3 scarves

I just spent the last hour and a half updating more of my website. I now have 3 of my woven scarves for sale. You can view them here. But here's a preview of my favorite one:


Somehow I stayed at school from 6 till 8:30 and only got a total of one yard of fabric dyed. I am playing around with shibori dying using PVC pipe. I cut my one yard into four pieces and did all yellow, with either green, orange or darker yellow on top. I think I was too impatient tonight and rinsed them out too early becuase I didn't get much of a shibori design on any of them.

Time for bed, I've been getting up later and later every day this week, this morning with only 20 minutes to get ready, plus the 10 minute drive... needless to say, I was late. Again.

On being productive

Well, it is amazing how much you can get done when you skip school. I drove to school last night right after work, chatted with my teacher for about 15 minutes and turned around and went home to work. Which amazingly, I did! I expected to come home and get distracted, but I got home and directed myself right to the sewing room, and got a lot done.

I prepared all the fabric I am going to need for the Moonflowers piece (except for some very light yellow and white that I still need to dye). And started to iron a piece of the Sapphire Blue that I low water immersion dyed for pieces of the sky, when I decided that I couldn't cut it. It looked so cool that I decided to use it whole for my sky, and hung it up and then started working on the moon. I got much farther than I had planned last night.
So, here it is so far...

As for my string of good luck... All I have to say is that I am blogging from work this morning. I am done playing Mega Millions. I am sticking to scratch off Bingo. At least with that, it's more like a game and at least you get the fun of scratching off your matching numbers. So I'll take my $20 winnings and buy four more tickets. If I don't win anything, I only lost $5 because that was my original investment. Or I could treat myself to a tank full of gas in my car... nah... that's no fun.

Here's a pic of my towels quilt hanging in my dining room. I love it!

A thought

I was thinking yesterday about my new logo and all the possibilities of making parts of my website out of fabric, scanning them in and adding text in Photoshop and Illustrator. And it occured to me that I could be doing this for other people as well. So many questions are floating around in my brain now.
~How much would I charge for such a service.
~Would I send the final fabric piece to the customer, or would I only send him or her a file by email or CD.
~Do I offer unlimited revisions of the logo even though fused and pieced fabric does not really lend itself to "undo" and "redo" quite as easily as a computer file in Photoshop does.
~Can I request that I be credited for the logo? Should they link to my website?
~Should I copyright it, or let them?

oh man, so much to think about.

I'm taking two of my old projects from previous semesters of Textiles to school tonight. My teacher wants to display some in the cases in the hallway. I couldn't decide between the two, so I'll let her decide. One is a pillowcase that hasn't been stuffed yet (even after two years).
<--full view of front

detail-->







The other is Ma'at, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth that I finished about a year ago.

I think the only other exciting thing I have to report to the world is that I am a lucky girl lately. Saturday I bought a scratch-off lottery ticket and won $10. so with my $10 winnings, I bought 5 easy pick for the $23 Million drawing tonight and another $5 scratch off ticket. And it was another winner! I won $20 this time! so if my luck continues, I'll be driving to Lansing tomorrow to pick up a check for $23 Million.

a great Saturday

What an eventful day! I got up somewhat early this morning, 9:30 is the perfect time to get out of bed on a Saturday. I bummed around for a while and got to work in the sewing room at about 1:00. There is a contest I want to enter, so I started a piece just for that today. It is my first attempt at an all fused quilt. And at 14" square, it is a good warm up for the moonflowers quilt I have planned.

I got this 14-incher quilt done to the point it is ready to quilt! all in only about 5 hours, minus time for lunch and various pacing around the apartment breaks.

I also had time to go to the store and get a curtain rod and hang my finished quilt made out of dyed kitchen towels. I need to think of a good title for that still.

The piece I worked on today for the contest had a theme requirement... "how does your garden grow" which isn't actually a requirement to show a garden, it is supposed to show how you "nurtured yourself or others, what you have accomplished in your life, or work, something or someone you are proud to have cultivated..." So my choice for the subject... My dog, Olive. It is a long story and one that I don't want to relay at the moment. But I no longer have her.
I am NOT a pessimistic person, but sometimes, no matter how hard you work at something and despite your best intentions and hard work, things just can not turn out the way you want them to. So my piece for the contest is about Olive and my hope that some day, I will have another chance.

Working title: Can't keep my mind off you

I used an iron on transfer of a picture of Olive, but other than that, the rest is all hand dyed fabric. I'll probably start quilting it tomorrow. I am going to try to add a lot of texture and more detail with the quilting, it looks quite flat and dull at the moment I think.

I've been sitting at this computer since 10:30, working on updating a few pages of the website. I have a new home page, using my new fancy logo! yay!!!

On to new things

I finished the towels quilt Monday night. It is ready to hang, just have to buy some kind of curtain rod. I am tossing around the idea of sending it to a show, somewhere. Kind of nervous about letting such a sentimental piece leave my hands.

Tuesday night I dyed about 5 yards of PFD for my next project. I was inspired Sunday night for my first project for school. I was driving home through the country, away from street lights and other light pollution. The moon was full and SO bright and beautiful. I was driving toward it for the whole 20 minute drive and had to really concentrate on not staring at it the whole time instead of the road! So my idea for my first completely fused quilt is sortof a landscape, but mostly a view of the sky with a huge moon and a row of moonflowers underneath. I find it so hard to describe in words my ideas for art. So I guess if none of that made sense... stay tuned for pictures. Critique is in Mid-October... am I setting myself up for stress and craziness?... YOU BET!!!

