week 12--yellow

Right after I pulled this one out of the bag,I turned around and noticed that my sewing table was covered in yellow scraps. I was in the process of creating a wall-hanging for a sale I did yesterday (sold it, too; thanks J&S!) and there was a sea of assorted yellow fabrics in front of me, more draped over the back of my sewing chair, as well as yellow-headed pins, yellow threads, yellow-handled rotary cutters, and yellow lines on the cutting mat. Big Bird standing in the room would have completed the scene.
Fusible-web applique, machine-stitching, embellished with pins (probably the first time those have been considered an 'embellishment'), an 'Olfa' (rotary cutter) lapel pin, and a wooden spool of thread, marked 19 cents. Ha!

week 11--bag

Again, not so 'artistic', barely creative. Not a bead or fancy thread in site. But it is sorta cute, and the first 3-d piece in the series. Which I suppose makes it functional, as if that matters. Which it doesn't.
Fusible-webbed batik (it just LOOKS like grocery-sack paper, albeit stained), pigma pen.

week 10--water

So I'm a day late. Life happens. This one wasn't as easy as it could have/should have been, I suppose; I ended up going for the literal, representational approach. Rather a cop-out, to me anyway, but there it is. A water tap, rain--that same rain fabric again!--ice cubes, clouds (yes, those are supposed to be clouds), and a river. Yes, it's muddy-brownish-grey, but it's Toledo in the spring and this is what the rivers look like right now. Fusible-web applique, a few lines with pigma pens, and a skosh of machine-quilting. I know now that it's time to push myself a bit beyond my artistic edges. (Big thanks to Lynn at fibraartysta.blogspot.com for showing my work on her blog. What an honor.)

week 9--cold

Two weeks after "hot" and I pull this one. Again, I prefer to show (or at least TRY to show) the concept of the word without creating a pictorial piece. No polar bears or icicles or snowflakes, though I originally wanted to represent the sweeps of super-thin ice on a frosty window. I chose cool colors grading out from the coldest, iciest core, 1/2-inch squares of fabric fusible-webbed down onto Timtex, then embellished with hand-sewn iridescent beads in shades of ice-blue and -purple.

week 8--bubble

This one made me smile, but I didn't know what to do with it. I thought of a big, pink gum-bubble just exploded on a face, bubbles rising from deep water to the surface, and just now thought of a bubble bath (darn--that would've been good!). Had a crazy busy week so didn't put a lot of thought into it until Thursday/Friday and didn't actually put it together until Saturday morning. When I found this 'rain' fabric in my stash I recalled how I love the big bubbles that a hard spring rain makes in puddles on the side-porch roof. I used two different blues and a silver embroidery thread for some of the raindrops, some iridescent beads, and silver fabric paint. (Yes, those are supposed to be bubbles.)

week 7--hot

Hot stuff. Hot potato. Hot to trot. I imagine 'hot' and can't help but envision waves of heat rise and waver like sun rays.
The background fabric was to look like a desert (something I've not yet seen for real), but I wanted to avoid gratuitous cacti and sun-bleached animal skulls. Wavy sun rays in darkening layers of hot colors entwine around each other show heat (I hope), machine-quilting radiates to the edges, and some shimmering orange and yellow beads add spark.

p.s. Is 'entwine around' redundant?

week six--head

Eek. Just six weeks into it and I didn't even recall putting this word into the bag! Not many thoughts came into my 'head' with this one. I certainly didn't want to do a self-portrait, nor simply a generic head; I did consider a frosty mug o' brew with a frothy top. Then I thought of those old anatomical drawings with different areas identified, and found this graphic online. I amended the categories to show what's in my head, though the originals were pretty interesting: moral, domestic, self-perfecting, perceptives, reflectives, aspiring, animal, and 'vitativeness'--spell-check does not like that one and I'm not too sure about it either, but it must not have counted for much back then since it's so small; it's size earned it the 'home' category (i.e., domestic) on my version, since I'm so into housework. Haha. Please note that my divisions are not necessarily numbered by importance, just in order on the picture; basically clockwise. Though number 5, creativity, is, as in my reality, surrounded by the rest of life. The design was traced onto flesh-toned fabric, lines and shadows were drawn with a sharpie and pigma pens; colors were fusible-web appliqued on top. What is hard to see in the photograph is the 3-d-ness (?!) of it; there is an extra layer of batting behind the head so it is puffed off of the surface, then hand-quilted down on the main lines. Week 7, drum roll please...

