Art Spirals

Silk cuff

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:30:00 -0600

Here's what I made from my first silk fusion lessonWendy gave me this spring. I stitched it onto a piece of yellow suede, covered it with water soluble fabric to not get my sewing foot trapped in the fuzzy layers, without thinking. So I tried to use a brush with water to dissolve the fabric, but I wasn't happy with it, so I dunked it. It dried, of course, the silk paper isn't as soft and wonderful as it was, but that's ok. I then cut up squares from the lime green dyed tablecloth used to make the postcard, shown yesterday, stitched it on with beads and sequins, through a copper metal lace ribbon. Then stitched it onto the blank, and glued the ultrasuede backing onto the inside. Fiddly work, but I like the outcome...although, it may be too hot to wear it here in the summer!

Porch Study

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:26:43 -0600

I"m pretty proud of these porch steps. This is a study for a quilt I'm doing, and may end up being one of the pieces of it. I'm following along the lines of Beryl Taylor's Mixed Media, making small items in the same colorways/themes and then experiencing the unknown joy of how they will go together. So, these steps are from three different values of recycled fabrics, the pale highlights are actually from the distressed creases near the pocket of a pair of stretch jeans, cut using paper template from my drawing, temporarily sprayed in place and then free motion embroidered. now on to peaches....

Helen Gwinn

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:41:54 -0600

At the Carlsbad Area Art Association Gallery (on Canyon Street, the downtown), I also fell in love with the watermedia/collage work of Helen Gwinn Just phenomenal work. Here's a pic of the collection of her notecards I purchased, I believe it represents older work, along with the postcard, bottom left, that shows an example of her new "Cliff" series.

And in her display was a lovely book that I have to find called: The Art of Layering: Making Connections. Her work is in there, as well as other work of other phenomenal collage artists.

Fabric Art Purchases

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:05:00 -0600

We just got back from a little vacation in New Mexico, and I shopped at three great fabric/quilting stores, and a neat Art Gallery, so I thought I'd do a show and tell, and plug for the places. First, the glorious fabrics:

The top batik is amazing, the second is called Botanical Bugs, love it, the next I plan to fussy cut to make some peaches for my next project, and the bottom I saw in various colorways in all three stores, Fairy Frost. It has a lovely sheen to it. Cotton.

The dark green print is a brushed cotton, I LOVE the lime green pine needle print and the others are wonderful.

Can you tell I have certain colors in mind? I just Love this screaming wonderful colors now. I still love blues/green/purples but I certainly have a ton of them, and I'm sorely lacking these (and also bright yellows, but I didn't find any pure yellows that I really liked.) And I watched the Ricky Tims video. I doubt I'd do the tulip pattern he does, but I might use the techniques to do other things. An enjoyable view though. He seems like a neat person to know.

Here are the fabric stores: Jill's Fabric & Design, (505) 885-1184 121 S Canyon St, Carlsbad, NM 88220 (the downtown). Martha's Fabrics in Ruidoso, NM and Homestead Quilting in Alamogordo, NM.

In Ruidoso there's a neat scrapbook/yarn/beading store called We Cree8, in the midtown section of Ruidoso, that if you're there, you'll want to check out. Martha's Fabrics is immense, loads of decorating fabrics and fancy fabrics, smaller section of quilting fabrics...be careful, you may get lost in there and never get out!

The ultrasuede is a request from Wendy, it's definitely more of a blue grey than it shows there. The blue/peach fabric is a Thomas Kinkade piece called Sunset. I see now that the selvage says: "intended solely for noncommercial use". Geesh. I have some thoughts on THAT!

And, I can't figure out why the font changed in these paragraphs, I LIKE IT, but can't make the preceding paragraphs bigger. I think I need a different blog platform!

The yarn is hand dyed and spun by Dedri Quillin. Here's her blog and website. Her work is BEAUTIFUL! I was hard pressed to pick just one of the gorgeous colors of wool there in a lovely basket. If there were smaller balls, I would have bought many, because I won't need this much for the work I do, but these colors will be great for my peach/blue project. I wish now I had taken a picture of the basket of wools. It was SCRUMMY!

Now I just had to have this blue print, not as though I don't have tons in those colors already

I bought (gasp) these two 3000 yd spools of King Tut. More than I wanted to spend to try it out, but I had already spent the gas to get there, and wanted to support local. I know now I could order them online, but that's ok.

