Christmas cards

 Here are some Christmas cards that I made this year.  This first one is made of fabric and paper strips.

For this type I made a landscape out of paper and sewed the trees onto it.  Then I cut it up and glued the smaller bits onto cards.

I had a purple piece of quilted fabric collage.  I cut out the tree shape and glued it onto the card.  These were fun to make and they were all different which I like.

Fall activities

It's been a busy fall and I haven't had as much time as I would like for my textile art. I'm practising some of my stamping to prepare for my playdate in January.  I'm leading a playdate on stamping for Out of the Box then.  Lately I've been printing leaves on fabric (before they disappear for winter) by putting paint on them and printing on fabric that I've prepainted.  I discovered that old dead wildflowers print well on fabric too.  Here are some photos.

First of all, my friend Suzanne Caron taught me how to make paper flowers out of old magazine pages so here's a photo of that:

 We were thinking of making a large number as a display for Fibre Fling this spring.

Here's a photo of printing of a leaf that I discovered at Mud Lake.  I'm not sure what species of tree it's from but I like the shape:

Here's a photo of a print I made putting paint on some dead flowers probably Queen Anne's Lace:

 

 The smoke bush in front of my house has beautiful leaves (still does now!) and they make nice prints.  Here's a photo of smoke bush leaves printed on a prepainted fabric background:

Fibre Fest

I've been working on finishing my pieces for Fibre Fest in Almonte.  Fibre Fest is the weekend of September 13-14.  Here is a preview of the bowls I will have there and my finished business/credit card holders made of fabrics I stamped this summer at the cottage. Out-of-the-Box will have an area at Fibre Fest.

Sunprints and stamping

My husband Marc and I were at the family cottage in Bancroft, Ontario for two weeks and I spent a week doing some sunprinting and stamping pieces to be made into card holders.  I carved three new stamps and used those and I stamped using leaves of plants growing around the cottage.  Here are some photos.
 

The UV was quite high during that week so the leaves printed very well.  I first put some paint on the fabric and then lay on the leaves.  A bit of salt was sprinkled around them.

 

There are lots of ferns growing at our cottage so I made quite a few fern prints.

These leaves had some holes in them which made interesting prints.

Stamping with some of my newly carved stamps.  These will be made into business/credit card holders.

I carved a triangular stamp which can be moved around to create squares. 

I usually create quite a few pieces at the cottage in the summer because I can spread out my work outside in the sun and there's lots of inspiration around.

July musings

My husband Marc and I went to Winnipeg and visited with his parents and sisters.  We're back now and I've started playing around with some collages.  (In the meantime I cancelled my trip to China.  It's too bad but there will be other trips.) I made some collages with scrap materials to go on cards.  Here's an example.  It's fun to use leftover threads and scraps of fabric to make these little collages.  I put a piece of tulle over it and then sewed it onto a card.

 I also started cutting out some of my handpainted pieces of fabric to make into cardholders.  I plan to stamp on them with leaves and my own hand carved stamps.  These are to sell at Fibre Fest in September.

I've entered myself into another colour challenge with Out-of-the-Box.  My colour this time is Fresh Scent Green.  I went out and bought my green fabric to match the colour swatch.  So now I can start thinking about what I'll do for the 12" X 12" challenge.

Zen drawings

I haven't been sewing that much lately but I've been working in my sketch book adding some zen drawings.  I intend to use these drawings in my artwork somehow.  Perhaps in making a stamp or as a background or something.  Here, first of all,  is my sketchbook covered in a collage of materials that I put together.  Yes, I had made a handy dandy glasses case to go with it :)

Here is a page of drawings I've been working on lately.  When I started out I was doing zen drawings by dividing a box into sections and then filling it in with various designs.  It's evolved a little since then.  These are not completely finished.  I usually use a black Staedtler pigment liner size 0.1.

Drawing workshop with Elizabeth Veninga

I had organized a drawing workshop taught by Elizabeth Veninga, a local artist to our group Out-of-the-Box, the fibre arts group I belong to and we held it on June 2nd.  It went very well and I think people enjoyed it.  We had 10 participants.  We learned to do some blind drawing which is drawing without looking at your hand and we also worked on large pieces of paper on an easel in conte and charcoal reproducing a photo to scale and drawing a rock roughly to scale.

