Chicago Festival 2010

"Schizo Rose" by Judy Robinson Ehrnst

So while I was driving down to Chicago last week, I was struck by the verdant green of the countryside.  Every past year, it's been brown and ugly -- not quite winter anymore, but decidedly not spring yet.  All the way down there (2 1/2 hours by car), I composed in my head this wonderfully poetic blogpost, waxing rhapsodic about all the spring colors, the birds, and the lovely look to the trees veiled in their new spring finery.

And then I got there and I got so excited, I completely forgot everything I was going to say.  Bummer.

Since I have been a rather neglectful blogger this past week, I will parcel out the stuff I did during my whirlwind tour of Festival over a couple of shorter posts, rather than one long, potentially boring, blogpost.  That way, if I'm at all boring, readers can skip to the next bit.

I took pictures of some of the quilts -- much of the exhibit had stern "No Photography" signs (which I obeyed to the letter) -- so I missed a wonderful shot of an elderly man sitting under one of those signs with his camera out and ready to go.  But mostly, I had fun walking around with my friend and looking at all the stuff.  It was amazing how many people whom I knew that I ran into.

For a look at some of my favorite quilts (and my pictures, too -- thanks, Beth) click here.

And I just had to post this one -- it was my favorite one of all:  front, back and a detail shot:

"In Hiding"  by Barbara Shapel

Tomorrow:  all about ATCs and some fishy tales...

Ta Da! Jasmine!

"Jasmine" -- WIP fused hand-dyes

After all the big pieces are in place, it's time to do the little pieces.  After tacking most of it together with the edge of a hot iron, the large pieces of freezer paper can be carefully removed using the tweezers.  Then the tiny pieces can be placed using the tracing paper as a guide.  I laid the tracing paper over  as a guide and carefully set them on the appliqué.  It's best to remove the freezer paper before placing them -- I left it on for the pictures, but it's really hard to remove it without pulling up the lightly fused bits.  Also, tracing paper doesn't work as well as parchment under the iron -- I think it has a lower "smoke point"  (don't ask me how I know...).  I may try using a piece of parchment for tracing next time.

Next is the hard part -- choosing the background.

More About Jasmine the Pit Bull

In my research, I discovered that, unlike the Bernese Mountain dog's basic black,  Pit Bull noses come in lots of colors -- pink, red, brown, black, and (!) blue.  Who knew?

Also, as a breed they are not recognized by the AKC unless they are Staffordshire Bull Terriers.  American Pit Bull Terriers, like Jasmine, are recognized by the United Kennel Club and are described as "excellent family companions" and characterized by a love of children.  They are further described as "eager to please and brimming over with enthusiasm," but not a good choice for guarding because they are "extremely friendly, even toward strangers."


There is a rather large caveat, however: "Because most APBTs exhibit some level of dog aggression and because of its powerful physique, the APBT requires an owner who will carefully socialize and obedience train the dog."  I suppose this is why I don't see a lot of them at the dog park.  But according to Pit Bull Rescue Central: "While pit bulls do carry the potential for dog aggression, the vast majority of pit bulls are very far from 'fighting lines,' and many are not dog aggressive at all."

It seems to me that this would be a really good dog for a woman who lives alone.  I know there are stupid criminals out there, but not many would be foolish enough to mess around with a large dog -- however "friendly" it appears.  Thus, anybody with one of these dogs would be safer with than without.  I always feel safe walking around with big Rosie -- even though anyone who knows anything about her would agree that she is the Gandhi of our neighborhood.  


Also, if lots of young women have these dogs, they might become known as "chick-dogs" (like "chick-flicks," "chick-cars," and "chick-tunes") and lose their cachet for dog fighters.  With this new tag, pits would then receive a certain amount of derision by the same reprehensible element that is likely to try to train these dogs to kill each other for "sport."  Therefore, that element would be forced to pick a more "manly" breed, such as the dachshund or Bichon Frise, to train for this disgusting endeavor and then might be frustrated with the results and desist altogether.  


As my kids say, "just sayin'."

Jasmine Part 3

I started ironing the pieces of freezer paper to the fabric.  I cut them out and fit them together as I go so I don't forget which piece goes where -- they look a lot alike when they're cut apart.  I guess I could have numbered them to make them unique (but that smacks of record-keeping -- ha!).

It's important to use really sharp scissors to cut the fabric so that there aren't any little threads hanging off (unless, of course, you like that look.)

As the pieces are cut out, it's helpful to look at the intact picture and figure out which pieces would logically be on top.  The pieces that will be underneath need a little "seam allowance" so that there will be some overlap of the pieces.  This is for two reasons.  First, I don't know what background I'm going to use and I don't want any of it showing through between the pieces.  Second, I think it makes the work physically stronger  -- as in: not as likely to fall apart.  Although with all the thread that I'm going to put on this, it will be plenty sturdy.   Of course, it would not be good to have really dark fabric shadowing through the light, so that's something else to consider.

