Batik play date with Beth, Ellen, and Abby

On July 5th my daughter, Ellen, and her daughter, Abby, joined me at Beth's house for a play date.  Ellen lives in Ohio but was visiting with her in-laws who live in New Hampshire.  They left the rest of the family at the in-laws and continued to Maine.  Beth and Ellen had become friends when Beth stayed at Ellen's house while taking a class at Nancy Crow's barn.  Abby and Ellen made batik silk scarves that turned out very successful.  I would have been happy to claim them as my work.

I used a couple of tjaps I bought from Dharma several years ago.  They had sat on the shelf for a long time unused.  This batik play date seemed the perfect time to try them out.  I used them on some fabric that had already been died multiple times, getting uglier with each new layer.  I figured I had nothing to lose.

The first piece is a yard long piece that has been died twice before.  I like it now.

And a close up.

The second piece is about 1/2 yard and it has also been dyed twice before.  I like it more now but it needs another layer before I will call it finished.

And a couple of close ups.

Batik Play Date

Saturday Beth and I got together and did some soy wax batik. These two are about 13 inch squares of dupioni silk that I batiked using acrylic ink.

An email from Judy Sall or Tie Dye Judy

Tie Dye Judy  sent me the following email with some photos too luscious not to share.

"I took a Surface Design class back in 2007 from Melly Testa when she lived here in Flagstaff... blew me away!  And that was the beginning of my adventures with soy wax batik among other techniques!
The photos are 1) a whole cloth art quilt where I pre-dyed fabric with oranges and yellows, traced on the leaf patterns, painted on the wax, then overdyed with browns;

2 and 3) fabric that was pre-soaked with soda ash solution, then dried; then I stamped with wax using various implements; finally, I applied procion mx dyes using a foam brush.  The fabrics were later used by a friend to create various products such as eyeglass cases, tissue covers, etc."

Friday Favorites

This week has been busy with preparing my  new blog that is technique driven.  We have 9 artists who are willing to take the lead in experimenting with different techniques and to report back.  I have the banner and the logo ready to go (you can see the logo on this blog).  Another week or so and I will be ready to unfurl the banner, show off the blog, and see if anyone wants to follow it.

Haven't heard anything from the No Holds Barred jury yet but it is very early.  I did go on the SAQA site and print off the directions for 3 or 4 more SAQA shows that I might consider entering.  I did run across one blog post that said she had entered quilts for 7 years before she got accepted.  I hope it does not take me that long.

On to Friday Favorites!

I love improvisational piecing.  I do it between pieces that require attention and fussing and  detail work and annoy me to death.  It feels like taking off a way too tight corset.  I thought I had invented it because I was doing it at home in a vacuum.  Now that I am more in the art quilting world I see all these other folks doing it too.  Maybe I should have copy-righted the idea years ago when I first thought of it. (LOL)  Anyway, Malka Dubrawsky gives 10 tips for improvisational piecing that I thought were really good.  The link takes you to the tips in Quilting Arts but Malka has just published her book that gives lots more techniques that she uses in improvisational quilting.  I have not seen the book so I can't comment on it but the title is Fresh Quilting: Fearless Colors, Design, and Inspiration.

Speaking of copy-righting my improvisational piecing idea, Kathleen Loomis at Art with a Needle wrote an interesting article on sharing quilts and quilting techniques.  You know, this is not the first time I have blogged about Kathleen.  I like what she says.  I also like that she states it is her opinion and leaves room for others to have opinions that do not agree with hers.  I find her posts generally raise questions that I may not have thought of but should consider as I make my way in the art world. What kind of artist do I want to be?

I have tried to ignore Arlee with all her ecodyeing blogs.  Yea, it looks interesting but I don't wanna go in that direction. Then I made the mistake of dying that fabric I showed you earlier in the week--the one with the rose leaves and the other one with the mums.  Remember?  Okay, now I am hooked.  What was I thinking?  Now I want to strip the woods and yard and see what I get from dyeing with the material.  Anyway, Arlee shares with us some more of her experiments with really good directions.  Don't look unless you don't mind another addiction. ***sigh***

I found a new blog this week.  It is Simply Robin.  She has a great tutorial on flat fold fabric dyeing.  The process sounds really interesting but it takes a day of hot sun.  That is not a problem in Maui where she lives.   I live in Maine and it is November.  A day of hot weather is probably 7 months away.  I will get to snow dye long before I get to try this method.  But I do want to try it on the 1 or 2 days of summer we get per year!

And, last but not least, my fellow 5 artist has posted a tutorial on soy wax dyeing.  Yes, she makes it sound so simple and the pictures she has posted of the results are so beautiful that I clearly need to go home and heat up my electric skillet.  I think that is what we are doing this coming Saturday for our play date.

New quilt top

Finally finished this quilt top last weekend when I should have been doing other things. I am trying to feel guilty but not succeeding. I am in love with it.

Simple block in a block pattern but I tried to be loose in the blocks so the sizes are not all the same and the placement of the blocks is not too regular. I wanted the blocks to be floating on the white background. The quilt is 85 inch square so it hard to take a picture of the whole thing and you can see the distortion from the camera and the wrinkles from laying on the ground.