Threads

Moving Day!

2006-10-15T06:48:00.000-04:00

Well I have decided to move my blog to typepad. Please visit my blog at my new address:

http://suebleiweiss.typepad.com/

Remember to update your links, I'll see you over at my new home!

another box...

2006-10-14T15:35:00.001-04:00

Remember several posts back I talked about the round robin that Terri, Joanna and I were doing? We all got our original fabric back last week and my fabric that started as this:

Came back to me after Joanna and Terri were finished with it looking like this:

Needless to say I was very very happy with the results! Now the second part of the round robin is to create three boxes from the fabric and then send them off to each other for embellishment. Here's what my boxes look like:

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking whoop de doo another box. Ahhh but I did something a little different to the inside of this one:

I added some pockets on the sides and a little box on the bottom. I think this would make a nice little sewing kit box or something. Now I'm off to make two more!

Silk purse and a silk box

2006-10-10T14:08:00.000-04:00

And the silk projects continue....

A silk clasp top purse:

and a silk box. The top of this box flips up.

Silk projects

2006-10-09T10:01:00.000-04:00

I've started cutting into all the silk I've spent the last couple of weeks painting. Here are a couple of the smaller projects that I've finished.

A silk covered journal:

A silk lamp:

A needle/tool roll embellished with silk applique:

That has plenty of room on the inside for knitting needles, brushes or whatever you like:

And here are the last two pieces of painted silk that I just pressed this morning:

Piece 1:

Piece 2:

These two pieces are both pretty large at about 1 1/2 yards each so I think one will get turned into vest. Not sure what I'll do with the other one.

My new bag!

2006-10-05T19:04:00.000-04:00

My friend Terri is a very talented fiber artist and she makes these wonderful bags. I fell in love with her bags when I saw them posted on her blog and decided I had to have one and it arrived today!

and not only is the front wonderful but take a look at the back side:

When I first started making bags I took a lot of commercially made bags apart to see how they were constructed on the inside. I even took apart some very expensive designer leather bags, you know the kind that run in the triple digits, because I wanted to know what the professionals used on the insides of their bags. So I consider my self a bit of a bag aficionado and can spot a well made bag from a hundred paces and I can honestly say that this is a beautifully made bag. The stitching is perfect, the construction is flawless and the composition of the fabrics is wonderful. And that hand painted girly face! I love it! If you want a bag like mine then pop over to Terri's Etsy shop and get one, I promise you that you won't be dissapointed!

More painted silk....

2006-10-04T12:20:00.000-04:00

Some more silk painted using a dyed shaving cream technique...

And this next piece was done using a pole wrapping technique.

And now I'm headed to the sewing machine to turn all of these pieces into something...

Painted silk

2006-10-03T16:36:00.000-04:00

A couple of new pieces of hand painted silk examples from my silk painting workshop...

This piece above was done using a fold and paint technique. In this picture the piece is actually ironed flat but because of how it was painted it really gives the fabric an interesting surface doesn't it?

I'll have several more pieces to share with you tomorrow. Everything else I've been working on for the last several days is still drying.

Finished WIP and some Nuno Felting

2006-09-30T09:16:00.000-04:00

Remember the work in progress chenille scarf I posted in my last post? Well I finished it and here it is:

And I've been doing a lot of experimenting with nuno felting. Here's a couple of samples:

For those of you who aren't familiar with nuno felting it is essentially a process of combining wool fibers and silk fabric. The samples above were done with a thin layer of merino wool felted to a base of silk chiffon. I wish you could feel how unbelievably soft they are and they have a beautiful drape.

A little knitted bag, some fabric and a WIP

2006-09-25T15:33:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of knitting lately. Now I'm not much of a knitter but I really enjoy it and I like to do small projects like socks and mittens. I saw this cute little drawstring pouch in the Last Minute Knitted Gifts book and thought I'd try it.

It's the perfect size for holding a couple of skeins of yarn as a gift for a fellow knitter and it only took a few hours to make.

Several posts back I talked about the round robin that Terri, Joanna and I have been doing. Joanna's fabric started out like this:
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Then it went to Terri and she added to it and then sent it to me:

So when I got it, I thought, well what more can I do to this? Terri did such a good job of adding color that putting more on didn't seem the right way to go so I decided to take some of the color out and lighten it up a bit. So I got out the clorox bleach pen I bought months ago on a whim and scribbled on the fabric and lightened it up a bit. I drizzled over it with some gold textile paint with a little perl ex powder mixed it and then used a dry brush to blend the paint a bit. This is how it looks now:

Unfortunately this is not a very good picture at all, it's really a nice piece of fabric but I can't seem to get a good shot of it. Joanna, it'll be in the mail back to you tomorrow, I hope you like it!

