Art Textilian

Lutradur

2009-10-16T13:58:00.006-04:00

I’ve joined C & T Publishing’s Creative Troupe to help create samples for them with their products. I’ve been having fun with new Lutradur products: lightweight black and ultra-lightweight white Lutradur. I haven’t played with regular weight Lutradur much before, but I’ve read about other artists who use it.

I have played with Tyvek so I thought the Lutradur would be comparable. I was a bit surprised to find out that the Lutradur didn’t shrink and distress as much as Tyvek with a heat gun. I can get Tyvek to be quite dimensional with a heat gun, but the Lutradur only curled up towards the heat of the heat gun a little bit by comparison. The flower of this necklace is Tyvek with a freshwater pearl center.
I’ve gotten wary about melting things so I wore my respirator while zapping the Lutradur with a heat gun. I’m still afraid that I might not have the right type of respirator so I don’t think I’ll be doing much Lutradur or Tyvek melting. Some say there isn’t any harm in heating Tyvek and Lutradur, but I haven’t exactly seen any test results and MDS sheets are hard to figure out. The hard part is that Tyvek does such cool things when you heat it that makes it tempting to play with the heat gun and an iron with it. So use your own discretion about whether you want to try melting Lutradur or Tyvek.

Below is one piece of the ultra-lightweight Lutradur that I started. It was stitched with metallic blue thread and then zapped with a heat gun. It will probably end up in my stash of random test pieces that could be used some day in a piece of artwork. I may have to clean out my random test bits collection soon though since it’s getting out of control or maybe I just need to organize them into nice little IKEA organizer containers…Who knows when that would happen!
I’ve found a new solution to avoiding future web shop fiascos. It's a new webcart software that is fully supported so I’ll have help if I ever run into problems upgrading again! Open source software is wonderful, but sometimes you just want the instant help and not have to do all the troubleshooting yourself. Keep watch for our new improved web shop!

“Artists give you something you didn’t know you were missing.”
~ Daniel Pink A Whole New Mind

Uff da!

2009-09-11T11:26:00.009-04:00

Uff da about explains how I've been feeling about our web shop lately. You may have noticed our message in red on our website main page about our web shop not working properly or the web shop site being "Down for Maintenance." This was the result of my attempt to update the web shop software and goofing it up big time so "Uff da!"

I hope to get the web shop up and running properly soon, but please bare with my PHP and MySQL ignorance for the time-being. I bought myself a lovely over 500 page book for future learning so this won't happen again if I can help it. (Web Shop is up and running again as of Sept. 13, but please let me or Mom (Ann) know if you run into anything not working right.)

Before I messed up the web shop, I added a nifty article that I just finished up to our website that I hope will be helpful to anyone experiencing artist block: Artful Mindfulness It's a diversion from some of the straight technique articles I've written. Western Avenue Studio's artist Glenn Szegedy was incredibly helpful with helping me figure out how to go about writing it. You should see his artwork: http://www.glennszegedy.com/ I especially love his Butterflies and Koi silk paintings: http://www.glennszegedy.com/silkpainting.html This is an image from the doing the exercise in "Artful Mindfulness:"

I also updated our Thermofax Silk-Screen Printing article recently. It has photos and more info than before.

Stitching Travel Tips

2009-08-04T15:10:00.010-04:00

My how time flies. I'll be off and flying to Philadelphia again myself this weekend. Nick and I have another wedding to go to. His brother got married in San Diego in July. People seem to keep telling me that I'm at that age when you have a lot of weddings to go to.

Perhaps this time I'll actually do some stitching on the plane. I've discovered that if I keep my threads cut to a nice length I don't even need to worry about not being able to have scissors on the plane although nail clippers work pretty well. With most embroidery threads you can open the skein up and then snip one end for a perfect length. I read that tip somewhere. I thought it was a Rajmahal threads flier, but who knows since it was some time ago.

I have a travel stitching mesh bag that I bring with me almost daily in case I feel like stitching on the train to and from work. I have a set of DMC ziplock baggies connected by metal rings for my thread assortment. It makes it easy to flip through my threads, but then it isn't really possible to bring all the threads I have with me so I have to try to remember to pick out the threads that I want for a project ahead of time.

It would help if I could keep only one project at a time in my travel bag, but at the moment I have three - no wait that's four. I got bored with the first two so I had to start another one and then of course I had an idea for a new project which was more interesting. I can't quite commit to not-finishing the first three projects and I can't figure out what to do with them so they've been sitting in my bag for months now. I've thought about breaking out the beads to use on them, but I never remember when I'm at home and could take a look at my bead stash.

Here's project #1 - started several years ago as a color study during a Laura Cater-Woods workshop on a quilting cruise to Alaska:
and #2 - an experiment with gesso ala Maggie Grey's "Textile Translations" book:
and #3 - leaf gelatin prints on felt printed who knows when, at least a few years ago:

#4 is based on photos taken from the train of the Concord River in winter. I think I'll leave #s 1 through 3 home now and focus on the Concord River piece since that one seems to interest me most at the moment.

