Experimentation as Procrastination

Instead of, oh, say, finishing something, yesterday I did some found object printing. Fabric paint, since my earlier experiments with acrylic paint yielded acrylic paint crumbs in my sewing machine. Most objects failed, including styrofoam packing peanuts. Maybe if I had glued them onto a base...but that would have required planning ahead, so the glue could dry.

Successful objects include a Leinie's bottle:

There's usually one of these around somewhere. Very subtle markings, once I figured out how not to glob the paint onto the glass.

And a rotting onion half I found in the bottom of the fridge:

Very cool, although future onions will produce (hee!) slightly different patterns. The fabric smells slightly of onion; I will have to rinse it after I heat-set the paint (does that take a hyphen? "heat" modifies "set"....).

And now, if you are my mother, you want to know what I will do with these. As always, the answer is "store them somewhere until I think of something." Except the styrofoam packing peanut piece--that'll be a back or base of something, where it can never be seen by human eyes.

A Clowder of FUZZ

So, I had this picture of my cat FUZZ, and I ran it through Photoshop (Version 5.5, I bought it in 2000). Next, I printed him out on white cotton fabric and painted over the faces with translucent fabric paint.



I appliqued one head to the fabric before doing the background stitching, but it was a pain in the butt to stitch around the head, so for the rest I did the background stitching first.

These pieces are about 4" square, and need to be finished along the edges (also need beads or sequins or more stitching or all of the above). My plan is to let them ripen for a few days while I work with other images printed on fabric, most likely fabric postcards.

Snow Dyeing

I rejoined Quiltart as a lurker, and many of them are doing some snow dyeing this winter. I feel like a sheeple, but I have a little fresh snow this week. :-|



I used two colors of dye, "Royal Blue" and "Raspberry". The latter separated into component colors very quickly:



The concept is that as the snow melts, the dye will seep onto the fabric, creating interesting patterns--especially if, as I have done, you have used a dye mixed from two or more separate colors.

My results? I don't have them yet. After four hours only half the snow has melted. :-\ Stay tuned.

Try it for yourself: Snow dyeing instructions (pdf)

I should probably post once a year, or something

Does anyone still read this? It's been literally years.

I never actually finished anything 2010. Since my last post, I have:

• dyed about 40 yards of fabric (not all shown here)
• taken several thousand photographs of New York, Germany, Südtirol, and a bunch of other places
• plugged away at some tedious and long-term traditional projects
• bought a bunch of paint and fabric
• thrown out a bunch of paint and fabric
• made more aliens (but I've stopped scanning and uploading them)
  
• collected more beer bottle caps than I have ideas for using them
  

I'm back in Milwaukee, anyway, and procrastinating on making some curtains. Over the weekend I fiddled around with some scraps:



I don't know what I'm going to do with them, either. At least they're not aliens.

Data Matrices in Progress

I don't have a set-up out here to photograph sequins (the flash reflects...), but as long as they're less than 9" wide, I can scan them...

Is it boring? Am I too blinded by my own cleverness?

A little darker:

In progress:

They're all technically "in-progress" since the edges aren't finished (they're just cropped). I got a walking foot last week, so this week I may attempt a facing. I say "may" because I've been working late a lot.

Meanwhile, I've got some fabric dyeing...

There is work in progress

When I was quilting the grid on this piece of fabric I dyed in 2004, I felt a need to scan it to preserve the subtle patterning before I covered it all up with sequins.

A few weeks ago I was doing some research into information encoding at work and came across the Data Matrix. And I thought, what an excellent way to put messages into quilts (especially subversive words/sentiments...). Up to 3115 ASCII characters--doesn't have to be alphanumeric--can be put into the matrix, and of course a quilt can string matrices together. I could encode ASCII art for the ultimate geekery.

I'm still playing around with instantiation. I haven't completely rejected piecework, but I don't enjoy matching corners so it's low on the list. Fused squares are in progress but the quilting is going slowly. Square sequins have an interesting look, but the process of applying them to a pre-quilted grid feels a bit like counted cross-stitch, which I have always hated. This weekend I will investigate stamping the squares. Screen-printing is also on my mind...when I come up with messages I can wear on T-shirts, I can commission some Thermofax screens.

