Winters Tale

Winters Tale

I really like Andy Goldsworthy and like his nature inspired work. I have been working with raw silk, as in fusion, inclusions and a lot of experimentation. When I read the requirement of using an unusual background I thought my silken web looked like the 'ground graffiti' of spring after the thaw. Not unusual to find the skeletal remains of what lived before the snow and ice and that is what my piece depicts. I used the skeletal 'bones' for the rhythm and the flowing water marks to repeat... in a sense.
This piece is on a base of black dupioni silk... the silk fusion stitched through with Honeysuckle [color] floss, then silk thread in my machine for the water..... the Japanese symbol is the 'spring' symbol. It is faced.
It was fun to do and I have another silk work in progress.

I am looking forward to your comments.....




After the Storm

I am not sure I have this right.... The 'Color field' aspect correct,
however I did study the links and the works presented therein. I have to say, that not having a totally clear idea of this challenge, I went with the images that formed in my mind as I looked, cogitated and drew conclusions.
I definitely look forward to your comments on this one.

This is a real departure for me.. not just the Color challenge, but this is done with newspaper on batting, then adhered to a 'texturized' canvas.

A question has been asked... did I consider not having the two strips across the top.... yes, I did, and in fact, left it for 2 days trying to decide. Yellow is very intense and hard to work with... something I have thought about.... maybe someone will comment on.. is should I make those two at the top paler... should I whiten them. Since this is an encaustic type of piece, it would be easy to do.

One shape...

Wanting to do something other than a 'normal' shape... I decided on a tessellation of some kind. It reminds me of a waterfall... tears.. or? I haven't quite finished it, I am using some black floss in hand quilting the outer area. The design itself is one piece, layered with batting, then placed on the black fabric. I was going to cut again around the shape leaving a quarter inch border, but I think the weight of the design needs the extra 3 layers to support it... what do you think? I love the sheen of rayon thread so all the threadwork is rayon.

Any comments or.. yes... greetings are appreciated.

Life and Death at once.

Long shadows reach out.
The time has come for sleep. Caught!
Life and death at once.

Whole cloth background fabric, using 'stitch' to define the pretty much dead grasses in the form of free motion quilting. Reverse applique was used for the branches and 'long shadows'. The spiders web speaks for itself..... I used some tulle for some of the web....

Simple, effective... to match the simple, effective words of Haiku.


With this piece I was able to get two-for-one........ here is the reverse side..

14.5 x 14.5

Coleus

Taking into serious consideration the critiquing of these works, I decided to do what I could with my coleus today to see if I couldn't get a little more ' Chiaroscuro' happening. Auditioning AGAIN in Photoshop I can see a bigger difference compared to the one below.... it is now faced, and having done that, I agree...I sure would appreciate any comments on this one, if you have the time...



Coleus

Fall is here, the sun is lower and striking the coleus at a different angle. This is an 11:00 am. sun...




I struggle with contrast... and the word, together with the links that directed us to work, seemed to me that some part should be quite light, so I hope I have achieved this. I used 16 different fabrics, including 2 dupioni silk, I loved the fraying for the center coloration of the main leaf. I used 10 different threads for the thread-painting. It measure 15 x 13..... but I may crop it to a 12 x 12.
[click on the photo for a larger view]



I think I will put a 3/16" binding on it. I thought of facing it, but because it is so bold, it seems, to me.. to need a sense of confinement..... your thoughts?



I encourage any and all comments.

L'Elegance in Nickel

GILDED........

Here it is with the 'gilding' done.      
I used Lumiere Metallic Bronze.
No comment from me at this point, I would like to see what you think.

Trying the torn pieces of paper in the actual fabric piece does not work...
there is really no where to put them, it looks messy..IMHO..

I thought I might try cutting some metal, like an aluminum can, but it was too sharp and that really isn't me anyway.

I had dyed a damask tablecloth a couple of weeks ago and I am making a jacket from it. I am at the quilting stage, and now this challenge comes along.

So, I took a piece of that damask... which by the way is dyed

'Nickel'... placed it on some batting, and used copper metallic to follow the design in the damask. I placed that on a gold metal grid fabric and stitched it

down. I had some grey/silver looking wrapping paper, I placed my piece on it,stitched it down, ragged the edges and used gesso to glue it to an 8x10

frame. I used hinges to add some other metallic interest.I have been wanting to

do something with a frame, so now I have.

The optimism is the fact that I believed I could put all this together and have it look good...and it does.

By the way, I used copper Sliver in the top and Invisafil in the bobbin. A 90 Metallic needle and I had no thread breakage.  Click on the photo to get a proper view of the metallic thread at work.

Thank you, Sandy for a great challenge!

