Loreen Leedy’s Studio

The 2012 Quilting Arts Calendars are in!

2011-07-26T12:25:00.001-04:00

They came in the mail recently and look wonderful. The animal theme inspired beautiful work...check out Miss Isabella, by Jill Packer:
My grey fox is the December image and can be seen in this post. The calendars are $14.95 and can be ordered from the Interweave online store.

Uzu: an amazing art + mesmerization app

2011-05-30T14:35:00.000-04:00

What is this gorgeous image, you ask? It’s a screenshot from an app called Uzu, available on the iTunes store. It’s only $1.99 and has already provided hours of enjoyment for me and anyone else that wanders by. It’s hard to describe how it works, so check out this video:

Here are a couple more images I’ve swirled into existence:

I’m almost finished with a picture book called SEEING SYMMETRY plus I bought an iPad 2 last month...that’s how I ended up with the Uzu app. By adjusting the controls, you can get the image to freeze when you take your fingers off the screen. It’s one of those apps you just have to get your hands on to see what it’s really like.

The images often have a textile-like quality... depending on the options you choose, they may consist of thin lines that look similar to thread. At other times there are little dots or wider strips that move, pulsate, explode, and otherwise dance along with your finger movements. Enjoy!

A quick Adobe Illustrator Live Trace tutorial

2011-04-01T15:59:00.000-04:00

My uber-talented artist friend Joyce Shelton asked me about using the Live Trace feature in Adobe Illustrator. Thought I knew how to do it... ummm... now I do! It allows you to convert a scanned drawing to vector lines. There are many advantages to vector art, one being that you can enlarge it basically infinitely without losing any resolution. So let’s use some of Joyce’s art to see how it’s done:

Her original was drawn with ink, but a pencil drawing is okay, too.

Scan art into Photoshop or similar program with 300 ppi resolution. The scan Joyce sent me was actually too low res, but it worked anyway.

If artwork is in pencil or otherwise lacking in contrast, use Levels to make it more black and white without losing too much detail. Save in psd, jpeg, or tiff format (others may work, but I haven’t checked them all.)

In Illustrator, open a new document and use File> Place to get the pixel artwork in there. If for some reason that doesn’t work, use Select All, then Copy (in Photoshop) and Paste into Illustrator.

Use the black arrow tool to select the artwork if it isn’t already. Go to Object> Live Trace > Options and a dialog box will open.

Put a check in the Preview box (on the right side in CS4, anyway). Tweak the various controls while looking at the image, which will update as you change the settings. Here are the settings I used:

To look at the original artwork again for comparison, uncheck the Preview box, then check it again if you want to make more adjustments.

Note that the Ignore White box is checked. This way you don't get all the white paper turned into shapes, which are a royal pain to get rid of.

Once you get the settings the way you want them, you can save as a Preset to use it every time, if desired. Even so, you might have to tweak the settings for each drawing.

Click on Trace and dialog box will close. Go to Object> Expand and the artwork is now all converted to paths. If desired, you can adjust the lines with the various tools in Illustrator.

By default, the black lines are all Grouped so when you select a part with the black arrow, the whole thing is selected.

Copy and Paste into Photoshop. Select Paste as Pixels then hit Return to complete the Paste. If desired, add color in Photoshop.

The image shows a detail of the converted artwork, with yellow behind it so you can see the white is gone. It doesn’t give an exact copy of the original line work, but it looks pretty good, and is much, much faster than trying to draw similar artwork from scratch in Illustrator.

Hope this makes sense, let me know if you have any questions. Happy Live Tracing!

Book reviews: art quilts, bead embroidery, making glass beads

2011-03-18T13:10:00.002-04:00

It’s long past time to catch up on some book reviews, so without further ado:

Twelve by twelve is a beautifully designed book that arose from a challenge group of a dozen artists who created one 12" X 12" art quilt every two months over a two year period (Thanks to Gerrie Congdon for straightening me out on the time factor). The themes varied from Water to Shelter to Mathematics.

There are comments from each artist, detailed photographs, works in progress, studios to see, discussions of techniques, and much more in this 176-page book. As you can see by the cover image, some of the quilts have non-objective imagery, many are abstract, some are more realistic.

I’ve made a few quilts this size for the Quilting Arts calendar contests and for auctions to benefit SAQA and it is a good size to work with. However, making the commitment to creating so many so consistently is way beyond me... hats off to these artists for getting it done!

My only complaint about Sherry Serafini’s Sensational Bead Embroidery is that the cover image doesn’t begin to do justice to this artist’s glorious work. It's an odd view of a bracelet and all that darkness looks gloomy, while her beaded pieces are a delight to the eye. Check out her web site to get an idea. And don't miss her handbags, they are amazing.

I’ve been a fan of Sherry’s (along with a zillion other beaders) for years, mostly from seeing her work in Bead & Button magazine. Have only attempted some small pieces, but love the technique. It allows you to turn humble seed beads along with a few stones, jewels, or Scrabble tiles into gorgeous one-of-a-kind colorful, textured jewelry.

There are 25 projects in this book with clear directions and supply lists and good closeups of the beaded earrings, brooches, rings, bracelets, and necklaces that show the details. There are projects for all levels of experience.

Creating Glass Beads by Jeri L. Warhaftig is designed as an intermediate level workshop, so beginners should probably start elsewhere. However, the tools and materials for the craft are well covered. Each “session” takes the reader through the process of making a project such as a pendant with gold leaf, an eye bead, and an intriguing combo of glass and silver “clay.” At the end of each session are numerous examples made by students plus a gallery of other professional artists’ beads made with similar techniques.

Making glass beads is a craft I admire but have avoided due to the use of actual *fire*...but if I ever dare to try it this book will be an excellent guide to exploring different techniques. After learning the basics from a very patient teacher, first.

It’s been fun being on Lark Crafts reviewer list, they publish some very inspiring books!

What is my 2012 calendar animal, you ask?

2011-02-15T12:02:00.002-05:00

My entry was accepted into the 2012 Quilting Arts calendar, so WOOHOO! There has been a hilarious debate on my Facebook page about what animal it is based on only a section of the face. It’s been a good example of the power of the human mind to extrapolate on available information. Guesses for the image shown at left have ranged from lion to bloodhound to monkey to horse to bunny to goat to llama to emu to owl, and even pig or elephant! Then there was prairie dog, but that was a joke (I think!)

The closest guess (without hints) was wolf. But it’s not a wolf.

Without any further ado, here is Cautious:

It’s an animal that I’ve never seen before in person, but one day this little gray fox was investigating our bird-feeding station, and by sheer chance I happened to look out the window. The fox’s coat was beautifully glossy, and it had a full, bushy tail. The neck and ears were reddish, the rest was silvery gray. After grabbing my camera and snapping a few photos, I tapped on the glass and got this view. One of the fun characteristics I found out while doing research about gray foxes (but not red foxes) is that they like to climb trees!

Here is my post about making this artwork. And this Wikipedia page has some nice photos of gray foxes and more info.

2012 Calendar

2011-01-21T15:35:00.001-05:00

Woohoo, I'm happy to say that my entry has made it to the finalist stage. Showed my critter’s right eye last time, so here’s the left. Guess I’d better sew that sleeve on now...

Update February 14: It’s in the calendar...so yay!

Watercolor pencils on fabric

2011-01-08T10:28:00.002-05:00

My first completed project this year is for the 2012 Quilting Arts Calendar... might as well try for three years in a row! The theme is Feeling Pet-ty, in other words animals, a lifelong favorite subject of mine. The previous entries had fairly bright colors but the subject this time called for a much more subdued palette. I had not used watercolor pencils on fabric before, but because they are transparent and the idea was to allow the patterning on the fabric to show through, wc pencils had potential.

First, a little organizing was in order. These pencils date from a book project eons ago and were scattered about in various nooks and crannies of my studio. After corraling them into a semblance of order, a coloring chart became essential because of the nature of wc pencils. It’s very hard to tell just looking at the pencil what color it really is.

As you can see on the left, the colors change drastically when water is added.

Because I was not going to use plain white fabric, the pencils would be interacting with the underlying color and/or pattern. The fabric needed to represent the fur of my critter, without getting literal, necessarily. Below are the four contenders:

The one on the left was a possibility, the next one was too spotty, the next one too contrasty... the one on the right with it’s pattern of leafy, woodsy imagery seemed most promising. So, I scribbled on some colors (below) and brushed over them over with water. So good so far, time to jump right in.

The sketch was done in Photoshop, won’t get into the details of that now. Once it was printed out, I redrew it onto tracing paper. Someone had asked me awhile ago about my unusual method of transferring sketches, so here are some photos. The tracing paper sketch is on top, and I just draw directly on the fabric underneath. The pencil point is visible through the tracing paper.

I roll back the tracing paper often to see how it’s looking.

Also, it’s easy to see through the tracing paper where the pencil is because it is darker.

This method isn’t suitable in every situation, but because I was using a dark wc pencil and a thick line, it worked fine. Why not use transfer paper such as Saral? I do on many occasions, but this works just as well for me and there are no worries about a Saral line ending up in the wrong place and being tough to remove. How about a light box? That’s a good option if the base material is see-through enough. But, if you’re transferring a sketch to primed canvas (for example), a light box won’t work.

Below is the colored line before and after being washed over with water. Quite a difference! You can always add additional layers of the pencil, if needed, after the fabric is dry. Or, you can use the pencil on wet fabric, which really lays down pigment but may be a tad less controlled. By the way, in this case the amount of water being added is just sufficient to melt the wc pencil, not saturate the surrounding area.

How about setting the wc pencil? I tried ironing it, which didn't seem to do anything much. A wet tissue dabbed onto the pencil work is an easy test of whether the pigment is set or not. Painting on thinned acrylic gel, textile medium, or Jacquard colorless extender (tutorial with wax pencils here) probably would have worked but since quite a bit of the image was involved, there was too much territory to cover. Instead, it was sprayed with two coats of Claybord matte fixative. This is the main fixative I use, because it has a relatively low odor that dissipates quickly. As you can see from the eye detail at the top of this post, there was another whole layer of stitching to add, so I didn’t want pigment from the pencils to get all over the threads or have to keep smelling a noxious odor. The other advantage is that is doesn’t stiffen the fabric much, if at all.

The watercolor pencils gave me the soft look I wanted, so that was the main thing. Wondering what this animal is? If it doesn’t get into the calendar, I’ll reveal all in a couple of months. If it does get in, I’ll post more about this project closer to the calendar’s release date.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Inspired Ideas: The Christmas Issue

2010-12-01T09:21:00.000-05:00

Inspired Ideas is an online ezine I just found out about via Elizabeth Dulemba’s blog. It has 168 pages plus an appendix... click here to check it out:

It’s full of creative and unusual craft projects such as a Christmas village made of recycled cereal boxes, a yarn ball wreath, cookie cutter jewelry designed by a gallery of crafters, artists, and bloggers including Mary Engelbreit. The brainchild of Amy Powers, it is an impressive example of innovative publishing... and it’s free!

Happy browsing!

Whimsical bird in progress

2010-11-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted about the LIQ project but never fear, progress is being made ever so slowwwwly. Above is the rough sketch of the bird drawn in Photoshop for size and placement in the larger scene... the plan is to refine her when the bird is actually constructed. Sometimes I make a very precise sketch but in this case it seemed reasonable to wing it (pun intended.)

My original theory was that the bird would be some shade of blue with a red belly, but a dotted violet, orange paisley, and black on black fabrics ended up working out best. You have to keep an open mind! I first tried matching orange and violet points on the wings and tail, but didn’t quite look right.

The striped fabric seen above right had the violet and orange in it plus some other colors that added interest. For the legs (below), I wrapped gold ribbon around black rickrack. The feet are made of interfacing painted with gold metallic acrylic paint. This photo shows more of a bronze color, but the gold ended up working better.

After gluing on the points, I machine embroidered the wings and tail. They are attached at their bases, but left free on the tips to give more dimension. I had sewn the body to the quilted background with a machine zigzag stitch, then remembered there was supposed to be a “swish” behind the bird...oops!

