felting wool

Yesterday’s blog post told you about my wool felted flower class with Vickie Clontz.  My flower was dry last night so I was able to finish it up.  I’m much happier with it, but it’s way too large to wear!!!  MY BAD!! Vickie gave us a pattern to follow, but mine just kept getting bigger and bigger, way outside the suggested lines Vickie gave me!  I think I’ll use put a long stem on it and put it in my studio.  I may even make a few more and make a bouquet (idea from Judy Whitehead – thanks, Judy!).

While the flower is pretty, and I’m glad I made it, my main purpose for taking the class was to learn how to wet-felt wool fibers. 

I have a project in mind using this technique. Before I start wet- felting a couple of pounds of wool fibers, I wanted to make a maquette.  Basically, a maquette is a rough draft.  I used a couple ounces of wool this morning to practice the technique and make a sample piece of wool felt. I actually stopped before the wool was felted. I made what is referred to as “pre-felt” (I learned SO MUCH from Vickie Clontz on Saturday!)

I won’t share the step-by-step process here because teaching the process is something Vickie does for a living and she really is quite good at it.

These are the bunches of roving I had stashed away

And here is how I separate the fibers

And here is the nest of fibers I made. The shiny stuff is angelina.

Here is the nest after I’ve started the wet felting process.

And here it is, rinsed and ready to dry flat.  At this point, I can either continue the felting process or I could try shaping this (I think it shapes better if it’s fully felted). I’m choosing to dry it flat because of the next step in the process of making my maquette.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

NC Quilt Symposium 2011

This year’s Quilt Symposium will be held at Peace College in Raleigh, NC. Here is a list of the lectures on Friday and Saturday.

Friday, June 3rd
9:00 am	Rayna Gillman	Pushing Creativity with What If?
10:30 am	Jan Krentz	The Great Star Review
2:00 pm	Frieda Anderson	Frieda’s Fun Fast Fusing
3:30 pm	Pepper Cory	The Art of Real Scrap Quilting
7:15 pm	Margaret Miller	Looking Ahead with Margaret Miller
7:15 pm		Participants’ Fashion Show
Saturday, June 4th
9:00 am	Joyce Becker	Landscape Quilts
10:30 am	Sharon Schamber	My Quilting Journey
2:00 pm	Lyric Kinard	The Elements of Art for Quilters
3:30 pm	Mary Ellen Kranz	The Top Ten Ways Quiltmakers Can Use Computers
7:15 pm	Leslie Riley	Making Time for Making Quilts
7:15 pm	Patti Cline and Cindy Page	Shesa B. Quilter meets Emma C. Fortune

Grab a friend and come to Raleigh!  Browse the Quilt show, Shop with the vendors, and listen to a lecture.  This promises to be a great opportunity for a memorable road trip.

Busy week

The past 7 days have been busy!

Rachel and I drove up to see my Mom last Tuesday (has it really only been 7 days??). Here is my mom holding miss Kiyah at her home in Burnsville, NC. We ate lunch in downtown Burnsville and did a little shopping before heading home to have dinner at Ted and Lauren’s house that night in Matthews, NC (I put over 400 miles on my car last Tuesday!)

Then on Saturday, I took a Felted Wool Flower class with Vickie Clontz. Vickie is very talented with wool and I wanted to learn the art of wet felting. Here is my merino wool fibers laid carefully on a piece of bubble wrap ready to start the felting process:

And here are the flowers we made in class:

Mine is one on the top right. When I got it home, I didn’t like the way it dried so I re-wet it, fulled it some more and shaped it and let it dry. It’s now ready to assemble. I plan on doing that tonight. I promised Vickie I would wear it at Symposium this weekend.

Which leads to the final “busy-ness” of the week. Getting ready for classes at Symposium.  North Carolina has had a Quilt Symposium every year for 32 years in a row. A State-wide Board of 21 members work to make this a continuing endeavor.  I have been serving as President of the NCQSI for the past year. I have one more year to serve.  The Symposium is being held this coming Thursday through Sunday at Peace College in Raleigh, NC.  I’ve signed up to take 2 classes with Leslie Riley. I’m very excited about the classes, but have had some preparing to do and some of that has required me to learn new things. Most of you know I am not techno-savvy and tend to hate gadgets and computers unless they are extremely user friendly. I am proud to say I’ve managed to learn to upload, download, mirror-image….. to print these wonderful images onto TAP paper.  The TAP Paper will allow me to transfer the images to cloth, polymer clay, glass, among other things.  I will be using the images to create collage this weekend.

Aren’t the images wonderful????? I got them from a great site: The Graphics Fairy.  The Graphics Fairy is a blogspot hosted by Karen. It contains over 2,000 copyright free images!  I love it!!!

So a very busy 7 days behind me with an even busier tonight and tomorrow as I finish up my felted flower and finish getting packed for Thursday morning. I’m hoing to take my computer with me to Symposium and blog each day.

Off to the studio where I need to find all those tidbits of stuff that will make my collages sing!

my new favorite ritual

I realized this morning that I have a new ritual and I am loving it.  For years I’ve gotten up and poured my first cup of coffee and sat in front of the TV to watch the morning news.  For the past several weeks, I’ve bypassed the TV and I’ve headed back to bed with my first cup of coffee.  I am an avid reader – always have at least 2 books going and have been known to have up to 4 going at a time! I realized this morning that I’ve been doing this long enough that I think it’s my new ritual!

First cup of coffee in bed with a great book. What an absolutely wonderful, marvelous, magical way to start my days.

I am now off to tidy my sewing room a bit and do some sewing.  My to-do list for the art side of my life is sooooo long!!! I promise to get back to you with pictures soon.

