This cute little face was so dirty, but still fun.

I had to laugh when one of my friends said she noticed that everyone else was watching the glass blower and my camera was pointed away from her at the wall.  There were cute little items made of glass here and there on the walls and most had been there for years and were dusty.  They made me smile.

dangling in the blowing studio

These little guys were on a utility box in the glass blowing studio

Another piece on the utility boxes in the blowing studio

I also enjoyed the age of the building,

an open window in the oldest part of the factory which made scissors. I loved the age of the building and the rusty view.

the equipment that had been in use for decades,

cullet barrels that hold the scraps that are saved and can be remelted and reused.  These are some barrels who have gotten many decades of use.

cullet in a barrel

bins for glass recipe ingredients

and tools.

texture rollers for the sheet glass equipment

I wondered at times which looked better: black and white or color (of which they didn’t have much anyway).

Color pic of carts to move around glass recipe ingredients.

Black and white pic

I hope if you are ever in the Kokomo area (central Indiana), you will make have time to get there and take the tour.

I have a nice camera that I upgraded to last Christmas, so I was anxious to see how I could do with it.  I tried lots of different settings and enjoyed seeing the variety of shots the camera got depending on the settings.  From huge haloing, to red, to fairly detailed when there was hardly anything I could see with the naked eye.

These three are the same photogaph.   The first (above) is pretty true to what I could see.  The second was adjusted for color.   The third was adjusted levels.  I thought it was interesting that it went to red white and blue.  I have decided to call it USA Supermoon Eclipse.

I think the next one is in 2018, so I’ll hope for better weather then.

A part of Mary Ann’s studio.  So well organized!

Mary Ann is full of energy and had project after project in progress and even more set up for an open house next weekend.  She does a wonderful and professional job of marketing and presenting her works!  Brava Mary Ann!  She also paints and her paintings are beautiful as well.

Paintings and quilts on display

I enjoyed seeing how she uses interesting techniques to incorporate her photos into the quilt instead of just having a rectangular photo.  I struggle with ways to help integrating photos successfully and artfully into my pieces.  Some mental notes were definitely taken while there!

The buildings are all photographs in this quilt.

I enjoyed the company of my artist friend, Judy for the drive up north and back home.  She showed some mixed media pieces to us during show and tell.

                  Judy showing and telling

Show and Tell is always wonderful, but I enjoyed that we all took our time to talk somewhat in depth about our processes used to help introduce ourselves to one another.  This was a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Assoc) event and it was nice to meet some more Indiana artists.  I enjoyed bringing a piece that took some inspiration from our last SAQA member studio tour to Peggy Brown’s studio in southern Indiana.  It was in progress but I felt that since it related to the last tour I wanted to talk about that one.  Thanks Peggy!  I also brought along the Quilting Arts issue and the little challenge piece Pisa Passage since last time I was only able to say the article was coming soon but had the quilts along.

Mary showing a quilt using airbrushing.  I just adored all of the art that Mary Ann and her husband have collected and display throughout the house!

Thank you, Mary Ann!  I had a wonderful time!

Here is the label printed in Quilting Arts and the photo of the Arno River and bridge is on the front of the quilt.

There are always loads of technical questions when it comes to printing on fabric!  Some of the questions being things like what the differences are between the types of setting chemicals and pretreated, prepared sheets, which leads to ink types and printer preferences.   Today I found a wonderful blog post on a fellow quilt artist’s blog about her experiences, old samples, preferences and technical info.  I think she did a fabulous job giving concise information and lots of it!  So I will refer you here to Gloria Hansen’s post.

I even learned a couple of things due to her working many years back on developing ways to make printer inks waterfast and lightfast before Bubble Jet Set was on the market.  I also began printing on fabric before Bubble Jet Set, but had little dye experience and was not dyeing my own fabrics then.  I used Retayne, and would probably still be doing so if Epson hadn’t developed wonderful pigmented inks which don’t need chemical setting and brought them into the home printers.

I have a love/hate relationship with my Epson R1800, but still plan to buy another Epson.  I have my eye on a newer model that I hope to get soon which will hopefully do something I have been wanting mine to be able to do, but is very limited in that capability.  It is a medium format (13″ wide) pigment based inkjet.  I have always said it needs a special button that says “Print anyway, Damn It!”  The printer wants paper to be perfectly aligned and will adjust the paper if it detects it is not perfectly aligned.  Unfortunately fabric does not have a perfect edge, hence it more often rejects my fabric than to accept it.  It has unfortunately taken too many hours to get it to print what should have taken less than an hour.  It prints beautifully and makes me so happy when it prints in an accepting manner!

Here is another label.  This one is a photo I took in Venice of gondole and was the photo used to make an original painted collage that was then printed on fabric and again painted.

I will have to do another post on how I print my labels in the future.

Looking at the Venetian photo above, I must end with,

Ciao, tutti!

I have been working on surface design with rust for a few years, but have stepped up my interest over the last year.  I was wanting to come up with ways to mimic specific patterns and hit a road block.  I took photos of rusty grain bins, signage, and other grange equipment and wanted some companion fabrics. 

So, I made thermofax screens from the photos.

I used iron in print paste and thermofax screens and I was off getting great companion fabrics! 

I am working with resists and iron powder now and also getting wonderful results.  I am also working on a huge piece of fabric using our fire pit cover to rust since it has wonderful patterning.  More on this piece later.  As the rusting is just the first layer of surface design.

Dance of Dusk

Photo of tree printed on copper

The first is my first quilt mixing leather, weaving and quilting, not to mention metal.  The quilt basically has a giant hole in it where the woven leather sun is.  The top is a rod pocket to hang from a bamboo rod.

Dance of Dusk was made to evoke a sunset and fence line at dusk as the birds are scurrying to finish up the day with one last bite, flight or snuggle before heading back to the nest as the sun goes down.  What at first seems to be a quiet calm reveals that there are pockets of quiet motion of the birds.

Photos printed on leather

Dreaming of Dusk

Dreaming of Dusk

Dreaming of Dusk detail

This piece was fun to try out some more techniques like bobbin work and using some fabrics with surface designs.  I also embellished with some silk fibers and a carrier rod.  This quilt also used my original photos on fabric and leather and evokes the same business of dusk in the life of birds.

There is an artists’ reception this Friday March 2,  6-10 pm. and will hang through March 30th.

Harrison Center for the Arts

1505 N. Delaware St

Indianapolis, In