Art Textilian

Dirty, Smelly, Noisy, Silly…

2008-05-10T10:33:00.004-04:00

Mom and I have both been working on art for an upcoming exhibit called “Dirty, Smelly, Noisy.” There is even a website! http://www.dirtysmellynoisy.com/ Opening date is June 6th so we have to get busy getting the art finished. Mom (Ann) is focusing on the “Noisy” and I’m focusing on the “Dirty.” She is re-envisioning her violin made out of papers and mixed media for the Scrolls exhibit that we participated in last summer.

I am playing with trash—mostly plastic bottles, plastic baggies, and other things I can’t easily recycle at my condo. Yes, I cleaned them so they aren’t really dirty. My first idea for artwork for the exhibit was a relatively tame idea, but now I’ve gone a bit silly. Just imagine what on earth I could be doing with silvery lamé leggings and fishnet tights along with my plastic trash!

Aside from that I have started to write an article for the on-line mixed-media zine - Fibre & Stitch. Mom and I are co-writing it. The article will be in issue 5, I believe. Not the next issue, but the one after that. It’s all about needle-felting your art. I’m tempted to make it a two-part article with the first one having the basics and the second one going into the more unusual materials and techniques for needle-felting. I’m having fun making the samples for the photographs, but I won’t be sharing them here – at least not until the zine issue is out – so you’ll just have to wait.

Fluid Blue

2008-04-03T12:54:00.005-04:00

Mom and I have gotten ourselves into doing a new Mother/Daughter art exhibit this August during the Lowell Quilt Festival. It will be in the wonderful, new Loading Dock Gallery at Western Avenue Studios! Our theme this time around is Fluid Blue since I tend to be obsessed with all things blue and "fluid" goes along with my current exploration of water. Mom, of course, also adores "blue" and wants to create more of her stunning jackets and her latest jacket is "fluid" in the drape of the fabric. At any rate, we are creating fabrics to work with for our exhibit and below are photos of my first round of fabric creation for the art-to-be. The first two were created from my water Thermofax silk screen. I'm pretty darn happy with how they came out.
This one was created with a simple tape resist on a silk-screen. I'm wishing I had been more careful about the edges of the silk screen so I wouldn't have gotten the vertical lines from the edge of the screen. Live and learn...
It's still pretty cool though. I suppose that's all for now!

Creative Link Crazy

2008-03-06T12:15:00.004-05:00

I have been remiss in keeping this blog current although I never made any promises to anyone about it. It is just one of those ideas floating around somewhere that I should try to post here regularly such as once a month at least.

So if you have seen me on a computer, you probably know that I am a compulsive web surfer. I follow any link that looks remotely interesting. This story starts with a link from the Surface Design Association newsletter's page with suggested links. I read the newsletter more thoroughly than the full-color journal. I am more likely to study the photos in the journal since the articles are in a more formal, academic style.

It all started with this link: http://creativityjourney.blogspot.com/ which is a great resource, but dangerous because it contains lots of other links to cool websites. This site led me to the Crochet Coral Reef exhibit which is an amazing, fun project on a very serious subject and the site contains info about the serious stuff such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, only a disgustingly large floating patch of garbage in the Pacific Ocean - Yikes!

Crochet Coral Reef, with info on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: http://theiff.org/reef/index.html

There was also a cool link about sweaters for penguins. I wish there were more pictures. There is one black and white picture part way down the page that will give you the general idea. Apparently people were knitting penguin sweaters to protect them from oil spillage. The project is done now so I guess there is no hope of getting more photos of penguins in sweaters which sounds so cute and silly, but has such a darker history. http://www.tct.org.au/jumper.htm
At any rate somehow this led me to http://www.treehugger.com/ I'm not quite sure how I got there, but it came from the need to "Do Something!" and of course learn more about how on earth to try to at least stop contributing to things like the increasing size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Treehugger.com is a great resource. Being in the U.S. and having the site focus on suppliers and locations in the U.K. of eco-friendly stuff and recycling projects made it necessary for me to keep looking for more info.

