end of the first week, Crow Barn 2012

 Above is a shot of the whole piece of cloth, Hope #2 . Below is a closer view of it. Notice the beams above us holding up the barn in the top picture.

 Below is a shot of the whole piece of cloth, Hope #1. I discharged much of the maroon/brown top layer that I posted a day or so ago,  by screening the word hope in many languages with discharge paste (takes out the color). I laid it in the sun for several hours to create the heat activated chemical reaction.  You can still see the very faint japanese characters for hope in the 1/3 left portion. I may go back in and highlight these lighter spaces with color.

 Below is a close up shot of Hope 1. I screened the various translations of hope in the vertical and facing both directions so they can be read by tilting your head to the left or the right. I used japanese, latvian, turkish, french, english, greek and hebrew

 These next four pictures are pieces of cloth that I made to go together.
This first one is made using a credit card

 This one is a mono print. I brayered the color on a plate then scraped it off using a curving motion with a credit card. It creates these nice wavy lines. I call it my Kandinsky piece.

 This one below is also mono printed. I brayered the dye on a plate then used the fingertips of my gloves to make the marks then I laid the print plate onto the fabric and the dye moved over the cloth in the pattern I had created. Mono printing means you make one print each time you lay the print plate on the cloth. You rebrayer and then put the plate on the cloth again. Very labor intensive. You can also put the cloth on the print plate but that is for larger pieces of cloth.

 This final picture is of a piece of cloth that is also mono printed. I swished the credit card back and forth across the print plate several times then applied it to the cloth.

What a great week this has been creatively. I have been making marks in a totally different way than previously and expanded my knowledge and ability for using several new tools in new ways.

Tomorrow is a day to go for a walk, get the laundry done, do some drafting for possible compositions for next week, and visit with my daughter Rachel. 

I am rethinking my ideas of what I wanted to work on while I was here during the second week and may end up going in a totally different direction.  We shall see. There is something about making a piece of cloth from marks your hand made vs using a screen or thermofax. So much to think about.

Crow Barn 2012, second post

 So I am working on pieces that portray hope. The piece above has the japanese characters for hope.
I put a soywax resist on the cloth and scraped over it a maroon/brown color. I left a few places where the original cloth shows through. There is a detail of one of the peaking through bits below.
I am going to remake this cloth because it was just beautiful and I could use it for piecing.

 This piece of cloth is in process still. I scraped two colors as the first layer with a credit card.
The second layer is the word hope written all over the piece in a pale value of turquoise using a needle nose bottle. Then I masked some areas and using a needle nose bottle again wrote on the top half with maroon with a touch of brown dye.  

 Here is a detail shot of the top half. You can see the turquoise hope behind the maroon words
"daily manna, seek my face,  living water"

I have switched the masking tape and will rewrite the word hope on the bottom with a stronger value of turquoise. Then I'll decide if there is more to do on it before it is "done.

the two pieces I showed yesterday I added another color to them. Once they are batched and washed I'll post pictures of them as well.

Crow Barn 2012

I just completed my third day of work at the Crow Barn Studios and Retreat Center.

The piece above is the darker piece  that originally was going to go with the blue/green one below.

the top one was the sad piece and the bottom one is the hope piece. 

I am going to have to add something to the bottom one so it blends better or perhaps they are now stand alone pieces or will go with others for a pieced composition.

The three pieces below are from the sheet of mark making exercises we did the first day.
Some other mark making exercises resulted in four more pieces of cloth that are a part of a palette of cloth. They are drying for one more layer of color to be added tomorrow.

I am working on a new series of pieces that communicate hope. More to come!
Karen

a path through anger

I have been working on this art quilt top all day. A path through anger.

Waldren Quilt

Here is an uncropped picture of the completed quilt.

I am going to mail it to the customer on Monday.

It is hanging up at my house to make sure it lay's flat on the wall. It does in all directions. She asked me to put pocket rods on all four sides!

I ended up using two colors of thread and stitched wavy lines all the way across, but didn't leave a space between the blue and red to allow for a "bubble" to accent the line.

I have another one going in a different color scheme Maybe the next piece I can try that on or maybe the next piece is going to finally be my wisteria! Ha that would be funny to accidentially back into it

with the negative image - I was trying before with the positive image

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Making this along with the conference last weekend has sparked a lot of new ideas of how to combine the positive and negative of my tree bark image.

This quilt is made with only the negative of the image.

I wondered what would it be like to use the negative image to create background and then use the positive image to create the composition...

This sort of feels like it might be a DUH moment but...

Lisa Kerpoe's cloth (remember at the Crane Old School building) with the line 24 " from the top got me thinking.

I have been sketching away and I am building up a couple of backgrounds to try these idea out.

Commission

Going to start machine quilting this piece of compositional cloth tomorrow.

Customer has seen it and approved. Spent some time this past week dying the back.

It is all basted and marked and ready to go in the machine the next block of time I have.

Woot Woot!

Small Art

I made close to 50 pieces of Small Art Postcards to go in a local shop.

Each has a loop on the back so they can be attached to a gift.

I also found some inexpensive business card holders so that they can be displayed on a shelf or desk. They will go into the local store by the end of this next week.

new studio coming

My new studio is coming along. Here are pictures of the front and side of the "old garage" with the new windows and one of the plywood floor underlay. Plus myhusband/builder mugging for the camera