CORAL BELLS, GERANIUMS & RETURN OF THE FLAMINGO FLOOZY!

I am ecstatic!  Coral is one of my signature colors; I wear it well -- in moderation, more about that later -- and I love to use it in my art.  It was purely accidental that I came up with the coral of my dreams in a what-the-heck experiment.  I must credit my teacher, Marjie McWilliams, for encouraging us to be daring.  She virtually yanked me from my cowering corner double dog dared me to try whatever concoction I fancied.
In other words, clean out those kitchen cupboards and play! 
So I find a dust covered bottle of DeKuyper's Wild Strawberry Liqueur.  It's been hiding for 15, 20 years -- I remember why I even had it in the first place, but it's well aged now.  The color is pretty, so I try it out on a small piece of cotton.  After an hour it has an unappealing color, an unpretty amber.  What if I added a few drops of red food coloring?  Turns out the only liquid coloring I had was green.  What I did discover hiding further back in the same cabinet were jars of food coloring pastes from a cake decorating class I took a decade or so ago.  I kept adding small amounts of red paste until I thought I had a strong color.

It's not red;   the cotton is a pretty peach , but the silk ribbon is nice shade of brick or russety red, rather different than appears in the above picture or below.  I liked the ribbon color so much I decided to do a larger batch.  I pulled it from its wild strawberry bath after soaking half the time, and then came my Eureka moment and the yummiest coral shade ever! 

It is a shame the scanner isn't picking up the vividness of the color.  Oh, my feet are still happy dancing.  I have to wear coral sparingly, usually as an accent color.  Otherwise it is far too attention-getting, and I don't always want to stand out.  Let me put it this way.  I once wore a coral cape while walking down a San Francisco street.  I suddenly heard my name called out; a colleague from Kentucky who had no idea I was even in CA spotted me.  I have a lovely silk outfit of this same coral .  I only wore it once.  People stared, but I think it was because I looked more like the Mango character from Saturday Night Live -- only rotund.

Instead of feeling fabulously flambuoyant, I felt conspicuous.  Another occasion, another attitude, I could pull it off;  my alter ego could shine as the Flamingo Floozy.

Not every experiment gets me worked up.  Above are a couple of duds.  The top is beet juice; most of the color rinsed out, and rest disappeared with the mordant soaks.  The dirty yellow comes from doubled strength peppermint tea and the addition of dried mint.  I was hoping at least for a greenish yellow, and I'd so hoped for little tiny spreckles of darker color from the mint leaf flakes.

SPICING IT UP!

Lesson 2 with Marjie McMcWilliams at Quilt University, dyeing with spices and juices.  It took me a while to conduct all the tests I wanted because I only have 2 burners on my stove; however, since I was using saucepans instead of cups as I did with the tea dying, I was able to dye larger pieces of cotton and a yard or so of silk ribbon for each batch.  My results were well worth the patience.  I was thrilled with the silk ribbon, and I look forward to playing more in the future.  Not shown are the unsatisfactory outcomes of beet juice (from canned beets) and mint tea steeped with additional dried mint.  It's a shame the colors in these pix aren't as bright or appealing as actual fabrics.

Top to bottom:  chili powder; paprika; Goya Sazon, dry mustard

Top to bottom:  tumeric; curry; saffron 2, saffron 1

Grape Koolaid.  What's looking gray in the picture is actually lovely shades of purple.  With the silk ribbon left in the solution from 5 min to an hour  I got 3 values, pale lavender to deep purple.  The feather and eggshell got about 15 minutes.  The cover of my scanner crushed the egg shell, but it doesn't matter because I use the shells crushed anyway.  Note the cotton remained pink -- about the same I got with beet juice, but the latter wasn't very colorfast.

A NAME I CALL MYSELF - TIFC May

The May challenge concept is a question I ponder all the time. What do I call myself when trying to explain my creative endeavors? When I tried to work through The Artist's Way , polite arguments in my head erupted into battle. Considering myself an artist won out for the time being, but that word itself is inadequate to describe the scope of activity in which I engage.

I invisibly wince when an outsider responds, "Oh, you do crafts!". My body reacts with an inward cringe if they add, "Me, too!" My inner snob and judgemental self silently separate that crafter from me and my artistic values. For me the difference has to do with creating from within, compulsive self expression, following a whim or instinct rather than a pattern. For me the barrier has nothing to do with technical proficiency or aesthetic appeal. My TIFC above, albeit an exercise, is a piece of art because it is a piece of me. It's not pretty, doesn't show proficiency, but it's not intended for anyone but me.

