Velvet and Brass Mesh

This is a little 5"x7" piece that I did with one of my Yahoo art groups. The idea was to treat a leaf in a new way. Last year I used some oak leaves and printed them onto black pique fabric. I painted the leaves gold then pressed the leaf into the fabric. It looked pretty cool, but I didn't know what to do with the cloth. The fabric sat around in a drawer for a year, so I pulled it out, cut some leaves, then layered them on a background of black velvet (recycled from an 80s ballgown...yes, I did go to some fancy parties way back when) and contrasted that with some sewable, 100% brass mesh fabric. Kind of a tribute to Krystle Carrington and Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan Dexter...

Well, there was a snafu and this pix got unattached from the post. Here is the redheaded version of me.

Do Redheads Have More Fun?

Over the years I have toyed with the idea of becoming a redhead. My hairdresser nixed that idea, and since I respect her opinion, decided to do a virtual makeover. So...I took a photo (snapped by my brother Kendall at a wedding a couple years ago) and made myself kind of redheaded. It looks pretty weird, so I guess my hairdresser was right.

This was done by printing a photo from the computer onto Avery printable cotton, then overpainting it with watersoluble oil pastels, and machine stitching.

Tyvek ATC with Faux Chinese Coin

On my last NYC art shopping spree I found some fake Chinese coins in a bead shop. I wanted to get some tiny coins, but it turned out the tiny ones, about half the size of a penny, are more expensive than the larger coins. Apparently it is more difficult to manufacture the little ones because of the wee details.

I had no idea what to do with them, so I stitched them to a couple of ATCs (artist trading cards, 2.5" x 3/5".) They are a surprise for a couple arty friends who have not yet experienced the joy of ATCs.

The ATCs are made of leftover pieces of distressed tyvek that I used for my last batch of art-o-mat blocks.

Frostbitten Flower

This is my November journal quilt. I have been doing 8" x 8" mini quilts for the past couple of years, ever since I first discovered the art quilting world. I try out new techniques or document what is going on in my life. I chose the size because I was sick of working rectangularly, and it also fits nicely in my scanner.

Earlier in the fall I saw a beautiful frostbitten flower on Cate Prato's blog. She is an editor at Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors, and also the author of Mixed Media Self Portraits (the new book that I was fortunate enough to be asked to contribute to.) I admired it and Cate surprised me by sending me the jpeg.

This was printed on the cheap transfer sheets that you use to iron designs on to t-shirts. I hand and machine quilted it ... after playing with it in photoshop ... applying a filter and punching up the contrast.

Tyvek: Not Just for Mailing

My second batch of tyvek blocks for Art-O-Mat is ready to ship. Who would think that those practically indestructable tyvek FedEx and USPS envelopes could be recycled into art? I love making these little blocks, as well as tyvek beads and art quilts with them.

I added coffee-dyed waxed masa (rice paper that used to be used by textile designers...which they don't seem to manufacture any more) to simulate leather, and dimensional metallic fabric paint dotted on to simulate metal studs.

If you want to know more 'how-to's, go to quiltingartsllc.com and put my name in the search box and you will get step by step instructions. Or, you can go to the joggles.com tutorial on tyvek, which is very good.

These photos are the box of 50 ready to ship and an individual block from my last batch.

Mini Quilt Art-O-Mat Blocks: Ready to Ship!

I just finished 50 mini quilts that are mounted on tiny wooden blocks for Art-O-Mat, also known as Artists in Cellophane. I did 50 Mystery Women and 50 Tyvek Abstraction and they are just about sold out. It is such a great program: they take vintage cigarette machines (cool, right?) and retool them to dispense affordable art.

So, 50 of my Mystery Women are enroute to Winston Salem NC to Art-O-Mat headquarters. I am just finishing up 50 more of the tyvek blocks, and trying out a few new designs...possibly some abstract self portraits.

Cha-ching!

