Ariell's quilt completed

Ariell's quilt is completed and ready to ship.

She wanted a purple piece. It measures 35" wide and 32.5" high.

These are shots of some of the details.

The background is hand dyed. Some of the circles are from hand dyed fabrics other are commercial cotton fabrics.

New quilt

THis is my next project to be sewn

I was accepted

This quilt has been accepted into the Art Quilt Elements show.

The show will be at the Wayne Art Center in PA March 30 - May 13, 2012.

This quilt was one of 48 selected from a group of 665 that were entered.

I am very honored to be selected.

June 2011

Since I have been back from class I have been busy working on cloth.

This piece was mono printed using a long piece of vinyl. I applied the fabric dye to the vinyl with a paint brush in a wave shape and then flipped the plastic over onto the cloth.

It has warm and cool yellows, warm and cool reds and rust orange.

This piece was made using a paper lamination screen. I painted newsprint with golden fluid acrylics and after that dried I pinned a sheer over top of the paper and applied my image to the mesh and paper using mat medium. Once this dried the color was attached permanently to the mesh. I scrubbed all the paper off and I was left with the image on the mesh that I in turn used as a screen. I scraped fabric dye through it in multiple layers. I have a lot more experimenting I want to do with this screen.

This is a piece of left over fabric that I was just using up the left over bits of fabric dye on. Not quite a clean up rag but almost. It is a long narrow piece of cloth two yards long and about 15" wide. I have found a bunch of previously dyed fabrics that match in my hand-dyed bin so I will cut this up to mix and match with other fabrics for a pieced top.

This piece I started a year ago. the marks are made by drawing on a screen with soy wax. Once it dried you can screen print with it and the dyes go where the soy wax isn't- i.e. the negative space. It has been sitting around for a year all soda soaked and ready to go but I never went back to it. I added more yellow in the middle and then screened over the whole thing with a royal blue. The squiggles now go in at least four directions now.

These marks are made using a needle nose bottle. It has lots of layers and the first ones are not very well defined. I was laying down a large bead and it was a humid day so it really soaked into the fabric. The picture above is a close up and the one below is of the whole piece of cloth.

2011

I am in the process of having some permanent screens made of the image I am using this year to move forward in my work.

I am distracted from my artwork by being a student and this is one thing that will make actually DOING art much easier.

I completed quilting "Water" and I hope to get the binding on this weekend.

Wish I could show it, but hoping to enter it in a show next spring.

This is piece two of five pieces I hope to have done by the spring.

Trying to tighten up my schedule and write in art time rather than just hoping it will happen (which it never does). Meanwhile I am stitching on a piece of cut off/leftovers just to keep my fingers happy. Here is one corner of it.

I have completed this maple tree commission this month.

Here is a shot of the full tree and a close up of the leaves quilting.

What is next

I have completed my city and guilds course. Here is a picture of my final piece On a Rock.

I have started my new job as a contract counselor two days a week. I am spending upwards of 30 hours a week in the studio, which is delightful.

I am having a new website designed and spending hours collecting pictures and writing text to be used. It is all worthwhile time spent and while I felt really good creating my own website two years ago this one will look much more professional.

Back in late April and with the help of Leslie Morgan from Committed to Cloth http://committedtocloth.com/ I created a one year plan for a self directed course of study. I am making good progress and up to this point am essentially using one image for the whole year. Different sizes of the image of course, but I am finding it very interesting how far this one image is taking me. I have one piece on the quilt frame (Field Flowers) and three more started (Water, Sudanese Hope and Forest).

I am going to end this post with a picture of the finished Zinnias wall haning in situ for your

viewing pleasure