Happy Valentine's Day!

Embossed aluminum colored with markers.

Tweet

My other love... pottery

In my conversation with Lesley I mentioned that I used to do pottery when I lived in Austin. I love working in ceramics, making the basic form and then carving the surface. Much like when I make an art quilt, I paint the fabric and then quilt the surface. I love that extra layer of visual texture. I found that each art form often influenced the other. Lesley asked me to post some pics on my blog, so here goes...

 

I eventually stopped making pottery, as much as I loved it, I had to make a choice, art quilts or pottery, there just wasn't enough time in the day to do both.

Melly stamp love!

I really have no business doing this right now, but I have been so busy doing business type stuff like planning for upcoming teaching gigs, making travel plans, packing, making a project for a friends book, writing up new workshops, filling out teaching proposals, dealing with contracts, insurance, writing an article and making the project to go with it, etc, etc... I have had no time to just play and make art and if you are like me it is kind of like holding your breath too long and really needing to breath.

My friend Melly Testa, recently started making stamps from craft foam mounted on plexiglass. When I saw her lovely bird prints I could not help but want to make some too, and of course Nina also wanted to get in on the action making this cute print based on a Pokemon character.

 I wish I could spend days making more of these, but I really need to get back to organizing stuff for Make it University this weekend and my trip to New Zealand next week. Eeek, that is coming up so fast!

Remember the edge crocheted pillow cases your grandmother used to make...

Isn't this a fantastic modern take on those lovely linens of yesteryear. I love this pillow, Cassie at You Go Girl, has created a fantastic tutorial on how to make this perfect scallop crochet edging. She also has a tutorial on making the pillow case too. I want to make one of these pillow cases, no I take that back, I want to make lots of these pillow cases. Cassie has lots of other beautiful stitched projects on her blog too, be sure to check it out.

Felted Soaps

Did you notice the recent Anthropologie catalog had felted soaps for $14 each? You want to make some of your own for gifts? Well here is what you do:

You need a bar of soap, I like glycerin soap for these but other kinds of soap work well too, roving and pantyhose. I cut the pantyhose into 6-8" sections or use knee highs.

Start out by making a layered roving blanket just like you do for making felted balls. Unwind a length of roving, while holding it in one hand, grasp the end portion with the other hand and gently pull off "tufts" roughly 5-6 inches in length. Spread the fibers into a thin flat layer with all the strands going in one direction.

Pull off another tuft of roving and layer it on top of the first, at a 90 degree angle. Repeat this process several more times, criss-crossing 4-6 thin layers.

When lifting the blanket of roving there should not be thin spots or holes. Changing the colors of yarn in the layers will create a heathered multicolored wool.

Take the soap, wrap it with the roving blanket and slip it into a panty hose and loosely knot it.

Run the pantyhose and roving wrapped soap under some warm water, saturating it, turn off the water and begin rubbing the wrapped soap as though you are washing your hands.

It will begin to lather, continue rubbing it, working all the sides. What is happening is the wool fibers are beginning to knot and tangle with each other creating the felt. Keep rubbing the soap until you see little fibers coming through the outside of the pantyhose, this will take several minutes.

When this happens you carefully remove the felted soap from the panty hose and smooth it between your hands and set it aside to dry.

The soap suds on the outside will dry and disappear leaving you with a lovely little felted soap.

If you are doing a lot of soaps you might consider wearing gloves, I got some pretty chapped hands one year when I made them for everyone in the family. 

If you are making these for yourself or for gifts, let the person know not to bother putting them at the sink for a quick hand wash, which is so tempting because they are beautiful, because it takes a couple minutes to work up a nice lather. These are great in the shower or bath since they have a nice gentle scrub, like a built in washcloth.

Painted Peltex Pod Form

Stitched painted Peltex, embossed aluminum and wool felt.

I was curious what the surface of Peltex would look like painted. This is the non fusible kind.
I painted one side green and the other side purple, orange and metallic gold with textile paints.The surface came out slightly porous looking, not smooth and flat like painting lutradur or fabric, it has an interesting texture.

I cut shapes out of the Petex for the center of the pod and stitched free motion designs into it. The stitching does not stand out too much on the textured surface.

I cut outside leaves from fabric I had painted a while ago and fused it to wool felt, quilting leaf designs and finishing the edges with a satin stitch. I cut strips of aluminum and stitched it on the leaves and embossed it with free hand drawn designs. The metal helps the leaves hold a curved shape

I stitched some furry novelty yarn to the tops edges of the peltex and then satin stitched the sides leaving the top open.

