C'mon Baby, Let's Do the Mashed Potato

Poatato Dextrin Sample #1 - White cotton - purple liquid Rit dye

Anyone remember the dear departed George Carlin and his great humor? I love his shtick about Americans' need to accumulate stuff, or as George would say, sh*t. No doubt about it. I'm a material girl that loves her sh*t. The only thing better than getting new sh*t is getting sh*t cheap. I love the hunt of finding really good sh*t cheap. Finding a great bargain gives me a shot of adrenalin that keeps me going for days

Potato Dextrin Sample #2 - Mulberry colored cotton with bleach

My stash of quilt fabrics is a sub-category of good sh*t, and keeping it up to date is one of my satisfying occupations, so when I can get good textile sh*t, cheap, I'm in seventh heaven. I love to buy specialty fabrics, but sometimes making your own is even better. I've been wanting to try some potato dextrin dying, and when my friend Kris showed me some of hers I was sold on the idea. Well, potato dextrin is a specialty item that has to be purchased on the Internet, but I read somewhere that you could do it with instant mashed potatoes. Hey, cheap sh*t! I had to try it.

Potato Dextrin Sample #3 - White cotton - blue Rit dye

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I purchased a big box of really cheap instant mashed potatoes and mixed one half cup of the flakes to each one cup of boiling water, stirred well and let it sit until luke warm. Meanwhile I cut some squares of fabric and pinned them to a slab of composition board. Half of the fabric was white cotton and the other half was two different shades of purple, you could use any color you choose. I took my drywall spatula and smeared various thicknesses of potatoes on the fabric and left it outside to dry. I left it outside while I was at work, so I was not at home to check on the progress. When I came home I was downhearted. The pins had popped out and the fabric was all curled up, and big hunks of the potatoes had dropped off. I gently crinkled what remained to create the cracks needed for the dye or bleach to penetrate the fabric. I decided to go ahead anyway, despite the nasty appearance of my project. (Did I mention I'm cheap?)

Poato Dextrin Sample #4 - Deep purple fabric with bleach

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I did all of my work outside to prevent having to clean up a mess in my house, and also to insure good ventilation. I decided to use the bleach first. Never to do anything by halves, I used it straight out of the bottle and quickly ran to get my respiration mask because the fumes were so strong (a trip to the ER is NOT cheap). The results however, were amazing. It took about one minute or perhaps even less to get the desired effect. I quickly dumped the samples in a bucket of water and scrubbed the fabric to remove the potato flakes. Next I tried the Rit dye on cotton. The directions called for thickened dye, no other explanation given. How does one thicken dye? Who knows, so I just used the concentrated liquid which flowed into the cracks well. Unfortunately, when I'm dying, painting, etc., I am more like a 6 year old than I would like to admit. I want immediate gratification. I could only stand to wait about 15 minutes for the dye to set, so the color is a bit washed out in my opinion. I think if I had left it on for about an hour I would have gotten better results. Of the two, I liked the bleach process the best because you have no idea what the result will be. I thought sample #2 came out looking like Florentine marbleized paper. I hope to do some more dying before the weather turns cold as this is not a process you will want to do in your home. Anyway, give it a try, you might get some good sh*t, and if you're really cheap, you can serve the leftover potatoes to your dog or hang a few strips of wallpaper, I never thought they were fit for human consumption.

Eating Crow

There have been quite a few times in my life when I have had to eat the words that have come out of my mouth. This started pretty early on. One evening, around the age of ten, I was standing at the sink and crying because I had to wash the dishes and touch all that icky food left in the bottom of the strainer. I distinctly remember telling my mother that when I grew up I would never have to do such a horrible thing because "I'm going to marry a rich man and have a maid." Like that ever happened! I didn't even own a dishwasher until 3 years ago. Other famous proclamations included never working with children or becoming a supervisor in my professional life. (I have been the supervisor of children's mental health services at our agency for eight years now), and telling a previous employer during an evaluation that "I don't really need any goals, I just want to enjoy living my life." Just a minute while I pick a few feathers out of my mouth.

