Getting organized

Yesterday I spent the day getting organized for my presentation on surface design. I have 14 topics to cover showing tools, ways to use those tools, what to use with them as in paints, paintstiks, silkscreens, stencils, foils, etc. etc. etc.  I have to be highly organized so I found as many boxes as I could and put different topics in each box along with my notes and numbered the boxes. In addition to all these boxes there's a rolling cart filled with books, magazines, bigger tools like iron, etc. and all the examples. What you don't see is the piles of boxes at my feet with all the extra surface design stuff scattered all over the floor after pulling out the examples I wanted to show. Will be glad after this presentation is over........then I get to put everything away again.

I went to spinning today and the spinning goddess must have been sitting on my shoulder on the drive home. A bad accident happened just one driveway down from us (we're 1/3 mile up off the road). It had just happened - fire truck arrived right in front of me, ambulance came as I was sitting at the end of the drive to get the mail. Head on collision, one of the trucks was going too fast around the curve and went over the line. It didn't even look like a truck anymore. If I had been 3 minutes earlier it could have been me that got hit head on and my little mustang wouldn't have been much protection. People drive way too fast on this rural curvy road - I take my life in my hands crossing it to the mailbox - I stand listening for cars before I cross and then run.

Yesterday I went to renew my driver's license, passed the eye test easily, I should have never fretted over getting the cataract surgery before renewing it. Last time they tested both eyes separately, then together - this time they didn't test my eyes separately, just together, so I could have easily passed even with limited vision in my left eye. So does anyone like their photo on their license? I swear those cameras take the most unflattering photos, they're made different than other cameras - this one is the worst picture taken of me in my life and it's on that license for 8 years! 8 years!  Good thing I rarely have to show it for anything. I am not posting that photo here on my blog..........

Back in the saddle again.......

I'm back to doing what I love - anything related to the fiber arts. My eye is doing great, I can do all the close up work I want now.........and can I ever see better - whoo hoo. I actually had the go ahead on Wednesday but had other things to do out of the house the past two days.

In the last push to get things ready for my guild presentation on surface design I did some sewing today. This is a piece of handwoven fabric, a plaited twill using perle cotton for the warp, a paper yarn for the weft. I wove it a while ago as a sample in a program I gave on newer fibers for weaving. A few weeks ago I stenciled on it using Shiva Paintstiks.

Today I sewed it into a snap bag. Then I found a little piece of leftover handwoven fabric that I had stenciled on who knows when so I sewed that into another little snap bag. It's looks skewed in the photo but it's really not - they also look better in person.  Since I was on a sewing kick so I moved on to working on gifts.

My goal is to have everything ready for the guild presentation by the end of this weekend although I may be in the mood to work on more gift sewing too. Tonight I'm hoping to finish up a warp on the inkle loom. So nice to be working in the studio again...........

Handwoven towels......

I finally got back to that towel warp I started on Oct 2nd - how did I lose all those days??? Anyhow, that first towel I posted 5 days ago was red. Below are 3 others that go with it, a turquoise, mint and then white using the red, turquoise and mint as a border. These are a gift for a kitchen with those colors in it.

Turquoise

 

Mint

 

White with Mint, Red & Turquoise

Next I start up on the blue towels that are a special order. I probably only have enough of this shade of blue for 4 of the 8 towels so the others will either be a lighter blue or peach to match that kitchen and the Blue Willow dishware.

Over the weekend I did finish up all the bookmarks to go with my program handouts for my surface design program for November. There are way more bookmarks sitting here on the back of the AVL than needed (7 in each pile) - will probably use the leftovers as thank-you's for customers.

Thinking of those back in South Carolina - haven't heard the news today on how things are going back there with the devastating floods. Sure wish some of that rainfall back east could be shipped out here - it's still fire season here, feels like it will never end. Usually by the end of September we have some measurable rainfall even if fire season isn't called off yet - not a drop here........

Another senseless tragedy.......