Kind of reminds me of Little Shop of Horrors in this photo.

I fused a base to the leaves and stitched the leaf edges together through the lower sides of the center pod connecting the whole thing together.

Making Felted Balls

To make the ornaments shown in Quilting Arts Gifts, you need to make felted wool balls or you can buy pre-felted balls from the Artgirlz or Quilting Arts. I like to make felted balls myself because I can have fun playing with colors and shapes. How to make the felted balls is explained in the article, but it does not have photos with all the steps. So, for all you visual learners here's how I do it.

Warning: once you start making these it will be really hard to stop.

This is a great way to use up leftover yarn, by rolling golf ball size yarn balls as a base for the ball. Wind yarn into oblong shapes to get a berry shaped ball. I usually use wool yarn because I know it will felt better, but in a pinch I have used other yarns too. My favorite place to order roving is from Outback Fibers, the colors are gorgeous and the prices are very reasonable. Unwind a length of roving, while holding it in one hand, grasp the end portion with the other hand and gently pull off "tufts" roughly 5-6 inches in length. Spread the fibers into a thin flat layer with all the strands going in one direction. Pull off another tuft of roving and layer it on top of the first at a 90 degree angle. Repeat this process several more times, criss-crossing 4-6 thin layers.
When lifting the blanket of roving there should not be thin spots or holes. Changing the colors of yarn in the layers will create a heathered multicolored wool ball.

Wrap the roving blanket you have created around a yarn ball, making sure there is full coverage of fluffy roving with no bare or thin spots.

Close the roving covered yarn ball in your hand and bring it to the foot of a knee hi panty hose. (buy cheap ones at the dollar store, or use those ancient ones in the back of your hosiery drawer that you never wear anymore) Gently remove your hand from around the ball and tie and knot a small piece of yarn around the hose to secure the ball in place.

When all the balls have been wrapped in the hose, place them in the washing machine, set the water to lowest level and hottest setting. Add a small amount of detergent, about a tablespoon, the exact measurement is not crucial but soap is important in the felting process. I usually run it on a long cycle, the more agitation the better the felting. Good old fashion top loading washers have the most success with felting.

When you take the chain of balls out of the machine, you will see little fibers have come though the mesh of the hose. Snip the tied yarn between the balls, gently peel away the hose removing the ball and roll the ball in your hands to smooth the fibers.

These would make great cat toys but dogs will want to shred these to smithereens. My chihuahua thinks there is nothing more fun than stealing felted balls when I am not looking and peel all the fuzz off.

This is my latest batch in preparation for my Make it U workshops in Houston.
50 felted balls ready to go. Come to one of my MIU workshops at International Quilt Festival Houston and stitch one of these babies into a lovely ornament.

Blue Vessel

After making the first vessel I realized that I needed to change a few things in the construction process. I used a fused hinge method to put the base on this new vessel. This was the method I used making the Dream Houses. It made construction much easier with less bending of the panels when sewing the sides together.
I was anxious to try out this shape so I used simply painted fabric to see how it would go together. For the inside of the vessel I painted the fabric using a paint called Polished Pigments. I wish you could see the luminosity of it in the photo, it is bright and coppery. This is a new paint that comes as a powder that you mix with a paint medium (Simple Solutions; one bottle for fabric another for paper). It is so metallic and bright, it literally looks like car paint. I saw Bernie Berlin using these paints at the Chicago IQF show last spring. The color glows, it is beautiful, but the base has a very different consistency than other textile paints. The outside of the vessel is painted with Jaquard Lumiere's.

I like this shape. Now that I have a few more construction details worked out I want to try some more, but I am going to have to stop for a while and take care of a few other projects that deal with writing, dyeing and color.

Vessels

For sometime I have wanted to try making some vessels. I have several ideas I want to explore. Besides trying different shapes, I of course want to include metal.

I suppose it would have made sense to make one without adding metal first to try and work out the logistics of how to put one together, but I always want to do it all, so before I begin I just think it through as far as I can and deal with technical issues as they come up.
One thing I learned making this was that the copper metal is much harder to cut than the aluminum or pewter. My decorative scissors did not like cutting the edge on this. The second problem was realizing I could not stitch the seam all the way to the top with the copper stitched all the way to the edge. It is too hard to stitch through two layers with the added bulk of Peltex.
I used my mixed media painted fabric technique to make the fabric for the vessel.
I love the combination of the soft green metallic paint with the copper.