Autumn 2019

Quick, a last mosaic before next year...
A small summary of this autumn...

My quilt is finished, but I haven't taken the time to photograph it. Maybe tomorrow, if it's sunny.

December

Here's a quick summary of this month in the studio...

It looks like there was a little bit of everything... drawing, painting, printing, weaving, sewing, studying Japanese, ...
Actually, it was mainly drawing and painting. And also thinking a lot about the work I want to do next year.

Transition

My mom passed away peacefully. She had been sick for several years and we knew this was coming, but it feels strange and sad to think she's really gone now.

The whole family had a beautiful celebration a few days after her passing.

Life has to go on now. I am slowly going back to the studio. I finished my super-secret quilt that I can't talk about until next year. I think I'm going to take a break from art quilting for a couple of months. I want to concentrate on painting, weaving and reading this summer.
I also need to go back to my Japanese studies. Did I tell you that I did really well at my end-of-year exam?

This is a mixed-media painting, using acrylics, collage and my own calligraphies.

Hello 2012!

First post of the year, at last!
This week, I am having fun doing Carla Sonheim's Imaginary Creatures online class, as a belated birthday present to myself.
Here are some of the creatures I painted yesterday...
This class is wonderful. I'm so glad I finally decided to sign up.

I haven't started to work on my Metamorphosis quilt yet. But I'm seeing change and impermanence everywhere...
Yesterday evening, I somehow forgot a pot of rice on the stove... I can tell you that the lovely whiteness and fluffiness of cooked rice is highly impermanent... I'm not yet finished cleaning the ugly black hard stuff that's now sticking to my pot...
Anyway, one of the ideas I had for this Metamorphosis quilt was to transform one of my rejected quilts.
This dandelion was a candidate quilt for the first Twelve by Twelve challenge back in 2007. I finally made another one featuring a white dandelion seed head. But now I am thinking of recycling this yellow flower and using it for the new challenge.
I like this idea because it would involve many layers of metamorphosis.

More autumn colours

The weather here has been so incredibly sunny and mild for the season that I can't resist posting another autumn photo.
Last summer, I enjoyed reading Tammy's blog, especially her posts about ICaD, and I played along a little bit, in my own corner. I didn't feel like showing my index cards here and didn't post about them, but the other day, I found Tammy's blog again, with this post here, and I just couldn't resist making a little mess too...
This print is my favourite...
especially this close-up...
and this is what happened to the sheet of paper that what protecting my desk...
The watercolour marks under the paint splotches come from sketches I did for a new quilt. Here's a little peek at one of the sketches...
The quilt is well underway, but I can't post about it yet.

Forget-me-not...

I'm taking a little refreshing break. Today, I made a few postcards for a swap. I used homedyed fabric, banana paper, an old picture transferred on fabric, and a little piece of novelty yarn. And now I'm disappearing with my yoga mat and some good books. Cheers!

Creamy fabric book page

This is my page for Carol's fabric book. Her theme is "just creamy". I started with a few small hand embroideries on calico, cut them into little patches, stitched these on a thicker cotton fabric, and added pieces of lace... Then, what else could I do?... I decided to dip the whole piece in black tea... The resulting colour was not very exciting. I sponged some very light ochre paint on it. Pfff!... It looked awful... I dipped it again in tea (lichees tea this time). It smelled delicious, but then the fabric became too dark! I was getting nervous, thinking of throwing the piece in the garbage and of starting all over.
The next day, I painted bleach on the piece... Great! The brownish colour disappeared. Only a few little darker patches were visible. I let the piece dry. At that point, I was very tempted to paint it with bright colours, but Carol wanted something white or cream or beige...
I then glued a sheet of tissue paper on my work, scratched the wet paper to let the embroidery show, painted the paper with white acrylic, added a few little pieces of gauze, dabbed some gold paint, and finished the piece with machine stitching... Et voilà!
It's not that bad after all...
Now, I'm looking forward to working on something a bit more straightforward for a few days!

Tiny little quilt

It is 3'' by 3'', and it is part of my paper/fabric challenge. The picture is an inkjet print. I used pva to glue it on white fabric. I sealed the surface with glue too. When it was dry, I cut it and stitched it on the purple background fabric.
I made my "tiniest quilt ever" out of this. The picture is me and my two big sisters.

Fabric book

Starting in January, I'm going to have a fabric book page swap with some of my FiberArtFriends.
This will be the front cover of my fabric book. I'll probably quilt it later, but it doesn't have a backing yet, simply because I don't know yet how I'll bind my book pages.
The theme of my book will be "Writing systems, past and present".

Paper and fabric

I started experimenting with paper and fabric. As I also have to work on my fabric book cover, and time is rather short these days, I decided to combine both exercises into one.
I wrote my name several times on rice paper in Japanese characters. I then glued these strips of paper on cotton fabric. I painted the first one with a very light wash of grey acrylic paint, and the next ones with walnut stain.
I mopped up the walnut stain leftover with a strip of fabric. It makes me think of mummy wrappings... As the theme of my book is "Writing systems, past and present", this sounds like a good transition to hieroglyphs...

Handmade beads

This morning, I made a few Tyvek beads. It's really easy with a heat gun. I'm going to try other colours this afternoon. Good reference books for this technique are "Raising the Surface" by Maggie Grey and "Surfaces for Stitch" by Gwen Hedley.
Don't forget to wear your mask if you heat Tyvek!