Good Morning,
I've had a few days to reconnoiter since returning from our yearly retreat in Taos.  This was definately the best session ever!  Each of the three instructors for the retreat, myself included, made a little something for each of the students.  These elegant little pincushions were my contribution.  I.V. found the glass bases at a surplus store.  We think they were probably for using under the feet of furniture.  Anyway, we have about 100 of them and will be making many more of these little lovelies.
Each one is made of hand dyed velvet stuffed with wool, inset into the heavy glass base and topped with Lucite flowers and leaves.  I'll be making lots more this week to take with us to Quilt Colorado later this month.
Till next time,
Heather

Hi All,
Here are some scarves that I made using Habotai silk blanks from Jacquard and their green label silk acid dyes.  I used cheap paint brushes and slightly diluted dye.  After they batched for 24 hours I set them in Jacquard dye set concentrate.  No steaming required.
This is a really fun technique and a great way to dye if you don't want to deal with powdered dyes and extra chemicals.
Till next time,
Heather

 

Hi All,

It's been a while again.  But at least this time I've got a good excuse; a badly torn ligament in a dislocated middle finger on my right hand - what a royal pain!  So, I haven't gotten much work done lately.

But, here is a quick little, ditty that I did on Sunday while teaching the technique to just one student.  It is 5-7 layers of cotton, silk and melty nylon fabrics along with cheesecloth, all stitched up then scored with a soldering tool and heated with a heat. gun.  

Before you get too impressed, the flowers, leaves and stems were already embroidered on the nylon fabric, but, I used wise placement and stitching to achieve this yummy end result.

Till next time,

Heather

 Hi All,
I've been really busy lately add color to lots of different surfaces in lots of different ways.  I do so love surface design! Here are some pieces of dye painted batting that I did last week.  They are painted with Dyenaflow and Lumiere by Jacquard.  I love to use this painted batting instead of regular batting.  I design right on it, collaging fabrics and other fibers right on the surface and leaving the edges of the batting exposed so that I don't have to add a binding.
Below, are some pieces of Lutradur that I painted in the same manner.  I like to melt it with a heat gun to lace it up and I love to make beads out of it.
So much fun, so much exploration - never enough time!
Till next time,
Heather

Hi All,
I taught a class last week in marbling on fabric with ink.  I only had one student so I got to create along with her - we both had a ball!  Here are the pieces that I did.  They are each 15" x 20" and were painted using Tsukineko inks on shaving cream.  I used black, white, and the metallic colors black orchid, copper, gold, silver and champagne mist.
I will be cutting these lovlies up to make a modern styled art quilt.  I think I'll add some stamped black birds to it too.  I can't wait to see how it all comes out.  I've found nothing more enjoyable than making art from the art cloth that I make! If you click on one of the images then you can see them larger in a slide show.
Till next time,
Heather

Here are a few more pieces

 

Good Afternoon All,

Here is my latest, almost finished piece.  It just lacks some hand stitching and mounting.

It began as a piece of silk fusion that I made using silk roving along with my own hand dyed silk cocoons, carrier rods and thread flotsam.  I added in some vintage silk threads during the process and that is what you see moving through the diagonal middle.

Once the silk fusion was dry, I laid it on top of the red orange dyed jute which is on top of batting and a backing.  I quilted the bajeebers   out of all of the negative space on the fusion then did some basically invisible stippling on the red orange fabric.  

The yellow circles are felt from the surplus store.  I will hand stitch those down with some violet floss then I'll mount the whole thing on stretcher bars and trim the frayed edges a bit.

 These close ups show a bit more of the fabulous textures as well as the mix of color.
It's been years since I've played much with Silk Fusion.  I made more than a dozen pieces the other day.  They are for sale in our gallery as well as on our new Etsy site:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/WildHeatherGallery?ref=search_shop_redirect

:

Hello All,
I've been really busy in the studio lately making all sorts of fun and beautiful stuff.  Here are a bunch of pieces of silk fusion, from simple to very complex, each one is very unique.  One of the things that I like to do when making silk fusion is to make them so that each of their two sides are very different.  One is simpler and the other more complex.
I use a combination of hand dyed silk roving from Treenway Silks and hand dyed silk hankies and carrier rods that I dye myself.  I also add silk sari fibers, silk waste, bits of threads from the dryer and lots of yummy, shiny Angelina fibers.  I put mine together with thinned matte medium rather than fabric medium.  It's cheaper and I've always got tons of it on hand.
I'm almost finished with an art piece made by the third piece above.  I'll show it to you once I've finished. The rest will be for sale in the gallery, on our web site and soon, on our new Etsy store.

Till next time,
Heather