Art, lunch and a big piece finished

I've had a tough time sitting down to write a blog post, I've thought about it several times, even composed a few in my head, but for some reason I just avoid actually sitting down and writing. I do the same thing whenever I need to write something, so it must be something I need to work on. Last week my friend Barb and I went to Boise to meet with our friends Kathleen and Lisa for some art and lunch. We started at the Boise Art Museum to see the Nick Cave exhibit. WOW! This is a man who thinks way outside the box. He is a former dancer and most of the items on exhibit were suits, sound suits and hair suits, which are made to wear while dancing. We saw a video of many of them in action. Most items were made from recycled materials except for the hair suits which were made from human hair extensions. There were also three huge bears made entirely of recycled sweaters. Photography is not allowed in the exhibit area and I don't think I can adequately describe what he's done and of course I don't have a link for you to look it up. If you do google Nick Cave, he's not the musician. Lisa works part time at the museum and was part of the crew that put the exhibit up, so we got some interesting tidbits about the whole process. All I can say is I will never look at sweaters, crocheted doilies, and sequins in the same way again. After our museum visit we walked downtown for lunch and then to check out some art. Kathleen has two pieces in a juried show at the Art Source gallery.

Lisa has designed art work for one of the traffic boxes.

Her work is on the traffic box next to the Museum - what a great location. I also finished doing a lot of hand stitching on a quilt made of mono-print circles that were cut and reassembled. I'm not sure where I'm going to enter it yet so here is a close up shot.

I also made a baby quilt and stuffed animal for a baby shower, didn't take pictures. Also made another small quilt using up some scraps, it will be a donation quilt. Daily stitching project #131 thru #137.

Bowling shirts with "splat"

My husband decided that the bowling team that he and some friends are forming for the fall season needed shirts with "splat" on them. I designed a logo for them, they brought me the shirts and today they were printed. I drew the design, copied it in two different sizes and made two thermofax screens to print with.

The small logo went on the front pocket and the large on the back.

The shirts lined up with the fronts printed. Good thing I have a large table to spread things out on. After the fronts dried (and I went to the pool to cool off), the shirts were flipped over and printed on the back.

Daily stitching project #125 thru #130.

Daily stitching project

All I have to show for the past nine days is my daily four inch square. I've done some things but haven't taken pictures and as I sit here trying to write something interesting my mind has gone blank. So here are #116 thru #124.

Leaf prints done and I sold a piece!

I got a call this morning from a local gallery space(actually a candy store that has a wall for art), that my piece "Swoosh" has sold! This afternoon I get to go put up another piece and pickup some money. This is "Swoosh".

This next group of pictures shows the progression on the leaf piece I had started last post.

I added some red leaf veins and a blue-grey to the background. Right now my thoughts are to quilt this as a whole cloth and then add some leaves dimensionally on top. Just an idea,not well planned yet, but then none of this piece was planned. I find I work better without a plan, just respond to whatever I've done in each step.

Daily stitching project #111 thru #115.

Getting side tracked by other ideas!

While I was getting my two slat masks ready to print with, I got an idea for a leaf design and started working on that instead. I made a leaf shaped mask for one of my large screens and used thickened black dye on the screen for the veins of the leaf.

I used a moss green thickened dye to print with. When I was finished I used some of the thickened green dye to put more leaf veins back on the screen. Today I'll print with an avocado color dye. I also used one of my old screens that is just the outline and veins of a similarly shaped leaf. This is how it looked when I left it yesterday. Today after I print I'll turn the mask over so that it will print in the opposite direction, add avocado vein lines and will probably print the next layer in chartreuse.

During Fiddle week there are lots of garage sales in town, one of my purchases was this tablecloth and seven napkins for a dollar.

This week they got dyed. Eating at my house is a colorful occasion.

I've also been playing with encaustic wax again. I pick up rusty stuff all the time and have quite a collection. A good portion of it is nails that I've picked up in the alley behind my house. I also have quite a selection of rusted fabrics that I've done with my rusty stuff collection. Now I've found a way to combine the two. I fused some of the fabric to a wood panel and started adding wax, then embedded some of my collection. This is how they look now, I'm not sure if they are done yet.

My daily stitching project #106 thru #110.

Yesterday I got a surprise package in the mail from my daughter who had just returned from a trip to Japan. My goodies included a canvas purse with a circle printed on it (how did she know?) filled with a package of "Nara Sarashi" which is a woven hemp cloth and a name seal with Linda in Kanji. Don also got a Kanji name seal. Plus the paper bags everything came in with japanese writing and symbols on them.