Calypso! Artist Trading Cards

As promised, here is one of the Calypso artist trading cards for the Arts in the Cards May trade. It was fun to do and relaxing to do the hand embroidery this time around. Its Friday again so I'm linking to Nina Marie's Blog.

My dad's sewing machine

I had previously given my dad [who will be 90 yrs old this fall] my old Viking machine since it is lightweight for him to pick up. He used to make his own boat covers and upholstery so he knows how to sew. Now he just hems pants and sews up ripped seams. Well, there were too many settings and he would get the Viking hopelessly messed up. So in his basement I found my mom's old Necchi Mira machine that he always used. I had to clean 40 yrs of gunk and oil off it and repair the bobbin winder but it works like a champ. (I had planned on bringing it home to mount in my treadle base. The machine is a depression green color and my treadle cabinet base is painted depression green..and my weaving loom is a Mira so I thought that darn Necchi was just screaming to come live at my house with all those coincidences.) Ron and I moved the Necchi Mira into my mom's old room so it is easy for him to get to.  I must say that since my mom passed away 3 years ago, that room has looked way too well kept and the addition of the machine and cabinet in there looks very much at home and puts a little life in the house. I think if my mom is looking down on him she approves.

Some day the Mira will come to live with me and that day may come sooner than  I would like. Oh, I tried to convince him that he needs to make a quilt but he didn't take the bait!

Calypso ATCs in the works

This month's color prompt for Arts in the Cards is Calypso.  I love when a color  like this comes up and makes us scratch our artistic brain for something to represent it.  It just happens that Benjamin Moore  has a calypso blue in their paint chips. 

AND it was a surprise to me that I had hand dyed cheese cloth and hand dyed cotton thread in just that color. 

After stitching the cheesecloth and scraps of ikat fabric I showed you last time onto some burnt sienna fabric, I machine quilted it in a wave pattern. Then I cut it apart into artist trading card sizes.  I'll use stitches from my favorite book to embellish these. I have some additional hand dyed cotton thread in greens and some wooden beads that may find their way onto these too.

This is the left overs from the cards. Who knows where this might end up?  Check out all the other quilters on Off The Wall Friday . I would love to hear from you. If you would like to join our group of trading card artists, let me know! We have room for 2 more artists.

Stash bargains at the Thrift Shop It was a good day!

I haven't been to this thrift shop for a while. The last time I went I purchased denim yardage for 50 cents a yard for making denim rugs.  We were in town today so I thought I would stop and have a look. I guess someone was cleaning out their stash. The top photo is all the yellows I picked up for 25 cents on the red tags or 10 cents on the orange tags. The pieces on the left are a yard and the others are fat quarters or more.   The next photo shows the 'other' colors but again 25 cents or 10 cents. Some are colors and prints I wouldn't use in art quilts but I plan on doing some modern lap or baby quilts to practice more on my Sunshine 16 mid arm. 

To the right is my 'big' purchase. The red is a crinkled ikat that measures 3 yards for $1 and the white is waffle cotton tubing that also is 3 yards for $1. This looks like a summer skirt and 3 white tank tops  for me!  Total spent today was $5.20.

Detail of final UFO finish

Detail shot of Frog Water Shallows.  Remember, you can right click this to open in a new window or tab for a larger view.  I thought you might like to see a detail of the piece. You can see the rust shading on the lily and I'm happy I chose some of my rust dyed fabric to use for this. The orange rust is a nice complement to all the blues. 

I have entered the piece to jury for SAQA's Color Wheel of Emotion. The emotion it evokes in me is calm and peacefulness.  Now we will keep our fingers crossed the juror find it fits the show. If it doesn't I have a few more in mind to jury for.

UFO saved - Yippee Skippee!!!

Some time ago I asked your opinion on this UFO that I liked but it had huge problems because of sitting so long unfinished.  My question at the time was if it was worth saving and I asked for suggestions on how to overcome the glue problem. There were a lot of great suggestions  sent to me privately. There were a few who thought I should toss it out, learn from it and move on. I just really, really liked the piece and wanted to work to save it. 

This is where the piece is now, quilted and ready to bind or face.  These are the things I did to save it. 

 The basting glue had turned rock hard and couldn't be sewn through.  I soaked it in a tub which helped a lot.  I was finally able to quilt the piece on my mid-arm. I simply quilted around all the elements that had to be removed.  I then replaced all the lilies with rust dyed fabric. As I searched my stash I found the fabric I used for the long grasses and leaves.  I heated the old stiff appliques and found the corresponding area on the fabric. Using a white lead pencil I drew around the area I needed to cut out and applied light weight fusible. This made it easy to replace the areas within the quilting outlines. 

The final step was to get out the paint box and shade/highlight areas. I rarely take much notice if I have used proper shading and light source on a piece like this. The light and dark is more a design element that I try to use to make areas of interest pop and the eye to move over the piece.   

There is still some final tweaking to do and small areas of detail. But I'm really glad I kept with it and saved the piece. 