Recombobulation

2009-05-18T19:29:00.024-04:00

Turns out it is a joke: http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29452504.html This is the sign we saw at the Milwaukee Airport when we went out to visit relatives this May. It gave me a good case of the giggles which is something that probably doesn't happen a lot in airports. Don't try to find the word at Merriam-Webster's website though because it's not there. It's my kinda word!

Anywho... I've been using my sketches lately to create Thermofax Silk Screens so I thought I'd share my process here. Maybe then I'll get around to doing some sort of demo for printing with Thermofaxes to share on-line.

Here's a page from a sketchbook that I created a Thermofax from. Not sure when the image was drawn, but it was at least a few years ago.

I converted this to grayscale using Adobe Photoshop Elements which is what I use most for image editing, but most image editing programs will allow you to convert an image to grayscale and then play with the contrast.

For this I used the auto contrast feature, but sometimes I like to bump up the contrast manually to get more black than lighter grays. After increasing the contrast to bring out the details, I used the "stamp" filter to convert most of the grays into blacks. The Thermofax machine will only capture areas that are black or almost black so the stamp filter is a good one for creating images for Thermofax silk screens. It does have a bit of a stylistic "stamp-ish" look to it for some images and it won't always capture the detail that you want for an image even when you play with the options for "Light/Dark Balance" and "Smoothness," but it worked well for this sketch.

This image which I dubbed "Fleur 2" is now available as a Large Thermofax Silk Screen in the Friends Fabric Art webshop along with a bunch of other images that I've created. Some of them are from old sketches and some are new ones developed from Dover-type clip art images that either wouldn't work well as is for silk screens or needed some jazzing up anyway. (It also makes more sense in order prevent any sort of copyright issue.) So far most of the new ones are from old sketches, but other new ones will be arriving soon, because I'm addicted to drawing them. One of these days I'll have to do some actual screen-printing with the images myself.On a totally different note, fellow Loading Dock Gallery and Western Avenue Studio artists, Bill Tyers and Jack Holmes are having an art exhibit called "Wandering Feet" at the Loading Dock Gallery and I wrote a pretty nifty press release for them! Please check it out here: http://www.lowell.com/news/2009/wandering-feet-3948.php I rather like how it came out.

If you are local to the Lowell, MA area and can go, the exhibit is photography by Jack and pastels by Bill and runs May 27 to June 21. The press release and the Loading Dock Gallery website have all the details.

Tea time! Have a lovely weekend!

P.S. "Dirty, Smelly, Noisy" is back! Now we have Dirty Smelly Noisy Two - An Exhibition in Celebration of the Inspiration to Be Found in Industrial Spaces at Western Avenue Studios running for the month of June with opening potluck reception on Saturday June 6th from 5:30 to 9pm. You may be able to guess what I'll be doing this weekend when art for the exhibit is due on Monday! I'm excited about the piece that I'm working on. It's focus is on Dunkin Donuts Styrofoam cups that I see lying around on the ground breaking apart into bits that will never really go away as far as we know anyway. I'm thinking of calling it "Legacy" although I've been having fun thinking up names for it.

Lowell Waterways

2009-04-02T22:12:00.010-04:00

Thanks so much for the comments! I plan to put the new pattern up on the web for the iPod Pouch one of these days. Who knows where it ended up in the studio moving process?!

It's official - my Lowell Waterways art quilt is getting a new home. It's going to a conference room of the new Jeanne D'Arc Credit Union headquarters building in Lowell! I'm quite tickled. It is so fitting that it has found a permanent home in Lowell since it is made up of photographs of Lowell canals and rivers.

I've been experimenting with Ink Jet Shrink Film and colored wire. My experiment evolved from yet another cool on-line class project from Maggie Grey. I made this funky, little box:

The white of the shrink film is a bit glaring, but since I didn't know how the experiment would work out, I didn't bother to color the back-side of the shrink film. I'll have to see if I can figure out how to color shrink film after it has shrunk. Here's another view:
The image that I printed on the Ink Jet Shrink Film is a photo of a sculpture that was in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. If I make a similar do-dad I'll try to remember to take step-by-step photos to share.

I kind of want to get a cheap toaster oven for shrinking shrink film, but all the reviews on-line for the cheap ones warned about problems with them catching fire. Maybe I just need to be extra careful with it... I'll stick with my craft heat gun for now.

New Space

2009-03-17T13:36:00.006-04:00

I've been moving my art stuff from my condo into a new studio space at Western Avenue Studios the last few weekends. I have a lot of stuff! I don't know where it has all come from. I have been trying to organize it all for a while now, but never really made much of a dent. Having a new space to organize it in should help as well as the new shelves and containers from IKEA.
The new space is three doors down from the Friends Fabric Art space so I can easily run back and forth between the two spaces.

I haven't gotten much artsy stuff done lately, but I did do this watercolor based on a William Morris pattern on the Victoria & Albert website. I did it to fit in a travel coffee mug designed to hold photos.

I also finished a fancy, new pattern of iPod Pouch to use. I may still have to add a tassel or beads dangling at the bottom.