As a result of that last statement, my boss sent me to a Franklin Planner seminar on, you guessed it, setting and achieving goals, which I had to pay for out of my own pocket by the way. The seminar tied goal setting into your personal value system. Now I had a reason to set a goal or two. Ever since that day I have set goals in spades and have accomplished a lot, including going back to college and getting two degrees. I only mention this as this past year I set some goals that have really moved my art quilt career along.

I am basically a type B minus personality. It takes a lot to get me riled up. I am also notorious for putting things off. I do things when I "get around to it." I had been talking about getting a website, learning Photoshop, and getting in some galleries for several years, but never got around to it. Then SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) started their Visioning Project this time last year. You had to publicly declare your goals and keep an online journal on their website for the entire year. My goal was to develop some marketing tools, and I'm proud to say I just completed this goal and then some. I especially wanted to set up a website, www.SueKingArts.com, and a paper portfolio.

If you were a little mouse in the room on my first day back to college at the age of 45, you would have had the opportunity to see me have an anxiety attack when I was asked to turn on the computer sitting behind me. Honestly, I thought the campus was so overcrowded and we were forced to have our English Comp class in a computer lab! I had to ask a little twenty something where the "button" was that turned it on. A dear friend of mine helped me learn to do web searches and really saved my bacon on various research papers, so you know I'm a bit challenged when it comes to IT matters. But with many stops and starts, a battle with Walmart over the purchase of Photoshop Elements and guidance from both of my wonderful sons, I can say I was able to overcome the computer technology I needed to complete my goals. The results are the paper portfolio shown above, a website, this blog and new business cards. I am ready to get out there and market my work. It's gonna be a good year. I'm pretty sure I'm not finished saying dumb stuff, but I am very practiced at eating crow. It's an acquired taste.

QN OMG!

Well, if you are anything like me, you just love to purchase those glossy art mags at Joannes or Hobby Lobby, or Barnes and Nobles. Even though I've seen it all before, they are just too darn hard to pass up, after all, I carry one of those coupons for 40% off in my purse for just such an occasion. One of the magazines I like is Where Women Create. You know the ones with the stunning, to die for studios. The ones with cute little antique jars to hold all of your buttons and the antique sewing machines that are artistically placed in the room to give just the right touch of creative ambiance.

I also grew up loving fairy tales, and that is what those studios are ... fairy tales. Kinda reminds me of that line in Crocodile Dundee, where Dundee says Knife? That ain't no knife, eers a REAL knife. Well here's a photo of a real studio one month before entries to Quilt National are due.
Did I mention that I have battled an issue with procrastination all of my life?

I should probably just ignore one of the biggest quilting events in the country, but heck, it's only 40 miles from my house! How can you ignore that? Not to mention just to get in could be a career maker. Forget the part where the guy at Cord Camera told me last time that he couldn't figure out what QN wanted with their instructions for digital images, "Lady, National Geographic is not that picky." Or the part where they actually give an award to the person who has tried the most times to get in and finally made it. I was told the record was 7 attempts. With the event being held every two years, that's fourteen years of your life, hoping to hit the big one. Let's see, that means I have another 10 years to go if I don't get in this year. I'll be....uhhh...well... darn near 70 if I wait that long to get in. (I can't do math, thank god for art quilts, all those little pieces and yardage requirements to calculate with traditional quilts.) Anyway, hard as I try, I cannot let Quilt National go by without an attempt at fame and glory.

I have been pulling out all the stops this year to produce a quilt worthy enough to enter. When I say this year, I actually mean starting last week ( I did mention the procrastination issue). I am using those new silk screen techniques, have a groovy color scheme the judges are sure to love and keep chasing the cats off my entry every five minutes. But still things tend to go wrong. Now I have to admit I am a whiz at printing fabric in my printer, running paper bags and all kinds of fabrics through it (except maybe that one time when I had to go out and buy a new printer due to a severe jam.) But the last two days have been very trying, I have literally used up a 10 pack of ink jet fabric at $24.99, (all right so I did have a 40% off coupon, you do the math), and a whole brand new ink cartridge at $18.99, (I'm too cheap to buy the good stuff), and I was unable to print the big, enlarged photo I had my heart set on for the centerpiece of the quilt. Every print was completly unusable. Yikes!

