Puzzles & More

Do you like puzzles? Jig Saw, that is. I've loved them since I was a kid. However, I haven't done one in several years. Just too many other things taking up my time. I did spy this one by Gunnel Hag  (click start a new game).

For those of you who aren't familiar with this fibre artist, go HERE and HERE. She is the artist who introduced me to the fabric dyeing method of the Colour Vie Pigment System. All the skies and water, that are in my landscapes, were dyed using this system. It is a fabulous environmentally friendly fabric dyeing method.

I used this method for the sky and water, in the piece below. The hills in the distance were printed onto silk from my computer and then appliqued to the background. The foreground is pieced and appliqued in place. This one was on exhibit at the Waterloo & Area Quilt Festival quite a few years ago.

In All It's Glory

For a few puzzles check HERE!

Enjoy!

Step One - Continued

I managed to get more cheese cloth dyed today as well as a couple of lengths of embroidery floss.
Looking at the bright greens below, I may have to darken some of it at a later date.

I've also included a few links to dyeing and using cheese cloth in fibre arts:

• The Felting and Fiber Studio
• In Good Company
• Dyeing Cheese Cloth on Pinterest
• House to Home Crafts
• What to Make With Cheese Cloth on Pinterest
• Threads on Threads

Have a look.
Enjoy!!

dyed thread
 

Fiber Lilly

Erin Kirby opened Fiber Lilly a couple of months before Christmas. This unique shop, located on 10 Highland Drive, St. John's, Newfoundland, carries a varied assortment of fabrics, including designer prints, stretch and organic fabrics. It also caters to the needs of knitters and fiber artists, supplying wool and knitting supplies, materials for dyeing and fiber art materials. Local art and pottery also graces the shelves.

Here's a few photos of the store but please check out the Fiber Lilly web site for more photos of the products carried in the shop.
Enjoy!

Local Products

More Work in Progress

I've been keeping busy! When I visited the yarn shop, From Ewe to You, in Nova Scotia, I saw a cute baby hat. I bought the pattern and knit this one for baby Emma. I then decided to knit a sweater for my granddaughter, Gale. This one is off to Chicago. I sure hope it fits!

The dyed fabric was used in my latest art piece that I posted about last week. Other finished pieces can be seen on flickr. I will post a photo of the newest piece soon.

I have three fibre lace scarves finished except for the ironing. This photo shows the first one just after it was washed and dried. It still needs ironing and a bit of trimming.

The next piece is an experiment in needle felting. Again, it's not finished. I usually stitch the felt all over with Sulky Sliver threads. This will probably end up as art cards and wearable art pins. Check more needle felting on my blog HERE; HERE; HERE; and HERE.

Last, but not least, I've been working on some 3-D birds. I'm using a pattern from the 2009/2010 International Quilt Festival Magazine, Fabric Birds by Terry Grant. Here is a small art piece with a bird.

Enjoy! 

Daisies and Dandelion

A few posts ago, I wrote about a piece of wall art that I had completed as a donation to the Cabot Quilt Guild for the Mother's Day weekend quilt show. It is part of a silent auction. Well, here is the completed piece. It is framed 8" x 10".

The sky is hand dyed satin (this fabric gives a lovely lustre to the sky). The green hills / grass are strips of commercial fabric that have been stitched with the sewing machine. The tree trunk and branches are thread painted and sewn onto the background. The foliage is stitched on by machine to give a 3-D affect. The daisies were hand stitched and then added to the picture (again, the flowers are in 3-D). The dandelions are French knots. Most of my landscapes have dandelions somewhere in them (unless they are winter scenes). When I was a child, I would pick these flowers as a present for my mother. She would accept them with a smile.

Take a Look

I've been working on another art piece. This one will measure approximately 13 3/4" x 5 1/2" before framing. I have the background partly done. Dyed, stitched cheesecloth is working out well for the rocky cliffs. Ignore the colour of the cheesecloth in the second photo. It should be a darker grey. This piece is causing some frustration at the moment. I just have to put it aside for awhile.

Fabric Dyeing

This afternoon I spent some time dyeing small pieces of cotton, silk and cheesecloth for cliffs. I have lots of grey commercial fabrics but none are working out for my next art piece. I could print out the cliffs from the photo I'm using but I don't want to do that for this project. I have used cheesecloth for mountains before and the textures were just right. Here's the fabrics I'm probably going to use. The first two photos show wet fabric. Usually the colours are lighter when dry.

Book Review # 2

Another book that was added to my collection this Christmas was Mickey Lawler's Skyquilts. I already own her previous book, Skydyes. In fact, I reference it whenever I paint or dye a batch of fabric to use as sky in my textile art. Skyquilts still touches on skies but not to the extent as in Skydyes. In this newest book, Mickey Lawler introduces 12 painting techniques for painting water, sand, dry land and green fields. She provides lots of beautiful coloured photos of the painting process as well as finished pieces. To read a couple of on-line reviews of this book go here. Take a peek inside this book on Amazon.

This book is a keeper!

Fabric Dyeing

Over the years, I have dyed fabrics for various projects. I started out using the Colour Vie Pigment System with Gunnel Hag. In fact, I still use it as it makes the most beautiful skies as you can see in this piece, 'In All Its Glory'.

For some reason, there are two photos of this piece showing up in Internet Explorer! I post in Fire Fox.

I have over dyed commercial fabric to get the right colour for a project. In the long piece, 'Western Brook Gorge', the binding fabric and some fabric used in the mountain range, were done this way. To get the texture I wanted for the mountain, dyed cheese cloth was used, as it is easy to crunch up to give the look of ridges.This sky was also dyed using the Colour Vie Pigment System mentioned above.

For other projects, I have used a variety of fabric paints, paint sticks, stamping inks, premixed fabric dyes, water colour pencils and crayons. I haven't used Ritz dyes yet. I came across a great tutorial on using these dyes that I just might try. It was posted by Vicki Miller, from Australia, called To Dye Another Day. Check it out.

Surface Embellishment on Fabrics

I received an update from Cedar Canyon Textiles a few days ago. They have a very informative site if you are interested in surface embellishment on fabrics. Check out the archives for the 'how to do' stuff such as stenciling with modeling paste, foam tray printing or foil with fusible web.

• For more embellishment techniques on fabric, have a look at the Fiber Techniques Library. 

• Laura Murray Designs has a projects page with instructions on using rubbing plates for molded paper and holiday ornaments with masking technique.

• There are online tutorials for surface design embellishments at Fibre Arts Online

• Learn how to paint fabric with a free fabric dyeing eBook from Quilting Arts

• The Surface Design Association has lots of inspiration for artists.

• Threads has an article with photos on Dyeing with Bleach

• More techniques that use colorants