King Salmon

I carved these blocks a few months ago and only now have found the time and the motivation to print them on fabric.  I am pleased with the way they look on my hand dyed fabric.  I carved 2 blocks-one headed in each direction.

My motivation came from a workshop with Evon Zerbetz on Saturday. My piece is not finished, but each of the 15 people attending carved a block, then all 15 pieces are asembled into a 3-D piece. Pretty cool. I will post a picture when it is complete.

More Small Work

I have been experimenting with some different finishing techniques with this latest group of small quilts.

This rockfish is, once again from a printing workshop I took last Spring.  I fused the purple organza before printing the fish.

I wish I had used a darker and heavier thread for the branch quilting on the outer part of the piece.  I got good texture, which I attribute to the wool batting.  I also thought the spray of beads across the piece is effective.

The fabric in this quilt is one of the first pieces of fabric that I dyed.  The mountains were printed.  I really fell in love with my Bernina quilting the sky.  My Viking ate metallic threads like this.  I was so happt with the way the machine was reacting, that I forgot to stop and change color of threads where I had intended. The image in the sky comes from petroglyphs of drawing by Kodiak Island's earliest residents.

Another Northern Lights quilt from the same piece of dyed fabric in the quilt shown above.  I quilted differently and followed the quilting motifs with beads.

One more very small Northern Lights quilt.

I did the same quilting on the outer border of this quilt as I used on thea bird quilt shown above.  Once again, a heavier thread with more contrast would have been more effective.  I am scared to use threads with high contrast.  I grabbed a piece of cotton batting when I layered this quilt and I think that the difference in loft is amzing.  I prefer the look of the wool batting to the cotton.  This quilt I sewed on rickrack to the quilt before I faced the entire quilt with a piece of backing prepared for fusing.  I am not entirely happy with the way the corners turned out, but with more experimentation, this will improve.  All of these pieces have fused backs, and with the exception of the final quilt, have fused bindings, which i have decided are great for very small pieces, but in the future, I will put a traditional binding on pieces that are 6" x 6" or more, like the larger Northern Lights pieces and the bird pieces. 

More Fun!

I finished the hanging structure for this piece last night.  I am having a blast using some of the less than perfect prints that I have done and trying out some different techniques.  I made the web out of blue perle cotton and secured it with size 8 beads.  Kindof went crazy on the beaded border.

Proofs

I am not nearly as happy as I was earlier today before I printed proofs of the new blocks that I carved.  As I said, I carved the background much too deeply.  I am going to eliminate the background on the fish immediately.  I trimmed them up a bit, but at this point I am afraid of doing more harm than good.  The chickadee was carved from linoleum; the others from some kind of rubbery stuff that I got from Daniel Smith. Although the linoleum is a bit harder to carve, I seem to have a better success rate with it. I am printing with Daniel Smith oil based water soluble ink.  The bottom right shows some wine corks that I carved.  I would normally print those with paint but the ink was there.

It is a good thing that being a printmaker is not my goal, because I know my prints are far from perfect.  But once I add some stitching, maybe some beads, it will be fine.

Ready to Print!

I have been carving the past few days.  The idea was to get some new pieces ready before I set up to print.  So I have 5 blocks that are ready to proof.  I finally figure out that I have been carving the background much too deeply.  The Arctic tern block is the only one that I completed after making this discovery.  Of course, eventually I will cut away all of the background, but I like to print an edition with the background, first.

Chickadee




Arctic Terns



Alutiiq Petroglyph



Mirror Image King Salmon



Postcard Art

Little Bird

The Sky at Night

A local gallery holds a Postcard Art Show every February.  I have never entered before-intimidated by the small size.  This year I decided to give it a go and these are what I came up with.  Fun! 

Little Bird began as a block print on silk.  I added a wash of yellow and orange beads to the background, then fused the back, and applied the fused binding.  I am pleased with the hanging bracket-a twig, wire and beads.

The Sky at Night began with a piece of hand-dyed fabric.  I sewed lines of hand stitching across the cloth, gathered it as tightly as I could, then imersed it in dye.  The patterning is very subtle but once stitched and beaded I think it is effective.  I beaded a lacey border onto the fused binding then made the hanging wire by stringing beads on Aculon and making loops at the end for sewing it onto the quilt with crimp beads.

The show is at Emerald Island Framing and Gallery, with an opening reception on Friday evening.

Valentines

I have not been idle even though I have not posted in months.  I don't know exactly why I am doing this anyway.  I do have a couple of larger pieces in the works, but most recently I have been working on these little valentine quilts.  I carved the stamps and played around with the various paints that I have.  I really was surprised at how the paints layered-sometimes the first paint acting as a mask to subsequent layers.  I added some beads, fused a quote on the back, and applied a fast and dirty fused binding that I am not totally satisfied with but these are valentines, not great works of art.  Some day one of my grandkids will open a box full of all these silly things that I have made for them over the years and call to their brothers and sisters, "Hey, come see what I found!  Can you believe that crazy old Grandma made all this stuff."

Part of the exercise was to test my new sewing machine.  When I was in Anchorage for New Years I purchased a Bernina 440 QE. I have waited years for this.  I knew that I needed a Bernina but could never justify the expense before now.   I really have been to busy to play with it much-I have felt very virtuous that I have been tending to business rather than playing!  This project gave me a chance to play around with the stitch regulator.  It will take a while to become accustom to using that.  I knew that I loved my machine when I start using different metallic threads and she didn't eat them!

Anyway,  Happy Valentines Day to all of my friends.