The drawing is now closed.  Drum roll please for Daphne Greig!

And the winner of the DVD is Daphne Greig, comment number 3!

And I’ve selected one more person to be eligible to win some of Diane’s fabric.  Each member of the bloghop is selecting a second comment, sending that name to Diane, and at the end of the week she will select a winner for the fabric.  That was comment 26:

The second drawing to be eligible to win some of Diane’s fabric.

NOTE:   The DRAWING is OVER and comments on this post are closed.  You can comment on other posts though!

Oh what FUN!  There is a reason why Diane Rusin Doran’s blog is called Ooh! Pretty Colors!  In her new Quilting Arts Video Workshop,  Digital Surface Design, Diane shows you how to make your own cloth digitally:  just think of it: all the beauty of hand-dyed fabrics, of hand-printed fabrics, in just the colors and designs you want, endlessly re-printable, and as she said in the conclusion, if you can click a mouse and move a slider on your computer, you can follow her clear instructions and create your own digital art cloth.  The download is available now at the Interweave Store, here, and the DVD will be available for order in a matter of days.  I’m thrilled she asked me to be part of her bloghop and giveaway.  Keep reading to find out how to win a free DVD!

Diane Rusin Doran’s new Quilting Arts Workshop: Digital Surface Designs

This workshop is all about creating your own digital art cloth.  Diane teaches you how to emulate traditional surface design, which she defines as the application or removal of color and pattern on cloth, with your computer.  You’ll need Photoshop Elements (software available for under $100), and can print your designs at home or by sending your files away to a fabric printing service. I will be downloading my copy onto my iPad (I have a download, not the DVD) so that I can watch on my iPad, pausing when necessary, and work alongside Diane on my laptop at the same time; you could do the same by watching the DVD on a TV and working on your computer.

I can’t recall when I first met Diane in person, but we’ve “known” each other online for years.  Several years ago I saw her Return of the Grackle quilt in person and was absolutely riveted:  it is quite large, 40×51 inches–I just wish you could see how stunning it is in person:

Return of the Grackle by Diane Rusin Doran

The video has five sections:

1.  Introduction (7 minutes)

Diane talks about what she will teach us, what supplies you need, and why you might want to do digital rather than traditional surface design.   Diane’s lessons build on each previous segment so that by the end you can create a layered composition, breaking what at first seems daunting into an easy step-by-step process.

2.  Digital Backgrounds for Hand-dyed Effects (20 minutes)

Diane teaches us how to make a softly mottled cloth using a photo of clouds in the sky, and how to simulate drip-dyed fabric by carefully showing step by step how (and where to find the correct thing to click) to navigate Photoshop Elements.  Diane used a PC with a newer version of Elements than I have, but it was easy to follow.  I plan to re-play the entire video and copy down the sequences step by step for various lessons in this video so I have them for handy reference when I go to play.  Familiarity with Photoshop Elements is helpful, but by no means necessary.

3.  Digital Patterning using Brushes (19 minutes)

I’ve played around with Elements a lot and learned quite a bit, but this DVD is way better than just stumbling across something:  it is  guided play.  I’d already discovered many of the things Diane teaches in the previous section, but this chapter was uncharted territory for me.  My brain started into high gear as soon as she mentioned re-sizing motifs at will and creating your own brushes to supplement the default ones in the software.  For example, I can carve a block traditionally, but then scan in a print and use Diane’s methods to re-size and print at various scales without laboriously re-carving the block (only to decide that wasn’t quite the right size).  So I can still get the hands-on that I crave, but with infinitely more possibilities.

4.  Designing with Layers  (15 minutes)

In the last major section, Diane then shows you  how to combine what you did in simulating hand dyeing and stamping stenciling to create layers of imagery and color on cloth.

5.  Gallery and Conclusion (7 minutes)

Finally, Diane shows us fabrics, and variations on the themes, printed from what she has taught us in the 3 teaching segments of the video.  Here are some of her printed fabrics (and part of her portion of the giveaway):

Win these fabrics made by Diane by commenting on blogs in this bloghop–see the link below.

Her favorite fabric is the one used on the cover of the DVD, which I first saw in a shirt she was wearing in November at International Quilt Festival:  yes, she printed it on a knit fabric and made a shirt out of it, and I love it!

Diane had her design printed onto fabric, then made this beautiful top!