By the way, Terri has recently opened up her own Etsy shop and has started selling those fabulous bags she makes. Check her shop out here

And lastly I'll leave you with a picture of a work in progress. This is a black chenille scarf mixed with a novelty yarn that is waiting to be threaded on the loom.

Working in 3d

2006-09-24T11:51:00.000-04:00

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrive of Janet Edmonds book "Three-Dimensional Embroidery" ever since I saw it reviewed in one of the Workshop on the Web issues. It's been available in the UK for a while now but it's just made it's way here to the states so when I saw that Joggles.com had it available I ordered one up right away.

This book has not dissapointed me! It's beautifully done with wonderful photos and pages of eye candy and inspiration. If you're looking to take your textile work from flat to something with more structure then do yourself a favor and buy this book. I think even those of you who work in paper will find something in here as well. I've had it for a few days now and here's my first project inspired from it:

I know what you’re thinking it’s just another box right? Well look what happens when you release the cord:

It lays flat! Now I’m thinking there’s a ton of fun stuff I can do with this. Make it with ATC’s or postcards that I’ve collected. Make it with clear pockets to hold photo’s. Fill it with something fun and give it as a gift holding a gift. I’m going to have a lot of fun with this little box! Click here to see some additional pages from inside the book.

By the way, the box itself is constructed from squares of fabric that were made by layering some hand painted linen (from the same fabric you see in the postcards below), some painted nappy liners and textile foils with layers of Misty Fuse (what else!) which I covered with black net and stitched over with metallic thread. The cord is machine stitched covered cording.

I've also finished my postcards for the painted fabric postcard swap I signed up for. The squares of painted fabric on these cards is some linen that I painted using dye-na-flow paint and then scrunched up and left it to dry in the sun. Sort of a lazy mans shibori style. Once it was dry it left wonderful markings on the linen where it was resting on itself.

The QA challenge results

2006-09-21T15:05:00.000-04:00

A couple of posts ago I had talked about being one of the lucky 30 that got in on the Quilting Arts challenge posted on their blog. This was the package I received:

I took all the pieces and cut them up and collaged them onto a piece of black wool felt, added some netting, gold texture paint and some stitching and then zapped it all with my heat gun. Then the whole piece was cut up and turned into:

Some postcards

Some Artist Trading Cards

A sculptured bowl

And a cuff bracelet.

The sculptured bowl and cuff have been lined with wireform mesh to give them stability and body and to make them moldable.

A handwoven gift or two and chenille scarves for sale!

2006-09-20T13:23:00.000-04:00

I love to weave with chenille. A lot of weavers find it a challenge to work with but I've never really had much trouble weaving with it. I use only the best rayon or silk chenille which I think makes the difference. The cheap stuff snaps and twists and doesn't produce a very nice fabric.

I wove this scarf as a gift for someone who has been very generous to me over the last year since I've met them.

This is black rayon chenille with stripes of a novelty yarn called Zodiac by Berocco. The zodiac stripes are almost irridecent and this picture really does not do this scarf justice. It’s nice and long too so it’s a great scarf for wrapping around your neck.
And these towels I wove using organic cotton. They're so soft and I'm sending these to my friend "W" because I know she really appreciates a handwoven towel.

And I know how much she loves getting packages in the mail!

And these three chenille scarves are leftover inventory from when I was selling my weavings in some retail stores. I had them in storage and thought I'd put them out here on my blog. If you're interested in purchasing one of these, they're $65 each and you can pay via paypal. Just send me an email at suebemail@yahoo.com

The green one is 9"x60", the purple one is 6"x60", and the mauve is 8"x60". Measurements don't include the fringe.

Silk projects, altered fabric and the QA challenge

2006-09-16T13:40:00.000-04:00

I know it's been a long time since my last post but it's been a rather busy week. I had some friends in from out of town that I wanted to spend time with and I spent all of Wednesday giving a workshop on how to embellish fabrics with Shiva paintstiks to my weavers guild. For those of you not familiar with them, they are wonderful to use on fabric. They're not a typical oil stick, they are specially formulated with a low linseed oil content which gives them a very low acid content and a quick drying time. You can use them to paint directly onto your fabric or you can use a stencil brush or my tool of choice - a foam makeup wedge. They come in some terrific colors but I'm partial to the iridescent ones. I like to use painters tape to mask off shapes on fabric and then paint in the shapes like I did with this scarf below:

So what else have I managed to get done this week? Well I've been working on and off on the silk painting workshop, here's a couple more projects from that:
First a pilow:

and a scarf:

and on a separate note, in my last post I mentioned that I had received Terri's fabric for the round robin that we're doing and that my task was to somehow add to the beautiful piece of fabric that she sent me. Well after much stressing about ruining somebody's piece of fabric, I jumped in and added some color, so it went from this:

To this:

And last but not least, here's a work in progress. I was one of the lucky 30 that answered the Quilting Arts blog post the other day and received this goodie package of fibers and fun stuff in mail the other day:

I was pretty excited when I opened the envelope because it's all colors that I love to work with so that will make answering the challenge that much easier for me. My task now is to turn it all into a work of art!

