A Big GEE Whiz!

The above greeted me at my place at lunch yesterday. Mike had been to the post office to buy stamps, and apparently saw these, and got them for ME!! What a guy. He bought himself some boring flags to actually USE. So I get to keep mine just to look at, if I want. Wasn't that nice of him?

I may use half of them - there are ten different images in all - so I could keep 10 and send 10. But I think I'll just keep them awhile. I do that sometimes. Somewhere around here I have a big sheet of Oregon Trail stamps, from back when they were lick & stick. I bought them around the time we moved to this house, I think - so they're about 20 years old. I can't even remember the denomination, but it's absolutely nothing relevant to today's postage rates. However, I'm searching for them, so I can use part of the image in a quilt I will be working on this fall. No, I'm not going to copy the image, but I do need access to a clear, small map of the Oregon Trail. Just goes to show - you never know when those packrat tendancies will come in handy!

And in other news...... I am becoming very discouraged about my schedule. I was hoping after yesterday's court that I'd start having a little more free time. But NOOOO.... I'll have less, since the judge and the department are pushing these parents to have more time w/their kids, but none of it unsupervised. And since I'm the supervisor, it means I'll be spending nearly 40/week with them, plus my other case, plus my other job. So when do I think I'll be able to create?? Egads! When do I think I'll even be able to SHOWER????

Rust is the Rage

ALL the rage, in the textile world. Or at least in the one I am mostly in. Marion rusts, Kimberly rusts, Sue rusts, Alice rusts ...... others rust. And now *I* rust. Or at least my fabric did. I did a minor experiment with rust-dyed fabric this weekend, and while I can't say that my results are spectacular, they're OK for a first-attempt, with mostly found materials (translate: $0 cost!).

Here are my pictures of the resulting fabrics. I used a rusty rooster ornament from a couple years back's flower garden, and an "antique" (so he says) door roller that Mike found somewhere. And I created:



The last little piece looks like it was wrapped around a rake. There's a very good reason for that: I found a rusty old rake head out near the garden shed and wrapped cloth around it, too. The other 3 pictures are using the above mentioned rooster and roller. Apologies for the mangled appearance of the photos. Blogger and I don't always see eye-to-eye on things.

The fabric I used on these pieces was just an old cotton bedsheet I purchased at Goodwill. Cost all of 50 cents, probably. They sell the all-cotton ones for less than the $1 poly-blend sheets, cuz they figure you'll have to iron cotton. HA! silly them. But my primary observation about rust dyed fabrics? They stink. REALLY stink. And now my hands do, too, even after washing them twice. I can still smell rust on them. I hope the fabrics get better after I wash them, or my rust-dyeing career is going to be the shortest in history.

We went to the State Fair this weekend, and of course moseyed thru the quilt display. The winner of Pride of Nebraska utilized rust-dyed fabric as a background for silhouettes of windmill blades done in pastel colors (roses, purples, mostly) The background appeared to be overdyed with a golden color - not a pure procion, but a mix of something. It was a simple, but very effective quilt. Then I picked up an issue of Belle Armoire at B&N - I stopped subscribing a year or two back, and now only buy it if I see something in it I want to read. This time there was an article on rust-dyeing. HUH??? It really IS all over the place. There also was a feature photo in the readers gallery in the back of some rust-dyed scarves. SEE??? I just keep running into this stuff. And THEN.... to top it all off, when I came home and started to do laundry, right there in my own washing machine was a rust-dyed t-shirt that Mike had done!!! Well, no, not on purpose, but still.......

Happy Holiday!!

And it IS a happy one for me! I actually have 4 (FOUR!!) days in a row off. Well 3.5 days, actually. And so this morning, I pulled a little piece off the design wall that has been languishing for a couple of years. I sanwiched and quilted it. It's working title was "Land Turtles", and I think I can just leave it as that.

The piece is a very simple one - the turtles were printed using a styrofoam plate which I cut to shape and then incised with the lines that form the design of the shells and appendages. I sponged on setacolor, printed, sponged on some direct painting, then scrounged the bin for hand-dyed and commercial cottons, and zapped it together lickety-split. Two years ago. And now it's finally quilted and bound and OFF THE DESIGN WALL. It's cute. It's fun. I like it. And most importantly.... IT'S OFF THE DESIGN WALL!!! Not visible in the picture are FMQ spiral turtles in the big mottled rectangles. I suppose I could take a detail shot.... but I'm not gonna. You can just guess what they look like. Spiral turtles. Not hard to imagine at all!

Now, on to more serious (or not) work or ideas. I started a little quilt not long ago that will be an abstraction of yucca against a coppery sunset. It will be consturcted from one of the Games in Diane Hire's book. (see earlier blog posts). And then, if I like it as much as I think I will, I'm going to turn around and do another one, maybe a little bigger, maybe a little more sophisticated, as an actual art quilt, rather than just as a technique-tester.

This past week has been spent (between my work schedules) finishing up my entry for Doing Small Things. After the online exhibit is posted, I'll do a blog entry w/ a picture and talk a bit about it. The challenge was interesting to work on - very thought-provoking - and I'm anxious to see all the entries.

So - the turtles are done. Mike has been working on the front porch with some repairs he contends WERE necessary. They weren't so necessary before he got the fancy new air nailer and compressor. I guess I have to trust he knows what he's talking about (and doing). There have been some mighty horrific and suspicious noises coming from that direction. He's scared the cat into hiding, and who knows when we'll see her again. I'd say there is only room for improvement... but at least before he started this "project", the porch WAS attached to the house at all appropriate points. Well, hopefully it still will be.