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The Frayed Edges — May 2009, Part 2
A few days ago I shared part of The Frayed Edges May meeting, including the pages Kate and Kathy made for our “round robin book” exchange. Today I thought I’d share the pages I made for Kate, Kathy and Deborah—Hannah’s is still on the drawing board (which means fully formed inside my mind, but not fully formed anywhere else!).
Kate’s theme changed from hands to hearts. I am NOT much of a heart person, so I asked if we could sssttttrrreeettttccch (stretch) the concept…so the piece above is “The Heart(h) of the home,” since many say the hearth IS the heart of the home. When we visit at Kate’s we eat in the kitchen/dining room, which has a good old fashioned wood stove and some comfy chairs. The stove pictured here is Kate’s (or very close), the chair is the rocking chair and stool in my sewing room. The fabric for the floor is one I made in my last Carol Soderlund workshop; I took some “dog” hand-dyed (some fabric I had previously dyed and was UGLY), overdyed and dye-sketched with the black. It was perfect for a wood floor!
The reverse side of Kate’s page is a stretch for me… I don’t do much surface design (and for the most part am not wild about a lot of the “surface design” / “art cloth” pieces that I see, which often look like a mish-mosh). But I wanted to see what I could do. So I took a piece of nearly-solid leaf green fabric I had dyed some time ago ,sponged on some color/texture, and created freezer paper stencils (and boy did they ever take time to cut…. I printed “I Heart Art” onto freezer paper… and it took at LEAST two HOURS to cut those letters out!) and stencilled I Heart Art onto the cloth. I also cut stencils for hearts. For some, I filled in the inside of the heart; for others I ironed the heart on and painted a halo/glow on the outside of the shape.
When Deborah last came to Maine last September we had a wonderful sleepover down near Kate’s house (blogpost here). It was a GLORIOUS and rejuvenating getaway for us (and Kate’s mojitos were memorable!). At that time, we exchanged journal covers; Kathy has been lusting after the one I made (Which Kate drew in our “grab it out of a pillowcase” method of exchange), so I made her a page with the seal in the kelp:
And one of my favorite sea creatures, the sea turtles–the background of this one, by the way, is one of my all time favorite batik prints, from Princess Mirah/Bali Fabrics:
When hubby and I were were young, well-employed and kidless (and pounds lighter in weight) we went to a resort on Saint John in the US Virgin Islands. We would snorkel at least once a day, and I fell in love with the tropical fish, especially the parrotfish, and the turtles. It was so soothing that when asked to visualize something calming for childbirth, I set myself snorkeling, imagining the gentle waves rocking me as I floated and paddled above the coral reefs.
Deborah’s pages were actually the first ones I did. I was stumped for ideas, since the next pages in sequence were numbers 9 and 10. So off to google! Nine quickly brought up the nine planets (I refuse to de-planet-ify Pluto!), so I made the nine planets around the sun for page 9.
Deborah has done some wonderful work with illumination and published an article on her process in February/March 2009 issue of Quilting Arts this past year. When Google reminded me that the Byzantine Empire was at its peak in the 10th century, I new I wanted to use the mosaics from the Byzantine churches. A second google search yielded photos of Christ Imperator from Hagia Sofia. Following instructions from Lesley Riley published in a Quilting Arts e-Newsletter (more info here), I applied fluid matte medium to Lutradur, which I then ran through the printer.
The coolest thing about using the lutradur instead of fabric was being able to made sharp fiddly “cuts” using the heat tool (I have a tool for cutting stencil plastic). I placed the Lutradur on a piece of glass (an 8×10 piece from a frame, edges taped) and “cut” with the tool. Initially, I wasn’t going to use the bits of wall and extra pieces, but when I went to move the areas surround Christ’s head and halo to the side, I loved the echo/shapes. It reminded me of how parts of the mosaics have fallen away from the church domes leaving the plaster showing.
As with Kate’s piece, I cut stencils to “write” Byzantium, 10th c. AD on the 7×10 inch page. Talk about FIDDLY! I would gladly pay a small fortune to buy a thermofax so as not to have to cut stencils like this! But…this may be one of my favorite pages that I have made. I don’t know yet how I will incorporate
Here is a link to Deborah’s blogpost about my current pages for her book: Deborah’s blogpost.
As you can tell, we have FUN!