Wow. I just checked the Alzheimer's Quilt Initiative, and I sold 2 more postcards. "Kids of Color" and "Golden Rainbow Spiral." I'll have to get busy and make some more postcards! Four out of five have been sold. I just boxed up 50 Mystery Women blocks for Art O Mat since they are nearly sold out of my first batch. And I am waiting anxiously to see what happens with my SAQA 12"x12" quilt of Broken Chakra Girl. Their auction started yesterday. My piece didn't sell yet, but one of my art friends, Sherryl, sold hers the first day...a gorgeous ginko. Mazel tov, Sherryl!

Don't Throw Away the Scraps

Similar to collage, and maybe a little like making handmade paper is the technique of making 'scrappy' fabric. I pile leftover fibers on clear, water-soluble stabilizer, making a 'sandwich' of it all with a layer of stabilizer on top. I then stitch it all over, covering every half inch with either a zig zag or another decorative, strong stitch. It can be used for all kinds of quilty/crafty projects. My favorite thing is to use it cover blank journals, and then I use some fiber with my handmade tyvek beads for a page marker. And with the leftover scrappy I played around and made some medallions, backing them with timetex and edging with seed beeds.

Hippie Chic Bag

Today was like a combination of Christmas and my birthday. I got a surprise package in the mail today from my friend Kate, in Texas. She is, in addition to a being quilter, artist and doll-maker, a knitter. Well, I don't know a knit from a purl, so I admire her skill and creativity. She made me what she calls a "hippie-chic" bag. She knitted it (without a pattern, just listening to her inner artist) then felted it. As of today, it is absolutely my most treasured possession. Thanks Kate!

PinkPupJQ

I loved the pink pup photo so much I turned it into my journal quilt for October. I printed the photo on Coquille watercolor paper, sprayed it with fixative and overpainted it with water-soluble oil pastels. I sprayed that, and stitched it to batting and backing, and framed it with an old pink Javanese batik I bought in SoHo years ago (when I was both single and childless...way long ago!)

Shattered

What if the world were only black and white? That was the question presented by Fiberartsconnsocal aka Fiber Arts Connection of Southern California to the art quilt world. The result of pondering that question and trying to work in only black and white is here: my quilt entitled 'Shattered'. The name came to me as I was shuffling 8.8" x 11" sections of the design, trying to decide whether to put it back together the way it was on the computer or shuffle the pieces around, and whether to connect them with wire, beads, wool, buttons or chain link. The old Rolling Stones song "Shattered" ran through my head, and it seemed an apt title.

I started with an oil painting, a self portrait that I did of myself a few years ago, scanned it into the computer, and played around with it in QuarkXPress, adding other designs of mine and drawing over an eye and mouth with the program. Next I converted the color piece to b/w in photoshop. I then blew up the piece by about 400% in Quark and printed (from the computer) each section on some cotton that I had ironed to freezer paper.

It will be part of fiberartconnsocal's black and white show, and be on tour for the next two years.

Turkeys?

Lately there has been a roving band of birds hanging out in my neighborhood. Where they came from is a mystery, but they seem to wander out from the woods and on to the lawns of the neighbors, then across the road to the other wooded area. We live right at the end of a greenbelt, so there are often unusual animals around. I think these are wild turkeys...can anyone identify them? I snapped this shot on my neighbor's front lawn.

Pink Pup

Today I had a big chunk of free time, so I thought I would seize the day and do some batiks. I gathered up my supplies, melted the wax, painted wax on white fabric, and prepared some dye baths. I set them out on the sunny deck and yard and moved the chairs away to prevent nosey dogs from snooping around.

Then the phone rang, and I chatted a while with my college-student daughter. After I hung up, a living candy cane whizzed by me. Needless to say, some little Maltese named Coco was popped in the bath before the dye could set.

Eight Out of Nine Isn't So Bad

Now that I have finally gotten my copy of Mixed Media Self Portraits, by Cate Prato, I see that they used 8 out of my 9 in the self portrait series. Soooo...I am posting my Frida tribute portrait here. I prefer to think that they didn't use this 9th portrait because somebody else did a Frida tribute, rather than thinking it wasn't so good. Well, I love it. That is my face, circa 1977, overpainted with watercolor, colored pencils and markers. I have always loved sock monkeys, so a little printed fabric monkey slipped into the piece, and I added my own drawings and stamps of flowers.