Whatnot

2009-01-27T11:46:00.007-05:00

My doesn't time fly once again. I had such good intentions of putting up a nice felted pin project for the holidays and it's still not ready... Ah me. Must let go. I'm still playing with Maggie Grey's projects and techniques for her Textile Translations book. I was having fun decorating my Moleskine calendar and sketchbooks one day. My calendar one has my usual swirl in the usual blue color. Here's a sketchbook that I had all ready started the inside with a water theme so it needed an appropriate cover.

We have also been doing an altered book project for Maggie Grey's workshop. Below is one page. I may add more to it. I almost totally freaked the first time I saw someone rip pages out of a book. It was an old art history textbook that the person was using the pages of to decorate the walls of a dorm lounge area. It wasn't even what I would call a boring book! This book was of no use to anyone anymore and donated to the cause of art by my friend Catherine. Altering books is fun once you get over the initial shock of cutting book pages (assuming this would bother you in the first place).

Before I sign off, I wanted to remember to say...if you have checked out my iPod Pouches project available at the Fibre & Stitch Free Projects section of their website and you have an iPod that is not the same Shuffle that I have, let me know what your iPod measurements are (including the size for the controls with their distance from the edges and the same for the screen if your has one) and I'd be happy to make a pattern for you.

I started to get patterns ready for other size iPods, but I wasn't able to get all the measurements that I need just from what is available on the web. You'll have to give me a week or two to do the pattern just in case life gets in the way of doing it right away. Please e-mail the measurements and type of iPod.
ttfn

Sculpted Tid Bits

2008-12-07T22:17:00.010-05:00

I said a few blogs ago that I was doing an on-line workshop with Maggie Grey that is free with her new book "Textile Translations" and I showed the beginning stages of one of the projects. Well now, I'm thrilled to say that Maggie chose my "wigwam book" to show on her blog: http://magstitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/secret-revealed.html It's too exciting! Below are two other views. Unfortunately the second one is fuzzy because I was taking photos late at night with a bad cold and I haven't had a chance to re-photograph that view. The wigwam name for these creations came out of the Yahoo group chatting, but I don't remember who "christened" them. Mine is a bit less like a wigwam than a jester hat or something. If you are in Lowell this coming weekend, December 13 & 14, stop by our studio (#304) at Western Avenue Studios to see it in person. We are having a second weekend of Holiday Open Studios. More details at: http://www.westernavenuestudios.com/
Here is another vessel that was created with some of the techniques in the "Textile Translations" book. I don't think it is done yet, but I haven't figured out what it needs next. I also decorated my composition notebook cover. It started out using one of Maggie's techniques, but then it needed more color (blue of course!) so I painted it with some blue acrylics and Golden interference oxide green paint (lovely stuff). It is much more fun to carry around in my backpack now.

I suppose that's all for now!
Happy Holidays!

Pod Pouches & VNA Quilt

2008-11-18T20:34:00.012-05:00

My iPod Pouches are on the Fibre & Stitch Free Projects page! This one is the first one I made for my iPod Shuffle. It is getting pretty worn out now. I can't even remember when I made it. I put my iPod in it and wear it like a necklace on the train and subway to work. I think it's pretty snazzy.I had trouble with my iPod getting unclipped from my jacket or shirt with getting squished into a subway car with lots of other people. Somehow this led to the development of the pod pouch (as I call it when I'm being less specific than iPod pouch). The material on this one is thin enough that I could operate the controls for the on/off switch without having to pop the iPod out of the pouch.

Since this one has been used so much and is made out of doupioni silk, I had to go in and do a bit of repair work by reinforcing the fabric by fusing on a second layer of fabric on the inside. It's now a bit stiff, but it still works great.

Another project that Mom and I have finished lately is a panel of the "Healing Pieces" quilt for the Lowell Visiting Nurses Association's 100th birthday. We worked together on one out of five panels of the quilt based on a Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass window. The other panels were made by teams of two members each of the Lowell Fiber Studio. The quilt progresses from nighttime to daytime. Mom and I worked on the sunset/sunrise panel.
Last Thursday we went to a reception for the quilt's hanging. A fantastic flower arrangement was made to completement the quilt. I love the way the flowers chosen mimic the night to day colors in the quilt.

This is the panel that Mom and I worked on. The photos of houses are actual Lowell houses that Sharon and Gwen, members of the Lowell Fiber Studio, photographed and then the photos were printed on fabric.

Coming soon...instructions & photos to easily create your own needle felted and embroidered pins.

"Textile Translations"

2008-11-05T21:34:00.008-05:00

I got Maggie Grey's new book "Textile Translations" for myself and then decided to get it from D4Daisy Books Limited along with Maggie Grey's "Embellish and Stitch" and Julia Caprara's "Exploring Color" for Friends Fabric Art. They are all wonderfully inspirational books! I read straight through "Textile Translations" and "Exploring Color" as well as studied the fabulous full page photos of artwork thoroughly. I have yet to read through "Embellish and Stitch" aside from a brief skim and some artwork photos perusing.