I do look forward to your comments....

Un Named at present

Wow! What a challenge this was Tobi!! And so much fun, too.... I really went out of my 'zone' on this one, got right out there on that limb! Almost everything in this has some new twist or take to what I would normally do. The quilting, for starters, I did the tree first and used a quilting design I have never tried before and have to say I like it. Then the background is something I have never done before... added some color and stylized the leaf design in the fabric. The woodpecker looks a little odd.. like a mole or some little animal as opposed to a bird... oh well...  and my bunny is paper.
I have a different edge shape than I have ever done... notches out of each side, one upper, one lower.... I will face it, then it is finished.

So, now I am looking forward to the critiquing process... its strengths? its weaknesses? Colors?

Or overall... is it OK? And I appreciate a 'good going', too.... means you like it...

 Size: size: 17 x 32

Geo I

Kathy... this challenge got me! It was not easy at all... I went out and took a picture of our mountains.

Geo I

Then I defined the lines in Photoshop and set it as background on my computer for a few days to look at and think. We have a favorite spot where we used to stay with our 5th wheel at Hurricane, Utah and I tried to remember some of the colors and because it has been a few years now, I cannot remember the lake, but it is not on the same side of the road as Zion..... and I did add ...I think, anyway... somethings unexpected.. Anyway, I am adding this one to my 'crap quota' for the year.

Because I really want to remember this, I wanted to do a piece for my fabric journal.. so it is 9 x 6 and I have it in my Journal already.

I learned a lot.. mostly what does not work. I had more stitching and I took it out, you can see the needle holes. In this case.. less would be more.

I used a feather to do the 'rock work' because of the size, I couldn't find anything with a small enough point
nor the color I wanted. I am going to post some photos of the feather at work on my blog and will link to it when I do.
I don't really expect any comments, but if you can find something redeeming, I will file those comments
in my Fabric Journal.

Kathy... that was an awesome Challenge.

Chanterelles

I used a photograph of Chanterelles as a guide and free hand cut and stitched. It is 3 layers.. altho' the actual backing is batting, the muslin is in the center. I will be using this piece for gluing into my Fabric Journal.

I am showing it in its actual size and in a Tramp Frame.

Chanterelles

Measures.... 8x6"

I am looking forward to your comments.

Waggle Dance

 Whilst experimenting with painting batting and the fracture challenge cogitating in the sub-concious, I was reminded of our bee-keeping days in the latter years of the last century. I started sewing strata in the colors I chose, yellow, purple and green. As I moved from one thing to another, I thought.... hmmmm... why couldn't I 'paint' batting with thread. So, there there are multiple techniques in this piece.
Besides thread and paint and the obvious commercial cotton, I used wool roving and silk hankie shreds.
I used my favorite thread.... all rayon by the way...
Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with the hive information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen. Color is also a discrimination.

I look forward to your comments.

P.S. My neighbor from San Francisco loves this piece, says it reminds him of Haight-Ashbury. Maybe I should call it Graffiti.

Cacti

I studied the psychology of color in advertising and found it quite fascinating. With the 'plant' theme and a still life, I knew exactly what I wanted to make, but I needed to find the advert that contained 'my' colors. After scouring the passel of ads that come with the newspaper, I found "Centrum Silver for Women". I studied the colors against the psychology and it was very easy to see why they use the colors they do:
Gray[silver] for 'practicality',
Purple[wines] for 'rich sophistication',
Yellow for 'happiness and good times',
Green for 'comfortable nurturing and well paced-energy',
Orange for 'fun times...energetic days',
Red for 'energy',
Blue for 'calming... actually causing the body to produce chemicals that are calming'.

So, maybe I need to run out and buy some......it just might help me with my 2010 word: YES.

My piece is based on a stand of 'mother-inlaws' tongue' cacti that appear to grow wild, albeit slowly, in our back garden. I love sitting there, looking through the citrus trees at the cacti and the colors of the fruit and bouganvillea beyond. We also have a 'resident' lizard of some kind and he just sits so very still and watches me.

I hope I have captured that and I look forward to your comments.

I had to contact my friend Sherryl Buchler in order to get the fabric I needed for the containers, that delicious 'berry' fabric.

I really enjoyed this Challenge and thank our hostess
Rhoda Forbes very much.








Size:16.75 x 19.50

Beneath the Surface

A real lesson here, never photograph white against white or cream......

