Happy Halloween

Hope it's fun and filled with cute little witches and globins who will take lots of candy...... and not leave you .....holding the bag......with so much leftover candy

to eat...... SIGH......

SAQA - Studio Art Quilt Association

 The Studio Art Quilt Association is an international organization dedicated to the promotion of art Quilts. It affords each member - professional or non professional membership the opportunity to be a part of national and traveling exhibits, mentoring programs, tutorials on line....the list goes on.

 Linda Sexton-Patrick started the group several years ago; it was very small, maybe 4 or 5 members. It stayed that way for quite a while but you know how it goes, all of a sudden it has blossomed. We only meet 3 - 4 times a year; we met today at my home after a long absence from each other along with much enthusiasm. We had some wonderfully talented new people who will add so much to our group.

 Lynne showed us a wonderful top that has yet to be quilted. She has a wonderful color eye and dyes all of her fabrics to use in her work.

 One of our new members - Jenny Perry showed us a piece she made using photo transfers and some hand painted fabrics. I really loved the angle she captured.

 And another piece from Jenny based on a photo she took.

 Julie Bagamary challenges herself with a piece a day for 30 days. Perhaps you remember her challenge of "hands". Julie says at first it's very exciting, but by about the 15th day, it's "why did I decide to do this" but shortly after that it's how can I push myself outside the box to come up with another idea. I happen to love this bird series...... so Bravo Julie. She also has a wonderful way of mounting using wafer thin velcro and boards from Cheap Joes.

 And another new member - Shirley Parkin showed us the type of work she loves to do - first of all, very colorful, also whimsical and beautifully appliquéd.

 And a detail.

 Lynn DellaPosta created this wonderful and very large quilt.

 This was from a new member - Mary Jane Lappin. Her work revolves around photo transfers on different fabrics, sheers and opaques. It is bordered with a Dupionni silk and then placed in a shadow box. Really elegant.

And Susan W. Lee, not new to the art quilt world but new to our group and we are so lucky to have her. She's a master of color and design. This was not one of her new pieces, they are all out in galleries but it was still new to us.
After a long break, I'm finally home and ready to get back into the swing of things...including my blog.
Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Fun at Folly Pt 2

Moving along, Kate and Mary had never dyed with acid dyes and it's one of my favorite things to do as you get gorgeous color. Acid dyes only work on animal fiber so wool and silk take it beautifully. They also exhaust themselves quickly so you are left with clear water and very colorful fabric at the end of the process - usually around 20 mins. 

There are many ways to fix the fabric for dyeing, but my favorite is to stuff it into a nylon stocking and secure the end. I throw it into the pot of boiling dye and when it comes out, the center part will still be white; I then throw it into pot for seconds just to add a tad more color. Doing it this way gives a lot of variation within the color. You can also go back and overdye it.

Mary rubber banded one of her pieces which was very effective. She also had great success with her wool which she uses so much in her work.

This is Kates pieces which she dyed and then overdyed.

And all the while, this is the view we have.

It doesn't get any better.

Sometimes we'll have some champagne and this time brought the bottle down - well to protect it from any little bugs wanting to swim in luxury. We covered it with a piece of stocking - A girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! And it worked - No bugs in OUR bubbly!

So I always forget the apron but do have the good sense to wear old clothes.

AND NOW FOR THE YUMMIES....one of our ice dyes.

2 pieces of the same batik print dyed in 2 different ice dye color ways.

Mary had a cotton nightie she wanted to spruce up - WOW

And thanks to Kay Sorensen's who is the queen of kaleidoscope ice dyeing (check out her blog and upcoming exhibit)). Her beautiful pieces inspired us to try it. We still have more figuring to do but think we are off to a good start.

Mary did her own version which I loved...

and the flames.

