Archive for the ‘design’ Category

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This new piece has had an interesting origin…..we were in Cornville , AZ visiting friends, and our driver wanted to stop in the high desert and see about getting some yucca stalks for walking sticks. If you look at the picture, the stalks are what’s left after the gorgeous blooms are done. They are evidently extremely strong and hold a lot of weight. So we have two collected stalks in the car, and I’m thinking, hmmmmm – these could make interesting wall hanging “hangers.” Turns out we got as a gift two really strong, perfect-height-for-hiking sticks from another friend we were off to visit, so I decided to keep these two, one as a walking stick for me (I just need it for balance) and one for a potential hanger for a wall piece.

I was looking at it today, as I was kicking around another weaving piece. It would make a good “topper” for a new piece. I had in mind a set of seasons pieces, and then suddenly I got the thought to create the fabric and weave them all together for a year of seasons.

Here are two samples of some of the weavings I have done with marbled fabrics. The first is my very beginning one, Gaia 1: Interdependence. The second is  Gaia 3: Autumn.

All of a sudden the design was in my head, and I sketched it out, something I don’t normally do. Here it is:

Creating the fabric will take some time, and I know with other projects in the pipeline, I won’t get to this until mid-September. Hubby is the main marbler, so he will have his work cut out for him. I will need to also watch the proportions in this piece – ever mindful of Michael Kors and Nina Garcia from Project Runway…..

Stay tuned for progress. In the meantime, here’s a few stories for past weavings in the Gaia series.

Sunday Stories: Autumn

Sunday Stories: Gaia 2

Sunday Stories: Gaia 1

So one of my goals over these ninety days is to look at the pictures I have developed over the last couple of years, analyze the licensing materials, and determine ten collections that I can develop. According to the research I have been doing, I am going to need twelve to fifteen different collections. I have some ideas, but I need to get them organized, set up folders, look at what needs to be enlarged, adapted, and so on. I also want to see what can cross over to Cafe Press and potentially Zazzle, so I get as much mileage from some of the pieces.

Whew. There’s a lot there. One of the things I learned in the lynda.com classes was about Bridge – a program in Adobe Creative Suite that let’s me easily look at all my images and organize them easily – something I really need to do.

Now to get started….and DON’T EVEN THINK OF COPYING THESE IMAGES – ask if you have something in mind.

Botanicals: I have a LOT of photos that could go for calendars, prints, cards. Interesting – as I’m writing this, I realize I really haven’t given much thought to WHAT these could adorn. I have been through numerous stores, looking at design, but I’m not sure I have really thought about extending these pictures into more than two items. Hmmm. Food for thought.

(don’t even think about copying….)

Black and White: prints, cards, kitchen items, gifts, fabric designs.

Indigenous images: I love taking regional designs and seeing how I can interpret them through marbled fabrics that have been digitized. This would make good regional products. Cards, calendars, prints, fabric (if the repeat works), gifts.

Art Deco Revisited: taking images in the public domain and embellishing them with marbled fabrics that have been digitized. Cards, calendars, prints, fabrics, gifts. The designs are from a public source, in this case the Dover book on Art Deco Designs.

                                              Original                                                                                                                With the digitized marbled fabrics

Abstracts: digital manipulation of marbled fabrics to create a new design, in this case “Moons.” Prints, cards, calendars, potentially fabric, gifts.

Inspirational: Taking either marbled patterns or images from nature and creating inspirational/motivational prints and cards, t-shirts, calendars.

Seasons: digital marbling, as well as nature images that could be used in fabric, cards, calendars, prints. Pictures here could overlap other sections.

Nature: Places around the country and the world, cards, calendars, gifts, prints.

Southwest Designs: since I’m in the southwest, and I know how popular many of these images are. This one is already set in repeats. Lots of fabric possibilities here, as well as simple gifts.

Holidays: (valentines, etc) Got nothin’ here, and I know companies will want to see holidays, so I have a great place to start.

Interesting. That’s potentially ten collections. In my mind there were more, until I actually started listing them. Next steps: take this list of collections and go back into the stores to see how else these prints could be used. Stay tuned for the progress here.

