As I’m feeling a little under the weather with a flu bug, I’m not feeling particularly creative today so I thought I would chat a bit about a project I’m just starting.  I’m always on the lookout for quick and easy projects that I can share with friends who are not as comfortable with a needle and thread as I am. While RVing, the wardrobe basics are jeans t-shirts and sweatshirts.  I’ve resisted wearing plain...

I’m always on the lookout to find new materials or techniques that I might use in mixed-media art.  While at the Calgary Creative Stitches & Crafting Alive Show I came across a booth with a representative offering courses in the use of Paverpol to create garden-safe sculptures.  My sister has created a couple of sculptures and they combine fibre empregnated with a material that hardens it to a waterproof structure.  I have never...

Years ago I took a workshop that introduced me to encaustic. While intrigued  I wasn’t particularly pleased with the pieces that I produced in the workshop and the teacher, who spent a lot of time talking about the creation of her encaustic medium, made it sound as though it was a very time intensive project.  I must have had some lingering interest though because a year ago I bought Encaustic Workshop by Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch....

Last fall I started to work on what I am calling my ‘Re’ series.  You may ask, what is my ‘Re’ series.  I’ve always been fascinated with trying to use things that might other wise be discarded and of course that opens the door to using processes that ‘Recycle, Reuse, Repurpose, Reclaim, Reprocess, Restore, Rescue, Relove, Recondition, Remodel, Regenerate’.  Of course if you are not a purist you could...

For a change of pace I’m going to share some of the photos that I looked at when starting this project.  The finished piece will be 18″x45″ so the shape of the piece will be a challenge in itself. This piece will be an entry into a FAN (Fibre Art Network) exhibition in 2013  entitled Abstracted.  This show requires artists to work with a partner, one artist develops a representative art piece and the other develops an...

    This was a month for experimentation, adding new people and organizations to my network and to time to get serious about some artwork.  One of my project this month was to explore the possibilities offered by paper fabric and to get ready to lead a workshop on the technique early next month. One of my samples is featured in my October journal quilt. This journal quilt incorporates paper cloth – a technique that has been on...

  This month’s journal quilt is ‘busy’ but more joyful reflecting, I hope, a turn in the course of events.  Can you find the ‘C’s’ encircling the centre of the piece? Inspiration September proved to be a busy month.  For me it was an introduction into full-time life in Calgary, a first-time for living in a city environment.  It was a month of continued, but lessening, worry about family health issues balanced...

This time I chose to use another of my ‘recycled’ fabrics for my August journal quilt.  I pulled out a piece of ‘fabric’ created from fused shopping bags and created my artist trading cards for the FAN retreat in September and some ‘inchies’ and squares that are incorporated into this piece.  Nothing goes to waste! My Inspiration August proved to be another crazy month!  I chose ‘T’ for a number...

  The technique I chose for this month’s journal quilt can be found in the book Layered Textures: New Surfaces with heat tools, machine and hand stitch by Kim Thittichai.  I think I will be dipping back into this book again for techniques to try.  Faux Chenille is one of the Recycled Layers ideas that I was drawn to while browsing the pages.  I’m also working on a series featuring recycled… materials but more on that to...

My Inspiration For my June journal quilt I selected the letter M.  M stands for ‘move’ or ‘manage’.  Our lives have taken a dramatic change and suddenly we are faced with the fact that we will be  spending a winter in the north once again.  While we loved the spirit of the Osoyoos park we visited in November and December 2011, we found the weather too cold for long-stay comfort in our RV, the cost of propane off-set any...