A Year of COVID in 8 Pop-up Book Spreads

A Year of COVID in 8 Pop-up Spreads

Like everyone in the entire world, I spent the last year mostly at home. How many times had I wished I could just lock myself in my work room and make all the art quilts I had in my head?  How wonderful would it be to isolate from the world and have no interruptions or other obligations???  Well, it turned out, not that wonderful.  I was stuck, and unable to create, so I did what I always do when that happens--I cleaned and rearranged.  One day while rearranging my studio for the 100th time, I came across a stash of cardstock, and started playing around, folding paper, gluing bits of paper onto the folds and embellishing the results with Sharpies--voila!  a crude pop-up!  I had paper; I had glue; I had time.  Things just kind of spun out of control from there.

I scoured the internet for instructional videos on pop-up mechanisms, and am most grateful to Duncan Birmingham and Matthew Reinhart for their detailed videos on YouTube. In the beginning my pop-up pageswere mostly just V-folds with my cartoon drawings glued to them. As time went on, I experimented with more complex mechanisms like the tall syringe (Matthew Reinhart Master Class) and the slide outs (Duncan Birmingham The Pop-up Channel). In spite of these two gurus, my pages are still quite crude and very much the amateur hour, but they pops occupied my mind for hours at a time when I might otherwise have spend time fomenting about the state of the world.

 

If you're a big trump fan, spare yourself the anguish, and go watch a panda video because I am not kind to him in my book.

Here's the link to the Pop-up:

A Year of COVID in 8 Pop-up Spreads

Snow Dyeing

Snow!  A great opportunity to dye some fabric!  I've used ice to dye fabric before, but never snow.  Using ice or snow to dye gives vivid colors, with lots of surprises.  Since I mostly use bits of fabric 6 square inches or less in my work, having fabric with lots of color/tone/shade variation is a big plus.  The process is the same whether you use snow or ice, though I usually crush the ice so it is easier to pile on top of the fabric.

So the process goes like this
You'll need:

• containers with screens to keep the fabric from languishing in a puddle of muck
• Prepared for dyeing, 100% cotton
• Soda Ash
• Procion cold water, powdered dyes
• ice or snow
• rubber gloves,
• Dust mask
• goggles

Prepare your fabric for dyeing: You can purchase prepared for dyeing fabric (PFD) 100% Kona cotton, or buy regular, 100% cotton, and prepare it yourself by washing it to remove the manufacturer's sizing.

Be sensible.  None of the chemicals used in dyeing will kill you, but they are they are fine powerders, and you won't want to inhale them, or get them in your eyes, and you shouldn't get the dyes or solutions on your skin.  So suit up.

Mix a solution of soda ash:  Mix1 cup of powdered soda ash per gallon of water (soda ash dissolves best in warm water, 96°F. or 35°C.). The soda ash changes the pH of the fiber-reactive dyes and cellulose fibers so that the dye creates a permanent chemical bond with the fiber. (Soda ash can also be used with silk, but not other protein fibers such as wool.)

Soak the fabric:  Put the fabric in a bucket and pour enough soda ash solution over the fabric to completely immerse it.  Leave the fabric to soak for at least 30 minutes.  If you need to leave it for longer, no problem.

After you remove your fabric, you can save the remaining soda ash solution indefinitely. Soda ash never goes bad. Mold will not grow in it, and it does not degrade chemically. You can reuse it again and again.

Gather your containers:  I use plastic shoe boxes, or buckets and push some hardware cloth down into the container.  This holds the fabric above the melted snow and dissolved dyes.  Since I usually mix two or three dye powders on the snow/ice, the drips underneath the hardware cloth are frequently not that beautiful, and besides, I want mottled colors that mix on the fabric. 

Add the fabric: Wearing your rubber gloves, wring out the fabric, and arrange it on the hardware cloth.  Loosely pleat the fabric rather than scrunching it into a ball, which will make it more difficult for the liquid dye/melted snow to penetrate all the layers.

Add the Snow:

Pile on the snow or crusshed ice.  If your hardware cloth doesn't fit inside your container, make sure the fabric and snow are OVER the containers, otherwise, you'll have a huge mess to clean up.

Add the Dye:  Sprinkle the dye power on top of the snow. Remember the safety-first part--goggles, dust mask, rubber gloves.   Use a color wheel to help you make combinations that won't turn to gray-brown.  (Two secondaries, like green and purple, pretty much make mud.)

