Watching paint dry...

The paint is dry (well dry-ish, it takes 3-5 days before you can place anything on top of it and a full 30 days to fully cure for maximum hardness and durability), the knobs are installed and the dresser is back in the hallway. I'm going to wait another few days before I style it with a pretty dish and some accessories and then I'll take official photos of it in place. This photo will have to serve as a teaser until then. Isn't that color delicious? I have to say, I really enjoyed using the paint - Benjamin Moore's Advance - the finished product looks very professional and smooth, and the soap and water clean-up was a dream. And look at how pretty those mercury glass knobs are.

Next up is a project to fill the blank space above the dresser. We are very fortunate to live in a house with 9.5 foot ceilings so there's quite a bit of blank wall in that little hallway. My project involves a bundle of strips,

but no sewing! I will tell you that it will be my twist on a popular interior design trend. I've been working on proportions and prototypes and will be diving in with the power tools tonight.

I also finished another series of fiber postcards, this one in the theme of Houses. Another task I can cross off my list. Yippee! I'm trying to move in to the new year with as much of this year's tasks crossed off as I can.

Progress - on several fronts

I have made a little progress on my painted dresser project since the last time I posted. A few things, and the holidays, derailed my timeline, but I'm moving forward again.

Each drawer in the dresser has a lovely brass keyhole and I wanted to preserve those when I painted the drawer fronts.

I covered the keyhole with painter's tape, pressing along the contours.

Then I carefully cut around the outside edge with a sharp blade.

Lifted up the excess and voila! Ready to go.

Repeat 3 more times and break out the paintbrush.

The paint, Advantage by Benjamin Moore, went on like a dream. I was little nervous when I first opened the can because the color is SO much lighter than I remembered it, but it's drying to a deeper, richer shade. Phew! The sheen is perfect too. The instructions recommend waiting at least 16 hours between coats and I'm fighting my impatience but winning so far. You can tell that I'm going to have to address the insides of the drawers. They're kind of icky. I've been browsing online for pretty drawer liner paper today and found an excellent one at The Container Store (cucumber scented even!) but they're out of stock online and the nearest store is 45 minutes away. Decisions, decisions...

On the art front, I finished some fruit-themed postcards and mailed them off. In my head they were supposed to be sliced tangerines, but after I made them I sliced a tangerine and the actuality didn't match the imagination. Now they are mystery fruit. Or tomatoes, as Carlos helpfully pointed out. I am still really pleased with the finished cards.

I'll have an update on the finished dresser in a day or so, depending on how my patience holds out. Now I'm planning the project that will hang over the dresser. Hopefully the result, unlike the tangerines, it will more closely match what's in my head, hahaha.

Back to the Studio

De las Lineas de Nasca, ink on fabric

Finally settling (sort of) into a new studio and I made some fabric postcards for a long overdue swap. The theme for the swap was Petroglyphs and while mine is technically inspired by geoglyphs, I think it's close enough. It feels good to be making again. Now if I could just find everything...

Colliding passions

I'm working on a new series of fiber art postcards and am exploring something different this time. I purchased an absolutely spectacular assortment of 60 jacquard batik squares from Lisa Shepard Stewart of Cultured Expressions a couple of weeks ago at a quilt show in Warwick NY and decided that they'd make gorgeous backgrounds for the postcards.

The fabrics are from Ghana and the colors are so luscious and vibrant  -- very different from my usual more muted palette. I don't know if it's the season or the weather or my mood, but I'm going with it.

I'm thinking about adding some photo transfers of the images I've been snapping with my iPhone using one of the several apps that give lomographic effects to photos. I've been noodling around with Camera Bag, Toy Camera, and Plastic Bullet but my very favorite is Hipstamatic.

I LOVE these hands. They're antique glove forms that we found in Judy Gula's booth at the Art Opera in NJ in April. They live on a shelf in my office and wave happily at me every day.

Stay tuned to see what happens next!

Recently I signed up for the Art Sketchbook Project from the Brooklyn Art Library and I got word today that my sketchbook has shipped. I picked the inside/outside theme and I can't wait to get started. It's not too late to sign up if you're looking for an inspirational and creative project.

AED - pile o' postcards

Today I finished up a pile of postcards that's been mostly done for a couple of weeks now. Finally. Tomorrow they go out in the mail. Finally.

