My first quilting adventure

A couple weekends ago I took a workshop with an artist named Bergen Rose. The workshop was called "Transforming Fabric with Digital Image Transfer Techniques." Such a great workshop with a lot of different techniques covered. Bergen's work is beautiful - combining paintings, photographs, transfers and fabric - a perfect combination for her pieces. You should check out her artwork at the Fountainhead gallery in Queen Anne, Seattle or her online shop at mochimochifiberart.com.

Anyhow, I tried a number of the transfer techniques with varying degrees of success. My goal this week was to actually finish one of the pieces. Whether it was good or bad, I just wanted a finished piece from the workshop to hang on my wall. This piece is pretty simple...I printed a 6 image grid of dahlia pinholes I took recently onto silk organza. I then applied free-motion stitching to a quilt "sandwich" (backing, batting, top fabric). I attached the organza to the quilted part using 2-sided tape. I then attached a sleeve to the back so I can run a dowel or a piece of bamboo through it and hang the piece.

I think any self-respecting quilter would have a minor heart attack to see my quilting technique but I don't care. I like the way it looks with the silk over it...almost like the flowers are on the quilted part.

I'm very excited to try out more daring things with the transfer techniques I learned and my trusty Brother sewing machine (thanks to my pal, Darcy).

The whole piece, front side.

Detail of a few of the squares.

The reverse.

Getting things done

The other day I had a conversation with another photographer who asked to see some of my work. Did I have it on Flickr? No. Yes, I have a website but it's ancient and I never seem to have the time or the inclination to update it (for shame...I know). I finally decided that I needed to just put up something so I wouldn't feel like a complete scammer. I decided to go with SmugMug because of the protections you can set for your galleries. I've had it for all of two days but have already managed to upload a couple galleries (one being a very small Woca/Holga gallery and the other being a larger gallery of digital images I took in Iceland in the summer of 2009). Here is the link to the gallery: leslielevenson.smugmug.com. It works really well with Lightroom 3, which means I'm more likely to utilize it. I'm just happy to have a gallery with images on display for a change. I'm hoping to get another one done before the end of today but that may not happen the way it's going. At least I'll be able to say "yes" to anyone who asks if I have work they can look at. Little victories.

I think I might actually put the start of my aquarium project in there since it might inspire me to go get more images. Here's one of my favorite images, so far, from that project:

A duck in water

Mixed media fun

So, I went to the workshop I talked about last night. Initially, I was nervous since clearly I had misunderstood the instruction about collage (I was supposed to bring collage materials, not a collage). However, it turned out all right. Teesha had plenty of collage materials for us to work with and I was forced to be a bit more creative in terms of creating a journal around fish.

We first prepped our books by painting watercolor paper with acrylic paints. Next, we bound them into a small journal. After that it was collaging time - first the borders of some of the pages (there wasn't enough time to do the entire book). Next, we worked on our content for the pages - the collages of our various beasts. Then came time for pen work, which meant we added color and marks to the collage primarily with pens. Finally, we got to the cover and how to do the collage and paint it.

Mine's nowhere near finished but I finished one two-page spread. I think it turned out pretty nice:

I guess I was still thinking about Moby Dick and that eye of his, though my whale isn't white. All in all, it was a lot of fun and really freeing to just start making marks without worrying too much about how it turned out. That's one of the joys of the "beginner's mind" - fearlessness and pleasure at just having created something you didn't know you could.

Workshop tomorrow

A very short post this evening. I'm attending a workshop held by Teesha Moore all day tomorrow. It's a mixed-media workshop so I'm hoping that I'll get some additional ideas for using my photos in different ways. I'm a little nervous since I had to create a collage to bring with me and I have almost zero experience in collage making. I chose a theme of fish since I seem to be big on the aquarium world these days. Hopefully, I'll have something interesting to show at the end of tomorrow.

Oh, and as an addendum to the last post about hands...my friend, Carla sent me this link to a very creepy iPhone cover. Can you say, "Creeeeepy?"