I am also very excited about my plans for re-designing my home page on the website. I made myself a logo, a 4-inch quilt that I then scanned into PhotoShop and added text. Here's a preview.



Who knew you could even make a website out of fabric! bwa ha ha ha!

The End... happy and sad

I am finally going to finish quilting this wall hanging today.



I started it in May or June, which was about 6 months after I dyed the towels. It took me a long time to be sure on the design before I started cutting them up. As I mentioned in a previous post, I made this quilt out of kitchen towels that belonged to my Great Grandma. Who knows how many dishes, spills and kids' faces were wiped up with these towels in her 97 years.

I love working on this quilt. The fabric stretches and makes it impossible to quilt without buckles and wrinkles. The many many squares inside squares inside squares means spinning and spinning the quilt around the machine. But I love it. I get to think about Great Grandma the whole time. I get to think about her zuchini bread, banana bread, and fruit cakes that were heavy as lead. I get to think about dreading that incredibly wet kiss goodbye. I get to think about the time she hugged me, grabbed a hold of my love handles and said, "oh! got a little something extra back there dontcha?!"

I kinda don't want to finish it. But I will. Then I will hang it in my dining room, and look at it every day and think of her and her words of encouragement, her pride in her grand kids and great grandkids and...

her sense of humor.

Here comes the weekend!

First of all, I would like to extend great thanks to the jerk who keeps leaving online dating ads in my comments section. Thanks dude, I have a boyfriend, no need for online dating here.

The website has been up for a week and I have gotten some great responses. No buyers yet, but they will come, it's only a matter of time. Besides, I haven't done any real advertising yet anyway, other than sending the link to all my friends. In the meantime, I am already dreaming up all the different ways I can rearrange things on the site, but probably won't actually do it for a while.

Looking forward to the Fiber Festival in Chelsea this Sunday at the Middle School. I guess they have been having it there for over 30 years. I lived in Chelsea for 22 years and have never been to it! I am sure I will spend way more than I should on things that I don't need. What fun!!!

TA DAA!!!

I am dusting my hands off after a long tedious fight with the internet, dreamweaver and my slow (yet brand new) computer.

The website is done; for now anyway. I will have continuous updates as I make and sell things.

www.textilestockpile.com

First day of school was... different. It is sad to be there without Pat. She retired at the end of the winter semester. I've taken at least 5 textiles classes at Eastern and 4 were with her, now there is a substitute until they can find a long term professer. Anyone who has known me more than a couple weeks can tell you, I don't like change. This is a big change.

frustration!

For those that have been patiently waiting for my website to be running at full speed, we will all have to wait a while longer. I spent at least 2 hours last night fixing things and uploading files to the server... there are a lot of pictures that still don't show up. I've examined the code and it makes no sense. I'll be working on it more today while at work; I sit in front of a computer all day, might as well make use of it.
Depending on how long the new Textiles teacher keeps us tonight, I may have time to get the rest online, if I can get everything to work today.

UPDATE!
I just fixed almost all the pictures and the only thing that doesn't show up now is one "button" that I forgot to load! I'll have to do that when I go home for lunch today. Then I can upload my index page and TextileStockpile will be full steam ahead!

Home again

We got back from Asheville, North Carolina yesterday evening. It was a great trip. We got to spend lots of time with my sister Shannon who has been living there for a month. She showed us all around the city on foot and by car. The most exciting part for me was the art, Asheville is a real artsy town, not at all like Ann Arbor. Seems like Ann Arbor is full of yuppies and real "out-there" artsy people. Asheville's art scene seems to be more normal, a lot of hand-crafts like weaving, knitting, sculpture and painting. I didn't see anything offensive or extremely modern in the retail galleries we perused.

Here is a random shot of the city, with the mountains in the distance.

The people in Asheville are great. Everywhere we went there were friendly people. Such a nice change from the awful northern attitudes we have around here. Probably about 50% of the people we talked to had moved there within the last 5 years or so. The workers in every shop or restaraunt we went into asked us where we are from and were genuinely interested in our answers. In Michigan, your waiter or salesperson doesn't care where you are from, they just want you to give them the money and get out as fast as possible.

The other exciting thing was a place called Earth Guild. it's a craft store that sells a lot of weaving equipment and yarn. They were having a sale over the weekend, so of course I spent more than I should have. I got some hand dyed slub wool to weave with and a cone of 8/2 cotton slub to dye. The dyed cotton will be available on my website.

Now starts the busiest time of year for me, Fall. Tonight I am going to dye a bunch of fabric for a commissioned wall hanging. Thursday I start school again, so I'll be in school Tuesday and Thursday nights from the time I get off work at 5 until at least 8. Hopefully Wednesday night I will have time to start getting the website loaded to Yahoo's server. If not Wednesday, this weekend, definitely. Then starts the work of promoting the site.

Here we are, I'm in the middle with my little sister Shannon and my boyfriend Ryan. We are in her apartment, as you can see, the wall above the futon is bare... the wheels are already turning on how I can fill that spot! The Sponge Bob sheets are there because that is where we slept, but the red and purple pillows were made by me.