Category Archives: New Iris

Acanthite, Caramelized, New Iris, Oak Leaves, Out of the Dark, Out the Window, Pomegranate, Red Nebula, Yellowstone

Realisations

November 20, 2014 admin 1 Comment

Hello,

I feel so Positive when I think about my work. I did a solo trunk show yesterday for the North Syracuse Art Guild titled

Out the Window 16.5" X 21.5" $125.00 — Out the Window
16.5″ X 21.5″
$125.00

” Your Art /My Art”. In that lecture/ trunks show, I compared my work to the many styles and types of work that the members use. In doing so I really realized how much I draw from the other art categories to get my ideas across. I draw directly on the fabric with pencils, crayons and markers. I use my machine as a drawing tool too. I Paint with acrylic,water color and dye on the surface when I need to create a special effect. I print on the surface using silk screens, stamping and stencils to get images I want on the work. I use some weaving techniques like felting, silk papers and frapping. I often use collage techniques to build up my surfaces with

Red Nebula 18" X 24" — Red Nebula
18″ X 24″

textures and transparencies and different already textured fabrics like velvet and satins. I even embellish with old jewelry on occasion. I am thankful that I get to use from all the different art areas to full fill my creative drive. I realized too that I have been using my experiences and interests to fuel my work for most of my life. Doing a presentation like this is a good way to reflect and re evaluate oneself.

Oak Leaves 45" X 30" $ 350.00 — Oak Leaves
45″ X 30″
$ 350.00

I now have the monster job of returning all the work back into the category packs that I store them in. I feel so very thankful that I am working in so many ways to fulfill my creative ideas.

Acanthite: Foundations XXIV 18" X 23" $ 150.00 — Acanthite: Foundations XXIV
18″ X 23″
$ 150.00

Progress Report: Acanthite :Foundation 24 This quilt is went together very quickly for me. This stone added some problems as some of the areas where a sold white. I wanted to be sure to use velvet and now whale corduroy on this work to show the wonderful textures they add to the surface. There were also lots of cracks on the surface that added interest to this one.

This shot also shows some of the chenille yarn( dark green) and some silk paper( blue- near the top).

Broadcasting I am enjoying doing the hand work on this piece. Most of the saxaphone pads are stitched down now and I am adding beads and french knots to the surface. I have added some reflective quilting to the surface too. This work is going along well at the moment with each actions leading to the next.

Yellowstone The ease that Broadcasting is a great contrast with my slow process on this work. I think I finally have the map portions the correct size and location. I will do the paint step for that and then I will move forward. I also realized that the piece is too pale. Yellowstone has lots of forest and I want to project that feel too so I pulled out dark green organza ( pinned to the left) and adding that will help me go forward I hope.

The Blues This work just needs time as the hand work is a slow thing. I am playing with three of different types of stitches- the chain stitch, the blanket stitch and the fly stitch. I am varying the size of the stitches to add interest.

Caramelized This is a new work that is still in the shifting and pinning stage. I melted the Tyvec that I painted in the fall colors last week, with the iron between sheets of parchment paper. The melt results are so much fun because they are uncontrollable. Mixing them with silk paper makes me think of carmel and melting butter. That is were the title came from. I am enjoying the play.

Keep Creating

Carol

Baby Quilts, Daily's, Diva Meetings, New Iris, Quilt Exploration Group (QuEGs)

Seeing July 3, 2014

July 3, 2014 admin 1 Comment

Hello,

As we head for the 4 of July celebrations I have been thinking about seeing. I read “We don’t see what we see. We see what we want to see.” by ALan Fletcher. My first response to this was surprize. But as I though about it I agreed. I then though- Oh this is not so true of artists- we pay more attention to what we see. Then to test myself I tried to visualize my walking shoes that I wear almost daily and recall how many holes were there for laces. Five I though with confince…. but when I checked there are six, although I only have my laces in five of the holes. So I drew them as my drawing exercise this morning. This will help me really “see” them I though. And that is true, I really did see them, but in the looking at the shoes I shut out all the things around the shoes. I would be quickly overwhelmed by the visuals if I did not do that editing and selecting of things in my world. In the end I have to agree with Mr Fletcher- we all are confinded by our choices of “what we want to see”.