In the containers below, on the far left I mixed cobalt blue and lemon yellow, hoping for some nice yellow-greens with bits of pure blue.  Next tub over has three colors--turquoise (a blue) and fuchsia, (a red) will combine into a purple, and the third color on the right side of that tub is grape, so my hope is for nice purple-ash hues.  The bucket in the back has two colors, Chinese red and deep orange.  And the last tub has kelly green, lemon yellow, and deep orange--if the orange and green mix--both secondaries, I could get some mud.

Since it's been very cold--below freezin--for a couple days, I set the tubs in my barn, and let the snow slowly melt.  As the snow melts, it carries the dye with it through the fabric.  Here are the final results.  Some are pleasing, others, meh.

In the first photo, the piece on the left was one of the ones in the cobalt and yellow tub.  It's mostly very dark blue, but with some subtle greens running through.  That works for me.  I make a lot of fir trees so blue tending to black says firs and forests to me.  The piece on the right is from the tub of green, yellow and orange.  Right in the middle of that piece, where the green and orange mingled, is an ugly blob of gray-brown, but the orange and yellow combined to make some nice mottled colors, and the lower-left edge of green with some yellow made an interesting shade that says "ocean" to me. 

In the second photo, the first 4 pieces were in the tub with the turquoise, fuchsia and grape.  I'm happy with them.  They'll work for shadows, dark parts of water and sky, mountains, foliage and who knows what else? 

The green piece, was alos in the tub with the cobalt blue/lemon piece above, but obviously got more yellow dye powder.  That's just what I was going for.  That yellow-green is perfect for sun dappled foliage, frogs, turtles, and water.

The third photo shows pieces that were in the Chinese red and deep orange bucket.  I had the middle piece of fabric scrunched too tightly, so the dye didn't penetrate that piece very well, leave a large section of blah pink.  The fabric on the far right, was a piece I grabbed last minute, and it clearly isn't 100% cotton.  I guess it's a blend, and got mixed in with my PFD fabrics, so it didn't react dynamically with the dye.  It shall live out it's useful life as a rag.

Why do I even want fabrics like this??  Because like I said at the beginning.  I use tiny snipetts of this and that to create an image.  I might cut a 2-inch x 2-inch section right out of the middle of a piece of fabric if it looks like it'll be the perfect shading for a tree trunk or bird wing, a truck fender, or whatever.

Quilt Batting Made with Pop Bottles

Many art supplies are toxic--not good for the environment, not good for you.  I try to look for materials that will get the job done, with minimal impact on the land, my septic system, my lungs, my skin and my pocketbook.  I work almost exclusively with cotton fabric and cotton batting. I love cotton.  But I know cotton is problematic.

Cotton only comprises 2.5% of all agricultural land world wide, yet uses 16% of all pesticides and 6% of all herbicides worldwide.  It is a soil-depleting crop regularly fertilized with petro-chemicals.  And if all that weren't enough, cotton is grown intensively and requires large amounts of water for irrigation which contributes to soil salinity.  Yikes. 

Other than giving up quilting, I don't see an alternative to cotton fabric, but I have found a good quality batting made from, of all things, pop bottles.  It feels and works like cotton batting, is soft, yet stable because it is cross-lapped and needle punched.  The batting is a very light green, and I did wonder if the color would show through on light or white fabrics, but it doesn't.  Dream Green is pretty inexpensive compared to cotton or wool batting, which is a plus, since most environmental better choices are usually more expensive than their mainstream cousins. 

The queen-size batting of Quilter's Dream Green I bought says it is made from 20 pop bottles.  I've made several wall quilts with it, and I'm very satisfied with the quality.  Switching to Dream Green is not a huge save-the-Earth change, any more than my switch to shampoo and conditioning bars instead of bottles of those products, but you've got to start somewhere. 

Making Mini-Quilts for Creative Minds Gallery

I've been  making (and actually finishing) a number of small pieces to add to my display at Creative Minds Gallery in Eastsound, Washington.

beaded and thread embroidery

I often make (and usually don't finish) lots of little quilts so that I can experiment with new materials, processes and compositions before committing to a larger quilt.  I generally tack these samplers on the walls of my studio for reference, just in case I decide to make a larger version.  Many (most?) eventually end up in the trash and the larger quilt never gets made. Last September, pretty much on a whim, I included several of these small pieces--what I jokingly call my potholder collection--in my one-woman show at the Orcas Performing Arts Center.  I thought they would help viewers understand how my work evolves.  To my surprise, all of the little pieces sold. 

