When Does A Sow's Ear STOP Being A Sow's Ear

Lord I HATE when I'm between projects. And it shows. I've been cleaning up and came across an unfinished piece from last Fall. There was a reason I abandoned it.
I'm sure there is an equivalent in all languages but my title refers to a saying "You can't make a silk purse out  of a sow's (pig) ear."

But another view is sometimes, SOMETIMES you simply have to finish something for its value or beauty to show.

The reason I had so much difficulty with this dragonfly was I wanted to feature the fabric. Sort of back assward.
After you spend a lot of time fiddling with a piece and it still doesn't please you, you're in a hard place.
So I finished it.

Even looking at it on the screen I'm not proud of it. I LOVE the background fabric but..........
Some one may love it..... but it isn't me this time.
They just can't all be great.

Totally , TOTALLY 180 degrees Crafty stuff!

Well I succumb to the sewing urge...........and made trinkets. Yes Trinkets. Crafts!

I'm meeting 2 dear old friends in TO tomorrow for lunch. We used to work together. We watched each others' children grow, and now its a weddings and funerals relationship except for the occasional GIRL'S LUNCHEON. ( YES )

Should be great fun. AND I decided to do the hostess gift thingy. These little change purses were posted on another forum last week and I though I'd make a few. One of my friends has a GD as well as a DD so I had to make four.

The first one took about an hour...........the last one 15 minutes.
Looking forward to tomorrow.

 LOL

PS: 8/14  5pm -Two hours on the road into TO and 2 hours on the road back out......but we had a wonderful time.  ( I'm the "baby" of the group, on the left.)

Painted cloth -Time to Take Stock

The weather is changing today so this will be the last of my painting for a bit. Apparently I've been a BEAR ( according to DH ) and I'll attribute that to my not sewing/working on anything at ALL. (I did have a DJ package and it's disappeared $$%#$#^) It will turn up but It has contributed to my grumpy mood.

I decided it was time to get smart about this painting stuff. I've almost used up $60 worth of paint PLAYING. I really didn't know what I was aiming for. I'm sure that contributed to my mood too. So I decided today for the last of a bit, I would give my painting a focus.

I took a few minutes to mix of a small amount of the secondary colours. While they aren't often featured in my work ( Except green) they are very necessary to put minute shifts in the colours.

Talking with DH, ( who is a brilliant photographer) I was bemoaning I had used almost all 250 ml of yellow.
I had discovered, when you make green you add the blue to the yellow, and when you make orange, you add the red to the yellow. They demand a far more skewed ratio than half and half. Apparently that explained to him the order YMCK, the colours in Printing and silk screening: yellow, magenta, cyan and black.

 

So here are my base colours. These are mixed a little over half and half with water. This stuff comes like sour cream.

 

I've gone thru almost 8 1/2 yards of white cotton @ $5/yd. That translates into about $2:50 a Fat Quarter. That's usually the limit I will pay in stores unless its REALLY cool. So I guess this is still in line. ( I just bought a whole bolt of 40 inch white..20 yards....BUT...)

 

Today I decided I wanted a piece of night...or dark... whatever. Transferable to sky, or water, or stone.

 

This is very dilute black, with a touch of blue and green. Its dried quickly in the sun. It IS ironed flat.
The lighter areas are from the way the paint moved. I rumbled it wet on the grass. Could be a very interesting background. But I will probably over paint it.

This piece has me gnashing my teeth. I was aiming for sky at sunset etc and while my back was turned the wind blew it into a heap and the black dried unevenly.
SIGH! Not a complete waste but........

On to the mop up. That wishy washy blue took up the black.

 

And my "I think this one is almost done".......is done.

 

I had excess red so I blended the yellow orange and red and "painted " it onto the water proof sheet and lay the piece on it. Definitely a field of flowers now.

So that all for a bit. This process generates so much clutter that needs to be controlled and organized, so its not like army manoeuvers every time I want to paint.

I still have lots of good weather ahead.

 

PERFECT Paint day

Good thing I don't have any burning desire to sew right now. Decided today to concentrate on analogous colours of Blues, Greens and red. I stretched the green a bit into a lot of lime but its still good. And because the sun was brilliant today, the salt and the sun prints worked very well.

So here are the four in situ, on the grass.

 The blue was salted

Mop for blues and red

Sun printing using grass and clover and a few mum leaves

Tiny stars from the dollar store

After clearing away the salt and ironing, this proved to be a fine example. There were 3 shades of blue used here, leaning to turquoise.

Using graduated shades of green with increasing yellow, again 3, nice clear sun prints.

This one worked better than expected. These Stars were less than .5 cm in size. Nice clean edges.

 

And another rather ethereal mop cloth. The creases are actually channels of migrated paint. When the first colour blue was set to dry, I rumpled the cloth so it would migrate.

More Paint Play

I have a few days coming up with some heat possibilities, so GOTTA PAINT.

I spent some boring time over the past few days trying to organize all the stuff that you start to collect with this activity. The paints themselves, containers to dilute the colours in, containers to mix the secondary colours and containers to make blends in. And As I'm doing all this I'm cognisant of the cost if I make MUD.

Consequently I'm mixing very small amounts and diluting them, perhaps too much.

The setting up time and cleaning up time is a nuisance but I am being over cautious and therefore really slow. I've not yet really proved to myself that this will wash out of my clothing etc. I've even taken to wearing my old chemistry lab coat or my big chef's apron. And on a hot day, they are hot. Doh!

So I thought I'd try some yellow today. I mixed a very small amount of gold/orange. Poured it over a wash of the primary.

 

This has some interesting movement for an art piece, and this is where I have to remind myself I'm not tiring to create an art piece.

 

 

Tried more salt and it worked minimally but I also (cause I can't leave well enough alone) added a bit of yellow Rit and Red Rit. There seemed to be more movement from the dyes than the paint today.

 



 

This one turned out very interesting. Only the primary blue and red but very diluted in some areas and more Rit powder. The blues and reds seem more responsive to the salt or the colours were more intense. So many factors. And the sun was definitely HOT now.

 

I did over paint some of the previous pieces as well but I was feeling a bit confused as to what I was really trying to accomplish so I stopped there and MOPPED up. I think I'm getting pretty close to the colour tipping point here.

 

 

Enough today.