First sound of my new voice

At the Jane Dunnewold workshop, I found my voice. It wasn't just what we did in the workshop but the realization of what I truly loved. I actually have three loves: portraits, ravens and crows, and color and texture.
This is the first piece in my new voice, color and texture. First let me say that it has been raining or overcast for weeks and the colors in my photo are not true. The photo does give a pretty good idea of the design elements but not of the way the colors work off each other.

I dyed a LOT of burlap, scrim, wool yarn, thread and woolen batts. The colors are horrible in the photos so I'll wait until the sun comes out and retake them as well as my first piece. I will show this first photo taken with a flash and poor color correction.

This piece of woolen batt was dyed at Vicki Jenson's dyeing workshop at ProChemical and Dye last year. I was just "getting rid" of left over dye before cleaning up for the night. When I saw how it came out I wanted to frame the piece of wool like a piece of art. I loved the colors.
In this first piece, I used all hand dyed wool, burlap and threads as well as a shell (emerging from the burlap), beads, sari yarn, and metallic threads. I love it because it's my first piece. I learned a lot making it and the colors are so scrumptious that I want to eat it. Stay tuned for more along this theme. I am going to also incorporate dyed and batiked silks in my work.
Newer pictures with slightly better light:

Jane Dunnewold Workshop

I had the time of my (recent) life at Jane's 5 day workshop at ProChemical and Dye in Fall River, Massachusetts. What a wonderful woman. We learned about making and using soy wax (mix) crayons, soy wax (mix) paste and hot wax. The crayons and paste each had it's own recipe with the crayon wax being a proprietary mix developed by Jane and Lisa Kerpoe. After experimenting with the three products, I had to see where I could fit these processes into my work.
I felt most at home using the hot wax in my batik work. I will show the processes of experimentation I used during the 5 days.

                                                               Click for larger images

These were sample colors of the wax crayons and some rubbings I did of textured surfaces

                                         This was more of the same - crayon rubbings

All three of these were done in the first or second day when we were getting different results from the 2 skillets of wax. One was running hotter than the other and was exhausting the color/wax.

This is a piece of Charmeuse and I was just beginning to "get it". I like it

 One day I started with a piece of linen and the hot wax had been heated too long the previous day and when I went to paint of thickened dye, all the dye that was supposed to be in suspension ran right out and mixed with the thickened dye. I got frustrated trying to wash out the dye from the wax with water because the dyes were coloring the pretreated fabric in smears so I just tossed it in the trash can. Jane said, "Boy, you sure give up easily". I took the challenge and snatched a bit of victory from the jaws of defeat. Here is the finished piece below.

After getting out as much dye from the wax by scrubbing in water, I drizzled black wax then over dyed with turquoise thickened dye. Not bad considering I dug it out of the trash can.

Now I was starting to "get it" and found what iI wanted to do with my new knowledge and experience/experiments.
These are two scarves that look WAY better in person. All these photos were taken today with heavy overcast.

                                                         Here are some samples that I like. The first is folded, dipped in two colors of wax and dyed in the void.

                                      Starting to like what I see (Charmeuse)
                                                       And these are my favs.

 

The final word on what I did in class was trying to develop what I was learning into a design technique I wanted to keep and use.

I forgot to get permission to post pictures of my classmates but here is a photo of Jane and I and also a special picture of Jane and I for my cyber quilt friend in the Netherlands, Sandra.

Thread sketching

I have been sketching again since I started watching DMTV.  Just the other day I was think of turning one of my sketches into a thread sketch. Wasn't I surprised to find one of the talented women whose blogs I follow did just that. Sandra from the Netherlands did some interesting sketches of a boat using three different techniques. I did a thread sketch of a raven (so what's new) and then attempted to paint the sections like Linda Kemshall does. I don't think mine came out very well. I decided to try it again but this time leave just he thread. So here are my two attempts at thread sketching.

The first I traced off my pencil sketch with water soluble pen and washed. The second I traced in pencil but haven't yet removed the pencil. I think I will continue to explore this technique more.

Clean up

I finished "Spring Flowers" and made a label for it. Now I wish I had seen the Kemshall's DMTV show about facings before I used a yard of hand dyed olive to pillowcase the quilt. I'm all set for the next one. At the same time I made a label for "Collateral Damage" but never put it on because I have never felt this quilt was done. It was the green tops of the trees that were giving me angst. Yesterday I removed all the hand dyed cheese cloth I used on the trees and knew I had to do it differently. I now love what I have done and hope to have it on the blog in a few days. I will also free motion on the strip of red silk charmeuse. Stay tuned.

