Best of Strip Piecing I and II with Nancy Crow

I'm in Ohio for two back-to-back workshops with Nancy Crow. Today was day one. As advertised, she runs her classroom like a graduate seminar. In fact, graduate school is the last time I worked this hard. I was there at 9 AM and left at 10 PM but I did manage to finish the assignment that will be critiqued tomorrow at 9. It's now almost 11 and I've got to get to bed so I can be there bright and early to tidy up today's project, clean up my work space and get ready for the next wave of work. I hope to have pictures, but not tonight. I'll update this post later with a photo of today's work.

UPDATE: Here's a picture of Monday's composition.

Still working

Three months ago I figured that I would finish all of my dying [UPDATE: That should read "dyeing". I'm perfectly healthy and I do hate that I can't spell.] by the end of August and spend September working on product for the holiday season and resting up for my trip to Ohio. After years of project management you would think that I would know to add 50% to that time estimate and not be surprised to find myself in September still looking at 24 yards of white cloth that isn't supposed to be white. I'm starting to feel like Pope Julius II in that scene from "The Agony and the Ecstasy" when he says to Michelangelo, "When will you make an end!" The only problem is that I'm playing both parts.

I think that I would be further along were it not for some changes at work that have crept into my personal life. I got a promotion (nice), but it means more responsibility, which means coming home at night without much energy for dyeing and spending part of the weekend catching up on what doesn't get done at work during the week. It will get better in a few month--I think. Bottom line, it's nice to have that "Director" title, but it doesn't come for free. So...off to dye. I need to do at least 6 yards today--preferably more.

Lab notes

During my recent sweatshopesque adventure in cloth production I've made a commitment to keeping better lab notes. Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say I've made a commitment to keeping them, period. Up until now I've just done my calculations and planning in a composition book so that I might be able to find this information in the future if I need it. Heavy emphasis on that word "might." Here's a sample of what I'm doing now. It's extra work, but I'm learning from it and I think in the long run I'll be able to see patterns/trends in the work that I'm doing and also have a better record of what works and doesn't work.

Of course this could just be a little fit of OCD.

I've got a nasty cold so I'm using today to catch up on my record keeping. I can only lay on the couch for so long before I get stir crazy. Say a prayer for poor coughing, sneezing, dripping me. I really need to feel better and get back to work. I've got two unfinished art cloth pieces at the studio that are due by a rapidly approaching deadline.

Stripes

The printing continues

I've been doing a bit more batik lately. Soy wax applied with a foam sponge works amazingly well. Gets the fingers a little warm, but the result is well worth.

Happy rebirth day to me

Where were you one year ago today?

I was the center of attention (at least as far as I could tell) in the cardiac ICU at Fairfax Hospital, putting behind me the heart disease that had landed me there and on the road to recovering from the surgery that had somewhat reset the clock on my life expectancy. The conventional wisdom concerning recovery from open heart surgery seems to be that it takes between 6 months and a year to feel like yourself again. So, I'm now myself? The truth is I will never be the old pre-op me again again, in much same way that I can never be a teenager again. There's just been too much change and too close of a brush with death. But the post-op me is still me and life is pretty sweet. I'm looking forward to seeing just how much sweeter it can get. And best of all I'm going to be around long enough to find out!

65+ yards and counting

I'm into my 3rd bolt of cloth and I'm building up a nice stash of solid color yardage for my class in Sept (Nancy Crow). I'm learning a lot from the exercise. If nothing else, I've gotten better about keeping lab records. I'm dyeing all of the solids with a full immersion processe. That means mixing and preparing dye and auxiliaries for about30 minutes then standing in front of a bucket for about an hour and a half. I've come up with a setup that lets me do 3 yards at a time. I manually agitate 2 buckets and let my Wonder Washer tend a 3rd yard (with a few quick checks along the way). What is a Wonder Washer you might ask? Well, basically it's like something straight out of an infomercial. It's a table top washing machine that looks just like an old school diaper pail crossbred with an ice cream maker. If you want to see one in action you might check out this slightly odd video of some straight guy doing his laundry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ4Nix460h4. Of course I bought the thing so who am I to talk about odd.

Anyway, I'm using the Soderlund method. My first family of colors (bright) was all dyed by overdyeing yellow, red, and blue to match samples from my (her) color book. This was really time consuming and I didn't realize that I should be using a different approach until I'd dyed about 30 yards of cloth various values of yellow. I had no choice but to continue with the overdye method to the bitter end. It was worth the work. I'm really pleased with the result.

