Have a Seat

Quite a while back, on a visit to my daughter, I noticed this wonderful old chair next door, just sitting there by itself - Picture time! I love old, vintage-y things and thought this might make a good image for a small quilt.

The peeled layers of paint were wonderful.

along with the old fashion like arms

and texture.

This chair had been painted many, many times.

I also thought, what a great silk screen this would make. I liked this angle of the chair, thought it captured it the best. I pulled it up in Photoshop Elements and made it into a photocopy. There was quite a bit of "noise" surrounding the chair which I removed by cutting away from the picture and in closer to the chair, using white out. I wanted the screen to focus on the chair and not what was going on around it.

I also did some photocopies and then screens of some of the texture in the chair.

and - Have a Seat. It's a small piece and was fun to do, used up some scraps, made some new silkscreens and worked with the deconstructive screen printed fabric which is hard to use.

Leaf I

I have quite a collection of fabric from our deconstructive screen printing playdays with Fiber Junkies. I decided I needed to start using it.  

 Like many things, some pieces I love and some not so much. This one I really liked and have several versions of this that would work together.

I thought of using the 3 prints together as a long wall hanging but it was just too busy. 

I then thought of treating each as a separate piece and featuring them together might be more effective. The print was made using leaves and the deconstructive screen printing technique. As busy as it was, I still thought it needed more layering;  I ran the print through my printer to get the imagery of tree branches on top. Also adding some writing and screen printing gave it more interest. 

 
 I tried different combinations of fabrics to finish the print

 and settled on this which was the best solution - a little softer to focus on the print.

 I always love the opportunity to use gauze (on right); I think this piece needed it to tone it down.

 I painted up some silk organza to use as a binding...

 which makes such a pretty edge.

I mounted it on a pre-stretched canvas which is one of my favorite ways to mount small pieces. This is one of my Haiku pieces (Haiku written on back). Years ago I was in LINT (Ladies in New Textiles) a wonderful fiber group consisting of 12 fiber artists. At one of the meetings, one of the gals had a bowl with pieces of paper - noun or verb on each. We were to pick 3 and then had 10 minutes to write a Haiku incorporating those 3 words. You didn't have time to give it much thought. It was so much fun and it peaked my interest in writing them for my smaller pieces. This one is :

Trees in the shadows

embracing words in the wind

touch the leaves above

Til next time...

Buzzin'

I have my granddaughter and daughter with me this week so not much studio time. I've been saving this piece to show for just that time when I haven't had anything else going. I did a smaller version of this a while back for the Alzheimer's Initiative. This one was done for Galleribba - small art for the wall. I know I've mentioned this wonderful online gallery of small quilts - Check it out here.

I have a lot of deconstructive screenprinted fabric I'm trying to work into some projects. I also loved screening and above is one of my grandmother's recipes for Carrot pudding..

I used my favorite stencil which is a mesh used in laying tiles (small squares) and did some hand stitching around the gold strip.

I use my screen of a dragonfly quite often - also some large stitching using 2 strands of embroidery floss.

I used 2 different bindings as I liked the look and thought they worked well with the piece - some black and white dots...

and silk organza on the other 2 sides.

And the finished piece - Buzzin' which you can see at the Galleribba Gallery.
Til next time....
Judy

The Woods

I've been working on some very small pieces lately.....They go together fairly quickly and I can manage to find little spurts of time to work.  I'm taking part in the Southern Highland Craft Fair this October and small is usually better. I'm also part of an online gallery - Galleribba which features the work of artists; all work must be 12" or smaller. 

For this piece - The Woods, I started with a lazer copy of a photograph of rocks.  I used an acrylic medium to coat the fabric, then laid the copy on top, piled books on top and let it sit for 24 hours.  Next I had to soak the copy/fabric in water and peel off the paper backing leaving the photo on the fabric, a little time consuming but I like the results.

I also had pictures of icicles I transferred to fabric with my printer and then cropped

I tried combinations of fabrics and some different images to screen on the rocks.  I screen images on clear plastic to lay over fabric to preview them. This one was of an old chair I really loved, but not good here.

This combination was too bold.

So I resorted to my old standby of trees to screen onto the rocks. I also added a face up in the corner. I dabbled a little green wash of paint on the rocks to pull in more green and outlined the tree with gold mylar thread for a little sparkle.

I did some screening on the strips - used lots of words.

And the finished piece.....I am linked to Nina Marie Sayres Off the Wall Friday