A few days ago I decided to work out some ideas for "Spring Air". I finally found an excuse to use the new waterciors I bought from the DMTV store. Wow. I've never used such heavily pigmented watercolors before. Very luxurious. Anyway, I was trying to work out how to spread the billows of air out in a shape that could be hung.

 

This is as far as I got with my planning. I know that many times the quilt ends up looking little like the sketch but it is a start. Meanwhile I will continue tying up loose ends with "Collateral Damage" then move on to "Spring Air". I also have a series of crows I am doing as thread sketches. They should be interesting.

Spring Flowers

I renamed the "spring 9 patch" after dyeing more fabric for another improvisational quilt about spring air. I have not started on this. I am doing a parfait dye for the technique driven blog I am involved with called And then we set it on fire  As I type I am over-dyeing 6 pieces of black and white fabric using yellow (bottom), blue (middle), and red (top) dyes in a parfait for the blog. Photos will be added to THIS post later today so if they're not here check back in a few hours.
I lost a good friend this week. She was a lovely lady I stayed nights with for 3 years and her loss has left a bit of a hole in my heart. I wanted to do a mindless piece of quilting to just let my mind spin in neutral so I made a pin cushion out of scraps from Spring Flowers. It was the first piece I made using paper piecing. It was fun and just what the doctor ordered. I got the pattern from the Kemshalls, Thr3fold Journal #4.

Meanwhile...
Here are the pieces I dyed Parfait style. What a bust. They are too primary even though I added a pinch of black to knock back the colors. Not every experiment is a success.

                                                      These are embroidery threads I added

                                                       This one I like.

I'll never be a successful documenter

  This past weekend, the FIVE took a workshop from Wen Redmond on "Digging into digital printing". For the first time in so long I can't even remember when, I carefully saved samples and documented every step of each variety of medias both substrates and grounds. I came home and neatly placed everything in a plastic folder and placed it carefully on the shelf for future reference.

Today I decided to dye ONE piece of fabric for the back of my spring flowers quilt (a.k.a. Spring nine patch - see below). I was very excited about the wonderful olive green and used a turquoise sponge to wipe up a spill. OLIVE AND TURQUOISE! I made many trips up the stairs for more and more fabric, making turquoise with blue and black, then turquoise with golden yellow, then one with even more golden yellow. Then I thought "What if I take the fabric out of the dye after an hour (I used scalding hot water to mix the dyes) and add more fabric to the partially exhausted dye"? Or what if I use full strength dye in one pot and watered down dye in another?

Well, I am about to do the wash out now. My measurement of dye powder was haphazard. How much water did I add to each pot? What exactly did I do to which? I guess my commitment to documentation has fallen by the wayside. I guess when the muse is dancing there is no time for writing, at least in my studio...

The muse was dancing this week

After a month of being in a rut, not creatively, but kinetically, I have made three quilts. Two are quilted and bound and today I will quilt the last piece and pillowcase it. First I think I should say a few things about kinetics. Judith came over this Saturday and we just jumped in with both feet experimenting with new techniques. I had had all the supplies needed to do these techniques but it was being able to hold someones hand as we both jumped off the cliff that was needed to take a thought and then take the action to make it real. Thank you Judith.

I finally used that beautiful sky fabric to make and finish "Vernal Pond". I had dyed the fabrics I needed, cut three stamps for the grass and had all the ProFab paint anyone could want. I just couldn't jump. I think the work Judith and I did really helped push me off the precipice.

We had done some silk screening at Kathy's community center mid-winter and I didn't know where to go with the pieces I made. "Fly Away" is what came out.

I dyed some green fabric for a quilt about bees. It was NOT the color I wanted but I loved it. It was a yummy olive green color. I took part of it and over dyed it. Now it was darker olive green - even yummier but not the color I wanted. Well, I took the olives (both) and teamed them with some lovely purples, lavender and pinks for a representation of what I think of as Spring! I just stared to improvisationally piece these colors with a vague idea if where I was going. I just wanted to make some improv squares or should I say squarish.blocks of spring color. I will be quilting this today with both tight machine quilting and a looser hand stitch. Meanwhile you can enjoy the fabulous colors of spring...

Image that I silk screened onto fabric

Image on another fabric with words, hand stitching and a mother crow calling sketch then painted (outline) with free motion sketched details.

                                                              Vernal Pond

                                                                Vernal pond detail

                                               Improvisationally pieced  "Spring Nine Patch"