The Green Guide was my next find. http://www.thegreenguide.com/ It is run by the old favorite National Geographic which I used to study the pictures in when my parents used to get it. So it ought to be trustworthy info if it is related to the National Geographic. At least that's my thinking. It has great articles filled with useful info and what you can do such as help reduce the over abundance of plastic garbage a.k.a. made-from-oil, non-biodegradable, floating gunk.
So have I given you some idea of how crazy I get with web surfing?! The Green Guide site had a great article about photography artist Chris Jordan: http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/122/jordan
If you go to his site to look at his artwork, I recommend that you sit down before you look at his stunning Katrina photos. They made my stomach drop. http://www.chrisjordan.com/

All these websites led me to try to get some concept of how much plastic I use and dispose of all the time without thinking about it. As a curiosity project, I am trying to collect plastics that I normally throw out to see how much it really is and to possibly try to use them in artwork or recycle. I've learned that it is extremely tempting to just throw something out especially when it is plastic covering from a frozen dinner that is covered with tomato sauce or otherwise messy and don't even get me started on the plastic baggies. I use plastic baggies for everything for my lunches, but they get messy and how on earth am I going to manage to keep cleaning and saving them? It's just too easy to toss. There must be a better solution. I suppose it is mostly rethinking how I package things to go and finding nifty new product alternatives such as a reusable sandwich wrap I found somewhere...

To get back to the more thoroughly textile art theme here is a link to Maggie Grey's blog which is fantastic to read. http://magstitch.blogspot.com/ She has written or co-written a number of exciting textile/fiber/mixed media art books including Stitch, Dissolve, Distort.

For my own art I have been playing with part of a photo from my Alaska cruise honeymoon. It's a bit of water that I edited to black and white and simplified in order to make a thermofax silk-screen of it. We were going to have a Thermofax silk-screen class last Saturday, but with snow and what-not we have postponed it and slightly altered the topic to Screen-Printing Play for this Saturday.
Here's the original photo:
and then a slightly edited and cropped version:And for a last link, here is Liz Smith's blog who has posted pictures of our new gallery at Western Avenue Studios for her March 4th entry. You can also see her cool instructions for making felted beads and snowy Lowell: http://madeinlowell.blogspot.com/

Next time maybe I'll try not to go quite so link crazy.

P.S. I thought I was done with this post and the links, but Mom saved an article for me from the New York Times and it was about the Crochet Coral Reef! I'm not sure if the link will work, but here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/arts/design/04crochet.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=crochet&st=nyt&oref=slogin
Now I have to go read it!

World Beach

2008-01-15T19:02:00.001-05:00

Check it out! My rock art creation is on the Victoria & Albert's website for Sue Lawty's World Beach project: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/lawty/world_beach/map_gallery/index.php?section=2&postIndex=0

This is an amazing project. I got interested in playing with rocks at the beach by looking through all the wonderful photographs of rock art around the world. Here is a photo of my creation from the opposite angle of the photo on the V+A website.

Here is my hubby, Nick, and Ole in front of the Pavillion at Rocky Neck State Park in Connecticut. They walked around most of the time I was playing with rocks, but Nick did contribute a small collection of rocks to the project and Ole made sure that a few sections were just right by knocking them over so I had to fix them. Ole also made it on to the V+A website as my helper in the "in progress" photo.
I had an awesome time! I encourage you to play with rocks on your own or with friends at a beach near you! (you might want to wait until the weather warms up a bit more...)

For more details about World Beach & how to participate:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/lawty/world_beach/map_gallery/index.php?section=1&postSearch=&category=&start=0&show=12

Needle Felted Fun

2007-12-26T16:42:00.001-05:00

Needle-felting is one of the nifty relatively-new fiber art forms that is getting attention lately. In my Mixing Media workshop, needle-felting is just one of the techniques that we experiment with. It involves persistent poking of fibers through your chosen surface with a felting needle. It can be great for expending nervous energy or frustration! The felting needle has little barbs along it that capture the fibers and pull them through your background fabric or felt. The needles don't have the most comfortable handle since they were originally designed for use in a machine and not for handwork.

For the type of needle-felting that I usually do, you need:

Felting needles (preferably more than one because they can break),
A background such as a piece of fabric and some quilt batting or a piece of felt
Some fibers such as wool or silk
A piece of foam, house insulation, or special needle-felt mat to put behind your work and protect your table
A chopstick or wooden skewer can also be very useful to hold your fibers in place especially if you like to do detailed work. It is best to keep your fingers out of the way of the needle as much as possible. The needles are VERY sharp and they hurt! Believe me. I know!