Misty Fuse

2006-09-08T14:55:00.000-04:00

Today I finally broke open my package of Misty Fuse that came last week. For those of you who haven't used it or know what it is, Misty Fuse is a really lightweight fusible web that comes without a backing paper. It's a bit different to work with from the paper backed fusible web I usually work with but I must say I am very pleased with the way it performs. It adds virtually no bulk to whatever you're fusing and it's very sheer and doesn't leave that shiny gleam on the surface that you fuse it to. I used it to make these cards below for a Misty Fuse theme swap:

I did these by alternating layers of misty fuse with soy silk fibers, angelina fibers and metal foils. The nice thing about the misty fuse is that even though I used several layers, it really just dissapears into the background. I really like this product!

Over the last several weeks I've gotten several postcards and ATC's in the mail from various people I've swapped with. These are all so wonderful I wanted to share them with you.

These first two ATC’s are from Ulla (don’t you just love that hat!) and Deb. Deb used rust dyed fabrics and I just love the earthy tone of this card.

These next three postcards are from Jean (the one with the woman with the silk fusion hair), BetyAnn (the one with the lace and the buttons on the silk fusion background) and Peggy (who added some very lovely scented potpourri under some net on her card).

And these next two are from Lorraine (on top done in silk fusion in all my favorite colors!) and Beate (the bottom one done in a wonderful collage of colors, fabrics and textures).

And this last card I got yesterday from Carol. Carol and I met while she was passing through my area on her trip to the US. We had a lovely visit and I'm looking forward to getting together with her again in another week when she's back this way again before going home to the U.K.

These next three are by (left to right) Christiane, love the colors in Christiane's card, Joanna who is a master at machine stitching. Isn't this seahorse the coolest? and Emmy who has such a gift for combining texture and color, you really have to touch this card to appreciate it.

and this last photo is of Terri's fabric that she sent me for the round robin we're doing that I mentioned in my last post. Isn't this piece of fabric gorgeous!

Now my task is to somehow put some additional surface embellishment to it before I send it to the next person in the round robin. Before I decide what to do I've hung it up on my design wall so I can just look at it for a few days and ponder the possiblities...

More silk and some handwoven scarves

2006-09-04T18:49:00.000-04:00

I spent the last couple of days working on painting up some more silk. Here are a couple of pieces:

This first piece is actually the base fabric that I am using for a surface embellishment round robin that Terri, Joanna and I have started.

Each of us prepared a 1/2 yard piece of fabric that will be sent to the other two for further embellishment. Once we recieve our original pieces back we'll make 3 fabric boxes from them and then pass those around to each other for embellishment. It's going to be a lot of fun and I'll be posting updates on each piece as we go along.

Here's another piece of handpainted silk:

And another:

Every year the Cocker Spaniel Rescue of NE has a big dinner and auction to raise money for all the homeless cockers in their care. We adopted two dogs from them a couple of years ago and so every year I donate a handwoven scarf or two to the auction. This year I'm donating these two:

This one I wove using a very fine wool silk and I used a lace weave. I actually made two of these and one I'm keeping for myself!

This next one is done in rayon chenille:

It's wonderfully soft and toasty warm.

That's it for now, I'll have more projects to share with you later in the week. Hope everyone had a terrific labor day weekend!

Up up and away!

2006-08-29T11:34:00.000-04:00

Silk painting 36 wide by 44 high.

Adapted from a stained glass pattern from Paned Expression Studios.

Silk Painting

2006-08-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that summer is just about over. It seems like just yesterday it was June 1 and here it is the end of August already. We've had some very cool weather here in NE the last several days with temps getting down into the 50's at night so the mornings have been pretty chilly!

So I figured there was no time like the present to start working on my winter classes. I've got several new classes on the development list for the winter class session at joggles.com and one of them is going to be silk painting. So here are a couple of samples from the first lesson for the silk painting workshop.

Angelina Fibers Tutorial

2006-08-20T11:30:00.000-04:00

I've created another tutorial, this one is about working with Angelina Fibers and how to make the pin below. You'll find it on the joggles.com website by clicking here.

and if you need some Angelina fibers, click here to see all the fantastic colors that joggles.com carries.

Fusing fabric with a soldering iron

2006-08-18T12:31:00.000-04:00

I signed up for another postcard swap and for this one the theme was to experiment with fusing fabrics with a soldering iron or heat gun. Well I bought myself a soldering iron a few months ago but up until now haven't had an excuse to take it out of the box. So yesterday I grabbed my copy of Margaret Beals book Fusing Fabric, did a little reading and this morning broke out all my colored organzas, acrylic felt and my soldering iron and went to work.

