Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Bones and feathers

The Bones

The last time you saw my geometric piece (now called "squares and triangles" for want of a better name) here, I had made a bunch of beads and thingies, from Fimo, to sew on it. I took it all to the beach and starting sewing them on. Then one, and then another and another, of the Fimo pieces cracked and broke as I was sewing them. It was clear they were not going to work. The next day when we went into Tillamook (see previous post) I spotted a bead shop and we stopped to look around. It was quite a shop, with a little of this and a little of that and piles of unsorted stuff and clutter and disorganization to an extreme. Another customer, a wild-eyed elderly lady, greeted us with "who are you ladies??" Then she continued to engage us and the shop owner in a disjointed and bizarre conversation the whole time we were there. Definite small town experience! But I digress. My great find were a cache of very interesting bone beads, which had a very similar look as my Fimo beads, but were much less delicate. Good price, too.


Here is a closeup of the bone beads and the stitching I did.


And here is the finished piece.

The Feathers
I showed you the crow I made at the beach. Here is a better view of it. Notice the wings.


This was another experiment. A couple months ago I discovered Golden Digital Ground Medium and did some printing on fabric using it. I liked it. I drew a feathered wing in Illustrator, manipulated it a bit in Photoshop and printed it on white fabric. (Actually two of them) Then I painted over them with a teal blue transparent fabric paint. It worked pretty well for the wings, I think. Here is the drawing I used.

8 comments:

  1. The geometric piece looks great, finished. It reads as part of a series with your "green line" quilts. And you know I love every one of those crows.

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  2. The geometric piece reminds me of beach houses.

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  3. I love the crow. What do you use for the feet?

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  4. Both pieces look great! I love the proportions in this quilt as well as your green line quilts!

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  5. This piece really came out well. Love the beads even though it's not normally your thing-in this case it really rocks the quilt.
    You already know how much I love the birds but I do enjoy seeing your techniques.

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  6. Wow! I love how this piece turned out! And the crow is so cool. I didn't think of using Digital Grounds for printing on fabric. Do you describe this somewhere in your blog? Does it make the printing more archival?

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  7. Both the house quilt and the crow are fabulous! I do like those beads!

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  8. The crow is unbelievably clever! It seems like you could make a fortune selling things like this.

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