Friday, February 24, 2012

New & Not So New Work

These are older pieces that have been hanging on my wall. "Koi Pond" will get some rubbing at some point and I will post when I get there. "The Love You Threw Away" is the 1st in a series I have rolling around my head.
Koi Pond

The Love You Threw Away

Color Study 1 (working title) is the latest piece. I had created two of the patterns months ago and just got the third pattern done while I was working on the piece post earlier this month "The Rest of the Story".
Color Study 1

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Valentine's

Here are a few things I made of Valentine's Day this year. Thanks to Pinterest and Cricut!



The rest of the story

The finished work working with my screen printing. I made two rubbing plates, one with squares and the other with pennies. matched the shapes and the colors. Then I stamped each piece with a piece of packing material for the curtain rod the held Jeanne's quilt in her bedroom. Cut one piece horizontal, the other vertical, and wove them together. Now is where I get stuck, how to quilt them...what pattern...?
This

plus this

equals this.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Ah-Ha Moment & Screen Printing

I think I have it! I don’t draw because that is just not the way I work. I want to get me hands dirty and work intuitively. Although I love to draw it is something I need to find a way to make fun, something I want to do, something I am driven to do.

Getting the hands dirty might just be the kid in me.

Santa got me three DVD’s from Quilting Arts. My favorite has been “Adventures In Surface Design” which is largely screen printing. Screen printing is something I have always wanted to do. I did it once, way way way back in junior high schoo,l in an art class. It was fun but we were using two and three colors and things had to be lined up and…..no fun.

So after watching the DVD where the host shows you how to do everything and talks about her materials and how she made things, I thought HEY! I can do that. So for the last month I have been thinking about it and this week I went and got all the materials I needed to make screens and printing boards. Two 10x12 screens (screen surface) and two 24 x36 printing boards were less then $35. So not a large investment. I used newspaper stencils, as was shown in the video and acrylic paint. Lets face it we all have some old craft paint laying around the house. I am making art quilts not bed quilts so I can use anything! So below are a few pictures of my 1st attempt at screen printing. I have a lot more I want to do to the pieces, like rubbings and stamping. Then the two pieces will be cut up and pieced together. I will take more pictures as I work on them.

Screens and Boards

Circles and Squares

The Others (should have posted last month)

There are blogs I read on a regular basis. I am always surprised how wonderfully some people write. Writing has never been my thing, if it weren’t for spell check I would be in big trouble. I am told, by me sister, that I am getting better so at this rate I will be a good about the time I kick the bucket.

I have learned to look at their blogs and enjoy their work but not compare mine to there’s, they are not me nor am I them…I am looking for my voice, I don’t want to learn to speak there language.

I made just one new years resolution, to sketch daily! Well it is the 8th and I have had my journal open three times and one of those was to try out some new stamps I made from curtain packing material. Tonight I cracked open my journal while Thom finished watching some unsolved misery (mystery)show, can you tell I can’t stand those shows but that is a story for another day. Like I was saying I cracked it open and did a little sketching with suggestions made in one of my Christmas presents.: Quilted Symphony--A Fusion of Fabric, Texture & Design. I am thinking about mixing the designs with a few idea I had from last Saturday’s Quilting Arts TV show on PBS. We will both just have to see what happens.

Ok that is not at all what I was thinking I was going to write. What I was thinking about writing was about how hard it is to sketch…I have ideas but they are never fully formed in my mind. I think about art and quilting all day long, when I am not thinking about work that is. Right now I am maxed out on my office space in the house so I am also doing a lot of thinking about how to get more out of my space, I need more work space, more storage space. Then there is my dream of a bigger sewing machine. I keeping thinking I will be a great artist when I get a Sweet 16. But my new mantra this year is “I already have everything I need to be…” fill in the blank. I have Quilting Arts next readers challenge up and I am thinking about what that is going to require. I have a piece that I am trying to finish that is 40% complete but I can’t seem to move forward on it, fear of making a mistake or making the wrong next move. But I stop and go to my biggest addiction, Pinterest, and I read my other mantra “You’re exactly were you need to be”. So I guess I will keep fumbling through my life, my work and my art.