...and then the staff

The lines for the staff have been making me crazy! The black lines are just under 1/4" wide, so it was a lot of little fiddly stuff to try to get it even and a soft curve and not fray into nothing. After several starts and stops and regrouping, I finally landed on a workable solution. The black is cut double width, as is the teal behind it. A line of liquid fusible (thanks, Terry Grant!) down the middle of the teal, fuse the black down the center, zig zag the outside edges of the black and THEN cut it apart! The black is already stitched to the teal and I'm not working with something so narrow it stretches out of shape. Another line of liquid fusible on the face of the quilt and fuse the strips down. All that's left is to do the narrow zig zags on the edges now, but at least it's secure while I'm stitching. And yes, the 'shadow' on the top line is intentionally wider than the others. The staff will ultimately have some music notes on it, probably with the multi-print from a previous pic. Again, subject to change!

Is anybody but Mary Ann even reading this? I've made more posts today than I usually do in a week. I'd like to get this one finished (at least the top finished) by Thursday since we're heading out Friday morning for the coast. Long weekend with my uncle in Biloxi and a side trip over to New Orleans just to play. My uncle has already laid in some shrimp and oysters (sto' bought since it's the wrong season) for us, and I'm planning on cooking stuff for him that he can freeze.

better late than never!

I know it's been a while since I posted but life happens! Not only do I have the show coming up in February, but I've just received the paperwork for an invitational show (Brick Street Fine Arts Festival) in March. Maybe I'll have some stuff left over from the show at ARTichoke to use. Either that, or I'll be sewing madly to get MORE stuff made for Clinton. Or I can use some of the non-musical pieces I have already. It seems like things are breaking loose all at once and it's sort of scary! I'm booked all the way into August (at least one a month) for workshops and presentations and classes and demonstrations. If I keep going at this rate I might actually MAKE more than I SPEND with my art.

Now on to the pictures.......

This is "Coltrane" and it's done on a piece of hand-painted fabric I did during Sonji Hunt's class this summer. It's actually the back of the fabric and it already had the Wonder Under on it. If you iron it long enough and hot enough with a non-stick sheet, the WU eventually loses it's sticky without losing the cloudy effect that I liked about it. The image of John Coltrane is a (copyright-free) picture that I adjusted the color on to be sort of a reddish pink. Printed off on 4 pages, assembled and then coated with several layers of gel medium. Paper removed and the resultant image is sort of translucent. Again, I wound up using the backside of the transfer because of the effect. Very minimal quilting around the image. 16x21, hand painted muslin, gel medium transfer.

And "The Jazzman Cometh"

Another hand-painted background from Sonji's class, and a painted image from some original artwork by Stephen Avgerinos in Bloomington, IL. Used with permission of the artist. Once more, the backside of the fabric was used and very minimal quilting. 24x34, hand painted muslin, stenciled Jazzman and lamppost.