My Sister Anne's new Masterpiece

Anne and I got to hang out in her studio while I was at home. She had taken a class with Susan Brubaker Knapp and I think she's doing a smashing job!!

Nuno Felting in Chapel HIll

On Wednesday September 26 I led a Nuno Felting workshop at my friend Leslie F’s home in Chapel Hill, NC.  I had the pleasure of meeting Catherine, Sue, Carolyn, Susan and Andrea. I totally enjoyed a wonderful homemade lunch of Sweet Potato Soup, Salad,  applesauce, mini quiches, Focaccia with  home roasted tomatoes all topped off with carrot cake. Yummmmmmmmmmm. (The lemon grass flavored iced tea was a great thrist quencher!)
After finishing off the wonderful repast, we made out way out to the drive way and started to felt.

So we got the outlines on the table and the bubble wrap laid out.






And start laying out the wool ......

Leslie's kitty cat was getting some sun as we worked away

After we laid out all the wool and wetted it down we started to roll the noodles....

and roll the noodles............. I should 

have brought a boom box to help get a rhythm it would also help with time...

Finally were were done and were able to unroll  our scarves

The scarves came out very pretty!!

They look quite nice hanging in the trees!!

Here are the ladies who made this wonderful day happen!!!

I think they enjoyed themselves :-D I know I did.



50 Shades of Color

I had a very satisfying dye day Monday; my inner Goddess was very pleased.

After carefully mixing up some dyes, I gently pulled out of the soda ash the scarves I had tightly bound and tied Shibori style.

I carefully lay each bound scarf in it’s plastic dye pan and slowly dribbled dye over it, first yellow, then blue, then some red. Or I may mix a nice purple or flame and saturate the white surface with the lovely mix of red and blue.

After the scarves set for an allotted time, I gently remove the restraining threads while rinsing them under cold water.

Below are how they looked while being colored and how they turned out.

My Inner Goddess is very relaxed now.

Green

Green in an interesting color.

What's great about it is that it's a blend of two colors, Blue, a cool color and Yellow, which can be considered a warm color. So it could be called a Coolwarm color (If Coolwarm was really a word)
Green goes very nicely with other colors.

Green and Gold go very well together

So do Green and Blue (with a spash of purple(

And if you throw in some reds and pinks you have  lovely scene

Mother Nature is truely the best inspiration,



My sweetie was in Germany..so what's a girl to do?

My sweetie had to go to Germany for  a week. Did I get bummed out and depressed that he was eating Swinehaxen and drinking good beer and I was sweating alone in North Carolina?  (yes) 
No...instead I knocked out some projects since I could leave things as messy as I could stand until he got home. (always look at the bright side of life right?)
In a previous post I showed you the post card I made recycling fibers and tags. I also learned to batiik  scarves.

I'm happy how they turned out. I really like the one with squares and circles. I really want to play around with this some more!!
I would have liked to have gotten more dying out of the way however the temperatures were:
Hot....Freaking Hot ...  and YOU GOTTA BE FREAKING KIDDING ME Hot,  So I had to retreat inside the nice, cool house to finish "Raleigh 005".

This one is the largest I've ever made..it took fooorrreeevvverrrr!

Next time they'll be smaller!!

Have a great day,  Pray for rain, Peace and lower temps ;-)

Inspired by EL Anatsui's exhibit at the NC Art Musuem

I went to the NC Art Museum June 30th with members of PAQA South and went through the EL Anatsui exhibit, "When I last wrote to you about Africa", Janna, (our President at the time) arranged for us to have a guided tour and WOW is all I can say. If this exhibit is ever in your area, please go see it, it's amazing.  To see some of his art click on the link http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/gawu/index.html.
Anyway, to thank Janna for this treat, I was inspired by what I saw to make a post card recycling items from scraps and tags from the back of shirts.
First I dug around a bag of fiber scraps my friend Diane gave me from NCSU.

I laid these out on a 4x6 piece of quilt batting and sewed down the edges.

Then with the fibers on the right, I wove them into the fringe trying for a basket weave effect.

After I wove the fibers as much as I could I arranged what I could in the middle and then put water soluable stablizer over all if it and sewed over it all creating a new background fabric.
Then rinced out the stablizer. (I do love that stuff!)

Then I went hunting in the clothes that are headed for Goodwill and snagged some tags. I got the Lauren tag from a Sport Coat my honey just purchased.

I arranged how I wanted the tags and then dabbed some school glue to hold them in place then topped with a dark green Tulle.

Then I started stiching around every tag and along the edges of the new post card,

After I finished stiching I dug around my scrap bin and found an attractive brown to edge the postcard with. I used Wonderunder to attach it.

The I topped it off with some decorative stitching along the edges.

And Viola! a post card made from recycled items in my sewing room.
It was these items fate to be remade into my postcard.

Accepted in the Felted Wonders Challange at Cloth Paper Scissors!!!

I am so excited! My scarf was accepted as a finalist with 35 other's in the Felted Wonders Challange.

I'm hoping I can win the felting machine listed as the prize!! Happy Dance!