Diane’s first QA Workshop, Digital Collage for Quilt Design, is now on its way to me.  I can’t wait to combine the two and work on a quilt…I have this photo of a rose……

I’ve already ordered Diane’s first video workshop…this new one has whet my desire to play!

So I invite you to join me in thinking how to combine traditional manual arts with the computer!

Here’s the schedule for the bloghop and giveaway.  Like Candy, on January 28th I will be drawing one name from those who comment on this post on my blog to win the DVD.  That means for the next nearly two weeks, you can visit ALL of these blogs and get FIVE chances to win a copy of this DVD.  I’ll also pick a SECOND   lucky person to be eligible to win a packet of Diane’s custom digitally designed cloth (see her blog to read about it); that drawing will take place on Diane’s blog!

• January 14 – Candy Glendening – visit Candy’s blog or the Interweave link to see a preview from the workshop.  http://www.candiedfabrics.com/journal/
• January 16 – Sarah Ann Smith – https://www.sarahannsmith.com/weblog/ (you’re here now!)
• January 21 – Deborah Boschert – http://deborahsjournal.blogspot.com/
• January 24 – Susan Brubaker Knapp – http://wwwbluemoonriver.blogspot.com/
• January 28 – Diane Rusin Doran – http://oohprettycolors.blogspot.com/

And I’ll close with another fabulous quilt by Diane, California Dreaming:

Diane Rusin Doran, California Dreaming.  Printed on silk and just LOOK at that quilting!

ALERT:  Joshua, if by chance you are reading this, STOP and GO AWAY!  <grin!>  Ashley, if YOU are reading this you may, but please don’t share pics with Joshua!

Please

scroll

down

Yes, I am

trying to keep

the photo

below the screen line!

It’s worth scrolling….

Yes, I am trying to get the photo below the screen line LOL!  In a small miracle, I have made some headway on Joshua’s quilt!  He graduated and got his GED in late Spring.  I started on it in late winter and hoped to have the top done by graduation.  Then I got the chance to make my video workshop (here) and was delayed.  Then I had hoped to have all of Autumn to work on it–but offers of articles and two bloghops to promote the now-out DVD intervened.  But I did get the diamonds made.  Yesterday I FINALLY got to put them up on the design wall, and I AM HAPPY!   If Joshua doesn’t like it (I’m sure he will), I’d love to sleep under this.

Clearly the quilt was inspired by Kaffe Fassett’s quilts.  I actually prefer the Philip Jacobs and Martha Negley prints to Kaffe’s, but had a lovely stash.  There was one print in particular that Joshua liked, so there are ten diamonds in that one, plus I plan to do a pieced “quilt modern-ish” back so the quilt will be two sided.  I think the quilt will be about 87 x 95 when done.  Yesterday I got the pieces up on the design wall (and partly on the floor):

Inspired by Kaffe Fassett’s diamonds quilts. I used the diamond template I had, then cut strips to make 1 inch (finished) sashing/borders for each diamond. There are not two pairings the same in the entire quilt. Doesn’t the color just make you happy? Now to get it pieced without messing up the order!

As I was stitching the edges onto the diamonds, I started popping them up on the wall.  What a muddle!  Wasn’t happy.  So I tried grouping them by center color (large prints) and, when that wasn’t so great, by border color (smaller scale designs/prints).  That worked much better, so I chose a simple rainbow flow:  reds to orange-ish/yellow to green to blues.  When I got to the bottom of the number of rows I needed, I had lots of blues, so used them to fill in the triangles on the tope and sides and really like how the darker strips help contain the quilt.  I’ll use a dark-ish blue for a simple binding.

Now I need to upload a few photos to a transfer site in the cloud for my next article for Machine Quilting Unlimited!  WOOT!

One of the lovely things about kids’ fall sports is being outside in a Maine Autumn.  As I type, I am watching an ever-so-pale pink on the  clouds underlit by the late sunrise (it is 6:56 a.m.) drifting across the distant hills, which range from deep pine to russet, gold, mahogany, bright green (the willows along the drive), deep umber on the trunks of trees that have lot their leaves already, and the burnt crimson of the blueberry barrens on the next hill over.   Going to Eli’s cross country meets is just as glorious, and we’ve had not-rainy weather the entire season!

Part of the trail at Camden Hills Regional High School; Eli is in red. 

Eli had a bumpy start to his season, coming down with a flu just a couple weeks in to school.  That affected his breathing and therefore his running, but he finally had a race with which he was happy last weekend at Homecoming.