The following picture is a small piece that I created with some of the materials from a Stef Francis Experimental Pack . I used the EP2 pack called Unusual Cottons & More on our Friends Fabric Art shop website. The pack has some hand-dyed scrim also known as cheesecloth which distresses beautifully when it is needle-felted.

an Experimental Pack (EP2) - Unusual Cottons & More These packs come with silk throwsters waste fibers which needle-felt beautifully. If you look back at my little needle-felted piece, the lovely swirly fibers are the silk throwsters waste fibers. Bamboo fibers pictured below are also great fun to needle-felt because they are so soft.
Yet another type of fun fibers to play with are Angelina fibers. They are a great addition to a piece that needs a bit of glitter! The best part is that you can use the metal and jewel-toned Angelina fibers that won't work for Angelina heat-fusing projects.

In addition to hand needle-felting the Embellisher is a fancy new machine like a sewing machine which you may have read about. It will do your needle-felting for you with the press of a pedal instead of using more of your own "man-power." Embellish & Enrich is a new Jan Beaney & Jeanne Littlejohn book that introduces you to the basics and potential of using an Embellisher in your artwork.
It is even possible to needle-felt into silk. Here is a piece I created with some needle-felting into a silk painting. Most of the darker lines in this piece are needle-felting. I did fuse the fibers on the backside with some "Wonder-Under" to give the fibers some stability to keep them from being easily pulled out. You wouldn't want to use a silk or other synthetic material that is slippery without a backing material such as felt or quilt batting. If you needle-felt into something that is too smooth and slippery your fibers won't want to stick to it. Aside from that, play away and have a Fiber-Filled Happy New Year!

Stitching Train Commute

2007-11-03T18:54:00.000-04:00

I've been busy cleaning and organizing our condo while adjusting to married life. There hasn't been a lot of time for artsy stuff, but Mom and I try to hang out at the studio one night a week to be creative and chat. Mom's been busy making gorgeous pieced jackets.

I haven't been very focused on any particular project except for my never-ending embroidery piece. It started out by playing with a William Morris pattern on the computer and printing it onto Damask linen fabric from an old tablecloth soaked in Bubble Jet Set (a special soak that makes printer inks permanent on fabric). I put batting and a backing piece of fabric behind the linen and started doing embroidery with Stef Francis hand-dyed threads, some silk ribbon that I dyed, and some reflective thread. I keep thinking that maybe I'll do a little bit more stitching and then I'll be done, but I keep stitching. It will have to been done relatively soon as I will run out of areas that haven't all ready been stitched unless of course I start layering the stitches.... It has been a very soothing project to work on while riding the train home from Boston. Occasionally I feel a bit weird doing artsy stitching on the train, but no one seems to pay much attention to each other so I don't seem to be drawing any confused stares anyway. I've figured out little nifty tricks to make stitching on a train easier like loosely tying the extra threads that I am using around my wrist so I don't have to keep putting them away and taking them out again.

I started working a new job this summer in addition to sharing my artistic passions with my mom at Friends Fabric Art. I am working in Boston (hence the train rides) for the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance & Policy as a Policy Analyst. I'm sure you can tell from the title that it isn't directly art-related, but it is interesting and my co-workers are very nice. I had fun decorating my cubicle with all my artsy stuff. I keep having visions of hanging more artwork all over the halls and cubicles to brighten things up more.

Fabric Friendly Wedding and Alaska Honeymoon

2007-09-08T13:41:00.000-04:00

I'm finally writing here again. So much has happened, but I can't possibly write it all down because then I'd have to turn writer and write a biography. Here are some pictures from the wedding and honeymoon anyway. You can see my dress here that Mom made for me and Mom to the right of me made her dress, too. Nick's parents Bob and Karen are on the left of Nick and I. My parents, Ann and Jim are on the right.

Here is a pic to show how gorgeous the bridesmaids' dresses came out! Yup, Mom made all of them, too. I only did the decorative thread-work stitching on the waistbands.

Who's who, left to right: My brother-Peter, Nick's friend-Matt, Nick's brothers' Ryan and Kris, Nick, me, my high school friend-Jenn, my college friends-Sarah, Kellie, Molly.