Postcards from the edge

Okay, maybe not from the edge, but some days are more interesting than others. Still transitioning into a whole new life, still trying to find structure and organization in the midst of change and still trying to get caught up, but I'm getting there.

I'm knocking things off my list and working toward some big deadlines. I have a wonderful group of people signed up for the June Printmaking for Art Quilters workshop next weekend.

And I've nearly finished the postcards that I owe to some very patient people. Postmark'd Art, the fantastic postcard group that I've belonged to for the past 4-5 years, had a theme of mixed media this spring and I used Loteria cards to create mine. Of course, I couldn't just mixed the media, I mixed the cultures too. The red stamp is one that my brother brought back for me from a trip to China. It's really beautiful, I love the scale of it with the Mexican loteria cards.

And to mix more culture in here, I finished a really good book last night, Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, about his youth in Sierra Leone during the civil war. It was hard to read because of the subject matter but the honesty of the author made it very worthwhile. I highly recommend it.

Workshop at Sew Inspired

Elin Waterston and I will each be teaching a workshop at Sew Inspired Quilt Shop in Simsbury CT on Saturday April 4th. We'll also be signing copies of our new book, Art Quilts at Play from 1-2 pm.

Elin is teaching Artist Trading Cards with Angelina fibers, painted fusibles and Shiva Paintstiks from 10am - 1pm and I'll be teaching Fiber Art Postcards with Tsukineko inks, metallic foil and gel medium transfers from 2-5 pm.

Hope to see you there!

Art Quilts at Play

Here's the big, exciting news! I've been living this project for the last 18 months and I can finally share. Elin Waterston and I have written a new book, Art Quilts at Play, for C&T Publishing, to be released in January 2009.

This new book is a perfect complement to our first book, Art Quilt Workbook, and covers a plethora of surface design techniques and special effects on fabric. The book is full of illustrated how-tos, many, many samples from the different processes and oodles of finished art. Once we've shown you how to create and alter some beautiful fabric, we give you scads of ideas of what to do with it, from challenges and trades to collaborations and more. Our first book was based on an in-depth, comprehensive class that we'd been teaching. This new one also draws on workshops plus the techniques we each use in our own art.

Over a year ago we asked a small number of very talented women in the art quilt and mixed-media world to contribute some pieces to our book and they very generously agreed. Their work enriches the material and shows you how different artists with different voices and different techniques approach the same themes or materials with exciting, original and unique results. We're so grateful to each of them for their contributions.

Natalya Aikens
Woodie Anderson
Liz Berg
Gail Ellspermann
Janet Ghio
Rayna Gillman
Terry Grant
Kathryn Hunter
Andrea Jenkins
Jane LaFazio
Mati McDonough
Tricia McKellar
Kim Rae Nugent
Karen Stiehl Osborn
Virginia Spiegel
Beryl Taylor

A few of our students were also asked and graciously agreed to share their work with us. We are so thankful to them for their generosity (and in a couple of cases, their bravery as well!)

There will be a big release party, book signing and art quilt exhibition at the Country Quilter in Somers NY on Saturday, February 21st and we hope you can join us!

You can pre-order an autographed copy of the book now by contacting me. We're so pleased with the response to our first book and hope that you'll like this one just as much.

Recycled theme postcard

With this postcard I am officially Caught Up. For one don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it minute. I'm going to bask in the glow of current-ness and then look for something else to get into...

Alphabird

I'm finally getting some overdue projects done - one of which is a postcard exchange with a group on Postmarkd Art. The theme is alphabet. I stamped different letters on each card in the series and kept letter A for myself. Not sure what the bird symbolizes, but he insisted on being there.

One more set of postcards and I'll be officially Caught Up. Don't blink...

Quilting Arts Gifts

The new 2008 issue of Quilting Arts Gifts arrived in the shop today. I contributed two articles to it, one is my take on a gingerbread house and the other is a cool idea for using fiber postcards to present gift cards to the special people in your life.

It's a gorgeous issue, jam-packed with all sorts of neat projects. I have to get busy making some decorations to replace the ones we lost in the basement flood after hurricane Wilma a couple of years ago and this magazine is giving me tons of ideas.