I use a pair of tweezers and my precious porcupine quill (thanks, Beth) to move the pieces into place.  Then I tack them together with the point of a hot iron so they don't slide around.

Jasmine Part 2

In the first post (here), I had turned the line-drawing tracing of Jasmine upside down so that the picture was reversed.  This was because I was going to piece it.  After looking at all the tiny pieces, I rethought my strategy and decided that fusing was the way to go.

So I flipped my tracing back over and used a different color of Sharpy (so I wouldn't get confused as to which was which) and traced the whole thing on freezer paper twice.  I made sure that I had the little parts of her face traced a third time because I'm going to layer the eyes and parts of the snout on top so I don't have to cut out all those tiny pieces.

I marked the pieces with the color ( I used a secret code: L1 for lightest, L2 for next darker, M1, M2, D1 in order, then D2 for darkest.)  I decided to use a beautiful dark brown  for her eyes that I found in my stash because Jasmine has beautiful brown eyes.  

I had pulled out a nice range of hand-dyes in some pretty bright colors and checked them  on the copier in black and white to make sure that I had the values correct.

As I looked at these fabrics, I decided that the orange and green were too jarring with the other colors, so I replaced them with some pinks and lilacs.

I pulled a couple of Shibori-dyes for the choke chain around her neck (she is not my dog, so please don't send me any emails about it). 
  
Can anybody tell me why, oh why, all the best parts of a shibori or hand dye are always in the middle of the piece?  So I didn't cut it now, I'll figure that out later.  

I ironed fusible (I used Wonder Under because it was there) to the backs of the fabrics and peeled them off the backing.  I set them on baking parchment on my ironing board.

I set up the fabrics in order from dark to light and started setting the cutout freezer paper pieces on top.  I didn't cut out the whole thing at once because I don't want to forget where I am when I come back to it.  So far, I have cut out her back parts and the big pieces of her face.

That's Rosie under the ironing board.  She got to go to the dog park yesterday, so don't feel too sorry for her.

Ink with Glue

So I saw on this blog here an experiment with glue and alcohol inks that looked pretty cool.  I thought it would be fun to try it on fabric.

I used some Aileen's Tacky Glue -- I had to dilute it because it was way too thick.  If you look carefully at the bottle in the photo, you might notice teeth marks -- I suspect that my dog was inspired to use this as a  chew toy briefly and the small holes were letting air in and making the glue thicken on its way to drying.

I spread the glue over plain white PFD cotton set on some baking parchment.  I took it outside because alcohol and heat together didn't seem like a really good combination for inside.

Then I dropped  alcohol ink all over the wet glue surface -- I used mostly Stream and Butterscotch, with a little Slate to fill in the white areas where the color didn't spread.

Then I hit it with a heat gun.  The ink/glue mixture bubbled up and the glue went from white to clear.  I added a little more Slate to fill in where the ink still hadn't spread and heated it again.

The dried piece felt leathery -- not plasticky like I expected.  The colors are really bright and deep.

So next I took a piece of cotton and layered it with batting on stabilizer. I quilted it with cotton thread.

Then I did the whole glue, ink, heat thing again.  It's pretty stiff, but I cut it easily with a rotary cutter and stitched up the edges on my machine.
They looked nice, but needed something, so I got out the foil.  I found that it stuck to the surface nicely when I heated it with my iron -- must be the glue (duh).

I haven't decided if I'm done with them, but I really like these colors and the gold foil really sparkles.  Maybe some beads, or something.  Or not.  I think I like them simple.

Jasmine

This is Jasmine.  Her person is my assistant and I took this picture one day when she came to visit us at the office.

Jasmine is a beautiful girl; a white pit bull and quite large for a pit.  She's very sweet and allowed me to photograph her while she was guarding her car.  As you can see, she is very photogenic.



I've been playing around with doing a portrait of her in fabric.

I manipulated this picture in PhotoShop until it had just a few shades of grey and outlined it (I don't remember how I did it, so please don't ask).  Then I traced it onto tracing paper using a fine point Sharpy.

Then I flipped the tracing paper over and put it on a plain white sheet of paper (actually the backside of the original print).  I taped it down and taped a piece of freezer paper on top and traced it.  Then I did another piece of freezer paper so that I would have two to cut out pieces from -- one for big pieces and one for the little bits that sit on top of the big pieces.

This is as far as I've gotten.  Tomorrow is House Cleaning Day at Chez Karen, so I don't know if I'll be able to post again until next week.

Who knows what evil lurks in those dust bunnies and piles of junk...