August, September, October--Where did you GO?

I'm still here, but you wouldn't know it from visiting my blog! I had some computer problems that led to the purchase of a new computer, and the transition to the new one has NOT been easy and still isn't complete, but I think I am getting there, at last.
Meanwhile there have also been a lot of other demands on my time, so I have put my creative side on the shelf for far too many weeks. Why do I always choose to put that part of me at the bottom of the list?? This is not a good thing.
I hereby resolve to remedy that as soon as possible! Stay tuned for a picture of my new project--COMING SOON to a blog near you.
AJ

Oops

Goodbye, August. The month is gone and I didn't find (or make?) enough time to make the first monthly quilt in my new self-assignment. I could lament this and feel like I have failed in some sense, but instead I am choosing to retroactively designate August a vacation month! I've probably earned it.
September will be here in two more days, and I will start my new journal-quilt-year then. Whew. That was easy. There's a distinct advantage in accepting assignments from yourself
Now let's see what September brings. I have some ideas. Stay tuned.

It is time to make a plan for '08 - '09

We are having an amazing number of beautiful butterflies here in western North Carolina this summer. They are all over our butterfly bush and they are loving a blooming mimosa tree in the woods below our house. I've been outdoors photographing them. This is a Pipevine Swallowtail on a Joe Pye Weed bloom. Yes, I wanted the color to be super saturated. Isn't it gorgeous?

I've been trying to decide what quilting assignment I would like to give myself for the next twelve months, and I think I have decided to make ONE small quilt per month for '08 - '09. However, I want each of these quilts to be larger than the approximately 9 x 12 inch quilts that I made during the last twelve months. I might try 16 x 20 inches.
The second part of my self assignment will be to have fun with at least four surface design techniques every month and to try to be organized enough to keep notes on the results.
Will I be successful in fulfilling my own expectations this coming year? Time will tell !
I'm already behind on my self-assigned quilt for this month. I've had an idea and done some thinking and planning, but so far I haven't put anything together, and it is August 17. Yikes.
Perhaps I am watching too many butterflies. But, now, really-----how could it be possible to see too much beauty---no matter how many deadlines it causes you to miss???

Here are all 48 of my journal quilts- 8/07-7/08

I am showing them again here for my own encouragement and benefit.
If I could complete 48 quilts in '07 - '08,
then I can do a mere TWELVE in '08 - '09.
Can't I?

(Scroll down and click on the older posts to see individual views and info on each little quilt...)

Flour and Water Resist

Hello, Andie from Florida! Thanks for dropping by and commenting on the potato resist / bleach discharge experiment.
Nice to 'meet' you. Your comment inspired me to go back into the kitchen and try the flour and water resist.
I used a cup of cold water and about one and one-third cups of flour, mixed into the water with a wire whisk. It was about the consistency of pancake batter. I painted it on a piece of coarsely woven off white fabric that I had pinned to a piece of foam insulation board. I let it dry thoroughly. Then I crinkled the fabric to make the resist crack, and painted it with blue fabric paint. After the paint dried, I washed out the flour resist. Above are a couple of pictures of the result. At the top is a closeup of the texture. Below that is the whole piece, which is about 16 x 20 inches. Click on either of these for a closer view.
You're right, the flour resist with paint gives a great result too. I found it a bit harder to wash out of the fabric than the potato resist, but I will definitely be trying both again. I think there are a lot of possibilities to explore with both. When I can make my own resists with non toxic ingredients that are already in my kitchen, what's not to like!!

Potato Resist and Bleach

At our July Uncommon Threads (art bee) meeting, our leader, Marilyn showed us some examples of painted fabric using potato starch resist. I had been thinking of trying this, but decided to see how it would work with bleach discharge instead of fabric paint.
The piece of fabric above is what resulted from my first try at using potato resist with bleach discharge on a piece of solid black fabric. I really like the texture effect that I got, and found that this particular fabric bleaches to a lovely rosy color, (a bonus!)
Here's what I did: I bought the cheapest grocery store brand of dry instant mashed potatoes. For the edible version, the box calls for 3/4 cup of boiling water and 1/3 cup milk to 3/4 cup of the dry potato flakes. I decided to try approximately double the amount of liquid (all water, of course), so I boiled about 2 cups of water and added the potatoes. This made a mixture that was very liquid and runny, so I stirred in some additional potato flakes until the mixture was a little thicker---about the consistency of babyfood applesauce. I also added about one tablespoon of Sta-Flo liquid starch. I had read a recipe somewhere on the internet that suggested this, but I can't find the site now.
I pinned the peice of black fabric to a scrap piece of blue board foam insulation to keep it flat. Then I applied a fairly thick coat of the potato mixture to the fabric, using a foam brush to smooth it out. I put it aside to dry on my deck in the 90 degree heat. When it was thoroughly dry, (which took hours!), it was quite stiff and I took it off the board and crumpled it so that the potato coating cracked in many directions. Then I put the fabric in a plastic tray, took it outdoors and sprayed it with Clorox bleach. As soon as it had bleached to a nice rosy orange in all of the cracks and parts with no potato resist, I put it into a solution of Anti-chlor to stop the bleach action. After a few minutes, I rinsed the fabric in a bucket of water which took off most of the potato, and then hand washed it with a little detergent to get rid of the rest. After a thorough rinse, I pressed it dry with the iron, and you can see the result above. This piece of fabric measures 8 1/2" by 14". I don't know how I will be using it, but I am very happy with it for a first try, and I will be exploring more possibilities with potato starch resist!