The extra special thing about "Textile Translations" is that Maggie Grey is doing a free on-line workshop for people who get the book. I've signed up for the the Yahoo workshop group and started Lesson One which became available on November 1. Below is what I have so far. It is going to be a vessel of sorts.

It didn't come out exactly like it was supposed to, but I didn't have all the right supplies yet. I'm definitely having fun though! So if you are a fan of Maggie Grey, this book is a must have! Join the on-line workshop, too. It's not too late. The second lesson won't go up until December so there is plenty of time to get the book and play with new techniques with us!

Here's a detail shot below. I scanned it and couldn't seem to capture the colors right, but you can get the idea. I did some spraying of color on it and it was only by some miracle that I didn't spray the bright, white scarf Mom was needle-felting into nearby. She moved further away from me after that. I'm a bit too reckless with messy stuff. There were always people in my art classes who could do drawings with charcoal or paintings with acrylic or something and never get themselves messy. I never could understand how they did it. I'd be walking across campus later with charcoal smudges on my face. Anyway, the next time I tried the spraying technique, I set up a cardboard barrier around my project.

I've been hoping to put a little needle-felting project here for a while now, but I just can't seem to get around to taking the photos necessary to complete the idea. Oh well. It will happen eventually.

O brave new world

2008-11-05T10:19:00.004-05:00

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world
That hath such people in't!"

~Shakespeare's The Tempest

"Ann Lee's Walking Wearables"

2008-09-29T21:16:00.007-04:00

You have to check out the video of Mom's jacket fashion show at WASAA.org! It's so much fun! Anna said that we'll get a copy of it. She had to compress to file so don't expect video quality isn't like Netflicks or something. I love Anna's title for the video, "Ann Lee's Walking Wearables."

I sent out my article for the next Fibre & Stitch issue last night. This one's about experimenting with needle-felting. I was looking through my pictures folder last night and realized that I'd totally forgotten about one of my first forays into incorporating needle-felting into my artwork. I used needle-felting for attaching the holographic Angelina fibers to a piece of black velvet that I had put lighter spots on with a bleach pen. Here is a detail that sort of shows the holographic Angelina fibers. They aren't easy to photograph.

The whole piece is sort of like a view of space at night. Again the combination of black velvet and holographic Angelina is not the easiest surface to photograph. Maybe someday I'll fork over the money for professional photography...
The article for Fibre & Stitch talks about needle-felting Angelina so you'll have to check that out for more details.

Yippee!!!

2008-08-26T15:15:00.012-04:00

There are so many things to be excited about lately! The other night I got my log in info to access the new issue of "Fibre & Stitch." Guess who's art that is on the cover? Yup, that's one o' mine! It's too cool. Then of course you can turn to page 11 for "Needle-Felting, An Embellisher Alternative" by Sonja Lee-Austin and Ann Lee! http://www.fibreandstitch.com/

Other nifty news is that the Lowell Zoning Board approved the Live/Work space at Western Avenue Studios! This struggle to get approval was what the "Dirty, Smelly, Noisy" exhibit a while ago was about. Here's an article that was in the Lowell Sun about it: Cheers as Lowell ZBA approves artists' live-work units and here's the info about the artist's live/work space: http://www.liveatwas.com/

Mom and I are also still floating from having our exhibit, Fluid Blue - Fabric Art in the Loading Dock Gallery.

Photo by Sam Slike

Here are some images from the exhibit and the fashion show of Mom's jackets. You should also check out Liz's awesome photos and details about the fashion show at her blog: http://madeinlowell.blogspot.com/

Photo by Sam Slike

Pret-a-Porter = ready to wear

2008-07-31T12:30:00.005-04:00

I had to look up "pret-a-porter" in the on-line dictionary this morning when I got to work. Nancye Tuttle (who writes for the Lowell Sun newspaper) stopped by Western Avenue Studios the other day and checked out our just hung exhibit "Fluid Blue - Fabric Art." I guess she liked it because here we are in the Lowell Sun:

Friends Fabric returns with prêt-à-porter - The Lowell Sun
By Nancye Tuttle ntuttle@lowellsun.com LOWELL -- Newbury Street North isn't the usual description you'd hear for the Loading Dock Gallery at Western Avenue Studios. That may change when Fluid Blue -- Fabric Art opens this week. View Full Story

She included a nice big picture of one of Ann's linen damask jackets:

Oh, the other good news lately is that my husband, Nick, got a great full-time teaching job at a charter school in Lawrence! It's way cool! We had to indulge in mojitos at Cobblestones that night with my mom and dad to celebrate. Oddly enough his first day at work is our first anniversary. Go figure...

Here's another taste of the tailoring and an illustration of the range of design for Mom's jackets that will be in the exhibit and modeled at the fashion show at our opening reception. (This isn't one of my best photographs.)

