Personal Paint Library

I’ve been taking an online class with Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen, Color Beyond the Basics. Our first assignment was to create a personal color library mixing all our existing paint colors in a prescribed method using black, white, buff, irridescents and primary colors. It has been tedious work, but so rewarding. From 32 acrylic colors, I have created a big color library. Here are some of my swatches.

The class has an open start time, and you can do the assignments at your own pace. That’s good, because I am behind. Lesson 2 has already been posted.

Haiti by Hand Auction

Rebecca Sower is doing a remarkable job of collecting items from artists and selling them in an auction site. She has relationships with several artists in Haiti and was visiting with them the week before the earthquake. All proceeds from the auction go to helping these women get back on their feet. You can read about some of the women here.

I was talking with my friend Mary last night, and she had had a conversation with a pastor who had arrived in Haiti to work with his denomination’s orphanages on the Monday before earthquake. He stayed to help until just a few days ago. He says there is so much we don’t see on our news, primarily the resiliency of the people. With just a little help to individuals, we can make a huge difference in their lives.

I have a quilt in the auction, Hope of Spring, but there are many other beautiful things for sale. The auction begins at noon CST on Friday, January 29 and runs through noon CST on February 12. Please consider bidding on the auction items or make a direct purchase through the Haiti by Hand Etsy shop.

photo blog of Israel and Jordan

If you haven't already done so, check out Tom's wonderful photo blog of our recent trip to Israel and Jordan.

Haiti by Hand

I’ve been busy helping Rebecca Sower with her mission for helping the artists of Haiti who have been profoundly affected by the recent earthquake. I have submitted several items for sale in the Haiti by Hand Etsy Gift Shop. Many artists are helping, so please visit and support this worthwhile effort. Here are the items I have listed with the shop. The Etsy shop has all the details on sizes and price and more photos of each listed item.

String of Good Fortune Birds

Sock Monkey Baby Quilt--SOLD

Hope of Spring Art Quilt (this one will be in the art auction TBA)

Two sets of Japanese fabric coasters

Change of Pace

I did say that this would be the year I would tackle my unfinished projects, and today I finished another piece. Five years ago shortly after I began quilting I had a vision for a quilt for our king size bed. I started collecting fabric and working on the skills to pull it off. I finished it during the summer of 09. It has painted gingko leaves on it and is densely quilted. With the quilt finished, I now needed a different bed skirt. Today I altered a ready made one and it is now on the bed. (photo does not have new bedskirt) On to the pillows! I may try painting the old pillows.

Clean up crew

It was cold for so long, that we had a fish kill in the lake behind our house. At first we noticed a few vultures, then there were hundreds. They lined the shoreline and lurked on the roofs. They waded in the water like egrets, dragged their feast to the shore and then spent the rest of the day fighting with each other over carcasses. Once you get over the creepiness, and realize the other option is a lake of stinky dead fish, they are just part the eco-system. They are mostly gone now and the egrets and herons are back. But I’m still looking for the swans to return.

related post: unusual visitors

And the winner is…

Brenda! who wrote on the blog…

I'm in the group (Mixed Media Art Friends) --but only got my papers made and then the holidays hit and …..

Brenda, if you will let me know your address, I’ll get those birdies flying to you early next week. You can contact me at defling1948 at yahoo dot com. (Just put the symbols in for the at and the dot.) If I don’t hear from you by Monday noon EST, I’ll draw another name.

Thanks to everyone who made comments. I am very grateful!

50th post

Leave a comment on my blog, and one of these stitch paper bird garlands could be yours. I’ve finished the ones to swap, saved one for myself, and now I have one to give away. On Friday, I’ll draw a name and announce the winner. But you can’t win unless you leave a comment. If you do post anonymously, just make sure you sign with some kind of name so I can identify you in the winner's post. When I post the winner, I''ll put in my email, then you contact me and we can communicate outside blogland.