Here are some photos of my work.  The first one is a charcoal version of the photo.  It's not quite finished.

This second one is a charcoal version of the rock on the top left.

Silk scarves at Fibre Fest

I've decided that I'll sell some of my naturally dyed scarves at Fibre Fest which will be held in Almonte in September 2014.  I  also plan to bring my hand painted business card holders and some more fabric bowls.  Below is a better photo of my scarves on a rack.  You can see the assortment of natural colours all derived from food, tea and spices.

I had a rather quiet month in April art-wise but I'm starting to gear up again.  I'm doing a bit of work from a book by Gilda Baron called The Art of Embroidered Flowers.  She does beautiful work and the backgrounds are painted in silk paint which is right up my alley.  I've also been asked to lead a playdate for Out-of-the-Box in November on stamping on fabric.  This will be right after I come back from a trip to China in October-November.  I'm going on a three week tour with a girlfriend.  The trip will include a visit to a silk factory and I plan to see and learn as much as I can about Chinese textiles.  The tour is not a textile tour per se but I plan to make the most of it.

Fibre Fling 3 was a success

So Fibre Fling 3 went well.  There were lots of people there and interest in our work.  I sold several silk scarves, five fabric bowls and some business card holders.  I'm pleased with the result.  Next year will hopefully be even better.  This was our third year holding this event at Kitchissippi United Church.  Now I'm winding down and thinking about what I'd like to work on.  I have lots of ideas about how to improve my natural silk scarf dyeing.  I'm not sure if the show in Manotick will be happening in June.  In the meantime I'll see if I can organize to be at some other venues.  Here's are photos of two other pieces I had at the show:
 

This one called Leaf Window  (12" X 12") was made from a piece of fabric I had printed with a linden leaf I found in the woods near my house.  All of the fabrics are hand painted and the quilting is by machine.

This one is called Dancing Daisies and also measure 12" X 12".  All the fabrics are hand painted and quilting is by machine.  It was inspired by echinacea flowers growing in my backyard.

Fabric bowls

This weekend I spent some time making fabric bowls for Fibre Fling.  It takes a surprisingly long time to make one but the results are worth it.  Here's a photo:

Ths smaller one at the front is large enough to serve as a jewellery bowl.  They are made of strips of fabric.

Submissions to Fibre Fling

I've sent in all my submissions to Fibre Fling  http://www.out-of-the-box.org/news.html   It's next weekend April 4th and 5th.   I'm putting in 25 of my scarves, some bookmarks, business card holders and five wall hangings. 

Two of the wall hangings are for the colour challenge Out-of-the-Box is doing.  They will go on tour in Canada with other wall hangings made by the group, organized into sections by colour.  Mine are for the turquoise section.   They have to measure 12" X 12" and have at least 20% of the chosen colour in them.   For this first one called Under a Lazy Palm I appliqued it and did a lot of machine embroidery for the leaves.

Here is the second one just called Lazy Palm:

I guess you can see the theme here.  I really love the colours of sky and water so I thought I would use turquoise for those.  These were inspired by photos taken on holiday in Cuba.  This one is also appliqued, machine embroidered and quilted.

preparing for Fibre Fling 3

I'm working on making some smaller sized silk scarves in various colours for Fibre Fling 3.  I have lots of the larger sized ones.  They will be hanging on a clothing rack on hangers at the show.  Large ones will cost $55 and small sized ones will cost $35.  Here's a photo with an assortment of colours of scarves hanging on the rack.

So far I haven't had any satisfying reds.  I get deep purple colours but not red.  I'm trying to stick to materials that I can readily find.  There are natural materials available to buy but so far I've resisted.

silk scarves

At the moment I'm dyeing silk scarves to sell at Fibre Fling  http://www.out-of-the-box.org/news.html and also at another craft show which will be held in June in Manotick.  Here is a photo of some of my scarves.   These particular ones measure 8 X 54 inches.    I'm also making some that are 14 X 72 inches.  I use all natural materials such as turmeric, blueberries, red cabbage, hibiscus.  I fix the scarves with natural non-toxic materials too.