Here is my challenge piece for this month. At first I thought 'yikes'!! Then, as I did some research, I thought it could be interesting. I had a piece of fabric paper that didn't have a focal point that I could find,satisfactorily...but it did have some good texture elements that could work with this theme, so I started to play. My paper fabric has inclusions under the paper, then stitching and paint. After it dried I added more paint. Cut some into squares leaving a large piece on which I could add and define the microbes. I added some painted dryer sheets, embellishments and free motion threadwork. Then I hand-stitched [quilted] the piece using hand dyed thread [received from Laura Wasilowski].
Because it is all on a pastel theme, I hope my 'microbial' findings are definitive enough. I had a great day doing this yesterday and finished it this morning.
I have also posted a 'closer look'.  [I am having trouble getting the color correct on the large piece, I can't figure out why it is so pink when it is white!]
I look forward to your comments....
thank you in advance.

Addiction, A Trap, A Prison

This piece was made in transparency as I worked to come to grips with how an
addiction can overtake someone's life and they think no one knows....

I reworked the 'fabric' of a previous challenge, used Organza, fused and stitched the man shape to the back of the Organza and draped behind the figure a
coarse net which is what comes down to a point.
Technically there are 4 layers and you can see right through it.
Click on it to enlarge and you will see how some of the words to the poem are visible in the piece itself. [representational]
I used twine interlocked and twisting to portray the 'trap'.. the fabric bars..
the 'prison'.
It is intentionally sombre and simple.
Size: 24 x 60

This is the poem I intend to place at the top... as an epitaph:

Addiction, A Trap, A Prison
Torn and shattered,
Nothing in life mattered,
Not family, not friend,
Too many fences to mend.
Trapped! Imprisoned!... a life shattered.

A slave to my vice
I was not even nice,
I withdrew, I hid,
Not a response to anyone's bid.
Trapped! Imprisoned!... alone with my vice.

A family loved me, but I could not see.
I was alone, that is how it would be.
Nothing in life mattered,
It was torn and shattered.
Trapped! Imprisoned!... Just me....


Comments welcome.

Addendum:
This is not quite finished... I will do the sides of the organza, perhaps burning, and when I attach the poem, I am also thinking of a 'key transparency'..a symbolism, of course, indicating there IS a way out....
I sure appreciate the comments thus far.
I am awaiting your comments before ... closing the chapter'.
Thank you so much, so very much.

Tidepools and Kelp Beds/ and ...........

This is another piece I had started for this challenge. Me and 'radials' don't get along very well, so this is as close as I can get without having to hang on to my chair.
My 'grapes' are ripening quickly in this hot 'sun', and the roses are showing new 'green' growth... the colors of my summer. To me it looks like hummingbird wings, or spinning wine glasses...
Anyway, Wendy, thank you for pushing the envelope with me!







This is a beach scene, lowest tide and a hot summer day....the kind of day when
the atmosphere delineates the earth from the sky.... These are the most incredible days on the ocean's coast , but few and
far between, because... literally, after a day like this the fog starts to roll
in.
I think I went in this direction, thinking more 'summer'... and the 'radial' being the intensely hot burning sun.

Several techniques and media are used here.... I started with a white silk, spray painted, torn into lengths, woven together,then layered with a white scrim,silk throwsters waste, silk tops [cultivated mulberry silk], hand-dyed scrim for the logs ,hand-dyed yarn for the kelp, the sun is angelina fibre, crystal organza islands in the distance and there is a tulle overlay. Hand stitches, machine stitches and quilting add details. Done on batting only then positioned onto a quilt sandwich and stitched down using a blanket stitch all round.

It is probably not quite what Wendy had in mind.. but nonetheless I look forward to your comments.

Rusted Love

I used stamping,stenciling, foiling, embroidery stitches and free motion quilting to create texture on this piece of green rusted fabric. I believe the green, rust and small bit of mauve equal the triadic color scheme of this challenge.
It is only a small piece 7.25 x 7.00 but it is all I had time for.
Your comments are appreciated.

Mountain Magic/ Do I know You?

Here is my WIP...
I really have worked HARD on this one. I see one thing in my mind and another emerges in the cloth.
This piece has been through the mill... literally... I made it,... boring... then I added other elements, still not so good. Cut up some of the pieces, getting better... not good yet.
So I painted, I dyed it and added a few more elements, like the stylized flowers and the rabbits.
It has a long way to go yet... but if you can comment at all... good or bad, I would appreciate it.
Thank you in advance.
Carole