Here's a pic of Kellie being silly with bouquets. You can see the waistband stitching here, too. On to the honeymoon. I had to take this picture for the great shop name, the Wandering Wardrobe, a fun artsy clothing store we ran across in our long walk through Skagway, Alaska. We walked to the edge of town to get to the Gold Rush Cemetery and then to Reid Waterfall. The waterfall was goreous, but of course, I forgot to check my camera batteries before we left so I couldn't take pictures because the batteries were burnt out.
Each day on the cruise our room steward made us a new towel origami animal. The elephant was too cute so here he is:
And just for a taste of the tons of photos that I took of all the splendid scenery in Alaska, below is a mountains and glacier photo.
Ah, and you must have a look at the happy couple on honeymoon. We are in Glacier Bay on the cruise ship by glacier that we stopped in front of for a few hours. I neglected to pay attention to the name of the glacier.
That's all for now. I wanted to write something at least since it has been so long, so very long... Perhaps I can get back to something more "textilian" next time.

Cheers!

Three-Dimensional Fabric

2007-05-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about writing about Paverpol for a bit now. It is a new thing that we got because of a request for Friends Fabric Art. The book: "Creative Recycling in Embroidery" by Val Holmes discusses using Paverpol to create fabric vessels.

So what is this Paverpol? It thickens or stiffens fabric and makes it water-resistant. Unless you are going to apply it to fabric thinly with a brush or water it down, it will give the fabric a slick look as if it has been varnished. So far I have only created two flowers with my bits of left over duppioni. I am working on putting together a more complete set of instructions for how to make these fabric flowers. On the Paverpol USA website they give directions for making a figurine. (http://www.paverpolusa.com/projects/index.shtml)

The first flower I made was about as simple as you can get with only four petal shapes cut out of duppioni, dipped in Paverpol and draped over a plastic covered bowl with a pipe cleaner as a stem. I meant to finish it up by covering the pipe cleaner with green fabric for a stem and adding a beaded center to the flower, but so far it doesn't look much different than the picture here that shows how I formed it over the bowl.
My next flower attempt was a bit more sophisticated as I graduated to five petals. I also used Paverpol thinned a bit with water for the petals so that they weren't quite so static and plastic-like.I also got so far as to cover the stem and add a leaf to this one. I still haven't gotten around to making the flower center more interesting with beads or fibers. That would be why the picture doesn't bother to show the center of the flower.

Paverpol has a newer product, Paverplast, that allows you to make watertight vessels and figurines for garden ornaments, but so far my experiments with it have come out lousy and definitely not photograph-worthy. I was trying to convert grams into American measurements and got myself totally confused. You have to mix in the proportion of 100gms of Paverplast to one Liter of Paverpol to make a mixture that will create a watertight vessel or object when it is applied. If you add more Paverplast, then the mixture is more of a sculpting putty. I should have simply used the scale to measure out a smaller number of grams. Ah well. Next time I'll be more careful. (Click here to see Paverpol products available from Friends Fabric Art.)

I haven't had much of a chance to try anything new since Mom is away on a cruise with Dad in Alaska. That leaves me to check in all these cool new books that we got from Thames and Hudson which will be showing up on the web shop shortly. All of them have stunning photos. The one that I got for myself at Barnes and Noble with a gift certificate is "The Art of Embroidery."
Last night I was at Rising Star Quilters' Guild to vend for Friends Fabric Art which was awesome because Amy Ropple was giving a talk. It was great to see slides of her art quilts and hear about textiles and beads from Turkey. Aside from vending and checking in books, I've been working on installing a Fedex shipping module on our web shop so customers can get more accurate shipping estimates. The downside is that I am going to have to start weighing everything that is available in the web shop because Fedex needs that information to give a shipping estimate. So much for an easy answer!

My, I have chattered away. Enjoy the sunshine!

Duppioni Bridesmaids' Dresses

2007-04-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

Mom has speedily put together the first of my bridesmaids' dresses. It only needs to be hemmed. I only stitched the middle part at the waist. This one is for my maid of honor, Jenn. It's made out of duppioni silk like my wedding dress. Some of the fabrics are "shot silk" which I learned is the word for silk that shimmers with two different colors from the warp and weft being different colors. The top on this dress is yellow &/or rose depending on the lighting.
Here's the stitching on the waist picture. I machine zig-zag stitched over Stef Francis hand-dyed thick rayon threads. On my practice piece of fabric I played with using some of the fancy machine stitches instead of zig-zag, but I liked how the zig-zag stitch best for the dress. Some of the stitches made the threads separate out in a cool way that would be a fun technique to play with on another project.
On another note, I captured the digger of the big hole near the Western Ave Studios building on camera today. Looks like a woodchuck. I had Ole with me and he didn't even bark at it. The woodchuck kept looking back at me while I took its picture. I'm glad it didn't turn out to be a more vicious animal residing in the hole.

