Marbling (of Course) and Some Grandma Time....

These are my "uglies" out on the line waiting for them to dry from their alum soak before dipping them into the marbling size.


This is one of the "uglies" already covered with a stripey pattern. This was the first dip of the day which is always the worse for some reason, although this one was okay for me.

This was done over a dyed golden yellow with an awful greenish tinge. Definitely improved with the browns, yellows and reds.

Well, my dear granddaughter is on the other side of the country, so I had to find another baby to cuddle. The mother of the very new baby is the older sister of my girls' best friends. I was always mother #2 to these girls so I am now an honorary grandmother as well! Very sadly, her own mother died just a little over a year ago and naturally she misses her a lot and even more so with the new baby. This baby's name is Sam and that is his proud mama holding him -- he is just a week old! He is totally adorable and I don't think the picture does him justice!
This is George in his usual position sitting next to Warren with his two favorite toys -- his ball run around and a cheap little stick that has a string and feather thing attached. Cheney has nothing but distain for toys and much prefers the little plastic rims that come with bottle caps on my gallon water bottles. He also adores rubber bands like his distant cousin, Dewey the Library Cat -- we finally dried up his source of rubber bands after finding him with them all the time. He wouldn't tell us where he was getting them from but we tracked it down to my basement craft supplies!

Pillowcase Party - the After Party

Well, Margaret and her committee have collected 1500 pillowcases to be distributed to various charitable organizations as part of our 2009 Quilt Show. Today was ostensibly to sort through the pillowcases and assign them to a proper category for distribution (children, patriotic, men's, women's colors). However, I got assigned to quality control early on which meant a close inspection of the pillowcases for loose threads, seams coming out, seams never done and a myriad of other minor problems!! It takes a LONG time to get through that many pillowcases even when there are 7 or 8 people working on it!! Margaret's house is in a beautiful location though and I spotted bluebirds and a beautiful red-tailed hawk from my position at the table (without even trying). Margaret says they have had bluebirds in their houses this year and new fledgelings already.

Of course as always it was a fun time with a wonderful lunch provided by Margaret out on her screened in porch. I also brought home with me a large bag of pillowcases which have to be resewn but that will be encouragement to take my serger out of retirement. The beach house is going to have a LARGE infusion of my own made pillowcases after I finish these up! It is a great way to use up a lot of fabric without too much effort! In fact, everyone may be getting pillowcases as presents this Christmas too! They are really fun and easy to make. Some of the ones today were incredibly beautiful or really cute or showed a wonderful sense of style. They gave me so many ideas. Many women put on an extra little piece of trim between the band and the main part of the pillowcase which really looked snazzy.

So Gail and Bill, are you ready for pillowcases??

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah Marbling....

Up from the bottom again! You will notice that all of the fabrics I have taken pictures of have not been washed or ironed yet which is why you sometimes see an occasional fold. I dunk the fabric 3 or 4 times after I do the marbling and then hang the remaining sticky wet fabric out on the line where it will dry (if it doesn't rain in the meantime which it has pretty consistently the past couple of weeks). It doesn't matter at this point if a little rain gets on it as the paints are pretty well adhered except if you brush with your hand or fingernail. I then let them dry for a couple of weeks and then wash in the very very gentlest cycle of my washer. I make sure they have no folds when I put them in the washer. I then take them out and they are pretty damp still as the slowest cycle has a relatively slow spin speed (I have a top loader). I then hang them out on the line to dry (NEVER use a dryer as it will just beat them up) and then iron and put away. I have been grouping them and rolling them rather than fold them -- just think of a painted surface and what care you would want to take with it. You just don't want it beaten or rubbed in one place excessively.

This was an orange and green piece that I focused adding the purple onto breaking up the orange space. Looks like a big spiral to me.
I ran out of alum-ed white fabric yet again and the weather has not been cooperating at all so I am back to using up the colored fabrics that I had treated last week. The next two were done on black. I used a lot of the titanium white mixed in with the colors. The light grey areas were white if you looked at the size. Titanium white is really not an opaque but has qualities of an opaque when concentrated.

This was on the black but with the push and pull technique as I wanted to create some fabric that looked a bit like tree bark always useful when doing nature fabric!!

Ah, my last piece of white fabric!

I didn't do much today as I was mesmerized by the funeral of Michael Jackson. I am certainly not the demographic that you would think would be a fan, but I have loved the tv coverage of him when he was in his prime when "I discovered" what a talent he was after watching the Thriller special and the Motown Anniversary special back in the 80's.

In The Zone......

