Warm-ups

Having taken a small break from art-making, I am easing my way back to work. As I mentioned yesterday, I have been working on my next Twelve by Twelve quilt. It will be done soon, which is more than a month before it is due. That is an indication of my eagerness I guess. My last ones were finished within the week before the deadline. I have been invited to submit work for a couple of shows and I am pondering ideas for those. I never seem to already have something perfect, besides both of these have very specific size requirements, so the work will be made especially for the show. Some artists I know hate working like that and will not make work to meet show specifications. They just do what they always do, then enter whatever works in the shows that come along with compatible themes and requirements. I actually rather enjoy the challenge of working to a theme and size.

Last week's bowl of apricots was a warm-up exercise, made for no particular purpose. I had lunch with my friend June and she asked what I was working on. I told her about that piece and whined a little that I am in some kind of rut, making bowls of this or that. She pointed out that they must mean something to me and perhaps I should explore the idea further, rather than fighting it. She is so smart. I do like bowls, cups, containers. I like real ones and I like the shapes and the metaphorical possibilities of full or empty vessels. Inspired by my little collection of Chinese tea cups, I started making cups today. Here's the beginning of one.

This is fused. At this point I use either paint or pastel pencil to add shading and dimension. The other day it occurred to me that, though I have a nice variety of media to use on my fabrics, I had not tried good old crayola crayons. I remember my Mom showing me how to color on fabrics, then put a piece of paper over the top and iron to set the color and melt the wax into the paper. They were amazingly colorful and permanent. I used them on tea towels or doll clothes or even tee shirts as a kid.

The crayons work great! I can't believe I haven't thought of this until now. The nice thing is that, unlike some of the things I have been using I don't have to spray or paint anything on them to make the color permanent.

Here's another.

I decided this one needed a little border like you sometimes see on these cups.

 

These are not attached to the backgrounds you see and look a little wonkier than they actually are because they are not laying perfectly flat. I think I'll make more of these, then decide how to put them all together.