Backflips with a Half-twist in my Happy Dancing

No, I am not actually doing backflips. But I SOOOO want to. And if the old rotator cuff wasn't so weak and wobbly, I would, even with my half-century self. Today I got my shipment of MIXED MEDIA SELF PORTRAITS and I am celebrating both the book's beauty and creativity and my own contribution to it: 3500 words and 9 pieces of art. I can't post the pieces here though, it's forbidden by contract with the publisher. But you can get a discounted copy on Amazon, and they even let you take a sneak peek. I have a piece on the back page and the inside cover, oh, and one on the index page...look for the piece with the half white face and rainbow eyes, and the other one with a fuzzy, dreamlike face with net and a turban. And even if I didn't have work in the book, I would still highly recommend it. It is full of creative, innovative work and lots of 'how-to's.

YMCA

Inspired by the mid-20th century modern design of my local YMCA, I started this little geometric color play piece. It is only pinned together at the moment. I am also working on a bigger version of this theme. The Y has a kind of Scandanavian simplicity, with cool angles and room dividing panels made of circles cut into wood that made me feel like going retro-modern. I used commercial cotton calicos and also some of my own hand dyed or hand batiked fabrics. Of course, me being me, I couldn't do something really precise; I like the off-center and lopsided squares...I think it makes it more interesting and appealing in a child-like way.

OMG: October already?

October 1? Wasn't it just 4th of July? Well, I have been busy, but don't have any photos ready right now. I've been working on the Rock and Roll Challenge, some stuff for FAT (fiber art traders), mulling over the Sacred Threads project, and mostly puttering around, leaving a trail of threads and fabric scraps wherever I go. I did an interesting self portrait yesterday...gave myself red hair. I always wondered how I would look as a redhead; my hairdresser said 'don't go there' and after I did the painting (on fabric) I knew she was right. Of course it didn't help that I painted half my face orange and the other half yellow, but still, the red hair is a big fashion 'don't'.

Scrappy Happy

One of my favorite things to do with leftover scraps of fabric, thread and yarn is to make 'scrappy' fabric. I read about it in an Embellishments newsletter and was hooked. Basically you gather up a bunch of pretty fabric and thread scraps, plop them down artfully between two layers of clear, water-soluble stabilizer, and stitch all over. You have to cover it well with stitches: I use a variety of designs and colors. Then you wash out the stabilizer in cold water and !viola! you have your own handmade fabric. I use it to cover journals mostly, and add a place-marker made from braided yarn or a ribbon strip with some handmade tyvek beads for adornment. This is a photo of today's scrappy as it was drying in the sun on my deck.

Learning Curve

Today, instead of doing what I usually do...painting or dyeing or collage or something else wildly colorful, messy and expressive, I made myself sit down at the sewing machine and learn a few technical things. I sat with some thread, scraps of fabric and the machine manual and taught myself, finally, how to: use the buttonhole maker, sew on a button with the machine and last but not least: free motion quilt. It was all pretty successful, and I made a little journal quilt of it. But sadly, it was really abusive to my wrist and forearm (probably the free motion quilting) and so I am all wrapped up in ice, mulling over the plusses and minuses of prescription painkillers. And just when I thought my torn rotator cuff was feeling a lot better...

Rock and Roll Challenge

Well, by happy accident I stumbled on a posting on the quiltingartsllc (Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors Magazines) editor's blog that is right up my alley. They are having a Rock and Roll challenge, 8.5x11. Of course, which of my 100 favorite songs will I choose? Some are great, but hard to illustrate. Some can be illustrated, but are they the right song?

In honor of the event I am posting a journal quilt I did last February. I took some of my favorite albums (excuse me...CDs...you can see how old I am by referring to music storage devices as albums) and scanned them, then arranged them in a 9 patch and surrounded them with some favorite lyrics. That Johnny Rzeznik (Mr. Goo Goo Doll himself) is pretty clever, and if i were 25 years younger, I'd have his poster on my ceiling.

Of course, the rules prohibit using scanned pictures of the album cover art (oops, CD cover art) and using the lyrics, so I can't do anything like this.