Next I moved on to a more subdued color family (Earth) and switched to a value gradation method. Carol has a nice formula for creating a 10-step value gradation of a single hue from very light to almost black. I wanted a 6-step and didn't want really light or really dark, so I used the basic method, but came up with my own scale (a log10 progression) that's producing very nice results. It's 4 steps of pure color and 2 steps toned with complement.

This Earth family also produces some really excellent browns and blacks. I'd love to dye nothing but this for a while.

I've still got more solids to dye, but I'm also starting to move on to some prints. It's been a long time since I did any printing with the intent to create yardage (i.e., not art cloth). It's a bit confining not to be able to work big and do whatever I want. The repeating pattern, stripe, grid thing doesn't feel right. I want to discharge and go back into all of the pieces below, but I need to resist for now. I might still do something. I need to let these stew for now. I will probably supplement the stash with some commercial stripes and plaids (Nancy's request--I'm afraid to know what we're going to do with plaid).

Multiple printings with two values of two different colors.

Mono printing combined with batik. This piece and the one above were both overdyed with the same blue as the last step to help unify them.

Well, that's all for now. I'll certainly post more before the class (or at least I "plan" to).

Dyeing myself crazy

In mid-May I went to The Crow Barn in Ohio to take the 2nd part of Carol Soderlund's class "Color Mixing for Dyers". What an amazing experience. I learned even more than I hoped and figured out the causes and cures for some of the technical problems that I've been having with both liquid and thickened dye.

While I was there I thought (and talked) a lot about what comes next. Aside from general artistic development, is there an area in which I could benefit from some focussed study? I kept coming back to design. I thought about whether I wanted to study on my own, in a university setting, with a surface design teacher, or with a quilt design teacher. Although each of these options has it's own appeal, and I might end of doing all of them at some time, the thing that seems to make the most sense right now is quilt design. After I returned home I finally made the decision to return to Ohio in September for two back-to-back classes with Nancy Crow. It borders on insanity given the amount of prep work that I have to do and the intensity with which Nancy runs her classes. I seen them during other trips to the Barn, but this will be my first excursion into the big upstair quilting studio as a student. What I think back on my physical condition at this time last year I am nothing less than shocked that I feel so good and am able to even consider doing this. I could barely have managed the packing for such a trip last year, let alone the prep and the class itself. Amazing.

Now, when I say "prep work" what I'm referring to is the rather substantial collection of fabric that I need to amass between now and September--about 100 yard of solid colors, with some patterned stuff thrown in. I'm almost 30 yards into the dyeing using what I learned in Carol's classes. I've almost completed one color palette and will soon move onto a second (pics soon I promise). I've also got to do value gradations of neutrals, a hue series of off-whites, as well as stripes, batiks, and such. I'm not quite through my first bolt of Pimatex and realizing that, while I've got two more on hand, I might need to order a 3rd. (Don't ask about my Visa bill). I'm also making my way through 80 lbs of salt. While I was at the Southern States (farm supply) I impulsively picked up 50 lbs of urea. It was so cheep that I couldn't resist, but honestly--this is a lifetime supply since I'm using it 10 grams at a time.

Stay tuned for more stories from the dye studio--AKA laundry/furnace room in the basement.

New website

It's the same old web address (www.russlittlefiberartist.net) but a new platform and a new look for the site. I just finished moving everything to Google Apps Premier Edition and I couldn't be happier. It's fully hosted and template based. I now have absolutely no site design software on my computer--just my web browser. The site does everything that I want and it's really easy to update and maintain. I had to rebuild rather than move it from the old location, but is was mostly copying and pasting text and uploading images. Perhaps best of all, I didn't have to write a single line of code--a refreshing change.

I confess that I've had some recent experience with a Google Apps implementation, so this wasn't too intimidating. If you're looking for a different way to handle, email, calendar, documents, and your website all in one location you might want to check it out. There are lots of 3rd party service providers who will set everything up for you for a relatively small fee. It's a great small business tool, IMHO.

The one that got away (sort of)

I'm disappointed to say that I did NOT get into the SAQA Creative Force show. A national art quilt show is still eluding me. I feel really good about the piece that I entered, and I guess that's supposed to be all that matters. Still, it would have been nice. Someday.

Here's the piece that didn't make it. It's titled "On Point" I think it's among my best work to date, if not the best. I've held off on posting it until now. It large--close to 80" tall. I've got another show in mind--so try, try again.

A detail shot.