week V--triangle

Last week's attempt failed. Big. It's still haunting me and perhaps someday I'll try it over. So this week I went for the in-your-face approach; no question what the word is. (I suppose it could be 'bright' or 'batik'.) I haven't done paper-piecing in a long time; I was never a master at it, but that's the idea--it makes for nice points and straight seams with little effort. The prairie points (the triangles along the outer edge) were a challenge to put on well, but I'm glad I chose to make them different sizes. And beads are always a fun addition.

week four--black

So I could have shown things that ARE black: ink bottle, arch-backed Hallowe'en cat, old-fashioned phone, little dress--but those are just pictures, representations of black. What IS black? Quite simply, a lack of color. The opposite of white, which is all color. This white background fabric has tiny circles (really tiny, about 1/16th”) , some of which I filled in with a pigma pen; the idea was to fade out into the white. All in all, not very well done, I admit; rather lame, in fact. Not even a bead on it—I tried a few but they didn’t really add anything. I would certainly not call this ‘art’. But it was a tougher concept than I thought it would be and I clearly did not push myself this past week. (My original idea for this would have taken much longer than a week.) We’ll see what this coming week’s word will bring...

week 3--garden

Ah, a hopeful thought in this dreary Northwest Ohio winter. (My former college roommate, while living in Montana, told me she liked earth tones. "You know, blues and greens and purples." Uh, yeah. 'round here, earth tones are brown and grey.) Anyway, no lack of color in this week's project. Online, I found a great comment regarding gardens. It is rubber-stamped on white muslin, then surrounded by bright green wool with flowers and leaves felted on top. A few beads were added for depth and a tiny bit of sparkle.

this week's word: shadow

I liked this word as soon as I pulled it out of the bag, then I got stuck. A shadow of what? The trees at the park made great long, grey lines against the bright white snow, but I wasn't into making a 'pictorial' piece. Hmmm... Then while looking through my fabric stash, I saw a favorite batik, one with kanji all over it. I wondered what the symbol for 'shadow' is, so looked it up and decided to make a shadow of 'shadow'. I dug out fabrics in light and dark shades of the same colors, so to create the illusion on the background. I suppose I could have used a slightly darker grey for the smaller kanji, but am generally happy with the overall results. Machine-pieced background, fusible-web applique, machine-quilted and bound.

and the word is...air

Okay--the first one is done. I pulled the word 'air' out of the bag last Sunday, didn't like it, and tossed it back in. (My challenge, my rules.) I pulled out another word I didn't care for, tossed it back, pulled another, tossed that one back, then pulled out 'air' again. Out of 52 little pieces of paper, to have pulled it out again so soon told me it was meant to be. I'll deal with the rejected words some other week. If an inkling of an idea doesn't hit me right away, back into the bag they go.
So, 'air'. Tough one. It's hard to represent wispy with solid materials. I decided thread can be wispy so I made a frame (Timtex covered with a batik fabric that has a wind-blown sort of flow to it), and stitched light blue thread across nothingness except a few pieces of fine monofilament (I suppose now that they were structurally unnecessary) from inner edge to inner edge. I couldn't find light blue embellishment fibers at any craft store in town so cut my blue thread into short pieces and stitched them in place as I zig-zagged the outer edge. To add a touch of sparkle, like in the uber-cold air outside, I tied a few blue beads onto the threads (with thread), though their iridescence doesn't show at all in the photo.
Reaching into the bag for word #2...

Is 'start again' an oxymoron?

Okay--new year, new plans. I have placed 52 little pieces of paper in a little bag, each with one word such as 'circle', 'red', 'flamboyant', 'tree', etc., just little jumping-off points to get me started. I will make a 5"x6" piece of art each week, be it fiber or paper or felting or ...., inspired by whichever word I pull out. I asked Joe to do some of the words, so I'd be surprised, requesting he not put in words like 'alien'. (He's 9, you know, so is big on aliens and Star Wars and such. He wouldn't do it, but decided to begin his own project to draw an alien a day. See? Each of us inspires others, in some way.) I'm not planning on any other rules with this project, but to finish each piece within the week--knowing they are not for show but just to get me moving again, artistically. Oh, yeah--and I'll post photos of them here. So I guess they are for show. Maybe I'll post Joe's aliens, too.
I'm not really sure I have time for this sort of thing, but I see so many others doing so much with their time, there's no reason I can't at least try to do the same.
p.s. Re: 'start again', I began this blog a few years ago but never told anybody. Silly. Now it's for real.