A relaxing day of being one with my marbling size and reading my favorite books is a good way to begin July!

I really think I am getting better at this and really love the pieces I got today although I did revert to using some blues again (they are just so well behaved and there are so many of them).

This is a try at my orange, purple and green pallette. Will have to figure out how to get some lavenders without using white.. Did get a lot of nice greens going today though.

Some browns playing with the blue background.

This was some blues and oranges and browns on a yellow/orange fabric.

This was my favorite of the day. Like looking up through flowering trees to the bright blue Florida sky.

This was one of two prints that I got when there was basically no goo left -- maybe a 1/16 of an inch thick and I just picked up the edges of the plastic lining my tray to force some of the color from the bottom up to the top. I just love the effect of this and actually look forward to running out of the size. I have also found that I am getting really clean prints no matter how dirty the size as long as I change my rinse water very frequently.

My new process is to take the print, then squeeze lightly the fabric from the back to get out the excess size into one bucket. Then I rinse three or four times gently in the clean water and then hang to dry.

I am still not using any surfactant at all and am keeping pretty much with my Golden Fluid Acrylics which I LOVE. I have been using them with GAC900 which is the additive which is supposed to make the hand of the fabric softer. I think it has a mild surfactant in it. I slow the paints down by using some of my ProChem pigments which are very cheap and which mix very easily with the Golden paints (a cheap way to get all sorts of different colors). I have been using primarily the Golden Primary Cyan, Magenta and Yellow although I have also used the Pthalo Blue (Red and Green shades), Ultramarine Blue and Raw Sienna, Raw Umber and of course Titanium White (which I mix with my pigments). I am staying away from opaques except when I am printing on colored fabric where the graininess and fuzziness of the opaques is not so obvious. I have really not been using my Createx paints at all as I have are mostly opaques.

The fabric I have been using is the Joann's Egyptian cotton in white. It is really absorbent and works beautifully for marbling when I can find it!

Fourth Follies...

This is the front of the house with the gardens really in bloom with all the rain. If you double click, you will see the pepper plants, marigolds and lots of those wave petunias. Warren grew all the flowers from seed this year and they are soooo much better than what you get in the garden stores. The only plants I purchased with a few snapdragons and the red peppers. He also grew some GIANT poppies from seed which still look like huge cabbage plants but the flowers are beginning to finally bud and they are really nice. We have impatiens in every color they come in I think!

This is a perennial called an Evening Primrose which Warren also grew from seed a couple of years ago. It flowers in the evening and closes up in the heat of the day. It was cloudy and had been raining when I took this picture -- before it closed up. They are a low growing ground cover with these rather large flowers. They are not related to primroses at all. Go figure...

Yesterday was the meeting day for RAFA (Rochester Area Fiber Artists) and I managed to forget my camera so no pictures this month! However, in some conversation after the meeting, the beginning of an idea was forming in my head. Several people are beginning to think I need an intervention to stop my marbling! Well, my thoughts were to give people one of my marbled pieces with the rules of a quilt challenge around them. This was met with some positive reaction. However, it was suggested that I have people pay for the pieces. Well, combining the ideas, I think at some future date I will propose the challenge and will ask for the money, but will put it all into a pot and offer prizes in various categories!! Maybe have someone else gather the pieces when done, make sure I can't see the maker and let me vote on things like "most innovative use of fabric", "most decorative", "my personal favorite" etc. Or I could vote on digital pictures. Or someone else entirely could do the voting (then I could enter too). Hmmmmm... just some random thoughts....

Ah, a peaceful green swirl!

Mostly orange!

Fireworks and Flowers!

Canals

I did all of the above today on the 4th and reverted to those bright 4th of July colors but tried some new techniques which I quite liked. Instead of using my trusty whisks to lay down lots of color, I did a slightly (and I mean slightly) controlled laying down of color with these wonderful new droppers I have (thanks Margaret). It had been a struggle to get good drops as they always seemed to have bubbles but now I make sure I continuously squeeze the dropper, NEVER letting any air back in. So I have been laying down a lot of color with the droppers and THEN I use the whisks just to do some highlights with some non-agressive colors.

The night before last it was time to put some organization to all the pieces that are done and washed. I broke them down into pallettes primarily with special piles for the ebru ones and those that are multicolor and stand alone. This gave me an idea of where I have been spending most of my time and surprise, surprise, it was the same as when I started quilting and buying fabric randomly -- the blues predominated!!!! I probably didn't buy new blue fabric for five or six years after that realization! After I finish this next bunch, will move on to some dyeing. The big difference is that I can do 50 yards of dyed fabric in a day and it takes me almost a month to do that with marbling!