And if you’re looking for resources, I regularly read Tara Reed, who writes an art licensing blog. Also, I have purchased materials from her about licensing (disclosure: if you purchase anything through this site, I do receive a small commission as part of her affiliate program). Also, her “Just Ask” calls are filled with great information from a wide variety of experts in the field. It’s another resource for you.  July 2011 Ask Call Replay

Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Tuesday….never know what you’re going to find! Plus I love reading about what people are doing. And blogs about history – but I’m staying away from current politics – makes me too angry and depressed, and I just don’t need that! So here’s just the cool stuff….

Speaking of politics (and this will be the last time, I promise), when I do look at headlines, I scan Al Jazeera in English. If you depended on just the US media, you wouldn’t know nearly 75% of what is actually going on around the world. Forget your previous conceptions of Al Jazeera – this is good all-round news.

From Cool Hunting – a really interesting take on working with crystal – including rings and weapons….

From Cool Hunting this week also comes where to play on Bora Bora. I REALLY want to go on vacation now!!

From the JPG Blog,  a new contest – photos are FABULOUS!!

Antelope Canyon, Abstract #1 by Linda Clifford

Also from Cool Hunting, a short video of an art show in Mexico:

Cool Hunting Capsule Video: Liquid Sculptures from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

From MAD Magazine, a look at the class of 2015 (hey, it’s the teacher in me…..).

Seven Steps that May Dramatically Boost Your Happiness from Dumb Little Man – some good ideas here. One step? Follow your bliss.

If you have not discovered fractals yet (and forget about all the math involved – just go for the beauty), you need to look at Fractal World. Here’s their fractal of the week:

Shopping more at Farmer’s Markets more? If you follow Summer Tomato, you will be able to tour farmers’ markets around the world. Here’s Shanghai….

Mix zentangles, ATC’s and color, and you get Enthusiastic Artist‘s  gorgeous work!

Have a great week – send me cool stuff you find online!

It’s Monday again….and it seems like all I did was read, look at emails, and set up buttons and the like. This is the “time-sucker.” So my goal for this blog post is to try and identify what needs to be done each week for marketing and set up a kind of calendar to work with.

This is what I’m dealing with: Ebay, Etsy, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Cafe Press, Zazzle, newsletters, a website, lynda.com, flickr, and a blog. I am trying to avoid doing all of this every day, because nothing else seems to get done. I’m brainstorming as I write, with the hope that by the time this post is done, I will have a plan.

Ebay: hubby handles almost all of this, including postal trips. But…if we are going to increase sales, we need more product, and I would like to help with the actual marbling. So…..marbling weekly. I do need to update the About Me page…..

Etsy: the bulk of the organization is done. But…I need to be adding product on a regular basis, which means I need to keep making things. It would be nice to have one new product up each week, if not more often. One of the goals this week is to add some of the major artwork (even though I don’t expect to sell it on Etsy, it is more exposure) on the site, as the pictures are redone. I want to continue with the circles marketing, which, if I have enough products, could be done every day – 15 minutes for this. Plus, I need to keep working…….

LinkedIn: profile is done, and I have registered for several groups for business. I have found already difficulty in keeping up with reading emails each day from the groups and have already deleted one group. This week I will determine which groups look to be the most advantageous. I also need to complete the setting up of a profile of artwork.

Facebook: I read this several times a day. I have a fan page which needs serious work, as well as Art From The Heart, which is to support healing art after the Tucson shootings in January. I have added FB buttons to my blog and this week to my website. I have read the Terms and looked at all the privacy settings. I also went through the photo stream stuff for FB and fixed photos for both the personal and fan page. I need to really think through what is going to happen with the Fan Page.

Twitter: I am finishing a class from lynda.com on using Facebook and Twitter for business, and I highly recommend the site. For #25 you can choose different trainings all available for a month at your schedule. I picked up all kinds of little tips, most of which have already been implemented. But….and this is a BIG but….the time for tweets and what to tweet. By syncing a lot of the programs, my blog appears on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, my tweets appear in a couple of places. I don’t think I can go further with this – the tweet button is on the blog and soon to be on the website. This is one area that needs some serious scheduling. Since I use TweetDeck (which is free…), I can schedule and keep track of who’s following and what is getting retweeted. So…I’m going to use Sundays for scheduling business tweets for the week, and I will look through the twitter feed once a day to see if there’s some good stuff to retweet.