HERE ARE MY JULY 2008 QUILTS

I DID IT !
I made four journal-sized (9 X 12) quilts each month for a year!
I have 48 completed quilts. I have learned and experimented.
Best of all, I have had hours and hours of FUN.

Here are my final four:This quilt (above) was made from bleach discharged fabric. I discharged the black dye from the black fabric, leaving a lovely orange color. The black fabric had an overall pattern of small white flowers. I used Soft Scrub bleach gel as my 'discharge paste and freezer paper stencils cut into heart shapes---using the shapes both as a mask and as stencils, ironed onto the fabric. The discharged pieces are raw edge appliqued on the gold commercial print fabric. The quilt is embellished with gold jaquard paint and has three gold hearts sewn on.

This is a digitally manipulated image of our late great kitty, Guinevere, in the iris bed. It was printed on fabric and after layering, I used some free motion quilting and thread painting to enhance the image.

For "Birds of a Feather" (above), I drew a digital image of a bird and colored it. Then I made a second image with opposite colors by 'inverting' in Photoshop. I duplicated the two oppositely colored birds until I had four rows of four. Then I used Photoshop layers, a rainbow colored layer and blend modes to make them multicolored. I printed them on fabric, along with the "Birds of a Feather" title, and made a multicolored fabric feather that I sewed on. After layering the little quilt, I used some decorative machine stitching to decorate it.

I used an original digital image of a small sunflower that grew in our yard. After some digital manipulation, I printed the picture on fabric and added some stitching and free motion machine quilting. The colors and sunflower make me think of Van Gogh.

AND THAT'S MY 48TH JOURNAL QUILT !

My Four Quilts for June, 2008

June Quilt number one.
This quilt started with a rectangle of painted Wonder-Under (in the middle). The pink flower is made from some silk flower petals. Some thread painting was added.

This is June 2008 Quilt Number Two

Number Two (above) is just a kind of 'doodle'. I started with a painted scrap and just played with various ideas from there. This does not show up in the photo, but there is sparkle paint in the border and on two of the heart shapes. There's some Angelina fiber that also didn't photograph properly. It was fun to make but didn't turn out particularly well.

June quilt number three.
In June, we drove to the Washington DC area to visit our two sons, who live in Germantown and Brunswick, MD. The little quilt above has a fold out accordian set of twelve pictures about our trip. When it is folded, it has a road map of our route on the front.

June quilt number four.
This quilt began as an experiment with rust dyed fabric. On our trip to Maryland, my son gave me an old rusted chain he had found in his yard and my husband and I found a rusted railroad spike and several other very old pieces of metal. I brought them home and used them to rust dye some fabric. Our younger son has recently moved to Brunswick, MD, a wonderful old railroad town containing a big railyard that is still very busy. One can hear and see C&O freight trains, Amtrak passenger trains, and MARC commuter trains passing through Brunswick all during the day and night. I loved the sounds and sight of them!
For my quilt, I printed a picture of an old steam train on fabric, along with my digitally manipulated photo of the rail yard as it looks today. Hearing the trains at night made me wonder if, in the moonlight, one mightn't sometimes be able to see a ghost of the old steam locomotives that used to pass through Brunswick's railyard.

My Four Journal Quilts for May 2008

This is the first of my four weekly May quilts. It is called Trinity because the design I made uses many of the design elements in threes. It has private layers of meaning for me. I used fusing to attach the everything to the black background, and did some hand and some machine stitching.

This is the second of my four quilts for May. I made the digital image from a manipulated closeup photo of a pansy petal that I had taken. I drew the female Icarus-like figure after seeing a sculpture of Icarus on the grounds of the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I printed the digital image on fabric and attached it with decorative machine stitches to the background of metallic flecked rose colored fabric. I extended the 'sun' with a layer of gold painted plastic that began life as the peel-off protector on top of a yogurt container. I used free motion quilting in the background and bound the quilt in yellow. For me this quilt symbolizes the need to aim high, even though you may fly too close to the sun as Icarus did.

