Book - Nudes in a Plain Brown Wrapper

I started making pages for this book nearly a year ago. I stopped for several months while I worked on some other projects. I was stymied by how I would construct the book so I decided it would be the project I would take to Ohio to get some help figuring it out with my sister. After finishing all the pages of nudes, I decided to sew all the pages to a large piece of heavy pellon and fold it into eight pages. Before sewing onto the pellon, I painted it with various mottled colors of acrylic paints. The pages were made using various multi-media techniques - computer graphics, transparencies, collage, transfers, stamping, etc. Most pages were a mixture of paper or tyvek and fabric or lutradur. The cover was fabric-covered book boards. The pellon pages were sewn onto the covers' end-page fabric which was then glued on.

Terri's Echo Quilt

This is a small (17x17) wallhanging I made for my friend Terri. I used five pictures that I had taken near our cabin at Echo Lake. I printed them onto fabric and pieced them with other fabric scraps that I already had.

Diane's Birthday Purse

I made my friend Diane a purse for her birthday out of the sunflower fabric that I bought while we were shopping together. I didn't have plans for the fabric so after she admired it, I decided that I would make something for her. I added other fabrics from my extensive collection of scraps. The purse is a simple rectangular lined bag, but it does have some good pockets, including the cell phone pocket you can see in the picture. (The brown rectangle with a circle on it.) I think I like the piecing I did on the other side even better, but the pictures of that side are too blurry.

Drum set for Bruce

I made this drum collage for Bruce's birthday. (Bruce is the mover and shaker of my husband's band - Odd Man Out.) Inspired to try making "paper fabric" (a technique where layers of paper are glued to a fabric substrate), I used that for the background. It wasn't entirely successful; I believe I may have used too much water mixed with the glue and the fabric really puckered on the back. Then I sewed the fabric drum set on and stitched the supports. On the back, I photoshopped a message onto cardstock and attached it by zigzagging around the edge.

Sharon's Birthday Food Book

For Sharon's birthday, I made her a fabric book of food quotes. It's not really quite a book since it's only four pages, but I made the binding large enough that either she or I could insert another signature of pages if we wanted to. The first page is a collage of magazine images mounted onto Tyvek that had been painted with acrylics. I then sewed that onto fabric. The second page is a magazine image that was transferred onto Tyvek with acrylic paints and then sewn onto fabric. The third image is a collage of red and blue/green magazine pieces in the background. Superimposed on top is a transparency sewn onto the paper and then the whole thing is sewn onto fabric. The fourth image is a stained glass window that I made on Photoshop with two stamps. I then printed the image onto a transparency and colored the back side with ink. I sewed it onto the paper background and then sewed a border. Constructing the whole thing with fabric was a challenge, but I think it worked.

Lambent jitters

This is a wall-hanging I made for my sister-in-law to make up for forgetting to make her a birthday card last year. It was inspired by a vision I saw briefly of reflected street lights out a bus window one night when we were visiting her in Colorado. I knew that it would be abstract as I was planning it, but I didn't realize how far it would go from what I saw. Her birthday isn't until next month, but I think I can count on her not seeing this blog entry. Hope she likes it.

Guitar quilt

I was working on this wallhanging off and on for about three years. I was inspired by Juan Gris' cubist paintings. I didn't want to copy his painting, but when I tried to do my own cubist composition I was daunted. I would take out fabric and play around with it for awhile and then put it away in despair. It ended up more closely following his composition than I would have preferred, but I did have fun trying to use the fabric and stitching to make it more "mine." But the best part is that it is finally done and I can move on to something else.