Heal My Life

All mimsy were the borogoves...

...and the mome raths outgrabe.   I've always been taken with Lewis Carrol's Jabberwocky, and while I was looking at my new creation today, the third line in the poem popped into my head. 

Because I can't knit, and I didn't have the ingredients I needed to embark on my baking project - what better thing could there be to do on a lovely spring day then prepare to set some fabric on fire.  I haven't done any fusing and burning since the fall as it's best done outside (fumes, you know). 

The preparation is a bit of a rigmarole and involves quite a bit of preliminary chopping, slashing and fusing.  I carted everything including the iron and board outside and this is what I spent the better part of the afternoon at: * Mimsy  (link thanks to Jen) will be cheery bucket bag with an elliptical bottom when she is finished and I will have a bag named for Jabberwocky! 

I do still need to get to Joanne for some poly sheers for her overlay, and some variegated and metallic threads for her stitchery, so she is on hold, sitting expectantly on her cookie sheet, until I can acquire those things. 

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.  And guess what - my pinky doesn't hurt a bit.

* In the sense of affected or over-refined, mimsy has long been known in the British Isles, especially in Scots and northern dialects; an example is in A Rock in the Baltic, by Robert Barr (1906): “In one corner of the room stood a sewing-machine, and on the long table were piles of mimsy stuff out of which feminine creations are constructed.”

Love - the SERIES

I just learned what a "SERIES" is in the language of art.  It means several works based on the same theme.  This is awesome news because all this time I just thought my mental phonograph needle was stuck in pinks and greens.  I had no idea I was working a SERIES!  And what better thing to have a series of than LOVE!!!

So this is what I did this weekend.  She's called Gypsy Love.  See, Jungle Love, Gypsy Love.... so do you need three for it to be a series or will two do it?  I was going in a different direction with this project.  I was supposed to knit a narrow strip, but once I cast on and started knitting, my poor knitting deprived fingers couldn't put the needles down.  Before I could stop myself, I'd knit a whole bags worth of fabric.  Sigh.  So I went with it and tacked the yo-yo's I'd made during the week (that were supposed to be another strip) onto the front instead.  I still have to think about a handle and get some sparkly things to hang on her which I'll do tomorrow since I'm having A DAY IN THE CITY!!!!!

Yep, I'm going to Tinsel Trading, Mokuba Ribbon, The Ink Pad and Beads World.  I also get to wander around the garment district and go into fabric, button and trimming shops until I faint from the heat or run out of money, whichever comes first. WHOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!

Oh, and I got some new yarn in the mail today, it's that hand-dyed sari that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.  Puerto Limon is the colorway from Honey Pot Yarns.  Brace yourselves - there's beige in it.  Anthony is calling it "ginger" not beige - though it looks awfully like dark beige to me.  You can call a pigs ear anything you want - it's still a pigs ear for Pete's sake!  And we all know I don't do filing cabinet colors, or any neutrals really except black and bark brown.  But he claims I need to stretch myself and try something new.  Personally, I just think he's tired of seeing all the pink stuff all over the place and wants to shift me back towards the blues and greens. I've bad news for you honey, I'm totally legit with the pink here - I'm working in a SERIES!         

Transfer This!

This is what I did last night and this is the stuff I used to do it with.  I transferred and image of my mom at the beach from an inkjet transparency to fabric - and it WORKED!!!  It was one of those moments when the directions and description of the process seem so far fetched you really don't expect it to work.  When it's like that - and then it works - it's MAGIC! Here are the steps.

Have Ready:

A piece of fabric.  I used muslin that I washed first, but i guess you could use white or something light. A cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil, or some other work surface. Golden Matte Medium (gel). A small foam brush.

What To Do:

1. Find a photo, either one of your own or one from a vintage image database.

2. If it's a photo of your own, scan it, the higher the DPI the better, I scanned this one at 600

3. I adjusted the sharpening and contrast, then did this really cool Photoshop "make an art stamp" technique from art-e-zine to the edges and added the text, but you can just use your photo the way it is.

4. Get your fabric and gel ready on the work surface, but don't do anything with it yet.

5. Print your image onto a transparency (if there's text, make sure to reverse the image, I forgot to do this the first time), preferably not the fast drying kind, and cut it out, leaving a bit around the edges.

6. Paint a thin layer of the Goldens Medium onto the fabric, making sure to get complete coverage.  Any spots you miss won't transfer.  There shouldn't be so much medium that it's slippery, but you do want good coverage. 

7. Place your transparency image ink side down onto the medium covered area and carefully press it into place making sure that it comes completely in contact with the medium.  You can use a roller or some other device - I just used my fingers.