Pantihose and the Pope

This might look like a typical page from someone's photo scrapbook, but look closer. It is about an incident that occurred back in the 1980s. My two roommates and I were robbed; tied up and held at gunpoint for hours in our apartment in New York. Fortunately none of us were hurt physically, although one still has a scar on her leg from struggling unsuccessfully to get untied.

The poem tells the story of the robbery. Poetry may not be my main talent, but it was a good way to express what happened. I used an old piece of pantihose to edge the piece because the robbers tied and gagged us with my pantihose. I chose a brown background because we were face down in a brown shag rug (came with the apartment...definitely not my taste.) It was the same night that the Pope was shot, and it was really, really weird to be tied up on the floor while the robbers made themselves comfy and watched the news on TV until they felt that the 'coast was clear.'

The intruders were trying to rob what they thought was a drug dealer's apartment. They were either not too bright or misinformed, since my roommates were college students at FIT and I was a young, struggling career girl. Once they realized we really had nothing of value, they loosened my restraints, let themselves out the door, and I was able to get free and untie the other two.

This 8"x8" journal quilt was included, along with my 8"x8" journal quilt Broken Chakra Girl, in the book 1000 Artist Journal Pages that was published this past spring. (available on Amazon if anybody is interested...it is a really good book, and not just because the author chose to include my work.)

Zen Flower

This is a little piece I did a while back, oil and oil pastel on primed matboard. It reminds me of a lotus and there is something really peaceful and healing about the little flower. Like many of my pieces, it just emerged from my head. I didn't look at a flower and draw it, I just scribbled with craypas and it emerged.

Orange Proportion

In one of my art groups we have a monthly exercise where we take an art or design principle and come up with a little quilted piece utilizing that theme. The September theme was proportion, which was harder than it sounded. Most of my work is about pattern and surface design as well as color and texture, and I don't think consciously about proportion.

I took an old sketch from a figure drawing class (that I did over 30 years ago and saved, thinking 'someday I might need this'). I reduced the figure to fit a 5"x7" space, then printed it out of the computer onto cotton that had been ironed to freezer paper. I added an orangeish background with water-soluble oil pastels and quilted it by machine with red-orange thread.

One of the group members commented that it reminded her of hot flashes...an idea that was probably in my subconscious mind. The figure had interesting proportions because I did it from the ground looking up, so the arms and head seem small and out of proportion to the body, but it did make it more interesting to have the unusual angle. I chose the orange background to contrast with the turquoise crayon/pencil that I used to do the original sketch.

End of Summer

Labor Day has come and gone. Today I actually found a parking spot in town...it seems all the tourists have gone home. In honor of the end of summer, I am posting a few celebratory pieces. Not that I don't like summer--I do--but I also love fall. The rose was done from a photo I took of some climbing roses in my yard. I zoomed in on a section with a bud that the aphids had gotten a few bites out of, printed the photo on cotton (ironed to freezer paper for stability) and overpainted it with watersoluble oil pastels. The second is a photo that I took of my favorite local beach, Havens Beach, a few winters ago when it was deserted and covered with ice chunks. The bay froze, then the tide came in and out, leaving big, thick ice blocks. I printed the photo on coquille watecolor paper and overpainted with watersoluble oil pastels to make it look like a summer sunset scene.

Boo Hoo and Wah Hoo Too

Well, today I got a little bad news and a little good news. I have been bumped from the fall issue of Studios Magazine; seems they had too much stuff and are saving my studio story for spring. But, hey, spring works just fine for me.

The good news is that Cate Prato just got her advance copy of her book Mixed Media Self-portraits, and I have 10 pages right up front! How cool is that? Little ole me, Linnie from Clinton, 10 pages in an art book. Wouldn't Mom and Dad be proud? To quote Fred Flintstone, "Yabba dabba do!"

Dinner at Our House

This is a small piece; one of the first postcards I made when I started art quilting. I used a poem I had written about a dysfunctional family dinner, and put some of my own plate designs on it and mixed in newsprint. I have been toying with the idea of making a big quilt of this concept.

Morgan

This is a little quilted piece I did from a photo of my great niece, Morgan. She was all dressed up in fancy, girly clothing and the photo was done with sepia tones to make it look antique. I added velvet trim, little rosebuds and fresh-water pearls to enhance it. Isn't she a charmer?