Monday Molas and Tuesday Treasures!

Monday was a fun lunch at Priscilla's, getting to see the hundreds of molas she brought back from Panama on her latest trip. She said that she saw far fewer on this trip and had to work to get a stash to bring back -- her molas are always big sellers and she offers them so reasonably compared to the going rates on ebay and other sellers. I was very controlled this time although she probably had a better assortment than ever!! I couldn't resist a couple of special large ones and several small ones -- I was focusing on getting birds or fish that were facing left instead of right!! It is always a treat to see the ones that she keeps as well!!! She will be selling them at our RAFA meeting on Thursday so I may just.....

These are several of the small molas or appliques that I got.

The above molas were all quite small (about 7 in square) while this next bunch was the next "larger" size and were about 12 x 18 inches.

This first one is my very favorite and you should double click to see it more clearly. It is lots of spiders and exquisite workmanship. Just had to have it!

This second one was very unusual and Priscilla thinks that it may be indicative of a new trend. It is actually the reverse applique done on top of a printed piece of fabric. The base fabric is white with big black swirls. They somehow cut out so carefully that there is just a slight outline of the black swirl showing and looks like it is another layer of reverse applique but it isn't. I loved it! Their workmanship is incredible. On some of these pieces there is probably 30-40 stitches to the inch to tack down the appliques. The only thing I have seen close is some of the quilts from the early 1800s in the US that were at the Rochester Museum and Science Center (where we were documenting their collection).

This was an interesting geometric that caught my eye!

I just had to have these iguanas!


Anyway, I was back marbling today. The morning started pretty gloomy which inspired me to work in bright brights -- primary pallette which I almost never do -- my favorite pallette is secondary colors of orange, green and purple. Primary just seemed right today though. As the day cleared though, I switched to earthtones again -- using up all my prepared white fabric and all but about two pieces of the "uglies". The weather has not been cooperating at all as it has been raining every day and is supposed to for the rest of the week. So alum-ing more fabric will have to wait and I will have to get back to some sewing.

Just my basic blue and lavender pallette which I switched to after a few of the bright primaries!

How is this for July 4th!

This was an interesting exercise although not a very pretty piece. It shows what happens when you keep adding color just in the middle so there is more space on the outer perimeters for the paints to expand. The surface tension was different all over and I may play some more with this effect. Does give a feeling of depth.

Just another of the stripey primary pieces.

Again, fireworks in preparation for July 4th!

I will have to wait for the sun to come out before I can take pictures of some of the second bunch I did today. I have some Seminole strips that I made a LONG time ago that are in red, yellow and blue pallette so these pieces will probably end up with those in another jacket somewhere along the way!

Maverick Marbler.......

Yea, sometimes the combs are fun to use and get traditional marbling patterns; but, it is a lot more fun to just play and see what kind of mischief you can do!

Yesterday, I just about ran out of all the ugly fabric that I had alum-ed and decided to do a few pairs of baby socks for my new granddaughter and also some just plain whites again (just got an additional thirty yards of my favorite dyeing and marbling fabric in the mail). So I alum-ed up 4 yards of the fabric and six pairs of baby sox. That will give me 16 nice fat quarters of fabric to play with. I made a good start today! Using the white fabrics, you get so many of the subtleties that you miss on the colored fabric -- of course the messes show more too! Of course, I have found a bunch more of the discarded fabric to play with as well but the rain showers have returned so it is not a good time to hang things outside!

This is just a kind of boring piece with all the different blues that I have. It looks better in person and magnified a bit!

This was the volcano that developed after I dunked the socks in the middle of the bath and then added a little more color. The colors were all rushing toward the middle to fill in the empty space.

This was some more of the stripes. The ultramarine blue is a pretty aggressive color and tends to compress everything else. The other colors will make it shift for awhile but the blue again takes over!

Again, more of the blue with browns in the background. I had first covered the size with the various browns using whisks and then dropped eyedroppers of the various shades of blue that I have and then whisked some yellow on at the end.


More of the stripes. These really do look better in person!

Of course, the boys are always looking for new entertainment so they discovered the jacuzzi with a bell ball in it. It seems you can play endlessly but Cheney just prefers to sit and watch George go for it!

George is having a bad couple of days as he is snarfling again and his eyes are a bit irritated again. He is such a lovely friendly cat except for the darned herpes virus which he will probably have forever. He is one of the unlucky kitties who shows the symptoms forever. It doesn't seem to affect his appetite though and he loves to play! We keep our fingers crossed that he will grow out of it some day!