Unusual visitors

My sewing was interrupted this morning when Tom called me out to the porch. Two swans were swimming on the lake behind our house. They entertained us for quite awhile, eating the stale bread we tossed to them and posing for pictures. They spent the day on the lake, but when I went out at sunset, they were gone.

It's Snowing in Florida!

It's snowing in Port Orange, Florida! This is the last straw, I've had enough winter. I'm ready for temps in the 60's instead of the 30's. Here's a photo of snow on my neighbor's lanai. look closely and you'll see the red monkey in the wire palm tree shivering. Me too.

Sidetracked

After sewing on the green binding on the ginkgo quilt, I put it up on my design wall to just make sure this was the look I wanted before doing the hand sewing involved.

What do you think? Keep the green binding or go with a black satin stitched binding? I’m leaning toward the black satin stitched binding because I think the matte quality of the present binding competes with the luminescence of the body of the quilt.

In the mean time, I have been working on birds for the swap project I’m doing online. I needed 40 birds to complete four sets. Three sets to swap, and one to keep for myself. I am also doing a bookmark swap with the same group. I’ll cut the bookmarks from the scraps of stitch paper I put together a couple of nights ago.

Creative Process part 3

I spent a long time yesterday painting the tissue paper. The color I posted yesterday was too yellow. I wanted a lot of layers, but I also wanted it to be compatible with the colors in the mono-print. Today it pleased me.

I cut out the leaf shape and fused it to black fabric, then fused it to the quilt body. I added some paint dots to the quilt body to soften the solid black lines. I found the perfect fabric for backing and binding the quilt, a beautiful hand dyed fabric from Wendy Richardson.

I chose wool batting, and quilted it with a green silk thread. Whenever possible, I outlined the ginkgo shapes from the original quilt. The tissue paper leaf was very easy to quilt, but I had to get out my magnifier to see the stitching on the rest of the quilt.

Tomorrow I’ll get the binding on and post the finished product. I also have a challenge for my blog readers. I’ll be giving away a couple of prizes when I post my 50th blog. (this one is post #43) You will need to post a comment on my blog the day I announce the prizes. So consider this a head’s up, start learning how you can register and make a comment.

Creative process part 2

I took one of the mono prints applied fusible web to the back and cut it into twelve 3 inch squares. I then shuffled the squares and affixed them to black fabric

The quilt on the left is the original one, now painted with metallic paints, and the one on the right is the new piece. Since the original quilt had ginkgo leaves on it, (and no focal point) I think I’m going to appliqué a ginko leaf to it. I don’t have any fabric the color I want, so for now I have cut a paper piece as a guide. I am painting some tissue paper and some stitch paper, one of which I will appliqué to the quilt.

And I almost always paint my journal pages with left over paint.

My creative process, part one

The challenge for my fiber arts group this month is “Organized Chaos”. I had a 9x12 journal quilt I had made last year but not quite finished. The quilt was made from painted tissue paper, fused to felt and then densely quilted. The colors were pleasing, the quilting was good, but it had no focal point, so I decided to work with it. My idea was to paint it, then cut it up and reconstruct it.

The quilt had no binding, so I used a chunky thread and did a double blanket stitch on my machine.

Next I painted one side of it, and flipped it over to paint the other side.

I flipped it again in order to blend the colors, and one of those serendipitous moments occurred. The pattern made by the side I painted first was a beautiful mono print.

I quickly grabbed some black fabric and made two prints.

Part two tomorrow…

Finished!

Before we went to Israel, I cleaned out my studio and set aside some projects to finish or discard after our return. Today is the first concentrated time I have had since our return, and I got a lot done. One of my accomplishments was finishing the binding on this paper stitch project I made many years ago. The daylily parts were from a Phil Beaver workshop I took in French Lick, Indiana about six years ago. We learned how to paint the fabric and I cut out the petals and shaded them. For three years I just had the parts of the daylily. Three years later when my fiber arts group issued a monthly challenge for quilt in a complementary color scheme, I made the stitch paper background and fused the petals to the background. I quilted it, but never bound it. Today, I finished it! It is ready to hang.