So I ripped out part of the stitching, put the light blue swish under the body, then restitched it. Some simple free-motion-quilting was done on the body, a beak and bead eyeball was added, plus some beads along her belly.

She’s carrying a piece of fabric back to her nest, in case anyone is wondering.

Home at last

2010-10-26T11:36:00.001-04:00

Here is how A Free Spirit (on the right) looks in his new home in New Zealand:

Love the two images together...many thanks to Julia Arden for sending this photo!

The previous posts about how this mini-quilt was made are here and here.

Pine in progress

2010-10-13T11:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been wanting to depict this pine tree on our street for a long time, so it’s nice to finally get going on it. The photo is a nice start but I’m going to leave out the distracting trees behind it and tweak the colors.

Here is the sketch on tracing paper, not too detailed but gets the idea across:

I started with a plain piece of some generic white cotton fabric, then globbed a lot of acrylic paint onto a silicone-treated sheet, one of the ones made for ironing appliqué. I folded over the sheet a few times, added more paint, etc. then laid the white fabric on it and pressed down.

This is interesting, but is too dark and contrasty, so the next step (after letting it dry thoroughly) was to brush over some lighter, semi-opaque paint. I also added some metallic copper paint. This is more like it:

Here is a close-up of the painted background:

Acrylic gel was used to adhere the fabric to a stretched canvas, then it was allowed to dry. (Note: if I was going to go in a more quilty direction, I would skip that step.) Next I transferred the sketch by using my weird method of taping the sketch over the canvas and drawing underneath it onto the canvas with a watercolor pencil. Next, the outlines of the tree were painted on:

I plan to paint in some color then use a few if the collage papers shown in this post to complete the tree. But, we’ll see what actually happens!

Tag Galaxy... a fabulous way to find images

2010-09-30T10:24:00.001-04:00

Do you need reference photos and/or inspiration? The Tag Galaxy image search system has been around for a year or two, but I just heard about it. You enter a tag (i.e. search term) such as quilts and a solar system appears:

The main term quilt is on the Sun, while related terms such as fabric, sewing, and patchwork orbit around it. When you click on the Sun, images start flying in from all sides:

The images are photographs coming from Flicker that have been tagged with the word quilt, apparently. Once they have arranged themselves into a sphere...

you can rotate it up, down, and around to see the images on all sides. If you want to zoom in on one photo, just click on it...

...and it enlarges. The web site is animated with Flash, so this post gives just a hint of how cool it is. Try it and be mesmerized!

I almost forgot to mention where I heard about this, on the Teach Science and Math blog...many thanks to David Wetzel. There are several other image search engines mentioned in his post, so you may want to check those out, too.

SAQA auction starts today (Monday) at 2 p.m.!

2010-09-20T13:41:00.000-04:00

Just a quick reminder that the Studio Art Quilt Associates benefit auction starts today. My wolf quilt is on the first page, click here to see thumbnails of the available artwork. There is a link on that page to get to the bidding form. Everything is $750 today, then the price is reduced each day until Friday, when everything costs $75.

Happy browsing and (perhaps) bidding, everyone!

Great source for vintage graphics

2010-09-16T19:44:00.000-04:00

I was looking for an image of a doily, and stumbled over The Graphics Fairy blog. If you need pre-1923 images, here are thousands of copyright-free engravings, playing cards, postcards, advertisements, etc. It’s well-organized with categories, plus a search box. Speaking of ads, there are plenty, but it’s worth it for these goodies.

Check out this wonderfully bizzarre pair of scissors:

Enjoy!

Goodies... in the mail and made in the studio

2010-09-07T13:38:00.000-04:00

One of the perks of being accepted into the Quilting Arts calendar is that they send you stuff. Last year, they gave a gift certificate to be used in the Interweave store, which made for some happy online browsing (and buying!) This year, along with the printed calendars came this pile of DVDs, two magazines, some Angelina fiber, a fat quarter, some batting, and what appears to be a very nice book about surface design on fabric, Art Cloth by Jane Dunnewold.

At first I was thinking I’d rather have made the choices, but though I haven’t looked at anything other than the mags yet, these all look great to me. When I get a chance to read/watch/use these goodies, I’ll pass along my 2¢ worth of opinion. The Cloth Paper Scissors Studios issue is very nice, full of inspirational photos of fab studios. If anyone wants to buy the 2011 “Flavor of the Month” Quilting Arts Calendar or any of these other goodies, click here.

What is that image at the top of this post, you may be wondering? It’s a close-up of the paper in the bottom row, second from the left (below). In a couple of different sessions, I cranked out loads of collage papers with the help of my artist friend Joyce and my 2 nieces. These were plain white cardstock, layered with regular and metallic acrylic paint and iridescent/metallic watercolors (from Daniel Smith.) Hmmm...except the one on the top right, which was painted on a restaurant napkin that was similar to interfacing, more substantial than the usual paper napkin.

The paper on the lower right was scribbled on with crayons, then painted with black paint, others were pressed together, stamped on, etc. It’s such fun to splash away without worrying about anything. One thing to remember when building up a stash of papers is to make plenty of light toned papers for contrast, and not just stick to the bright and dramatic colors. The plan is to use these in some upcoming collage work, along the line of these previous pieces. I also want to try these techniques on fabric, just am pressed for time at the moment.

Have a creative week!

Free Spirit will be auctioned for SAQA

2010-09-01T09:41:00.000-04:00

Do you remember this wolf? I decided to donate him to Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) for their annual auction to benefit the group’s activities to increase awareness of art quilting. Almost 300 quilts are available, so there’s something for everyone. It starts on Monday, September 20, and is a reverse auction where the prices decrease every day until the works are sold. More details about how the auction works can be found here.

A large image of Free Spirit can be seen here. Two previous posts that show how he was made can be found here and here.

Have fun looking at all the artwork... it’s amazing to see what artists are doing with fabric, thread, and whatever else they can stitch on. : )

Painting faux granite

2010-08-29T21:58:00.000-04:00

Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? The photos below should make it clear...feast your eyes upon the hideous green formica countertop that we lived with for seven long years. Before anyone gets too excited about the prospect of transforming laminate countertops, let me make it clear that we ripped out that green monstrosity.

However, note the strange bulge behind this backsplash, and the feeble attempt to cover up the top of it with a random strip of green trim. Apparently the first builder made a half-wall, then later someone added the rest of the wall but since the lower part was not plumb, they decided to fudge it this way, leaving a bizarre wedge of drywall behind the backsplash. Basically, the wall is a mess and a professional contractor friend of ours had never seen anything quite like it.

Anyway, after our gorgeous shivakashi granite counters were installed, I had to figure out how to cover up this little glitch. First I used drywall compound to fill in the gap to make it as level as possible with the granite. You can really see how off kilter the wall is here, because the granite top is actually level to the floor while the green monster wasn’t.

The drywall compound was sealed with latex paint. Then the fun began. I used Golden OPEN acrylics to paint with because they don’t dry nearly as quickly as regular acrylics, which leaves more time for blending. I mostly used the stiff stencil brush on the left because I didn’t need fussy details, just needed to smear some paint around.

I applied a base coat of sort of a pinkish gray.

Next came some patches of the various colors from the granite. These acrylics dry a little darker, but don’t shift as much as regular acrylics. If you click on the photos, you can really see what’s going on. It doesn’t matter if the colors aren’t exactly right at first, they’ll be blended into each other.

The darker streaks that follow the flow of the granite really make it happen. The painted area isn't as smooth as the granite, of course, but I put some glossy sealer over it and it's very hard to tell it isn’t the real thing with a casual glance. My husband was flabbergasted at how well this turned out...so was I, frankly. I asked several people who came over to see if they could spot anything that looked faux painted to match something else, and no one could figure out what it was.

Here’s the other end. The wall wasn’t as crooked, but there was still about 3/8" that had to be faked. The actual width of the granite is the same on both the backsplash and the counter, three centimeters, I think.

In case anyone is wondering about the gap along the top edge, well there was no way I was going to paint all that, plus it would get too much wear to hold up over the long term. We’re still looking for the right trim piece of tile to cover it up, or possible wood molding. And we still have the lighting, some cabinets, and a few other things to do. No worries, I have my new faucet, undermount sink, and much lighter, glam countertops, so who cares about a few little details?

Hope you enjoyed this little detour from my usual artistic pursuits. You just never know when mixing some colors may come in handy!

Uploading your custom background image in Blogger

2010-08-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

It’s a little tricky but worth the effort to use your own image to give your blog a unique identity, rather than the prefab ones anyone can use. I created a new blog for my children’s books yesterday, and wanted to use them for the background image.

First you need to prepare an image. Mine is a photo of a stack of my books, laid as horizontal as possible so there won't be awkward visual jags when the image is “tiling,” that is, when the image repeats horizontally and vertically to fill the space. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can create a seamless image in Photoshop using the Offset filter (here is an online tutorial). The image is supposed to be less than 200K...more details about size are on the Use Your Own Photo etc. article linked below. Anyway, here’s the book stack image:

The template is Ethereal, with a 3-column layout as shown. (Not all templates have a background image.)

I customized most of the colors, type, etc. in the new Template Designer, which is found under the Design tab. The Template Designer is great, it gives you a preview of your changes as you test them.

However, if you click on Background in the Template Designer, there is no option to upload your own image, you can only choose from what is there. The answer is to go to Blogger in Draft to do it rather than the usual Blogger Dashboard. It looks the same, except there are a few additional options. Here are the steps:
Make sure you’re “signed in” to your Blogger Account and are in Blogger in Draft.
Click on Design, then on the Template Designer (right under the Design tab.)
Click on Background (upper left), then click ON the Image box itself.
You should see a button for Upload Image, so go ahead and upload your image.
Click Done, then choose Tile and check Scroll with page.
Click on the orange Apply to Blog button on upper right.
A yellow alert that says Template Applied should flash, then it will go away.
Click Back to Blogger (upper right) and your image should be on your blog.

If not try again, or check the article Use Your Own Photo for Your Blog’s Background and the Comments for clues, .

To see the actual blog we’re talking about, click here.

Good luck!

New blog for my books

2010-08-25T17:47:00.001-04:00

For a number of reasons I’ve decided to set up a separate blog for my children’s books. I’ll still talk about creating the illustrations on this studio blog from time to time, but the books blog will have activities for kids, publishing info, lesson plans, and that kind of thing. A little more focus is always a good thing, doncha know.
I wanted to mention a couple of things about designing the new blog...here is a screenshot:

I used a template called Ethereal which is quite a bit wider and has three columns, (I think there were several options.) Blogger has a Template Designer feature that is apparently pretty new that makes it very easy to get the colors, type, and so on the way you want them.

The tricky thing was to change the background image. I took a photo of a stack of my books and after struggling quite a while got it to show up. You have to use “blogger in draft” to get your own image in there, and it’s very tricky to do... this article sort of tells you how, but not clearly enough. I couldn’t tell you exactly how I did it, but after trying several times the Upload button appeared and after that I selected “tile” and it worked.

So, check it out and let me know what you think! Here is the link, or click on the button on the right.

My Teacher Is a Dinosaur free coloring page

2010-08-23T19:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I received copies of my fall picture book and they look great. The full title is My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts. It takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the history of life on Earth starting 4 1/2 billion years ago... not bad for only 48 pages, right? For more info including reviews, please check out this page.

These previous blog posts tell a little about the behind-the-scenes activity. I also wrote about doing the research for this book on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) here and here. Last but not least, here is my I.N.K. post about how to write jokes and riddles.

I haven’t forgotten about the coloring page... here it is!

Click on the image to enlarge it then print it out with a horizontal orientation and get out your crayons. (Did you know there is a Crayola set with 96 colors!?!) Or drag it off the web page to your desktop. Feel free to send it to any kids you know that love dinosaurs. If anyone sends me a photo of a colored-in page, I’ll post it here. Or, post it on my author page on Facebook!

