conversation at the art store

I had some time to kill before picking Dave up from work yesterday so I popped in to Spokane Art Supply and picked up 2 tubes of oil paint and a small tin of Prismacolor pencils. And then I had a conversation with the art store cashier guy that put a smile on my face:

Art Store Guy (ASG): So...do you work in oils or in colored pencil?
Me: Oh, neither, I work in fabric.
ASG: Fabric, really? So what are the oils for?
Me: Paper plate lithography...you know, with lazer copies? It's a great way to put text and images on fabric.
ASG: Really? It works on fabric?
Me: Yeah. And the Prismacolor pencils are great for shading, they blend so well. They work on fabric too.
ASG: Really? On fabric? So do you do a small picture on fabric and use it as a mock-up?
Me: Oh no, I just do surface design to create my own fabrics and then I make art quilts with them.
ASG: Oh.
Me: Yeah, I have a piece at the Kress right now, although that piece is all commercial fabrics, not surface design...
ASG: Oh. Really? Wow!
Me: (as he hands me my bag of stuff) Yeah, anyway, thanks!
ASG: Thank you, have a nice day...

Hee hee. Still giggling about that one...

In other news, I've been sick sick sick and not much is getting done around here. I'm starting to feel better, it's like emerging from a fog. I finally started stitching again this last weekend, just finishing up some postcards I started ages ago. Anything to break up the inertia of not sewing.

Shibori class

Way back at the beginning of August, right at the beginning of this stretch of being way too busy, I took a Shibori class from Debra Lamm. Here's a shot of some of our pieces drying on the line outside Debra's garage.



Here's a pole-wrapped piece, dumped in fuschia dye:



This one is a stitch-resist:



Here's one that was clamped with a circle template. Debra and her husband are developing a line of templates to sell for this type of dyeing. I'll post a link once they get their website up and running. I'm really intrigued by the possibilities of this technique.



Near the end of the day Debra said "Ok, feel free to do a couple more pieces in whatever technique you like." It's always the stuff I do on the spur of the moment without much of a plan that I end up liking the best. I did a bit of pleating on this black piece, then clamped it with my plastic clothespins and threw it in the discharge bucket. I love the result:



Overall, I liked the clamping techniques best. I can see a lot of possibilities for combining surface design with hand embroidery with these pieces. When I get completely healthy and have a minute to sew again.

Imagination Unleashed opening

We had a really great opening for Imagination Unleashed - Art Quilts from the Inland Empire at the Kress Gallery on Friday evening. The downtown Spokane galleries have their openings on the first Friday of the month and there's usually a big preview in the Spokesman Review the Thursday before. Our show was the featured show for the First Friday preview in the newspaper! Tons of people came through, I don't know how many, but the room was always comfortably full. The gallery director told our group it was the most people they had ever had for an opening!

I was tired and excited and failed to take pictures of all the lovely people, but here are a couple of pictures of some of the quilts.

Here's me with my quilt, Summer, looking like I have a sinus infection. Yep, all that fun and running around in August finally took its toll on me:



Here is Road to the Zyder Zee by Lorraine Gilliland:



This is Interference #2, a wonderfully surface designed piece by Debra Lamm. Debra lives just outside Cheney and was the instructor for the shibori class I took back at the beginning of August. That I still need to post pictures from. Debra is taking a City and Guilds course and I'm hoping to get to see more of her surface design work soon.



This is Marble Manifesto by Kristine Calney. Because I'm still thinking a lot about circles.



Sunday, on the ride home from yet another trip to Seattle, in somewhat of a delirious haze from the sinus infection, I came up with two new quilt ideas. Neither one features circles, but they both feature the type of scrappy pieced strips background I did in the Summer quilt. Hmmm.