Then I realized that God speaks to us in mysterious ways. If I had been able to print out that image, I would have screwed up the integretiy and compostion of the whole piece with my determination to do it a certain way. S0, I 'm out a few bucks and another trip to the store for more printer sheets and another ink cartidge, but I'm much happier with the version I was forced to make.

What am I making? There's a teaser in the corner of the photo, but I will say no more until I get my rejection letter in the mail, and last time I got a very nice one that I was proud to show all my friends. What's the saying? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Got to get back to the studio. There's plenty of time to clean it up after QN.

What I did on My Summer Vacation Part 2

Anniko Feher

Let's Face It Workshop

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No, I have not been abducted by space aliens. I am alive and well and still living in Lancaster, Ohio. But it has been one hot and busy summer for me. I had a solo show last week and have spent the entire month of July getting ready for it. With my " just one more quilt" attitude, I have been logging in some serious studio time. I have also been working on my SAQA Visioning Project like nobodies business and am proud to say that I accomplished my goal this week! I now have a beautiful little book to use as a paper portfolio (guess the fall will be busy too as I start to market my art work to galleries). There's no rest for the wicked!

Anniko Explaining her Technique for Portrait quilts

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Before the summer got so darn hot and crazy I did spend part of my vacation attending a fabulous quilt workshop on fabric portraits. I belong to the Common Threads Quilt Guild in Bexley, Ohio. What a fun bunch of quilters. God bless 'em. I am the only self-proclaimed art quilter in the group, but somehow they let me in. And for a group of pretty traditional quilters they bring in well-known art quilters to speak at our meetings and sometimes give classes.

A Face in the Making

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I had not attended any of their workshops before and decided this one looked really interesting. I love figurative work, but cannot draw people to save my soul. They usually turn out looking rather deformed or perhaps just ape-like, so hey, if she could teach me how to do life-like portraits I was waiting to be amazed, and honestly I was.

She Takes Shape
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Before she started with the technique, Anniko told her story of coming to the US from Hungary in the sixties. She had had hopes of becoming an artist as a teenager and going to art school in Hungary. However, due to the corruption of the communist government and the high cost of the bribes required to enter a specialized school, her parents enrolled her in a school for seamstresses. She hated every minute of her time there and soon came to realize that her sewing was the worst in the entire school. Many years later she learned about quilting in the US and has never looked back. She explained that many of her relatives were annihilated in the Holocaust. She was in possession of one tiny black and white photo of her grandmother and made the most amazing quilt of her that was just purchased by a museum for their permanent collection. What an honor for a girl who couldn't sew!

Completed Face

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Well, as we all sat down and prepared to work, I looked at the pattern we were going to be using that was generated from a photo of one of Anniko's friends. I started to feel the slightest niggling of anxiety beginning to stir in my gut. This pattern looked like a very intricate paint by number canvas. Each color of fabric was denoted by a number. Number? I hate numbers! We were to write the numbers on the backs of the various shades of fabric and keep them in order as we worked. Well, I'm sort of a laid back, do it if it feel right sort of girl, and I was very quickly becoming disoriented. I kept having to ask Anniko to come back to my seat, asking "what did you say to do?, Is this right? What area are we supposed to be working on?" I felt like an idiot. Meanwhile, all the traditional quilters are merrily progressing and are way ahead of me. OMG! I was going to be the one person who couldn't do it. The art quilter who couldn't make an art quilt. The laughing stock of the guild! However, an amazing thing happened, after a half an hour the technique just clicked and I got it. I wasn't stupid after all. I could do this. In another hour, not only was I not behind, I was leading the pack, and ooops, not following directions. All those little numbers fell off my fabric and I was using them in an intuitive way. Hey, this is my style after all. I am proud to say that I was one of the few to finish the face before class ended. Anniko told me that my face was "different from all the rest, and I mean that in a good way." It was very interesting to observe that while we were all using the same pattern, each face turned out completly different, and even more odd was the fact that the faces actually looked like the person making them. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to get started on a quilt using my own photograph, but I've got just one more quilt to finish first.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation - Part One

Japanese Friendship Garden, Balboa Park, San Diego

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It has been a mad house around here lately. A lot of commitments at work, preparation for a solo show, trying to keep up with the yard, etc., so I really needed a break. This year it was California here I come. If you are a woman of a certain age, perhaps you had a big crush on the Beach Boys as a teen, I sure did.

