Stimulating ...A GOE Challenge

One of the members of the GOE group gave us a container with some odds & ends and a word for inspiration, for us to use in our challenge. I've been pondering for quite some time & finally I had to just have it done because today was the last day I had to work on it. No more messing around. I always seem to run out of time and pressure to finish seems to be my best friend lately.

The word in the box was Stimulating. So I just did something that I find stimulating...that's working in encaustic. I used a wipe up tissue that I kept from a day of dying at a friends house for the backdrop. The colour matched perfectly with the rovings that were in the box. I added Pearl X, beads, a crayon coloured bottle cap, a tyvek & copper bead, along with some felted trimmings my daughter gave me last Christmas.

This is just a detail shot.

ATC

If you've been following my blog you'd notice that I've been working on art cloth. I took this ATC sized section from one of my art cloth experiments, hand stitched it, added beads along with a tyvek bead and copper wire. I thought that the texture was interesting. I'm really starting to like working with the tissue and cheese cloth. This particular sample was done with alcohol inks that I spritzed with water so that it ran down the length of the paper. It was quite stiff when complete and perfect for an ATC.

Frankensteined

Well, I've been working for a week and getting nowhere. It started with an article from the Quilting Arts Magazine, February/March 2012 issue. The article is called Surfaces for Stitch in which this wonderful lady named Pauline Verrinder  gives directions on how to make art cloth from Gesso, cheesecloth & newspaper. I just loved this article and what she made was fabulous. The Group of Eight's (GOE), challenge for next quarter is to do something with an article in a newspaper. So naturally I though I had something that I could produce and be done my challenge way before the due date. Ha ha...that's not happening. I'm a very nervous person and always want to put my best effort on everything that I do and I was discussing this with the group and telling them how I really stress over the challenges. The group was very supportive and told me to just have fun and that I could make something as small as an ATC for submission. So I really thought I had this one in the bag. I started out so bloody positive but all I got was positively frustrated. I followed the directions but I guess I'm just not very intuitive when it comes to paints because you wouldn't believe how many layers I added to try and get the right combination. Then when all I got was a friggin mess...I'd paint over it with a solid colour in frustration. I couldn't get the layers to stay down like the article was describing. As soon as it dried the layers seemed loose...so out came the glue, more gesso or even molding paste was added. I ended up with nothing like the article. After my first try with nothing that resulted in anything like art cloth,  I asked my husband to read the article and see if I'm missing anything. He read the article and had a few suggestions. So on Friday night I came home again ready to adorn the apron and dig in again. I worked for over 3 hours and the next morning I went up to the studio and painted the whole dam thing metallic blue and started over. This article is going to do some traveling with me so that I can get some expert advice from my fibre friends. Maybe I'll have more to show but for now take a look at the below pictures. They are not in sequence so I've numbered them in the caption of where I started and what I ended up with.

This was my third piece that my husband says needs to be called "Frankenstein something" because of the stitching. The newspaper article is not recognizable at all. It was suduko puzzles and that's why they have numbers painted on the pieces.

This is a detailed shot. I think I'm going to frame this one anyways because it's growing on me a little. Maybe I just want to salvage something of my week.

This was my first try. Up close I really love the texture that I got...but it's nothing like the article. I wish I could show the article but I don't want to get in trouble with the copyright police.

This is the second one I did after my husband read the article and gave me his suggestions. We you can see some of the newspaper article in this one...but it just doesn't do anything for me at all. I even had the Golden glass bead medium out on this one. Up close you can see the beads and how they give it a little glitz. Again nothing like the original article from QA. You can see why I needed some help on it right. I was loosing sleep...and everything works in theory.

El Grande Worry

This piece all started with a commercial that I thought was very funny...

I was so excited about making this piece that I was up in my studio painting at 5:30am so that the paint would be dry when I had more time. I started with painting a plain white Tyvek envelope, using gold, brown, rustic red and emerald green, Lumiere paints.

Then I painted a left over piece of cotton batting, brown and gold, as a back drop for the Tyvek. I cut the Tyvek into random pieces that I found pleasing and pinned them to the brown and gold back drop.

Then I got really nervous because I'd never done this before. So I thought that I would practice on a piece of Tyvek that I had in my scrap pile. I pinned it to a scrap piece of cotton batting and put some tear away on the back to give it some stability and also to give my hands more room to hold it while sewing.

Then I started stitching using a Sulky embroidery thread for the top and a neutral cotton thread in the bobbin.

Because my sewing machine automatically sets the tension depending on the thickness of the piece under the needle...I had to use a stiletto that my husband had just made me. This helped me keep my hands away from the needle and also help feed the Tyvek through the machine. I really liked the results so now I was ready to start on my original back drop.

Again, using the stiletto as a guiding tool, I stitched until I was happy with the integration of the Tyvek to the painted cotton batting.

Then I stitched the backdrop to a burlap rice sack using jute from the dollar store. Painted the title using rustic red Lumiere paints...El Grande Worry...and then attached my rope worry doll.

My worry doll is about 7" tall. She's made from course rope that I bought yesterday from The Art House Studio in Kitchener. Then I wrapped the rope with jute from the dollar store. This made her very stiff and you could actually pose her. I added the raffia hair and clothing from my stash and she was complete.

Surface Design Reveal

Last weekend I met up with the Surface Design Tribe and was completely overwhelmed by the ideas for the next design challenge. After we decided what our next round robin project was going to be we had a show and share of what the members had done since our previous meeting. The eye candy just had me hovering above ground...no rest for the wicked right. It was so exciting. Our group has now expanded to 12 members so the next installment from this group will have 12 blocks rather than 10. The fun has begun again, but for now, here's the pictures of the reveal.

tyvek sample

I'm in love with melting tyvek. Recently I borrowed a book from a friend called 'Surfaces for Stitch' and in it there is a section on tyvek. It re-inspired me to head back to the studio and melt more tyvek. In this sample I used gel medium to adhere a used, painted and melted dryer sheet to a FedEx tyvek envelope. Once dry, I then placed it between parchment paper and heated it with an iron. I just loved the texture, however, some of the FedEx print was showing through the holes in the dryer sheet. So then I had to add more paint in order to cover it up. I used my inks and dropped randomly around the piece and let it run. I also rubbed ink over the surface until I got the effect I was looking for. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the sample but I had fun and I'll add it to my basket of goodies.