Making Buttons

At about 2:30 this morning, I realized that I cannot remember the last time I either sat at a sewing machine or had needle and thread in my hands.  It is not that I have been sitting around, I have been reading through a sizable stack of library books, doing various planning for classes and other business ideas, and trying to pull, trim and dig my garden into shape.

I had a quick orientation on the new 3-D printer at work today, and as part of the training, I had to make something with it.  I decided to make some buttons, here they are:

Bright, aren't they?  They are not of great quality, considering that they are built up from a string of melted plastic, but they would still be serviceable on a garment.  The lines are somewhat visible, the process is very similar to an embroidery machine building up an image with stitches.  These button will end up on some artist trading cards.  The down side is it took 26 minutes to make five buttons, not something feasible for any sort of quantity production.  On the plus side, it is possible to scan a button that needs a match, and print out a similar one.

My goal for the weekend is to do some sort of stitching, and hopefully I will have something beautiful to share on Tuesday,

Trick or Treat!

I know it is not Halloween time, but I found a surprise "treat" recently.  I'm working on a chicken themed quilt, and I was going to cut into one of my vintage livestock feed bags for it.  This is the bag I selected:

I noticed some traces of faded post-manufacture writing on the bag, and by chance I looked inside the bag...

Some ambitious youth had made the feedsack into a trick-or-treat bag!  I am so amused by this, that I am thinking of making this a whole cloth quilt, and not using it for the chicken project.  I might just split the bag, and turn the "fill'er up" side out, pairing it with the remaining "right" side for a quilt top.  I would stitch the letters to make them show up better, and perhaps add color to the faded printing.  I'm not sure what else yet, but I will come up with something more to do with it.

What I would love to know (and sadly never will), is where the kid who used this as a trick-or-treat bag lived.  It is a large bag, it once held 100 pounds of feed.  I'm assuming he (this must be the work of a teenage boy) lived in a rural area to have access to chicken feed bags, but in a rural area, population is sparse, houses are far apart...  slim chance of filling a bag this size with candy.  Perhaps he was traveling to a city with visions of lots of candy.  I give him credit for dreaming big!

Missed Opportunities

I spent the past week working on the paper aspect of my business name, making paper collage cards for the May edition of Zanesville First Friday.  I thought that the cards would be a nice low-cost impulse buy for shoppers, as Mother's Day is quickly approaching.  A very reasonable plan, however, I simply forgot to put them out on my table.  I found them fifteen minutes before the event ended while I was looking for something else in my project bag.  That's OK, I wanted to add a little more drawing detail to some of them, and they are not specifically Mother's Day cards.  Maybe I'll remember to put them out next month!

Sales were improved for me last night, as compared to the past two months.  I think that being out in the hallway, instead of a vacant office helped a bit.  I noticed that many of the people roaming the halls were not looking at anything, they just seemed to be walking the halls.  I wasn't the only vendor who noted that phenomenon.  If you attend a visual arts event, please look around, the artists are there to share what they make.  Even if you don't or can't buy anything (and believe me, I am in the camp that is often not able to buy), at least talk to some of the artists and give some positive comments on their work.  A few good words go a long way.

Flower Pounding

I continue to be amazed at the multitude of techniques for fabric surface design.  I just made a quick trial of flower pounding, inspired by one of the books I just purchased in Fredericktown: Flower Pounding by Ann Frischkorn and Amy Sandrin (C&T Publishing, 2000).  Flower pounding is just as is sounds, hammering fresh flowers into prepared fabric.  The fabric (cotton muslin) is prepared just as you would for dyeing with plant dyes - alum and soda ash.

A quick tour of my property for blooms yielded violets, lilac, bluets, spring beauty, pink dogwood, redbud and weigela.  Here is a sampler of those flowers:

The lilac was most disappointing.  I love the clusters of the tiny pale purple flowers this time of year, and the air now is heavy with their scent.  The pounding process on the lilacs only resulted in a murky pinkish-brown.  The bluets and spring beauties, tiny delicate wildflowers, dissolved into a pulpy mess.  The redbuds had nice color, the weigela was another murky mess.  The pink dogwood - oh, my!  It actually came out darker than the fresh flower, and the parallel veins imprinted onto the fabric -lovey!  The violets went splotchy, but notice the color of the flowers.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  What would happen with violets in a dye bath?  I have one little piece of prepared silk that didn't make it into the last plant dye session.  It might take a lot of violet flowers to do it, but I am going to try dyeing with them.

