I finally got my laptop back (it was actually ready 7 days before I was able to pick it up, but due to a miscommunication in house, they kept telling me it wasn't. ARGH.) 

In the meantime, I was working on lots of stuff, but first up, playing with plastic!

You know, for a first effort at painting on cloth, I'm pretty chuffed with this result!  I was just kind of playing with the paint on the cloth, trying to figure out what it would do - not really trying to achieve anything in particular, so when the "plain" cloth as it was, was so clearly meant to be this ...


all I needed were my charcoal sticks (the bottom row in the pic above) and some pastels (top middle section).


And of course, some thread!




As I added the charocal and pastels to the piece and it revealed itself more fully to me, I thought about time.  How it moves, how we think we are standing still in it, and yet it changes us without our even knowing, moving us along to a place that's new.  If we resist that movement, standing firm in the place we've claimed, it will wear us down until we no longer exist.


But if we embrace it, let it take us where it will; we will all be made softer, purer with age ... and the kindness of erosion.

So, after I painted the plywood background, I laid window screening over it  (my "batting) and held it down with the metal tape.  Then  I took all those little bits of balsa wood, painted them, decorated them and laid them on the batting - more - after the jump:

Charley Harper time!

A few/several months ago, I was participating in a Charley Harper QAL of sorts - hosted by Ethne at Flaming Stitches. She had gotten permission from the estate of Charley Harper for us to either copy directly or be inspired by his work.





I made two pieces - one inspired by and one a copy, and said at the time, I had one more to make.  Well, here it is!

I made it in the same manner as the others, except that this time, after I fused the fabric, I drew the reverse image directly on the paper backing, and cut them out, rather than make a pattern and trace it.  Why waste the step?



For the corn cob, I cut out strips of already fused fabric and then further cut them into little square-ish shapes, and then placed them by hand, using a tweezer.


After I had placed all the bits on my pieced background, I ironed them down (with a sheet of paper between the cloth and the bits) and when it had cooled, pinned it to my batting and backing.


And then I quilted the dog out of it.

So here are the other two:



This one's the direct copy:


This one's inspired by:


And this one is a blend of the two.  All three will be framed and will hang in our bedroom.

So you may remember that I was working on this piece a couple of weeks ago.  First, I hand-painted my fabrics (a post on how to achieve this result is coming soon), but I was struggling with the leaf issue -  I wanted it to look leaf-blown, but couldn't decide which leaf worked best...


I made a couple of different styles in a couple of different fabrics...



But finally decided that the "November-ness" of "November" was best expressed by no leaves at all.



Just a cold, Northern wind...


Oh, and the winner of two charm packs of Tula Pink's Neptune is:

Hiyacinth, who said "Terrific Tula Pink designs. They're so intriguing! "  Congratulations Hiyacinth, email me your address and I'll send them along to you.

I'll be doing another giveaway very soon, so stay tuned...

But as always happens when I add beading, I didn't like it when it was done. It didn't add anything and in fact, I think took away from the lovely hand-dyed fabrics

Hey, speaking of those fabrics, they're the ones from THIS series of posts.  But back to the beads, I never like them when I add them.  I think I'm just not a bead kind of girl.  Which is pretty shocking, given how much of a magpie I am.



But speaking of shiny things, something I did add and love was a little gold at the tips of the petals and to highlight some of the lines/veins in them.



I also used ordinary gel pens to add a little more definition with a good result,

And the final touch was to add some script with this Micron pen,



Which is a poem I wrote a couple of years ago:


alone .

I wished I knew,
and felt lonely for a home I never had.

Kit Lang (c) 2008

When I first made the flower, I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but as soon as I combined it with my hand-dyed fabrics, I immediately "saw" my poem, and knew that it would reflect the beauty and warmth of Lishanti's version of "home"; while the dark shadows of the purples and lilacs expressed my longing for one like hers.

In a way, I'm sorry that this piece is just a journal quilt (or "sketch" as I call them); because it feels like a bit of a waste to have used those fabrics that I loved so much.  On the other hand, because it is a sketch, there's so much room for development, so I could do a series that would evolve - both the techniques and the story.

This piece also caused a fair amount of acrimony in our household - both because of it's subject matter and BSP's firm assertion that "art should be pretty". BSP added that no one would want something "so depressing" to hang in their home. (!)

After a couple of days, we agreed to disagree, and I'm sure you'll see me revisit this subject again in the future. With or without BSP's stamp of approval. ;)

Ta da!

I finished the piece I was working on - the one I've been showing bits of all last week.  I started out by showing you mystery bits that were felted with roving, scrim and gauzy ribbons...

Hopefully, this doesn't look too familiar to you, but you may remember (if you used to follow me at Coneflowers In Leslieville) that when I was "done" this piece, it looked like this:

I mentioned last week that I had been hand-painting some fabric; and though I usually clean up such projects with batting scraps (for use in later projects); the piece I had on hand was "full", so I just grabbed this fabric remnant I had (a poly-blend taffeta) and used it to mop up.

Close up - the sea around Japan.

Back.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan.

My Quilt Art group's challenge for March was to a: produce a landscape and b: make it something other than rectangle or square.

This is my second piece in the Art Quilt Blog's journal quilt challenge (theme "highly prized") and the 4th of my journal quilts for the 3 Creative Studio's journal quilt challenge.

This is my second journal quilt of the year on the theme "highly prized".
When I thought of what I prize highly, I immediately thought of my BSP (Beloved Spouse for those of you who are new to my blog), my children, my family. There is nothing that I prize more highly than my precious family and our love for one another, and I am nearly daily, consciously grateful for BSP and the life we have made for ourselves. I wanted something that was an abstract, celebratory visioning of that life.



For this piece, I wanted to try a kind of dyeing that I had seen either in a magazine or on someone's blog - it's a technique that I recall is used for shibori.  Of course I wasn't doing shibori, but I thought I could try this vaguely remembered beginning.