Cafe Press: I have a site, a free one, so I am limited as to the number of products I can put up. I haven’t looked at this in several months and it needs serious work. To have a store isn’t much money each month, and I could have a lot more products available, but the issue is marketing and driving people to the site. I have some great digital stuff already to go, and I need to start planning around the holidays, reading about marketing through Cafe Press, and so on.

Zazzle: Ditto for Cafe Press……both are not a high priority right now.

Newsletters: oy, it’s been months since a newsletter went out, and I have all these contacts where nothing is happening. I used Constant Contact last year for a few months, until I couldn’t keep up with the demands and school at the same time. I was happy with it, but disappointed that not many people actually read it. I need to go back to a newsletter and offerings at least once every three weeks, and more during the holiday seasons. I need to check out Mail Chimp, which is free, and I have heard people have good luck with it. I’ll try and make this a priority this week.

Website: Most of the changes to the website have been made by my wonderful web lady Suzan. I need to get a couple of buttons set up, and then do something about newsletters and contacts. I also have some pages to add on Digital Marbling (TN), and I need to evaluate “print on demand” for artwork. This is a “need to think about” topic…..

lynda.com: I have until Friday to finish my month of training. I still need to finish Twitter, and I want to get the html newsletter course done. I am not going to continue with Dreamweaver because it isn’t a priority.

Flickr: I have photos up, not all of them with copyrights, and there is a class on lynda.com if I have time. I’m not really sure what I want to do here….

And finally, my blog, Marbled Musings. I went a bunch of months with no new writing, and I’m at maybe three times a week. I need to get back to at least four times a week, and eventually every day. I have plenty to write about…and I need to stay up with my Google reader – as well as comment more on some of the posts. This is probably the biggest area for marketing that I have to schedule.

Weekly:

* Marbling fabric

* Work on Etsy products

* Sewing and other design

Mondays:

* Add Etsy product

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read newsletters from LinkedIn groups

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog post Monday Marketing

* Google reader and at least three comments

Tuesdays:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog post Top Ten Tuesday

* Google reader and at least three comments

Wednesdays:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read newsletters from LinkedIn groups

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog Work in progress Wednesday

* Google reader and at least three comments

Thursday:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog – Thursday Thoughts

* Google reader and at least three comments

Fridays:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read newsletters from LinkedIn groups

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog Photoshop Friday

* Google reader and at least three comments

Saturdays:

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog posting on Specials

* Google reader and at least three comments

Sundays:

* Read Twitter feed

* Schedule Tweets for the week (i.e. Etsy, Ebay…)

* Blog Sunday Stories

* Google reader and at least three comments

Goals for next week:

* FINISH LYNDA.COM

*Update “About Me” page on Ebay

* Update Etsy products, especially note cards

* Evaluate how calendar is working

* See if buttons are added to the website

* Decisions on what will happen with the Facebook Fan page

* Long-term thoughts – what to do with CafePress and Zazzle

* Read and decide about Mail Chimp for a newsletter

* Spend some time thinking about what the website still needs….

Okay, I think I have a handle on this…we’ll see next week as I evaluate how the week goes. And…I’m taking some online classes!

Thoughts??

It has been a productive week, and I have two new projects on the agenda, but first – my finished quilt from last week. This is waaayyyy better! It was originally done many moons ago as  a marbled BOM, and I wanted the quilt, which I have always liked, to reflect the new skills I have. It’s from a block pattern from Judy Martin’s Around the Block.

I’m calling it Monet’s Marbles, based on the mottled green fabric, which I bought years ago because it reminded me of Monet. I didn’t quilt anything in the stars, because I wanted them to stand out from the rest of the quilt. Here’s a close-up:

This is one of the blocks from Judy Martin – the quilt has four and uses two different marbled fabrics.