This week was the first Tuesday of the month of July so I went to meetings. QuEGS meant and we all had lots to share. Liz is making progress on her memory quilt for her friend. All the blocks are made now and she will begin the final assembly soon.

Linda C. showed us her crazy quilt and amazed us by flipping up the work to show the paper and that showed the planning pages she had under the sewn squares. Several of us admitted we would not have planned out as much as she did, but would have let the process tell us what to do next. We all have different procedures we follow as we work. This work will be a stunner when it is complete. The good thing about seeing the processes of others does help us all of us to think more carefully about our own work and consider if we can improve by following the the examples around us.

Angela is still being influnced by her tip to Hawaii. She showed us several beautiful silk painted flower pictures this week.

Then I was off to my DIVA meeting. Cheri shared her “Miss Liberty” wall piece and her new lady lizard( in the for ground) She mixes fabric and yarn in her sculptures and I think that is a great idea.

Alice had her fabric books to show us. They are so delightful. I enjoy how she mixes commercial fabric images- the water lily- with her own hand painted materials- the turtle.

Ruth assembeled all the units she had created in the class she took last month. They do make a pleasing little collection I think. And what a great visual review of techniques to have on the studio wall so one does not forget about them.

Progress Report: New Iris I am happy to say this work is now complete. I took it to both meetings on Tue and asked for ideas on the beards for the iris. I had thought that purple was the color to use, but the others felt yellow or white would be better.

New Iris 28" X 22.5" — New Iris
28″ X 22.5″

I tried both colors before I settled on the yellow. The yellow sure does pop forward on the purple flowers and draw the eye. That is what contrasting colors are suppose to do, but I do not think of it most of the time while I am working.

I like the depth this quilt has – all the applique on top of what I once thought was a completed work, helps that idea. I will try to keep this more in mind in the furture too.

East Window This work is done now . I made this quilt to put over the window in the east bedroom in the winter. I used a special batting that has a foil liner in the center to reflect heat into the room and cold out. There is not a lot of quilting on this work. I only stitched in the seam lines( in the ditch) to connect the top and back. I would have done a lot more machine drawing on the surface if it was not for window use.

Baby Quilt This one got completed this week as well. I was surprised when I finished putting the last hem stitches in last even and realized I had finished off three this week. The bad news is I have no new beginnings.

I try to be practical with baby quilts and make them so they can be easily washed. I also add a sleeve so they can hang on the wall if the parents choose. This is the second child for this family so there are two bears, one for each child. The bigger one is helping the smaller bear and that is my way of saying that they should care for one another and the older one is a part of the process.

I like the simple outline applique technique that is easy to use with this style of quilting. It goes quickly when the layout of the parts is done. One only needs to think about the layers of the pieces so there are as few starts and stops as possible. Here I did the mane first, then the ear, then the body, and last I added the reins and the eye details.

Daily News I can now see that it will take a lot of time to finish this piece. It takes a seven min. to machine add the velcro spot, and stitch around the two units , leaving an opening. When I set down to do the hand work I trim the corners and turn the block right side out, before stitching it closed. I get between four and five of them done in an hour. I know I am working as fast as I feel comfortable with– but the process of finishing up seems a long way off at this point.

Please leave me a comet in the area provided at the bottom. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Keep Creating

Carol

Baby Quilts, Daily's, Dusty Roads, New Iris

Choices June 26, 2014

June 26, 2014 admin

Hello,

It is another gray and rainy day here. There are lots of reasons to feel down. I am having trouble with the tension on my sewing machine. It is very humid and my hair is droopy. The sky is gray and all this rain even makes the Martha Washington Greniums hang low. In my effort to empty some of the excess rainwater from them , I accidenty spilled it all over my feet and my sandels are all wet. Inspite of all this stuff I still feel happy. I am making progress on my projects even with the thread problem, because all the rain keeps me in the studio a bit more. The birds are singing and I even saw one taking a bath in one of the mud puddles on my walk in the rain. I noted too the circular patterns of falling rain in one of the puddles and thought it might make a good starting place for a quilting pattern. So why I feel so good? I believe it goes back to what my Dad always use to say to me as a kid” It ‘s not what happens to you that matters so much as what you THINK about what happens to you that matters.” I am choosing to be happy about the possibilites of today.