Country French and India

Last year my artquilting group, Threads of Sanity, did a traveling book project. We each chose a theme and did a page for each other over the course of about 9 months. My theme was world folk art, and for my own page I did what is dear to me, Country French. I had always noticed the similarity between the expensive Pierre Deux type expensive fabric and the inexpensive, hippie-ish made in India cottons. With a little research, I discovered that travelers brought the Indian designs back to France many centuries ago, and thus the mystery in my mind was solved. I also discovered that the paisley design originated in the far East and printers in Paisley, Scotland became known for their fine printing of the design, and thus it was named after that town. I took a country French scarf design from a textile book, scanned it, flipped and repeated it, then printed it out of my computer on cotton. I quilted it and added a little elephant as a tribute to India, where I must have been in the fabric business in another life.

Rotary Cutter...Rotator Cuff

Hmmm....rotary cutter/rotator cuff...sounds almost the same. Except that one of them wrecked the other. That would be the evil but fascinating rotary cutter ruining my rotator cuff. (It is basically a razorblade on a pizza wheel.) With my frugal self, I purchased the tiny rotary cutter when I started art quilting, and in my creative frenzy, didn't realize that the little cutter had gotten dull and was too small to be cutting through heavy fabric, layers of paint, thick pellon, peltex and metal mesh. My arm and wrist would get a little sore as I worked, but not enough to slow me down. But then the pain got really bad and I had to eat left handed and could hardly drive the car. After a joyful (not!) and painless (not!) MRI in early February that revealed two of the four pieces of the rotator cuff were torn, I started physical therapy. Fortunately I am getting slowly better and have avoided surgery. But it is so hard to want to create art when your arm and hand don't want to cooperate.

I can't blame it all on the rotary cutter of course. Maybe the furious, hour-long scribbling on pellon with crayons during a panic attack had something to do with it. Maybe the years of competitive sports finally took their toll. I guess this is nature's way of slowing me down and so that I work on only the projects that are really important. Maybe it is forcing me to breathe and meditate and think about where the anxiety is coming from rather than just scribbling it out. The good news is that I have gotten pretty skilled with the left hand; I can steer the old computer mouse from the left and even do layout design left-handed now. Not quite ambidextrous, but working toward it!

First Art Self-portrait Art Quilt

Right after I picked up my first issue of Quilting Arts, I knew I had found my place and my people in the art world. The very first art quit I made was this one. I took a self-portrait that I had designed on the computer and printed it on the gooey, cheap t-shirt transfer sheets. It was a little stiff and gummy, but the colors reproduction was excellent. I hand quilted the entire thing and embellished with beads. It was used, along with some other pieces, to illustrate my piece entitled "Painting out the Panic" that appeared in the April/May 2007 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine.

Reiki Energy Card

This is a small piece that I did that has a reiki influence. I used the same gold medallion as on the reiki peace quilt, but did it in subtle earth tones and added gold spirals of energy. I added some earth-toned tyvek beads on the bottom, and intentionally left the string hanging off them. It is trimmed with a green hand-dyed cotton that was sent to me from a quilt addict in Norway, Kjersti.

Reiki Peace Quilt

This is pretty much the first art quilt I made. It was for the journal quilting project and was shown in Houston last fall. I experimented with new techniques and materials and was pretty happy with the way it came out. This is the artist statement that went with it:

A Page from My Book:
Journal Quilts 2007— Journal Quilt Project


Linda Edkins Wyatt
Sag Harbor, NY
USA


Reiki Peace Quilt

Creative Quilting techniques used: Tyvek painted with Lumiere and heat distressed (p. 175); stitching on metal (p. 223); hand-beaded embellishment (p. 245)

Late one February night, I couldn’t sleep, and was reading my monthly on-line newsletter from reiki.org. I read about William Lee Rand’s travels to the magnetic North Pole, where he placed the first World Peace Crystal Grid. He later traveled to the South Pole and to Jerusalem, placing grids constructed of copper, gold and crystals in the hope of magnifying prayer energy to facilitate world peace. They are designed in the shape of the heart chakra, and each petal has a symbol of one of the 12 major world religions. The inscription on the plaque says: “May the followers of all religions and spiritual paths work together to create peace among all people on earth.” Rand’s vision of world peace and religious harmony inspired my quilt.