Here's one of my pieces that is in the exhibit. The photo also isn't that great. It is also taken before the piece was finished. It has a lot of hand stitching that you can't really see except in person. I hope to post photos of the artwork from the exhibit on-line which should include better quality photos.
For more exhibit details visit: http://www.friendsfabricart.com/FluidBlue.html

Art with the Governor

2008-06-06T12:40:00.007-04:00

Check out this blog of photographer Carlton SooHoo for a picture of me with other Lowell artists including Carlton who is next to me, the Governor Deval Patrick, and Senator Steven Panagiotakos! Be sure to check out Carlton's photo of the Boston skyline that was in the exhibit, too.
http://panospin.blogspot.com/2008/06/governor-senator-with-artists.html

We were at the art reception at Senator Panagiotakos' Boston office in the Ways & Means office at the State House and the Governor dropped by. It was so exciting! The exhibit was held to feature Lowell's creative economy.

Here is the piece I had for the exhibit. There is actually more space between the 6 panels, but this picture shows how the panels are intended to be one continuous landscape. It is abstracted from photos of Halibut Point in Rockport. It was initially meant to be hung in the round. I created it for my senior art show in college. You can see detail images here: http://www.friendsfabricart.com/Galleries/SonjasGallery_2.htm
If you are in the area, don't forget to visit "Dirty, Smelly, Noisy." The opening party is tomorrow, Saturday, June 7th, 6-10 pm and you can visit Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios earlier tomorrow from noon to 5pm.

Nifty Paint Shop Pro Filters

2008-05-30T11:55:00.012-04:00

I have been messing with computer graphics lately thanks to the inspiration from Maggie Grey's blog: http://magstitch.blogspot.com/ She has been discussing using the Displacement Maps feature in Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. Her results are amazing and I kept looking for something similar in an older version of Paint Shop Pro that I have access to. I may not be able to do displacement maps at the moment, but I've been having fun with a feature called Arithmetic as you can see below.

This first image is a combination of a photo of my silk-screened water fabric (in the March post) and a photo of a mountain in Juneau, Alaska. I did a Reflection Effect called Rotating Mirror to the fabric photo first. I think I played with the coloring a bit, too.

In case you are curious, here is the Juneau image:This one is putting the Juneau mountain picture together with an image of mountains in Glacier Bay. The Glacier Bay image is the same image that I posted a while ago in the April post.This one started with another photo of screen-printed water fabric and another photo, but I can't remember which one at the moment. I think it was the same Glacier Bay one. I also did something to the color, but I don't remember that either. I guess I should pay more attention, but I get carried away trying different effects. I think I'm going to have to print some of these on fabric to stitch into!

Dirty, Smelly, Noisy show opens this weekend so I should have pics soon! I can't wait to see where they put my "Trash Vases."

Dirty, Smelly, Noisy, Silly…

2008-05-10T10:33:00.004-04:00

Mom and I have both been working on art for an upcoming exhibit called “Dirty, Smelly, Noisy.” There is even a website! http://www.dirtysmellynoisy.com/ Opening date is June 6th so we have to get busy getting the art finished. Mom (Ann) is focusing on the “Noisy” and I’m focusing on the “Dirty.” She is re-envisioning her violin made out of papers and mixed media for the Scrolls exhibit that we participated in last summer.

I am playing with trash—mostly plastic bottles, plastic baggies, and other things I can’t easily recycle at my condo. Yes, I cleaned them so they aren’t really dirty. My first idea for artwork for the exhibit was a relatively tame idea, but now I’ve gone a bit silly. Just imagine what on earth I could be doing with silvery lamé leggings and fishnet tights along with my plastic trash!

Aside from that I have started to write an article for the on-line mixed-media zine - Fibre & Stitch. Mom and I are co-writing it. The article will be in issue 5, I believe. Not the next issue, but the one after that. It’s all about needle-felting your art. I’m tempted to make it a two-part article with the first one having the basics and the second one going into the more unusual materials and techniques for needle-felting. I’m having fun making the samples for the photographs, but I won’t be sharing them here – at least not until the zine issue is out – so you’ll just have to wait.

Fluid Blue

2008-04-03T12:54:00.005-04:00

Mom and I have gotten ourselves into doing a new Mother/Daughter art exhibit this August during the Lowell Quilt Festival. It will be in the wonderful, new Loading Dock Gallery at Western Avenue Studios! Our theme this time around is Fluid Blue since I tend to be obsessed with all things blue and "fluid" goes along with my current exploration of water. Mom, of course, also adores "blue" and wants to create more of her stunning jackets and her latest jacket is "fluid" in the drape of the fabric. At any rate, we are creating fabrics to work with for our exhibit and below are photos of my first round of fabric creation for the art-to-be. The first two were created from my water Thermofax silk screen. I'm pretty darn happy with how they came out.
This one was created with a simple tape resist on a silk-screen. I'm wishing I had been more careful about the edges of the silk screen so I wouldn't have gotten the vertical lines from the edge of the screen. Live and learn...
It's still pretty cool though. I suppose that's all for now!

Creative Link Crazy

2008-03-06T12:15:00.004-05:00

I have been remiss in keeping this blog current although I never made any promises to anyone about it. It is just one of those ideas floating around somewhere that I should try to post here regularly such as once a month at least.

