Art Every Day: Yesterday  and Today, Sept 8 & 9, 2013

 Good Evening Again,

I worked really hard on getting somewhat caught up today.  Though it was my one day off today, I didn't have anything more pressing so I spent the better part of my day at the studio sewing.  It felt spending some time alone with all of the art and beautiful fabric.

So here is a piece for yesterday.  A few weeks ago in the last session of the Surface Design class that I teach, one of my students, Darcy VanPelt cut a stencil to use while screen printing.  Just before she left I asked her  if I could pull a few prints from her design.  I thought the flower would look great at the two ends of a light violet scarf that I had dyed, but, one should never really rush through screen printing.  The prints were both quite messy and really just ruined the scarf.  So, I threw it into the scrap boxes that I do my daily pieces with.  This morning I figured was as good a time as any to use it. 

I simply Misty Fused it to a piece of light red violet bamboo felt then stitched just inside all of the petals and added some long, thin veins then I stitched the center with swirls.  I switched to a pale lavender thread and stitched the background with a micro stipple to push it back.  Because it's silk, the piece is really lustrous in person, the photo just doesn't do it justice. I like the stripy dye job that I did when screen printing, it adds some nice visual interest and Darcy's flower design is fabulous.  

 

This is my favorite piece of the day.  It began with a piece of fabric that I had hand dyed then discharged and over dyed using Decolourant Plus in two colors; primary blue and avocado which is really brown.  I really liked the fabric so I didn't want to cut it up.  I simply placed it on top of some dark gray batting that is streaked with blue metallic paint.

I  quilted the whole thing i a pale green rayon and stitched around all of the small brown circles and diagonal lines.  I also stitched around the perimeter of the small blue circles and the large blue circles.  The I quilted tight cross hatches inside each of the four large circles.  Finally, I stitched a stipple in the background in an attempt to push it back.  

I love how all of the circles come forward and how far back the centers of the large circle are. I like it's weird, freaky balance with the one complete large, blue circles and the three partial ones, but mostly I like how all of the smaller brown circles look.  Though it doesn't show well in the photo, they really pop out and almost look stuffed in person.

Till tomorrow,

Heather