Happy New Year

The New York Public Library has thousands of digital images, including these charming Happy New Year cards.

The images from the NYPL are a mixed bag of copyrights. You may use them for personal use, but not commercial. That said, there are some images that you need permission even to display on your website or in non-commercial art.

Before There was Burger King, There was Molly

In an earlier post I gave a recipe for oatmeal cookies, but I have to tell you how I actually make them, but first the back story.

When I was growing up, my mother had a take it or leave it policy regarding food. Don't like frog loaf, too bad, it's what's for dinner. There was no option to make yourself a frozen pizza or a peanut butter sandwich. I was also of the clean plate generation, so over the years my siblings and I ate a lot of things we didn't like. When I married and moved to my husband's home town, things were much different. Tom's mother made everyone exactly what they wanted. You like cold fried chicken? I'll put it in the freezer while I get everything else ready. Counting calories? I'll bake yours instead. You want your chocolate pie warm? I'll put it in the oven a bit while we have supper. (pre microwave days) We always went to her home on Sundays and at least once a week when I didn't feel like making dinner. I'd call and ask her if we could come, and she never turned us down. It was always a spread.

My cooking is a hybrid of my mother's and my mother in law's styles, but I do carry the recipe for oatmeal cookies to the extreme. When I make them, I just make one batch. In the final stages I pull out some of the dough for my daughter who doesn't like nuts. When a friend came for Christmas one year, he didn't like dried fruits, so I made his with just nuts and chocolate chips. It gets complicated, but like Molly, I say, "Have it your Way".

Molly died two years ago today, and I will always live by the lessons she taught me. Thanks!

Birthday Presents Under the Tree

Anyone who has a late December birthday knows the challenge of sharing the celebration with the festivities of the Christmas season. My Mother's birthday was December 21st, and my older daughter's is December 31st. I married into a family with three birthdays in late December, so there have always been birthday presents under the tree. I did a little creative wrapping this year and used what I had in the studio to make festive gift wrap. Freezer paper for wrapping, and markers and gel pens for drawing and embellishing. Happy Birthday Laurel!

More Fiber Arts in Jordan

On our last day of the tour, we visited the Roman city of Jerash, about 45 minutes from Amman. The columns of the city were beautiful, and many of the Corinthian capitals are beautifully preserved. Of course you always leave a historic site through the gift shop plaza. In one of the shops, I found these camels, made just like Kelli Perkins good fortune birds. I’m making three sets of Kelli’s birds for a swap, but maybe I’ll make some camels too.

Carter’s Oatmeal Cookies

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without these cookies. My mother came up with this recipe forty-five years ago, and it is still my family’s favorite cookie. The original recipe included raisins, but when my children came along, they turned up their noses at anything with raisins in it, so I substituted dried cranberries.

Carter’s Oatmeal Cookies

1 Cup Crisco (don’t even think about a substitute)
1C brown sugar
1C white sugar
2 beaten eggs
1t. vanilla extract
1t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt
1/4 t. nutmeg
1 t. cinnamon
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 1/2 cups quick cooking oatmeal (not instant)
2 cups goodies (I use 2/3 cup each of chocolate chips, pecans, and dried cranberries)

Directions

Cream sugars and shortenings, add eggs. Add vanilla and mix well. Add soda, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Mix, then add flour. Mix again, then add oatmeal. After more mixing add nuts, chips and fruits. Drop on cookie sheet and bake 12-15 minutes at 375 degrees. Forty five years ago, it made 60 cookies, but along with everything else, they have been supersized, so you might get 45-50 cookies.