Why!???....

2007-04-16T20:44:00.000-04:00

Today ever since I got a call from Nick this afternoon to listen to the radio, I've been in shock. I'm sure you were, too, when you heard about the Virginia Tech. tragedy. Until this year, my brother, Peter was going to Virginia Tech. and he still has friends there. I am thankful that his friends are all safe, but some people's friends and family are not. In this feeling of helplessness I turned to one of my favorite contemporary folk musician's songs about life: Catie Curtis's "People Look Around" from her newest album, "Long Night Moon." (Song co-written with Mark Erelli, another awesome musician>) Although this song is about Katrina's effect on New Orleans, the feelings Catie Curtis gives voice to in the song are the same as I feel now.
Here's the link to her music video for the song: http://catiecurtis.com/index.php?page=video

To leave you on a more artful note. I am posting a photo I took this summer of Shelburne Falls.
I am going to go stitch some more and listen to more of my favorite music! Next time I'll be sure to post something light and fluffy!

Quilt Play

2007-03-15T12:01:00.000-04:00

Much is happening. I've been meaning to post for a while now, but I kept having trouble with logging in to the blog on this computer. I finally tried Mozilla instead of Explorer and low and behold, I was able to log in just fine without messing with my browsers options menu.

My mom and dad have moved out of the house that I lived in for a long time. Today they sign the final papers! It was so weird seeing the house empty. Mom and Dad are happy to be done packing and cleaning for a while. They are staying at a Residence Inn for a month or so while their condo is being finished up.

Here are two small quilts that I have been working on. The right hand one is finished and I stitched it to a piece of matte board to be able to frame it. The left hand one has been hand-stitched instead of machine stitched. I am thinking of adding beads to it, too.
To make the fabric for these quilts, I followed a shibori (Japanese for tie-dye ) technique in a less traditional way. I folded up a fat quarter of Kona cotton and stitched through the layers with big running stitches. I pulled the threads as tight as I could which wrinkled up the fabric. This was a bit tricky because I had sewn through a bunch of fabric layers.

I then painted the fabric with Dharma Instant Set (pigment dyes). These dyes are more of a paint than a real dye so they capture a lot of texture of the folded and bound fabric. (I had a picture of what this looked like, but I can't find it. It must be on my home computer.) After the dye had set and dried out, I started to play with Stewart Gill sparkly paints.

The fabric came out looking a bit like a topography of hills and rivers. I used the paints to accent the "hills." I played with a nifty trick that I learned from Rebecca Gill's book about Stewart Gill products, "The Painted Surface." It you apply the paint thickly and aim a heat gun at it while the paint is still wet, it will bubble up to create an encrusted look. This worked really slick with the gorgeous shimmery, interference paints (Alchemy) and the glittery Galactica paints. You can see a bit of what it looks like in this detail, but it is nothing like seeing the paints in person.

Oh, and I HAVE to share the cool shoes that I found in a shop in Mystic, Connecticut for the wedding. Mystic is really close to Nick's parents' house. Wow, the shop has a website: Peppergrass & Tulip. I spend too much time on the web. Can you tell?!

Shiva Sticks and Lowell Quilts

2007-02-10T17:03:00.000-05:00

Today I have been playing with Shiva Paintsticks on one of our new rubbing plates. My new favorite is a plate based on Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Starry Night" from the Masterpiece Art Rubbing Trays I decided that one of our scarves wasn't as interesting and beautiful as it could be.

The rubbing "trays" are bigger than other rubbing "plates" that are available so you can cover a larger surface area faster. I used masking tape to give myself some shapes to fill in with the rubbing plates patterning.In two corners, I rubbed the Shiva Painsticks over the rubbing plate twice. Once with the iridescent blue and once with the iridescent green. The rubbing plate was shifted slightly in between the two color applications to vary the patterning a bit.