Progress Report: Dusty Trails I am to the quilting stage of this project now. I was tempted to just quilt in the ditch, but staying in the seam lines with the quilting seemed like a cop out. So I am using is wandering stitch pattern that reflects the seams instead. My title has more to do with color than the stitch pattern.

New Iris I am all done with the hand applique of the new leaves and flowers. I was considering adding some of the fuzzy trim to the flowers as the beards of the iris. The color has more red in it than the existing flowers but I really like the texture. I guess it is again a decision I can only make after I try it and see how it looks. That really is the best approach any way.

New project-Baby Quilt My niece had a new baby last week and so I am busy creating a baby quilt for the new child. He as an older sister so I am putting two teddy bears on this one. The three butterflies allow me to add quilting for stability in the sky. One might also be able to teach a little counting to a little one with this work.

New work- East Window I am creating a new window cover for the east room window. When I work on these types of quilts I first do a wrogh layout of where I think some fabrics will end up. I am trying to start quilts now using fabrics I have altered in some way. This time I used some marbleized fabric, a piece from the soy wax class, and some painted fabrics. When I have selected these materials, I chose things that work with them. I think of the second choices as fillers and I cut them into strips of one and a half, two and a half and three and a half inch sections and sew them into long mixed units. This method means I can just add the units to the fabric sections as I go along and do not have to keep stopping and cutting new fabric. This method does create some unused material at the end of the assembley. But I always just add that to my scrap basket and it becomes part of the material I use in my scrap happy quilts that I give as fund raisers . I always enjoy my time doing the assembly process of quilt construction.

Daily News I have finished the base for the Daily’s now. It is a black rectangle with 30 black velcro units on it. I put the quilt on the door to my studio so I see it first thing every day and my new habit has become to change the layout each morning. Its a fun exercise and it means that I finish several more blocks every evening during the news like before.

Keep Creating

Carol

Daily's, Dusty Roads, New Iris

Quarter Moon June 19, 2014

June 19, 2014 admin

Hello,

This evening we will view the last quarter moon for this month. I have always wondered why the cookies that are half choclate and half white are called Half Moon cookies? Quarter moon would be more accurate. Oh well, I know they are all good to eat no matter what they are called. The other seasonal event this week is Summer Solstice. That happens on Saturday . Hurray! Bring on Summer.

I spent last Friday with my friend Susan. We made silk paper. Susan is very interested including text and words in her work, so I did some experimenting that I might not have tried other wise. The 3’s are letters on tying paper that are tarped between layers of silk. Then I thought why not just write words – so I tried my name as you can see. It is doable. I will use my name to make a new name tag to put over my work area at QBL.

Then on Monday I drove down to visit Regina. She is amazing and I had a wonderful day. She gave me this stack of sample l dress tops to play with. Her techniques is to cut off all the beads and use them in other work. I do not know just what I will do with them- but I love the challenge. Regna loves texture almost as much as I do. This wonderful little evening bag is a good example of that. She weaves rag rugs that are all over her house. She has an embroidery machine and has wonderful examples all over the place too. I went home with my head spinning full of ideas and aw.

With all my travel I have not done a lot of work in the studio this week, but that seem to be the nature of summer. I want to be out of doors and enjoy my environment.

Progress Report: New Iris’s I am adding applique iris on the surface of this quilt now. I am going to add the greenery first and then the flowers. I may need more blossems – but I will only know that with lots of looking and thinking.

Dusty Roads This was formerly labeled as new work one. I can see where I am going with it now so it has a name. This is a good example of many of the surfacing altering techniques I like to use. There is rust work, eraser stamping, silk screen printing, direct painting, and fabric from the soy dye class in this piece. The dark brown with the white lines is drawing done with liquid dish washer detergent. Most of the blue areas on this work are painted interfacing pieces. I sure had fun mixing all of them and it made me realize that I do work in color families most of the time.

