Well, I took remarkably few photos during this visit, because I figured I’ll have other chances, and this weekend was really for Eli.  As part of his AP Biology class this year, his teacher assigned them a major research paper in Fall for which they had to find a published article by a professor at the college they hoped to attend.  Eli contacted Professor Blair, who did a paper on a biology topic that was a subject that some might find dry but Eli really enjoyed.  She offered to give him a tour if he made it down to the college, so we took her up on the offer.  She took us around the science building before the official “visit day” activities became–really wonderful.

So what do I do…spot furniture and stuff in the science labs that I think would be AWESOME studio furniture and additions!

This drying rack is PERFECT for where I dye my fabrics! So I’m going to go troll companies that supply stuff to science labs. I could make something easily using wooden dowels, but I want something that has plastic since it won’t absorb the dye. And the white bits will show if any residual dye is on them so they can be easily cleaned. But isn’t this perfect?

And lookit this lab table…with the outlets on the end. Wouldn’t you love a STUDIO (as well as kitchen) island with outlets on it? With one of these chairs, too….

or…..

Here’s the teacher’s table. Good quality. Attractive. Nearly indestructible top. On casters. Furniture lust! Stand up, sit down….sigh….

I’ve got a table I love, an old IKEA kitchen table with a drop leaf, for which I made a platform of plywood with casters, so I don’t need the above.  I love the history of my table (has scratches on it from my first beloved cat, Cassie), but this is a mighty fine looking piece.   So hope the ideas might help some of you, dear readers! But I really, Really, REALLY want that drip-dry for containers thingy!

So, I’m working on a new quilt.  But we can’t publicize photos until after jurying.  But I figured I can show you one bit of it–the fabric that I am dyeing, because this isn’t what it’s going to look like.  I’d be surprised if anyone will be able to see this then realize that my entry is the one attached to this photo.  I hope.

My fabric dyeing space exists, which is a joy in itself. However, it is in the “utilities” room with the 330 gallon heating oil tank (on the left), the water purification system (to remove arsenic which occurs naturally in the water table here…at the end of this work surface), the boiler (house heat), and the hot water tank. Can you say barely enough room to slide sideways along the 4×8 foot melamine-glued-to-rigid-insulation work “table”?

I wanted a very exact color.  Thanks to my classes with Carol Soderlund, achieving this is possible, but sometimes I need to overdye.  My biggest challenge is that I haven’t dyed enough fabric to have a good grasp of how much the color will change once washed and dried–it lightens up a lot.  And in this case, the blue I wanted ended up being a mix of two blues, which I haven’t done in any of the classes I’ve taken.  So I was winging it.  I ended up using ProChem’s Intense Blue and a tiny bit of turquoise.   To get the shade I need, I used 0.9 gram (which is a ridiculously small weight) of Intense blue and…get this…. 0.1 gram of Turquoise.   On my first attempt, I used a very pale wash of the Turquoise over the solid blue I had dyed with Intense Blue.  And it was too turquoise.  So I started over.  The second attempt is the one that is on the table above, on its second round adding more of the combination (with a lot less turquoise) to get it a bit darker.  It worked!

And that’s all I can show you until about June.  Gotta get to work!   More anon!

I’m delighted to share that my most recent art quilt, Milkweed No. 2, has been selected to be in Brenda Gael Smith’s current exhibit, A Matter of Time, and is en route to Australia!  Brenda is giving us all sneak peeks at the artworks in her blogpost series called “Just a Moment”  here.

Milkweed No. 2 has been juried into A Matter of Time and will be touring in Australia, New Zealand, and possibly points beyond in the coming two years. I’m thrilled—just wish I could fit inside the envelope and travel with it!  Click to view a little larger.

Apparently I mostly forgot to take in progress photos (!!!) while I was making Milkweed No. 2, so I will share one or two in progress shots from the making off Milkweed No. 1 (which I have not yet shared in public…stay tuned for that in a few weeks) in this and in a second post about my process.

As usual, I began with an idea (more like an obsession with milkweed pods) and dyeing fabric.  I had plenty of batiks and some of my own hand-dyes but needed more for the sky.  I decided to dye some cotton duck for the backing, as well.

Backing and sky fabrics I dyed specifically for my two Milkweed quilts.

I use the cotton duck as a stabilizer.  It helps reduce shrinkage and the artwork hangs beautifully, although it isn’t as easy to handle under the needle as a lightweight fabric.  It is worth the trade-off!  I wrote an article about my process for Machine Quilting Unlimited and blogged about that here.

The top side of the cotton, is on the left. The right side shows where the dye pooled on the bottom (cloth was dyed flat on a surface).

Next, using Mistyfuse (by far the softest hand, easiest to use, never “ages out”) adhesive / fusible web, I prepare my fabrics for collaging.  My video workshop (here on my site and available as a download here from Interweave) shows this part of the process, plus a lot more.  Anyway, I use my “stash” of fused pieces, but always end up adding more bits for a given piece.

Sorry about the shadow on the left—here I’ve got fabrics out for fusing and am sorting them into colors using carry-out dish lids (that I’ve been using for at least the past 7 years! that restaurant has been out of business for eons)

Next, I start the fusing process.  In this shot, I’m working on the sky for Milkweed No. 1 (larger, landscape orientation), but I used exactly the same process on this piece.