Thanks, y’all!

The 2011 Quilting Arts calendar is now available

2010-08-20T06:00:00.013-04:00

My quilted artwork made it (again!) into next year’s calendar which can be ordered from Interweave. Below are teensy images of all the winning artwork for the 2011 theme, “Flavor of the Month":

Mine is on the left in the 2nd row down, the garden veggies floating on a light background. Not sure which month it represents, seems to be April. You can see a much bigger image here. If anyone would like more info, here are the previous posts about my calendar entries.

Next year the theme will be “Feeling Pet-ty,” which will feature one of my favorite subjects, animals. The info about it is on page 70 of the August/September issue of Quilting Arts. I suspect there will be a lot of competition for this one and the entry date is earlier this year, January 7, 2011. Guess I’d better get busy!

My apple collage is finished... yay!

2010-08-18T19:57:00.000-04:00

I’ve been busy finishing up the apple from the workshop (see previous post.) My friend Joyce and I took a day to paint a bunch of papers, including some disintegrating sheet music. It’s great fun to splash paint, rubber stamps, metallic paints, etc. on papers without the usual worries (is it the right color/shape/value?)

This photo doesn’t seem to show all the colors... oh well. Without further ado, here it is:

I was a little worried about how to make the transition from the greens to the reds, so I painted some papers with blue-green lightly brushed over red, then used them along the color shift. It helped to connect those disparate colors into one form, don’t you think? Here it is in black and white:

I've been reorganizing my studio to accommodate the collage papers so it's easier to find them. Previously they were in file folders, but now they’re in those plastic drawers from the office supply store in spectrum order. Hope this works, I can’t have layers of painted papers added into my usual piles in the studio!

An apple today for artists at play

2010-07-31T08:09:00.000-04:00

Things have been very hectic around here because we’re replacing our kitchen countertops, which naturally leads to many other related projects such as changing the lighting, refinishing the sides of the island, cutting precise miters on trim molding, and on and on. It might be easier to just tear the house down and start over. But the art must go on, right?

Since I’ve been doing quite a bit of collage lately, it seemed like it would be fun to take a mini-workshop with a local Orlando area artist, Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson. She calls her work paper paintings, an apt description. Fellow artist and friend Joyce Shelton and I will be there today for four hours, tearing and pasting away. Since time is limited, we have prepared our underpainted panels ahead of time and are bringing our painted collage papers along. The subject: an apple. Below is a cropped photo taken at a farmer’s market with nice greens and reds to play off of each other.

We’re working on a 12" X 12" wooden panel primed with clear gesso. The idea is to perhaps allow some of the wood grain to show through in the final image. I sketched the composition onto tracing paper, then taped it along the top edge of the panel. I don't really transfer the sketch directly, but sort of redraw the image underneath the tracing paper, using it as a guide.

I painted over the lines with a gold metallic acrylic then started splashing on color with Golden OPEN acrylics. They’re nice to work with because they don’t dry as quickly as regular acrylics which allows time for blending. The colors are intensified a little or a lot.

It has proved invaluable to take photos along the way with my little point-and-shoot Sony in black and white to see how the values are working (or not!)

Here is the completed underpainting which has a lot of nice colors already. I don’t expect to finish it at the workshop, but it’s easy to add more collage and/or paint later. As you can see, I couldn’t seem to stop brushing on paint which would’ve allowed the wood panel to show through...oh well!

One glitch that I can see already is that the apple in the lower left is too large compared to the others, so that’ll have to be tweaked. No worries, it’ll take just a stroke of paint or a shred of paper. Wish me luck!

Still looking into the treetops

2010-07-09T15:25:00.001-04:00

Here is another experiment with the oak branches as a subject using “hard” collage, as opposed to soft quilting techniques...there are so many possible options it’s pretty amazing. Below is the reference photo, taken on Big Talbot Island in north Florida:

The spiraling branches are what caught my eye in the park and inspired this piece. The large broken off branch in the lower right didn’t seem to add anything, so I left it out of the composition.

I’m not crazy about the texture of canvas, so some torn pieces of handmade paper were collaged onto the bare canvas to cover some of it. I sketched in the branches using watercolor pencils and painted in the basic structure with Golden OPEN acrylics. They’re nice to work with because they don’t dry on the palette/canvas as quickly as regular acrylics.

Blues, greens, and turquoises were painted on fairly quickly, just to cover up the white ground, primarily. Fortunately, I was liking it already, always a huge relief. Many, many pieces of torn paper and words ripped out of a defunct old book were added. The word “cathedral” in all caps (seen at the center bottom) inspired the name of this piece.

The words form a poem that can change, depending on the order in which you read them...

Cathedral

quiet woodlands

branches spreading to the sky

ageless strength

peace and restful calm

priceless beauty

cathedral

Take two on the oak branches

2010-06-26T16:45:00.000-04:00

Actually this is the third painting/collage I’ve done of this subject, but this one is based on the same photograph (cropped down) as this first version so it seems like #2, even if it isn’t really. It’s engrossing to test out various ways to depict these trees. While not 100% satisfied yet, I don’t hate these tryouts, which is a refreshing experience. Often In the past when painting, my reaction after a few hours of labor has been a strong desire to throw the canvas in a nice hot bonfire.

This version is less stylized than the first one and incorporates more paper than fabric in the collage part. Also, it has something ripped out of an old National Geographic. It’s current title is Splendorous, based on one of the torn-out words. I can’t recall seeing that word in print before, love it. Who knew how fun it would be to add some text to the image? Here’s a detail shot:

So here’s the question, dear readers... Is it finished? The in-process photo below shows the Spanish moss I was originally thinking of adding.

The clumps of moss aren’t all in the exact spots where they would go, but hopefully this gives you an idea. Yes, no, doesn’t matter? Thanks for any opinions!

Critter sighting

2010-06-20T11:12:00.000-04:00

Hmmm, what is that in the backyard? A pushmi-pullyu?

Nope, just adorable twin fawns. They wandered around nibbling here and there (please, help yourself to the grape vines, guys!) I never did see a doe, although a buck with velvet-encased antlers ate his way along the side of the house. The twins settled down near the pond as twilight came. I assume later they went into a more hidden spot, but didn’t want to disturb them by shining a flashlight around, you know?

Oddly, the deer like to eat citrus tree leaves, so we hang bars of soap in the branches which sort of discourages them. They keep out of sight when anyone is outside but sometimes when we walk around the yard, there’s a big crash in the palmettos when we’ve spooked one. It would be fun to use them in some artwork, wouldn’t it?

Branching out

2010-06-12T15:34:00.000-04:00

Sorry, couldn’t resist! My husband Andy and I recently took a little trip to visit several Florida state parks, including Big and Little Talbot Islands. I shot quite a few photos looking up into tree canopies, mostly oak and pine trees. The twisting branches of live oaks are amazing, like a bonsai that just kept growing.

The shot above is the cropped photo that I used as the basis for the artwork. While I’ve worked mostly in soft fiber art mode in recent years, I wanted to try “hard” collage using acrylics for this piece.

First I sketched the image onto a 12" X 12" hardboard (an Ampersand pastel panel that was hanging around), then painted the basic shapes with black, lavender, and white. After drying, it was time to add...

...some pieces of fabric from my stash. I set up the easel to lay flat so quite a few pieces could be laid out before being stuck down. The adhesive is Clear Tar Gel gloss by Golden, but other reasonably thick gels also work.

Hmmm... a problem became evident about midway through. I take photos along the way, which has become vital to my process. For some reason I can see things in the little display of my camera that are not apparent in the artwork right in front of me! The lavender was too similar in value to the green leaves, which made the image lack contrast. So, I painted over most of the lavender with white acrylic, though it still shows through.

More fabric pieces were added plus some tiny bits of painted papers. Though perhaps a few things here and there could be changed next time around, I like how it turned out.

This is becoming a bit of a roll, because the wolf from a couple of weeks ago was also satisfactory. While that may not sound overly enthusiastic, if I am not happy with artwork-in-progress my reaction is along the lines of YUCK, THIS IS AWFUL!!!! Having created over the years more than a few pieces of artwork that “went ugly” and couldn’t be rescued, this is a nice change!

Reading Rockets 2010 Big Summer Read

2010-06-11T13:21:00.000-04:00

How nice to find out that The Shocking Truth about Energy is on the list for 6-9 year olds recommended by Reading Rockets. The entire list of about 20 titles is here online and there’s a PDF if you’d like to print out the list to take to the bookstore.

Other titles on the list include:

Face to Face with Manatees by Brian Skerry
She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader, by J. G. Annino
Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer

The Reading Rockets web site is full of excellent resources to help encourage kids to read.

I created an e-card for them a few years ago, which can be found on this page along with several more by various illustrators such as Robert Sabuda, Marc Brown, and Betsy Lewin. The idea is to send them to your favorite little reader to give them a little extra motivation throughout the year.

So, here’s to happy reading, all summer long!

Ta-dah...the finished wolf

2010-05-28T06:00:00.061-04:00

After glue-basting the patches down and cutting out the wolf, I tried some possible background fabrics. The idea was to vaguely suggest a landscape while keeping it very simple. I considered introducing some subdued greens, but they looked hideous, so forget that!

The above colors were pretty good, but overall it was too blah. The fabrics below were almost what the artist ordered, but the gray “mountain range” seemed too similar to the wolf’s underlying fur color. I also fixed his mouth...above it looks like he has an overbite and his lower jaw was too rigid, so below it’s a tad more wrinkled.

So, after some free-motion machine stitching and a fabric binding, here’s how he turned out:

I’m pretty happy with this piece, all things considered. There were some glitches with the eye... next time I’ll probably paint the entire eye instead of fooling with teensy pieces of fabric. I’m not crazy about this “typical” binding and need to come up with a more interesting option. Maybe painting a more irregular “frame” that is rigid because of the acrylic paint and stitching it on would do the trick. (Will have to try that idea, probably doesn’t make too much sense!)

Last but not least, any ideas for a title? Other than Ta-dah, that is.

Wild times in the studio

2010-05-26T18:36:00.000-04:00

Recently, I was working on a writing project that involved describing how it feels to be a wolf, so that seems to be what inspired this project. After working out a sketch of a profile of canis lupus, I transferred it to a grayish blue fabric with some texture. The lines are painted with black gesso to get a matte finish. The photo below makes the gray look neutral, but it’s fairly blue as seen above.

The fabric is pinned to 1/2 inch thick foam core, by the way. It makes a wonderful portable work surface that can be put on an easel, laid flat, pinned up on the design wall, whatever. I put a paper cutout around the silhouette of the wolf because the plan was for the background to be a light value. Then I started pinning on patches of fabric in somewhat realistic, but intensified colors.

Some of these fabrics had to be switched out later, but the only way to know is to try them out. One of the big questions was how much of the line work to cover up vs. cutting the patches so that it showed. I tried not to get too hung up on it. The first black fabric I tried was too busy, but this one has just a suggestion of dark gray swishes, which worked well.

The finished piece will be in my next post, hope you like him so far.

I'm a calendar girl (again!)

2010-05-10T18:40:00.000-04:00

Just heard that my entry for the Quilting Arts 2011 calendar won... yahoo! Here are all the winning entries. Below is a detail from Garden Fresh, not sure which month it will be yet.

It’s been fun to enter this contest. The first time I tried, my entry Studio View didn’t get anywhere, but it came in handy as the header for my blog. I can see now why it probably didn’t get in. It had some nice parts, such as the cat or this squirrel:

But overall, it‘s a little murky, not enough contrast. For example, the red cardinal disappears into the rust-colored “pine needles.”

And what is that green blob between the squirrel and the birdhouse feeder?

My spring book: The Shocking Truth about Energy

2010-04-29T08:33:00.000-04:00

With a bolt of lightning named Erg and a gaggle of appliances, toys, and gadgets, get ready to find out about energy! Explore how electricity is generated plus sources of power from fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, water, solar, geothermal, and biofuels. For a longer post about it, please check out this post on the I.N.K. blog. And here is the book’s page on my web site.

