Shannon's Parrot

I'm always on the lookout for budding artists, and here is one to keep an eye on. This is Shannon with her pretty pink parrot. She used pastel chalk to make this art work.  I am very impressed with the use of complimentary colors and the shading on the parrot and perch. Great job Shannon!

Shannon's Parrot

My Cup Ranneth All Over The Patio - finishing touches

The finishing touches for this piece include beading and binding. I wanted to use beads to depict the bird seed that is overflowing the cup, running all over the patio, and feeding the doves.

Here you see the top with beads laid out in their intended locations. It took a little bit of moving them around, but that is what I wanted. I put some marks on the top to remind my self of what I had in mind, because as soon as you pick the piece up to sew a bead down, they all roll off.

So the next step is the stitching and that's what I did.Here are some close ups showing the beads stitched down.

To finish the edge I used a satin stitch with thread the color of the dark areas on the doves. Here it is with the satin stitching on the edge.

And that's it for the posts for this piece! Thanks for visiting my blog!

Recycled Art Show - Monte de Oro Winery, Temecula

This weekend there will be a Recycled Art and Fashion Show at the Monte de Oro Winery located at 35820 Rancho California Road, Temecula (951-491-6551). My art quilt shown here, which I call Second Chan-City, will be in this show. I made this using the following recycled materials – two men’s ties, a man’s handkerchief, lace fabric from a woman’s blouse, and left over hem facing. If you are in the Temecula area try to check out this show. The hours are: Saturday, April 26, from 6pm to 10 pm and Sunday, April 27, from 11 am to 5 pm.

Basting and Quilting on "My Cup Ranneth All Over the Patio"

Well I'm going to try to get the rest of the posts for this piece done so I can move on to another project that I have been working on. I only have a couple things left to post about so it should be quick, I hope!

Truth be told its been rough few months. I lost both parents in the space of about 5 weeks. Other things in my life have taken a back seat during this period. It is something we all go through and although the loss is painful, I have been incredibly blessed with two very good parents. But they didn't condone moping around, so I'm not going to do that. Onward and upward. There are art quilts to be made!


For this post I'm going to talk about how I did the basting and quilting on this piece. I have recently started using "Bo Nash" bonding agent (its an adhesive powder) to baste small quilts. It seems like a time saver and so far I have had no shifting of the three layers while quilting.

The first thing I do is lay the batt down on the ironing board. I sprinkle some of the Bo Nash powder over it, trying to reach the edges and center without making a big mess. I don't seem to need too much.

Once I have sprinkled the Bo Nash, I lay the back down on the sprinkled batt, and then press the back. The ironing melts the adhesive and the two sides stick together.

If the piece is longer than the width of the ironing board then I do it a section at a time. I sprinkle Bo Nash on just the section on top of the ironing board, then lay the back over the sprinkled section and press. Then slide the batt and back so the next section is on top of the ironing board. Lift the backing fabric to expose the batt, sprinkle, lay the back down, press, and move on to the next section. It works pretty well on small to medium size pieces.

After the back is adhered to the batt, the next step is to flip the batt/back over and sprinkle the other side exposed side of the batt. Then I lay the top on the sprinkled batt and press again. Its like shampoo, rinse, repeat. In a few minutes you're completely basted. The biggest risk is not making a mess with the sprinkling of the Bo Nash.

That blue fabric was just a demo. This is the fabric I used for the back for My Cup Ranneth... piece. I like my backing fabric to match the front of the quilt.

After sandwiching it was on to the quilting. These close ups give a view of the quilting stitches I used.

I love swirls! I put them in every quilt.

OK so the next post will be the finishing touches! Thanks for visiting my blog!

Rinsing and Sandwiching

My last post showed the painting of the birds and cup with inks and painting medium. After I finish the painting, I press the painted fabric with an iron to set the inks, and then I rinse the fabric in cool water in the sink. Rinsing is an optional step and its purpose is to remove excess painting medium.  I have done some Internet research and found that many people don't bother to rinse after fabric painting.  Some rinse because they are concerned that the painting medium they have used may yellow over time and change the appearance of the painting. Others don't bother rinsing because they have fabric paintings that have been around for a long time that were never rinsed with no ill effects. I sometimes rinse and sometimes don't. If I think rinsing might damage an image, then I don't rinse. If I think the image is safe, then I rinse. I would rather take my chances on yellowing over time than to have to redo the painting.

I'm rinsing in this case because I noticed that the inks looked a little shiny in one area. I have no idea why they look shiny. It might be the color of ink in that area, mixed with the medium, resulted in shiny-ness. Or perhaps I used too much medium?? Not sure???? Anyway,  I thought if I rinsed the fabric then the shiny-ness might go away. But it didn't....So I have decided that the shiny-ness is a desired feature for this piece. Problem solved!

Here is the painted fabric in the sink. I put it in there for a few minutes and then remove it. I roll the wet fabric in a towel to remove water quickly, and then blow dry or iron dry it immediately. Although nothing is supposed to bleed, I fear that leaving water in the fabric a long time is tempting fate and I might get bleeding of the inks. So dry it quickly and no worries!

soaking in the sink

towel drying

My next step is sandwiching and quilting. That will be the next post. Thanks for visiting my blog!

My Cup Ranneth All Over... - Painting the Main Objects

I'm continuing the description of how I made this 12" x 12" mini fiber art piece that I call "My Cup Ranneth All Over the Patio". My last post showed the background fabric and tracings that I had done of the bird and cup outlines. It also described the inks I used to paint. 

Below you see the painted images of the main subjects. These are the steps I used to paint the images:

1) Paint around the border of the traced images with "No Flow". This product prevents bleeding into the surrounding fabric.

2) After the No Flow dried, I painted the bird bodies using a light reddish brown ink mixed with painting medium. I used Jo Sonja's Textile Medium for this. Some of the background color was already in the bird body area, so I didn't have to add too much of this ink. 

3) Next step was to paint the shadow areas of the birds using a mixture of dark blues, dark brown reds and a touch of purple.  I also painted the shadow areas of the cup with a similar mixture. These mixtures were blended with  painting medium before applying to the fabric.

4) Lastly,  I added some mid value colors to the feet, beaks, feathers and cup areas.

Here is the painting at this stage:

The objects look good to me, although they are floating in space. I need to ground them by putting some shadows beneath the birds and cup. I like my light source coming from the right, so that was what I depicted here. The shadows were painted using the same paint mixture I used on the dark areas of the birds and cup.

Next post will cover setting the inks, rinsing, basting, etc.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Cup Runneth All Over...Getting Ready to Paint!

When painting images on fabric I like to use a  background fabric that is lighter in value but  has some variation in color that I can use as part of the painted image. I hope you know what I mean by that, so here is an example. I knew I wanted my doves to be done in tans for the lighter areas and purple mauves for the dark values. I looked for a background fabric in my stash that would work with that. I found this piece shown below.

I painted this piece last year in my backyard using watered down acrylic paints. I was trying to get a "rusted" look without acutally doing the rusting process. I didn't completely achieve that but I liked the result anyway.

I had my drawing on paper, so I just placed the background fabric over the drawing on a light table, and traced the outlines of the image on the fabric. I took some time to figure out the best placement for the image relative to the colorations in the fabric. I used Frixion pens for the tracing since I knew they could be removed with an iron. Here you can see one bird and the cup.

My next step is to select the ink colors I wanted to use for the birds. These are Tsukineko Inks. I chose dark blues, violets, reddish browns, tans and peach colors.

Below  I also show my ink painting palette, brushes that I used and medium.