Fiber Arts in Jordan

Shortly after we arrived in Jordan, we visited the city of Madaba and saw its beautiful mosaics in a 6th century Byzantine church. While walking from the bus to the church, we passed a store with beautiful handmade dolls. I just had to have one.

Journal Pages (corrected)

Tom and I just returned from a wonderful trip to Israel and Jordan. I tried something new with my journal on this trip. Before we left I painted several pages in an inexpensive sketchbook. While we were traveling, I dated each page, then listed the letters of the alphabet. During the day, I would jot down a word or a phrase for as many of the letters as I could. Many letters had more than one entry. Then at the end of the day, I would doodle all over the pages with a type of drawing inspired by zentangles. I found it very relaxing, and while doodling, I would always remember other things to add to the list of the day’s events.

Extreme Shepherding

I found this video on Robinsunne's blog, It will make you smile.

click here to see video

We leave for Israel tomorrow morning. I promise photos when we get back. My Christmas shopping is done, and today I’m packing and cleaning up my studio so it’s all ready for me when I return.

Close-up stitch paper garland

I tried some close-ups of the stitch paper garland today, and here are the results.

The process I used was:

1.Make stitch paper using Christmas music and paint with metallic paint and gloss glazing liquid

2. Cut out two shapes for each ornament and stencil with white paint

3. Emboss using clear embossing powder. I used clear as the stitch paper is somewhat tacky and extra embossing powder sticks to it. The clear embossing powder doesn’t show like colors do.

4. Embellish stenciling with extra lines with Pitt extra fine pen, and paint writers

5. Add beads and sequins (the beads and sequins made it hard to stitch in the next step, might just glue them on after final step)

6. Sandwich ribbon between matching ornaments and zigzag all around. Using paper clips helped to hold the two ornaments together while stitching.

7. Touch up stitching with gold metallic paint

8. Finish ends of ribbon for hanging

Stitch Paper Christmas garland

I’ve been busy making a Christmas garland with my new addiction, stitch paper, a fusion of fabric, paper and glue. This garland is a prototype, so I have learned a lot about how this medium behaves and the best way to stitch and assemble.

The underlying paper is from so old hymnals. I cut out the Christmas songs and glued them to fabric, then painted and embellished. Lots of fun!

Warning: blog contains graphic photo

Last weekend, Tom and I went to Merritt Island on a bird watching, hiking and photography expedition. It is a beautiful place less than an hour south of us. It was created in 1963 when NASA purchased the land surrounding Cape Canaveral as a security buffer for the space program. Conservationists saw it as an opportunity to transform the property into a wildlife refuge. The refuge and the adjacent Canaveral National Seashore have flourished.

We were looking for Roseate Spoonbills, but they not making an appearance on Saturday. However on a hike, we came upon a pile of feathers which we determined to be the remains of a Great Blue Heron. Every other bird photograph that day was taken with a telephoto lens, but this guy met his end right in the middle of the trail.

…and the companion photo shot in a Publix parking lot

My New Favorite Condiment

Last weekend we were with friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico and a group of us attended a class at the Santa Fe School of Cooking. One of the recipes our chef Rocky made was a cream of tomato soup with Chipotle en adobo, which means Chipotle peppers in marinade.

Santa Fe Tomato Soup

4-6 Roma tomatoes

4 medium onions

4 garlic cloves

Olive oil

1 t. ground oregano

2-28oz cartons tomatoes with no citric acid (I used Pomi)

1 carton low fat silken tofu

2-3 t. chipotle en adobo

Slice Roma tomatoes in half, peel and quarter onions, peel garlic cloves. Toss all with olive oil and roast in 400 degree oven for about 40 minutes.

Toast ground oregano in pan on cook top, add tomatoes and stir until mixed. Set aside until vegetables are roasted.

Put tomato mixture, and roasted vegetables in a blender or food processor and blend until pureed. Add 2/3 carton silken tofu to mixture and blend well. This may need to be done in several batches. Return pureed mixture to pan, stirring to mix thoroughly. Heat just to a simmer and stir in chipotle en adobo. Assess, adjust, proceed.

