Category: works in process

Art, Art Quilt, Dharma Trading, Fabric Dyeing, Fiber Art, Hand Dyed Fabric, Indispensable Tools, Mixed Media, Pro Chemical & Dye, works in process

I Love What I Do!!!

Guila Greer

hand dye multiOften. to get the look that I’m after for an art piece,  I have to dye my own fabric.  Now, that’s not something that I see an a hardship – although it is a lot of work:  messy work.  Especially now that I have my own studio with a SINK!!  And there was a reason I wanted to leave the concrete floors “as-is”  during the garage conversion.

So last night I tackled the job at hand and set about to dye several lengths of fabric for a couple of upcoming quilts.  The fabrics were all immersed in their respective color baths and I left them to cure overnight.  This morning, after oohing and aahing at the lineup of color on my worktable, I took the fabric/dyebath containers to the sink one by one to do the rinsing.

So far I’ve discovered that when rinsing “Deep Space” (Dharmatrading),  I rinsed out Purple; when rinsing “Emerald Green” (from Pro Chemical & Dye),  I rinsed out Turquoise, and while I swished around the “Gunmetal Gray” (Dharmatrading),  RED water drained away!

Well, I do realize that a lot of these dyes are mixtures – but I’m always delighted when I see the elements right in front of my eyes.

I’m reminded of being 10 years old and playing with my chemistry set.  This was my favorite toy as a kid.  Mostly I loved mixing the chemicals to see what color I could get.

I LOVE what I do!

Art, Art Quilt, Fiber Art, Mixed Media, Quilts, works in process

Work (still) in Progress

Guila Greer

There are lots of reasons we don’t finish our projects right away.  And one of them is that we’re not quite sure how we WANT to complete the piece.

So this has been hanging around for awhile now on my design wall.

tree on aura_edited-1

This started as a plain piece of Lutradur.  I took a photo of a tree on my street and worked with it using Photoshop Elements.  I took out everything that I didn’t want in my finished piece including all the leaves on the tree.  This step also included removing all the color.

In the meantime I painted the Lutradur with acrylic paints.  I used some from Golden paint and some Lumiere in various coppery hues.

Then the moment of truth as I printed my tree onto the Lutradur.

Then lots of fun to thread paint the tree itself.  I used a variegated 40 weight cotton from King Tut – (In the meantime I had layered the piece with cotton batting.

and that’s when I stopped.

The biggest question in my mind is whether or not to add quilting.

So now it’s time to finish and I’ve given myself 2 weeks to do that.  I hope by posting the process to date I’ll have more accountability to do that – to keep it as a priority.

What’s your opinion on adding more quilting to the piece?

Quilts, Traditional Quilts and Quilts for People, works in process

Goals and Gotta-Dos

Guila Greer

One of the shows that I wanted to submit to has a deadline only 4 days from now.  There’s no way I’ll finish the quilting on the piece that I wanted to submit.  Darn.  Time just slipped by.  And I’ve been caught up in doing some very mundane quilting.  As in items that I promised to people and must get done.

However, all that said, I’m looking forward to receiving the first “challenge word” this week from our Haiku-Art group.  It’ll be “ready, set, go” with only a week to create and finish the Haiku and the art piece.

So far as my “mundane” work – actually they are 2 quilts that I’ll enjoy doing.  One is the softy sea for my younger granddaughter and I’ve got all the elements ready now to put together.  It’s been a fun designing process. The other is a lap quilt (a wedding gift) and I just finished cutting out the first round of strips.