This morning while working in the studio I was watching a dvr'd show.......then it was over.......the local station came on to the news of the tragedy that had just happened up at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg. Another tragic mass shooting, this one just an hour north of us. What a shock in such a rural area such as ours in SW Oregon. My heart goes out to the families of those killed, to those injured and all others who witnessed such violence. The news has been reporting on it all day long, not much new, but they just can't seem to stop.......but I could, I didn't need to hear it over and over all day long......change the satellite channel to Sirius 60's music. It didn't stop the thoughts of what had happened but it did help not to hear it over and over again.

I went back to working on the surface design bookmarks that I was experimenting with last week. First I stamped on the cardstock, then I stenciled, I did glue a second piece of cardstock on the back to add more umpf to them. Then this morning I added some sparkle with foil and cut them out to see if they were successful. Yep, they were.........

So, I pulled out more cardstock and stamped on it. After the paint dried I did some stenciling. These will now sit for a few days for the stenciling with Shiva Paintstiks to cure. Then I'll add some foil sparkle and turn these into bookmarks. These bookmarks will go with program handouts for my surface design presentation next month.

I don't know if I've ever talked about how to clean stencils and stencil brushes. I use Citrasolv. It's orange scented and pretty much non-toxic.....it's very orange scented, like have the window open when using it. It makes quick work of clean up. I can find this in the natural food/household department of my local grocery store.

I also got the inkle loom warped up today and wove an inch just to get the weaving pulled into the final width. I'll work on this in the evenings, then put a second long warp on as I need quite the yardage. It's for this year's inkling ornaments.....hopefully my idea for this year will work.........if not I'll have a pile of pink bookmarks!

Playing..........

Today I did a little playing that is part of the surface design program I'm presenting in November. Always a fun activity.

I took a black silk scarf (pre-washed) and put painter's tape on it in a grid and then pulled out the Shiva Paintstiks and stencil brushes.

Here are the ends of the scarf once finished - color looks different on them but it's really not, just a camera/lighting snafu.

Here's a piece of wool felt I stenciled gingko leaves on using the Shiva Paintstiks. I'm thinking I'll put this wool under the embroidery machine and stitch very simple line drawn gingko leaves all over it - maybe in metallic thread. This will eventually become part of a tote bag.......I think.......plans may change...........

I had another black silk scarf that I had washed.......gingko leaves landed on it too, this time a different stencil.......

I used Jacquard Lumiere Textile paints and these two foam stamps when embellishing cardstock. This will get further embellishment with Shiva Paintstiks and possibly foiling. These are a test run to see how they'd do cut into strips to be bookmarks. I always like to have something for everyone to go with the presentation handout so am thinking of bookmarks. It has to be something simple and relatively quick to make. Will get back to these sometime next week.......

Tissue paper dyeing

I'm currently working on making some samples for a surface design presentation I'm giving in November. I gave this program to my guild back in 2009 so there's much updating of my handout and other than my small samples I have no full size samples so I'm trying to get some done.

I'm not sure why but in my handout I included a bit on tissue paper dyeing silk. It's not really surface design but at the time it seemed like a fun idea. It's not regular tissue paper but Spectra artist bleeding tissue paper. I remember now why I didn't care for it - most of the color washes out. But it's in my handout and I've dyed three scarves so I'll show it - always good to show failures too.

Here's the first scarf - I tore tissue paper into random sizes, placed them on the prewashed scarf and sprayed them with water - they immediately start bleeding.

Here's what I thought would be an Oregon Ducks (college football) scarf.

And the final scarf - you know it's done when the tissue paper dries and starts to pull off easily or if it's breezy it starts blowing all over the driveway.

Look at the pale colors that came out of what were really dark colors before rinsing them. And I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed again using Synthrapol, using laundry detergent. Finally I got them to wash clear - phew what a job. And look at that center scarf - it was the one that should have been yellow and green!  They turned out pretty but not what I envisioned.

I had some small scraps of off white handwoven fabric in my stash so I stenciled on it with Shiva Paintstiks and quilted a couple coffee cozy's.

And this was some leftover warp painted fabric I wove for another project that I stamped leaves on using fabric paints.....makes for a cute little purse.

I've got some other samples I've made recently but would like to make a few more this week.

This and that......

After the debacle on Monday of my discharge paste being too old to work I tried again with the new container - success. I buy my discharge paste from Dharma Trading Co.

Here I'm about to silkscreen the gingko design using the discharge paste.....

