Studio Kit

Jack says: "Is it morning already? Don't you want to go back to bed?"

I said, "Great idea, Jack!"

See YOU all later. :)

Instead of writing about me today, I thought I'd write about someone else - or else's, actually, Men Who Quilt!

I'm talking about these fine gentlemen quilters...

All of whom are participating in the Men Who Quilt contest being hosted by Pigtails and Quilts.

You can vote for your favourite one by going HERE, clicking through the thumbs, choosing the one you like and emailing pigtalesandquilts with your choice.

And you can be a winner too, by stopping by her blog on a daily basis, because she's doing a daily giveaway too!

And hey, speaking of giveaways - I'm going to be doing a tiny one this weekend so pop in on Saturday or Sunday and see what's cooking! :)

As promised, here is the finished product of my first fugitive media experiments. It's called "Transracial Adoption" (explanation for the name at the end of the post.)

But now, to the explanation of the "how".

The original "finish" had these brassy-gold beads sewn around the edge.

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:

Transracial Abduction

Lishanthi tells me
my blouse and earrings remind her of "home"
and smiles,
a soft light in her eyes.

I smile too,
warm in her afterglow
while she speaks of home:

food and comfort
and cousins both big and little who play
outside

it's small

but large with mama and aunties
who laugh and scold and call
“Come in this house now!”

and generations stretch out behind them like trees,
like afternoon shadows,

like a road to her heart's beginning.

And as she talks,
love runs through every word.

I nod and smile, and laugh along,

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. ;)

My usual practice is that before I go to sleep on the nights I'm going to post, I get into bed with my mini laptop: watch some t.v., upload photos and compose a post.

The other day I was doing just that, when Maggie-May (on the right) suddenly became very interested in the fact that my pyjama bottoms had a tie.

As she played, Mitzie (on the left) was curious about what Maggie-May was playing with, so she came to "investigate".

When I explained to them that I had to get back to work, these were the expressions I got.

Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, right?

ETA: WE HAVE LIFT OFF!!!
(You should be able to leave comments now. Sorry for the inconvenience)

Yesterday, we were talking about fugitive media. The piece I was working on was hanging up to dry, and while it was doing so, I started working with some charcoal pastels.

For those of you not familiar with them, this is what they look like. For those of you who are, be happy in your knowledge. ;) In front of them are a couple of charcoal pencils.

(I apologize in advance for the quality of these photos - I was working outside on a beautiful fall day and the sun was either shining so brightly on my work that it was impossible to get good photos, or it was leaving me over the hours. )

I started out by sketching out my tree and ground with a charcoal pencil for my outline,

and then I used the sides of my charcoal pastel to sort of brush in the leaf area of my tree. I used all of my shades of green, the darker greens on the inner branches and the bottom of the tree;

the medium tones in the middle, and the lighter greens on the top of the tree and the left side, from where the sun is coming. I even put a little yellow on the very top.

and to do all of that, I used my very expensive blending tool...

When it was "done", I once again painted it with a 50/50 blend base extender and water.

Something different tomorrow - and on Thursday, you'll find out what happened to that flower!

'Till then...

Last month's technique at And Then We Set It On Fire (a group surface design blog I'm part of) was Fugitive Media - where you use items normally meant for paper, on fabric.

I started with this piece of fabric I had dyed with procion MX dyes back in May. This was my second attempt at producing a mandella.
I thought it looked quite a bit like a flower, so I decided to use this piece to produce a flower using fugitive media. The first thing I did was....

Add some blue water pencil-crayon at the tips.

Then I added some green to the blue. You'll note I haven't done any blending whatsoever, because I knew that would happen naturally once I "painted" it with water.

I enhanced the pink lines that you see in the photo before this, with a fuschia water pencil-crayon,

and the added medium charcoal at the already feathered ends. Then I drew in some actual petals with a watercolour crayon (as opposed to a watercolour pencil crayon).

Now, when all of that was done, I blended the colours by "painting" it with water. And then in order to change it from a "fugitive" media to a "permanent" media, I painted it with a 50/50 mix of base extender and water, and hung it up to dry.