Some good reviews have come in already, which is always a plus!
Kirkus:

Erg, a cartoon energy-bolt, narrates this electrifying introduction to the basics of energy. A spread is devoted to each of the many types of energy, how they are harnessed, their uses and their pros and cons: Fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, water, geothermal and plant-based energy are all discussed. Leedy presents difficult concepts in a way that even younger readers can understand, encapsulating the key essentials and leaving the complex details for older readers’ texts. Additional pages explain the generation of electricity, address the problem of global warming and educate readers about how they can help save energy. Throughout, the watercolor-and-digital artwork cleverly illustrates the concepts presented in the text with cartoons, diagrams and sketches. The author’s whimsical anthropomorphized electrical outlets and devices keep readers’ attention and provide further information. Backmatter includes more energy facts and ways to save energy as well as additional cons against fossil-fuel usage. What Anne Rockwell and Paul Meisel’s What’s So Bad About Gasoline? (2009) did for fossil fuels, this book does for energy as a whole. (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Booklist:

An imaginary bolt of pure energy appropriately named Erg introduces energy basics: its varied forms, the principle that it can be changed but not destroyed, how we get and use the power of fossil fuels, good and bad news about old and new power sources, and the importance of conserving energy to save the earth. The author begins with the role of food in human bodies, a sure way to draw young readers in. The exercise of imagining human muscles pushing a car easily explains our use of other power sources. Leedy’s experience selecting facts that are most relevant and engaging for young readers is evident, and the information is eminently digestible. The design moves from energetic to near-frenetic. Her brightly colored mixed-media illustrations are filled with animated appliances, bursts of information, and decorated fonts. Three final pages of sensible suggestions for energy saving are followed by three more pages of helpful supplemental information and suggested Web sites, including a source for science fair projects.

— Kathleen Isaacs

Read my lips...the UCF book festival was excellent!

2010-04-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

Especially considering it was their first year, everyone involved in presenting the 2010 UCF Book Festival deserves a big round of applause. From the army of student volunteers that helped out all day to the informative full-color program to the yummy sandwiches in the author waiting area, everything was well-conceived and executed with no glitches that I was aware of. There was a teensy problem with the sound system that produced some unusual reverberations, but that seemed to be taken care of quickly.

Held in the UCF Arena, there were over 50 authors that spoke and signed their books, free book appraisals, many activities for children, books galore from Scholastic, Barnes & Noble, and several smaller outfits, and if you looked closely, even an astronaut wandering around. Several characters from Star Wars were also in attendance. It was particularly funny to see Darth Vader posing for a photograph with a cute baby girl dressed in pink.

My brother Robert’s double booth looked wonderful and he was pleased with sales at the show. Leedy’s Books is located near Fashion Square Mall in Orlando and carries used books (primarily nonfiction) and also my new children’s books, naturally. We made a couple of suggestions in the exhibitor survey, the main one being that 2 days would be even better for next year’s festival. We heard that it was definitely under consideration, so keep your fingers crossed!

This was one of those events that made you think, “Why hasn’t this been done before?” Well, now it has been and promises to be even better in the future.

UCF Book Festival is this Saturday!

2010-04-14T09:48:00.000-04:00

The University of Central Florida will hold their inaugural book festival this coming Saturday April the 17th, and it looks like they’ve done an excellent job pulling it together. Here is the link to the festival’s home page. Admission and parking are free with events running from 8:45 until 5:30. I will be on the author panel Adventures in Children’s Books from 10:30–11:20 in Cypress B (The Venue). The author forum schedule is here.

I’ll be signing Missing Math and The Shocking Truth about Energy afterwards in the exhibit hall. My brother Robert will have a booth for his bookstore, Leedy’s Books, and has most of my other titles.

If you like Carl Hiaasen (columnist and author of Hoot, plus many more titles), he’ll be speaking from 9:15–10:00, so get going early and come on down!

Scanning turtles

2010-04-09T11:34:00.000-04:00

In the early ‘90s I wrote and illustrated a book about sea turtles, entitled Tracks in the Sand. It was named an Outstanding Science Trade Book by the National Science Teachers Association and many people have told me they really loved the artwork. It’s been out of print for awhile, but with the ebook technologies now coming online, I’ve been thinking it might be a candidate for reissue in digital form.

With that in mind, and because three framed pieces are due to go into an exhibition, I’ve been disassembling the frames and scanning the spreads. The page just fits into my scanner... since it’s for a digital version, there is no need for bleed, I’m assuming.

This little guy is under the sand in the nesting chamber breaking out of his shell... he looks a tad grumpy at the moment.

The artwork was rendered using Caran d'Ache Neocolor ll aquarelle crayons and is scanning nicely. I am having to piece the pages together in Photoshop, which isn’t too difficult, fortunately. Not sure at this point if the artwork will need to be in single page or spread form, but I’ll figure that out later.

One issue is that the paper is somewhat wrinkled towards the edges in places, so that is going to have to be dealt with a Screen or Hard Light layer to counter the shading.

Color improvisations in Photoshop

2010-04-06T20:47:00.000-04:00

I like to start with reality then alter it a little or a lot. In digging through my Photoshop how-to books, it seems that I’ve neglected some fun ways to play around with color. This post on Gloria Hansen‘s blog has a photo of boats that she altered that really appeals to me (scroll all the way to the bottom to see her results.)

My hubby Andy and I have been hiking quite a bit lately, enjoying the lovely spring weather and fresh green leaves. Though I shoot quite a few photos, somehow they don't capture the vision in my mind’s eye. This typical image was taken on the oak hammock trail at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I like the shape of the twisty oaks, but the color is pretty ho-hum. Photoshop to the rescue!

You may be interested to know how this was done... it’s impossible to give a step-by-step formula because each image has its own issues. Basically I added a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer to every image, then tweaked individual colors if needed. A filter was run on a copy of the image (it’s always nice to have the original underneath to refer to), either Paint Daubs or Palette Knife. Or try the Surface Blur or Smart Blur.

All of these have a Curves Adjustment Layer and possibly a Channel Mixer and/or Brightness/Contrast, too. Since they're Adjustment Layers, you can continue to tweak them until you’re happy.

You also can combine the best of two Layers by masking out part of one. It sounds harder than it is once you’ve memorized that little procedure.

Here are a couple more:

Whether I’ll use these images as inspiration to throw some paint and/or fabric around is hard to say...I definitely find them much more compelling this way.

Measuring Penny in top 100 nonfiction books

2010-03-31T17:00:00.000-04:00

What a nice surprise... my Measuring Penny was named one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books for Pre-K–Grade 8 by Judy Freeman on the Reading is Fundamental site. The whole list is here. There’s no date on the page so it’s hard to say how long the list has been up, but I just found out.

[A few minutes go by]

Hmmm... just checked on the publication dates, and the most recent is in the early 2000s. So, it’s old news, I guess! I signed up for Google Alerts to try and keep up with things a little better. Gotta love the ‘net!

Tag, you’re IT!

2010-03-30T16:46:00.000-04:00

I just heard that Diane Evans gave me this wonderful award... thanks Diane! If you haven’t been to her DEsigned blog and seen her lovely art quilts, be sure to check it out.

Here are the rules for this award:

1) Thank the person who gave you this award.

2) Share 7 things about yourself.

3) Pass the award along to 5 bloggers who you have recently discovered and you think are fantastic!

4) Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

I’m tagging the following bloggers to be fellow recipients of this award (click on their names to reach their blog):

Salley Mavor (don’t miss her 5-part series about illustrating her 1st book, The Way Home, with fabric.

Joyce Shelton’s Sketchbook... she has been posting a sketch almost every day of flowers, fruit, fish, and more.

Susan Elliot’s Plays With Needles has big, beautiful photos of her bead embroidery and other creative endeavors. This post about her Bead Journal Project is one of my favorites.

In Painted Threads, Judy Perez paints on fabric then quilts it. If you haven’t already seen her work in various magazines, you’re in for a treat. She posted wonderful in-process photos of the piece Oh Deer, Look What Has Become of Me.

Susan Miller posts about her children’s book illustrating and various nifty projects such as painting Christmas bulbs, gourds, and Easter eggs.

The 7 things about myself...

1) I love any color, as long as it’s in the right place

2) We haven’t bought lettuce in weeks... (my hubby is growing it hydroponically.)

3) My current favorite TV shows are Chuck and Project Runway.

4) I save my cat’s whiskers.

5) For me, shopping is a chore except in stores with art supplies, yarn, thread, beads, fabric, or handmade crafts/art.

6) I got swiped at by a tiger once. Fortunately, he didn’t have his claws out.

7) For the last year or so, I’ve been eating one vegan meal a day... it’s healthy and reduces my carbon footprint.

Happy Tuesday!

The rest of the flock

2010-03-27T19:12:00.000-04:00

The third sheep has been completed... since I forget to show it previously, above is the sketch for this project. Pretty impressive, no? It’s not much more than a scribble done in Photoshop, but all I wanted was the size and basic placement of the critters. Sometimes I do a very precise pencil sketch on tracing paper and line up the fabric pieces exactly, but for this project a looser approach seemed possible and more fun.

Here’s how #3 turned out...she’s looking up at something up in the sky. I wasn’t necessarily going to hand stitch all the quilting, but it just seems to have the right whimsical feel.

As you can see below, I ended up ripping out the quilting shown in this previous post on the darker green fabric. Now there are yellow beads scattered around. Dandelions, probably. (Non-Floridians may not know this, but dandelions don’t grow down here.) I’m tempted to add a lamb, which for some reason didn’t occur to me until just this second. The funny thing is, this little flock of sheep is just a sideshow in a much bigger image.

Hope you’re having a nice weekend. We hiked around most of the day looking at the new spring leaves.

More from Quilting Natural Florida 2

2010-03-25T10:06:00.000-04:00

I just had to share a few more photos from this excellent exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Gainesville. (Related posts are here.) Above is a detail from Laura Quinn’s Pelicans by Susan Walen. The Laura Quinn of the title runs a volunteer bird hospital in Key Largo that the artist had visited and wished to honor. The sewn-on seashells on the seashore (try saying that three times, fast) are very effective, aren’t they? Below is the full image.

Another beautiful bird quilt is Solitude, by Gretchen Brooks, which depicts a Snowy Egret. The dark background shows off the white bird very dramatically.

I was intrigued in the label information about how the egret was made... the egret is a machine embroidery design that was digitized by BFC Creations. The company offers a huge number of designs that can be stitched out by the advanced sewing machines now available. This page shows the egret design. Personally, I’m only interested in creating my own original designs, but it is amazing what is “out there.”

Below is Road 9, Crandall Pasture, by Julie Mainor. The artist created quite an effective depiction of sunlight streaming into the woods.

Last but not least, below is GoPher It, by Dawn Moore. Like many Floridians, I adore gopher tortoises and often find them munching the vegetation on our property. Then there are the deer that keep hoovering the citrus tree leaves, but that’s another story!

It’s funny, but I can’t remember seeing any quilts with alligators... how did that happen?!? To see a page from the museum’s web site with several more nice images, click here. If you look at the participant page, there are several artists who don’t live in Florida, so anyone could enter as long as the quilt referenced the state’s natural beauty.

Feeling sheepish

2010-03-23T16:35:00.000-04:00

Need some sheep for a grassy field? Here is one way to make them, using a punch needle with embroidery floss or other threads to make the fleece. If you’re not familiar with punch needle work, here is a nice tutorial on Planet June by June Gilbank. I tried 2 strands of white floss with metallic silver on the upper left, but it looked too gray. On the upper right is plain white floss, which seemed a tad dull. The lower left one is white floss with one strand of variegated thread... it’s pretty, but not a good sheep color for this project. On the lower right is the winner, one strand of perle cotton in a cream color.

