Home From Turkey Travels

Hello all... I surely hope you had a great Thanksgiving.  I was fortunate enough to travel to Denver area to cook and enjoy the holiday with my daughter Allyson, granddaughter Kaley and  5 year old grandson Max.  A good bit of fun and family time albeit brief.  The day after BIRD day.. we spent exploring the wonderful Denver Zoo. I was impressed and all had a great time. Daughter Allyson and Grand daughter Kaley stopped for a moment below exquisite silk lanterns. Gorgeous!

Lucky for my pocketbook.. I didn't see these for sale anywhere!   Now to unpack!!!

Happy BIRD Day!!!

Hope it is a great one for you.  It may be better yet to have a glass of wine before carving that big bird! ;-)

Planning The Road To Panama

A few of you might remember the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby Films of yesteryear... The Road To Zanzibar, etc etc.  Well, in conjunction with the World of Quilts Travel Panama Canal Cruise of 2014, the owner of the Road To California Quilt Show is participating in the cruise event.  To me, that called for a Road To Panama class so it's in the works.  I am envisioning wall quilt art that takes on a vintage  postcard feel...  I first drew out  4 LARGE Block letters  on 1/4 scale graph paper. P A N M is all I needed. I then copied, printed, then cut out one P, one N, one M followed by 3As.
This allowed me to easily lay out a curved/overlap of letters as seen below... ( those teenage years of doing paste up ads for a throwaway newspaper came in handy)

I've added a few other design elements  plus have some other things in my head to use painting to tie many of these separate parts together.  So I am off again to the printer for a printed image the size I want.  After that, I can begin the painting dance!!!

Panama Textile Painting Complete

Fini!!!   I'm liking the feel of this finished painting. It is definitely folk art with a bit of a contemporary feel here and there.  Detail below!

This is one of 2 new class pieces I am creating for the "World of Quilts" Panama Canal Cruise in 2014.  Yep, I mean .. 2014.  I gotta start early on such planning.

Pretty Much It!

I'm already thinking about the finish work on this piece.... I will make this into something both artistic and useful. News at Eleven!!!

I am first using the very fine tip of a black marker to accentuate the separation between the background and the various detailed images.   To keep this more informal in feeling, I chose an inconsistent and loose linear approach.

Then some mottling in the background....

Close to done !

This is WAY FUN

This project seems a little like Zentangle... I do have a plan here.... but it feels a bit like doodling for sheer relaxation and fun. So I am continuing prepping the 4 corner triangled areas... Putting in some groundwork and allowing them to dry before I return and add wet stuff next to areas I want to stay pure... no bleeding in.  These Sharpie "Stained" Fabric markers do seem to dry pretty quickly so I needn't wait long between applications in a common area.

 These photos might give a better idea of the order of things...

Making The Supply List Simple

When I teach on a cruise, I'm very aware of cruisers likely desire to spend most of their well-earned dollars in port as opposed to spending volumes on board ship class supplies.  So for this experiment, I'm choosing to create the piece mostly with  reasonably priced markers readily available across the country in both craft and stationary stores. I'm using an 8 marker pack of "Stained" Fabric Markers by Sharpie, plus 1 bottle of a more neutral bottled ink and 2 fantastix applicators by Tsukineko ( the later 2 items I will have available in class).  Why a neutral?  These markers are colorful and bright, so an added neutral both calms the minds eye and will "show off" the folk art drawings.  This simple supply list will also be easier to transport to and from the cruise, and keep $moolah$ in cruiser's pockets.

First, the drawing is taped to a protected work surface.. after which the colored fabric is taped similarly atop the drawing.

So here we go... Already I am finding the 'Stained' markers easy to use. They have a very FINE tipped brush marker that seems to hold the sharp tip quite well. They are VERY saturated markers.  The yellow and orange lighter values and more transparent than other colors.  The hand on the fabric seems to stay pretty soft which makes me happy. ...and the markers seem to dry fairly quickly.  The one thing one need be aware of with these markers  is that because the markers are quite saturated, particularly when new and as is my norm working quickly...  it is easy to 'flick' pigment to create small spots a few inches away from where you are brushing on ink. So relax when using a new set, and enjoy the journey.

 To avoid one wet color bleeding into an adjacent wet color , rather than regularly heat setting, I instead am hopping around adding colors here and there and allowing them to dry naturally.  I always know I could dry with a dry iron, or with my handy hairdryer or embossing dryer, but this works fine.
You are starting to see some neutral background shading appear in the upper left  triangle.

 I'll keep tinkering...playing and post the rest within a day or so.