One important matter when you are collecting plants or flowers from the wild: be sure you are not picking anything that is rare or endangered, and no matter what, only take what you need.  For every one that you pick, leave at least ten of the same plant undisturbed.

Oh yes, here's more of the lovely pink dogwoods:

Happy spring!

Traveling through Ohio

The Fredericktown Quilters' Market Day was successful for me, if not in cash, definitely in books.  I added six new books to my personal library, along with some magazines and two other books that I already have, but will eventually be door prizes at a future class.  Thank you to those of you who made purchases from me!  I hope that you will find some new skills in this blog, at least you will be entertained by my ramblings.

It looks like I will be a regular presence at the Zanesville First Friday gallery walks through the summer.  Every first Friday of the month in Zanesville, the downtown art galleries open late and have special events from 5 PM to 8 PM.  I will be in the Masonic Temple at 38 North Fourth Street.  I will have mostly finished art work - fabric boxes and small art quilt wall hangings - but I usually bring a small selection of hand dyed fabric too.  Stop by and visit!

Here are two views of my table last month, tucked inside a vacant office:

Images copyright RPS. Please do not copy or repost.

The Masonic Temple was built in 1903, and retains most of its original interior.  This was the view out of my little office-for-a-night:

You'll never see new woodwork like that!

Despite not yet attempting the pirhi eggs I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am working on some flower pounding on fabric, from one of the books I just purchased.  Check back on Thursday to see if it works!

See, hear and taste

A week of my life gone, vanished in the process of doing my taxes!  Here's a quick report on my trip a few weeks ago to the annual Original Sewing & Quilting Expo in Cleveland.  This is the one held at the I-X Center, the former WWII bomber factory (later produced tanks during the Korean War).  Lots of history in those walls.

I saw the SAQA "Two by Twenty" exhibit - delightfully inspiring, as expected.  I noticed a few quilts whose edges were not bound in the traditional manner, looked to be just stitched very close to the edges to hold the three layers.  I will be exploring this "non-binding" in the next few months.

As I was anticipating having to pay a bunch on my taxes, I could not purchase much, but I found a few mixed bags from a couple different vendors:

Kimono silk scraps, and a bunch of fancy ribbons and trims.  I cannot resist embellishments!  I see more crazy quilt-type collages in  my future.  Stunningly, where I bought the most was not from a sewing vendor.  I purchased a small fortune of blended teas from SubRosa Tea.  I'm not much of a tea drinker, but their blends are quite creative and delicious.  I am enjoying Pina Colada, Spiced Mexican Chocolate, Cafe Latte, Strawberry Ginger, Chocolate Mint, and Coconut Truffle.  I appreciate creative and quality food as much as I love beautiful dyed fabric and art quilts.  To finish off this ramble on appealing to the senses, I have been listening this week to Verdi - Il Trovatore, Smetana - Ma Vlast, and Mendelssohn - Hebrides Overture and Symphonies #3 and #4.

Slovenian Easter Eggs

I recently discovered an intriguing Slovenian tradition that will be of interest to dyers and surface design people.  The tradition is pirhi, a method of using plants to not only dye, but decorate, Easter eggs.  Small flowers and leaves are wrapped around raw, whole eggs, then boiled in a pot of onion skins, cooking the eggs and coloring the shells in one step.  The leaves or flowers act as a resist, leaving a lighter imprint on the eggshell.

Not the sort of egg to use for pirhi!

If only I hadn't used all of my onion skins for a small silk dye bath over the winter!  I want to try this.  I'm sure I could use any edible dye plant for pirhi, perhaps red cabbage or beets for starters.  I learned about the pirhi tradition from Our Voice, the newspaper of the American Mutual Life Association, Cleveland, OH (3/14/17).  There is a short video of the pirhi process here.  Enjoy!

Later this month, I will make my own pirhi, be sure to check back for the results.  Meanwhile, I have more ramblings about children's book illustrators. and one of these days I am going to quilt that purple collage!  Next week, I will also write a bit about my visit to the Original Creative Festival.