The backing is white Kona quilting cotton. After taking the fabric out of the embroidery hoop, it’s trimmed to about 1/8" away from the loops. Then it's glued around back with tacky white glue. (A bamboo skewer comes in very handy to press down the raw edges.) The black parts are ultrasuede, their eyes are a gold bead held with a knot of black thread, while the ears have a stitch of brown floss.

Here they are in place with seed stitch quilting, consisting of 2 strands of variegated floss. It’s pretty hard to tell, but in a few places I colored over the dark green pattern where it seemed too prominent next to the sheep, using a light green wax colored pencil. Might need do some more. I’m not 100% sure that I like the quilting stitches... may try some beads instead and see how that looks.

These remind me of sheep pins I made eons ago out of polymer clay. Actually, these guys could be pins with a little pin back sewed on. Their face and legs might need stiffening, though. You could fuse two layers of ultrasuede together, maybe.
Hope you’re having a creative week!

Quilting Natural Florida 2 is even better

2010-03-21T14:58:00.000-04:00

The first version of this show in 2006 was enjoyable, but those involved really outdid themselves with the current exhibition. The bird-themed quilts almost stole the show. Above is Roseate Spoonbills by Sally Pearce Freeberg, with a detail below.

Another stunning quilt depicting the same subject was Happy Together, by the Lovin’ Spoonbills, by Susan Slaton. She pieced the background first, then added the birds, nest and mangroves.

Here is a closer look at the wonderful chicks. We’ve seen quite a few spoonbills over the years, particularly on the Black Point Wildlife loop drive on Merritt Island, but have never glimpsed an actual chick.

Florida Flamingos (below) is by Denise Oyama Miller. Did you know that according to Audubon of Florida, there was a small breeding population of flamingos at the very southern tip of the peninsula when the first Europeans arrived? (I had not known that, just looked it up.)

The palm fronds certainly are well done, and of course the birds themselves.

There were many other subjects other than birds that quilters were moved to depict, including abstract representations of some aspect of the state such as weather. However, to complete the visual theme we have going, here is one final pink quilt:

Florida Beauty is by Martha E. Berles who found inspiration in her own back yard. I have attempted to make a quilted hibiscus in the past... that central stamen stalk is not so easy to do.

There are many non-pink quilts in the show, the majority of them, actually. In addition to birds and flowers, they include trees, butterflies, turtles, and even a fungus. To see the previous two posts about this show, click here. The exhibit is open until April 25, 2010 and is well worth seeing if you’re in the Gainesville area.

Shooting and adjusting excellent detail photographs

2010-03-14T17:28:00.000-04:00

I just read a post on the Beadlust blog by Robin Atkins, Taking and Editing Quality Photos of Beads and Beadwork... it’s an excellent tutorial that would be useful for many types of artwork. It includes the adjustments she uses in Photoshop, including Levels, Shadow/Highlight, Brightness/Contrast, and several more. A before and after image shows how much of a difference her process makes in bringing out the beauty of her beadwork. I certainly learned a thing or two that will come in handy.

While you’re there, of course, check out the fab artwork made with one of my favorite materials, BEADS! I haven’t posted many of my beaded creations, but above is a butterfly that’s almost finished. He just needs a little repair work where I managed to cut the thread around the outside... oops! This actually was scanned, not photographed... it doesn’t look as sparkly as the real thing, but since I was in a hurry and didn’t follow all of Robin’s steps, that’s probably why.

Quilting Natural Florida 2 exhibit is now open

2010-03-10T06:00:00.027-05:00

If you’re in the Gainesville, Florida area from now until April 25, 2010, be sure to stop into the Florida Museum of Natural History. A special exhibit of nature-inspired quilts will be there, sponsored by the Quilters of Alachua County Day Guild. To see the guild’s lovely quilt, appliquéd with the flora and fauna of the state, click here.

This is my piece, Reaching, that was juried in. We haven’t seen the exhibit yet, but since it’s only about 7.5 X 10 inches, it’s probably the smallest piece in the show. Here is my artist’s statement:

I painted this pine tree directly on the fabric while on location at Highlands Hammock State Park. The twisting branches of pine trees continuously catch my eye, each treetop a unique formation caused by Florida’s weather extremes.

All of the image color is paint, except for the binding fabric. This detail shows the stitching. One drawback of using acrylic is that it causes the fabric to retain needle/pin holes, so it’s best to get the stitching right the first time. I made the mistake of using safety pins to hold the layers together which left a few holes. Using a sharp needle mostly from behind, it wasn’t too difficult to gently pull the threads together to minimize them.

There are a few more trees that want their portraits done... hope to fit them it sometime soon. I would like to try a larger one that incorporates chunks of fabric in addition to or instead of paint. At long last, the weather is not so chilly now, so that helps. Spring is right around the corner, yay!

2 new quilting books

2010-03-07T12:01:00.000-05:00

A surprising and delightful package arrived last week containing two new titles published by Lark Books. Apparently I had signed up to review books for them months ago, though had completely forgotten about it. I would have written about them sooner, but after starting to page through 500 Art Quilts, I put everything on hold to spend the next few days in the studio putting together an entry for a contest before the March 8th deadline. (Made it, see sneak peek below.)

So, I can personally attest that 500 Art Quilts: An Inspiring Collection of Contemporary Work, definitely lives up to its subtitle. The artwork juried by Karey Patterson Bresenhan into this book presents a wonderful overview of the variety of work being created by artists today using cloth and thread plus many materials that uninitiated readers might not expect. Each full-color photograph is accompanied by a materials and process list that may include newspaper, fusing, drawn threads, charcoal, gauze, stones, tulle, ink-jet printing, grommets, zippers, beads, shibori, and much more. A portable quilt show in 432 pages (8" X 8"), it is a worthy addition to the books in this series, such as another one of my favorites, 500 Beaded Objects.

For a more detailed step-by-step book, Pretty Little Mini Quilts can fill the bill. The small (under 36") quilts are original designs by 25 different artists. They include a variety of styles and techniques such as traditional geometric blocks, appliquéd images, a portrait quilt, “drawing” with thread, machine and hand embroidery, vintage fabrics, and the use of embellishments. The directions are clear and should provide enough information for sewers with at least some experience. Compared with the artwork shown in 500 Art Quilts, these projects are simpler overall and require relatively standard materials and techniques. The 144 page, 8" X 8" book includes a table of contents, supply and tool list with general instructions, and an index.

Last week I wasn’t sure if there was time to pull together an entry for the Quilting Arts 2011 calendar contest, but things came together nicely for once... perhaps my biggest worry was having enough time to print out three 8" X 10" photographs without my printer balking. No problemo, this time. As you can see from the detail, I crocheted some elements, in this case the curly stem on top of a tomato. I was glad to be able to enter again, wish me luck!

From trunk show to quilt study collection

2010-03-01T09:30:00.000-05:00

I received some fun news from SAQA recently... my little 8" X 8" piece that had been part of the SAQA 20th Anniversary trunk show has been chosen as one of 55 to be archived in the permanent collection of the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln.) There is more info on this page about how it was made.

Tropical Dreams l has some novel materials incorporated into it, which is probably why it was chosen for the study center. The shell is painted onto a sparkly sheer turquoise fabric, not too unusual, perhaps. But the fronds of the palm tree are painted, stitched heavy-duty aluminum foil, which is a little offbeat. By the way, the painting on foil technique won’t work on the new, nonstick foil that is available now, so read those labels.

Seen a Giganotosaurus lately?

2010-02-09T08:31:00.000-05:00

There’s going to be one on the cover of the book I just finished. Yes, I made the deadline (barely), working until 10 o'clock at night without a day off since about the middle of December.

Haven’t worked that hard since illustrating my first book in 1984 which was pen and ink with pre-separated color. That meant that I had to color in with pencil 4 black and white “plates” for each spread of artwork, one for each process color of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. No wonder A Number of Dragons took 6 months to illustrate.

Who knew then that a bunch of people out there would invent the computers, software, and electronic pens and tablets to allow artists to draw and paint digitally? One thing is for sure, the artwork shown above would not exist with those tools. When My Teacher is a Dinosaur is released next fall (hopefully), my buddy Giganotosaurus (Giggy for short) will be staring out from the cover.

And now, on to reclaiming my normal life again... yay!

A “value-able” Photoshop tip

2010-01-21T08:35:00.000-05:00

Checking the values of artwork as you work allows you to disregard color for a moment and evaluate the pattern of light and dark. Transforming the view of an image into black and white is very easy in Photoshop, using a Black and White adjustment layer.

Many thanks to David Opie (www.spacemandave.com) for this simple but very useful tip.

Select the topmost layer in your document, then create a new layer thusly: go to Layer> New Adjustment Layer> Black and White and poof, the entire image is in grays (though none of the layers below are actually changed.) How does it look now... flat or contrasty, too much dark in one area, too uniform, or whatever? In the case of this Allosaurus on the left, he’s as flat as a pancake and needs some shading and highlighting.

That’s better, isn’t it? The way I’ve been doing the modeling lately is to make one layer for highlights set in Screen mode, then a layer for shading set in Multiply mode, both clipped to the color layer. The same color can usually be used on both layers but because of the different modes, it has a completely different effect. I‘m still not happy with his teeth because they don’t look sharp enough, but that’s a problem for another day!

Here he is with the Black and White adjustment layer in place. From now on, I’m going to put a B + W layer on top of every image and use it to punch up my artwork. You can turn it off and on by clicking on the eyeball.

I’m still slogging away at these prehistoric illustrations... hope to finish before the next asteroid strikes!

Lost in time...

2010-01-10T11:20:00.004-05:00

In case anybody is wondering what has happened to me, this is what I’m working on. Above is the eye of a Parasaurolophus, one of the hadrosaurs. The deadline for this prehistoric book is early February and it’s going to be a squeaker. The only way it has chance of being finished is if I don’t leave the house and chain myself to Photoshop.

It’s freezing here in Central Florida, the dinos wouldn’t last long down here. Hope your new year is off to a good start!

The 4 tops are finally quilts!

2009-12-31T11:34:00.006-05:00

It took until late on Christmas Eve night, but I got them all finished in time. Here is a link to the previous posts that show the process of designing these. In case this is the first post you’ve read, the fabric for all four tops came in a box from an estate sale. These are the first “real” (as in functional) quilts that I’ve made. They’re lap size, about 4.5' X 6' or so. Without further ado, here is Anna with her new quilt and pillow with the fashionable ladies prancing around on the fabrics.These were a surprise for my nieces and nephew, which was fun. I almost had to give one of them held together with safety pins because time was running short. Below is Deborah with the mostly pink and white one.

That is Sarah with the groovy pink, green, and orange designs. I hear that it has instantly become her close companion for TV watching.

That reminds me, I just read a story in Consumer Reports that the “Snuggie” blankets shed handfuls of fuzz with every wash and end up threadbare. Another advantage of quilts.

Caleb’s quilt has guitars, too, plus musical notes on the backing fabric and keyboards on the binding. (He plays the cello.) This photo turned out a tad blurry, but you can see it better in the next

photo.

My husband Andy somehow took a nap amidst the cacophony of the group simultaneously playing the card game Flux and working a puzzle.

After making these simple designs with big chunks of fabric which still took quite a long time, I can’t imagine how people make the really complex blocks with a bunch of tiny pieces. More power to them, it’s back to small wall hangings for me!

Happy New Year, everyone!

My “fresh picked” calendar quilt came home

2009-12-17T09:47:00.006-05:00

And it looks as yummy as ever. It has certainly traveled more than I have this year as one of the Quilting Arts 2010 contest winners. It has been at trade shows and appeared in quite a few ads in magazines and arrived back here in perfect condition. Thanks, Quilting Arts! The calendars are still available for the reduced price of $9.99 at the Interweave store. The July image is my Handpicked.

The theme for 2011 is “Flavor of the Month.” Yes, that means food, food, food! So, if you feel like quilting some comestibles, by all means enter. Here is the info, you just have to scroll down the page a little.

To see previous related posts, click here.

