Birthday Postcards

I really enjoy doing postcards, because they are quick, little projects.  They are also very handy for trying out new techniques.  For the past several years, I have been making them and sending them to members of my fiber art group, Seams Unique.  Here are two that I have done in the past couple of months.

This one is made using a piece of sun dyed fabric I made in a workshop.  The leaf shape came from a stencil, and I repeated the shape with machine quilting.

This postcard was made with a piece of a black and white wool skirt that I had lying around.  Must have bought it in a thrift store!  I added circles and did a machine blanket stitch around it.  Postcards are fun, and I usually send them in an envelope I make myself out of wallpaper scraps.  That way I know it is going to cost the first class postage just like a letter. 

Auction Piece for SAQA

I am donating an auction piece to the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) online auction this year.  And I am trying a technique I've never done before.  I have been doing some tree scenes lately, so I decided to continue in that vein.  Somehow, though, the piece ended up being a compilation of the seasons! with spring in the foreground, summer in the background and autumn in the tree.  So I have titled it "Seasonal Progression." 

I created the plants by fussy cutting from several different fabrics and assembling them into a cohesive plant.  I also added bits of metallic fabric to the trunk of the tree, to give it some oomph. 

The autumn leaves are bits of different fabrics.  Everything is held down with netting and machine quilting.  I hope you will all go and check out the wonderful auction pieces at the SAQA website; www.saqa.com  The auction begins in September! 

Zentangles in Fabric

I have begun my first zentangle in fabric, and this is what the beginning looks like. 

I have used 11 different fabrics.  I thought that by using patterned fabrics, it would simulate the look of zentangles, but after fusing the fabrics down, I decided that it needed additional stitching. 

I have stitched, either with the walking foot, or free motion, on each of the fabrics.  The two lower fabrics were just outlined, although on the left side I added some dots with a permanent marker in the orange areas.  See the detail shots below:

The two larger circles are ultrasuede, with gold beads around the outside.  I still have to add antennae and I may add some more beads, not sure about that yet.  Zentangling in fabric is a bit more work than on zentangling on paper, but it is just as much fun.  It certainly takes collaging to another level! 

Zentangles

My group the Dirty Dozen this month is challenging us to investigate Zentangles.  I am starting with a drawing, and I hope to also do some in fabric.  This is my first attempt at a zentangle drawing, and because we are already in February, I decided to try my hand at a heart. 
Here is a close-up of the designs:

And here is the finished design.  The whole process is rather meditative, and I really enjoyed this little project.  Next step is to do something in fiber; I'm not sure if I'll get into color or if I will use all black and white prints, hmmmmm, so many possibilities. 

Artist Imitation

One of the challenges presented to my Seams Unique group this year was to pick a famous artist and compose a fiber piece to imitate the artists' style or color palette.  My artist was Salvadore Dali, a truly prolific man, if a little mad.  In researching his work, which spans many different styles and color palettes, I decided to focus on a couple of his iconic images.  Specifically, his melting clock from the Disintegration of Time and also the crutches he used in several of his works.  In my piece I used the crutch to hold up his identifiable mustache.  The piece I constructed is small, only 14 inches, but we were allowed to do something as large as 36 inches.  Dali worked extremely large for his religious works,but also very small for some of his later works.  

 We normally never show our challenge pieces in the group until the hanging of our exhibit at a local quilt shop, but since we all selected a different artist to imitate, I felt that showing this on my blog wouldn't be able to influence any of the other members in the execution of their pieces.   Several of Dali's later works were done in a gold/brown/beige palette, so I used those colors in my piece.  To add a bit of bling, I surrounded the two clocks with a gold sparkly fabric.  And just to be a little "out of the box", I let the major clock melt out of the piece!  I'm not sure what Dali's intention was in portraying  the melting clocks; perhaps he saw time slipping out of his grasp, but the melting indicates a slow dripping to me, and I find that as I get older just the opposite is true.  Time seems to speed by faster as we get older, don't you think? 

Chocolate

Who doesn't like chocolate???  I recently did a chocolate piece in fabric.  As you can see, I included dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate.  And just to make it mine, I added candy wrappers to simulate caramel and raspberry, my favorite chocolate additions!  The swirls are copper wire that I hammered into a swirl shape, and couched down.  FUN.

Pastoral Aspens

I did a piece for the Dirty Dozen Fiber Artist exhibit in October and have decided to donate the piece to a fundraiser for Melissa Brooks.  The piece is titled Pastoral Aspens and I made the fabric for the aspen trees using black Webbing Spray by Krylon.  I really love the effect the spray has on fabric; in fact a group of us played with it and it can even make an ugly piece of fabric sing!  I used a couple of my hand-dyed fabrics in the piece, as well, and the water is shibori discharge.  It was a fun piece to do and I particularly like the shadow effect with the gray fabric.