The center area of the scarf was masked off into a wonky square and filled in by rubbing the iridescent green over the rubbing plate once more. The finished scarf once heat set (with an iron after waiting 24 hours) will be quite stunning with the subtle shimmer from the iridescent paintsticks.
One thing I forgot about as I often do when I start making art projects is: Shiva Paintsticks are messy! Gloves are necessary if you don't want to turn into a "Smurf" or other colorful critter.
Luckily most of the pigment will come off with regular soap and water, but if I wanted completely clean hands, I'd have to find some paint thinner or other less smelly solvent that will thin oil based paints. The stuff also tends to get under your fingernails which isn't exactly easy to clean up. So... Remember those gloves!

The New England Quilt Museum has issued a challenge for quilters to create Lowell inspired quilts. Mom (Ann) and I have each been working on one. Mom's is inspired by the immigrant population of Lowell. The quilt contains fabrics from countries that Lowell citizens are from. It is also inspired by the brick patterns used in buildings around Lowell. All of the pieces have been cut to the size of actual bricks.

Here's a good pic with Jacque helping Mom work on her quilt.
My quilt is inspired by the canalways and rivers throughout Lowell. It uses lots of photos printed on fabric that I then painted on with a bit of shimmery paint because water shimmers! It has been pieced now in a slightly different composition than the picture, but I haven't taken any new photos of it yet. Mom and I are both hoping to finish in time for the March deadline which is coming up fast.
Hope you are having lots of creative fun!

Art Quilts & Dresses

2007-01-19T20:39:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've written. The holidays sort of suck up a lot of time. Much has happened. I finished my little art quilt that I started with screen-printed fabric. It's changed a little bit with the stitching, but Mom's quilt has changed more dramatically.
Here's Mom's little art quilt. Some of the patterning has been painted out with purple to put more emphasis on the leaf patterning. She added chicken-stitching in the purple areas and beading and stitches on the leaves.
Mom and I made some big decisions today. We confirmed our decision to make my bridesmaids' dresses by getting fabric. We went shopping in Marian Bressel's garadge aka Fabritique We had a ball picking out fabrics. The dresses will all be unique with different jewel tones of Dupioni silk. The picture below gives a general idea of what they'll look like. The dresses are simple shift dresses cut on the bias.

Actually Making Art

2006-12-06T21:33:00.000-05:00

The last few Saturdays Mom and I have been doing a Creative Quilt workshop series. We first started out with screen-printing with newsprint and the second week we did Thermofax silk screening which is an easy way of making a silk screen of black and white drawings or photos. I decided to use one of the pictures that I had taken of Carter Smith's fabric to make a silk screen. Here is the photo:

This picture shows how I edited the photo with Adobe PhotoShop to make the image black and white and bring out the pattern with more contrast. This is the image that I used to make the Thermofax silk screen.
And now for one of the images that I printed with the Thermofax silk screen:
Now this fabric was printed first using cut-outs and ripped bits of newsprint to mask off patterns on a silk screen . The following Saturday, it was printed a second time with the light purple with my Thermofax silk screen of Carter's fabric. It came out pretty well. If you click on the picture you can see more detail.This is what I did last Saturday with a bit of fabric I was printing random test prints on. One part of the fabric had a nice composition with the Japanese lady in the center so I cut out that part and here it is. I'm making it into a journal quilt. Since this Saturday I will be going to Connecticut to Nick's parents' house, I will have to finish the quiltlet on my own instead of "in class."

Here is the fabric that Mom (Ann) printed in a similar manner as mine. (Notice the similar color choices) The blue and purple pattern was printed with the bits of newsprint masking areas of a silk screen and the leaf/paisley shapes are the Thermofax screen that Mom created. This is the journal quilt that Mom started last weekend with another piece of fabric that she printed with Thermofax silk screens. She chose a much more challenging composition to turn into a quilt as it is quite busy looking at the moment. Wait until you see what she has done with it . Today she was painting on it. I'm sure it will turn out amazingly in spite of the challenge of making all the shapes stop flying around like crazy.About Thermofaxes
If you haven't heard of Thermofax screens, they are rather amazing. The Thermofax refers to the name of the machine that is used to make the screens. The machine's long name is a Thermal Imager. The machines used to be used by offices to make overhead transparencies. It is not possible to make a Thermofax screen without a Thermofax machine. Welsh Products is the primary seller of new and used Thermofaxes. We have a reconditioned one at Friends Fabric Art.