Working on the sun-glow in the sky. This is totally a collage process. I tend to cut chunks to go into the various trays, then use as is or submit while collaging.  The drawing you see is a piece of paper underneath my non-stick ginormous press sheet with my sketch.  I ordered this one from Valerie Hearder in Canada, but Mistyfuse now sells the Holy Cow Goddess sheet which is 36×48 inches.   Really helps with my process–I just cover the entire “big board” and get to work.

I then did a bit of surface design including stenciling and screen-printing using thermofax screens (details in my next post).  Finally, I quilted my piece.  Aren’t the colors just glorious?  And yes, bright purple works in a seed pod!

Quilting on one of the milkweed pods, using variegated thread from Superior Threads.

A second detail shot that shows some of the sky–I just love those days where there is a bright glowing spot in the sky where the sun is behind the clouds.

I’ll be back in a few days with more on the processes using paint!   Remember, visit A Matter of Time here and the “Just a Moment” previews blogposts about the various artists and artworks here.

(c)Sarah Ann Smith 2015; quote (c) Mirza Khan, used with permission

In my last post I shared my most recent work and the good news that Descended From the Stars has been juried in to Affinity, the 2015 Dinner@8 exhibit which will premiere in Houston.  Today I thought I’d share how it began.

It began with an idea and Procion MX dyes…..and a pyrex pie plate (yes, dedicated to dye only use for safety) in the center.  Here is the first round of dyeing, with the pie plate to elevate the yellow center and prevent tendrils of green from sneaking in to my sun.

When my sons were little they attended Children’s House Montessori School in Friday Harbor, Washington.  The teacher asked me to dye a (GULP) hand-tatted doily of her grandmothers.  Made in natural cotton color, she wanted it yellow because it looked like a sun.  When a child had a birthday, she would place the doily on the floor, and the child would walk around the “sun” once for each year of their young lives:  four circles for four years.

I then thought about a labyrinth.  What is life but a labyrinth?  It  twists and turns, going around the center/sun, in the same place but not really, through the changing seasons.  That led to thinking about the tree of life.  Finally, I wanted to include Mirza Khan’s quote (see previous blogpost, here) in the deep blue of the heavens.

I knew I would never find fabric like I wanted, so out came the PFD (Prepared For Dyeing) cloth and the dyes and my color “bibles” from classes with Carol Soderlund (her website has info) to figure out which pure dyes I needed to get the colors I wanted.  The photo above shows the yellow and green.  The next photo shows when I added the deep blue to darken the edges.   I ended up doing a second dyeing to get the deep, deep dark blue on the edge.

Deep navy is brushed on to the fabric to provide a gradation of color from pale in the center to deep dark on the edges.

Once dyeing was complete, I enlarged a labyrinth design onto paper, then transferred that onto my dyed top.  Then I spent several episodes of DVR’d MasterPiece Theatre cutting out stones from batiks pre-fused with Mistyfuse.   I used an old ice cube tray, putting one type of stone (cloth) into a cup.  That way I could choose fabrics to be sure I got a fairly random patterning.

You can see a faint white chalk line on the edge of the green/blue that gave me my center square.  On the left, you can see an idea that didn’t work out.  Initially I planned to applique items onto the labyrinth that represented important phases in my life.  But once the quilt took shape, I realized that would simply be too much clutter!

Next came the lettering, which was done with a dip pen and Liquitex acrylic Ink! in gold.  I figured out how large I wanted the lettering to be (counted all the letters in the quote, divided by four to see where I would need to break at corners, etc.) and after a second try, got the size correct.

Here I have pinned the text, printed onto paper and cut apart, to see if it will fit. It does (on the second attempt).  I chose a font I liked since I more or less copied the font in my lettering.

I chalked in guide lines:  top, bottom, top of lower case, like on a second grader’s paper.  I find that as you go along, large writing tends to want to get small and closer to normal size writing, so I needed the guidelines.  I used the SewLine ceramic chalk mechanical pencils, then erased the lines when done.  I covered the outer edge of the cloth with the text strips (seen above) immediately above where they needed to go so I could also keep my spacing consistent and accurate.  I placed freezer paper underneath in case I had any blobs.  Sigh.  My first blob happened on my second letter!  But I was able to fix it (used a little of the blue acrylic ink after scraping up the blob and that made it look like part of the dye patterning!) and learned to be more careful.  It took a few hours for each side, so I only did one side on any given day.

The lettering is done! next, on to the trees.  You can see the chalk guidelines in this photo.

And yes, I did have a practice piece!

It’s quilted in this photo, but I had a scrap of blue fabric and tried various ways to write, from a chisel brush to the dip pen and crow-quill (metal) nib that I ended up using because it gave the crisp look I wanted.

In the next post, I’ll show the trees and quilting.

I’m thrilled to be able to share my most recent major work along with the news that Descended From the Stars has been juried in to this year’s Dinner@8 exhibit, Affinity, which will debut at International Quilt Festival 2015 in Houston, Texas, this coming October.

(c)Sarah Ann Smith 2015; quote (c) Mirza Khan, used with permission.  Click to open slightly larger.

You can find more about the exhibit and the other artists here.  I am blushing to find myself in such company, and humbled to be in this exhibit for my sixth consecutive year.

The theme is Affinity, and the call for entry reads:

Detail of the lower right corner, showing the autumn tree of life.

Detail of the lower left corner, with the winter tree kissed by snow.