Let me explain my interpretation of both concept and palette for this month's challenge. In a nutshell, I'd resort to looking in a crystal ball to find a suitable name for what I do.

a. needle artist

b. fiber artist

c. textile artist

d. mixed media artist

e. all of the above

f. none of the above

g. some of each

Most of my artistic pursuits involve thread or fiber, some kind of needle or hook. For sake of convenience I generally tell people I'm a fiber artist, leaving them to presume I spin and weave (I don't -- yet) and no inclination that I bead. I have no commercial goals; I keep or gift everything I make. I love to learn new techniques and share what I learn. I have fun. All the time. And to those of you reading this, you will understand why I call myself

FIBERDABBLER. I don't know that there is an answer to the May concept question. Dare I suggest it doesn't matter semantically how others perceive us? I'm evolving, and I love the mystery of not knowing what comes next.

MARCH TIFC COMPLETED

APRIL TIFC

Again, I'm opting for the palette portion of the challenge. I hope the colors at least resemble those of the palette; the computer I had to use away from home may not have had the most reliable monitor. Above are the colors Sharon B generated and you can see the photograph she used for inspiration here.

In my last post I mentioned I had found DMC flosses and a few perles at a CA fabric store, along with some woven raw silk. This store also has two rooms of trims! I bought beads by the yard with a metallic finish in bright copper/burnt orange that just doesn't show true in my pix. None of the colors do, but I'll hold to blaming the cheesy monitor. On my sketch you'll see how I named the colors, but I really wasn't sure if the second one was brown or browny purply plum, so I used both! The pale lemon is all but lost on the ivory/cream background. First picture below is closest to actual color. Below that is the entire sampler. The bright, shiny bead strands simply don't "pop" as visually as they actually do, compensating for the lighter colors lost on the pale background.

SNEAK PREVIEW OF MARCH TIF

Colors from the March palette reminded me of oriental rugs which made me think of the decorative grandeur of the Ottoman or Moghul Empires.

I allowed my Creative Inner Child to fantasize about magic carpets, sultans and Scheherezade. Then I made a crude sketch for a design of paisley motifs and scooped up some black burlap and all the threads, ribbons and yarns I had on hand I thought might match the palette. No time to search for beads, but there was a good LRS where I was headed in CA.

I cut a piece of burlap and backstitched the perimeter I wanted, allowing enough border to fringe. This seemed natural because the weave of the burlap was so loose. Once I started on the actual stitching, I quickly realized I was not conforming to the lines of my original sketch. I drew another more closely resembling the form and direction my stitches were indicating.

April was upon me before I could get to the bead store, so I started on this month's TIF, which went quickly given that I had no decisions to make regarding which stash to use. I made do with what I could eke out from what I had with me, supplemented with some flosses and perles found at a local fabric store ,where I also invested in some ivory colored, loose woven raw silk for the background.

I don't have too much left to do on March's TIF, just a little more stitching and beading. I'll post a finished presentation in a day or two.

TAKE IT FURTHER CHALLENGE - FEBRUARY

Given the choice of basing design on a memory (my earliest being when dirt was formed) or designated palette, I chose the latter:Hmm, is that gray or slate blue? What's that dark color? Indigo? Purply blue? Again I worked entirely from stash. The two pieces of ivory satin that resemble vanilla caramel swirl (yum!) are from a piece of white silk/poly blend that I rust dyed. The teeny, tiny rust colored silk at the bottom left is dupioni. Why isn't there more? I could fib and say I was conserving a favorite fabric, but the truth is I miscalculated with the stitch, flip, cut technique. The slate piece is a piece of ultrasuede, the dark blue (with a tinge of purple) is moire, the print is from a gentleman's tie. The remaining three portions are light blue charmeuse. Confused? The upper right is overlayed with a blue sheer that has been machine stitched to resemble punch needlework, and if you look closely you can see it is printed to look like hand painted , concentric curves. It's from a lot of embellished sheer sales samples I caught on eBay!

This a work in progress picture I took, cropped and printed out to give me a clearer idea of my borderlines and guide me toward envisualizing embellishment placement and scale. At this stage that center seam treatment is looking pretty gimongous and my other stitching too dainty -- and puny. I continued adding and subtracting until I think I have it where I want it, although I may yet do a little tweaking.

I DUNNO...

... perhaps I should have left it alone. There's not that much different; I just filled in a couple of gaps.