This third quilt in my May series of four expresses my joy at the beauty of May and the blooming iris in our yard. First I painted an iris on fabric and scanned it into the computer where I manipulated the image in various ways until I had a composite image that pleased me. I printed the image on fabric and used machine stitching to enhance it. I bound it with a happy print.

This is the fourth of my weekly 'journal quilts' for May. Like Huck Finn and Jim, I have lain outside on the ground at night with someone special and marvelled at the stars. For this quilt I used a handmade star stamp and metallic paint to decorate the night sky fabric, and then I used free motion machine stitching with variegated metallic thread to add more light.

April's Quilts

For this Nuthatch, I squished out some paint on glass and made a monoprint on tissue paper. Then I collaged the tissue onto the leafy fabric using diluted Elmer's glue. I printed the scanned nuthatch on fabric from the computer and appliqued him on, using machine satin stitch. I machine quilted the painted areas using decorative and straight stitch.
I love seeing a nuthatch scurry down a tree trunk head first.

The moon is fused fabric. The owl was printed on fabric and fused. The tree is free motion thread painted using silver metallic thread. Here in the western North Carolina mountains, we sometimes hear the big owls calling in the woods above our house on cold, early Spring nights.

I stencilled the hummingbird's silhouette on the glue side of fusible web and transferred it to the fabric with a hot iron. The flowers are done the same way and the leaves are fused fabric. I used free motion machine quilting to echo the bird's dancing, darting flight.
'Our' family of hummingbirds always arrives around April 20, and this year was no different. We always try to have their feeders filled and waiting for them. I'm pretty sure it is the same family group every year. I base my faith that they do return to their own specific yard on the following: My mother always hung her hummingbird feeder in a specific location. After she died, my brother lived in her house, but didn't put up any feeder. For several years, in early Spring, he saw hummingbirds arrive and repeatedly search the exact spot where my mother had hung her feeder----a spot that was now completely vacant of anything that could have attracted them.
I am amazed when I contemplate how precisely they must navigate. Welcome back, little guys!

I am always so happy to see Spring's first iris. I printed my digital photo on fabric. It needs more quilting, but I haven't decided what kind.

My Four Journal Quilts for March 2008

This is just a 'doodle' quilt. I used scraps of muslin that had been used to try out brushes, colors, etc. These are sewn to a piece of green felt with more strips inserted for a kind of border. It is embellished with three round fused kaleidoscope pieces printed from the computer, some beads and some ironed-on plastic Easter basket grass. I used decorative stitching around the edge.





This is called 'Dream'.
I used scraps of muslin that I'd tried colors on, the mask-like faces that I drew on fabric are fused on and are partly hidden behind Angelina fiber as they inhabit the dreams of the sleeping figure below. I drew and colored this figure and her quilt digitally and printed her on fabric, which was then fused to the purple bottom panel. I used some decorative stitches and an applied border.





At the left is 'Dancers'.
I used fused fabric and added some embroidery for their hair.
It is sandwiched with flannel for batting and has muslin backing.
It expresses the joy I feel when I'm in my studio having fun!









This is a collage on muslin, and it uses homemade paper, mulberry paper, and tissue paper, with transparent paints added. I used Elmer's
glue diluted half and half with water to put down the layers. It was sandwiched with flannel and a muslin backing, and free motion quilted.








You can click on each quilt for a slightly larger view.

The Ketchup Sisters - part 2

Here are the other two 'Ketchup Sisters'. And now I'm caught up. I have four journal quilts for every month since August 2007. The face on the left was drawn and colored with Neocolor 2 watercolor crayons, used dry on muslin. The face on the right is a thread drawing on fabric.

Fumble Bees Forever!

Although I have told you about my recent membership in the new art quilt bee at my guild, I haven't written about another truly special sisterhood that I am privileged to enjoy. For several years now, I have been V E R Y lucky to be a member of the FUMBLE BEE, one of the several Bees that exist in the Smoky Mountain Quilters Guild.
Until last week, there were eight of us. We meet once a month, at each of our homes in turn, for lunch and an afternoon together. We usually bring some small hand sewing project to work on while we visit, but our conversational focus is usually anything but sewing. Husbands, banished to other parts of the house on meeting days, report overhearing wild bursts of laughter and sometimes even lines that they claim could have come from questionable jokes. We are also widely known for our fun trips to quilt shows, fabric shops and seminars. On some of these trips, our members travel incognito, and prefer to be known as The Travelling Threads. Getting lost has been an added fun activity on some trips, as has cell phone calls from back seat to front seat in the same car...(don't ask!)
And, don't get me wrong---although fun is frequently our focus, we have some very accomplished and dedicated quilters in our Bee---people who consistently win ribbons at shows (not me!) and even one member who quilts professionally.

