Monte's Art Quilt

My last color design class challenge was with analogous colors. I've been doing t-shirts and thread painting with a picture taken of a serpentinite rock slab Monte has. I print the picture from my computer, through the ink-jet printer, onto iron-on transfer paper. I decided to have it be my base "material" for the art quilt, along with a photo of a rock formation reflection Monte took in Norway. Then I printed some other photos reflecting tools and scenes from his geology world.

Serpentinite is like the origin of life substance (Monte of course would say this differently). It's related to the oil world. Origin relates to DNA. When Googling DNA, I saw lots of spiraling images, so was thinking spiral or diagonal when laying out the images. When taking geologist/scientists on a field trip through California, Monte took a picture of an oil bubble, capturing his and Stan's reflection in the bubble. I put the bubble image somewhat in the center.

So the dominant analogous color is green shades with some blue as accents. Then I printed a saying he's had in his office for years -

 
"Little boys who pick up rocks 

either go to prison or become geologists.

"Geologists are Boy Scouts who hated to give up camping

when they went to college, so they majored in geology.

"A geologist listens to more silly questions

than any other human, and he must

weigh each answer with the greatest of skill.

"Have pity on him. He's just as lonesome as he looks,

He'd love to tell you everything he knows, 

but he doesn't know how."

I was going to dye some material to add to the composition, but decided the photo image materials were enough. After stitching it all together I couched a variegated green yarn around each picture - this is the "quilting" thru the layers. There is a bamboo batting and a camo material backing. I crocheted a long "string" and attached it all around as the edging. I was going to crochet a lot of rectangles with the yarn to fill in the edges making it a total rectangle, but Monte likes it best with it's funky perimeter.

Garden Pics

Our backyard from the roof

Clematis and Black Hollyhocks

Clematis entwining crab apple tree

Echinacea

Heirloom Hollyhocks

Kale and Lettuce

Calendula in midst of carrots and lettuce

I love gardening. But our first frost is around the corner ...

Dye Painting and Overdyeing

I'm exploring dye techniques. After doing lots of varieties of tie-dye, and fabric dye samples, I'm moving into overdye, and painting techniques. The first pic is a tie-dyed T-nightgown I gave to Sarah. Everyone in the family has been getting T-shirts and oft times, matching socks. I'm a sock person, liking them with my sandals.

I had some T's I dyed that I wasn't in love with their colors, so I started overdyeing, and I'm really liking the added depth. I did a mixture of hand-painting the dye with a brush, and then I love the sponge texture - I've used my one sponge for everything, including my home's entryway walls. The next pic is a T-shirt for Heather. It's original colors were moreso gray and gray-blues, maybe a touch of light pink and gold - I don't remember. But I spattered dye and sponged.

The next pic is of overdyeing a light blue with yellow T. Most of the extra color is with the sponge and a bit of hand-painted large ovals, like daisy petals. But then I spiraled the shirt, bound loosly with lots of rubberbands, and immersed in a bucket of black dye, leaving in for several hours. I'd made up the black dye bath a few days before. I'm always amazed at how dyes don't mix that much (unless I agitate them a lot right away). It's a chemical reaction called "striking" that happens- like in the first 15 minutes. At first I expected to rinse them and expect all dark, like they look when wet.

Most of my dyes are in 8oz squeeze bottles I store for several weeks. I'll make them up fresh when whatever I'm doing has to have very exacting colors. I don't add soda ash to my dyes because otherwise they need to be used up that day. I keep a soda ash solution in a bucket for however long it takes till it's all used up- maybe months. I soak everything I dye in the soda ash solution for about 20 minutes and wring - leaving wet for most dyeing, or hanging to dry and dry-dye later - like for batik, stenciling, stamping, and screenprinting ...

A shirt I did for Monte similar to this is blacker cuz of immersing when the dye was fresh made - he wanted a pair of brown pants to be black. All the later additions to this dyebath are more a blue-black. All blacks are made up of other colors, and those colors disperse in varying ways - like drop a blob on paper towel, and when dry, you'll see outer rings of blue or fuchsia or blue-green. As too with most colors - very few are pure colors. The operative word here is FEW - like in - 3 primary colors making up all colors.

On this note of over-dyeing clothes - I've done it for years. I've been hooked on second-hand clothes shopping since I was a teen. A lot of the baby clothes I dyed - rather than pastels - deep blues, maroons, and greens... And I've dyed bathrobes I like over and over, changing colors, till they fall apart. Monte has started looking thru all his clothes and giving me shirts to overdye. In the past he's had me dye suits for a color change too. Dawson just gave me a pattern to try and dye-paint on a shirt for him. And he gave me a black shirt he wants me to practice on - a discharging technique.

My next pic is of total hand-painting, with some spatters and sponging - a dress and matching socks. What I learned ... I LOVE the technique, tho time-consuming. Thus, I'll be moving into making my own stamps for repeat printing. And I'm going to start thickening the dye, so less running in most cases.

I'm in need of more yogurt, so while writing this post, I'm making more. I'll post yogurt making soon at my Karey's Kitchen blog. The kitchen table is full of geology related pictures I printed along with several serpentinite photos - some of them already printed on inkjet paper and ironed on fabric. This month's color challenge is "analogous" and most serpentinites are greens (tho when in Boston we saw lots of pinks-to-reds. You'd think them marble. When watching movies, Monte's always pointing out serpentinite - it's everywhere! And since, as he's talking his science lingo, he's using talk of DNA and blueprint ... I'm trying to create an Art Quilt for him. When done I'll post a pic.)

Wonder Full Creativity!