With the exception of a cotton thread or two and the yellow cord, flosses and perles are silk and hand painted by Victoria Clayton. The feather stitching is done in perle and the chain
stitches are the same colorway done in 2 strands of silk floss. I'm not sure of the name, but it was from Vicki's dragon series. The chenille is also hers, and most of the silk ribbon, too. I used a bead soup of assorted sizes to fill in some of the negative space between the feather stitches.
On the far right the little flowers are purple sequins with size 8 triangle beads, which stand up in the center. The two purple pailettes in the center top are dyed shell, rough sides up.

I really came to enjoy this palette challenge and was surprised that I was able to work entirely from my stash.

FINISHED? NOT QUITE!

I thought I was done, but I think I'll play some more. Meanwhile I want to share another Flickr pix that shares our January palette challenge. The photographer seemed intrigued that we actively seek inspiration for fiber art in nature. This picture struck me particularly because it seemed to portray strata of color and I had used a stripe for my foundation.
Lake in blues & yellows - Acadia, by Zombie37

TAKE IT FURTHER CHALLENGE

First, if you haven't heard of the Take It Further Challenge, you should check the link. It is Sharon Boggan's 2008 challenge, and I have just started on January, along with 293 other registered participants. I'm going for the color palette:

As soon as I saw it I was reminded of a sweater I've admired for awhile. I've drooled over the picture and pattern so often, it looks like my copy of Knitter's Magazine, Spring, 2000, has been left in the rain. The colorway is not exactly the same, but similar with the play of greens and purples. What looks like grays & blues in the picture is really sage and teal . This is the Mitered Mozart, designed by Candace Eisner Strick, and believe me, I would have made it by now if only I could wear a short cropped garment. I searched the Ravelry site and found a beautiful example. I saw the sweater the summer of that year made up and displayed in a yarn store; the main color chosen was a royal blue, best I can remember.

Another thing familiar about Sharon's palette are the mint green and what I know as medium leaf or jungle green. The two almost seem at odds, the mint being cool and the leaf much warmer with yellow, and it bothered the heck out of me when we had our house painted a few years back (the trims were supposed to be medium and light leaf). In time I've either gotten used to the contrast or the sun has mellowed the mint to light leaf and now appears the identical color to the lichen on our trees. Such is my peripheral view out the window when seated at the computer.

To start the challenge, I gathered up my paint color cards and attempted to match the given palette. I have an abnormally large number of greens because I'm always questing that elusive silvery green of... Well, it wasn't long before I was waxing nostalgic and singing my college alma mater in my head:

"Where the Truckee's snow fed waters fall from mountain's crest,

Where the mountains meet the sagebrush by the sun caressed,

Cradled by the silver mountains neath the western blue..."

Oh, it got worse. I started searching for sagebrush on Flickr and found these wonderful pix.

I hope you'll take a minute or two and take a peek, especially if you're intrigued with the purple and green palette or just great photography:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckharvey/865663969/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29446253@N00/137908560/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anitagould/9617059/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinb/26115112/

Next I copied Sharon's palette into my Paint accessory and used the eye dropper tool to pick up the individual colors. I tried to play with a design, but best I could do was see how the colors could interact. Now if you'd like to see the real magic worked by someone savvy with a sophisticated application, Francoise's blog Creatilfun is pretty amazing.

Now for my favorite part of any project, picking through stash. Mind, I still had no clear picture of what I might make with the palette, but I found plenty in my CQ fabric pieces, thread assortments and beads to provide plenty of latitude. At last I opted to do a small, do-able CQ piece and wrestled with the ideas of using delinquent TAST stitches and even combining that with my even more backlogged BJP. Crazy quilting is the format; we'll just have to wait and see what develops beyond that.

Right off the bat I found my verifying fabric, that's the one that contains the entire palette so I know everything can work together. It was a small square of batik. In the interest of keeping the project simple and do-able within a couple of weeks, I did minimal piecing.

I began with the green dupioni and placed it right sides up together with the lavender satin (I think hand painted by Karen South) and cut a gentle curving line. Next I put right sides together and machine stitched matching hills & valleys. My plan was to repeat the procedure with the next pairing, the purple and yellow-green dupionis. Unfortunately I forgot to allow sufficient width to allow for a second seam. Waste not! I seamed what I had and left the curved edges raw and overlapping the outer edges of the starter pair. Not wanting to repeat the mistake I simply straight seamed the end colors, on the left a silk velvet, on the right a crinkle-textured irridescent that flashes yellow and lavender. Too bad you can't see the latter; it's a piece I received in a squishy and it has the most marvelous handpainted flower that I'm reserving for another use.

Once the strips were sewn I fused a medium light, nonwoven interfacing to the back.

I have started the seam treatments, dealing with the raw edged pieces first. My intention is to use embellishment for "curving" the straight seams.