Fragility

I LOVED doing this one and just may be off on a new tangent.
Shopping for the fabric was fun, putting it together was even more fun.
I hope I got the 'GRID' part of this challenge. I used Joen Wolfram's
Color tool and used the 7 colors. My main color was 'yellow' and I went from there.
I used threads in the same color and the beads pretty much fit as well.
I used a yellow poplin for the background, it only shows in small bits. I drew a 2" grid all through it. From there, I tore my Dupioni silk into approximate squares and laid them out on the grid. I added over top , etc... all along the grid line drawn underneath. I hand stitched using a 'ladder' stitch. I also tore organza into 'bite-size' pieces and laid them out in an overlapping diagonal toward the bottom.
I used stitches, a button, loose threads and beads to embellish. As you know, Dupioni silk frays like crazy, so in straightening my fabric, I pulled the fraying threads toward the selvage. I cut that off, rolled it into organza squares, letting the threads hang down. I wrapped the 'tubes' in embroidery floss, tied into the top knot a 4 stone Svaroski crystal pendant [green] and stitched them on with a bead at the top. It is bound with a sheer.. also torn and see through edges. Beads embellish the edges in the binding.
I called it 'Fragile', I think because of the fragile system we live in.. re: swine flu, faltering economies, age and the frailties associated there. Add to that the incredible 'show' of support for Virginia Spiegel's Cancer fund-raiser.... me remembering my own asleep in death.... just made me think FRAGILE. That is why I like the torn edges, the threads and see-through frays.
I look forward to your comments..... and your 'what-if's'...
Carole

Last Waltz, Last Moon

It was a Challenge indeed, for the S-curve all I could think of was a dance... so went with it. It helped having watched the American Dance finals.. so that was my inspiration. Also it was hard choosing a color, but I like yellow. Yellow is this years color...plus it is so cheery. It has been said yellow is very hard to use because it cannot be looked at for long, that the eye needs somewhere to rest...that is where the split complemenary colors take the focus away from the background. I used yellow with violet, then red-violet and blue-violet.
The red-violet and its paler color, as well as the violet are kimono silk, the moons are batiked cotton in violet and blue-violet. The background is wool roving overlaid with chiffon and needlepunched for a scrunchy texture. If you look carefully you will see the chiffon casts a shadow over part of the moon as it is loose.
Again it is an irregular shape and is hand-stitched.
I look forward to your comments.
Carole

Moonlit Canyon

Moon # 5 in this series.
The January moon was as big and as close as the December one, however, it was so White, so Bright.... it was so beautiful.
So, that was my inspiration, the white of this moon was accomplished by using the stuffing that comes in my bottle of vitamins. Absolutely the right 'color' [or lack of it] and texture. I overlaid some crystal organza and used my needle felting machine to scrunch and texturize. It went from there. I have used the backside of a piece of lurex lame, a remainder of scrim from another project, snippets and stitches to depict the breezy canyon. A ton of hand stitches in floss... my I think I could be hooked, the texture and 'hand' are so unique to anything experienced by machine. The edge treatment on this one is something I have never done and dreamed up about 4 hours ago. I have some kimono silk, so I cut lengths, put one edge on the front, turned the remainder to the back and stitched... all this is raw edge...then I went around it again with floss, on the angle to make that scalloped edge. I have this stitch on my machine and have only ever used it on a sleeve edge. Do you like it?
I really look forward to and appreciate your comments.
Carole

Hunter Moon over Lasqueti Island

MOON SERIES #4
Ok, I know you are saying 'Lasqueti Island?" It is an Island across from our house when we lived in Parksville on Vancouver Island, B.C. back in the early 90's. What we used to see from our house over on and toward that Island was always so intriguing. Kept my binoculars on the front foyer hall table next to the telescope for star-watching.
So, this is it! My December Moon. I loved doing this one [I think I love doing them all.....] albeit a scramble for how-to.... but I am coming along with the 'hand' side of the work.
For this one I used chiffon.....if you never have... try it! Wow it is so easy to manipulate. And this had the colors I needed. For the sky above the Island mountain range, I used dryer lint. I had washed a blue sweater and I think half my sweater ended up in the lint catcher, so.... having paid for the whole sweater, I decided to use what I couldn't wear! Again, I used the needle felting machine to hold those
fibers down and provide some texture to the chiffon. Then I just got out my embroidery threads. I used my last Saturdays Michael's 50% off coupon and got 105 skeins for 7 or so dollars!
[My husband says I am Ebenezer Scrooge!haha].
I used Shiva Sticks to color the moon... using a grid underneath the fabric, used turquoise stick and some gold on other fabric for the highlights. On the water, to depict the break on the waves in a rising tide I used crystal chiffon.... it just shreds so beautifully under those barbed needles. [Wouldn't be hard to do by hand for accents].
I hope you like it, I hope I met the challenge and I hope I am inspiring some of you to try some of these 'odd-ball' techniques!
Since this was Tobi's challenge, I honored her in the shape of my piece.
Keeping that lint on was a challenge in itself and the chiffon pulled in a little more than I thought it would,so in order to keep to my Journal Size for this series, I just finished it the way it was covered. that, too was fun....

Comments are always welcome.......and appreciated.
Carole