So if you have seen me on a computer, you probably know that I am a compulsive web surfer. I follow any link that looks remotely interesting. This story starts with a link from the Surface Design Association newsletter's page with suggested links. I read the newsletter more thoroughly than the full-color journal. I am more likely to study the photos in the journal since the articles are in a more formal, academic style.

It all started with this link: http://creativityjourney.blogspot.com/ which is a great resource, but dangerous because it contains lots of other links to cool websites. This site led me to the Crochet Coral Reef exhibit which is an amazing, fun project on a very serious subject and the site contains info about the serious stuff such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, only a disgustingly large floating patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean - Yikes!

Crochet Coral Reef, with info on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: http://theiff.org/reef/index.html

There was also a cool link about sweaters for penguins. I wish there were more pictures. There is one black and white picture part way down the page that will give you the general idea. Apparently people were knitting penguin sweaters to protect them from oil spillage. The project is done now so I guess there is no hope of getting more photos of penguins in sweaters which sounds so cute and silly, but has such a darker history. http://www.tct.org.au/jumper.htm
At any rate somehow this led me to http://www.treehugger.com/ I'm not quite sure how I got there, but it came from the need to "Do Something!" and of course learn more about how on earth to try to at least stop contributing to things like the increasing size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Treehugger.com is a great resource. Being in the U.S. and having the site focus on suppliers and locations in the U.K. of eco-friendly stuff and recycling projects made it necessary for me to keep looking for more info.

The Green Guide was my next find. http://www.thegreenguide.com/ It is run by the old favorite National Geographic which I used to study the pictures in when my parents used to get it. So it ought to be trustworthy info if it is related to the National Geographic. At least that's my thinking. It has great articles filled with useful info and what you can do such as help reduce the over abundance of plastic garbage a.k.a. made-from-oil, non-biodegradable, floating gunk.
So have I given you some idea of how crazy I get with web surfing?! The Green Guide site had a great article about photography artist Chris Jordan: http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/122/jordan
If you go to his site to look at his artwork, I recommend that you sit down before you look at his stunning Katrina photos. They made my stomach drop. http://www.chrisjordan.com/

All these websites led me to try to get some concept of how much plastic I use and dispose of all the time without thinking about it. As a curiosity project, I am trying to collect plastics that I normally throw out to see how much it really is and to possibly try to use them in artwork or recycle. I've learned that it is extremely tempting to just throw something out especially when it is plastic covering from a frozen dinner that is covered with tomato sauce or otherwise messy and don't even get me started on the plastic baggies. I use plastic baggies for everything for my lunches, but they get messy and how on earth am I going to manage to keep cleaning and saving them? It's just too easy to toss. There must be a better solution. I suppose it is mostly rethinking how I package things to go and finding nifty new product alternatives such as a reusable sandwich wrap I found somewhere...

To get back to the more thoroughly textile art theme here is a link to Maggie Grey's blog which is fantastic to read. http://magstitch.blogspot.com/ She has written or co-written a number of exciting textile/fiber/mixed media art books including Stitch, Dissolve, Distort.

For my own art I have been playing with part of a photo from my Alaska cruise honeymoon. It's a bit of water that I edited to black and white and simplified in order to make a thermofax silk-screen of it. We were going to have a Thermofax silk-screen class last Saturday, but with snow and what-not we have postponed it and slightly altered the topic to Screen-Printing Play for this Saturday.
Here's the original photo:
and then a slightly edited and cropped version:And for a last link, here is Liz Smith's blog who has posted pictures of our new gallery at Western Avenue Studios for her March 4th entry. You can also see her cool instructions for making felted beads and snowy Lowell: http://madeinlowell.blogspot.com/

Next time maybe I'll try not to go quite so link crazy.

P.S. I thought I was done with this post and the links, but Mom saved an article for me from the New York Times and it was about the Crochet Coral Reef! I'm not sure if the link will work, but here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/arts/design/04crochet.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=crochet&st=nyt&oref=slogin
Now I have to go read it!

World Beach

2008-01-15T19:02:00.001-05:00

Check it out! My rock art creation is on the Victoria & Albert's website for Sue Lawty's World Beach project: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/lawty/world_beach/map_gallery/index.php?section=2&postIndex=0

This is an amazing project. I got interested in playing with rocks at the beach by looking through all the wonderful photographs of rock art around the world. Here is a photo of my creation from the opposite angle of the photo on the V+A website.

Here is my hubby, Nick, and Ole in front of the Pavillion at Rocky Neck State Park in Connecticut. They walked around most of the time I was playing with rocks, but Nick did contribute a small collection of rocks to the project and Ole made sure that a few sections were just right by knocking them over so I had to fix them. Ole also made it on to the V+A website as my helper in the "in progress" photo.
I had an awesome time! I encourage you to play with rocks on your own or with friends at a beach near you! (you might want to wait until the weather warms up a bit more...)

