Getting There, getting there....

For me, happiness is a few hours in the studio....this week I was able to get over the hump with a new piece in my Burrard series, after a few false starts. Mostly the challenges that I mentioned in my blog post of January 30th: http://susanpm.blogspot.ca/2017/01/what-am-i-afraid-of.html

I had decided to paint the sky with diluted white textile paint to tone down the contrast of the black and white fabrics. As I was doing this, I though....gee, I should have put a plastic sheet over the print table....because I watched the damp fabrics wick up some dye residue from the table, red, blue, green and some bright orange.....!!!! Gosh Darn was the polite term!

So, thinking through what I should do, I waited for the paint to dry and rinsed out the fabrics with a bit of Oxy-Clean......then hung it to dry. After it was dry I ironed it thoroughly, hoping that I could get it all to lay flat! I painted the fabrics again (this time with plastic underneath) let them dry and heat set! Most of the dye had come out and the remainder blended into the the over all fabric collage. Lesson Learned!

I added the fabrics at the bottom in a collage format as well and began adding the torn strips for the steel girders....with three packs of 1/4" Steam a Seam tape!

I was all set to begin pressing in place and double checked my photo reference......

Ooooppps, the girders do not reach to the top....they are set at an angle

Well, good thing they're not fused down.....some re-positioning and its making more sense:

Now its ready to come off the design wall, get a heavy dose of steam and some additional pieces fused in place. The remaining girder lines will be done with stitching heavier black threads. Then onto the quilting stage.

I had an art consultant visit the studio this morning and she mentioned a gallery space in town that might be interested in my work.....

What Am I Afraid Of?

Or maybe it should read "what I am afraid of".....a little like confession but it's been 3 months since my last blog post. It's not that I've not had anything to say, or that I didn't think of or I forgot to write any blog posts, but its more that I just kept putting it off....and off...and off until it became an embarrassment to even come to my blog and start writing.
But I'm back and ready to get to work, my goal it to write consistently and share my current work with you and hopefully keep myself accountable!

Last week I sent entries into the National Juried Show for the Canadian Quilters Association, this time I had three quilts to enter, a record for me. I missed last years entry by 2 days so I made certain that these were sent in plenty of time.

"Burrard" is one of them, I can publish this photo because its already been in a US show....

 Another quilt just got finished in time to take the photos, so I'll only show a little detail.

This one took a lot of quilting so I had time to think about ideas for my next piece. I'd already decided to continue with my "Structures" series and chose a photo to work on:

I like to get started right away on new work and on this one I saw a lot of sky behind the ironwork, almost 2/3 of the picture. I wanted to use a collage of pieced fabrics for the sky and made this:

who says sky has to be blue?

I thought I'd audition some of the iron work in bright colours:

And I put the photos on Facebook, asking if anyone thought the sky was a little intense....:)

Some suggested putting tulle over top to calm it down a bit, but that's not really practical as its about 36" square. I though I'd try painting a dilute white wash over top so I made a small sample and auditioned it in a couple places:

I like the texture of the paint roller and that it's a less than even application. So I think it's a go to paint over it and I think I might make this piece more of  monochromatic with black/grey ironwork and touches of bright.....

Now....as for the Desert Island Designs in the previous blogpost from so long ago...... it's still going ahead, I'm going to be planning it for March, care to join me?