Friday Favorites

Well, (deep subject) it looks like I did not make it into the No Holds Barred show.  This was my first attempt to get into a show that didn't have to take my entry.  It is disappointing but I am philosophical.  I submitted one piece and a proposal for second piece.  The first piece I love.  I made it for myself and now that SAQA has passed on it, I will hang it in my office.  Nothing lost there!  The second piece involved some welding that I would have been complicated to do right now.  So, now I will complete that piece this summer when I have more time and the outside weather is more agreeable.  Nothing lost there.  Life will go on. On to Friday Favorites.

You know how much I love bloggers who do all my testing for me. This week I found several.

Lynn at Fibra Artsyta tested the washability of Simply Screen textile paints and she loves them. I am still buying one of this and one of another type of paints so I am happy to have her evaluation and to see if my local art supply store has this economical brand.

And then I came across Terry Jarrard-Dimond experiments with Soft Scrub as a discharge agent.  I had never even thought of it as containing bleach.  I think I will have to add it to my repertory. Terry actually spent the next week on Soft Scrub again. These posts are week #1 and #2 of her 2009 commitment to experiment weekly.  I have started going through her old posts and have found some other "Ah HA!" posts to remember. Even more interesting, I learned how she approached her weekly experiment.  I think I will use a similar approach when I start my monthly experiments for "And then we set it on Fire"

Sue at Quilts to Dye For Blog painted some silk with Setacolor and then  Genesis and compares the effect of both types of paint. I have not heard of Genesis before, have you? Big difference in the results of the two.

Melanie Testa at Every Single Day  has committed to drawing lines every single day.  Most, if not all, of her work is on paper but I see no reason why my lines could not be drawn on fabric.  Melanie also uses a ruling or folding pen that she made.  I want to make one for myself.  It sounds like it would have a lovely mark.  I have no plans for Saturday and a November ATC exchange with a  theme of lines so perhaps I'll make my pen, draw some lines on fabric, and turn them into ATCs all on Saturday.

Enjoy your week!

Metallic Class

 

There is so much I am making right now that I can't show you that but I can show off this one little (9 1/2 by 12") wall hanging.  I think it needs one more little organza square up towards the top right corner. Right now it feels a bit bottom heavy to me.  If it does not sell this weekend then I will add that missing square.

I have been reading one of the free e-books from Interweave on framing small art quilts.  One of the authors told a story about her husband.  He exclaimed how much like art her little quilt looked when framed. She, of course, was incensed thinking, "So what have they looked like to you before now?"  I was thinking of that while making this little one.  Would someone think it was a placemat?  I put beaded fringe on the bottom just to dispel that thought.

New Hand Dyes

I tried waiting till my mother left before I started dyeing but...well...I have never been known for my patience.  So, here are some results.  The first was wrapped around a pipe and dyed--twice.  I love the green but for my monthly IT! project I needed a bit more white.  You can see more white on the piece on the right that I sprinkled with bleach.  That great red stripe up the middle is just the red table cloth showing between the two pieces of fabric.

The second one is a cotton piece that I dyed black.  I was hoping for a bit more texture but it will do.  This is just low water immersion with a really really heavy concentration of black dye.  At that, it still took two dye sessions to get it that dark.

This last piece is a commercially dyed black cotton fabric that I discharged with bleach.  I loved the discharged fabric that Beth gave me so I decided to try and make some more of my own.  Expect to find this in a wall hanging in the near future along with some feathers I collected at the Windsor Fair Poultry barn.