For more details about World Beach & how to participate:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/lawty/world_beach/map_gallery/index.php?section=1&postSearch=&category=&start=0&show=12

Needle Felted Fun

2007-12-26T16:42:00.001-05:00

Needle-felting is one of the nifty relatively-new fiber art forms that is getting attention lately. In my Mixing Media workshop, needle-felting is just one of the techniques that we experiment with. It involves persistent poking of fibers through your chosen surface with a felting needle. It can be great for expending nervous energy or frustration! The felting needle has little barbs along it that capture the fibers and pull them through your background fabric or felt. The needles don't have the most comfortable handle since they were originally designed for use in a machine and not for handwork.

For the type of needle-felting that I usually do, you need:

Felting needles (preferably more than one because they can break),
A background such as a piece of fabric and some quilt batting or a piece of felt
Some fibers such as wool or silk
A piece of foam, house insulation, or special needle-felt mat to put behind your work and protect your table
A chopstick or wooden skewer can also be very useful to hold your fibers in place especially if you like to do detailed work. It is best to keep your fingers out of the way of the needle as much as possible. The needles are VERY sharp and they hurt! Believe me. I know!

The following picture is a small piece that I created with some of the materials from a Stef Francis Experimental Pack . I used the EP2 pack called Unusual Cottons & More on our Friends Fabric Art shop website. The pack has some hand-dyed scrim also known as cheesecloth which distresses beautifully when it is needle-felted.

an Experimental Pack (EP2) - Unusual Cottons & More These packs come with silk throwsters waste fibers which needle-felt beautifully. If you look back at my little needle-felted piece, the lovely swirly fibers are the silk throwsters waste fibers. Bamboo fibers pictured below are also great fun to needle-felt because they are so soft.
Yet another type of fun fibers to play with are Angelina fibers. They are a great addition to a piece that needs a bit of glitter! The best part is that you can use the metal and jewel-toned Angelina fibers that won't work for Angelina heat-fusing projects.

In addition to hand needle-felting the Embellisher is a fancy new machine like a sewing machine which you may have read about. It will do your needle-felting for you with the press of a pedal instead of using more of your own "man-power." Embellish & Enrich is a new Jan Beaney & Jeanne Littlejohn book that introduces you to the basics and potential of using an Embellisher in your artwork.
It is even possible to needle-felt into silk. Here is a piece I created with some needle-felting into a silk painting. Most of the darker lines in this piece are needle-felting. I did fuse the fibers on the backside with some "Wonder-Under" to give the fibers some stability to keep them from being easily pulled out. You wouldn't want to use a silk or other synthetic material that is slippery without a backing material such as felt or quilt batting. If you needle-felt into something that is too smooth and slippery your fibers won't want to stick to it. Aside from that, play away and have a Fiber-Filled Happy New Year!

Stitching Train Commute

2007-11-03T18:54:00.000-04:00

I've been busy cleaning and organizing our condo while adjusting to married life. There hasn't been a lot of time for artsy stuff, but Mom and I try to hang out at the studio one night a week to be creative and chat. Mom's been busy making gorgeous pieced jackets.

I haven't been very focused on any particular project except for my never-ending embroidery piece. It started out by playing with a William Morris pattern on the computer and printing it onto Damask linen fabric from an old tablecloth soaked in Bubble Jet Set (a special soak that makes printer inks permanent on fabric). I put batting and a backing piece of fabric behind the linen and started doing embroidery with Stef Francis hand-dyed threads, some silk ribbon that I dyed, and some reflective thread. I keep thinking that maybe I'll do a little bit more stitching and then I'll be done, but I keep stitching. It will have to been done relatively soon as I will run out of areas that haven't all ready been stitched unless of course I start layering the stitches.... It has been a very soothing project to work on while riding the train home from Boston. Occasionally I feel a bit weird doing artsy stitching on the train, but no one seems to pay much attention to each other so I don't seem to be drawing any confused stares anyway. I've figured out little nifty tricks to make stitching on a train easier like loosely tying the extra threads that I am using around my wrist so I don't have to keep putting them away and taking them out again.

I started working a new job this summer in addition to sharing my artistic passions with my mom at Friends Fabric Art. I am working in Boston (hence the train rides) for the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance & Policy as a Policy Analyst. I'm sure you can tell from the title that it isn't directly art-related, but it is interesting and my co-workers are very nice. I had fun decorating my cubicle with all my artsy stuff. I keep having visions of hanging more artwork all over the halls and cubicles to brighten things up more.

Fabric Friendly Wedding and Alaska Honeymoon

2007-09-08T13:41:00.000-04:00

I'm finally writing here again. So much has happened, but I can't possibly write it all down because then I'd have to turn writer and write a biography. Here are some pictures from the wedding and honeymoon anyway. You can see my dress here that Mom made for me and Mom to the right of me made her dress, too. Nick's parents Bob and Karen are on the left of Nick and I. My parents, Ann and Jim are on the right.

Here is a pic to show how gorgeous the bridesmaids' dresses came out! Yup, Mom made all of them, too. I only did the decorative thread-work stitching on the waistbands.

