This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge is “Fashion.” Never being fashionable, I wasn’t certain what to do. But then I remembered one of the exercises in one of my favorite books, Mixed Mania, by Debbi Crane and Cheryl Prater. The exercise suggests using paper, fabric or other scraps to dress a paper doll.  I had avoided this one because I am not a “doll” person. However, it seemed a perfect way to meet the challenge.

I dressed my doll in paper from a Hancock’s of Paducah fabric catalog, and I placed her on a background I had been playing with. It’s a wee bit darker than I wanted, and I really wasn’t sure how to dress her feet, so she’s barefoot. but I think she looks happy in her environment, and happily proclaims, “look at me!”

After a brief hiatus, I have returned to silk painting. I took a little more time on this one — to avoid breaks in the resist lines, so my koi are more structured than usual.  I used Jacquard’s Dye-Na-Flo paints and Silkpaint’s resist, both from Dharma Trading Co. While the Dye-Na-Flo affects the hand of the silk slightly, it just seems so much easier and — OK — less scary than using dyes I’ll need to steam set.

So here are my koi, on a habutai scarf, 60 x 15 inches in size.

Mixed Media Monday’s challenge this week is mothers and daughters. For this challenge, I pulled a personal-use Life magazine photo from the Google image search, gave it a sepia tone.

For some reason, the phrase “you complete me” rang in my mind when I looked at the photo, so I decided to break the photo into pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I attached the pieces to foam to give it a bit of depth (note to self: it’s hard to cut foam precisely–at least the curves.)

I added the jigsaw puzzle pieces to a brown and gold background. I added lace, penned in the phrase racing through my head, and here we have my challenge piece.

You complete me

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Mixed Media Monday’s challenge this week is to use pink in your design. I used TAP paper to transfer a black and white image onto a piece of fabric I had painted pink. I lay that on top of some cream and blue fabric with a nice repeating design.  I lay my framed pink lady on some black felt and included three repeats of the cream and blue fabric’s line design. I lay gold tulle over the the top of the entire piece and free-motion quilted the piece, using pink thread on the black. I am practicing free-motion vines, which I found quite pleasing. I hope you do too:

This week I hosted Mixed Media Monday, asking that everyone use maps (or map imagery)  in their piece.

I like using maps. I need to find ways to get more maps in fabric form. Maps suggest travel, distance, adventure, new paths and journeys, connecting, so many things! It’s no wonder I like using maps!

Books also allow me to travel, to experience adventure, to take new journeys. They have been a way to experience new places and new ideas since I was a very little girl, and I love my books.

This piece mixes the two images. I’ve created a collaged map background and added a little girl reading in the forefront.

My books can take me anywhere.

The Mixed Media Monday challenge for this week was provided by Yvonne, who asked that we select a piece of music that has meaning to us and create a piece around that. There are a great many songs that mean something to me. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the era of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. Recently, I went out of town to meet my new second cousin, Drew. I have always been very close to my cousins, and his mother, Sarah, was one of my first babysitting charges years ago. As I held Drew, Sarah and I talked about caring for babies and how, at least in our family, we seem to always sing to the little ones. I remembered how I used to hold her when she was fussy, and sway back and forth as I sang Beetle songs. My favorite song to sing to a baby or child has always been “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Of course, I always replaced “Lucy” with the name of the baby I held: Sarah, Erin, Leah, Damon, Shelby. (This always worked well, since our family leans toward two-syllable names. Drew will probably be modified to Drew-bug or Drewbie for my Beetles rendition.)

Because of this nostalgic talk with my cousin, and in honor of the next child I will serenade, I chose to base my art on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The wall hanging includes an image transfer of a figure from a classic poster imprinted over a Nancy Crow fabric I purchased in the 1990s. I added felted flowers of yellow and green (OK, OK. They aren’t cellophane, but the felting just seemed right). The flowers and image are on a machine-quilted muslin that I hand-dyed this year.

Thank you for the challenge, Yvonne. It brought to me fond memories.

In the sky with diamonds

Time to plug a new neighborhood hangout: Clifton Art Supply. It’s a new art supply store on Frankfort Avenue here in Louisville. As a person who likes to buy local whenever possible, I am happy to purchase from them whenever I can. (Plus, since they are in the neighborhood, I can actually WALK there — how’s that for shopping local?)

The store is no giant mega art center, but the staff are friendly and knowledgeable. Their products are varied, and they will find particular items for you if you ask.

I want to encourage my Louisville artist friends to stop by and give the store a chance.

Mixed Media Monday’s latest challenge is “Metal/Metallics.” For the challenge, I took bits and pieces of blue fabric from another project and fused them onto black felt. Then I decided add some gold tulle for bling. I free-montion stitched the block and took a look at it: Nice, but nothing to write home about.

I decided to add some scraps of gold metallic floss. To do this, I lay down some misty fuse,  strips of thread and more tulle. I fused this down and added even more machine quilting. Another look: That’s what I want!

I cut the block into a variety of shaps and sizes. This will be used as embellishments on other quilts and for pins. Those that are to be pins are finished up with stitching around the edges, the addition of a pinback, and a little bit mre bling:

Dragonfly Pin (1.5x1.5 inches)

Under lock and key (1.5 x 1.5 inches)

This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge is “round.” It was an interesting challenge and led me to create two different pieces: one light and one dark.

My light piece uses cogs from Maya Road designs to create three flowers. Each flower acts as a round frame for the photo of my sister’s family. The faces were one of the many experiments in image transfer that I have been trying. This used a gel medium to attach a photo to a piece of cloth (printed side down). Once the medium is dry, I used water to rub the paper away from the ink, leaving me with the image.

A Floral Family

My dark piece represents the ways in which my thoughts spin around, moving from love to hate, from despair to hope. Each small collage represents different feelings that spiral from a center that asks “What happened?”

My thoughts spin round and round.

I love to try out new quilt/art techniques using my family as … well … guinea pigs. I’ve tried this applique process before, but saw a simplified version of it on Quilting Arts TV on September 5. I had good photos of my nephew and his moms, so I thought I would give it a shot. I am pleased with the results.  The photo is modified in Photoshop to create the applique layers, which I created in blues and purples. I also included a small photo of the family on a purple bar. All this was blanket-stitched onto a machine-quilted orange fabric. A few additional splashes of purple at the bottom, add some silver for a bit of flash, and there we have it.

Child in Blue