8. Walk away for 10 minutes or so, then carefully peel the transparency from the fabric.

9. And magically - there it is!  Let dry overnight.  This last part was hard for me because I wanted to carry it all around and show everyone in the house.  Only a grave fear of ruining my work kept me from touching it.

So I have an idea what I want to do with this process or how I can apply it to my current work, but I'll figure something out.  I thought it was so cool, I just had to try it.  And if you're at all interested in doing any collage art, I found an amazing resource.  Of course, they're in England, where so many of the cutting edge techniques come from (it's GOT to be something in the water over there). it's an online collage art zine by Gillian Allen Art-e-zine.  I found it last week and I'm STILL looking around and finding cool stuff there. And if you like the site and use it, she asks for a $10 donation.  It's worth every single cent.   

Oh, and here's a link to her resource page on transferring - it's a goldmine: http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/image.html

 

Darling Blossom

So we got away for a much needed R&R this past weekend.  Friends of ours have a lake house and invited us for a weekend of a little swimming, a little sailing, a little eating, a little talking and no schedules.  It was awesome.  And this is what I made.  Her name is Darling Blossom and I made her for our hostess:

The making was fast, fast, fast.  The pattern is from Folded Flowers: Fabric Origami with a Twist of Silk Ribbon by Kumiko Sudo.  She used a patterned fabric for the bag body, pretty - but not my style, I thought the flowers were battling the pattern on the body and were just not as prominent.  So I used a gorgeous two toned fuchsia and orange silk that I had picked up at an upholstery shop sale a few months ago.  The depth of color is hard to see in the photo, but I love it so much I'm going to do another pattern from the book with it. 

Okay - I know.  A pattern from a book?  Claudia - what ARE you thinking?  I can't really answer that except to tell you that I'm completely taken with this whole idea of folding fabric into flowers. not to mention that it rally is a beautiful book (if you can get past the REALLY busy fabric combinations) with more than enough folded flowers to keep you stitching all summer.  It's awesome - this fabric origami.  And when you do the little flipping things to turn the petals inside out - a flower appears out of a little stitched square.  Pure magic, and we all know how much I like magic!  So yep, I'm going to go ahead and make another bag, and I guess it'll be some form of pink, since I seem to be hooked on the pinks this summer and this length of silk in particular. 

And then - just because folded flowers weren't enough, and because I'm hooked on Japanese craft books, today, I learned about Kanzashi, which is the art of "pinching" flowers for elaborate hair ornaments for Geisha.  There is a pattern on Craftlog and I'm going to look for more patterns.  It's too hot to hold yarn, and summer flowers seem to be just the ticket.  Anyone?  Anyone?

Brown Mystery

This is what I did today.  Well, one of the things I did today.  I also babysat for Madeline (who vacuumed the house while she was here), worked in the office all morning, made a batch of HMH, went to the quilt shop, the mall, the upholstery shop (for 44 cents worth of cotton welting), walked the dog (twice), made crunchy chocolate squares, got caught in a downpour (one of the many), took a shower and washed my hair.  I also read my blogs, caught up on the news and smooched Anthony for making an amazing avocado salad with lime dressing fro dinner; not necessarily in that order. 

But for sheer novelty, the brown stuff won the "what was the most interesting thing you did today" contest by a landslide.  More on what it is tomorrow when I can finish it and show you more photos.  Now, its time to get upstairs and dive into Definately Dead, a Southern Vampire Novel by Charlaine Harris.  I've read all the others - this is the newest and I love them.  Yep, it's summer, yep it's romance with a twist.  And I deserve it.    

Oh, and PS, I don't force the kid to clean - she LIKES to clean.  I offered various other options, including going to the mall and fabric shops with me and her answer? "Thanks Nana, but I'd really rather stay here and vacuum".  She's eight - it's strange.  I dragged her out anyway on the premise that it's just wrong to be in the house on a beautiful summer day vacuuming when there's fabric to be bought.  And no - I don't rent her out.

It's MAGIC

I put this post in the embellishment category for no reason other than i figured that if I embellished the garden with a magical being - perhaps the rain would stop.  And it did and really - I'm not amazed.  Since I haven't been able to post photo's of finished bags I decided that today I would take a photo of Merlin instead - rain or shine, so I'd have something to show you. 

Shine? who was I kidding.  The sun hasn''t shone here since I can't even remember when,  Weeks and weeks ago at least.  It's rained pretty much the whole of June.  And I mean RAINED.  Not a drizzle, not a sprinkle, but heart stopping, activity canceling RAIN.  So today, I picked Merlin up off the dresser and told him that he had a photo shoot.  And if he wanted to look good - he oughta start thinking about doing something with the weather.