The starting gun has just fired, and Ben Trapani. Caleb Love-Webb and Eli are in the lead for Camden (the three in red at the left).

Senior Ben Trapani is poised to come in near the top in the state this year.  I remember when Eli was in 6th grade and Ben in 8th and we would watch him at track meets, a full lap ahead of the field.  Not much has changed in four years, except that he is bigger, stronger, and even more of a fine young man; well, I would say that his confidence in himself and his running has grown, and it is good to see because it is confidence well-placed.   Will sure miss him after he graduates, but his younger sister Emma, a Freshman, is already at the head of the pack in the girls’ races!   Caleb is a Freshman, and is now the second-fastest on the team, something Eli predicted before the season began.

Caleb (left) and Eli (just behind him) coming round the bend side by side after about 1.5 km of the 5k race.

I see in Caleb the same focus and drive that I see in Eli, so it’s going to be a good few years for the boys.  And Eli, though not a typical runner’s build, is determined and fast as ever.

Eli coming around the back side of the second field at the high school. There is a spot where you can get the into-the-woods view then move about 30 feet to see the kids come around the loop to this spot.

Eli has an incredible drive to compete and win, and it comes out at the end of every race.   He can run down kids like you wouldn’t believe if they are anywhere near close.  Here  he’s putting it into overdrive:

How can that kid be so strong? He clearly gets his physical prowess from his dad!

And checking his time after crossing the finish line:

Better! Next up, the very hilly, challenging course for KVAC (Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference) race at Cony High School in Augusta, followed by Eastern Regionals in Belfast and states at Cumberland the following weekends.

Went to turn on the lights in my chilly studio this morning, and saw this: totally frosted windows! I don’t think it has been that cold here before since we moved in. Temps this morning have warmed up two degrees to -2, wind chill now only -15. At least this is pretty!

OK…so I’m working on a new quilt, and nothing on the shelf was quite right, plus I really wanted the sheen of silk for the water.  That meant it was time to bring out the dye-buckets and implement some of what I learned in Carol Soderlund’s Think Silk workshop last April.  I knew that I wanted deep blue water with glints of moonlight on it, so I checked my dye swatches and found I wanted a color made of Navy dye and a tiny tiny bit of red.  In my stock of dyes, I had two containers of Navy, one from ProChem (with hardly any dye in it…not enough really for the yardage I wanted to dye) and one from Dharma Trading, so I used the latter though it was old–there was plenty of it, so if I used a high percentage of dye to water, I could still get the deep values I wanted.  Right.

This photo shows cotton on top (overdyed) and silk on the bottom.

This close-up of the top fabric is washed out because of the camera flash, but it shows how PURPLE the cloth became…from navy dye from Dharma.

It took a while to figure out what went wrong….I was getting way too much red!  I KNEW I was using the proper method to fix the dye to the silk:  an acid bath using citric acid (not soda ash as on cotton).   I thought at first that the purplish color was because my Dharma navy was old and the red was doing what Procion MX reds do:  overpower.  So I tried a second dyebath with ONLY the Dharma navy.

Round 2 of dyeing. Nice, but not what I wanted. Yet.  The long strip on the right is close, but that is the cotton.  The black shibori on the far left is an overdye of a black dye-vat I did in the Think Silk class, but hated the green cast from the dye (YUK).  Better now.  The center top is a scrunch of cotton, where I over-dyed the original cotton because it was too purple.  The silk on the bottom center is an overdye of one of the first two pieces of silk, again to cover up that purple.

So I dyed with ONLY the Dharma Navy, and I STILL was getting purple.  Then I noticed that the dye powder, when it touched a paper towel, had RED specks in it!  I had thought the Dharma Navy was the same as the ProChem Navy.  NOT.   The ProChem Navy is a pure dye, meaning it won’t split or “halo” red or any other color, whereas the Dharma Navy is a mix of pure dyes.  AH!   Light bulb flipped on!  There’s nothing wrong with the Dharma dye, it’s just not what I wanted or thought I had–I thought the “navy” was a pure dye, not a mix.  Now I know to check more closely!

The striping is OK, but TOO much purple still showing. Silk (left) and cotton (right). I wet out the cloth with plain water, then “pleated” by hand into tucks. Next, use a sponge paintbrush to brush on the dye, trying to keep white bits.  And this was my last piece of sandwashed satin silk.  Erk.