The Thermofax screen that the Thermofax machine makes is just like a photo-silkscreen (except the process is much easier), if you are familiar with that screen printing technique. If not, the screens are like stencils except unlike the stencils you can get at the usual craft store, having a Thermofax machine allows you to make stencils or screens of any image you like such as family photos, doodles, text, or drawings. Any photo or drawing with high contrast will create the best Thermofax screen. The machine likes pure black not tones of grey like a stamp.

The machine works with images from a copier that has carbon in the toner or drawings created with a carbon pencil. In addition to the machine, you also need the special screening material which is a fine mesh fabric covered with a thin film of plastic. To make the Thermofax screen, the plastic film covered side of the screen material is put face down on the copier print. The Thermofax has a heat lamp so when the screen and paper sandwich is sent through the machine, the heat lamp etches the plastic away everywhere there is a dark enough coating of ink on the paper. As strange as the process is to describe, it only takes a few seconds to etch your image onto the screen material. Once this has been done, the screen material is often stretched flat in a plastic frame or given a tape border of Duct Tape or packing tape to ready the screen for easy printing.

If I have confused you or you have questions, drop me an e-mail: Sonja@FriendsFabricArt.com
If you are curious about how to use a Thermofax screen you can visit: http://www.friendsfabricart.com/Free-Articles.html

Mom and I can make Thermofaxes for you at Friends Fabric Art or check out Welsh Products or eBay to get your own if you think you'll get addicted. Another place to check out fabrics printed with Thermofax printing is Jane Dunnewold's website: http://www.complexcloth.com/Artcloth_Store/ClothGallery/clothgallery.html

Limbo

2006-11-30T11:10:00.000-05:00

Here are a few more Carter Smith shibori photos for fun. The two cropped images are from the coat photo. It's pretty cool how Carter can get the blue to sit next to the yellow orange without getting brown in between. I don't think he thickens his dyes to get this effect. I didn't ask him how he did it. It's my last day working for him. The drive to Nahant is too tiring and too long.

It will be nice to spend more time at Friends Fabric Art and with my mom again for a while.

On another note, Mom and I got a pattern and fabric to make my wedding dress. It is a simple pattern, but we will play with it to add detail to the bodice. The fabric we got is a slightly creamy dupioni.

The dress will me most like the middle picture from the Kwik Sew pattern with the scoop neck and not the long train.

Times they are a'changing...

2006-11-17T20:05:00.000-05:00

In the last few weeks my parents decided to buy a condo in the Boott Mills in Lowell, sell their house in Lowell, and sell the house in Maine on Sebago Lake. And I thought things were going to start to settle down. Oops-oh well. Below is the view from Mom and Dad's new condo's windows. The condo won't be finished until late spring. The other picture is the gorgeous staircase at the Boott Mills that they are tearing out! Part of where the staircase is will be someone's bedroom. I suppose it must not have been cost effective or fit into the architect's plans to save the staircase.

Mom has worked hard to get Friends Fabric Art moved in to our new location at Western Avenue Studios. I managed to set up most of the shop area before the November First Saturdays Open Studio. The rest of the space was quite a mess. Now we actually have a shop area AND usable studio and workshop space. Here are Nick (my fiance) and Ole lounging in the shop area.

Mom and I went to the Revolving Museum this morning. The exhibit, "Race, Class, Gender does not equal Character," they have up now is incredible. I especially enjoyed "900 Skinny Girls" by Linda St. John. It's all these little dolls made out of pipe cleaners and bits of fabric. I love her attention to detail. There is a doll in overalls. Dolls with little dogs, raincoats, a poodle skirt... You can see a picture at the links below.

The exhibit also has some embroideries from the Amazwi Abesifazane Project that completely took your breath away between the imagery and the story behind them. The artworks are "memory cloths" of women who lived during the South African apartheid. You can learn more about them and see some of them at the website below, but if you get a chance to, go see them in person. There is a list of their exhibits in addition to the Revolving Museum exhibit on their webpage.

Amazwi Abesifazane Project:
http://www.cas.org.za/projects/voices.htm

900 Skinny Girls:
http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Revolving_Museum.html
http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/exhibitions/AVAM/stjohn_girls.jpg

Revolving Museum:
http://www.revolvingmuseum.org/index.html

Moving

2006-10-30T22:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the big moving day for Friends Fabric Art. We got a lot of stuff over to the new space in the Western Avenue Studios building. Mom and Peter continued moving today. Tomorrow hopefully we can finish up emptying out the Merrimack Street location.