Torrey Pines State Park, La Jolla

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Living in the middle of Ohio, about the closest we came to an ocean was Lake Erie, so California had a certain cache for all the kids in my neighborhood. We wore beach attire, listened to songs about woodies and little deuce coops and rode our skate boards on our flat as a pancake geography and imagined we knew what it was to ride the big one with Gidget and the Big Kahuna. I dreamed of being a "California Girl." When I actually met a real person from California, I was in the ninth grade. She was frankly pretty square (as if I wasn't?) but it didn't matter, she was from that magical state and must have achieved Nirvana at the age of 14.

San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla

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Anyway, my son and his girlfriend moved to San Diego last fall so she could enter a doctorate program, and he hasn't been able to wipe the smile off his face since. When I ask him on the phone how the weather is, he just giggles and tells me it's 70 degrees and sunny...it's always 70 degrees and sunny. I stayed for four days and was able to see a lot of interesting things. La Jolla was beautiful, I loved Torrey Pines State Park. We went hiking and the views of the Pacific Ocean were stunning, as well as the pines themselves, which are extremely rare and very photogenic. The hills were covered with succulents and apparently also sprinkled with two varieties of rattle snakes, which we luckily did not see... or hear.

Harbor Seals in La Jolla Cove

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We also visited the San Diego Museum of Modern Art. They had one of Andy Goldworthy's cairns on the lawn. If you don't know who Andy is, you've got to check him out on google. He is the most amazing sculptor who uses only natural material like vines and rocks in the most spectacular ways. When I got home I reserved as many of his books as I could find, as well as a video documentary about him from the public library. Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of his work in La Jolla.

San Diego Museum of Modern Art in La Jolla.

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We also drove to a wine growing area called Temecula, about on hour north of San Diego and tasted wine all day. I had my fair share, but at least half of what I tasted was dumped in a jar designed for just such a purpose. We also visited the San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park. I had been dying to visit the Japanese Garden there and it was very peaceful and calming.

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No trip would be complete without including textiles somehow. This time I visited the Quilt Visions Gallery not far from Dan Diego Bay, and was really impressed. The gallery is dedicated to art quilts only, and three artists were exhibiting, including Valerie Goodwin. I have seen photos of her work in SAQA bulletins and Quilting Arts magazine, but let me tell you, photos just do not show the amazing layering and detail of her work. The women that run the gallery are volunteers and like all the quilters I've met, were very friendly and informative. They let me know that anyone can join Quilt Visions and have the opportunity to apply to their shows. They also had a nice gift shop with hand dyes, books etc. I bought an art quilt pendant that I can't wait to wear. I also got a hot tip on a fabric store called Rosie's, but ran out of steam and money before I could get there. Next trip it will be at the top of my list. Anyway, I did a little California dreaming and came home rejuvenated and ready to get back in the studio and back to work.

I'm in Love (It's not what you think)

Original Photo

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Don't get too excited, I'm talking about a new art technique that I absolutely love...silk screening. My art friends and I tried silk screening at last summer's art retreat, with only minimal results. It sure seemed a whole lot more trouble than it was worth. We used directions featured in Quilting Arts magazine and after doing some of my own research on the topic, I found out that the directions were, shall I say, variations on a theme. Not recommended for the beginner and frankly, I'm not sure I would recommend the technique at all. The article suggested using gel medium to drag through the screen, and if you have used this medium, you know how thick and goopy it is. Physics alone would indicate there is going to be a problem trying to force it through the tiny holes in the screen.

Thermofax Screen

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After reading about the subject, it seemed as though we did not give this technique a fair shake. Other problems encountered were not using the proper screen size, correct mesh size and not degreasing the screen before use, all important facts that were left out of the article. For this summer's retreat, I really wanted to try silkscreening again using the thermofax method. I still remember the smell of freshly mimeographed work sheets and tests from back in the day, sort of an elementary school high that was almost as good as eating paste (yes, there's one in every class, but I'm not sayin' it was me). The thermofax uses the old fashioned mimeograph machines to cut an image into a plastic film. I did an Internet search and found that Lyric Kincaid, http://www.lyrickincaid.com/, had the best prices and has what has to be the fastest delivery anywhere, except perhaps McDonald's. You email her your image and she must burn them the minute they plop into her inbox. I had the returned thermofax in two days.

