Category: Art Projects

St. Patrick’s Machine Quilting: Not Exactly Green Beer

Well it’s St. Patrick’s Day and I’m NOT playing any fiddle tunes tonight. My tell-all of my experience in Tucson’s dysfunctional Irish music community will be coming up in a future post; right now, while it’s hard to tell in the photo below, I just quilted around all the poppies in this latest piece:

Here’s a close-up:

And here’s the back:

I think I’ll just stipple the border. Then try and frame it. The quilting line really brings out the shape of the flowers. I used my walking-foot, as free-motion–as I mentioned before–didn’t work on this surface, thus limiting what I can do with the quilting line. But I will be able to use the free-motion foot on the border, which is just plain cotton fabric, nothing laminated.

Art Quilts, Meet Power Tools

I want to try and frame some of my newer, smaller art quilts, given that they look painterly; and if I’m successful, maybe I’ll even try framing larger pieces! Given my DIY sensibilities (why buy it if you can make it), I priced out entry-level compound mitre-saws and picked one up at a local hardware store yesterday morning: this is the tool that allows one to cut wood at a 45 degree angle, what’s needed to make frames for art.

Power tools freak me out. My mother’s father was a very gifted carpenter, as are his sons; they built the church at a nearby monastery in St. David, AZ. You’d think some of the handiness would be passed on to me. Perhaps. Sadly, when I look at power tools what comes to mind isn’t carpentry but war and torture; I’m not trying to make this political, it’s just sadly a morbid train of thought I can’t stop thanks to our war in Iraq.

But, you know, I want to make frames for my art quilts. Dour thoughts aside, I really liked firing up my new saw and hacking away at some molding strips I got at a local lumberyard.

Here’s my first set of stretcher bars!

The plan is to stretch the poppy art quilt over the bars, staple, and then build a frame to go around the stretcher-bars. To that end, and thinking optimistically, I drilled 2 holes on the top and bottom bars, so that I can screw the stretcher bars to the frame I eventually build.

I’d like to thank Jerry, the Sixty Minute Artist; his blog post about building frames for his paintings gave me some good ideas. Thanks Jerry!

Oh, Saguaros: Not Fade Away!

I had mixed results with the whole photocopy-collage-silk-fabric lamination thing.

Here are both collaged pieces pinned down under 100 silk organza. Yummy fabric.

After using a silkscreen to apply the gel medium, then drying, pressing, soaking and scrubbing the fabric, I was left with this faded disaster:

This is the fabric-side (as opposed to the paper-side) of the fabric. It’s so dim-looking,  I’m disappointed after all that glue-sticking. When I applied the gel medium on Saturday, the color photocopies in the collage were mostly just a few days old. I read in the book by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan on the topic that it’s best to let color photocopies “cure” for at least a week for using them. Now I know why; I thought I was exempt from this recommendation. So, I think that’s one factor.  The photocopies I used in the more successful prickly pear piece in January were 2 months old.

The other issue is perhaps the subject matter itself. Saguaros aren’t generally a bright, vibrant green; they’re looking especially parched now due to the rainless winter here, but even after inches of rain, their green is still not bright, at least not consistently. Their color isn’t enough of a contrast with the black-and-white photo background.

The poppy piece fared a bit better, this is the “fabric-side”:

This is the “paper-side”: all the paper is scrubbed off, what you see is just pigment, but the color is brighter and I think the fractured effect is a bit stronger.

And this is the same side, on top of some dyed orange fabric, instead of the white above; this of course brightens things up and will likely be what I decide to use for the backing.

Next time I spend hours on a collage I’m using photocopies that are a month old for sure. Time to get thee to a photocopy shop now, so I can start another collage next month.

Third Silk and Paper Lamination Piece: Saguaros

I’m almost done with the last of 3 silk and paper lamination pieces: this one will be saguaros. I worked on it this week after work and then this morning. I’m still stunned that it takes so long to rip up paper, apply glue-stick and then adhere to paper; seems like it should be done in no time but NO…

I’m taking a break right now from finishing it, so tomorrow I can take both this one and the poppy one outside and screen-print on the acrylic gel medium. Tonight it’s me, a glue-stick, a stack of shredded paper on my ironing board, my dog and C-Span. Now that is commitment.

My pattern is based on this photograph; saguaros are themselves creatures of amusing and intriguing design, and when in a saguaro forest the interaction of their shapes never ever bores me:


Poppy Collage Finished!

