An ATC Exposion

I was out of town for 9 days to Queretaro, Mexico.  More about that soon.  

Its a big birthday month: today is my Birthday.  Happy Birthday also to Jude at Spirit Cloth, and to Mette and Sissel - my art friends in Santa Barbara, CA.

For the last 2 1/2 days, I've been working like crazy on my ATC cards for the Las Vegas Art and Soul trade.  Sally Jo finished hers yesterday, and I finished mine today.  We had started a few weeks ago by doing the water color back grounds.  Then we added layers of stamping.

These are Sally Jo's cards. She used gesso and a stencil to get the beautiful Japanese flowers. Then some torn foil paper with stamped Chinese words. A bit of gold leafing here and there for the final touch.

The theme this time was "In the Garden with Art and Soul".
Sally Jo had 3 themes: Garden Time, Dream Garden, and Steps to my Garden (with the numbers).

Here are her lovely water colored backs with the ATC info.

Here I am stitching the lace and birds on my cards.

I loved the variety of watercolor back grounds and playing with the stitching on the birds.

Some of our favorite birds and watercolor back grounds.

12 finished cards ready to ship to Marie in CA for the trade.
Each card was stitched to a back card done in watercolor and containing the ATC info.
The title of my cards: My French Garden.
Enjoy the flight little birds!  

Getting Ready for Art and Soul

Hello!  I just bought my ticket to go to Las Vegas in February for the Art and Soul retreat. http://www.artandsoulretreat.com/index.html  Sally Jo and I have been to 3 Art and Soul retreats now and they have all been such a great learning opportunity.  We have been to 2 in Portland, and 1 last year in Las Vegas where we stayed at the Paris hotel on the strip.

We have participated in the ATC (Artist Trading Cards) exchange each time.  This past Oct. in Portland it was a Halloween themed exchange.  We worked together, painting, stamping and stitching to get our cards ready: 25 of each kind.  We made pumpkin cards with batik fabric sewn on for the pumpkin, leaves and stems.  The other set was orange and pink with spider webs sewn on and beads hanging with a little skeleton head on each one.  The edges were all stitched and our info was on the back.  It actually took quite a long time to complete these - staying up until 2-3am to finish it up the day they were due!  Each one was a little bit different.  Unique art pieces.

 

Sally in class making a picture frame that turned out quite nicely.

 

 Here I am working on a mosaic collage that I painted, inked the sides, and painted all the little tiles on.  Then you pick little found objects to attach to it.  I have an old bulb - perfect shade of turquoise, some old dice, a ringed rock, the head of a dog found in the Willamette or Columbia river by a diver who looks for old lost objects, and a watch makers tin with an old watch face on the front.  Still looking for 2 other objects to place on the remaining tiles.

A Little Cyber Retreat with Galloping Pony

Hello!  This weekend I've been on a cyber retreat with Galloping Pony: her second annual retreat.  We have been playing QUILTO - the quilter's version of BINGO, using quilting words.  We had a Valentine heart challenge to make a card.  I really enjoyed that and ended up sewing 2 things which I plan to make into a little fabric book with some pictures from my trip to France last summer.

 The white back ground fabric is a street map of Paris with famous sites on it.

     The Eiffel Tower I free hand stitched on the machine with no pattern.  It was pretty fun to do. My mom, Sally Jo, and I were sewing at the same time, which is always wonderful.  There is a star block pattern that we can try out, and I'll see if I can do that today.  I think cyber retreats are actually pretty fun - a group of women from all over the country sewing together - on their own projects and a class project.

 

     This is Sally Jo's appliqued heart card.  She stitched "Love" with 4 different shades of linen thread that I got her for Christmas. The heart is on script fabric that is attached with 4 of her grandmother's buttons to hand painted paper that she made this past October at the Art and Soul retreat in Portland, OR. 

A Little Intro to Boro Cloth

Hi!  I'm glad you could join me here.  I've been wanting to start a blog for so long, and now that I've done it, its hard to know where to begin!

      A few days ago, I started Jude Hill's (http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/) class Contemporary Woven Boro along with dozens of other people.  I've been following Jude's blog for a year now - my anniversary I guess!  I've learned a lot from Jude in the last year - from her blog, and from her classes: Cloth to Cloth, Spirit Cloth, and The Beast class.  It's been an amazing year in terms of learning. Since the topic is boro, I'd like to share some pics I took of authentic Japanese boro cloth owned by Becky Scellato of the Shibori Dragon store in Lakewood, WA (www.shiboridragon.com/).  Her shop has the most amazing collection of Japanese threads and patterns for sashiko and all things Japanese.  She shared some of her collection with us last fall at the Portland, OR Quilt Expo in a sashiko class that my mom, Sally Jo, and I took.

Boro, translated as rag, is fabric that has been worn, patched up, and used again. Out of necessity and thrift, the fabric items used daily by the common person needed to be repaired as they wore out; so patches of fabric were stitched over thread bare areas.  Over time, a piece of cloth would acquire more and more patches with tiny stitches to secure them in place.  This was done on clothing, jackets, shoulder pads, bed coverings and even household rags.

Boro was originally used as a way to repair cloth by those without funds for new items. It was not displayed or collected, as it is now.  Fabric lovers from around the world have now come to appreciate the hand made nature of boro, the skill with which items were repaired, and the time it took to repair them. 

                                     

Above:
This is a jacket, with top folded forward and sleeves going to the left and right of the top of the picture.

This jacket was thick to keep the wearer warm in the cold Japanese winters.

For more information about boro or to start your own collection, you can visit: Sri Threads: http://srithreads.com/index.php.

Thanks for visiting and see you next time!