I didn't have high hopes, since it had started pouring at around three AM and had only just let up by nine.  By the time I got through my work and got outside - the SUN WAS SHINING!  It's *MAGIC*, I say.  Thanks Merlin.

Oh, and I made Merlin with the help of Wee Felt Folk, should you feel the need to have a little magic of your own.

Starfish Nightmares

The road to hell is paved with good intentions; that's what my mother always told me.  My intentions may have been golden, but this is what happens when you give a pattern, needle, thread and beads to someone who obviously has no talent for beading with tiny beads.  Yes, I followed the directions, but somehow, the beads kept getting mixed up in the rows and all of a sudden I had a crease or a dent.  Very often, extra beads would sneak into the row or slip out so I had either more or less than I was supposed to and would have to "fix it".  Stringing beads is like cutting glass - there is no fudge factor WHATSOEVER! 

In my distress, I was ready to quit and cut it apart several times.  But my usually exceptionally smart beloved said "No honey, don't stop.  Keep going - it'll look much better when it's all done".  Everyone is entitled to occasional lapses in judgment - even Anthony.  I can't really blame him anyway, since he's refusing to accept the blame for this one.  All he said when faced with the poor mangled thing was: "Do another one - practice makes perfect you know".  Right.  Maybe on his planet.   

A Turtle's Life is FINISHED!

I made A Turtle's Life as a bag for my camera.  It started innocently enough when Anthony suggested that perhaps I didn't want to make the camera bag out of fuzzy wool which might somehow end up in the workings of the camera.  Good idea honey.  And that's how I took this detour into FABRIC WORLD!  And I will be eternally grateful to this man because I probably never would have picked up that first issue of Quilting Arts. 

Anyway, A Turtle's Life started much the Same as Reefer Madness, with the same fabrics in the layers.  I started him as an example at my friend Deb's house so that we'd have something to burn together.  As such, I didn't have all of my measuring and marking tools around, nor had I thought to bring the camera with me, so I just guessed on the proportions of the bag.  The finished size of the bag is 4 3/4 wide X 7 long, and my camera is only 3 1/4 long, so  I was more than a little bit off.  The bag is deeper than I would have made it had I had all my tools and the camera with me.

I spent a good couple of days trying to figure out how to make the long narrow bag easier to reach into.  Cutting it wasn't an option since I had already placed the middle layer bits, angled the flap, stitched and burned it.  Then it hit me: make a flap.  And as a band-aid measure - it works really well.  I can reach to the bottom of the little bag with no problem.  I also made the mistake of leaving a lot of the embellishment until the bag was sewn together.  Hopefully, I won't do that again.  It's insanely difficult to so any sort of stitching and not catch the lining.  And I pierced my fingers with that darn needle entirely too many times. 

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A Turtle's Life

Just a sneak preview...  A little fusing, a little burning, a little free-motion embroidery, a little hand embroidery, and couple of lengths of ribbon yarn - gathered and attached. 

More to come - stay tuned!

Burn Baby Burn

OK, I had to show you this.  This is the coolest thing I've done since jumping off the roof of a house under construction when I was a kid and knocking the wind out of myself.  That was cool, this is definitely cooler.  In my last post I mentioned that I was trying my hand at fabric fusing/burning and that I forgot a bunch of stuff at Joanne Fabric.  Well I went back there yesterday and got what I needed which you can see in the irst photo.  I made the fabric sandwiches, which you can see in the second photo.  The sandwiches are:

Layer 1 - quilting cotton
Layer 2 - fusible mesh
Layer 3 - Bits of nuno felt, cottons, sheers, ribbons, tulle, lace and what have you
Layer 4 - Poly chiffons

Then I fused the pile together.  Then with my sewing machine, I free-motion embroidered lines like seaweed over the whole thing.  Then the cool part.  With a little butane torch, I burned holes through the chiffons to expose the stuff underneath.  Yep, I SET THE STUFF ON FIRE!!!  Carefully, of course.  Arson is a prisonable offense and I didnt want to go to jail for burning down the house.  I used and old asbestos house shingle underneath so I wouldn't accidentally set my desk on fire too.  You can't really see the little blue flame in the third photo, but it's there.  My hand is at a funny angle so Anthony could take the picture and show how it's done.  You actually hold the torch sort of like a paint brush, painting the flame across the fabric.  Painting with fire.  If I smoked - I'd need a cigarette right now.  Maybe I'll have a root beer. 

Anyway.  I still have to free-motion stitch the other side and the freeform reef part i already did goes along the bottom edge, and I got beads today on a bead spree with my friend Deb at Blanche's Beads in Bergenfield, NJ f(very cool store with tons of Japanese seed beads) for some more coral and a starfish, but I had to share my firebug experience.  More on this as the project progresses, but I like I said - I couldn't wait another minute to share.