This silk abstract started life as a Fast Friday Fabric challenge and has been sitting for a few years. It was monochromatic and I feel a need for color most of the time. The lutradur-style fabric Liz and I painted seemed like a good addition to take this piece further. I added it at the bottom and top and moved on to adding color on the body of the silk piece to make it cohesive.  {No, this isn’t the entire quilt and after it is quilted I will decide what direction it needs to go to next.}

On to quilting with my new Sunshine 16. This seemed a good practice since it is so organic I’m not going to worry about a skipped stitch or two. In the bottom photo you can see my Quackers that came with the machine. They have foam [think pool noodle] on the bottoms to grip the quilt. They work like a charm!  I’m linking up with Nina Marie’s Off The Wall Friday.

 

My friend Liz came down last week for a play date. It was my turn to go up to her house in Missouri but she just put her home on the market and things like dye and paint don’t bode well if they want to do a showing.  

I recently purchased a gel foam mattress pad and wrapped around in was this lutradur looking stuff that was larger than a queen size flat sheet. I laundered it because I didn’t want any chemicals from the mattress pad to affect how I used it. No way it was going to be thrown away.

We put drop cloths down, cut some large pieces off, got out the paints and away we went.  I love the way some of the texture comes through the paint.

I have already found a use for some of it. I’ve been working on an abstract piece for entry into Sacred Threads. I won’t show more just yet, but I’m really thankful I saved this stuff.

I was reading Kathy Loomis’s blog post about yarns and her disappointment with a well known brand that she has used for years. The disappointment was the change in texture.  I think there are a lot of products that have changed and  we accept it as inevitable.  Last night I took the last stitch in a wool scarf I crocheted for myself. I used a vintage Stanley Berroco Quelinda. The first end was one skein white, then 2 skeins variegated, white, variegated then one skein white. when I got to the end…there was exactly the same length little tail left over that was on the starting end and each section was exactly the same without counting rows. What you see in the pix is the scarf exactly as it came off the skeins ( not blocked yet ) since I’m not good at counting rows while I watch Downtown Abbey on Hulu.  I don’t think there is any yarn made today other than handspuns that would be this exact. It is a sign of the times with imported goods and is a reason I use vintage fibers when I find something as lush as these. Another good thing with this yarn…I found it in a thrift shop for 50 cents a skein. I always check for any insects when buying wool so I don’t bring critters into my wool stash or oriental rugs but the older wools are mothproofed and just as good as when they first were sold.  Check out what others are doing this week Off The Wall Friday

 

I was in Houston most of this month without all my tools and supplies to work on these cards for Arts In The Cards. When we started home we went along the cost to Port Arthur and Lake Sabine to see a new area.  The beach was still pretty messed up and oil balls were still washing up with each wave.  Not a pretty beach but there is a lot of renewal going on. The area was good to see if you like oil rigs and refineries, not much else there.

I picked up shells and vegetation washed up at low tide as well as safety glasses probably from an oil rig…and this great alligator skull. Anyone who knows me would fully expect me to appropriate the skull for my flower garden.  I used the vegetation to stage some still life photos on the concrete at the RV resort.  Gator Boy with his glasses is a photo on his own.

I used 4 of the compositions in photoshop and varied the opacity of the layers as well as the color.  This was intended to be printed on cloth when I got home, with other cool things going on later. That wasn’t to be. My Epson bit the dust with my laptop, so I got one good phototransfer from my husband’s computer. As Mr. Murphy would have it, the transfer was not any good when I went to put it on cloth. Then the Epson bit the dust on his computer. So we got the extra printer and it bit the dust!!

Off to the store for a new printer but I forgot to buy transfer sheets. I did not want to make another trip into town and by this time I was thoroughly disgusted. I found a pack of window decal sheets so into the new printer one sheet went. I put this transparent print onto card stock that I Gator Boy printed on it.

The glossy finish made it impossible to do anything else to this card but finish the edge with stamping ink. Each card has a real vintage shisha mirror, not the plastic kind,  glued on to represent the sea glass I didn’t find but would have liked to.  These are very un-Janice cards but I hope you like them…they were an awful lot of trouble so I couldn’t sell them for less than $1000 each, lol.

This is the second piece in my series. Elizabeth asked a ‘what if’ question of how the wall and vines would look at different times of day. Because of her question, I pulled back the covers on my fabric shelves and started looking. 

The background was a really ugly overdyed failure. Or so I thought. It was simply waiting for the right project to shine.  It made a perfect twilight background when the wall glows with the red light of the setting sun.  The ugly duckling is turning into a swan.

Of course there is a lot of work to do yet but I’m excited about both of these pieces. 

While I was in Houston at Festival I purchased a sit down 16 inch mid arm. I’ll be blogging about it in a couple of weeks. I know it is going to make short work out of quilting these pieces. Stay tuned! check out other great working artists at
http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/