Art Deco Postcard

I'm madly finishing up some postcards for the swap group, Postmarkd Art, I've belonged to for the last three-four years. One theme this round is Art Deco. I did enjoy this, but it took longer than I had anticipated to complete them. This morning I decided they needed one more thing and I carved a stamp with a small art deco motif/ornament on it to add to the upper left corner. Today I'll drop them in the mailbox and send them out into the world. Phew, cross that off the list. Two more themes to get through and I'm on to the next round.

Fish tales

In between a home improvement/art display project last weekend (to be revealed soon, tease, tease), I found a little time to make some art. I painted a bunch of fish prints using my new little blue gill and made a few of the prints into fiber postcards. This small rubber fish makes me so happy! Weird, I know.

These two postcards are destined for the Wish Upon a Card fundraiser sponsored by the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show this July. I'll be teaching all five days at A Quilter's Affair in Sisters, Oregon the week prior to the show. Only the Friday class still has space left, so if you want to join me, don't delay!

Wander

A fiber postcard made for the word prompt "Journey" for Postmark'd Art.

Not all those that wander are lost - JRR Tolkein

Rhyme

The word prompt for my fiber postcard group this month is "rhyme". I had a plan for this piece that went awry. I started out with a haiku by Basho, a 17th century Japanese poet:

How reluctantly
the bee emerges from the deep
within the peony

then it drifted into a pun, 2 bee, my bee turned out to be a wasp, and there's no rhyme in sight. I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. I like it anyway.

Today's incongruity: shoveling three inches of snow in the pouring rain. I'm talking cats and dogs, literal buckets of rain. I couldn't have been more wet if I had taken a shower fully clothed. The driveway's clear though. Gotta love February.

Couture

The fiber postcard group that I belong to, Postmark'd Art, does several large, through-the-mail swaps each year and now we're also creating a card each month in response to a word prompt. The word for January is Fashion.



A non-sequitur, appropos of nothing - I read alot, usually 2 to 3 books a week. I just finished one that my daughter lent me and I highly recommend it, Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison. It's an excellent memoir of someone living with Asperger's Syndrome. For a really good fictional novel of a boy with Asperger's, read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon. I read this when it was first published in 2003, but it's definitely on my re-read list.

A rectangle, a square, a triangle and a stamp

I needed to make some fiber postcards in the theme of "Houses" and boiled my design down to the basic shapes - rectangle, square and triangle. I had already carved a stamp in the shape of a window for a different project, so that came in handy for printing. Then I played with composition. Here are four of the ten I made today. Of course, none of these would pass building codes...









The seals I stamped in magenta ink are from fellow Nature Printing Society member Fred Mullett's Red Pearl stamp site.

Art for Boxing Day

Boxing Day has typically been an art/craft day in my family. We all go off in our own directions to work on our art, meeting for meals of leftovers and to check out what the others are working on. A nice way to relax after the holiday...

A fiber postcard made in the theme of Maps. I found a paper at Papyrus that's printed with an old map of Paris and chopped it up. The gear is a carved stamp.


I gave my extended family a "homework" assignment for our holiday get-together on Sunday. I passed out 2" square canvases and told them that they each must fill their canvas with their choice of subject in their choice of medium. There will be 10 for dinner from kindergartner to grandparents - I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with! I worked on mine today and it has everything I love on it, an insect, text in several languages, fabric, paper and printing.

Snow Day Butterflies

The weather outside is frightful! (wait, isn't that a song?) So I'm home working in my studio, waiting for the snow and freezing rain to stop. There's a cozy fire going and supper smells are wafting from the kitchen - neither is my doing - not a bad afternoon, all in all.


Imprima - Mariposa


Imprima - Polilla


block prints with acrylic paint on cotton fabric, printed rice paper, nori paste, cotton thread

New Fiber Postcard

Block-printed Fish, 6" x 4"

I'm working on some new postcards for swaps and the first bunch are done and ready to be mailed. This one gave me a chance to try out the new Stewart Gill paints I bought at Festival in Houston and the pearlescent acrylic inks I picked up in my favorite local art supply store.

This series is bound for the latest students in a class that Elin and I teach called Swap Art. Elin shows the students how to make fiber ATCs in the first class and they make enough to trade with each other. I teach them how to make fiber Postcards in the second class and then we all mail postcards to each other over the next couple of weeks. Fun! I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Then it's on to the postcards for the latest round for Postmark'd Art. Our group has been trading for a number of years and we have members from all over the world.