Who's who, left to right: My brother-Peter, Nick's friend-Matt, Nick's brothers' Ryan and Kris, Nick, me, my high school friend-Jenn, my college friends-Sarah, Kellie, Molly.

Here's a pic of Kellie being silly with bouquets. You can see the waistband stitching here, too. On to the honeymoon. I had to take this picture for the great shop name, the Wandering Wardrobe, a fun artsy clothing store we ran across in our long walk through Skagway, Alaska. We walked to the edge of town to get to the Gold Rush Cemetery and then to Reid Waterfall. The waterfall was goreous, but of course, I forgot to check my camera batteries before we left so I couldn't take pictures because the batteries were burnt out.
Each day on the cruise our room steward made us a new towel origami animal. The elephant was too cute so here he is:
And just for a taste of the tons of photos that I took of all the splendid scenery in Alaska, below is a mountains and glacier photo.
Ah, and you must have a look at the happy couple on honeymoon. We are in Glacier Bay on the cruise ship by glacier that we stopped in front of for a few hours. I neglected to pay attention to the name of the glacier.
That's all for now. I wanted to write something at least since it has been so long, so very long... Perhaps I can get back to something more "textilian" next time.

Cheers!

Three-Dimensional Fabric

2007-05-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about writing about Paverpol for a bit now. It is a new thing that we got because of a request for Friends Fabric Art. The book: "Creative Recycling in Embroidery" by Val Holmes discusses using Paverpol to create fabric vessels.

So what is this Paverpol? It thickens or stiffens fabric and makes it water-resistant. Unless you are going to apply it to fabric thinly with a brush or water it down, it will give the fabric a slick look as if it has been varnished. So far I have only created two flowers with my bits of left over duppioni. I am working on putting together a more complete set of instructions for how to make these fabric flowers. On the Paverpol USA website they give directions for making a figurine. (http://www.paverpolusa.com/projects/index.shtml)

The first flower I made was about as simple as you can get with only four petal shapes cut out of duppioni, dipped in Paverpol and draped over a plastic covered bowl with a pipe cleaner as a stem. I meant to finish it up by covering the pipe cleaner with green fabric for a stem and adding a beaded center to the flower, but so far it doesn't look much different than the picture here that shows how I formed it over the bowl.
My next flower attempt was a bit more sophisticated as I graduated to five petals. I also used Paverpol thinned a bit with water for the petals so that they weren't quite so static and plastic-like.I also got so far as to cover the stem and add a leaf to this one. I still haven't gotten around to making the flower center more interesting with beads or fibers. That would be why the picture doesn't bother to show the center of the flower.

Paverpol has a newer product, Paverplast, that allows you to make watertight vessels and figurines for garden ornaments, but so far my experiments with it have come out lousy and definitely not photograph-worthy. I was trying to convert grams into American measurements and got myself totally confused. You have to mix in the proportion of 100gms of Paverplast to one Liter of Paverpol to make a mixture that will create a watertight vessel or object when it is applied. If you add more Paverplast, then the mixture is more of a sculpting putty. I should have simply used the scale to measure out a smaller number of grams. Ah well. Next time I'll be more careful. (Click here to see Paverpol products available from Friends Fabric Art.)

I haven't had much of a chance to try anything new since Mom is away on a cruise with Dad in Alaska. That leaves me to check in all these cool new books that we got from Thames and Hudson which will be showing up on the web shop shortly. All of them have stunning photos. The one that I got for myself at Barnes and Noble with a gift certificate is "The Art of Embroidery."
Last night I was at Rising Star Quilters' Guild to vend for Friends Fabric Art which was awesome because Amy Ropple was giving a talk. It was great to see slides of her art quilts and hear about textiles and beads from Turkey. Aside from vending and checking in books, I've been working on installing a Fedex shipping module on our web shop so customers can get more accurate shipping estimates. The downside is that I am going to have to start weighing everything that is available in the web shop because Fedex needs that information to give a shipping estimate. So much for an easy answer!

My, I have chattered away. Enjoy the sunshine!

Duppioni Bridesmaids' Dresses

2007-04-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

Mom has speedily put together the first of my bridesmaids' dresses. It only needs to be hemmed. I only stitched the middle part at the waist. This one is for my maid of honor, Jenn. It's made out of duppioni silk like my wedding dress. Some of the fabrics are "shot silk" which I learned is the word for silk that shimmers with two different colors from the warp and weft being different colors. The top on this dress is yellow &/or rose depending on the lighting.
Here's the stitching on the waist picture. I machine zig-zag stitched over Stef Francis hand-dyed thick rayon threads. On my practice piece of fabric I played with using some of the fancy machine stitches instead of zig-zag, but I liked how the zig-zag stitch best for the dress. Some of the stitches made the threads separate out in a cool way that would be a fun technique to play with on another project.
On another note, I captured the digger of the big hole near the Western Ave Studios building on camera today. Looks like a woodchuck. I had Ole with me and he didn't even bark at it. The woodchuck kept looking back at me while I took its picture. I'm glad it didn't turn out to be a more vicious animal residing in the hole.