I don't really feel like sharing my samples (or messages) at this time; just felt like I was neglecting the blog.

What I probably need is a critique group to tell me I'm being a bit too precious with the intellectual crap and not at all visually interesting, like my fiber class did with my logic diagrams ten years ago.

Fabric Dyeing, Jan 17

Sunday did two sets of 9-step gradations (that's still the only way I can make the math work!), seven FQs, and a really awesome wingspan of "pre-soaked, then batched with leftover dye." Not bad for the first time I've dyed fabric in about over 18 months.

I measured the dye powder and kept scrupulous notes. I also saved snippets in a three-ring binder with the measurements I used, in case I want to reproduce the colors. I don't think I've done that in ten years (I first learned to dye in the fall of 1999)...

I'm using mixed colors from Dharma, and I didn't stir much, so the color is not consistant. Which doesn't really bother me because I don't have any end project in mind.

The orange and yellow fabrics are to keep my camera's color correction from freaking out at the lack of red...

Blue Green to Navy:


Blue Green to Royal Blue:


Fat Quarters:

Not in order, but there's Navy with Pure Yellow, Navy with Golden Yellow, Royal with each yellow, Blue Green with Azure Blue, Blue Green with Pure Yellow, and Royal with Navy. The Golden Yellow was much browner than previously; I wonder if it settled during shipping (I do not recall stirring the powder in the jar).

Yesterday I bought a 25-lb bag of food-grade salt at the grocery store, to see if the colors become brighter next time (I felt bad-ass driving my cart around with that much salt...like I was stocking up before it becomes illegal in New York).

I used Kona muslin; it's about 200-count so very smooth, and very sharp visual resist effects from crinkles in the fabric. I would use it again for shibori, but not for a project where I wanted uniform color. And I guess I won't be hand-stitching anything made from these.

Finally, my wingspan of leftovers, hanging on my bedroom wall for inspiration:


It is a lot lighter now that it's dry, but I'm still very impressed with myself.

Is this thing on?

I am still in New York. 6-month contract turned into 8 turned into 14. I took over seven thousand digital photographs of the lake, the Thousand Islands, the Adirondacks, etc. Some of the ones that didn't suck can be seen on Flickr.

Now it is winter, and I am bored to tears, so I bought a cheap sewing machine at WalMart and ordered some fabric dyes. We'll see what happens.

In New York with no sewing machine

Yesterday I inspected Lake Ontario and found it acceptable.

Almost there...

In Pennsylvania for the night, after driving up from visiting Grandpa in SW Ohio. I-80 through western/central PA is probably very beautiful when it's not fogged over, and when there are leaves.

I can't take pictures of myself, so I brought a stand-in:



That's Bratwurst, one of the Famous Klement's Racing Sausages. I was unable to hear the Opening Day game since I was on the road...fairly crankified. It appears to have been awesome.

Syracuse--sewing machine?

I'm going to work in central New York for six months while the cat stays here with Bryan and my furniture. Which sounds depressing...let's try "I'm going to test a new airport safety product for six months in a beautiful part of the country, where every weekend I can go take pictures somewhere I've never been before and drink beers I cannot drink in Wisconsin!" That's better.

The plan is to drive myself out with a Buick full of essentials, buy an air mattress, get a recliner and a table at the Salvation Army, and give it back to them in October (I have a friend there with a Jeep). Once I have an address, I can receive boxes of fabric in the mail. I will have my laptop and Photoshop. JoAnn, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and AC Moore are all within 15-20 minutes of work; I already visited a traditional quilt shop in the area when I was there for the interview *grin*; I'm sure there are needlework and art supply stores somewhere between Buffalo (I have a friend there...) and Albany. So I should pack and ship odd stuff--hand-dyed fabrics, maybe my beer label collection--and not worry too much about forgetting a certain tool or color of thread. Although I don't see myself buying too much stuff, since it will all have to be donated or shipped back to Milwaukee.

