And there she is, ready to rock!

Quilting on Wednesday. See you then...

All done!

So when I left you last, I had pieced together my red silk and the pieces of old silk kimono and had begun to apply my leftover bits of black fused fabric.



After I'd laid them all out, fused them down and quilted the piece, I began to think that I had named it incorrectly.  I mean, it was the flotsam from my "Walking While Black" attempts, and it was meeting the Japanese kimonos...


...but perhaps I should have called it "Creature Feature"!

There was something vaguely alligator-ish, something that looked a bit like an antelope...



... a fun monster-guy,




a horse, a snake, an eye (actually, there are two or three eyes in this piece)...



a werewolf-ish strongman type guy,



and of course, The Blob.

What was fun about finding these "people" is that they weren't cut on purpose - there they were, in the bits.

This piece has been very popular ever since I finished it.  BSP and my boys have been arguing over who gets to have it, and a co-worker wanted to buy it (but not at the price I was selling it).  And the Drunken Quilters loved it as well.

Hope you like it too!

See you on Monday with the beginnings of something new.



P.S. - Joining in with Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday.  Check out what other folks have been up to!

When the little blue clock in the middle of his work
Sings a song to the moon up above
It is nature that's all
Simply telling us to fall in love....


And that's why birds do it,
bees do it,
even educated fleas do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love!


When I was making this piece, for some reason, this Cole Porter lyric kept running through my head - so even though I was initially just making all those squiggly squares and circles,eventually I found myself making some flowers and leaves and insects, despite myself.


Although I had suggested  in my last post that it probably would have made more sense to paint the stablizer/lutradur first and then cut it out, some of my little lines had gotten filled in with paint, and when I tried to re-cut them out with the heat tool, it worked, but...


all the paint got sticky and glommed up the tool - so... pick your evil. My preference would be to paint after. "Bees Do It" is 42" x 24, the bacground is scraps of black satin, wool, silk velvet, cotton and then quilted.


So, I'm done experimenting with the lutradur now, and will start actually working with it.... I actually have a piece done that I'm really excited to show you, but I can't until a MONTH from now (lol) so I'll have to maybe do some more thread work in the meantime, or start a new piece I have in mind about Angelique or another one I have in mind for a call for entry due in August.


Hmmmm...


Guess we'll all see on Monday! Have a great weekend, everyone!

More experiments with stabilizer...




This time I've fused it, cut out my shapes, and then Ive painted it with full strength acrylic paint. Here it is drying on my drying table ('cuz where else would I dry it?) *s*

Of course as I was laying them out to dry, I realized, it would have been much more clever of me to paint it first and then cut out my shapes.  But you know, why make things easier?

Here's hoping I'm more clever about the rest of the process... which you'll grt a peek at on Wednesday!

Until then...
 

Here is a close up of the actual organ grinder, which I first painted and then outlined with the "anime" pen (it's an artist's pen that's marketed for use for anime artists, but I can't remember what it's called). And his little painted gourd and other decorative elements, and his key to lock it up at the end of the day.



His face has a little sadness in it - as it would be I think; he is such an anachronism in our time - perhaps even the last of his kind - playing his music amongst the glass and steel...

Well, it's that time - I thought I would step up to the mic and tell you the sad tale of my abysmal failure.  lol

You may remember that about a month ago, I had an idea to see if I could do something similar to Riusuke Fukahori's resin work in textile. I was totally sure it would work, so after a errant step into encaustic, I shook off my paw and happily skipped off to get some resin.

The first layer turned out really well, and I was pretty excited.  The only problem I found was that it didn't provide enough depth to create the look I wanted, so I knew I'd have to do 3 or 4 more layers before I could start laying the animals out.  But, so what, right? Fukahori has to do like, a gajillion layers of resin - what's 15 or 20 layers for  me?!?


The next layer turned out equally well, although it took longer to dry. The first layer took about 12 hours, the second layer about 18 hours.  (You see where this is going, right? I didn't. I mean, I suppose I would have, if I'd actually thought about it, but I just kept blithely going on...)


But I soon realized it's inherent problem was built right in. It was a glazing resin. I was already through my 3rd box and my first layer of animals was only covered half way, and the drying time between layers was taking 5 or 6 DAYS.

This pic was taken at day 5 - and as you can see, it's nowhere near dry.

It was time for me to re-assess. 

I'd have to use another 3 boxes to finish the piece, and at this advanced drying time, it would take me months to finish the piece - not to mention, at $36/box, this was becoming quite an expensive enterprise.

Enter my new hero, CASTING RESIN.
At only $22 for the medium size, this was clearly going to be a far more economical enterprise, and it promised a drying time of only two hours!  I was practically dancing with excitement to get it done and show you the result.

I mixed according to directions, carefully poured it over my piece (made a comment to myself along the lines of "Wow. This stuff is WAY more smelly than the glazing resin") and then cleared a space to set it to dry. 