Recoloring a stegosaur

2009-12-11T10:19:00.005-05:00

Here are three more versions of the Kentrosaurus from yesterday’s post. I got some very helpful feedback from my colleagues at PBAA (Picture Book Artists Association), so here goes. First I did a little tail surgery, then altered his body color only, below.

Below, his outline is a dark purple color. For some reason the background colors are brighter, too. Or are they just duller above... who’s in charge here, anyway?!?

Below the line work is a brown. It doesn’t look that different from the purple, really.

The brown/purple lines seem more integrated into the overall image, the black line stands out more... not sure which version I like, actually.

Prehistoric illustration style... opinions needed!

2009-12-10T12:14:00.004-05:00

I’ve been working for eons on a children’s book about prehistoric life. Okay, for months and months. The dummy is finally more or less finished after some major revisions, so great... we’ll show it to a paleontologist to avoid any boneheaded errors, then on to the art. Speaking of errors, it’s difficult when the reference books don’t agree on basic terminology. Eohippus? Hyracotherium? Protorohippus? C‘mon guys, the little horses are important, let’s stick to one name already. This is as bad as the whole Pluto-isn’t-a-planet thing. (Just kidding, I’m aware that naming organisms can get complicated.)

Anyway, the first art sample is below, a Tiktaalik trying to decide whether it’s worth the struggle to flop around on land to go after some creepy-crawlies. Or maybe he’s just gazing wistfully and resolving to sign up for some legs.

(Hmmm... a mysterious line has appeared on the two images below... just ignore it, please. I would redo the images, but have managed to lose one version due to one of those “Save As“ snafus.)

I’ve been thinking that the above style is okay but not that dynamic. So below is a stegosaur (Kentrosaurus) rendered with a bolder black line. Better? Worse? Either is okay?

Of course, the fabulous thing about Photoshop is the ability to play with different color schemes, thus using up the time saved (if any) by using digital media. Either color version looks pretty good to me. I'm going to try having more black laced through the entire image to see how that looks. This is just a part of a page, maybe a third of it.

All of the line art and the plant shapes were done in Illustrator with the blob brush. This previous post goes into detail about the blob brush. Then the paths were pasted into Photoshop, filled, colored, and textured. BTW, the texture in the grass is from a photo of reindeer moss. Wonder if reindeer moss had evolved by the Jurassic Period? Or grass for that matter? I do know the reindeer hadn’t!

My inspiration book

2009-12-04T19:22:00.005-05:00

Like many artists, I keep images for reference and creative stimulation. One way of doing it is to keep a clip file, which consists of tossing the photos, drawings, etc. into a file folder. Though that works for some very specific projects, for my general collection of mostly catalog and magazine images, a more organized arrangement is more, well... inspiring!

A large binder with page protectors is the basic book. The images are pasted on paper with a glue stick on both sides, then into the page protectors they go. The binder is divided into categories using standard tab dividers. Below are some pages from the Fabric section. While these are clothes, I‘m primarily interested in the color combinations and the patterning on the cloth.

There’s a Jewelry section and a separate Bead section. Every time I look at these, I want to make one.

There’s a Knit & Crochet section, Ceramics, 2-D Art, and several more categories. Hey, at least all these ridiculous catalogs they send me get some use! (I have cut down on the onslaught by registering with CatalogChoice.org, which has helped. It’s an endless battle, though.)

The book is getting pretty full, may have to subdivide. Of course there’s a whole digital clip file on my computer that is getting vaster by the day. Then there are the bookmarked web pages, the blog subscriptions, my bookshelves, the library books...

Organize embellishments on your design wall

2009-11-27T08:00:00.004-05:00

Usually a design wall is for putting together a quilt top. I just finished stitching a few myself, The 4 Tops. However, I’m getting ready to work on the LIQ project, a series of small wall hangings. Since I won’t be needing the entire design wall for awhile, a section of it is going to become a storage station for threads, buttons, lace, trims, and whatever else needs to be handy yet out of the way. The stuff is hung on various sizes of pins, depending on how thick each item is.

Perhaps you have the same affliction that I do... out of sight, out of mind. If these goodies are ever going to be utilized, I have to be able to see them! Just having them arranged like this makes me want to get going on the next wall hanging. When I first did some hand embroidery as a kid, the threads ended up as a tangled mess in a box. Hmmm... it’s probably still around here somewhere...

A post that includes how the design wall was made is here. Another way to use this concept is to get a piece of 1/2 inch foam core. Michael’s and Sam Flax are two stores that carry it. You could use it as a small portable storage wall, though knocking it over would be a potential hazard.

Believe it or not, all the doodads shown above were jammed into this cutlery organizer (from Bed, Bath, and Beyond.) It was impossible to find anything as you can imagine. This is what’s left in there for the moment, though it’s sure to be filled up again soon.

I’d be interested in hearing about other interesting storage or organizing tips, heaven knows there are still stashes of stuff piled up that need a better home.

Spiced cranberry sauce... yum!

2009-11-25T14:30:00.004-05:00

Ixnay on the cranberry sauce in a can, right? My husband Andy tasted this at a party a long time ago, and has been making it ever since.

Spiced Cranberry Sauce

4 cups fresh cranberries (2 standard-sized bags)

2 cups water

3 cups sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp ground ginger

Wash cranberries and drain. Combine rest of ingredients in a large pot, bring to a boil. Add cranberries, cook at medium heat for 7 to 10 minutes until the skins pop (see below.)

Mash the berries (below.) Reduce heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes with the lid on but askew to allow steam to escape. Stir occasionally until dark red and thickened.

Remove from heat, pour into glass or ceramic container, and chill.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Top #4... last but not least!

2009-11-22T18:31:00.004-05:00

These are the fabrics for the last of The 4 Tops. Do you agree with me that this group has a distinctly masculine vibe? The piece in the center left has tiny dots on black... it had too much visual vibration and looked muddy, so that fabric was deleted. Also, it seemed to me that more red and black would be beneficial to add more dark notes.

Fortunately, I had some red and black checked fabric plus some black with gold dots that fit in. (It’s somewhat amazing to me that despite having a ton of fabric, very little of my stash melds with this group.) Below is the first “draft” of the arrangement. Do you see any issues with it so far?

Maybe the black and white photo will make it clearer what bothered me with this design... the various rectangles were merging together too much, especially the lighter tones. I wanted more separation in the values.

Below is what it looks like pieced together. I didn’t have quite enough regular cotton fabric, so had to sneak in a couple of pieces of flannel on the edges. No biggie.

It has been interesting to work with such large pieces of fabric with large motifs, compared to the little scraps with more subdued patterns I usually am assembling. Oops, just noticed a glitch in the final top... the large guitar piece got vertically flipped with the piece below it. Hmmm... do I care enough to rip them out and restitch them?!?!

World Quilt Show in West Palm Beach

2009-11-17T11:28:00.006-05:00

My husband Andy and I drove a couple of hours down to this new show last Saturday and it was definitely worth it. There were 400 quilts on display and some 80 vendors, a nice diversity on both counts. The West Palm convention center is very easy to get in and out of and is quite an attractive building. Plus it’s right across the road from City Place, a lovely collection of shops and restaurants. Another plus was that it wasn’t freezing inside from excessive air conditioning, so yay! My only complaint is that the lighting wasn’t the greatest, which is typical of so many similar venues.

On to the the quilts— these are a few of the many nice pieces that caught my eye. Below is Parasol by Liz Jones (United Kingdom). She must have visited Florida at some point, or do palmettos grow in many locations? I have no idea.

Here is a close-up of the wonderful free motion stitching.

Midsummer Melody is by Jane Rollason (United Kingdom).

Next is Little Bit of Sunshine, by Cynthia Wismann. This was part of an exhibit by Art Quilters Unlimited, a group based in Ft. Myers.

Here is a detail from Little Bit of Sunshine, which was whole cloth painted with fabric dyes (as well as some other techniques.)

Below is Morris in the Garden is by Sue Reich (Connecticut). The way the cat was depicted with outline stitching is what intrigued me about this one.

The Birder by Cheryl Costley is also part of the Art Quilters Unlimited exhibit. He’s wearing a real hat and his camera and binoculars are 3-dimensional. There weren’t very many depictions of people in the overall show, we noticed.

The next two photos are details from Down Under Florabunda by Margo Hardie (Australia). This quilt was just covered with beautiful birds and flowers. It must have taken ages to create.

To finish up the birding theme, here is a detail from Fantasy Flock by Sheena Norquay (United Kingdom). She used her own doodles as the design inspiration.

To prove that most quilt shows have something for everyone, here is a quilt that my husband Andy was enthused about. This detail of Leaves on the Ground by Helen Richards (Australia) shows leaves she drew on fabric from her photographs. My plant pathologist hubby got a kick out of the holes eaten by insects, galls, spots, and other evidence of apparent plant diseases.

There were quite a few nice quilts from Japan and other countries, too. The vendors were from all over the U.S... nice to see some new faces with interesting merchandise. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing a small excerpt of this large show.

Quilting Natural Florida 2

2009-11-15T14:50:00.006-05:00

In the summer of 2006 we went to see the first Quilting Natural Florida show at the Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, Florida. Below is one of the pieces from that exhibit. What do you see in this image? I liked the abstract pattern of the diagonal shapes. The lighting was a little uneven, but after taking a photo, the little digital display showed what was hidden in plain sight.

The title will make it clear: Manatees by Faith Pflaz. There are three of them, facing left. For a nice slideshow with additional photos of the various pieces, click here. The exhibit was very enjoyable so I made a mental note to have something ready to enter for the next show. Alas, despite having loads of time, I didn’t have anything suitable when the entry deadline this fall loomed.

At the last minute, a tiny wall hanging of a pine tree that resulted from my plein aire painting workshop came to mind. It’s only about 7.5 inches by 10 inches, but it was accepted! At left is a detail from Reaching, a quilted painting of the gnarled top of a pine tree. I’ll put up the whole image closer to the show.

The 2010 show will have over 100 artworks in the exhibit, which will be on display from February 6 through April 25. If you’re in the area, by all means check it out. The butterfly atrium in the museum is wonderful, as well as the nice variety of Florida fossils. Love that terror bird! And of course, the giant ground sloth. Hey, maybe next time I could do an image of some prehistoric critters, that would be fun! (Guess I better get started ASAP.)

Stitching Jenny

2009-11-11T15:46:00.004-05:00

It’s been awhile since I last posted about Jenny but progress is being made slowly but surely. The background is mostly completed, and gold beads were added for the flower centers. I was very concerned about how to stitch her down, but after making samples decided to go for a low key approach. I used my sewing machine’s faux blanket stitch in a matching thread on the plum parts of the body, and hand stitched her hooves and belly. The ears, tail tip, and the gold part of her nose are not stitched down to create a little more dimension.

The blank green area on the left will be getting more “stuff,” so it hasn’t been quilted yet. I might add more decorative details to her, but want to see how the whole thing looks once everything is actually on. This is only about half of the total picture, the rest of it is still in pieces.

Below is a close up of her head. For some reason, her ears are my favorite part.

My hubby Andy and I are going to the World Quilt Show in West Palm Beach this weekend... should be fab!

6 quick digital art tips

2009-11-01T09:13:00.003-05:00

Here are a few fairly random tips in no particular order along with the corresponding Photoshop commands, though similar functions can be found in many art programs.

1) Reverse the image you’re working on to look for lines/shapes/colors that look “wrong.”

Edit> Transform> Flip Horizontal.

Work on it for awhile, then flip it back.

2) Learn keyboard shortcuts. I put them on sticky notes on my monitor until they’re sufficiently tattooed on my brain. The very first ones I learned? Cut (command X) and Paste (command V).

3) Put image into grayscale to check values.

Image> Adjustments> Desaturate or keyboard shortcut Shift-Command-U.

Does it still read well or does it turn into mush?

4) Record an Action for anything you do repeatedly that doesn’t already have a keyboard shortcut. I’ve made actions for Flipping Vertical or Horizontal, to Copy or Paste Layer styles, and now in CS4 to Link or Unlink layers (since it now is a hassle to do otherwise.) I need to record a few more Actions, actually.

