Great Fabric

On my recent teaching trip to Greenville, NY, one of my students brought fabric she had designed and then had printed through a company called Spoonflower. It was beautiful fabric based on images from her flower garden. She used the photo editing program - Photoshop Elements, the one that I use. She took a photo of her garden, put it in photoshop, hit "filters" along the top, then in the drop down menu, she hit "artistic" and then "posterized edges". She had the Posterized Edges print and the finished product with her, but not the original picture, so I wanted to show you what happens with that particular filter. The picture below is from my garden pulled up in Photoshop Elements and then...
I hit filter, artistic and then posterized edges. I love this particular filter; it makes the print a little more alive and the edges more distinct. It's especially noticeable in the greenery in the background.

Here is Sheila's fabric; she was able to do all of this online, sending the photo to Spoonflowers with lots of options for repeats, mirror images, and sizes of prints.  This was a lovely quality cotton, silk was more. I was very impressed with the quality of color and fabric.

Sheila had also purchased some wonderful batik fabric that worked beautifully with her designer fabric. She made the top of the jacket with the batik and the bottom with her own fabric. Sheila felt it needed some perspective so she added some small images of mountains along the horizon, not only to break it up but to give it distance. She used the Pigma brush pens which are permanent and come in a variety of colors. They were new to me. I'm familiar with Pigma pens but not these; it was nice to see a new product and how successful and easy it was to use.

Next came some thread embellishment done mostly with metallic threads but just the right amount.

Next, some flowers from the print were backed with fusible web and cut out individually to bring up into the batik fabric area. I really like the perspective!

Just perfect!

Sheila promised a picture of the finished jacket which I will share with you. I know it will be wonderful! Another student, Sandy, started this "sampler" in class to hold the many techniques we covered.

It was coming out so pretty, she decided to make it into an art quilt and put many of the techniques in a sampler notebook for future reference and use. One of the things I love on this piece is the stone firepit, created from a photo of the one in her yard. I think it turned out really nice.

I also love the couching techniques (the leaves) which are hidden under a piece of screening (the kind you buy at home improvement stores). It's a wonderful "fabric", I use often. It softens the color and pattern underneath and gives great texture.

This is going to be a great piece.

Next time - more adventures in Greenville involving cemetaries, murder on the bridge and "spooky" old houses - all on my aunts old property.

Until next time

Hi...I'm home

I just spent a wonderful week in the very small, charming town of Greenville, NY. The B&B I taught and stayed at - Greenville Arms Inn (established in 1889) was incredibly charming with great food, wonderful classroom facilities and our own rooms had all the comforts of home. The Hudson River Valley Workshops are not your typical scenario. Not only do you stay at a beautiful B&B, some rooms had a fireplace and jacuzzi, but you also get fed like there's no tomorrow AND have the opportunity to take workshops from nationally known instructors. And if that wasn't enough, a homemade cookie break every afternoon at 2:30. Boy did we watch the clock for those huge, warm, right out of the oven cookies. The first night we arrived, we became acquainted with the inn, had a wine and cheese reception and then sat down to a beautiful dinner. I was fascinated by the "fretwork" over the different entryways. The Inn was an older home with all the charm that homes of that time period had.
Isn't this just beautiful.

There are several dining rooms, all charming and lots of quilts hanging all over the walls - most of them made by owner Kim LaPolla.

This "rabbit" quilt (below) made by Kim is wonderful in person and hangs over a section of the room that houses a small shop, actually an assortment of supplies that students can purchase while taking a workshop - so convenient.

And this room which houses the 24/7 coffee and tea pot and some beautiful built in cupboards.

The Inn also runs painting classes, once in a while - Mark, our chef gets to model.

Speaking of which, here is Mark decked out in his Halloween costume. Our first day at the Inn was Halloween; we even had some Trick or Treaters.

Okay, so I'm not much of a breakfast eater but really now, how could you resist this? We started with "Greek" yogurt, granola and the largest blackberries I've ever seen (along with other fruit) and then our choice of the days specials along with other yummy delicious food.

The classroom was large with enough space for each student to spread out, have their own design wall, sink, copy machine, and the best part - it stayed open 24/7.

There were beautiful rambling brooks right outside.

After one of our decadent cookie breaks, we all decided we needed to walk off the calories and found this beautiful church

with this incredible door.

Students wore or brought some great things to share. Sheila was my clothing person and is modeling her "Carpe Diem" jacket. She is still working full time and has a great time wearing all these beautiful creations to work. She has a large following - literally - everyone in the office is following her around to get a closer look.

I'm always tickled with a great "button" treatment. Sheila found the perfect buttons in the shape of a leaf to complete her jacket.

Sandy brought a landscape quilt she was working on, an exact replica of the island she lives on in Ontario. It was quite amazing.