Thermofax quilt top on the design board.

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I purchased Photoshop Elements 8 last winter and used it to alter the original tree photo above. You could just xerox it, but if I'm going to lay out some cash for a new program, I'm going to use it. Besides it was really fun. Keep in mind that high contrast makes the best images for thermofax, and you can snail mail your image to Lyric with a check instead of doing the online route. An advantage to the thermofax technique is that you don't need to use a screen, just put some duck tape around the edge and you are ready to go. You will need to purchase a squeegee. I got mine at Dick Blick.

Regular Silk Screen of Trees with Fabric
Snippets

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Since we couldn't get the regular silk screening to work last year because of the gel medium problem, (my friend Peggy said it took so much strength she thought she would throw her back out), I was determined to give it a try too. I had equally good results this time and just used a tree stencil on the back side of the screen to make a long horizontal row of trees. It was windy the day we were working, so there are some black marks in between the trees, but when quilted, these will become undergrowth.

On the design wall

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I got the idea to make the trees reflect the changing of the seasons by dropping various colors of snippets on the screened trees.

On the Design Wall

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I screened the original tree on to some different background fabrics, again with the idea of representing the seasons. I haven't had time to do much else but look at these beauties on the design wall, but I hope to get at least two of them quilted for my solos show in July. It would be fun to screen some trees in different colors and perhaps on different fabrics like silk. I see pillows here, and I'm thinking Christmas gifts. So if you are attempting something new, the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again., " may just be the answer to your problem.

Entropy Revisited

1933

32W x 27H

2010

Many of you expressed an interest in seeing what became of the rusty train photos I shot a few months ago. Well, they morphed into my first SAQA Show entry. I had already taken these photos when SAQA posted a call for entries for No Place to Call Home, a show with the theme of homelessness. I may have shared that in real life I am a clinical social worker, and as such, I deal with this issue and many others in an all too real way. So, about the last thing I had any intention of doing was entering this show. I do make an attempt to keep my professional and personal life as separate as possible and this felt like it was pushing the boundary. Then I got the bright idea to base my quilt on all the homeless men, women and over 250,000 children that "rode the rails" during the Great Depression. I had heard much about this period from my parents, who both lived through it as children. They had it tough, but were never homeless. I remembered hearing a piece on NPR (my favorite) about the boxcar kids and an author who was researching their plight all these years later. It was a very touching piece, and all of a sudden I was on a roll with this quilt. I tossed all my other work aside in order to get it done in plenty of time to enter.

Detail 1933

I was already in possession of some old quilt blocks I bought at a yard sale 20 years ago that looked like they contained depression era shirting material. So, I used some of them whole and others I cut up and mixed with new batiks. I went down to the Goodwill and bought some old jeans, cords and wool tweed pants and threw them in the mix (my friend Jessica would not let me use the zipper, she said it was too distracting, if you know what I mean). Then I printed out the rust photos on cotton fabric. I bought Photoshop Elements 8 last Christmas, battling for weeks with Walmart and my computer to get the darn thing to work. All in all, it was a great move, but I've gotta tell ya, I had to quilt just to calm myself down from the frustration of being so technologically challenged. Thank the lord I've got a calling plan that allows me to call my two boys every five minutes asking for help, and two sons who know that their Mom is dunce in this area, and don't care. Anyway, I'm starting to get the gist of it and it is amazingly fun to play with. So, I altered some of my train photos and printed them out too. While I was doing research for the quilt, I learned that hoboes actually had a whole set of symbols they used to communicate with each other to warn of barking dogs, police and Railroad Bulls or to give each other the low down on a handout. These symbols were hidden in the quilting. I decided on a deconstructed look that would mimic a torn blanket, perhaps carried in a bedroll for warmth on the boxcars. I topped the whole thing off with an old spoon I found smashed in the road this winter. It reminded me that many people found their meals in hobo jungles. Well, technology was used to digitally enter the show today and will keep my fingers crossed, but frankly I'm just too darn busy to worry about it. I'll keep you posted.