In addition to tyvek, glass beads, sequins and 100% brass woven fabric, I used coffee-dyed and distressed waxed rice paper, Angelina fibers, polyester fabrics, hand quilting and machine quilting. I edged the quilt with coffee-dyed cotton. The hand-quilting is done in a geometric pattern to represent Earth’s magnetic fields. The three medallions are actual photos of the North Pole Grid, printed on cotton and over-painted with gold acrylic. The 12 sequins on each tip represent the 12 major world religions, and the four spirals represent elements—air, water, fire and earth. The distressed tyvek square represents our endangered planet Earth. I chose deep purple for the bottom background because it is the color used on the reiki meditation symbol, the Antahkarana, and light aqua for the top background to represent the sky.

Over the past months I experimented with many new materials. I like the contrast of silky fabric with metal and paper, the organic quality of hand-dying cotton and paper versus the man-made Angelina fibers. I used hand quilting on the background since the fabric was so silky and slippery. I have been sewing and painting for years, but I only began combining the two in September 2006 with quilted postcards, and first began journal quilting in January 2007. This quilt represents a major accomplishment for me, and is my first large piece. I feel I have finally found my artistic niche and voice as a mixed-media art quilter.

Sold!

Here are a couple of postcards I sent to the Alzheimer's Quilt Initiative last fall. Lo and behold, I noticed today that they had sold. Now of course, that gets me wondering...who the heck bought them? and do I know them? Well, they are two of my favorite little pieces.

India-inspired Tyvek Earrings

I made these earrings on the 4th of July during a 'mom & me' jewelry making session. It was too overcast to go to the beach, so we sat on the deck and beaded while Hugh (my husband) and Coco (the wee lad disguised as a dog) attended to preparing a barbecue. They have my own tyvek beads in the center, and inexpensive glass beads from the local 5 & 10. I think they are my new favorite.

Little Universe Between Our Backs

Well, this is not exactly an art post, but I just had to blog about what a great concert I went to Sunday night. As a birthday treat, I took my daughter, who will soon turn 20 (!! does that make me OLD?) to see KT Tunstall. We had 3rd row center seats and of course she was fabulous and intense and sang all her hits. Such a tiny wisp of a woman with a powerhouse voice and presence. She had on a cool black and white graphic outfit, kind of black and white triangles fanning out from a center point and cool 80s UK rocker boots. She changed her guitar for every song; our favorites were the glittery silver one and a shiny red oddly shaped one. Clearly I know almost nothing about music or I would know the names of the styles and brands of guitar...but maybe they were custom made. So, I am inspired to do a quilt or piece of art illustrating the Little Universe between our backs.

Self-portrait card series

One of my favorite things to do is make self-portraits. When I moved from NYC to the end of Long Island ten years ago, one of the first arty things I did in my new office/studio was to try and teach myself to oil paint. I did a self-portrait, which I then scanned into the computer and played around with in my layout design program, QuarkXPress. The design possibilities are endless in Quark, and you can step and repeat designs, make them bigger or smaller and add elements from other designs. This is one of my favorite in a series of self-portraits that I did. Naturally it has my favorite paint color, yellow. It is a mix of several of my textile designs, plus the oil portrait.

Egyptian Dreamer

This was my entry for Quilting Art's Doorway Challenge. We had a choice of several black and white doorway frames to base a quilt on. I decided to stick my face in the middle, use the doorway rocks as hair, and the windows for sunglasses. It came out kind of Klimt-like and a little Eqyptian looking. Best of all, it was featured in Quilting Arts Magazine's Doorway Challenge issue last fall.