....the discharge paste is still wet here so it can be seen.....

....after it's totally dry I hit it with a steam iron until I see the amount of dye pulled out that suits me....

....and here's the chenille scarf washed and dried. It takes a bit to get the sliminess of the discharge paste off the scarf but it's not too bad. I wish it were easier to photograph chenille, especially black, it's so yummy. (just noticed I took pix of two different scarves - one of the scarves had large gingkos, the other a medium size)

I wove the first alpaca shawl that I put on the Macomber last week. Black alpaca warp, charcoal grey alpaca weft. I'm thinking the second shawl might be black weft.

And here is one of the popsicles I made yesterday - the perfect afternoon pick me up on a hot day. The white grape juice makes them a little tart but I like it. These get a thumbs up for yummy and also a thumbs up for being healthy.

 

More adminstrivia....and a reward

More administrivia today.....all I want to do is weave, spin, sew or knit.....but never ending administrivia. I spent time taking pictures of scarves for sale, above is one of the rayon chenille scarves that I silkscreened discharge paste on in the gingko design. Pictures never do these justice. And then after taking numerous pictures, editing them and saving them I got to run the vacuum - red letter day! So, I decided a reward was due, after I dropped off orders at the post office I drove to town (totally out of the way by at least 10 miles each way) and picked us up take-out from Abu's Deli & Oasis.....the entire house smells like lebanese food.....going to be hard waiting for Sam to get home.....

Fun in the studio.....

Trying to keep myself very busy today....too much on my mind so trying not to dwell on things I can't control. So, after blocking the knitting and crocheting this morning it was to the studio to decorate some frames. I bought these 3 notecards at a quilt shop in Coos Bay, OR, they were 5"x5". I immediately thought of framing them for the beach cottage, or the 'villa' as my friend Diane from Idaho calls it.....she won't call it a villa once she sees it! I found these nice black frames at Michael's with plans on decorating them. I pulled out the Shiva Paintstiks and went to town. I masked off an 1/8" on the inside and outside of the frame to keep a small black border then started applying color followed by white using stencils. I love the way they turned out. Now they sit and cure for around a week. I thought the next thing on the agenda today would be weaving that scarf warp of the loom but even with the window open and fan on the Citrasolve I used to clean my stencil brushes created fumes I just can't tolerate so no more working in the studio today. Hmm, that means I could either spin or knit, or clean house but that's just not happening today!

A wintery day of play.........

Yes, I said wintery day of play......what happened to spring??? I remember having 3 or 4 days of it and then we went back to winter - today torrential rains, wind, big hail and tonight the snow level will fall to 2500 ft and freeze warnings in the valley. Guess I'll need to pull all those planters on the deck up against the house or lose all.

So, here's the finished scarf of my handspun merino/tencel warp crossed with a commercial bamboo weft. I had been undecided on the sett and ended up changing it from 15 epi to 18 epi. It turned out beautiful but in hindsight I wish I had left it at 15 epi. The feel of this is 'like butter'. I added some beading in-between the twisted fringes, it doesn't show much which is planned, I didn't want a lot of added color to pop out, I just wanted sparkle. I'm happy with this.

So here was the beginning of my play day.....surface design. I never shop at Penney's but the other night some cute women's t's with cap sleeves caught my eye in the sale ad (sale is still on for a few days). How could I resist? Only $5.99, regular $14.00, just calling out to be embellished. I did keep a couple plain but had to play with the rest. Although not pictured many have a little embellishment on the sleeve or on the back shoulder. I could have gone crazy with the stenciling and silk screening but in reality I don't like that much design, much prefer simple and understated. First was the chartruese t that I bought to wear under this great rayon piece. I used stencils and Shiva Paintstiks - love the way it turned out.

Next was the brown t where I used a ginko stencil sheet and gold, copper and yellow gold paintstiks. The second picture is of the back shoulder.

Then a cute little flower in white paintstik on purple

The lotus blossom is one of the silkscreens I made last year - I used chartruese Lumiere paint. This also has a cute little chinese knot on each sleeve and the back shoulder

And finally on the black t a neat little abstract design in white paintstik with dragonflies in lavendar, green and blue

paintstiks. The second picture is the back shoulder. Since I'm not an experienced photographer I'm not sure why the wavy lines turn up on the body of the t-shirts in these photos. Sometimes it happens when photographing handwovens on the loom too.