The next project is to finish up some small wall hangings for my second mom. She spent one winter in Vermont cutting out Hawaiian designs for a potential quilt – they never made it into a quilt, and I am  trying to put them into something that Momcat can use. There is one major problem….these amazing blocks are all cut out of a heavy white polyester fabric…that ravels…………so I am using a lot of satin stitch, which also adds a slight bit of color to the blocks.

We decided on a black background to emphasize these wonderful patterns. I am hoping for one of the small wall hangings to be done for next Wednesday….we shall see…..

Many of these are original designs , and they are certainly a challenge in corners, heavy polyester, and satin stitch….but they will be gorgeous!

I hesitated to sign up for The Sketchbook Challenge, especially when seeing the sketchbooks of the people who are coordinating the challenge. Intimidating, to say the least….But I can’t let that stop me. I want to explore this idea of a sketchbook and break through some of my own barriers, the main one being that my sketch has to look like something “arty.” I’m sure I’m not alone in that thought….

Anyway, enough about them. This challenge is for me to break some long-standing barriers. I have to stop worrying about what the final product is going to look like. So I started thinking about items/things/ideas that are highly prized by me and came up with Peace. So I did a peace sign, complete with all the zentangles, since I’m really working on zentangles over the last month. And…since I had trouble going to sleep last night, I kept thinking about more “highly prized” items and how I could work on them through the zentangle process. So that’s how I’m starting. If I feel like sketching, then I will. Here’s my peace sign:

I might try playing around in Photoshop and add some color, but I am so taken with black and white and Pigma pens. It goes back to childhood, and I’m just going to go with it. I did buy some new colored markers, and I will play with those, but I LOVE the black and white effect.

I also prize books, and I am halfway through a book sketch. If I have time tonight I’ll finish that up. I must say it’s looking quite cool. But I don’t plan on keeping any kind of daily schedule with this. I may try some other challenges this year, just to get myself to expand my thinking and to diversify my skills. And I have an idea for Fish Follies this year that I need to mull.

All in all a good start to the new year.

The high school I work at is the arts magnet high school for the city. The kids have some amazing opportunities in both performing and visual arts. Imagine taking a class three times a week in all the Adobe programs – all updated, where you don’t have to worry about buying the programs, getting updates, and making sure your computer always works, plus hands-on instruction rather than learning yourself. Can you say “jealous?”

I think back to learning Pagemill waaaaayyyyy back when I was just starting my website in 1998…I still know a little code from teaching myself. Everything I’ve done has been self-taught, so I love the opportunities the kids have. About two weeks ago I walked to the end of the hallway to discover a new exhibit of student work, using Illustrator – a program I just haven’t had time to explore. The kids had to recreate some organic shapes (the pen tool makes me nuts….) and use some filters to develop their piece even further. All I could think of was what cool quilts these would make. There is glare (and the remains of some graffiti) on the showcase window, but I think you can get a good idea of what the kids are doing.

What I like about this is the blossoms. I am thinking they would look good in free-motion on a solid area of a quilt. See my dilemma below the pictures…….

Now, speaking of quilting designs….I need some help. I have two “older” quilts that I am requilting. I took the stitches out of one while in the hospital, and I’m working on the other one. I need suggestions as to quilting. I have grown beyond stippling, but I am still having trouble with actual designs that will work with the patterns. Here’s the first – four traditional blocks with marbled stars in a neon paint.

You can see all the old quilting. When I get all the invisible thread out, I’m going to soak it in warm water to see if I can make the lines disappear. But what should I do for quilting?

Here’s the other – a log cabin table runner done with marbled fabrics. What do you think? Just stitch in the ditch??

Leave me comments on the blog, and I’ll do a giveaway for the best suggestions for each – some digital note cards based on marbled patterns. Come on, help me out!!

So it’s been an interesting Saturday, with almost giving up at 1o this morning, thinking I would just submit one piece, rather than trying to show my overall style – which is certainly unique – any maybe too different…. My leaves are done, and my strips are done. I know how I’m going to make the grass and what stones I am going to use. But it’s the actual layout….

I want a stand of bamboo. My original idea, some eight years ago, was to have it free-hanging – strips of bamboo, with some type of hanging system at the very top. Well, I figured if I did the leaves all at the top, I could put a casing behind them for a rod. When I actually had it on the design wall this morning…didn’t really grab me.

