Prayer Flags #3-#7

 My granddaughter, Olivia, spent the night last night and we got up this morning and continued with the Prayer Flags for Her Grandma Darlene.  I had some commercial foam stamps and some word stecils that were perfect for her to work with.  The flag below needed a little something more and I was itching to use my new thermofax screen, so I added the little birds.

 On this one we decided to have her write her name more than once so it became a design element.

 I am continuing with my Home theme.  My stamp did not take the lumiere metalic paints very well, so I stamped it again in a different color so there is sort of a shadow.  Anyway that was the intent, successful or not.  These are a great way to try our new products and techniques.  I love, love, love my crab stamp.  this is the first time I printed with it.  It will be clearer when I print with ink.

 This is the first print I made with the Kingfisher stamp, also.  this was carved from linoleum, and once again didn't take the paint I used as well as I would like, but it will be great with ink.  I am really pleased with this stamp, also.  I had never printed with sequin waste before.  I used it as a stencil and as a stamp.  Again, not perfection, but experimenting with new toys.

 And here is my partner in crime for the morning, Olivia, with all of the flags strung up behind her.  I like them!  I am probably through, now, unless Truxton wants to make some next time he comes to visit.

Here is Olivia with a piece of fabric she painted to take home to he Mother.  I carved the leaf stamp.

Prayer Flag #2

 My second prayer flag-this time sized as it should be.  I guess my theme is Home.  If I do text again I will have to come up with a different way to apply it because I don't like my handwriting.

 Here are the two that I have completed.  I am just pinning them to the clothesline to photograph them but will string them up when I am done.  I don't know how many I will make-at least one more to go on the other side of the large one.

I got some thermofax screens in the mail the other day and played around with this one today.  It is called Cascading Branches, but I like it turned upside down.  Unfortunately I printed the orange in the lower right corner upside down.  I do like the effect of layering and think that it will be cool to print foliage, print a bird, then print more foliage on top.  The top half of this fabric was an unsuccessful attempt at rubbing with shiva paintsticks.  Now I know that I need a rubber mat of some sort to keep the plate from slipping, then tape the fabric. The second picture is the fabric before I screened it. It is better with the sreen print on top.  In all of the DVD's that I have watched, it seemed like they were pouring alot of paint onto the screen.  With the thermofax screens, I found out quickly that I didn't need as much paint as I had put down!  I used a cut off foam brush rather than a squeegee.  I watched Lynn Krawycz's DVD and some Utube videos and the screens came from her, also.  Perhaps the next screens I order will be my own design.

Prayer Flag for Darlene

My daughter-in-laws Mother has been ill since last Christmas.  In fact, she has been away from home, on Kodiak Island, in Seattle for treatment since then.  She has been on my mind alot lately.  Although Alexandria is working on a project that I am going to take part in(don't want to give it away if it is a secret), I wanted to do something.  I read about The Prayer Flag Project on jane LaFazio's blog.  Last night when I came home from work at 10 pm, I grabbed a beer and headed for the studio, if that is what you want to call my closet down in the dungeon(but that is a story for another day).  A prayer flag was not my intent but that is where I eventually ended up.  Obviously, I did not read any instructions, since my flag is much larger than it should be, but it is what it is.  I think that this first flag of mine is about 12" x 18".  Smaller will be much less consuming, but this is the size the elements I wanted to use required.  My prayer is for Darlene to return home soon.  Her family is here.  We live on an island in the North Pacific where salmon is a huge part of the culture.  Salmon return home to spawn, so i wanted them as an element in my flag.  I had some wooden letters that I glued to a piece of mat board and covered it with matte medium before I left for work so when I got home tonight it was dry and ready to print.  I am not totally satisfied with the print job-it is a bit splochy, but adequate for this project.  I enjoyed the hand embroidery alot.  I worked on it on the down times at work today.  I mostly sew beads by hand-thread is nice.  You don't have to pick up a bead with every stitch. 

Anyway, back to my point.  I think it would be awesome if, upon awakening after her surgery next month, if there was a string of prayer flags to greet Darlene.  Then she can hang them outside her house in Seattle, and all the good will and love in the creation of these flags will bring her peace, love and home to her family. 

 You can look at Jane Lafazio's blog and see her wonderful flags here: http://janeville.blogspot.com/2011/07/prayer-flags-5-6.html. 

