My first comission!!

I am still dancing around my studio! I was approached by Jane Hall (Yes, THE Jane Hall!!) at the December guild meeting and she asked if I could make her a wall hanging like the one I donated to the Heritage Day Auction. Of course I kept my cool and said " Of Course!!". I floated back to my seat and managed to maintain my cool until I went to the ladies and did a major happy dance!! I felt so validated!! I finished Jane's Wall Hanging in January and I want to share the below picture of it.

Jane really liked it and the best part was I received some wonderful advice on how to price my work.

thank you Jane for your confidence!!!

I entered the Cloth Paper Scissors Challange again

OK, I'm a sucker for a competitoin. I can't help it....so CPS announced that they wanted post cards sent to them I had to go for it...I made 2.

and

I ended up sending in the top one and I'm hoping when I get the next CPS I'll see the image in the magazine.

A Christmas Present for my Mother

We took my Mother and my MIL camping with us in July last year. We went up to Upper Michigan and had a blast. I printed out some of the pictures on fabric and made the below wall hanging for my Mom.

I used some of my hand dyed fabric as  the back ground and used a dark green tulle to cover the pictures. It turned out very nice and Mom just loved it!!

Feltng class with Sharron Parker

Woo Hoo a new technique has been learned!!

I took an incredible felting class with fabulous Felt artist, Sharron Parker, who has been in Artspace for the last 25 years.

Sharron’s work studio is located on the Neuse River in Wakeforest. There was a small group of us, 4 from Raleigh (Moi, Donna, Lucy, and Elaine) and 3 from Virginia (Deb, Karen, and Rebecca)

To make our geodes, our first task was to choose 7 colors from a large pile of wool roving. (Holy cow that was harder than what it sounds)

We had to layer then perpendicular to each layer (|-|-) then we had to roll them up into a tight ball, then wrap 2 more colors around it as an outer layer.

It all got stuffed into a stock and we then plunged the sock into hot soapy water and “worked” the wool into a ball. This took about 7 minutes depending on the size of the geode we were making.

After we were done working the wool, we took them out of the sock and then cut them in half. All of us were amazed how the pile of roving we put together came out to look like they did.



We then took our geodes and then cut them into ½” slices and arranged them layered wool batts that were arranged in sheeting, again perpendicular

Once we arranged the geode slices we then arranged more wool roving around the geodes to fill in over the white. We also added curly wool locks and pieces of wool yarn.

Once we were done we covered the wool with more sheeting and used large safety pins to secure the geode slices and the other wool. After we completed the edges, we laid the pinned up sheeting in a tub and poured hot soapy water over it and “worked” it by pushing down on the sheeted wool. My thoughts is that a potato masher would work wonderful for this process…we had to do 10 minutes on each side and then check to make sure the wool was “felting”. Once it was firm enough we unpinned our creations.   

When I got home I had to try and make some..below are the results.







Western Wake County Farmers Market and Craft Show Saturday November 5, 2011

What a GREAT adventure!
The wind and the cold had to be experienced.  As you can see by the below pictures we had a steady blast and some wild gusts!

You can see the table cloths and the scarves blowing in the wind 

Luckily I grabbed some rocks I picked up in Lake Superior to put on the coners to keep the table cloths from blowing off.

When we had started our dying thing, we started on cotton fabrics and stiched Shibori panels before we found the scarf niche. We decided to add some of these projects to the offerings. Below are some pictures.



Fat Quarters and squares



As the day wore on the wind got stronger and stronger. It became a challange that the dragonflies took on....

The other vendors had issues as well, lucky for us there are two of us, one on each side. However a nice man named Travis came over and helped us shore of the sides of the tent to keep it more stable so we were at least able to conduct business. Thank you Travis!!!!

It was a nice market and here are a couple of shots of the marketplace.

We made a new friend, his name is Dewey! Dosen't he look adorable in one of our bandana's?



Dying with Ice

Saturday the Dragonflies played around with a technique called “Ice Dying”.

The gist of the whole process is using dry dye powder and to sprinkle on ice to get a very interesting color intensity.

You need the following:

• Scarf or fabric (soaked in Soda Ash water)     
• Procian dye (I used Turquoise and Fuchsia and Golden Yellow)
• Plastic spoon             
• Container to hold iced fabric  
• Crushed Ice

After soaking your scarf or fabric in soda ash water, lay it out in the container

Sprinkle the ice over the top of the scarf (or fabric) and even it out across the surface

Measure out some dye on the plastic spoon and start to sprinkle on to the ice.

After you get the coverage you want,

fold the ends of the scarf (or fabric) over the ice

add more ice over the surface.

*Note: try to remember to add the ice before you accidently sprinkle the surface with ice.

I also added a dash of Golden Yellow just to break up the blue and red.

After I added all the colors I wanted to add, I took it outside and let the sun accelerate the melting process.  

After an hour and a half I came back to them and found scarf soup.

I was rather afraid that I was going to end up with a mess on my hands, but my fears turned to delight after I rinsed and washed the scarf. Below are the results and for a first time I think they came out well!



 

Designer Downtown Market Sunday September 25, 2011

We attended the Downtown Designers Market Sunday September 25. It was supposed to be on Saturday the 24th however the rain just wouldn't stay away!!!
Here are some pictures of our set up. We made out booth fee back so it was a success!!!