Go Green

I had such a good time experimenting with recycled materials for Quilting Arts Magazine's Go Green challenge. I went crazy grabbing rags from the cleaning bin and dying and splattering them, and saved all kinds of crazy things that were sewable. I sent in some pix to QA and they liked them so much that they used it in their on-line Embellishments newsletter. Here is a small assortment of the little pieces I did and also the 5" piece I did for the challenge. I used crazy things like beet juice, dribbled raspberries over muslin, painted coffee sleeves gold and sewed them on, wove vegetable netting with yarn and of course included my favorite thing: tyvek beads made from recycled fedex and usps envelopes (I paint the insides, cut them into long strips, roll over a toothpick, glue the tip and give it a quick blast with the heat gun.)

Studios Magazine

Guess who is going to be in the next issue of STUDIOS magazine? That would be me. I had to take a bunch of shots of my little basement studio...but first I had to move all the junk out of the corners and pretty it up. And of course I couldn't manage a picture of myself in the studio, so Amanda (my daughter [who will very soon no longer be a teenager] for those of you who don't know all the Wyatt household members) took the picture of me. I took the rest of the shots. Hope they aren't too blurry!

Well, I will probably just be one of many artists featured and not take up more than a page, but I am very honored to be included. Of course I nearly passed out when I got an e-mail from the editor asking me to be in it. And she wondered if I had already been featured in some other publication, which would disqualify me. Me, featured elsewhere? I am just a blip on the art world's radar screen at the moment. Well, maybe the article will propel me into the big league and suddenly my work will be worth a small fortune and I can buy that cottage on the ocean that I always wanted. The one with the gigantic studio where I spend all day in a creative frenzy and see fabulous sunsets each night as I sip my Cosmopolian on the veranda.

Broken Chakra Girl for SAQA

This is my 12"x12" piece for the Studio Artist Quilt Association fundraiser auction. It is a variation on the journal quilt, Broken Chakra Girl that was used is Sandra Sider's article in the British feminist publication n.paradoxa and was also featured in the book 1000 Artist Journal Quilts.

Mixed Media Self Portrait Book

This is the cover of the book by Cate Prato that will be coming out this fall. I have 9 self portraits and about 2500 words in it. I am not allowed to post the artwork yet and spoil the surprise.

Mystery Woman of the Flowers ATCs

I just finished these little ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). They are 2.5"x3.5". It is an original design I did with watercolor and colored pencil on Coquille paper. I scanned it and then sized it to an ATC and printed it on Avery cotton. I freehand quilted it by machine and added a zigzag edge. Beads and sequins were added and the edging embellished with gold dimensional fabric paint.

Negative Space

This 5"x7" piece explores negative space, and also texture. I used cut pieces of canvas that I found tucked into a closet and used it with a sleeve of an old black velvet dress from 1985...like the kind they wore on Dynasty.

Coffee Filters Aren't Just for Drinking

My friend Sonja does incredible painting and quilting on all kinds of things you would never think of. So she sent me some of her coffee filters, all the way from Hawaii. Turns out they were exactly like the filters they sell on Long Island, so it is just her magical way with them, the filters weren't extra special after all. But I played around with them and made these cards, including some of my home-made batiks, hand carved stamps and fancier than usual stitch work.

Postcard Madness

I started out in the whole fiber arts world by doing quilted postcards in an art2mail exchange. This addiction led to a whole bunch of yahoo artquilting groups, an article in Cloth Paper Scissors, and some other publishing excitement. These are some of my latest cards, with layers of torn cotton calicos and heat distressed lutradur and/or angelina fiber on top.

Elizabethan Collar on Coconut Jenkins Wyatt

Poor Coco had a grooming accident...had to get 5 stitches in his little tummy and wear this lovely collar for 10 days. All healed now and back to his old self.

tyvek

tyvek

I love tyvek, which I get mainly from recycling shipping envelopes and painting inside-out. I use it for fiber-art and beads. The necklace was featured on Cloth Paper Scissors Embellishments Newsletter. I painted tyvek, cut long triangles, rolled them into beads and lightly heated them.

I love doing self portraits. I made this piece by connecting some 4" x 6" postcards with beads and wire. I over-painted photos from kindergarten through last year and alternated them with abstract versions of myself. I used mostly oil pastels over photos printed on Avery cotton. And the exciting news is that I am going to have a series of nine self-portraits in a new book called "Mixed-media Selfportraits" by Cate Prato, which is due out in July.