From my evening bag series, around 2008 or so.

As I considered making some small pieces specifically for the gallery, rather than as experiments, I thought about the evening bags and pillows I used to make.  They all featured marine invertebrates, which I have always thought look very feminine in their pinks, purples, and lacy frills.  When I made the evening bags and pillows I embellished them with beads, decorative threads, ribbon, paint, and thread-embroidery--like the purse shown here. 

With that in mind, I started gluing and stitching--to make small wall hangings with my favorite marine invertebrates, strawberry anemones, plumrose anemomes, starfish and octopuses.  And who doesn't love that amazing giant algae, bull kelp?  Most of the pieces are around 12"x18" or less, and embellished with all the shiny bobbles and threads I love.  They've been selling pretty well, which means I get to make more!

I really am enjoying finishing a piece in days rather than months, and I have lots of ideas for more, but at some point, I do need to get back to the two large pieces that having been hanging on my design walls so long that I fear I may need to start  dusting them!

Road Trip to Paducah

When my quilt, Signed, Sealed and Delivered was juried into the granddaddy of all quilt shows, the Spring Paducah Quilt Week Show, I decided I had to go to Kentucky.  This decision was prompted in no small part by the fact that my oldest and dearest friend, Phyllis, lives in Louisville.

Phyl and I went to high school in Ankara, Turkey, and though we've never lived anywhere near each other since graduating from high school, we have always stayed in touch, and gotten together periodically over the 50+ years since high school.  No matter how many years pass between our reunions, we are always able to pick right up, as though we'd never been apart.  It's the gift of a life-long friendship.

So, I flew into Louisville, and a day later, Phyllis and I hit the road down to Paducah.  It was about a four hour drive, mostly down the Western Kentucky Parkway.  Springtime in Kentucky is stunningly beautiful.  We talked and laughed as we drove past miles of rolling green hills, deciduous forests, red bud and dogwood trees in bloom, and fields of yellow golden rod.  Beautiful.

Phyllis, a retired school principal, and college professor, is also an accomplished painter.  Both of us were inspired and encourage to make art by our high school art teacher, Miss Cosper.  In a thousand ways she showed that making and appreciating art was for everybody--even a couple of sergeants' daughters.  So it seemed only fitting that a "Flat Stanley" style Miss Cosper accompany us on the trip to Paducah.  We thought of contacting Miss Cosper to let her know of her lasting influence on us, but doing the math, we figure she'd be over a hundred and probably no longer painting among us.  Why didn't we think of contacting her years ago???

The night before leaving Phyllis's house for Paducah I got an email from The American Quilter's Society saying I'd won a prize.  They didn't say what the prize was--I had to go to the award ceremony to find that out.  I was over the moon to just get into the Paducah show in the first place.  I certainly never expected to win a prize.  Whew.  Be still my heart.

So Tuesday night, before the main hoopla of the quilt show, Phyl and I went to the awards ceremony.  I assumed I had won an honorable mention at best.  We sat through the awarding of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards in 16 categories.  As the table was emptying of trophies,  I became quite convinced that I'd been inadvertently left off the honorable mention group which was announced at the start of the awards event without much fanfare.


But then Victoria Findlay Wolfe, the MC for the event, announce my name.  Yowser.  I'd won an award with a very long name:  The Brother Corporation's Best Wall Stationary Machine Workmanship Award.  It came with an engraved crystal vase, which was pretty cool, and a check for $3000, which was way cool!  Phyllis tried to take my picture as I went on stage to get my award, but apparently I ran up, grabbed my award and dashed off.  It's all a blur to me.

The next day, Phyllis and I went to the show itself.  Paducah is off the beaten trail for sure, but for any artist or quilter, it's well worth the trip to see this exhibit.  Phyllis had only seen traditional state-fair type quilts, and was pretty amazed by the artistry and workmanship on display in Paducah.

Though it didn't win best in show, our favorite quilt was  Ruby Wedding Anniversary by Harumi Asada Higashiura, pictured below.  It had everything--piecing, applique, surface embellishment, hand stitching, free-motion quilting, tons of detail and stunning colors.  It looked a hundred times better than this photo suggests.