Ok, big decision - do I head back to Penney's for more little t's...

Since I'm not weaving at the moment I thought I'd share a few other items I worked on for my presentation on surface design. The bookmarks are what I made as a gift for everyone who attended. On wool felt I first did rubbings using Shiva Paintstiks, then I stamped on top of those with Lumiere paint, and finally foiled on top of that. I bonded the wool felt to cardstock to give the bookmarks a bit more body.

The second picture is of 3 black silk scarves that I played with Shiva Paintstiks on - I'm sorry the picture doesn't do them justice. I'm working on an entire series of scarves along these lines. They will all be up for sale in the near future.

So, the fun news of the day is that my handwoven peach huck lace towels are featured in an Etsy Treasury through Saturday evening. So, please go take a peek, click on my towel as well as all the other towels. The more hits they get the bigger the chance we have of making the front page of Etsy. http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=58082 I think this is my 4th time having an item picked out of my shop for an etsy treasury.

Life is not my own.........

For some reason life is not my own these days, many other things outside of weaving keeping me busy. Another day of this and I'll be pretty grumpy - I need my fiber fix. So, this is why you see a picture of Bailey - nothing new fiber related to post........he thought it was time he show off anyhow. I took this picture on Monday as Bailey and I were planting the deck railing planters.

I gave my surface design presentation on Saturday to the Saturday Handweavers' Guild, well received, although I feel like it wasn't as good as it could have been. Following a lengthy business meeting I didn't have enough time to tell everything I wanted to or to demonstrate all of the techniques I wanted to - thank goodness my 19 page handout should fill in the blanks. I was in a panic talking as fast as I could and watching the clock thinking "oh my gosh - I have 5 more techniques to cover and time is running out". Could have run over if it weren't held in a library community meeting room with the library closing at 4:00.

On another note - yesterday at a meeting of the other guild I belong to, Rogue Valley Handweavers' Guild, the props were brought in to work on how our guild booth will go together for the ANWG Weaving Waves of Color Conference in Spokane at the end of the month. All weavings were in conference colors - primary & secondary colors in undulating weave structures. It's going to be an outstanding booth. I'll post pictures of it from the actual conference after it's over. My contribution to the display are two bamboo scarves - one reds in an undulating shadow weave (3/7/09 posting), the other in blues in a advancing point twill threading with a networked twill treadling (2/15/09 posting).

My Fiber Story

I'm still working on the Surface Design 101 presentation - coming down the home stretch though which is a good thing since it's 2 days from now. Above is a piece of handwoven fabric that I embellished by stamping Lumiere paints in the leaf design. The original fabric was a hand-dyed warp I had done in 5/2 perle cotton. This was a fabric woven a while back that originally was to be used for a vest or kimono top only I didn't like the colors for that so the yardage has been used for other projects such as Christmas cards this past year. This remaining piece that I've stamped is probably only 20" x 28" - I'm not sure what will become of it - maybe for embellishing or piecing, maybe a purse, it will come to me after it sits on the shelf a bit.

Ok, so finally the story of how I found the fiber arts, yes Susan, I'm finally getting to this challenge.

A little background - from a very young age, encouraged by my grandmother, I learned to sew, crochet and embroider. I was always drew, very little in the way of painting though. I was an art major in college concentrating mostly on fine line pencil drawings, silkscreening, etchings and lithographs...........and then on the other side of reason the business and accounting classes so I'd be able to support myself once out on my own.

So fast forward to 1986 a visit to Oregon (where we now live) from DC where we both grew up and lived. My aunt had taken up weaving and that summer she was participating in a loom exchange where guild members threaded up their looms to different weave structures and passed them around. On our way into town we needed to drop off a loom, her car was small so I had this table loom sitting on my lap. On the 45 minute drive to town I kept looking at this loom thinking this looked like it might be fun to learn. Upon returning home I looked for a weaving class, found one with a great teacher outside of DC, took the class and have never turned back. Mary Alice Hearn is an incredible weaving teacher - she was one of the first to receive her COE from Handweavers Guild of America, in 1976, I think. Not long after the class she steered me toward a used 10 harness 40" wide Macomber - it's my all time favorite loom. Other smaller second looms have come and gone but this Macomber will be here for the duration. Currently I also own a 24" 8 harness Macomber that was originally built for Mary Meigs Atwater - I even have newspaper clippings showing her teaching at a workshop sitting at this loom.

