Swirling Leaves

This will be my entry for the RAFA Arts Council Show in Rochester in March.

It's a small piece - only 12 x 12.   I'm still undecided as to whether it will hang on the wall, or if I will mount it to a canvas frame to sit in a picture stand.   The show is titled "Off The Wall" and they are hoping for some dimensional, free standing work.   If I can figure how to do it, this should qualify.

I started this well over a year ago in our small QA Study Group.   We were working with paint transfer from a gelatin plate.   After that, we stitched "what we saw from the transfer" - you can see that I saw leaves in mine.   Then we highlighted them further with artist paintsticks - in my case, mostly lumiere paintsticks.   There are 3 of the dimensional thread painted leaves.   After that I dyed some cheesecloth for texture and floated some leaf beads on the cheesecloth.  The background was also painted to look like water, reflecting sky and trees above.

Thread painted leaves

Dyed Cheesecloth with leaf beads.

Closeup of the stitched and painted leaves.

Now, if I can get it to sit in the stand - all will be good!!!

Purple Carnival Mask

So, yesterday was the reveal for our Quilt Guild Challenge - this year's theme is "Carnival"!   What an amazing group of quilts revealed and will now hang in our local library.  I was blown away by some of them - almost all of them.   As usual, there were no two alike although carousel and mask seem to pop up quite often.   This year we decided not to have them judged and it's a good thing - how would a judge ever pick from all of the wonderful entries.   Sure, you could start nit-picking over techniques and how good they were - but it really would spoil the whole idea that was put forth in this challenge.   I think I liked almost all of them better than mine, but in actuality, I'm very happy with my entry!!

Detail of eye showing thread painted eyelashes, crystals and music symbols.

Above the eye - showing more beaded detail, threadwork and crystals.

Secrets, secrets & more secrets!

As it turns out, it seems I'm always in the midst of projects that I can't reveal when I finish them.  This first one I can.

This is a small one I'm working on:

I call it "swirling leaves".........so far.   The center was a gelatin plate transfer.   Paint was applied to gelatin (basically) and then the fabric was laid over top and the paint was transferred.   I saw leaves I guess because that is what I did with free motion stitching.   Next paintsticks were used to give further dimension and definition to the leaves.  I used dyna-flo to make the blue water and some green dabs here and there to reflect trees!   I quilted it in a swirl design and am adding 3 dimensional leaves and beads.   Where it goes from here........is anyone's guess!!!
On the subject of secret pieces,   first off is our guild challenge - "Carnival".   I thought long and hard about this, had a few ideas, but in the end the one I picked surprised me as it was not on the horizon when I first started thinking about it.  It's just a fun piece.....and best of all IT IS FINISHED!!!   We will reveal the at guild on Saturday, so I can share then.

We have also started a round robin project in our ArtCGirlz group.  We each picked a piece of fabric or small quilt to pass between members for each person to add their own creativity to it.   I forgot to take a picture of mine in its "naked" state.   Lori has mine first and she is a photographer, so I think I'll ask her if she minds - just a quick picture for my records. 

My first go around comes from Chris Kuehl.

This is a McKenna Ryan fabric.   She said it reminds her of water, sand, marsh.   I think she is right.   I see marshy reeds etc.

More of the fabric she included....can be added if we so desire.

I have a couple of ideas, nothing firm yet.