Then I tried one of the jungle background fabrics, figuring I could make a background and attach the bamboo on top of it. Well…I ironed, pinned to the wall, added the strips, and then added leaves at the top….and…it was better, but certainly not a grabber. I tried shortening the strips – after all, they were at least 50 inches – nice, tall bamboo. Somewhat better.

I played around with a different leaf arrangement. Nope. Tried more strips beyond the five. Nope. While I like 8 because it’s a Fibonacci number, there was too much bamboo.

Last Sunday I went to my local quilt shop, Quilter’s Market (the BEST store, except for G Street….) with strips in hand to look at some other potential background fabric. I found one that was fairly “jungle-y” and worked with the browns and the greens. I pulled that out, ironed it, and cut it in half – top and bottom. I pinned the strips back on…this time I had them straight, but I had the top angled into the forest….five strips kind of angled downward from left to right….added the leaves in some different arrangements, and voila – I LIKE it! Now it’s more what I had in my mind. I needed to shorten the strips and angle them – while bamboo grows straight, it ain’t perfect.

I need to go buy about another third of a yard for binding. (They were almost at the end of the bolt last week…hmmm…) I’ve been going back and forth about a frame or not. I am thinking a simple binding, as I don’t want to constrain the bamboo with a frame around the jungle, especially as I plan to have leaves out and about the edging. There is a possibility I will need to make more leaves – I have most of what I need, but they are pretty time-consuming. At this point I can see myself making the deadline, especially with another whole weekend available. And I’m pleased…so we’ll see about progress tomorrow. I promise a small picture when it’s a little more together.

This whole process is extremely interesting. I find myself making more and more complex decisions as I learn new techniques and expand what my sewing workhorse (Bernina 1080) and serger (Bernette) will do – or what I will make them do. I will say my serger wasn’t totally happy with my choice of threads (some really fancy light-weight ones) for the edging…but except for re-threading the needle, I was in pretty good shape. I just need to remember to put the serger back into its original sewing condition for hubby to serge the new fabric for the Labor marbling…he’s not real thrilled with having to thread the machine….

I have lived in New England, specifically Vermont and New York, for a good amount of my life. My biggest regret living in the desert is not seeing Autumn each year. A number of years ago I had a chance to put some work in a small gallery in Jericho, Vermont – the town my husband’s family settled in the 1600s. The gallery is also the original home of Snowflake Bentley, the man who photographed snowflakes and proved no two snowflakes are alike. I wanted to do something that would honor autumn in New England.

We marbled a piece of polysatin in autumn colors. Now there are some purists in quilting and marbling who insist 1) everything has to be cotton, and 2) you can’t marble polyester. Well, I’m a great one for breaking the rules…which is interesting, because I was such a linear, rule-follower growing up. But not where my art is concerned, evidently. We have discovered since we started marbling that polys take the marbling and paints extremely well, and almost all our art pieces are done on some type of polyester. The detail is exceptional, and the colors are consistently bright.

Once we had the great colors, then it was…hmmm, how to show this off? This would be my third piece in my Gaia series, and I knew I wanted to keep the weaving aspect. But I didn’t want a square or rectangle of strips. So I looked to weave just the top part and have the lengthwise strips hang down in points.

The draft looked like it would work, but the copper thread was not cooperating. This was before I really knew much about threads and machine tension and adjustments…so I did a lot of ripping out to try and get the stitched somewhat even. The other problem was the serging. Again, I wanted to use some decorative threads, but the machine wasn’t cooperating. And…I wanted to have points at the end of my strips, and I wasn’t sure how to manage that.

Gaia 3: Autumn

Now the visual effect was what I wanted. I cut the length-wise strips so the pattern would not be broken. This is a traditinal marbled pattern, the reverse of the peacock/bouquet design – which we call “bat wings,” because that’s what it reminds us of. The vertical strips are attached until about 6 inches from the bottom, because I wanted the effect of leaves/branches in the wind. This was actually the second piece I added beads to, and they worked out quite well.