5) Zoom out so the image is tiny... does it still look interesting?

6) Get ahold of a Photoshop how-to book or two, with plenty of pictures. I’m working my way through Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual and am picking up plenty of good info. I ignore the stuff that doesn’t apply to my work flow, and put sticky notes on the pages with the real gems. Why buy a book? There are a lot of good tutorials, etc. on the web, but a book helps you to systematically cover all the basics of the program. There are many techniques that I use every day that I NEVER would’ve figured out on my own but found in a book. The WOW! series, which have even more pictures, are also excellent. There are many other good ones.

That’s it for now, just wanted to toss those out there. By the way, I upgraded from CS1, so am just now finding out about the Warp tool... love it!!! (Under the Edit> Transform menu.)

I changed my sig to have more autumn-like colors, though it’s still hot here in Florida (ugh!)

#3 is designed, I think

2009-10-26T15:42:00.007-04:00

I liked the idea of adding more lime green to this (see previous post comments), but couldn’t find the right color/pattern in my stash. A splotchy batik was not going to mesh with these fabrics and every other chunk of fabric was a little off color-wise AND there were not going to be any shopping trips(!) So I added more hot pink, black, and white.

As I’ve mentioned previously, these 4 tops aren’t supposed to be masterpieces. Yet, if something really nags at me, I have to change it. Do you see anything that looks funny in the photo below?

Those two pink and white pieces with the vertical stripes running through them seemed to break up the design in a weird way. Below the stripes are horizontal, which looks much better (to me, anyway.)

Time to sew. I might break down and buy some lime green for the binding, we shall see. One step at a time!

Top #3... needs what?

2009-10-23T10:24:00.006-04:00

Here are the fabrics for the third top ironed and tossed up on the design wall just to see how they’re looking. The other related posts in this series are here. I’m thinking it might need some more mostly black fabric, or mostly white, or both to punch it up a bit. Any opinions?

Here is a close-up of the cute retro fashionistas on several of them.

The next step is to start chopping up these chunks into similar widths and making big stripes out of them. Have a nice weekend, everybody!

Top #2 is sewn together

2009-10-12T14:55:00.007-04:00

I took out the dreaded purple polka dot fabric (shown here on the design wall.) This definitely looks better. The pink, white, and black certainly is a cheery color scheme. The other related posts are here.

The dots now live on the back of this pillow, which goes with the quilt.

Only two more tops to go!

Announcing the I.N.K. Think Tank!

2009-10-08T10:38:00.006-04:00

If you’re a teacher, librarian, parent, or anyone that is interested in nonfiction books for kids, here is a brand new free resource that you’ll love. The bloggers of I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids), including yours truly, have assigned national educational standards to their books and put them all into this database, the INK THINK TANK.

The participating authors are:

● Don Brown ● Vicki Cobb ● Sneed B. Collard III ● Marfé Ferguson Delano ● Susan E. Goodman ● Jan Greenberg ● Cheryl Harness ● Deborah Heiligman ● Steve Jenkins ● Barbara Kerley ● Susan Kuklin ● Loreen Leedy ● Sue Macy ● Dorothy Hinshaw Patent ● Susanna Reich ● April Pulley Sayre ● Rosalyn Schanzer ● David M. Schwartz ● Melissa Stewart ● Tanya Lee Stone ● Gretchen Woelfle ● Karen Romano Young

The titles range from picture books to YA books, all nonfiction. The awards this group of authors has received are many, including Caldecott Honors, Parents Choice Awards, Silbert Honors, Green Book Awards, ALA Notables, and many more.

Please help us spread the word!

A couple of fab links

2009-10-05T18:40:00.006-04:00

Wow, the online studio tour was quite a success. According to Google Analytics, over 300 people stopped by to see mine. (Not sure if it really counts all visitors, but whatever!) Here is the link to the various blogs on the tour, in case you missed the updated page:

Quilting Arts/Cloth Paper Scissors Open Studios

Also, for my quilting readers, if you haven’t seen the blog below, you must check it out. Leah Day is posting a new free motion quilting design with a video showing how to do it, every day for 365 days! It’s pretty amazing, the designs are great, and she’s up to Day 53. Can she do it? Is she nuts, doing this with a 2 year old? Will there be a movie about it? What actress will play her? Stay tuned!

365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs

Hope you’re having a creative week!

Welcome to my sewing studio tour!

2009-10-03T00:30:00.006-04:00

The funny thing is that when I set up this room five years ago, the quilting bug had barely bitten. I just wanted a room to work on whatever craft was interesting at the moment. The room was needed as a guest room occasionally, so versatility and things-that-can-be-rearranged were important.

After painting the ceiling to cover the footprints of the previous owners’ bunk-bedded twin boys, scraping off the kiddie wallpaper border, and painting the walls a soft sage, it was time to get some furnishings. The futon was one of the first acquisitions. (It’s only full size so it’s really a tad small for two. Oh well!) I heard about various DIY design walls on the Quiltart list, so below is my portable one.

It consists of two 4' X 8' panels of insulation foam, with about a foot cut off the length so they fit easily in the room. They are covered with gray felt from Jo-Ann’s that comes in 6 foot widths. The felt is wrapped around to the back and pinned at an angle towards the outer edges. This is mostly because the pin tips would otherwise stick out the front... not good. The felt has held up well, though the cat has made use of it for unauthorized scratching a few times. Chunks of fabric cling to it beautifully for designing purposes. It’s also handy to hang small supplies on a pin like embroidery floss for certain projects. If necessary, the panels can be easily moved.

When a project is underway, I set up an ironing board with a wide surface on top. It can be adjusted in height for sitting or standing. The wide board is a sheet of homasote covered with ironing board fabric on one side, and flannel on the back. The flannel keeps it from sliding. Homasote seems to be a variable product, because some people say they can stick pins in it easily. Well, not this stuff! But it is a good surface for ironing.

The area shown below is an assembly of flat files, countertop, and wall cabinets. There are actually four flat file units. The lower ones have 5 drawers, then stacked on top are 3-drawer units. I ordered them from a local art supply place. They were only available unfinished, so first they required three coats of clear satin polyurethane. The handles were flimsy plastic, so I ordered unfinished wooden handles from a woodworking supply place, stained and varnished them. (I hate sanding, varnishing, sanding, blah, blah, but love the end result.) The little metal label holders were spray painted a copper color to cover the original shiny brass. The wall cabinets were off-the-rack, already assembled cabinets from Lowe’s. Fortunately their color was close enough to the flat files. I added the knobs.

The countertop was custom made (big box home supply store) to be as long as possible yet still fit in the room. It’s just sitting on top, it’s not screwed down to the flat files. All these pieces could be taken out and the room turned into a plain bedroom in the future, if needed. The bulletin board under the cabinets is made from homasote covered with a thin veneer of cork. Though difficult to push tacks and pins into, it works reasonably well and certainly takes advantage of the space. The little white 3-drawer unit to the right of the sewing machine holds my larger spools of thread. The green pad is for the comfort of my kitty Knickers as she gazes out the window, or more likely, snoozes.

As previously mentioned, I originally didn’t know what was going to go into these flat files. Not surprisingly, they are now jammed with fabric, mostly fat quarters. The nice thing about a flat file drawer is how it can be left open while working. For example, the 4th drawer down has the smaller thread spools, needles, bobbins, etc. in it for easy access while sewing.

These drawers are on the right of the sewing machine. Love to just open them up and look at all the colors and patterns!

Across the room is this bookcase filled with most of my quilting books and mags. In order to fit it there, the bi-fold closet doors were removed and a curtain hung instead. The closet has filing cabinets and shelves full of batting, fabric, etc. The table is covered with fabric for a particular project. Rather than constantly dig through the file drawers, I pulled out all the geometric and small prints and put the fat quarters into photo boxes. The bigger cuts are sort of piling up, but I don’t really need any more fabric, need to just get working(!) Those little nested tables come in handy to move around and pile things on mid-project. Or, if guests are in the room, to put next to the futon.

So there you have it! In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit to moving aside a pile or two of clutter to take these photographs. When I’m in the middle of making something, the room gets... shall we say... messier.

An award to crow about

2009-10-01T16:25:00.005-04:00

Zowie, someone gave my blog an eggs-citing award. A quote directly from art quilter Diane Evan’s excellent blog DEsigned will explain all:

“The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the Zombie Chicken-- excellence, grace, and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of Zombie Chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the Zombie Chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all.”

I wouldn’t dream of angering a chicken, especially a zombified one, so here are some of my fav blogs (though there are many more, check my profile to see the ones I follow.) It appears that all of these blogs are by artists... go figure!

Doodles & Scribbles by fab artist Joyce Shelton. I have some of her Tea Party set and can’t wait to get more!

BARBARA STROBEL LARDON, a talented quilt artist who coincidentally ran a recent post titled “On the Farm.”

Silver Apples of the Moon by illustrator Tara Chang. She often shows her intricate paintings in progress.

Postcards from Cairo by Jenny Bowker, a quilt artist who lived for many years in the Middle East (she now is in Australia.) Don’t miss these amazing images made of fabric.

Dee Sanchez: A Painting Today. And she means it, all inspired by her New Mexican home.

Adventures of a Migrant Art Worker by Larry Moore. Outstanding plein air painting and illustration.

Many thanks to Diane and to these artists who are sharing their work and process with us all. By all means share your favorite blogs in the comments if you like. Happy viewing!

Open Studios coming on Saturday!

2009-09-29T09:33:00.006-04:00

This is a fun idea from Quilting Arts magazine... their Fall Studios issue features tips for hosting an open house in your studio. In conjunction with this theme, they’re sponsoring a virtual tour of studios on blogs, including this one. I’ll post photos of my sewing room on Saturday, October 3rd. If you’d like to participate, click here. It’s easy to do.

This was a timely idea for me, since I had been thinking of showing some photos of my quilting lair anyway, including the design wall and storage solutions that have worked for me. The question is, do I tidy it up first or not?

Top #2 on the design wall

2009-09-28T08:37:00.005-04:00

To make it easier to arrange the pieces for this second quilt top from the estate sale fabric, I decided to clear all the “stuff” off of my design wall and actually use it for its intended purpose. Here is a close-up of some of the fabrics in this batch. Love the Eiffel tower prints!

Below is the entire top. I don’t know about you, but it looks to me as if those purple dots aren’t fitting in very well. Can you say “sore thumb?” There is enough fabric to insert something else instead. The other option in this kind of situation is to cut up the purple dots into smaller pieces and have it appear more than once, but I doubt that would work in this case.

This basic arrangement of big chunks is similar to top #1, but using the design wall instead of winging it is definitely making it easier already.

Happy Monday!

1st estate sale fabric top completed!

2009-09-22T15:24:00.005-04:00

Do you remember the estate sale fabric I was fortunate enough to to find? It was already cut into medium-sized pieces and I was going to chop it up even smaller. However, since this is for a utilitarian project (a lap quilt) it seemed unnecessary. Besides, the prospect of lil ol‘ me sewing together four sets of fabric into quilts is chancy enough, so why make it that much harder? Below is a close up of some of the diverse fabrics.

Below is the whole top. While I did have to iron and straighten out the various pieces, I didn’t chop them up much at all. Because they‘re big prints, the pieces couldn’t have been much smaller anyway. If you look at the smallest pieces on the right side, they start to look a little muddled. But maybe that’s due to what’s next to them. I did put the prints with the dark brown backgrounds next to lighter pieces, mostly. Hey, whatever, this isn’t trying to be a masterpiece.

Another detail. The next step is to figure out the quilting. I’ll probably stitch in the ditch, then do large geometric shapes like zig-zags, wiggles, and in some areas follow the design.

My only complaint is that someone had the bright idea of spraying some perfumed stuff on the fabrics, which billows up when they’re ironed. Hate that stuff.