Mom, Nick, & Peter

Peter and an almost bare space

On another note, Mom made a really awesome scarf by stitching over strips of Carter Smith's silk scrap and Stef Francis hand-dyed Rayon threads on Aquabond watersoluble stabilizer.

Peter, Paul, & Mary!!!

2006-10-24T17:38:00.000-04:00

I think I'm having too much fun with this blog thing. I keep thinking of pictures I could post or what I could write about. My latest picture involves the building of Carter's new house. His last house burnt down. Actually I wouldn't be working for him if it didn't, as it resulted in his previous studio assistant leaving the job.

There are these weird metal structures in the house foundation area that I can see out the studio's office area window. They look like they would be fun to turn into wild sculptures by paper-macheing over or draping with fabric. Carter finally noticed that they were used to transfer the support boards for the concrete pouring of the foundation walls. Anyway here's the pic:

The more exciting news is that my parents, Nick, and I went to a Peter, Paul, & Mary concert and got to meet Mary Travers after the concert. Carter is friends with Mary. They met at a birthday party or something. She's really cool. She even stood next to me and put her hand on my shoulder a couple times. Nick asked me if I was ever going to wash my shirt again since Mary Travers touched it. I mostly stood there and smiled, but I actually said something to contribute to the general conversation that didn't sound totally silly. I'm glad I didn't stop breathing and fall over. My dad was in heaven.

The Lynn Auditorium backstage area wasn't that exciting to see. It looked a bit like a school or prison. Some of the performers rooms looked like cells. Mary's backstage room was a bit bigger and slightly brighter. She wore a gorgeous blue coat created by Carter during the first half of the concert. During the second half, she wore another one of Carter's coats.

I feel like I should have a sign off phrase...it's tempting to say: "And that's the news from Lake Wobegon," but I suppose that wouldn't fit and how many people are familiar with Garrison Keiller anyway.

Toodles.

Carter Smith Shibori Coat Photos

2006-10-18T17:53:00.000-04:00

Here are a few pictures from two jackets that were finished by Carter's seamstresses yesterday. I take basic photos of each garment for keeping track of inventory. The photos don't do the garments justice. You can get a sense of how cool they are from my editted photos better than from the plain inventory photos.

I thought these photos would be fun to print larger on ink jet fabrics. I might also play with them using Adobe PhotoShop Elements.

I plan to take my computer home from the store tonight so I will be able to play with photos and the internet more easily at night. The big store move is set for the end of the month. I don't really use the computer when it is at the store anymore which is good as there won't be space for it in the new location.

P.S.
In case anyone is curious about the inventory photos that these pictures came from, here they are below.

Beginnings

2006-10-16T15:38:00.000-04:00

Molly, Me, & Sarah, Saint Olaf College alumni in front of a Saint Olaf House we happened to walk by on our recent trip to London

Here is something new for me...a blog. So many things have changed in my life lately that I thought it would be fun to start a blog as a way to let people know what all I have been up to and to remind myself of where I am.

To list the major changes in no particular order:

I'm engaged to Nick Austin, a pretty awesome guy who did my laundry for me the other day and even folded it! Wedding is set for August 18 and there's even a website for the occasion: http://www.SonjaAndNick.Weddings.com
I have a new job working for Carter Smith, a shibori artist who specializes in artwear. It's mostly administrative, but there's fun stuff involved. His website is http://www.shibori.com
Friends Fabric Art, ( http://www.FriendsFabricArt.com ) the cool fabric art store that my mom (Ann) and I started 4 years ago is moving from its storefront location in Lowell to the Western Avenue Studios building also in Lowell ( http://www.westernavenuestudios.com/ ). It is less than a mile away, but it's still a big deal. Thank goodness for the new dolly, because I really would not be excited about moving our book selection in particular. I love books, but they sure are heavy when you have to move a lot of them around.

In addition to all that I got to go to London with some college friends a few weeks ago. We had a wonderful time. My friends Sarah and Molly did most of the planning which worked out great for me. I'm still working on editing all the digital photos I took. The photo above is from Molly's collection.