The serging is rough. I have since learned all kinds of tricks to smooth out what I want for a decorative edge, and the piece I am working on now reflects all that I have learned. This is one where I wish I had better pictures – and more of them. If you visit the website, you can enlarge the pics there for a better view. The piece sold about a year later to a quilting buddy. I still miss it, as it is so New England autumn.

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Carol Taylor

I managed to finish up the two small quilts based on the work of Carol Taylor and her “arc-i-texture” style. The DVD is from Interweave, and they have some scrumptious ones to choose from. I learned a few things, particularly about couching, and I finally got my satin stitch to work. I do want to try one with printed fabrics, but I really like the pay of light on the silk pieces.

Here’s the first finished one, in greens for Shelby, one of the twin girls I have know for a long time.

The edges were finished by adding a facing all the way around. I also showed you last week the beginnings of the quilt for Brianne, the other twin.

It’s pretty darn bland at this point, and I was worried about how it would finish. I next did my satin stitch to couch down the pieces of silk.

Definitely looking better. I do like the effect of the satin stitch, with a King Tut variegated from Superior Threads. From here I started the couching. I found some fuzzy blue yarns to try, one of which I liked, and one of which I ripped out.

Once I got the hang of how to use the couching foot, I really liked adding the circles. I learned to trust the machine and the foot and not to pull.

Finally the finished product:

Still not totally pleased with it. It’s missing that certain spark, definitely in the picture. It looks better in person – you can’t see the rumpled silk. I used a regular binding on this one, because I felt the blues helped accent the main part of the design. But this is all part of The Process Pledge…writing about what I am doing and learning, and I did learn a lot. And I know the twins will love them.

This pic is a current shot of the bamboo leaves in progress. I started with those about three weeks ago, sandwiching the thread between sheets of Dissolve to create thread fabric. I started doing the free motion on the top, using a variety of different threads. Still have no idea how this is going to turn out. Hopefully I will have the completed piece next week – or at least the leaves, as I start back to school next Wednesday. We’ll have to see…

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I have to say, I have been busy. I originally was thinking nothing was going to happen art-wise in July because of so much work on the business. I was wrong…the last week has been incredibly productive. Last Wednesday I wrote about my lava piece just telling me it really wasn’t finished. Here’s last week:

And here it is now, since it told me it was “finished:”

Midnight Lava Flow

Turns out it needed actual lava – those little round pieces are actual chunks of lava I collected over a couple of visits to the Tucson Gem Show each February. I also added more lava flows, and nothing really interferes with the quote on the back. This is going to go up in the newly-developing Etsy store.

My “purse” didn’t make it as a purse…I loved the play of the fabrics together, but I couldn’t get handles to work the way I wanted them to…so now it’s a nice new basket for collecting fabric scraps.

If you were reading on Sunday, you saw the finished “Desert Heat” quilt, now on the wall in our bedroom.

Now I am working on my “bamboo” quilt, started about 5 years ago with a piece of marbled fabric in the chevron pattern. One of the things I like about this quilting is that it is very zen-like, in that you can just follow the lines of the patterns. You can see the original piece of fabric here. You’ll see what I mean about the lines of the pattern.

As I was quilting yesterday, it occurred to me to take pictures of the process, and then that led me to think about putting together a tutorial on quilting marbled fabric. There is an interesting story behind the quilting. Years ago I pretty much just put marbled fabrics with blacks, as I wasn’t sure at all about my color sense. I did slowly branch out, but it was Quilt artist Ellen Kohen who took a piece of fabric and quilted it. I knew there was more I could do with the fabric, but I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Once I saw what Ellen had done, I was hooked, but it took confidence to start the free motion needed to accent these patterns. Starting this Sunday, I’m going to introduce “Sunday Stories,” and I’ll take a look at the story behind each of the pieces in my gallery on the website.

For today, here’s a close-up look at one of the bamboo strips (which I am aiming to finish by mid-August, as I want to enter it into an art quilt show with my “Ocean’s Bounty.”) You can easily see all the “lines” in the pattern and how I have followed the lines with a variety of different colored threads. The problem you might run into (as I have) is when to stop with the lines – you can get easily sucked in to quilting everything.

Chevron pattern

Serged edge

You can see the serged edge in this piece – which is how I usually finish these weaving pieces. I’ve learned over the years not to serge until I am finished with the machine quilting.