Close up of purple halo-ing from the red in the Dharma Navy (a mix, not a pure dye I learned).

It took about 2 yards (OUCH, kaCHING) to get exactly the color I wanted.  Plus on my first go-round, the print paste or the cold wax resist (which I had used to preserve some white areas for moonlight glints) mix did not want to leave the fabric.  I called ProChem’s technical staff (LOVE that business) and spoke with one of the chemists, who confirmed my suspicions about the navy dyes.  She told me that the manufacturer had offered the navy mix to them, also, but they wanted the pure dye so folks like me would be happy and not get “splitting”.  She also suggested using Metphos, a water softener that is one of the ingredients in Calgon water softener, to try to remove the stiffness I was getting from the print paste and/or cold wax resist.  Some of that stiff feeling went aweay, but on another test, I still couldn’t get it out of the silk, so I’m glad that when I got to my last piece of silk, I opted for careful painting of dye!

After speaking with Nancy at ProChem (waving hello!), I then took out my small remaining bit of ProChem PURE navy and went back in to the last piece of silk and tried one more time. FINALLY! Some purple still shows, but I can knock that back when I go in with the quilting thread. PHEW!

I also wanted some specific deep-dark hues for another part of the quilt, and my batiks were too contrasty.  What to do?  Paint!  I tried both acrylic inks and Setacolor paints thinned with water and settled on a Setacolor to darken this black-and-charcoal:

Charcoal and black batik with the contrast minimized by a thinned coat of blue-and-black Setacolor paints thinned, mixed and applied to the cloth.

And a lighter mix of  blue to gray and darken this lighter batik:

And a lighter wash on the “rice grain” gray batik. As the cloth came from the bolt it is too bright, too distracting. This muted over paint is just right!

Some folks love the hunt for the perfect fabric.  Not me.  I am too busy and stores are too far flung.  And I don’t want THAT much stash!  I’d rather get a good selection, then modify when I can and dye my own when I can’t!  Next on the fix-the-studio agenda:  a deep sink in the basement so I don’t have to dye in the kitchen.  The bathrooms are too small, and I don’t want the dye in  the food prep area!  So if there are any guilds out there that would like to hire me for 2014 and 2015, I’d appreciate the donation to the studio-improvement cause! <GRIN>

At the Hemingway House, Key West, Florida

Back to some visual inspiration from our Florida trip!  After our first night on Duck Key, we drove down to Key West for two nights.  This allowed us one day to wander (sweating a lot…it was over 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity) in downtown Key West and one day for a snorkeling trip to the Dry Tortugas.  The one thing I absolutely wanted to do was visit the Hemingway house, where I promptly fell in love with the acid green shutters!  The house is on the second highest bit of land on Key West, a little over 20 feet above sea level!

Of course, one of the reasons I wanted to go is the cats.  We have a polydactyl, which means many-toed cat.  They are reasonably common here in Maine as well as on Key West.  Most cats have 18 toes (four per foot, plus dew-claws on two feet).  Thumper has 26 toes–basically a foot and a half per leg!

This regal calico allowed us to photograph her in the dining room of the Hemingway house. I think she has the normal number of toesies.

Here’s one of those lovely windows from the INside looking onto the verdant garden.  There are fans for the obvious reason…it was HOT!  Apparently Hemingway’s then-wife (they lived there in the late 20s and 30s) decided to remove the ceiling fans and install her collection of crystal chandeliers.  The tourguides regret her decision every summer!

I loved the paving in the verandah area around the house…looks like a Quilt Modern plan, eh?

I LOVED the pods and flowers… I believe this is a Royal Poincianna tree. Stunning against that blue sky!

Speaking of cats… clearly they go where they want, even if it is on top of wet cement so that their feeties are preserved for posterity! Can you say Surface Design?

More wondrous and bizarre berries on trees–this one near the dock area where we departed for the Dry Tortugas.

LOVE LOVE LOVE the Royal Poincianna petals among the stones and buttress roots! Can you say QUILT-to-be?

And here are Mr. and Mrs. Smith at Mile 0 of US Highway 1. Now we need to go, maybe next summer, to the OTHER end of US Highway 1 where it runs into Canada a couple of hours to the north of us!

Coming soon:  our trip to the Dry Tortugas… yes, it is possible to go beyond the end of the Key West…keep going west!