Spiffed!

I'm gonna quit clicking buttons!   I wondered what a spiff up was!   Now I am knee deep in spiffing!  Bonnie  from Institches with Bonnie has been doing some things in her studio.  No problem, I caught right up.  My batting was in good order except for a jumble of odds and ends in a bag.  My fabric stays pretty good in my shelves although there is some serious leaning to some stacks.  Then this week it was the ironing station. vbsigh  Mine was buried under piles.  I know that flat surfaces are my nemesis! 

Okay.  I give up!   If I admit I won't be making any more garments I can clear an whole shelf way up high and put the batting up there as well as the odds and ends.  Some of my shoe boxes have fabric groupings that are now passe.   I need one whole shelf for low volume.  Browns are out and greys are in.  The greys can share space on the low volume shelf and all the earthy fabrics can go up high as I have embraced clean and bright.  :)  The top of the craft unit holds backings and all that landscape fabric that may or may not make the next cut.  :)

A start on Thursday evening had me committed to restoring order.  I'm a good sleeper but I was awake at 4:00 am with all kinds of ideas.  :(  I gave up at 5:30;  shook my feathers at the Rooster, barely acknowledging his leaving and sorted, shuffled and stacked.  The shoe boxes hold planned projects for home decorating- quilts, table runners, place mats, wall hangings, pillows and fibre art.  As those decrease I can switch that wider section out for my narrower coloured section.  I anticipate my solids and hand dyes will be increasing. 

 I roared off to town at lunch time for shelves and some cool plastic tubs from our Dollar Store.  :)  All my cute FQ's are in the new tubs and available for the grand kiddies to make projects.

 It all fits back wonderfully well and I only have three large bundles of fabric  to make a decision on.  These are not clean and bright. Would they make an eventual gift???

Anyway.  I'm feeling virtuous and I hope Betty doesn't have a craft corner that she wants spiffed! 

Re:

Goodness sakes!  All this fun I am having is starting to get a bit out of hand.  What a crazy month! But honestly, it isn't this month it is this life!  So if I want to continue to do it all:

RE: evaluate-
I need to go back to those words for the year- focus, find, fine tune, finish...  What exactly do I want to do?
Well,  I want to make things using fabric.  I want to journal.  I want to make art.

RE: Fabric-
 I like to support The Needle and Thread Network.  It motivates me to have something related to my first luv, fabric, on my worktable for Wednesdays.  I hadn't really planned to do a wall hanging a month but again, the focus and the making of something for my home quite fits in with my overall goals.  This month is a challenge time wise and I'll be happy just to get a top done.  Twelve focused projects just resonates with me!  I do better with a theme.   I am a tad exuberant so I try to not to stick my hand up for every quilt a long.  I have a few smaller commitments but I need to be focusing on fine tuning my skills not fiddling with those fun projects.  :O  I think the fabric part is good, I just need to rein myself in a wee bit!

Re:  Journal
I do like the Document Your Life Project (DYLP).  I need to fine tune my method. As I try to deal with all my stuff (clutter)  that overwhelms this designated workspace area I could combine my out of control lists, and bright ideas into this journal.  I swear, one extra big creative spark and everything will go poof! 
I  signed up for Sketchbook Skool, a six week course,  knowing this would be a crazy month.  So I am way behind on the practical although I have read all the theory  which, the truth be known, is my problem.  Just do it, don't study it!  sheesh  But I have made journals, used journals, and worked in journals.  This isn't too bad and again I can pull in the parameters a bit and get the daily practice more consistent. 

RE: Art
Which leads me to art and the whole mixed media realm!  It fascinates me and I so badly want to create stuff.  It is also the area that I need to get a grip on.  I am a technique junkie.  I never saw an art supply I didn't need to replenish or investigate!  My clothes budget has been hijacked!!!  I keep telling myself to take the free tutorials!  vbsigh   I am committed to a project this month involving Lutradur and the ...and then we set it on fire blog... .   It has been a bit time consuming but I am liking it and I'm thinking I may need a designated 'art' day for the blog so I can stay focused and actually produce something. The memory box will take several more weeks and then I should think of another series.

My finishes for the week are quite motivating as well.  awk!  Just finish something!!!!

So I need to do some readjusting, some reorganizing, some redeeming (time), some readjusting, some re... Well, you get the idea.  I could do mixed media Mondays, fabric mid week and finish up with journal projects.   That leaves two days to procrastinate.  Another REally big problem!  

Okay, time to RE turn to regular scheduled programming!  ;^)

In the mood

 The fore casted rain has been holding off but the dew this morning was very heavy.

The plants are all loaded with dew.

The Rooster was in the mood to weed Sunday night but the mosquitoes drove him in finally.  The wood ticks have also been very bad this year.  He is giving weeding till the end of June and then it is time to move on to The Projects!  :)  He has almost completed his initial pass around the circumference of the yard and is most interested in filling all the black areas to reduce future weeding. lol 

We moved the bench to the other sunnier side of the yard.  I/we are thinking a nice paved circle would be lovely in front of this bench and anchor it. The two small and rounded lilacs on each side and a nice  small sized tree off to one side but behind it will make a nice grouping.  And off to the left of the photo and deep under a shrub is where mama duck is in the mood to brood her eggs!  shhh, its a secret!

