Little Trees

First of all, many thanks to everyone for your good wishes after my recent fall.

Bruises are healing and I'm feeling a bit better every day.

Today I felt like I really needed to stay put, so I set about cutting some

little trees for my landscapes. I think I could describe my style in making fabric

art as a discovery expedition. By this I mean that I look at variegated fabric, especially

batiks, and find the areas that 'speak to me'. No, I'm not a fabric psychic, but I do look

 for passages in the design that remind me of nature and elements I want to depict.

When I cut out trees and other things, the fabric has already been backed 

with Wonder Under, which makes for a nice crisp cut.

These pieces are just tossed on a background of hand painted sky fabric.

More cut-outs...

and here is a hand embroidered tree which I tried recently.

This technique should work well with soft grounds like wool felting.

Finally, I feel like I'm making progress on my landscape-making journey!!

Hope you're having a good week!

Felting, and a Fall

Recently I did some wet felting, making pieces of felt to add to my landscapes.

First I pulled apart short lengths of roving and arranged

them in criss-cross layers - like making lasagna!

I added some streaks of other colors,

 soapy water and a piece of netting, 

then mashed and kneaded and rolled the roving, rinsed it in water,

let it dry and came out with a nice thick piece of felt. To this I can add more color

with needle felting and tear it apart as accents for a couple of landscapes. I just love 

the irregular edges, which I'll put to good use!

My other piece of news is that I fell this past week, tripping as I walked along

on a cement sidewalk, landing with a resounding thud of head against cement.

This is a "nice" selfie taken after a 4 hour stay in a hospital emergency room, with 

CT scans and an Xray of my wrist. No broken bones, thank goodness.

The following days brought 2 black eyes and much bruising as things developed. I won't share those pictures with you. I feel fortunate to have come out of this with not-too-serious injuries. I'm keeping a low profile and working on my artwork for the show I'll be part of, which is now a month away. I hope to share some finished work with you soon.

Have a great week!

Hello, friends

 I'm sorry I've fallen off the blogging grid lately... 

I've had a head full of distractions and things to deal with,

but I never want to lose my connection with my blogging friends,

nor my creativity!

Here's a little self portrait in felt with my furry friends.

I had made it a while back, but revised it recently.

Don't we look like muppets?

Hope you're having a wonderful September!!

Feeling Creative

I always say there's nothing like a deadline to stir up creativity, and I'm scheduled to participate in  two shows this Fall, which is right around the corner! If you talked to me yesterday, you would have heard how anxious I was about this, but I feel much better today, having broken through the creative block I had been dealing with.

This morning, I spread out my materials - my hand painted fabrics, roving, etc. - and propped up a piece of foam board with the beginnings of some landscapes pinned to it.

I worked on the two top landscapes simultaneously, concentrating first on the lower one. I do love purple and green together, so this one had me excited. I audition many fabrics as I go along and lightly tack the pieces to some white flannel, which I use as the base for my landscapes. So, I started with this...

and proceeded to this point...

Here's a higher contrast photo, where you can see that I draped the dark green sheer fabric in the foreground and ironed it down, but not entirely flat. I'm happy with this technique which I had been wanting to try. I need to mull over this now and decide where to add details with roving, threads or beads. And I need to decide where and whether to add trees, so I'll just sit with it for a few days.

The second landscape started with this orange/pink fabric I had painted some time ago. I really just wanted to experiment with it, but it seemed to come together pretty quickly (meaning, in about two hours with auditioning fabrics, etc) and I went out on a limb and added some bits of wool roving and hand dyed cheesecloth for texture, then finally, a setting sun. Or is it dawn? That will be up to the viewer!

I'm happy to have started this journey, which will be going on until November.

Thanks for reading, and hope you're having a lovely week!

Now to clean up my mess for the day!!!

A New Look

This morning I had a good time designing a new header for my blog,

using PicMonkey and a border I had cut from fabric years ago.

Truth be told, I get very bored looking at the same header all

the time, and also the same profile picture!

PicMonkey makes editing and designing so easy, I'm sure you'll be 

seeing different headers from me all the time now!

And I've also changed my blog description because,

truly, we really are on a creative journey, aren't we?

I think I'll forever be trying new materials and techniques

and cherishing every moment of the journey.

How about you?

Have a wonderful day!!

Happy September!

I just came across these photos my friend Andrea took a couple of weeks ago in our final paper mache class. I don't think anyone had actually completed her piece by that point, but there was progress! Luckily, Create Artisan Studio, the place where our classes meet, has open studio nights during which  we can continue work on our projects outside of our normal class time.

Rosalie's eggplant is becoming more colorful

as she applies layers of tissue paper.

Andrea's girl (named Yardley) is lying down, feet forward,

while to her left is Barbara's black cat.

My lady is shaping up - she has had some hair added 

since this photo was taken!

AnnMarie's fish is very happy looking!

She'll be suspended from the ceiling when she's done!

And meanwhile, at home, Angus and Rosie are relaxing,

single file, on the back of the sofa.

Hope your September is off to a great start!