Walking foot

This is with my walking foot, but I’m not totally happy with the control with this foot. Because there are slight curves to these lines, I use my regular foot and am quite happy with it. I think this is probably a personal preference. I tried the free motion foot on this, but I didn’t have the control and even stitches I wanted for this design.

I have four and a half “strands” of bamboo finished at this point. I can quilt for a couple of hours, listening to some John Denver and just kinda zone…as I mentioned earlier this week, I am amazed at just how much I get done when I think a project will take forever. Now what probably will take forever will be the leaves. I’ve tried marbling some silk leaves – not happy with them. I am thinking some thread leaves, but they may not seem “sturdy” enough for this hardy plant. I do know thread leaves would be a great use of all my lousy threads I have hanging around. I haven’t broken any threads with some 6 hours of quilting – have I told you how much I love my Superior Threads?

If you would be interested in a tutorial on quilting marbled fabric, please leave me a comment and let me know. If you’ve got pictures of some marbled fabric that you have quilted, I would LOVE to see it.

The kids and I were definitely on the same page today. They didn’t want to work, I didn’t want to work, they had lives outside of school, I have a life outside of school….so we talked about not giving up when we still have work to learn. I took them through everything they had accomplished in algebra 1:

*making a table, a graph, and an equation for a linear function;
*making a table, a graph, and an equation for an exponential function;
*making a table, a graph, and an equation for an absolute value function; and
*making a table and a graph for a quadratic function.

THe only thing we really have left to do is solve quadratic equations through factoring and the quadratic formula. I think they were pretty impressed with themselves, and we had a great class. No more whining – we were in this together!

But – I still wanted to get home and work some more on the gecko from yesterday. I still felt there were a lot of ideas to try in Photoshop. So you can go back an entry and see the original image – and then look at this new one -lots of embossing, and I learned how to change the shadows from a default black to a color within the marbled pattern. I continue to be amazed at the amount of texture the marbled fabric gives the design.This one looks like a piece of copper. Another “wow,” and I foresee a series with the gecko, and maybe a few other common images of the Southwest.

Don’t forget our CONTEST!

Two days of some hard physical labor and the art show is up! All the activity really makes me wonder how I used to do all the musicals – ‘course that was 16 years ago. Sheesh, I’m getting old. Yesterday my eighth graders helped with all the nuts and bolts (literally) of putting the panels together. Today with my seventh grade I did a quick design lesson about measuring, making sure things are straight, looking for balance, a good color mix – and then they took the artwork, chose a panel, and started to mount the work.

Two of my girls helped me during seventh period (thanks Arreana and Zayra!) and they rearranged a few panels so the work was more balanced. Turns out they discovered they have a very good eye for this sort of thing! So here they are – five out of the 10 panels – notice what I mean about the great stone wall?

You can see some of the digital work the kids did, plus some of the stained glass letters.

The circle piece is really fun – Brianna did a bunch of overlapping circles and didn’t know where to go from there. I suggested she vary the colors from light to dark and she ended up with incredible depth to the piece.


Some of the geometrics, once color was added, really improved their impact. The bottom piece started out as a perspective lesson, and when Jullian framed it off-center, it led to him adding the flames around the NYC skyline in memory of September 11.

I had fun last night playing again with the brushes and trying to create different layers and link them – still need to work on that – need to reread the linking stuff. I’m getting better at adding the layers each time I try something new.

I am drawn to geometric shapes – I think in the analysis it’s because they “always look like something,” so I can’t really mess them up. I do need to scan and play with one of my own sketches, to see what I can do with the brushes. But – here’s the new work:

I’m continuing to play around with more brushes as part of this week three lesson. For this portion we were to work on layers, and then move one of our objects. So here we go –

I would like to figure out how to make the shadows of the sun better, as well as crop the sun for the second one. But for a freehand, not too bad. I had watched Sewing With Nancy about landscape quilts, and part of what was included in that episode was tips on shading. So I wanted to do more with the window frame – but it needs to be larger – the scale seems all right for this, but not for more shading.

This just means I have to do more work…ahhh, too bad!