Comments:

I added about ½ t. salt since the tomatoes I used had no salt. I did not skin the tomatoes either before or after roasting. I used tofu, but you used cream you would probably use about 1/2-2/3 cup cream. Just be sure to not boil it after adding the cream. Making it with tofu did not produce the same result as making it with cream, but we liked it enough to repeat it. The Chipotle en adobo is my new favorite condiment. We’ve put it in black bean soup and chili, and the results are delicious.

Upcycling

Upycling, a term for making something better out of what was likely to go in the trash. Similar to recycling, but the end project should be as good or better than the original. Last May I made the teacher appreciation gifts for all the teachers and workers with youth and children at our church. I purchased canvas tote bags, used Leslie Riley’s transfer artist paper, and ironed the images to the totes. The image is of an art quilt that is displayed in our church. Maybe some day I’ll blog about the process of making the art quilt. The recipients were pleased with their gifts, and I was happy to make them.

But in any new art project, there are practice pieces. Several totes were rendered unsuitable in the learning process. So rather than throwing them away, I added two layers of fabric, ironed a new image to canvas and stitched the whole thing over the ruined image on the tote. I’m happy with the results.

However I will say that it was much easier to just iron the images directly to the bags. I suppose that is the point of upcycling, it takes longer than making the original.

Sock Monkey Baby Quilt

Several years ago I found this fabric collection in a quilt store in Boonville, Indiana. My quilting group at church liked it too, so we ordered bolts of it and divided it among ourselves. I have made at least six of them, and I still have enough for two or three more quilts. Whenever I start working on one of these sock monkey quilts for a baby, I get the urge to start singing, to the tune of "Matchmaker" from Hello Dolly. "Sock Monkey, Sock Monkey, make me a quilt, make it so strong, sturdily built...." It is a sturdy quilt ready to take outside for a picnic, throw over funiture to make a tent, wash and dry again and again, and eventually be used to wrap furniture when the youngster grows up and moves out.

I've need to get this in the mail tomorrow for the Manley Bambino.

First stitch paper project

I meet once a month with a bunch of wonderful fiber and mixed media artists, and we are challenged each month to make a project based on a theme. October's theme is "Fright Night". I started to think about what a "Fright Night" is for me and how to use the stitch paper techniques I have been playing with for the last three weeks.

Long ago, I had a lapse in my formal education. My family moved when I started the third grade and I went to the school in our new neighborhood. We had a teacher for about the first six weeks, then she left, and we never had another regular teacher again. My mother says there was a long string of substitutes including the school custodian and parents willing to come in and help out. Consequently, I didn't learn much that year. My parents then sent me to a private school for fourth, fifth and part of sixth grade. I loved this school. There were only about 50 students in the whole school, first grade through twelfth. So there was a lot of mingling. I must have had some regular classes with my grade, but I remember sitting in on a lot of high school English and History classes. I was behind in math, having missed out on multiplication and division the previous year, so I just didn't go to math class. For some reason, no one seemed to mind.

In the middle of sixth grade my parents realized that my sister and I were not getting the education they were paying for. We transferred to a school in our old neighborhood, and I was happy because I was around all my old friends again. However, I was woefully behind in math. I had multiplication and division tables to learn, the concept of the decimal point, fractions, long division, story problems. I developed a bad case of math anxiety. Eventually I caught up, but I never got over the fear of math tests. My interpretation of Fright Night; it's the night before the trig test. The ghost is made of stitch paper using pages from a trigonometry textbook.

addicted to making stitch paper

This may show up on a family valentine next year.

For this piece of stitch paper, I added color as I glued the papers to the fabric. I ran out of glue today, but I'll be back in business tomorrow. I need a bunch of sheets completed by the time we start week 2 of the book study. I'll do more to this piece as I am inspired.