We were all in the mood for lunch in the veranda Sunday afternoon.  A little crowded but very pleasant.

While the Rooster was on his hands and knees in the yard I was in the mood to purge my fabric.  This is the rough sort.  I have 4 bags for the MCC quilters.  I just asked myself if I'd want a quilt from the fabric in question or do I even know someone who would.  Folk art??? I have come a long way, baby!  lol The boundaries for my fabric will be this shelving unit and a matching one with projects to the right of the sewing machine.  My neutrals are still to be moved from the closet. hmm, I might just switch all the fabric to the sewing machine wall and put the beads, buttons and thread on that end wall.  Tonight the Rooster will hang my new rods for the white curtains which will be my design walls.  vbsigh  It feels good!  I was in the mood!

Wow Fabric in an Altered Book

Lesson 16 from Elizabeth's Altered Book tutorial is due.  It is all about adding fabric to the books and includes fabric dyeing, resists, cloth beads and other embellishments. This series has been way more work than I ever thought but I am happy I have done as much as I have and I'm even happier that I like this book. I think we are nearing the end and I'm looking forward to going through each page, adding the necessary continuity to the various pages and putting it all in place and fixing a nice cover for it.  A finished project!  shh, I mustn't jinx that motivation!

I have dyed and painted on fabrics before.

So for this project I mostly wanted to use fabric that was already available for the book.  I just freehand cut or sliced cotton fabric, most of which I have dyed.  I had a momentary thought of making a leaf stamp for a background layer but I'm realizing I like simple.

I gessoed the page remembering to incorporate the page beside it.  I just used acrylic folk paint which I watered down and kinda blended to try to match the green on the left hand page.  I dabbed the brush in and around the green areas.  Snoopy hasn't figured too prominently in the book but I have saved bits of the gang here and there.  The ducky ribbon did not work on the preceding page so I peeled it off and used the gel medium to try to get it on the tornado page. lol  hmm, I might have trimmed it this second time. ?  Dare I rip again???

I need to work on my tree shape but the beauty of using fabric or even paper strips is you can play, position and remove more effectively than you can with brush strokes!

This trunk needed more height but I ran out of page and I need to loose the hour glass shape!  lol  It is all glued down with gel medium and this one is Golden Soft Gel (Semi Gloss).

The idea for this came from a colour wheel made from pencil crayon points I saw during this past week.  I also have somewhere an old kindergarten art page master that uses a basic tree shape and you added construction paper leaves.  If I find it I think I'll clone it as it could be a stencil, a mask, a ???.  And it is not hour glass shaped but more vase shaped.  Now what if...

I'm sure my fellow Needle and Thread workers have lots more good ideas.

wow, what if...

Yesterday I was trying all my primary and secondary colours on plain sketchpad paper.  I wanted a reference for exact hues when I wanted to use say, red, which can be a blue red (cool) or an orange red (warm). When I got all my colours on the papers I had a what if moment!  What if I put the colours on cloth?   Then I remembered that I had bought dyes and paints for fabrics. 

Dying fabric is not the same as painting fabric.  The colours adhere differently.  I wanted to see what painting would show as I have dye samples already.  I have a couple of dye posts under my To Dye For page.

So I unearthed my Pebo Setacolours and a few odd jars of fabric paint.  I did try a few acrylic paints meant for paper.  I wish I had also got white in Setacolour as it would be very useful to have the lighter, clearer options.


Here is what I discovered.

My favorite colour.  I did try to get orange by mixing the 2 different reds with yellow. 

Red has more variations that I'd have thought possible!

Purple is tricky.  The light area on the fabric is watered down lots. I tried mixing blue and red watercolours to get a violet. I need to spend some time mixing colours because when I did get the setacolours it was with the idea of mixing other options. But it was recommended that purple be specifically bought.  I can see why.

I'm not a baby blue person but I'm gaining an appreciation for cobalt blue.  Aqua is another favorite colour.
I did a small area of dirty water.  lol  Even the dirty water is useful for backgrounds.  But straight craft acrylics are very stiff.  The fabric paints are much softer.

The inks tend to bleed a lot and they are very matt.  Hmm, I wonder if you added some glitzy stuff???

My biggest surprise was how well fabric paint stamped. These are very cheap kid's foam stamps.   I see no value in painting backgrounds when dyeing is softer and easier.  But dyes would probably bleed in making marks so paint is the way to go!  Even the craft acrylics would be useful for stamping, especially if one used a light hand on applying the acrylic and in pressing the stamp.

This seems like a lot of work but really it is helping me become more familiar with the various mediums and how they look and react.  I'd like to think these are warm up exercises before I take the plunge.  Perhaps it could also be stalling but I'm beginning to get the urge to actually try all these options out.  And that will be a good thing!

I'm linking up to TN&TN so if you'd like to see what my neighbours are doing, please click on the link.