Here is a tutorial:

http://theprayerflagproject.blogspot.com/p/tutorial.html

And here is the main page of the Prayer Flag Project:

http://theprayerflagproject.blogspot.com/

Like I said, I got a bit out of had with this first flag of mine.  The size is 5" x 8", and they are to be completed in an hour.  Anyone interested?

SAQA Auction

My Quilt, "Homeward Bound" is in the third line on this page for the SAQA Auction.

http://www.saqa.com/news.php?ID=1900

It is grouped with the work of some very illustrious artists.
You can read about details of the quilt in an earlier post, here:  http://sallysartquilts.blogspot.com/2011/06/saqa-auction-quilt-complete.html

Early Morning

For me, today was an early morning.  Since I work nights, I tend to lounge around in the morning, but today I jumped out of bed and got to work.  I had this piece laid out already.  I changed the mountains in the foreground several times before I settled on this fabric.  I need more dark and toned fabrics!  Going through fabrics looking for mountains, I realized that the majority of my fabric is medium shades.  Although I do like the gradation in the border, it is not very uniform-by that I mean that there are unexpected gaps-one of the things of working with handdyed fabric.  There is so much variation in the fabric, often I have a piece sewn in before I realize that it is not quite right.  I really like the narrow red border, and the way it lies behind the hills in the foreground.

It is time to start quilting.  I have 5 pieces ready to quilt.  I have been procrastinating.  Figuring out how to stitch a piece is always a bit intimidating for me.  But, my stitching improves when I quilt several quilts in succession so I choose the one that I care about the least to start with, and by the time I get to the piece that I am the most invested in, my stitches are uniform and sortof beautiful.

Productivity

I tried to upload these pictures with the previous post but it wasn't happening.  I got some precut stencils in the mail last week.  Someday I will cut my own but for now, this will do.  I added the branch on the chickadee piece above.

 This is a less successful attempt of using Shiva paintsticks with a purchased rubbing plate.  Try as I might I couldn't get everything to stay still.  Will have to do some research. It does have a nice texture,so perhaps not a complete lost cause.

More stamps.  I am excited to use the crab but I need to dye some fabric, which is why I am wrapping poles and folding and stitching fabric.  No point in mixing dye until I have everything ready.  I want to attempt more than simple dying, but the resists take a rediculous amount of time.

What I Have Been Doing

I haven't posted for a few days, but I have not been idle.  I read somewhere that you should rub your poles with steel wool then apply floor wax to them to make it easier to push down the fabric.  I couldn't find floor wax, so I used car wax instead and it made a huge difference.  Hopefully wax is wax and it won't react with the dye.  I have four poles ready to go.  About 10 more to wrap.  These are Hoffman PFD fabric, and I am going to do some with Kaufman Pimatex also.

Every Day

I am trying to accomplish something every single day-before I go to work at 1.  This morning I fused Angelina fiber onto misty fuse, cut strips with my shaped rotary cutter(the word escapes me right now), cut out petals and fused them to this 6" x 4" piece that I previously printed a baby sparrow.   I don't know where I go from here, but eventually all of these little things become a quilt.

Soaring

This is another of my Arctic Tern quilts.  I carved away the background on the block on this since the last tern quilt that I posted.  The clouds are angelina fiber fused to the quilt.  This piece is 12" x 9.5".

Calllista's finger knitting

My 9 year old grand-daughter, Callista, came to visit recently.  When she asked for yarn  for finger knitting, I gave her a ball, and was totally astounded when she used it all up and wanted more.  That is alot of yarn!  I knew it was essential to make a reason for all that fingerknitting.  I had her do long ropes in three different colors.  After she had gone home, I braided the ropes and felted it.  This could be a nice strap for a felted bag, or if braided more loosely and not felted as much, I think it will be flat enough to make a belt.  A crafter in the makings!



Arctic Terns

Another completed small quilt.  The clouds are angelina and I put a layer of purple organza over the top of this.  I have tried a couple of other pieces with angeling clouds.  On those I fused the clouds down, over seams, which didn't work out so well.  I am happy with this.  Todays progress has not gone so well.  My machine does not  like something in the combination of a piece I was trying to quilt today.  The machine was skipping stitches.  I rethreaded the top and the bottom and changed the needle, trying a larger size.  Can't figure it out.  I tried stitching on another piece, no skipped stitches on that but I am just not in the groove today or something.  Better quit before I destroy something.  I really don't like to take out quilting stitches.