Our blogger friend Robbie sent Mary some white cotton velveteen which we split into 3 pieces and ice dyed...well...YUUUMMMY! Thanks Robbie!

and results...

and more results. Having spent an extra day at Folly, we had much more fabric and as a joke we decided to weigh our fabric when we got home. Kate had close to 5 pounds, I was at 3.4 and Mary somewhere in between - that's a lot of fabric! So such great fun and I'm always so thankful to have such wonderful girlfriends as well as blogger girlfriends who never cease to amaze and inspire me...thank you.

Fun at Folly Pt. 1

It's Folly Fun time. Every so often, we (Mary and I) are very lucky to be able to go to Folly Beach which our good friend Kate who owns a beautiful home there. We go for several days and play, play, play. We all love doing these wonderful surface design techniques and try and come up with some new ideas for experimenting.

The car is packed so tight...barely room for a toothpick.

The moment we arrive, it's set up time. Mary has these wonderful mats we use to stand on and everything covered with plastic.

We had to plan what took the longest batching time to get that started first so ice dyeing it was. I've talked about the process in previous posts so will spare you the details but it is one of our favorite things to do and always with great results.

We also decided to try and use colors that we hadn't used before....just to see.

We got 4 trays done and put in the sun for batching.

On to dyeing with wood chips which our blogger friend - Robbie, sent to Mary. We were also wanting to do some eco printing which we still haven't conquered but know we will at some point.

The colors were yummy - osage orange being my favorite as it gave great color.

We used 4 different kinds of chips - this being another - Purple Heart which also yielded color but not as much.

We went out for an early morning hunt on the golf cart to find fresh leaves etc.

We soaked the fabric in alum and laid leaves on top.

We also used some raspberries and blueberries.

We used some color but mostly white fabrics.

We rolled and secured them tightly around dowels and laid them in the wood chips and alum solution.

We realized early on that the color wasn't taking real well so using a propane burner, we had the pan simmering for hours with our fabric in solution.

This is the result of the osage orange - beautiful color but no imagery of leaves...so dang, we still haven't figured out the eco printing part.

While our wood and fabric was simmering, time for more ice dyeing.

Using the screens on top of trays has made it so much easier and with better results as the ice doesn't fall through to the bottom.

We had a lot more trays going in the afternoon.

And here are our clean up cloths - mighty pretty. Part 2....coming up soon with results of ice dyeing and also some acid dyeing.

Marbling with Fiber Junkies Pt. 2

Lunch is always a fun time, a time to sit and chat and share our latest projects. It's even more fun when we can do it on Vals back deck. She has a breathtaking view of the City of Asheville.

You can reach out and touch the trees; it's heavenly.

Val is our truly amazing artist, the one we turn to for advice and help; you can see why. Her imagery is her own, made into silk screens. Val does a lot of faces which I think gives a haunting quality to this piece.

I love the way she did this image - a double print, done with the first color, allowing it to dry. She then shifts the screen ever so slightly from the first image and screens with a second color to create that double image effect.

Gen with her latest pieced quilt which is a lovely combination of colors.

Mary is working on a piece using fabric she created with ice dyeing. The bottom has the most exquisite lace which took the dye very well also. She's putting "Silver dollars" (we called them growing up in NY) or a money plant as Mary calls them.

Denny is doing kits, with her life being complicated right now, she wants the joy of just sewing. She has also admitted that she doesn't like to follow directions, being the very spontansous artist that she is; so these kits are helping her in that department. The above animal quilt is darling and the backing

wow, this great denim print. Looks like it's pieced...right? not so, .all one piece.

And this is part of another quilt - love the saying "I don't suffer from laziness, I enjoy every minute of it".

After lunch, a little more marbling and then clean-up. During the process of marbling, much of the paint falls to the bottom. Every time I've taught this workshop, students are convinced that you can lay a piece of fabric on it to get a print...Not so and I don't know why, it just doesn't work...BUT

we never thought of using paper which our clever Val did. The paint is allowed to dry on the surface without rinsing as with a fabric and this was beautiful. A great day with great friends...Til next time.