More This ‘N That

Woohoo!  I feel like I actually got something done today.  I got a sample bag made, and it went pretty fast.  This is the Runaround Bag by Lazy Girl Designs, made, of course, in my hand dyed fabrics.  One fabric has paintstik designs on it.  I didn’t have a 12 inch zipper to match the fabrics, so making do with the yellow one I did have.  I think it looks just fine…it makes  a yellow stripe.

Front…

Back….with a heart embroidery stitch used as topstitching…

How about some antique buttons added…?

This is a cute pattern and makes up fast.  The finished bag measures 7 1/2″ x 9″. I have patterns for sale.

I am planning what shows I will be attending this fall and what I need to have done as far as samples.  This bag is one sample I wanted to make up.

On another note, I was juried into the annual Working Together exhibit to be on display at the Evansville museum from July 11 to August 28.  This is an Arts Council exhibit. I have shown this piece in another post on this blog.  It is …But Words Will Never Hurt Me (Sticks and Stones). I am happy it will be in this exhibit.

Rust dyed cotton sateen, discharge dyed sateen, screenprinting, stamping, stenciling, cotton thread, handwriting.

This ‘N That…

I can’t believe it’s been nine days since I blogged here!  First I have to go out and take a walk.  The weather has cooled off considerably and this is a great morning for walking.  The intense heat finally broke here yesterday.  It was much cooler when I came out of church yesterday.  88 degrees actually felt good compared to what we have been having.  Be back later.

What have I been working on? Last week I needed to get photography done for an entry that was to be in by June 30.  Application had to be filled out, etc.  This is for the Mid-States Exhibition that is held every year at the museum in Evansville.  I have only entered once and didn’t get in, but this year I felt I had something that might get accepted. But who knows?  The previous year that I entered, I was beat out by a nylon stocking with rocks or something in it that really looked like a bull’s testicle.  It was supposed to be some sort of  “necklace”.

Here’s some stitching I did on a deconstructed print…I am thinking of making some small bags with these prints.

I got out my Featherweight machine to do this with because I want to demo free form stitching with a Featherweight for an upcoming class.  These machines can be a little touchy.  I couldn’t get it to stitch in free form mode because the needle was in backwards.  But once I figured out that’s why it wouldn’t stitch, all was well!

I loaded some new little bundles of fabric to my etsy shop and someone picked one of them up for a treasury.  That’s never happened before and has increased hits to my shop, although not a sale yet.  Keep fingers crossed. I need to keep working the shop, although I get sidetracked in the morning and forget to load pictures.

Piece of fabric I dye painted a couple of weeks ago…not sure where it’s going yet.

Squeegees

When I started screenprinting, I used credit cards.  They were cheap and always on hand.  Then I  bought a real screen squeegee.  It is an 8 inch one with a rubber edge and a wooden handle.  I like it, but it is a little unwieldy because of size and doesn’t always fit inside every screen.  I can’t imagine using a larger one.  Then I heard about Bondo scrapers.  So off to Auto Zone I went.  Yep, they had them…and this is what they look like.

Here are my observations:

1. credit cards are too small to get a good grip with your hands,

2. regular squeegees can be a bit bulky to handle, but are large enough to get a good grip with your hands, and

3.  Bondo scrapers are wonderful…they have  a bit of give, they are a good size for your hand…I love them!

Thursday Goings On….

So sorry I haven’t blogged for awhile.  It’s hard to write two blogs…especially if you want to write something thoughtful yet entertaining.

So, today, after my walk and my visit to my hair girl, photographing silk scarves was on my agenda as well as photographing a new large piece for entry into an area exhibit.  Well, the wind is just a little bit too strong to get much photography done.  I tried.  When I photograph, I like to open up my garage door and set up everything just inside the garage.  It gives me plenty of light, but not too much.  I even had a backdrop set up with my gridwall and a black sheet.  The wind was just too frustrating, but here’s a pic of one of the scarves.

Silk habatoi is the only kind of silk I have dyed that gets this wonderful kind of movement in the dyes.  I guess it’s because of its thinness.  I really like it and these are the scarves that sell the quickest for me.  This scarf is $40 and is 14″ x 72″ before shrinkage.

I was looking at an application for a regional exhibit coming up.  I need to get it  and digital images in really soon.  I see in the rules that purchase award winnners will be asked to relinquish copyrights to their work.  I am wondering if this is a good thing to do or not?  And if you enter you are asked to sign a statement on the application to this effect, so it’s not something I can decide later.  How do others feel about this?

I sold a quilt this weekend at the farmer’s market.  It wasn’t an art quilt, per se.  I had been dragging it around with me for years, using it to cover a table or fill in a space in my quilt show booth.  I’m a bit sorry to see it go since my favorite longarmer who doesn’t quilt any more quilted it.  But I’m really glad to pocket the money!

I also went to visit the gallery I will be showing in…in 2011 (lots can happen between now and then).  I wanted to see how much space I will be  expected to fill.  I have some ideas percolating now for small pieces.

What’s everyone else doing for the summer?

Tuesday This ‘N That…

Awhile back I posted a photo of a stack of hand created fabrics that seems to get increasingly larger all the time.  I decided to try to decrease the stack by creating some small bags.  This morning I worked a while out in my patio adding some layers to pieces of cloth for the bags.  Not only was it a beautiful morning, but I was also witness to some young eastern bluebirds playing in my yard and chattering and fighting in the driveway!  What a treat.

Fabrics I worked on today…

I will be quilting these and then turning them into little bags for sale and gifts.

I am still having trouble with the delayed Write when I hook up the new camera…may have to spend hours doing reasearch to fix that.

What are you doing this summer???

New Camera…

I got a new digital camera last week.  I have been wanting one a little smaller than the Sony CyberShot I’ve been using.  This one was on clearance at Radio Shack so I went for it.  It’s another Sony CyberShot (I do like them and knew I could jump in and use it right away), is 7.2 megapixel (I don’t think I need more than that) and works pretty much the same way as my other one.  It is also smaller, squarish and has a larger LCD screen.  It is set up pretty much the same way as my other one, with a few modifications, but nothing too difficult.

The one thing I have a problem with is loading pics from the camera to my external hard drive.  I keep getting a Delayed Write Failed message from Windows and then it acts like my drive is wiped out (but it’s not…I just have to reboot to see it again).  This is very annoying.  I finally found instructions online about how to get the pics off the camera and onto my desktop.  This is ok, but I like to put my photos on my backup external drive, which I still cannot do.  It’s very surprising that there would be this difference in unloading pictures.  I will keep searching for the answer.  Other than that I love the smaller size of the camera and the pics are still great quality.  Any computer geeks out there have any experience or answers to share?

Photo of the day: Aluminum recycling center