Friday, May 26, 2006

A Fiery Quilt

I finished this little quilt today ... it felt so good to sew something again! My sewing studio is in a bit of a disarray as we work on the walls and rearranging the furniture, so other than the workshop with Laura Wasilowski a couple weeks ago, I haven't done anything with fabric in quite awhile. My church has an art gallery and every few months they change the theme and invite artists in the church to submit artwork in that theme. The upcoming theme is the "Essential 100" ... this is a list of 100 passages in the Bible (50 in the Old Testament and 50 in the New Testament) that are good for reading to get an overview of the message of the Bible. Each artist is being asked to choose one of the passages and interprete it in their artwork. At first I was going to do a quilt on the Fruit of the Spirit found in Galations 5 (I've had an idea for it for quite awhile actually, but have never had an opportunity to actually start working on it), but time ran out ... the deadline was this past Sunday. However, in the church bulletin that day there was a notice that the deadline had been extended one week. I started doodling the quilt on a scrap of paper and came up with another idea for that passage that I thought I could finish in just a few days using the techniques I learned in Laura's workshop. As sometimes happens though, the idea took on a life of it's own. After I fused down the blue and green vines, I realized I'd made more of a bush than a grapevine like I'd intended, which made me think of Moses' burning bush in Exodus 3. So I went with it ... and I'm so glad I did! I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I hope the gallery organizers like it as well. And who knows, I just might make that Fruit of the Spirit quilt someday, too ....

Friday, May 19, 2006

More altered text pages

Yesterday I finished three more pages of altered text. I sat outside and worked on them on the front porch while my girls were riding their bikes. That's one of the best things about doing an altered text book ... you can do it anywhere with the fewest of supplies. All you need is a book and a handful of markers and/or pencils.

Page 20:
"windows"
(Prismacolor pencils)


Page 21:
"singing
dancing
teasing
sharing
seeing you
What I enjoy"
(Sharpie marker)







Page 24:
"contemplating scars
faint remains of a vast collection of ashes"
(Prismacolor pencils)

Monday, May 15, 2006

Laura Wasilowski workshop

This Saturday, as part of my Mother's Day present from my dh, I was able to take an all-day workshop with Laura Wasilowski, a well-known art quilter and maker of hand-dyed fabrics and threads. She showed us how to create an art quilt with fusible webbing. Included with the workshop was a kit of her fabrics and thread ... it was amazing to see how different everyone's quilt turned out, even though we all started out with exactly the same fabrics. My favorite part was ironing down the grass and making them curvy ... it was so freeing to just cut into the fabric with no set plan ... I LOVE the outcome! This picture shows the quilt top I did ... it rarely happens that I can bring home a practically finished project LOL! I just want to add a little bit more embroidery on some of the flowers and then I can quilt it.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Art Journal pages


I've journaled off and on for many years (mostly off, unfortunately), but I never thought to add art to my journaling until recently when I joined the Yahoo groups CompositionArtJournals and artistsjournals2. These groups have inspired me to start journaling again! I grabbed a composition notebook and started painting backgrounds so that they'd be ready for art and journaling. Here are the few pages I've done so far.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Starting the Altered Arts Obsession


Summer of 2005, I joined a round robin on one of my favorite Yahoo groups (FiberArtTraders). We each made a 5 inch square book and then sent it around for the others in our group ... each person was to add one 2-page spread in the theme chosen by the originator. For my book, I chose the theme Color. I created my book using cotton linters for the pages, then decorated the front cover, back cover and the first spread for a signature page and instruction page. There were 6 people (including me) in the group, so I had room for each of us to do a 2-page spread on a color. I marked the pages as to which color should go on which page (I wanted them to follow the color wheel ... red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple), but everyone got to choose what color to do based on what was left when they received it. At the end, I would do whatever color was left. When I received the book, I was overwhelmed with the creativity! The book is such a pleasure to hold ... and the variety of shades of each color are wonderful. When it came back to me, the color green was left for me to do ... my favorite! Unfortunately, I have not yet had a chance to create the green spread, though I have been setting aside bits and pieces for when I do get around to it. In the meantime, here's the pages the other ladies did:










Red by Katy Kapasi










Orange by Normajean Brevik

Normajean even wrote a poem:
Orange is My Favorite Season
Red, orange, yellow, brown,
I see the leaves come tumbling down.
I hear them crunch beneath my feet,
the sounds of Fall are really neat.
We rake them in a giant pile,
jumping in them makes us smile.
I like each season, I like them all,
but the one I LOVE, is called Fall.








Yellow
by Penny Dean









Blue
by Darma Redwine









Purple
by Melinda Fulkerson

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Bev Brazelton workshop


Back in February, I was able to take a workshop on altered books with Bev Brazelton. She was so nice and very generous with both tips and supplies. It was a very full workshop ... we all had fun and laughed tons. And everyone made wonderful pages, too!







Here's what I was able to finish during the workshop.

Altered Text pages


I thought I'd start by posting a few "altered text" pages I altered in the style of The Humument. I love this style ... the search for the perfect words or phrases to pull out of the text is quite hard for me, but when they are finally teased out, the result is very rewarding. I really need to do some more pages like these ....

The book I'm altering is The Artist by Norman Garbo.

Page 9: I pulled out words that described the beach (waves, ocean, foam, shore, whitecaps, Atlantic, water, seaweed, tideline, sand, dune, driftwood, beach), so I just colored in a beach scene (using Sharpie markers). I love the simplicity of this page.

Pages 12-13:
"Grief and mourning,
feeling the silence
frozen forever in the darkness
why?
if the soul had its own natural knowledge of such things, it had so far refused to share"
(Sharpie marker)



Pages 16-17
"feeling anonymous irrelevant
fading translucent
hollow echoes vague
the sensation elusive"
(Sharpie markers)

Monday, May 08, 2006

First Blog Post!

Well, I finally bit the bullet and started my own blog. I'm a quilter who has just started a new journey (or maybe it's an obsession?!) into altered books and art journaling, including reading all kinds of books about altered arts, journaling, drawing and sketching. I love my local library LOL! I'm hoping this blog will encourage me to do some art (fabric or paper) and/or journaling every day. Thanks for stopping by!
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