Anyway, one top done, on to the next one. By the way, I have never actually made a utilitarian quilt before, only wall hangings(!)

Do you want greener books?

2009-09-18T08:22:00.004-04:00

Have you ever wondered which is better for the environment: paper books or electronic books? I dug through some articles to see if there was an answer to that question and posted the results on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids.) It’s amazing how many factors there are to consider, and I.N.K. readers have added a few more.

In other I.N.K. news, the 20+ author-bloggers been compiling a database of all our books in terms of how they meet national educational standards. For example, Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story helps students to meet several standards developed by the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) such as NL-ENG.K-12.4: Communication Skills. The database will be a free resource for librarians, teachers, and parents who prefer to use high quality trade books but also need to justify their educational value. It’s due for launch in October with its own web site so more details will be coming soon!

By the way, here’s what’s going on in the illustration above... Rufus the fox has just woken up and feels “as fresh as a daisy.” During the story, whenever a character is compared to something he or she turns into that thing. Since various characters “shake like a leaf,” become “as mad as a hornet,” and get “as cold as ice,” they look pretty silly throughout.

Love the new Illustrator blob brush

2009-09-10T20:01:00.005-04:00

That is how these plants and the beastie below were drawn. There’s something ironic about using such a 21st century tool to draw prehistoric life.... I’ve never used Illustrator that much despite having it for at least a decade, but it seems the time has come. Photoshop, for all its wonderfulness, just can’t make lines this crisp. Illustrator brushes have an adjustable “smoothing” option that (surprise) smoothes out the wobbles and bobbles in each stroke. I keep the level pretty low and have to redraw some lines, but overall it works wonderfully well to create attractive, swooping line work. You also can make the size vary according to the pressure, and several other parameters.

What’s helpful about the blob brush is that it automatically merges all lines that overlap and are the same color. Saves some steps. When you don’t want the lines to combine, the regular brush is the one to use. One problem I ran into that took awhile to figure out... once you’ve used the blob brush, if you switch back to the regular brush, it won’t work. Instead of the cursor, it shows a circle with the slash through it. You have to open the brush panel and choose a brush tip, then it works again. There may be some other way to avoid this, but whatever works, right?

Next step is filling in and otherwise coloring these in Photoshop.

Studio reorganization... is it permanent or just a short-lived phase?

2009-08-27T14:01:00.009-04:00

After delaying for years I finally bought a new monitor and Mac, so yahoo! However, as this photograph demonstrates, some reorganization was in order as well. The room isn’t quite this disheveled normally, but the photo was taken after the new system was in place, yet the old system (G4 tower, a small LCD monitor, and a Sony Trinitron CRT) was still on the tables. It’s still in here actually, because I keep thinking of files that must be retrieved from it.

I asked my naturally-organized hubby Andy for advice on how to improve the use of space. After chuckling because he gets this request from people at work fairly often, he immediately came up with two great suggestions:

#1 Put some shelves behind the monitor.

#2 Get a larger bulletin board.

The white boards on top of the TV are pieces of foam core that were sort of propped up there... for years. Kind of like bulletin boards, come to think of it. When stuff accumulates in sort of a permanent geological formation, it’s either a sign that a storage unit is needed, or perhaps that the stuff needs to be discarded. It’s not obvious in these photos, but the other items that have an annoying way of piling up are sticky notes. They accumulate in my office-studio like barnacles on a gray whale.

Let’s start with the new bulletin board (below). It’s a lot bigger than the old one, 4' X 4' and it’s very easy and inexpensive to make. It’s a piece of rigid foam insulation from the building supply store cut in half because it comes in 4' X 8' sheets. The other half is elsewhere in the room giving a total of 32 square feet of wall space to put stuff. Note: take your own box-cutter to the store, one with a nice blade at least an inch long. They only give the employees a dinky little cutter with a teensy tiny blade that just scratches the surface, literally.

The foam is covered by inexpensive decorator fabric from an outlet that is wrapped around the back and pinned into place with ball-headed straight pins. They're angled in pointing towards the edges to keep them from poking through. The pins work well instead of thumbtacks, which would make bigger holes and tend to degrade the foam faster. I didn’t bother to attach the finished bulletin boards to the walls... this one is sitting on the tables and is held in place by the mini-bookcase and TV. If you wanted to attach it to the walls, you’d probably have to glue some chunks of thin plywood to the back because you can’t hang foam on a nail. For long.

With this much-thinner monitor (a NEC MultiSync LCD 2490WUXi), there was a huge amount of room behind it. After visiting the local office supply stores, I found this 3 X 3 cubicle in Target. It’s not the most sturdy chipboard in the world... it’s similar to dried oatmeal. However, because the shelves are supported every 12 inches, it shouldn’t have any sagging problems, hopefully. It was a little confusing to assemble, but eventually it came together. This gives me an additional 9 square feet of stashing space that so far is mostly empty(!) The plastic bins are from Office Max... they were the only place that had anything like these.

You can see some sticky notes have crept in already, but I’m forcing myself to use the sticky note “widget” on the Mac instead of the real ones as often as possible. Or, just starting a document to contain whatever the fab info is. I should probably take the pens and pencils away, that might help.

Anyhoo, it’s a vast improvement and makes it much more enjoyable to write, illustrate, design, go online, you name it. Maintaining this nirvana is the next trick. After I finish up the rest of the room...

Listening to podcasts while creating

2009-08-22T08:42:00.006-04:00

My iPod touch is my new best friend while drawing, sewing, making jewelry, etc. We had resisted the siren calls of these little players for many years... what finally put us over the edge was that our new car has a USB connection so we could have lots of music without having to bring clunky CDs. When we went into our local Apple Store and saw that the iPod touch was exactly like an iPhone without the phone service, we couldn’t resist. (I have nothing against the iPhone, but we already have the only cell phone service with good reception where we live and it’s not AT&T.) Once you buy the iTouch, there is no monthly phone charge but you can do all the stuff... load your CDs on it, go online (with WiFi), use mapping services, and most importantly to me, download free podcasts from the iTunes store.

You have to set up an account with iTunes, but you don’t have to buy anything, (not that there aren’t many temptations!) The navigation with the iPod is a little confusing, but to get podcasts the first time go on the iTunes store (purple button), and either do a search on the name of the podcast you want or click the little podcast button if it’s visible on the very bottom. I’m a little vague on exactly when various options appear, it seems to vary.

You can stream many of the podcasts (listen without downloading it) but you should download at least one and keep one on the iTouch all the time. The reason is that it makes it much easier to browse for more. Once you’ve downloaded a podcast, it’s stored under the orange Music button. If you can’t see your downloaded podcasts when you click on the music button, click on More and it should appear. Once you have a podcast on there, there’s a handy little link that says Get More Episodes... the link takes you directly to related podcasts on iTunes and makes it easy to find more.

There are all sorts of categories of podcasts: News & Politics, Technology, Comedy, Arts, Games & Hobbies, and many more. What I have listened to so far are mostly NPR shows like Living on Earth (environmental topics); This American Life (fascinating stories about people); A Way with Words (fun conversations about word origins and other language topics); Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (comedy news quiz); and Fresh Air (interviews of newsmakers, authors, musicians, etc.). Scientific American had a fun 3-part series in July about the Ice Age movies, with interviews of the company founders (lots of physicists), art directors, animators, and others involved in the production.

I've only scratched the surface, can’t wait to find more. Let me know if you have any favorite podcasts to share. One thing’s for sure... my days of attempting to listen to the lousy local daytime radio in Orlando are over!

Estate sale fabric... what luck!

2009-08-14T13:05:00.005-04:00

My brother Robert has a used bookstore in Orlando, Leedy’s Books, so he’s on the email list of a company that runs estate sales. Actually, in this case the homeowners were just moving to the beach and wanted somebody else to deal with disposing of their extra belongings. They listed a lot of sewing-related items so I checked it out. There were bolts and bolts of fabric, but I really didn’t need 5+ yards of those particular fabrics. Fortunately there was a smallish plastic bin stuffed full of smaller cuts for $20.

Once home, I spent about an hour shuffling the various pieces around to find good combinations. It was amazing how much fabric was in there... most of it was large-scale prints that I wouldn’t normally buy plus some chenille and minkee fabric, but check these out...

Guitars and polka dots:

Pink and black fashionable ladies with a touch of green:

Three colors of Paris with purple dots:

Red guitars and blue and green dots:

This one isn't really a set, but I like all these fabrics, especially the paisleys.

This is what is leftover in the box. I’ll either use them for quilt backs or donate them. Although the green fluffy stuff has already been claimed by our kitty to cover her luxurious new foam pad.

Such a deal! I suspect the top four groups will come in handy for the holiday gift-giving season... if I can stop sleeping and get some production sewing time in.

By the way, in honor of finally getting new computer after delaying for literally years, AND upgrading to the wonderful world of CS4, I made a new signature for the blog. How do you like it? Maybe it could change colors with the seasons. : )

Wire jewelry set

2009-08-10T08:51:00.007-04:00

It was intriguing to visit the CHA Craft SuperShow... mostly I was on the lookout for new materials or those that I’ve previously overlooked. One of the latter is WireLaceTM, which is a ribbonlike tube of extremely fine wire netting that comes in various widths and colors. It can be stretched into ruffled shapes if desired. Bello Modo has a good selection, as well as a lot of other beautiful beads, embellishments, and other tempting supplies. The photo on the left from their display shows the WireLace woven into large chains. Also check out the kits for finished examples.

I’ve been branching out from basic wire crochet as shown below. This necklace started with one simple chain in 28 gauge wire with a few beads added in. Then several strands of randomly swirled and beaded wire were woven in one by one. It’s not an exact process... the swirls are done around various sizes of crochet hook handles or a thick needle (for a very small coil), stretched, flattened, and/or twisted around, weaving in and out of the crocheted chain. The crocheted chain provides the structure for the other strands because it can’t be stretched out of shape.

The teardrop earrings use the same wires along with the smaller beads used in the necklace.

This little sample didn’t end up as part of the set, but it has possibilities, don’t you think?

Happy Monday!

Jewelry with wire, beads... and fiber?

2009-07-30T08:05:00.008-04:00

I’ve been in a jewelry phase lately and when I wandered into JoAnn’s yesterday, most beading supplies were marked 40–50% off (yippee!) One of the intriguing books available was Crocheted Wire and Bead Jewelry by Jacqui Harris. It was only $5.97 after the markdown, with nice color photographs of the variety of necklaces. They’re all based on the same process; chain stitch at least 3 lengths of wire with beads, then braid them together. They can be elegant or wild and crazy, depending on the choice of colors and beads.

The random quality inherent to this style of jewelry is one of its most appealing aspects for me. Another nice feature is that these are pretty quick to construct. I made the one below in a couple of hours in front of the TV last night. It has 6 strands braided in groups of 2, so it’s still a 3-strand braid. One factor is that the wire can be hard on the fingers, so perhaps gloves might be in order for the fingertips that must grip the wire chain while in progress. I used 26 gauge wire instead of the recommended 28, so that made it a bit tougher as well. Of course you wouldn’t have to stick to a 3-strand braid. 200 Braids to Twist, Knot, Loop, or Weave by Jacqui Carey is wonderful eye candy that shows amazing ways to create unique trim. A helpful photographic “braid and trim selector” is a visual index to the contents. Each sample is explained clearly with general instructions plus the unique aspect of each one, e.g. multi-colored or different strand weights and/or textures. I bought the book without any specific project in mind, but with over 75 braids alone, there must be some that would be appropriate for crocheted wire work jewelry. Time to experiment, definitely.

And what about adding some fiber? Whether wire can be considered “fiber” is perhaps debatable, but there must be a way to add strips of fabric, ribbon, or yarn. Below is a simple 3-strand sample with one strand that’s crocheted with wire + ribbon yarn. The other two strands are wire chains with beads. Some definite possibilities there!Tomorrow is the Craft and Hobby Association Craft SuperShow which moved to Orlando this year, so who knows what supplies may be available there? Better bring an extra bag...