Daily News I am working away on the back unit to put my little squares on now with this project. It is all black so I did not do a photo of it- not very interesting at this point. When it is done I will start to shoot it with the various squares velcro-ed on the surface.

Enjoy the beauty of the season.

Keep Creating

Carol

Daily's, New Iris

Tomorrow…..June 12, 2013

June 12, 2014 admin

Hello,

I am greeting you with flowers because my husband did the same to me this week. I enjoy the rich deep color of red roses.

I realized that tomorrow is the full moon and it is Friday the 13. I wonder how often that happens?

Saterday was our second play date at the Verna Fire Hall. We again were exploring the Gelli Plate and its many printing wonders. There were 10 folks this time and only three of us were repeats from the time before. This shot is of my work table at noon before I fired up for my second layer of fun and surprises. I made a mistake and left half of my paints at home. But I chose to see that as a challenge and because I did not have any red, orange or purple all the pieces will work together do to the limited pallet.

I had a wonderful surprise yesterday as Patti stopped by. She presented me with a gift of two of the squares she made using the fabric yarn I had given to her last week. She sure is enjoying her new pin loom! Both of these squares use the the same weff fabric yarn- but the color she used for the woof really makes them appear different. The black sure tones down the color!

I went to visit Nancy this week too. She works on a tabletop to lay out her work. I do realize she has a much more realistic feel for how the project will look on the bed by doing it that way, but I really like working vertically myself. This quilt will be the summer quilt for her own bed when it is done. She is building a rainbow layout across the main part of the bed top with some black and white added in for interest. This is also the quilt she made the clouds for last week. They are set to go in the pillow sections of the quilt. She lent me this book on color to read before I take my color classes at QBL this summer. It is written for paintes, but I am enjoying it throughly. I am sure thankful I live in a time when one can just go purchase paint off the shelf instead of collect the materials, grinding down the pigments and mix the formulas to get the desired colors.

Progress Report: New Work One I thought I should revisit some of the fabrics I made in the soy wax class earlier this spring and use them. I pulled one and then I noticed how it worked with the rust fabric I did last fall and a piece of the stencil work I did last winter as well as some stamping work I had done the winter before. So I started this possible lay out. It was too monochromatic so I added some blue to the mix. The blue is from my stash of self embellished fabric too. Things will surely shift and change from this starting point- but I try to be open to the changes the fabrics suggest as I work along.

New Work Two I piled up a second collection of fabrics as a starting point for yet another new quilt. It is not “talking” to me in the same way the brown one is so this may not go beyond this point. I just have to live with it a bit.

New Iris’s I was not happy with the way this quilt was going. It was coming out too much like the first one I did earlier this spring. So I let it hang on the pin wall for two weeks. Then I decided to add another layer to the work. I painted purple Iris’s like the ones I saw in Monet’s garden last month. I then sewed organza to the back of the flowers and truned them to create the new blossoms. That process is very time consuming when the shapes are as complex as these are. It takes about 20 min to do each one. I will start to applique them to the top of the quilt this week.

Daily News

The title of this work has changed because of how I want to finish this work. I decided I want it to be a flexible work that could change. To that end I have finished these squares off with each of them having a velcro patch in the center of the back of each “block”. I have only started this process and so I will be doing the flipping of the units and sewing them shut by hand for a while. Soon I will build a back unit with its own corrisponding velcor units placed four inches apart all over its surface so one can add or subtract any square from any location at any time. I think I will limit the back unit to 30 squares( or velco spots) to invite as many possible playing combinations as possible. ( and one does not need to fill all the spots) I hope it is fun to play with when I am done.

Keep Creating

Carol

Daily's, Diva Meetings, Foundations XVII Granite, Foundations XVII Obsidian, Foundations XVIII Rusty, New Iris

National Choclate Chip Day May 8, 2014

May 8, 2014 admin

Hello,

I hope everyone is enjoying a choclate chip cookie today. What a wonderfully silly thing to make a national day. Not sure of the origian of this idea, but I am sure the cooks approve. As do those of us who will eat a cookie for any reason.