I am dithering about whether or not to take the sewing machine...and/or the big plastic tubs of beads and sequins...and/or fabric paint. I haven't been using the machine or the embellishments lately, but that's different than not having them. I only plan to be "home" on rainy weekend days, and maybe not even then. And it would be fiscally responsible to pack the Buick with some dishes, towels, pans, etc, instead of art supplies. Handwork might be the best bet.

Whatever I pack, I will wish I had packed the other thing.

It has occurred to me that late April/early May is prime season for "dumpster diving around college campuses", which is how I obtained most of my dyeing/batiking equipment 10 years ago, including ironing boards (my iron is going with me for work clothing purposes).

The first week is obvious: I have been sporadically (on airplanes, mostly) working up a red, black, and gold paper-pieced Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt with 3200-ish hexagons. Three years, maybe 15% completed. No pictures--perhaps I'll have time tomorrow. Will be excellent mindless stitching for sitting in a hotel room thinking about a new job.

Take Me To Your Feeder

The aliens have mutated.



Look! Paintstiks! *heh*





And for thrills, I stacked 'em all up:


I may have been affected by the new episodes of Red Dwarf, even though no one has bothered to mention when or how they will be available in the U.S.

I'm still calling them "in-progress"--whiskers are definitely needed, and I'm still thinking about potential embellishments. But the stab-stitching is very soothing right now.

Harrington Beach

I've been spending my weekdays sitting around waiting for phone calls, which is simultaneously tedious and stressful.

Bryan took me to Harrington Beach on Sunday afternoon and we walked around for a couple of hours indulging my obsession with sand formations.



More here.

Flickr has installed a new feature where you can see your stats "So far today", so I have a new feeder-pellet bar to click on every thirty seconds or so. *snicker*

Milwaukee Photo Walk

Lots of people out downtown today, so I went south of downtown.



More photos here.

Aliens on backgrounds...

I've given up on making any sort of FFAC collage. Just not my thing--even in picking an image to work around, my good photographs are a whole composition and don't really lend themselves to being one element, photocopies of antique postcards look too flat, and most everything else that intrigues me has a copyright.

So then I was looking at my stack of aliens, and I noticed my stack of backgrounds, and I flipped them around for awhile.


The tacky metal word is too tacky. The background probably needs more stitching. Could also rotate the orientation 90 degrees. I wish there was more "stars" swirling above the alien...I could take the background apart try again, if I have more of the glitter fabric. I know I don't have any more dyed batting...


Same background, different alien. Same thoughts. Obviously, there can be only one here...


I'm not really sure about teal with navy blue, but I love the contrast between the orange the blue.


Same reservations about the teal, and about having horizontal stitch lines on both parts.

Obviously, a collage would need more than one element and a background. Stars, or stripes of color...

So, I could make a couple of pieces that finish to 8" x 10", but then I look around at other artists' submission, and the aliens seem...slapdash. Maybe childish.

I could use some honest comments, if you're inclined. :)

Minor adventure in FIBland.

Had a job interview yesterday on the wrong side of the Cheddar Curtain. Stopped at a state park on the drive home, to decompress. Wasn't really impressed by the park, but had some fun with the camera.



The whole set is here.

I resemble this lolcat.

The beat goes on and I'm so...something

Grey aliens.

These two are another upside-down Jinny Beyer print from 1997-ish:




An icky faux-country calico print, again upside-down:


I may never get to the "embellishment" chapter of the playbook.

I'm kinda impressed at how good the "icky" fabrics I don't like and thought I would never use actually look in a project, even one with only two fabrics.

Alien Apotheosis

I don't think they can get any better than this:



Here's another green E.B.E.

Alien invasion continues

This is the same teal fabric as the earlier E.B.E., with unprinted side (I refuse to call it the "wrong" side for this piece) on top:


And while I had the fabric paint out for the eyes, I tried a freezer paper stencil:


Not sure how he ended up wonky-shaped. I like the color and the hand of the paint, but he looks a little flat compared to the appliqued guys.