I love the teal varigate, and the blue grey is for my peach project. The purple varigate is signature, the only 20 wt she had (it was a mistake that it came), the orange varigate is a sulky 30 wt. and the YLI yellow/orange is a Jean thread...I thought I'd try it in the bobbin. These white on white fabrics I think will dye/paint wonderfully, maybe like Diane's? and I got the scissors Wendy suggested I get for FME.

Oh and yes, I filled up on any possible fusible needs. I had steam a seam 2, but was running out; tons of Heat n Bond (which I'm not happy with)...so now I have Misty Fuse, Wonder Under, Stitch Witchery (bought before I found the first two), Sulky temporary adhesive, and also Bo Nash. Whew. Now I just have to remember what to DO with each of them!

We're Number One!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:35:00 -0600

isn't this a cool shot? Feel free to use it in art if you'd like.

Taken in Pecos, TX June 2008

Pics of our pond and flowers

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:39:30 -0600

Amazing what a little "pond bacteria" bottled from the pet store will do to a pond without filtration. YAY! we had the fish, the good water levels from testing, the plants, but it was still murky. Now we can see the bottom -- found lots of interesting things there, a dead lizard with its tail gone...he got a proper burial...homework paper that had blown in, and two tiny new fish (maybe eggs were on new plants?) and a water snail. Unfortunately I took pics at noon, so the water lettuce plants, a nice green, are washed out with the glare. love the reflection! Bertrick, our five inch koi, seemed startled by the whir of the camera mechanism, but here he is. His buddy, Fishy, a shebunkin goldfish, is near him, but elusive to capture on camera. And last, a beautiful tiger lily beside the pond.

Finit! The Mommy Glove finished

noreply@blogspirit.com (Rachel Murphree) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 -0600

It's finally done, and yet it doesn't seem like it took long at all. A wonderful 9 months of work -- how fitting. I'll explain the symbolism of the piece.

Mommy is who I am now (at least partly) to my two girls, ages 5 and 7. So this glove describes memories of being a mom. First, the four silver butterflies on the M are for the four miscarriages we had prior to our first child. Both girls are represented with ever growing butterflies on the first and ring fingers. The white owl under the O of mommy is for Harry Potter -- I've read the first five volumes to them and we've loved them. The blocks are for toys, the silver large hand and four small hands to the left of it are for growing hands and my hand training them. The doll, is obvious. She has a piece of beadweaving half visible under her skirt that reminds me of learning this with my sweet older sister, Marti. The heart and sequins in bright colors above the word Mommy are for living in this colorful border town of El Paso. The triathalon symbols in the yellow area symbolize our girls' love of this sport -- and they're quite good at it too!

Now, on to the fingers. The thumb is for my older daughter who loves lizards and nature...see the lizard charm where the thumbnail would be. The first finger has a paw for our older dog Cody who died last year. The three stars in a row are for Orion's belt. I remember teaching them that constellation when they were still in a double stroller and we had both dogs hooked up to the front, like reindeer, and we were pretending we were Santa in his sleigh.
The third finger has frilly and iridesent and pink stuff, see the little purse?, for the dress up phases they both went through, and the younger one is still in. The ring finger has a silver snowflake embedded in it and cold blue/ice colors for the snow that we have fun playing in in the mts of New Mexico. And the pinky finger has a fish on it, for our two fish in our new pond: Bertrick and Fishy. Also the sign language letters are: TLC and my older daughter loves learning sign language, she did that all through first grade.

I am considering submitting it to our local Arts International show (for artists in TX, NM, and the mexican state of Chihuahua), but it says that all submissions must be for sale. Of course I don't want to sell this, it's too personally meaningful for me. However, now that it's finished, it's the memories and the process of doing it that are more important to me than the finished piece. My girls though, will definitely want to have this when they get older. So I guess I could submit it with an outrageous price tag -- $7000?? -- and I'd think no one would buy it. Hmmm.... The bead competitions that I've found so far, don't seem to mind if it's been displayed on a blog already (there has been some talk involving quilts onthe Quilt Art group) and the piece doesn't have to be for sale on them. So maybe I'll do those too/instead. Any advice for me?