Fran

One such immensely creative and accomplished quilter and FumbleBee member was Fran Johnson, who lost her life to ovarian cancer just four short days ago on Friday, February 29. She brought her own special brand of fun, good humor, supportiveness, wisdom, and strength to our Bee. On Wednesday, February 27, she asked her family members to summon the FumbleBees to her house for one last get together. It was an amazing gesture of love and friendship on her part and utterly typical of her. Since her diagnosis, Fran had battled her cancer with everything she had. None of it can have been easy, but she kept going through all of the surgery, chemo, transfusions, and other treatments with her usual sunny smile and with her sense of fun intact. She truly made the most of every moment of every day. She hosted our January Bee meeting at her house, and drove herself to our February 4th meeting at Maggie's, where she was as cheerful and nurturing as ever. Her spirit was just as strong when we told her goodbye on February 27.

L to R: Connie, Maggie, Margaret, Renate, Faye

We had our March Bee meeting yesterday at my house, and during lunch we reminisced about Fran and what an amazing woman she was and how much we miss and will always love her.
Then we 'talked some trash' and played with watercolor crayons on fabric.

I think Fran would have loved it..

Pathetic Patty Ketchup

In my last post, I said I was going to discard my first pathetic Ketchup Sister into the scrap bag, but...something about her stopped me.. I tried out my new couching foot and gave her some orange yarn here and there, and she got some button earrings. and a fuzzy yarn border. She has apparently angered her hairdresser---how else could you explain that hairdo? Her plastic surgeon didn't do the greatest job on her nose, and what about those excessive collagen injections in her lower lip! You might also notice that Pathetic Patty is even more politically confused than I am because she's wearing buttons from three presidential candidates. (I'm down to only two, myself.) So, although she is still pathetic, she is pressing on in spite of everything.
More power to you, PattyGirl!

The Ketchup Sisters

It is confession time.
In August '07 I pledged to myself that I would produce four journal quilts a month, and I have kept this going pretty well, but in December, I fell behind! In my defense, I did make two little quilts that month that I gave away, but Ive decided that they don't really count, so I ended up owing myself four quilts! The Quilt Police will probably pull up to my door any moment now, so I have resolved to make up the deficit and redeem myself in my own eyes. (What would a therapist say about that?).
Since I have been wanting to play with making some human faces, I decided I'd make four portraits of women, and I'd call them the Four Ketchup Sisters! (Ketchup==catch up---get it? Yeah, I know that's pretty bad---sorry!) I've seen lots of neat looking primitive fabric faces, so that's what I decided to try first. My initial result is PATHETIC. (at left) First I thought that some embellishment might help but after looking at it some more, I think I may just consign it to the scap bag. I guess that whimsical-and-primitive just isn't working for me this week!
Then I thought maybe I would try a more realistic, photographic face, and that turned into attempt number two (at right). I do like her better, so I'll probably finish her and maybe I will try interpreting some more 'real faces' into fabric.
Stay tuned for more Ketchup Sisters.
Still having FUN!
AJ

Snow

Here is a picture of the branches of a big
evergreen in our yard during the recent
snow. I enhanced the digital photo to emphasize
the needles and shapes and printed the photo on
fabric. Snowflake beads were added and I
did some handquilting on top of the snow to
add sparkle, which doesn't show in the photo.

Child's Prayer

I am touched by this sweet children's prayer.
I couldn't find its origin online and I don't think
that it is copyrighted. I added a drawing that I
printed on fabric.

Here's some more color

Scrappy strips of fabric, joined and overlaid
with mesh from the bag that contained our
supper onions.

Hungry for color

Drawing was done on the computer. Plate was
fused and i used embroidery floss for the
colorful food. Color feeds the soul.

This is another watercolor crayon experiment.
Watercolor crayons on white fabric; machine
quilted with multicolored thread.

At our 'art bee' meeting in November, we played
with watercolor crayons. This is my result, called
'Wild Columbines'. The two borders are commercial
fabrics.

We lost a very dear family member on January 16
when we had to say goodbye to our 14 year old
cat, Miss Gwinney. She was a sweetie and I made
this in her honor.

Experimenting with some homemade
polymer clay beads and commercial fabric.

November 2007 -- 4 quilts

I call this "Spirit Dance." I used foil, fusing,
and fabric paint. I left dangling threads to
suggest movement.

A very old family photo and some odds and ends.

Hand dyed fabric combined with manipulated
iris photo on fabric.

Hand dyed fabric. Just experimenting.

October 2007 -- 4 quilts

My Halloween quilt.

Here I am thinking about the season, but also about aging.
The hands are my husband's and mine.
We celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary in 2007.

THE UNLIKELY PAIR
Everyone knew it wouldn't last.
She was ceramic.
He was organic.
It was over by lunchtime.
(Haven't we all attended a wedding like that?)

Another 'Ricky Inspired' quilt.

September 2007 4 Quilts

Losing My Marbles is self explanatory. They are jumping out of my head and running away...