Going to Paducah, and winning a prize was great, but sharing the whole experience with Phyllis was pure joy.  She's the sister I never had.  I could never have imagined all those years ago when we were smoking cigarettes in the girls' room that we'd still be dear friends all these years later.  I don't know if I'll ever have another quilt make it to Paducah, but I do know Phyllis and I plan to have many more adventures.

Call for Entries, Improve Your Quilt Bindings, and a Good Read

Here are Five Things that Caught my Attention this week:

1.  Sacred Threads Quilt show has plans for a special installation at their show this
summer.  The project is called Eye Contact.  They are asking artists to submit small quilts, 5-inches by 23-inches of human eyes looking at the viewer.  This is not juried; anyone can submit. Deadline is May 31, 2019.  For details go the Sacred Threads website.  Above is a piece from the Sacred Threads page, by Barbara Hollinger.  This exhibit may not be for the more paranoid among us.

2.  Another upcoming deadline is for the Lincoln Center 37th Annual New Legacies:Contemporary Art Quilts show.  (Yeesh, what a LONG title.). The deadline is May 20th, and the show is in Fort Collins, CO in July.  Here's the info.

3.  There are so many stellar quilts in quilt shows these days, that judges often look to the smallest technical skill to determine the winners.  Master quilter Sharon Schamber, who has accumulated a heap of first-place ribbons over the years, says bindings are one of those details judges carefully examine.  She offers this tutorial for creating the perfect binding.   Her instructions have certainly improved my bindings.

 4.  I loved Old in Art School by Nell Painter.  After retiring from a career as a highly regarded historian, Princeton professor, and author of numerous history books, Painter went to art school.  No, she didn't take some Continuing Ed. art courses to become a hobby painter.  She went to art school.  Full time--art school!!!  And if that wasn't enough, then she went to graduate school at the Rhode Island School of design. Whew.                                                               
Painter's background as a historian shines through as she discusses the works of artists past and present, and how they influenced her work and her thinking.  She asks several thought provoking questions--for example, what does it mean to be an artist, and who the hell gets to decide?  She had a vicious art school professor who told her she'd NEVER be an artist.  Cripes! What kind of ass does something like that? 

Painter tells the painful story of how race and age impacted her time in school, often leaving her alone and filled with self-doubt--nevertheless, she persisted and her story (and courage) is inspiring.  When I turned the last page I felt like I knew and loved Nell Painter. I wanted to call her up and say, "come on over for a cup of tea and tell me what mountains you are climbing today."

5.  This week I'm in Paducah at the AQS Spring Show.  More on that next week.

Sewing and Mental Health

Here are 5 things that interested me this week:
1.  An article by Clare Hunter, author of Threads of Life: a History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, in The Guardian.  She writes about the mental health benefits of sewing.  She describes a charitable project, called Fine Cell Work, which teaches inmates in prisons around the UK embroidery.  Their creations are sold online, earning them a little money, but the bigger benefit seems to be the peace and comfort their stitching afforts them.  I am a bit surprised by this claim, since I think things like a tangled threads, running out of bobbin, and threading a serger, seem to undo any serenity I might enjoy from sewing.

2.  Speaking of Clare Hunter, her recently publish book, Threads of Life, explores the social, emotional and political significant of sewing--which through the ages.  Sewing has largely a women's craft, and as such, not generally given the same status as art work produced by men.

3.  Healthline  weighs in on the mental benefits of not just sewing, but all handicrafts.  They credit hobbies and crafts with reducing depression and anxiety, improving mood, and creating a greater sense of well-being.  It doesn't seem to matter what the craft is--knitting, painting, sewing, cake decorating, photography, playing an instrument, or even coloring in a coloring book; it's all good.  Jeez, have we ever needed crafts more than now???

4.  An article in the Daily Mail claims that quilting improves your health even more than exercise!!!  Whoa.  Now there's a claim that grabs my attention.  I don't think I'll give up exercise, but when I occasional skip a workout to finish a piece, I won't feel so guilty!

5.  And here's what I've been working on this week:

Harkening back to the days I made purses and pillows with marine invertebrates, I made some small pieces--around 10x15-ish--featuring marine critters.  These will go to Creative Minds Gallery tomorrow.  I like having some small, affordable pieces, and making things like this gives me a place to try new ideas and play around a bit without the huge risk or expense of a large piece.