Margaret is working on a quilt for her nephew. She found the most unique fabric printed like our currency which she pieced into this wonderful quilt which also features horses, lots of fun things - lucky guy!

Tomorrow - more of one of the projects using fabric printed from a picture of Sheilas garden, It's just amazing.

Until then

Off and Running Again

I'm off and running again, this time to the Hudson River Valley Art workshops where I'll be doing a weeklong workshop on Inspirations from Nature - lots of good machine techniques. If you click on their website, you'll see a good picture of the Inn which looks positively wonderful with lots to do and beautiful views everywhere you look. My hubby is coming with me; he'll do the driving and get to bop around all week while I'm teaching. I think it will be a fun week.
Also wanted to wish you a Happy Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. I love seeing the little ones and especially love eating the leftover candy.
I grew up in NY where it was always cold on Halloween. Your costume was always big and loose so you could wear lots of warm clothes underneath. My mom was the "candy apple" mom who made those yummy bright red candy apples for all the kids in the neighborhood. It was always the last house we went to as it was our favorite treat. I have wonderful memories of my days as a "Trick or Treater" and those of going around with my kids.
I hope you'll be making some wonderful memories this Halloween, so a Happy Halloween.

More Prints to Share

This is a continuation of our Fiber Junkies Deconstructive Screenprinting meeting a short while back. I never had the chance to show you all of the wonderful prints that came out of this afternoon of "playing". I think this was Mary's prints which she went back and added color to. The circles were created using bubble wrap underneath the screen, the lines - corrugated cardboard. I think they look amazing!
And more prints done by Carol.

This next one was done by Carol Sloan. She used a larger screen and had lots of interesting elements underneath the screen for texture.

Can you find the baby mushrooms?

This was probably the third swipe, a little more blended and lighter. The dye is beginning to exhaust, but I love this look.

Patsy, being our "in house dyer" started with a colored fabric with great results. The areas that would normally be white, have the color from the base fabric.

I love this next one and boooooo on me as I can't remember who did this, but it's a great print.

And this next one where a little more dye is released in the lower right area.

In this next one, Carol used feathers, bubble wrap, leaves, twigs and some decorative "flower" edging. Can you see the little flowers - very effective.

The prints from this screen keep getting better and better as more dye is released.

Isn't this wonderful? The best part about this process is the "unexpected" results, you never know what to expect. Sometimes, they're not so great but often they are spectacular!

And all of this magic was created at Val's studio which overlooked this!

Does it get any better - dont' think so!

Until next time

SAFF - Southeast Animal Fiber Fair

Yesterday I went to the SAFF at the Asheville, NC Fairgrounds. This event is held annually; there are lots of vendors selling rovings, yarn, knitting and felting supplies and many other things. It's an amazing event and if you love fiber and color, you'll think you've died and gone to Heaven. Sad to say, I have never been able to attend until yesterday and was it worth waiting for. It was hard to find a spot to park and I wound up way in the back near a tent of vendors. They had some amazing things - so many fibers I was not familiar with - both hand dyed and natural.

This is the large tent where I thought the entire event took place until someone pointed to a large building across the way and said - there's lots more vendors over there and a TOP and BOTTOM level!

So many of the rovings are hand dyed and braided for display purposes. They are so luscious!

Racks of rovings - beautiful colors,

natural fibers you can dye yourself. The vendors were saying they use an acid dye - makes sense as they are animal fibers like silk which also uses an acid dye.

I loved these racks of yarns. Some of the yarns and fibers were dyed with natural dyes and had a beautiful soft color.

These little bears might have been my favorite - made from fibers like alpaca which is incredibly soft. I couldn't put them down.

Many of the vendors had these little goat curls - all hand dyed. Just running your hands through these soft and colorful curls was such fun and purchased by the ounce.

At one point, I stopped and took some pictures of the huge building where SAFF took place, quite impressive and every bit filled with color, fiber, books etc. There were vendors from all over the country - this is a very big event.

And I don't knit or crochet but I do a little felting so I did bring home a treasure - some goat curls. I REALLY wanted a Teddy bear (am I too old for a Teddy bear?) maybe next year!

And the animals, an added highlight. Angora rabbits in some of the booths; some were taken out of their cages so you could pet them. They were precious. One woman was spinning angora fur as she pulled the excess off the rabbits - from rabbit to spinning wheel - no inbetween!

On to the outside to see, feed and pet the Llamas and Alpacas. I love the way they sit with their feet straight out in front of them or completely tucked underneath. It reminds me of my cats.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of these beautiful, gentle creatures.

Is this the cutest/funniest face?

I loved this handsome boy - caught him eating.

They are so tame and comfortable with people.

You could reach in and pet them. They especially loved you when you gave them food! This little Alpaca below is loving all the treats we were giving him.

Mother and baby, how sweet is this!

It was a wonderful day. I also forgot to mention - there are classes ongoing all day on everything you can imagine related to fiber - next year!

Until next time