I began tidying up my room to start another project and became aware that the "chemical" smell was becoming quite unbearable. I opened windows throughout the floor that my sewing room is on, made sure all the doors were open, and got to work on the next project. 
About 1/2 an hour later, BSP came downstairs and "yelled" "Are you trying to KILL us??!! WHAT IS THAT SMELL???!!!" I went upstairs and discovered that the smell was all through the house. Oh-oh!  I opened up some more doors and windows, took a break to have a diet Coke and chat with BSP and then went downstairs again where I was practically knocked over by the incredibly powerful smell of the resin. 

With apologies to the Day Supervisor, There was nothing for it but to move the project outside.

Unfortunately, I knew it would be ruined. It had to have a mininum temperature of 70 degrees to set well and this was Ontario, in March. (eep!) We'd been having warmer temperatures than usual, but 70 was a lot to ask, especially at night.

I put it outside, covered it to protect it from anything that might fall on it and left it.  I mean LEFT it.

I knew it was going to be ruined and I wasn't psychologically prepared for that, so I left it there for a couple of weeks. I finally picked it up about ten days ago, brought it down to my sewing room and uncovered it.


::sigh:::

So, until it's summer weather here, that's the end of my resin experiments. However, having assessed the time, cost and effect, I may not do this again.

Here's how it all worked out, re expenses:

1.    Encaustic wax, damar resin and electric frying pan  $160
2.    3 boxes of glazing resin @ $36/each                         $108
3.    1 can of casting resin                                                 $22
4.    Silk and other fabrics, batting, fusible, thread           $20

GRAND TOTAL:    $310

THREE HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS!!!!  (I'm glad BSP doesn't read my blog. lol)

Now, to be fair, I'll give the the encaustic stuff another whirl (I've already got an idea for something I want to try), so we can take $160 off that total price tag.  And our learnings have taught us that glazing resin is not the answer, so we'll just need casting resin in the future, and for a piece this size (8 x 10) I'd probably only need two cans, so that's $44 plus the supplies for the quilt itself at $20, so all told, it's $66 rather than $310. 

But still....

$66 for an 8 x 10 piece is quite an investment. And as you know, I usually work in the 20 x 30" or 30 x 50" size, so that price would probably be more like $150 which is getting a up there again.  I mean if I spend $150 on a quilt, I should be able to sell it for at least twice that much. But I've never sold an art piece before and I don't know what the market will bear...but I don't think it'll be $300 for an 8 x 10" piece!

And, the truth of it is, if you look at that first pic up there where everything was going so well, it looks fine, but it doesn't look awesome.  I mean, the addition of the resin made you go "Oh. Cool." but it didn't really add anything to it. 

Except weight.  A LOT of weight.  lol

By the time we got to the point where the piece was ruined, it was already about 3 pounds.  And that was prior to the next couple of layers being added on - don't forget - this was just layer one of the animals; there was supposed to be another layer of animals and then another layer of trees - this thing would have weighed about 10 pounds, possibly more (!) by the time it was done, and it was only 8 x 10"!! 
So, expense + weight + "not that cool after all"  = I probably won't do this again.

But, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?  Stay tuned for my next adventure!

And have a wonderful holiday weekend whether you're celebrating Easter, Pesach or just some time off!

I'll be golfing. :)

Because I figured, encaustic wax and fiber art go together (at least in some circles); and it dries pretty translucent - and this particular encaustic wax says it dries clear.  Pretty exciting, right? 

So, here's my little cottage in the woods background, on a cookie tray from the dollar store lined with parchment paper, next to my brand new encaustic-melting-skillet and a cool new brush for encaustic wax, and here I go!  (It's a nail-biter, I'm telling you!)

Check it out!  It looks almost the same, just a little deeper, which is what I was going for.

And so then I worked on my quilting to see if I could make leaves in a way that doesn't make my trees look like lollipops.

First I tried to do what I think of as a standard kind of "leaf" shape.  It wasn't bad, all in all I think it'll be a fairly successful foreground if I were going to do a forest type thing.



And then I tried a more abstract sort of leaf - not really a leaf, but more the suggestion of a leaf.


I liked that much better, and I think it'll look good I think as a kind of background leaf - if I wanted another tree in the foreground to stand out more, for instance, this would be a good choice.




And then I tried this kind of pine-needly kind of evergreen sort of thing - which really - I mean this isn't a tree that exists anywhere in nature (lol), but this needle shape will be great for a future evergreen - and was really the most successful of the three, in my opinion.


So, this little journeyman piece had two purposes - to try and conquer the lollipop tree and to figure out what leaves work best. I like all of the leaves for their various purposes, and the lollipop effect was somewhat diminished, so all in all, a good experiment.  More to come in future, never fear! I still have THIS one to quilt!

Don't forget about the giveaway - you can still enter until 11:00 p.m. tonight - I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

'Til then,