... so today, I decided to ditch the glass. I have some fiber art pieces in my bedroom that are framed without glass, and have been hung for years with no adverse effects, so I'm done with the glass! Especially since the price of glare-resistant glass is prohibitive! Now I just need to decide if I'm happy with the mat or should replace with mat that is more rigid. The existing mat was behind the glass, and didn't have to be rigid since the glass held it in place. But without the glass, there are slight bulges toward the center of each side. So, I'm living with it right now to see if it detracts, and will decide in a day or two.

This is the piece I will be showing at Prelude Exhibit - our annual exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts for participants in the annual Flagstaff Open Studios Tour. So I want it to be as professional quality as I can make it!

Shrekkie update

Remember this guy?

This photo was taken toward the end of 2010, when I had begun to get him used to being inside... he's my little orphan cat, Shrekkie. So fast forward about 18 months, and here he is now:

Completely comfortable with his surroundings, he sleeps belly up on the deck! I caught him just a little while ago, and our older cat, Double was just a few feet away. These guys crack me up, they're so dang cute! Had to share...

More Ice-cube dyeing

Sooo.... I've been wanting to make a jacket with some rayon fabric I bought, but have been hesitant about how to dye the fabric, and whether to dye before or after I made the jacket. I decided to test ice-cube dyeing on a rayon poncho to see how I like the results, and I'm thrilled with how it came out!

Below is a picture of the poncho after I covered it with ice cubes and sprinkled dye powders over it.

And here is the final result... almost looks like I used water colors, doesn't it?

So I have decided to sew the jacket first, then dye... I'll post pictures when I have it done.

Carolyn's Tie-dye

I taught a private class in basic tie-dye to my friend Carolyn on Monday. She came over today with her shirts to let me see them and take pictures:

Two color scrunch

Rainbow Swirl

Novas

Diagonal Stripe and Novas

"Ess" Accordion Fold

I think she did great, don't you? Carolyn will be teaching family members how to tie-dye later this summer, and promises to take pictures for me to post... can't wait!

A new addiction, aka "I'm a glutton!

Jeez.... just when I think I have tried everything, something comes along to lure me into a new addiction! No, I'm not on drugs... unless you want to consider dyes a mind-altering substance. Now that I think of it, maybe they are! I don't snort 'em, or smoke 'em, or swallow them, but I do love to apply them all over fabric. For years, I have enjoyed tie-dye, but that was just a gateway drug to ice-cube... that's right! ICE-CUBE parfait dyeing! I happened to pick up a copy of the June/July issue of Quilting Arts magazine... put it aside for a few days, then browsed through it one day while I was eating my lunch. The article that grabbed me was 'dye your own iced parfait' by Carol Ludington. Now, I have done my own version of dyeing that involved freezing my scrunched fabric or garment in a small container, then pouring liquid dyes over and letting it batch for hours... nice alternative to regular low water immersion dyeing. But this method uses ice cubes and dye powders direct from the jar, in layers with each layer covered with ice cubes and sprinkled with dyes. I had to try it!

I chose Golden Yellow, Bronze, Deep Orange, Scarlet, Olive Drab and Lapis for my color pallet. Fortunately, I have a nice tall covered plastic container, and tore up some muslin to create six fat quarters, then I dove in. This morning, having batched the bunch overnight, I rinsed and laundered them. As I pulled each piece from the batching bucket, all I could think of was "OMG... they look like clean-up rags!". And at that point, they did. However, once they had been rinsed, laundered, dried and pressed, it was a whole different story! See what you think:

I applied different combinations of the above colors to each piece, and they were laid one on top of another, so there was some seepage through the layers as the ice cubes melted. I am thinking I want to try stretching one over canvas stretcher bars, or over a pre-stretched canvas, to see how they would look mounted. There is way too much complexity to try stitching, so maybe I'll just let the parfaits speak for themselves. Needless to say, this is not the last you'll see here about iced parfaits! I'm hooked...