Winner of The Trickster's Hat

This give-away was on both the FIRE blog and my own (sewsewart). There were 23 comments on both blogs and the winning number was 20. The first 19 were on the FIRE blog and the last 4 were from mine. The winner is Vicki whose email address I do not have so here is her picture.

So Vicki, send me an email at beth dot from dot maine at gmail dot com. I'll be sending you the book as soon as I get your address.

I always wait at least 3 days after a give-away because some folks who email subscribe don't get the posts for 3 days.

Congratulations Vicki and thanks everyone for your comments. Creativity awaits!! 

Additions to my studio and life

This past Sunday I made a quick trip tp Boston to get two new shelves for my studio and see if I could find a few items I saw at the Amsterdam IKEA. I also needed to go before we got our new rescue dog on Monday and before the snow flew. The trip was a resounding success.

I was going to put the two book cases together making the unit 30" wide. 

This is a single book case. The folding table I removed from this spot was 30" wide. I wanted to make another "work surface" but in reality, I know I don't need another huge work table. Instead I decided to put the bookcase in from of this door that we don't use. Unfortunately there is  step too so the bookcase protrudes into the room a bit. A big "So What!"

You can see the other one across the room.

I saw this rug in Amsterdam and thought if they had it here I would buy it. Who wouldn't want a Button Rug in their studio??

I also bought a candle holder and 5 flower pots which I will have to photograph because I bought them because of their colors! Later!!

Meanwhile, I picked up our new boy, 18 months old and cute as all get out!!

Priming the creative pump

I read about this book on someone's blog and I got it. I am always looking for ways to "prime the pump" and get those creative juices flowing. The Trickster Hat can be seen here on Amazon and it's a "Look Inside " book so just click through. It started with some fairly quick and small projects one of which I found very clever.

The task for that day was to draw a rectangle 1.5 X 3" and make a paper collage using old postage stamps. It was fun and I even liked my 15 minute "art piece".

By day 4 the projects were getting longer - like an hour or two and although they sounded great, I was too impatient to start them. I think during the winter when the allure of the outdoors is waning, I might try a few. The exercises certainly pushed me outside the box.

Another quick pump primer I loved was creating a quick art work on luggage tags. While I was having chemo, I made one as many days as I could and loved the challenge of coming up with ideas. I did collage, sketch and even painted one. What great fun.

This last technique I heard about from a quilter in New York, Victoria Findlay Wolf . She said she simply took scraps of fabric and sewed them togtehr for about 15 minutes each morning. Kind of reminded me of Rayna Gillman month of posts on the FIRE blog and her book "Create your own free form quilts". I was going to have a second look at the book but I gave my copy away. Think I'll ask Judith to lend me her copy.

So I will pass along the fun and give-away a copy of the Tricksters Hat. Leave a comment. Happy Creating!!

And then I set it on fire!

I missed over two weeks of the wonderful Maine fall foliage season this year because of my trip to Malta and the Netherlands. I got that urge again to print with leaves but most of the leaves had fallen off the trees. I took a short walk and picked up a few maple, oak and ginkgo leaves. I looked for a nice dyed piece of cotton but then I spotted some natural linen and thought that would look great in browns and gold.

I got out my plate of glass, fabric paints and pouncer and started to print

Nice!

I started with the darkest colors: dark brown, dark red and used a sheet of waxed paper to lay over the backs of the painted leaves so I could rub and press without having to worry about the leaves moving or smearing paint on the linen.

That's when it happened. I torn off a sheet of waxed paper and laid it on my work table - right on top of a lit candle. The waxed paper burst into flames. It was burning too fast for me to run to the sink; I knew I'd drop it. Suddenly I remember the mist bottle I use when ironing and I sprayed water on the paper and put the fire out. My partner, Brian said, you really did set it on fire. I couldn't resist the title.

Used leaves with traces of fabric paint on them.

The finished piece about 45 X 24. Below are a few detail shots. All in all it came out great, I know my smoke alarm works and we are all safe.

Acid dyeing adventures

**ANNOUNCEMENT**

The new issue of Through Our Hands Magazine is now available and for free. I downloaded a copy as a PDF for a mere 3 pounds easily payable through PayPal.  I paid what amounts to $5. for my own personal copy because #1, this is a QUALITY magazine and #2 it requires an enormous amount of work. #3 is that copies of the first few issues could be downloaded free and #4 the editors deserve to be remunerated. Having said that it is free to view online to anyone.

This past weekend I had a "private" workshop for a friend, her sisters, mother and one friend. They wanted to make crepe de chine scarves. We did all sorts of fun things. Before folks came I made a scarf using acid dyes and small Plexiglas shapes as a shibori resist. The plates were so large that most of the dye was kept out. I ended up redyeing them this morning but it's like a dungeon in my studio with all the snow on the skylights so I'll take the re-deaux pictures later. 

Meanwhile this is our adventure.

I started out by getting out different scarves so I could tell the the different techniques and what they might expect from each.

I also brought out a few things I had for sale that they may have wanted to buy.

Although the leaves fabric wasn't for sale, I wanted to talk about my stamping class. They may be interested in the batik class this spring. Nice!

Washed out scarves waiting for the drier.

One of the women wanted to try the plexiglas sheets to do a shibori but there wasn't enough liquid in the dish that went into the microwave.

Happy faces all around.

Next morning I re-dyed both of my scarves.

While in Rome.......

While I was in Amsterdam, I thought it would be very cool to take a workshop at the DIY Textile School. It turned out that the Sunday I was there, was a workshop on knitting - but not ordinary knitting. 

The night before the class about half of the women who were in the workshop also attended a performance called Knitting for Peace at The Hague. Since I am NOT a night person, I didn't go.

We started out warming up by starting to knit. I used wool, natural raffia and soft dyed lavender raffia and ended up with Sari yarn made from twisted strips of Saris. 

Then we did an exercise with rope , saw a slide show of avante garde knitted and crocheted textiles. We finished up with knitting wire which was not what I thought it would be since we didn't use knitting needles to knit it but rather our hands.

This is the piece I knit from wire. In case you are wondering how difficult it was to take a workshop in a foreign country, it wasn't. The owner of DIY Textile School was from America and the presenter, Adrian Sloane, was from Massachusetts. Also just about everyone in the Netherlands speaks English.
It was a great time and just a fun thing to do getting together with other women from another country united in art.

 Back of card

*An update on the storm

We ended up losing power for about 7 hours. With the low temps and high winds, it didn't take long for us to get REALLY cold. We ended up in bed with blankets to keep warm. We got the power back during the night but internet and telephone was out until this morning ( 4 Nov). MANY in our state and others are still without power and cold. What a freak storm that was!! Glad it's over.

Not so funny Halloween trick

This is what I woke up to this morning.

The skylight over my bed and the window overlooking the new garage.

 It's not that I don't like snow or I wouldn't live in Maine. It's more like, November 2nd, REALLY? We have white out conditions and 50-60 MPH winds. I looked out the kitchen window at my Hydrangea tree bent in half under the weight of snow and said to myself, "With this wet snow and wind, we're going to lose power" then the lights went out. I never realized I had that much power. After a few minutes, it went back on but I can hear the wind roaring out there.

View from Brian's window

These two pics are strangely abstract and kind of cool.