Also on that trip to Oregon we decided to buy property for retirement, of course we couldn't wait until retirement so we transferred to the SanFran Bay area for 2 1/2 years while we built up here, moved to Oregon winter 1992. Sadly we are no longer in that original house we built - I loved that house. But lives change and being 45 minutes from one town and 1 1/2 hours from a bigger town became too much driving so we moved in closer in 2003. We're still on acreage but only 10 minutes out of town - much less time spent on the road and many less miles put on the vehicles.

Ok, so back to fiber - I said I would never spin, well I should have never said that because I succumbed to spinning, then decided I need to start drop spindling.......mostly because of the beautiful drop spindles out there to covet. Now I teach drop spindling - my most fun class to teach. I also do quite a bit of dyeing and some felting but my first love remains weaving - I could spend all day planning and weaving off projects. I currently say I'll never own fiber animals - that is true - just won't happen - not enough hours in the day. And this is not one of those that later I'll change my mind - no fiber critters for me, a happy golden retriever is all I can handle.

So for the future - I'll continue learning as much as I can about the fiber arts. For the past year I've been looking at the AVL 24 harness compu-dobby workshop loom, even picked up a laptop last September at a back to school sale that will eventually run the loom. I've been so busy since the beginning of the year that I haven't even thought about ordering it plus in this economy it seems like it's something I should hold off on a bit.....and then I need to decide do a take a class at AVL before buying to make sure this is the model I want. There are also classes in the software, I know I would learn a tremendous amount but since I currently work with another weaving software for designing I think I could manage without that class for the time being. So much to think about, so little time.

And now back to the studio to organize myself for the surface design presentation.

Great workshop weekend

It's been a busy week - but what have I accomplished??? Saw my brother off at the airport Monday then got ready for the American Sewing Guild's visit to my house/studio. I had never met any of these women and they knew nothing of weaving - what a nice time, very nice women, I'm glad I agreed to this.

The remainder of the week was spent working on my surface design presentation which will happen next Saturday..........very fun work but I'll be so glad to get back to what I want/need to work on.........two guild presentations so close together has consumed a tremendous amount of time, the majority of my time since January. Hopefully tomorrow I'll knock out most of what's left to be done with the last minute details to finish up on Friday.

I did spend a great weekend in a workshop with Anita Luvera Mayer. We learned about all different types of vests - weaving and embellishing them. Then a small hands-on project of a necklace/pouch in which we learned some beaded embellishment techniques. What an inspirational and creative woman Anita is. In the first hour of the workshop Anita asked us each what goal we'd like to have met a year from now. Mine is weaving more garments (for myself) - I've woven a few but never put it on the front burner since I'm weaving to sell. She said if the goal is put in writing it becomes much more attainable - so into the journal it goes and now it's here for the world to see............or at least the small portion of the world that reads my blog. Here is my pouch - the body of it is melton (fulled wool fabric), lining is pieced cotton.

Surface Design

Today was a day of playing in the studio. I started out with samples using the Shiva Paintstiks - I finished the samples needed but still felt like playing with them so I took out several silks scarves I had hand-dyed...these were ones I always felt needed something else. Well, the paintstiks were just the thing - I used them with rubbing plates. Above are two examples of scarves - guess I only took pictures of the two purple ones so they look similar....but they're not.

Also made freezer paper stencils and printed samples, did some monoprinting and made up a couple silkscreens. Hopefully tomorrow samples of stamping (all different kinds of stamps) and silkscreening samples will be done. Oh, and dyed a silk scarf using bleeding tissue paper - an experiment, can't wait to see the results tomorrow when it's dry.

Did spend some time outside - absolutely beautiful day...........sprayed the dreaded poison oak in Bailey's yard to hopefully combat a repeat of the 3 month bout I had on my arms last spring.