Good news

 I’ve been quiet on the blog front lately, but I’ve been very busy in my life – remember the old saying about the duck sitting calmly on the water, but her feet are going a mile a minute?? That would me of late.

Remember my post about being brave? One exhibit rejected my quilt for their show. I got a very nice note from one of the curators telling me how much she liked my quilt and that she was sorry it was not going to be in the exhibit. I thought that was really thoughtful.  Here’s a picture of that quilt:

The National Quilting Association has accepted my quilt “Cold Foot Contest” into their 2011 show. I’m very excited about it. The show will be June 16-18 in Columbus, Ohio. I wish I could be there to see it hang, but unfortunately I have other plans that weekend.

Finally, my last bit of good news is that I’ve been invited to join a group of fiber artists known as Fiber Art Options.  I went to my first meeting as a member yesterday and it was so inspirational to be in the company of these talented artists. I will be posting about upcoming events as they get closer. I believe being a part of this group will be a huge motivation to begin new work. All those sketches and ideas will need to be dusted off and brought into existence!

Fab Friday: Intention

I shared with you a couple of weeks ago that my word for the year is “Intention”.  Being on vacation made it difficult to focus (and to blog!), but the word would cross my mind occasionally and I found myself making better decisions for my health as we went along – I managed to eat LOTS of good German food and not gain weight!  I also found myself more easily able to enjoy the moment we were in and the experience we were enjoying at that moment (I have a tendency to want to see what’s around the next corner).  

My intention for today is to continue to sort through my stuff and make decisions about what I will use, how I will use it, and how I can best store it so that it will be USED and not just OWNED.  One of my year’s goals is to reclaim organization in the area of  my art.  I’ve been busy over the past year and have been guilty of opening cabinets and tossing stuff in and then digging through stuff to find what I’m looking for and not taking the time to put stuff where it belongs.  The result is I have stuff everywhere and it’s all in a jumbled mess.  I feel like my mess is a sign of disrespect to my studio and to my art.

I like my studio. I’m able to create and sew and I find peace in that room.  My studio was a birthday gift many years ago. My husband had a friend of ours come in and put built in cabinets in and a counter top for my sewing. He cut the cabinets down so that the  height is perfect for me.  I feel very loved when I sit down to sew.  In that room is a small closet that we converted to a desk space for me when I was working on my masters degree. We had a desktop computer there. It recently ‘died’ and we’ve taken it out which has opened up some space that I want to use for some of my non-sewing activities. 

Here is a picture of the closet area before I started working on it:

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Funky bracelet

I was able to steal away to my studio for a little while on Saturday afternoon. Rachel and Adam went to look at houses and Steve went for a kayak paddle. Left me ALL ALONE in the house for about 2 hours. I headed straight for my studio. I first spent about 15 minutes re-acquainting myself: petting fabric, rearranging piles, etc. Then decided with the time I had I better not start any of the larger projects calling my name! So, pulled out a few odds and ends and made a bracelet.

A group I am a part of, FABS, went to Saluda a couple of weeks ago. We went to go shopping at a very cool store called Random Arts. What a neat little store!!! I wish I had thought to take my camera with me!!! It is a store full to the brim with odds and ends: ribbons, charms, “found” objects, copper mesh, cardboard “things”…….. A true treasure trove for any artist. I bought entirely too much stuff, but am looking forward to playing with it all! One of the things I bought was this piece of loosely woven fabric that they had used to make funky bracelets. It’s what I played with on Saturday. I got to wear my bracelet Saturday night when Steve and I went to dinner and dance at the local Catholic Church’s Irish night supper. I felt beautiful!

Until next time!

DeLane

Chicks are growing!

Here’s a picture of the chicks. I’ve actually had a couple of friends ask for updated pictures so here they are! I moved them outside to their chicken run/coop this week. The weather is warm enough for them as long as I keep a light bulb glowing at night. This weekend, I’ll probably have to leave it on all day as well since the coop isn’t insulated yet. Chicks have to be about 12 weeks old and completely feathered out to regulate their body temp. (in addition to pictures, you actually learn a tidbit or two when you come to visit me here).

I still haven’t been in my studio – 3 weeks now! I’m feeling pretty antsy to create, but at the same time really don’t have the presence of mind to do so. On the up side of why I’m not in my studio, Rachel and Adam are settling in to living here temporarily. Rachel finished her second week on the job today; she seems to enjoy it. Adam begins his new job on Monday. This week, he’s looked at over 50 houses trying to find one that both he and Rachel can agree on. She’s been meeting him and the real estate agent in the late afternoon after work to look at the houses Adam liked during that day of looking at houses. They have 2 or 3 to look at tomorrow. They are both hoping one of them will say “ME! ME!, Buy ME!”

So, for now, it’s a house full of family which is a good thing; a coop full of chickens that entertain us; and a studio that says “hey! when you coming back?”.

Until next time – and I promise I WILL put up art at some point soon!

DeLane

What I did today!

You’ll never guess what I did today! I bought my baby chicks! I have wanted chickens for at least 20 years and in the last 3 or 4 it has become more and more important for me to do so. I cannot explain it – it is something I “have” to do. So, my husband has started building the coop and a neighbor is working on the run. Our local Tractor Supply Store got baby chicks in on Wed and I stopped by today and got mine. Aren’t they cute???!!!!

I have a Rhode Island Red, a Cochin, a Buff Orpington, a Black Barred, and a Golden Laced Wyandotte! They are between 1 1/2 and 2 weeks old. I have them in a tub in my garage for now. They will have to be moved to a larger container in the next few days and will go outside to their coop in about a month or so. I’ll post pictures from time to time to keep you up on their progress!

So now that the chicks are settled in, I’m off to my studio to play.

Until next time, DeLane