Jeez, this took longer than I expected: total size will be 16″x 20″:

It was really cold today, by Tucson standards, and it’s going to freeze tonight, so I couldn’t laminate the collage to silk organza (because the messy process is done in my backyard). I’ll have to do that after work one day this week when it’s warmer. Then I’ll have 2 in my series (the first is the prickly pear I made last month). I just made a stack of color photocopies of saguaro cactus; that will be the 3rd design in this series. Once all are done I’ll quilt them and then hopefully frame for a triptych.

I guess I’m sounding a bit confident: I’m assuming the above collage will laminate successfully, and that I’ll have similar success with the as-of-yet to be collaged saguaros. I’ll keep you posted!

New Paper and Silk Lamination Project

I started a new project today; this time, it’s poppies, a shape well known to me from my previous quilt. You can’t see it too well here, I’ll post a better photo soon; this is the first of 6 poppies:

I ripped up color photocopies of poppy photos I’d taken in my backyard the last few years; I’m making a collage of the photocopy pieces, and will transfer the completed image to silk organza.  Here are a few more of today’s poppies:

After looking at my work, I’ve decided the shape on the left is going to have to go; I think it’s best if the poppies kind of “match” and the one on the left has blue in the “wrong” places. For some reason, the old Sesame Street song “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other” came to mind as I tried to figure out what was bugging me.

I’ll post better photos tomorrow or the next day, my work day permitting.

Print Paste Recipe

I hope to screen print some fabric soon, and that means making print paste. Anything not food-related gets prepared outside; in this case, by the washing machine, where the electrical outlet is located. Here are the ingredients….

…sodium alginate, urea (sheep’s urine; you see why this is not in the kitchen), my chemical-only-use food processor, some empty containers, a gallon of hot water.

First the urea (1 cup, divided, 1/2 cup for the first quart, 1/c cup for the next quart) is dissolved in close to a quart of hot water (above) in the food processor, and then 1/4 cup of sodium alginate is slowly poured in as the hot urea water swirls around, if you don’t dissolve the sodium alginate slowly and into moving water, you get clumps; the mixture quickens rapidly:

Here’s a nice smooth quart of thickening print paste. I pour this into a 2 1/2 quart container, add a quart of warm water, and then let it sit. I do the whole thing again to make another 2 quarts of print paste.

I don’t add water softener, like some recipes call for.

I left this out for a week, thinking it was cool enough; I was wrong. I checked the print paste and it had small bits of mold starting to grow on the top!! I had no idea. I quickly scraped off the mold and put the paste where it belongs, on a back shelf of my fridge.

I think my paste is a bit thin. I don’t think half a cup of sodium alginate per gallon of water is thick enough for painting, but I think I could use it for screen printing.

Progress…

Tomorrow is my only day off this week. I have to work in my garden; it’s going to get warm here quite soon and I have beet and carrot beds to dig up and get ready for something for spring, which is a very short season around here. Maybe snow peas. We’ll see.

Yesterday I put a mitered border on the laminated silk organza piece I posted about a few weeks ago. I don’t know if this type of border really works for such a non-traditional bit of fabric….but this is just a sample. I’m going to quilt it within the next few days and see how it goes:

This is roughly 16″ x 22″.

Curtains

I’m embarrassed to say that this is what the curtains in my house have looked like for the past……6 years.

My mom made these for me years ago when I lived in a different house, with different windows, and they looked GREAT there.

Over 6 years ago, when I bought my house, it came with the original 1958 ugly drafty casement windows; and I just wanted to cover them up with anything possible. So I used the old curtains.

A whole year ago, I posted about the new windows I had installed to replace the ugly ones. And since then, I haven’t changed the curtains. Too busy landscaping, sewing, etc.

But that changed last week. Enough, I realized, was enough. I put my nose to the grindstone and measured, cut, and sloppily top-stitched 12 different panels for my windows; and then I dyed the panels yellow, because my adobe brick house is dark. I also painted the window trim yellow to match. Yellow is a high-value color, and normally it would be too bright, but in a dark house it works well.  I would’ve been done sooner but got a bit crippled by neck pain and then a sprained sacro-illiac joint, and my birthday was in there somwhere as well.

Now things look a lot brighter:

Here’s the sewing area….

I’m very pleased. It looks less gloomy.