These first four are done by layering polyester organza on top of acrylic felt and then using the soldering iron to fuse the layers together.

These next two I did by layering various pieces of fibers, fabrics and foils on top of a piece of wool felt. Then a piece of sheer organza is placed on top of that and stitched down using free motion embroidery. The whole piece is then zapped with a heat gun to burn away some of the layers.

If you're going to jump in and try this technique then let me just warn you that you absolutely have to do this outside and you have to wear a respirator. The burning acrylic sets off some fumes that are very hazardous to breath in. Keep the kids and the pets away from where you are working.

Silk fusion postcards

2006-08-14T09:34:00.000-04:00

I recently signed up for a postcard swap with a silk fusion theme and I've spent the last several weeks stressing over what my cards should look like. Yesterday out of the blue inspiration struck and I scribbled down a few notes. I got into the studio early this morning and this is what I came up with.

My original plan was to just couch down some silk fibers to the front of the postcard but I really wanted to do something just a bit different. The women that I am swapping with are a very talented group of artists and I really wanted to create something that reflected my style. The base of these cards is a sheet of silk fusion and then I've trapped unspun hand dyed soy silk fibers under clear vinyl. I am really pleased with the way these came out.

Of course I couldn't just make the four that I needed to so I made a couple extra. These are available for trade so if you're interested, drop me an email at suebemail@yahoo.com !

Online class registration starts today !

2006-08-13T04:42:00.000-04:00

Registration for my fall online classes opens today! I am offering 5 classes this fall:

Silk fusion level 1

Silk fusion level 2

Angelina Fiber Projects

Free Motion Embroidery

The Art of the Vest

See you in class !

Me and Lilly in Handwoven Magazine

2006-08-10T12:33:00.000-04:00

Well I made it into Handwoven Magazine! This jacket was originally going to be an article but it got cut in the final moments. But in the end they decided to use it on the "endnotes" page. Click here to see the page it's on. That's me an Lilly on the left second picture down. It was so cold the day we took that picture on the deck with windchills below 0. brrrrrrr

And today's mail brought a wonderful surprise! Creative Little Daisy (who's blog is one of my favorite reads) had a little give away drawing a couple of weeks ago in celebration of her birthday and I was one of the very lucky winners. I got to choose my prize and I chose a wristlet and am I so glad I did! She does fantastic work and the fabric choices could not be any more perfect - I just love it all !

And since I've posted pictures of three of my dogs I figure I should post a picture of our fourth. This is Hershey my 123 pound German Shephard.

Hershey just turned 12 last month and he's a pure bred German Shephard. He's an awesome dog and loves to spend his days lounging on the deck !

Birthdays, silk fusion and ATC's

2006-08-08T04:30:00.000-04:00

Well today is my birthday ! It’s funny that when I think back to when I was in my 20s I remember thinking that to be in my 40’s seemed so far away and that 40’s seemed like such a big number but now that I’ve arrived at 42 it doesn’t really feel that big.
Here are a couple of silk fusion boxes embellished with rolled fabric beads. This box is a little different than the others I’ve posted in that the tops are attached and just flip up.

And these are some sheets of silk fusion that I did the other day that are waiting to get turned into postcards as part of a swap that I'm in.

and here is a round silk fusion sculpture. Won't this look terrific used as a vase sleeve with a single flower in it?

and the last of the silk fusion projects are these two...

A few posts back I asked if anyone wanted to trade ATC's with me and so here are a few that I received in response to that.

The one on the left is from Emmy, the one in the middle is from Joanna and the one on the right is from Christiane. Aren't they all terrific? I definitely think I got the better half of the deal in this swap!

I've added a couple of links in my sidebar menu to my yahoo groups. I have two yahoo groups: an art to wear group and a silk fusion group. Click the links to the right to learn more about them.

Silk fusion pictures and a tutorial !

2006-08-04T19:47:00.000-04:00

These silk fusion pieces were done with hand dyed soy silk from Joggles. I love working with the hand dyed soy silk, the colors are just so vibrant and they have a beautiful sheen.

I've also put together a brief tutorial on how I make silk fusion. You can find it on the joggles.com website here

Silk Fusion Dress

2006-08-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

I bought this little metal dress form several months ago and I put it in the corner of my studio on a shelf and waited for a burst of inspiration to tell me what to do with it.

Yesterday I was making up some sheets of silk fusion to use to make postcards out of for a swap I signed up for and I noticed the dress form out of the corner of my eye and well, here she is wearing her new silk fusion dress...

The front of the dress

The back of the dress

This dress form stands about 14" high. The silk fusion was made with bleached tussah silk and then painted using Jacquard dye-na-flow paints. A little perl-ex powder added to the textile medium gives the dress just a bit of shimmer.