Sacred Threads 2013 Acceptance

Yippee! I finally got off dead center and entered something in a juried show. I've been on hiatus for over a year because of the surgery on my shoulder in 2012. I think entering shows may be a little like riding a horse or a bike and you have to get back on your game as quickly as you can after you fall off. Otherwise you get all sorts of self doubt and can find reasons to stay out of the game.  The only thing I entered during that time was photography in the Houston show, Eye of the Quilter.

I'm showing you a close up of Purification 2, one of my series on the outlawed practice of Sati.  Purification 1 is currently traveling with the SAQA exhibit Beyond Comfort. The gray pillar with red hand prints represents the Sati gate. The black background is burned and has both with machine and hand quilting and embroidered sparks of fire.  

The triangles of burned saris represent the widows thrown on the fire. The purpose of using triangles pointing up is that in the Hindu religion,  the triangle (trikona) is the symbol of Shakti which literally means feminine energy. When it points up it symbolizes spiritual aspiration and the element of fire which is always oriented upwards.

So this piece will be at Sacred Threads in July in Washington, D.C. in the grief category. There will be some wonderful pieces there and I'm sorry that I won't be able to attend in person. 

Indigo Dye Dipping is not just for Fabric

My two teenage grandsons have birthdays coming up. This is always a gift giving problem. One is a freshman at William and Mary and the other is in high school.  I'm tired of simply sending cash or gift cards since I don't think they mean much to them. They do, however, write short thank you notes, actually sent in the mail and not electronically.  

As Liz and I finally got to do our indigo vat, I got into my envelope and heavy card stock to make up blank card sets. I dipped one edge of both the card and the envelopes in the dye.  They do look masculine don't they?   I have a stash of nice leather samples from a furniture store. As luck would have it when I folded them over and stitched up the sides they were just the right size for a case for the cards.  I tied them up with a heavy round black elastic band for a closure. Now all I need to do is buy them each a pen for the set and they are ready to give.  I'm linking with Nina Marie's Off The Wall Friday

Wool Dyeing weather

The day was scheduled for an indigo vat at a play day with Liz.  I awoke to thunder and rain. Booo...hissss...All week long we had carefully compared weather reports for her house in Missouri and my house in Arkansas but Mother Nature threw us a curve ball and we cancelled at 7 AM.  Within an hour the sun came out at my house and I had all this yarn ready to dye.  

The white and blue cakes were salvaged from an unfinished wool afghan bought for $4. It yielded 8 cakes of 3 colors so it was a real bargain.  But, the colors were boring.  Then my friend Linda gave me 8 skeins of vintage Spinnerin yarn. It is an interesting combo of wool and slubs of linen...but it was a pretty unflattering color of hot ping.  

I used a package of scarlet Rit dye for the bath. I divided it in half so I could do both a cotton bath and a wool bath. Cotton requires adding salt and wool needs to be acidic with vinegar added to the bath.  The pink skeins were rewound into hanks that could be twisted and I left the cakes as they were. Into the dye they went. The pink was submerged but the cakes were put into a plastic container and dye was poured into the middle and down one side until it was about 2 inches up the side of the cake.

Getting ready to unwind the cakes and skeins to dry. These have already been rinsed and squeezed out till the water was clear. 

Isn't this white great? Look how it grades from red to white as it is unwound.

This is what the pink and white skeins looked like out of the dye pot. The very bottome photo shows some of the variation in the skein and the original pink.

Yarn hanging to dry outside to take advantage of the warm southern wind.

You can really see the variations in the yarn dyed this way. The tighter you wind the skein, more variation you will get in the finished color. Think of it as tie dyeing for yarn.  The bonus for this yarn was that the hard finish on the Spinnerin vintage yarn seemed to disappear in the hot water dye bath. The finished yarn is luscious and soft.

check out all the other creative projects at 
Off The Wall Friday

Pay it forward...in the mind of the reader

While watching the morning news I saw a young woman reading her op-ed piece she had sent to the Wall Street Journal about being rejected by some colleges. You can read some of the story here if you missed it, or you don't subscribe to the WSJ (I don't).

I thought the piece was funny and a little satirical. Here is a smart young woman who was probably told all her life that she could be anything she wanted to be and go to any school she wanted. And she got rejected by Ivy League schools.  Remember, I was listening to her read the piece with all of her tonal qualities exactly the way she intended it to sound.  The problem for this young woman has been caused by other people reading her comments without the expressions she intended to convey. There are a lot of people who think she is a spoiled brat because of what they think she meant rather than reading what she really said. Think of your favorite comedian....if you read their performance without knowing it was from a comedian, you would probably be offended and irate.

It drove home a point that I think all of us should consider when we read online what someone says. It can be a list serve, a yahoo group or just an email. So many people go off half-cocked and perceive negative tones that maybe really aren't there. Friendships are lost, flaming occurs and many people have their blood pressure raised unnecessarily.

In the spirit of making my little part of the Internet a nicer place, I promise to think twice and read more than once with an open mind before I interpret something I read as negative.  Will you pay it forward? I Will.