This week contained the first Tuesday of the mouth so I had meetings. The QuEG’s meeting was great with lots of show and tell. Sue Ellen showed us this wonderful book/ album/portfolio of all of the fish quilts she has done this year. What a great way to present your work. Corrinie is not beading on this wall piece. I sure love the semenate. Linda and I showed the fabrics we had created in the soy dyeing class from last month.

Then it was off to the Diva meeting on Tuesday evening. Anne and Ruth had both taken a workshop with Gwen Marsdon. This first one is Anne’s take on the processes. I like how crisp and clean Anne’s work always is. She limits her color and uses it so very well- something that I could afford to learn a little be more of.

Ruth chose to try all the techniques and plans to assemble them into a sampler type thing when she is done. As is usually true in a class each person puts their own stamp on the final outcome. They both had a good time too.

Spring seems to bring a lot of workshops to all of us as Donna took one as well on Encostics. She came away with three wonderful images and I found it difficult choosing the one I liked best to show here.

Liese continues to wow us with her wonderful little dioramas. This one she finished up on Earth Day (April 22) and it is her statement about all the pollution in our Oceans. I really enjoy her little people- they are so very animated and full of life. She told us this work was the center piece for the dinner table on Earth day too.

This meeting marked my fifth anniversay with this very diverse group of gals. I so enjoy them and I drive home with my mind spinning with new ideas and inspirations every time.

Foundations XVII Obsidian 34" X 33.5 $400.00 — Foundations XVII Obsidian
34″ X 33.5
$400.00

Progress Report: Foundations XVII Obsidian This quilt has many different fabrics in it. I used some denim from my husbands pants in one area. There is velvet, silk, cotton, taffata and nylon fabric here too. I made my choices based on the colors that I saw in the rock ( there are lots of reflections due to the nature of the stone) – it did not matter what type of material it was. The process also involved some fibers that I purchased years ago without any knowledge of the content or type. I was delighted by the color then and I still am. I am glad to finally find a home for some of them. There is some aposistory fabrics in this too. the textured gray black show here was on the piano seat Mom covered when I was in Jr high. I m glad to find a home for it too.

Foundations XVIII - Rust 26" X 42" $385.00 — Foundations XVIII – Rust
26″ X 42″
$385.00

Foundations XVIII – Rusty This quilt has lots of old fabric that was intended to become clothing. The rust colored wool was purchased for an a-line skirt. I am still struggling with the irregular shape and the high point at the top of this quilt is still a problem here. I though I had it sloved, but that proved not to be the case. I plan to add some stays in to that section today. I am not surprised as there are always new problems with unexplored territioy. This first close up shows some fabric that I rust dyed. I did break a needle when I tried to free motion through the three layers of the rust dyed fabric. I do not know why, but I fear that even though I did wash it when I finished the fabric there still could contain a bit of residue . Again I used lots of different fabrics on this piece. Wool, velvet, cotton and the back side of taffata can be seen here. I am enjoying the process.

Maya’s Tee Shirt Quilt I finished this quilt this week too. It took me four hours to do the hand stitching on the binding of this project. It is a queen sized quilt. The free motion work on the blocks was the most enjoyable part for me.

New Iris’s This top is now ready for the quilting step. It is a little too much like a very nice background at this point so I will need to think carefully about how to go forward on this project.

Foundations XIX – This is the new pinned up section for the next work. I love the wonderful moss green fabric that Noel gave me a few weeks ago. This mossy stone is the outgrowth of that feeling. I feel the striped fabric that is the base for this one is still too strong so I will keep building on top of it.

Daily’s My storage box for these little exercises is almost too full so I think I will end this series soon. I want to move on to another idea as well.

Keep Creating.

Carol

PS I am off to spend a week in Paris so there will be no post next week. Look for lots of pictures the following week.

Cre-8

Category Archives: New Iris

Realisations

Seeing July 3, 2014

Choices June 26, 2014

Quarter Moon June 19, 2014

Tomorrow…..June 12, 2013

National Choclate Chip Day May 8, 2014

Creative Fiber Collage Artist Carol Boyer