Another Silk Collage

Kimono Silk Collage #1

Here is a first effort with the kimono silks.  I mixed in a few necktie silks, too.

Antique Kimono Silk - removing mothball and mold smells!

A friend in my art quilt group, WAV  (visit our blog here) brought a big pile of antique kimonos to our October WAV meeting.  She suggested we could each take pieces of them home and I focused on the dark ones with subtle woven patterns.  As I was taking the kimonos apart in order to salvage every bit of useable fabric, I was envisioning creating fused collages from them. 

When I got my pieces home, and began to iron them, I found the odors of mold and mothballs overwhelmed me!  I could not work with the fabric the way it was, so I decided that even though all this fabric is silk, I would wash the fabric, hoping the odors would vanish in the wash.   I washed in warm water, delicate cycle and used what I always use when washing silk - Orvis paste.  I washed twice hoping the odors would disappear.

Not so!  In fact, the washing seemed to intensify the odors!  Oh my!  The whole house smelled like mothballs and mold - even my husband was bothered by the smell.  I researched how to remove the odor and back into the washer all the silk went.  I soaked it for 24 hours in white vinegar/ water solution.  Then, I spun it out and found it still reeked! 

OK, so the next step, according to my research - hang it outdoors until the smell disappears.  Here are the silk panels on the clothesline, where they hung for a month.  These were my "Halloween decorations".  My grandson and hubby thought it looked very "witchy" or "ghostly". 

I did finally get the smell out

A Year of Art Fundraiser to Fight Cancer!

This is my donation to "A Year of Art"

Tomorrow our 2013 fiber fundraiser to fight cancer, "A Year of Art," opens
at 10 a.m. Central.

There are two ways you can join the fun:
1.  Donate any amount and be entered in a drawing with one grand prize worth
more than $1550.

 http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/AYearofArt2013InspirationDrawing.html

2.  Bid on eleven artworks donated by Pamela Allen, Pokey Bolton, Linda
Colsh, Jane Davila, Vivika DeNegre, Jane Dunnewold, Jamie Fingal, Laura
Wasilowski, Yvonne Porcella, Karen Stiehl Osborn, and me.

http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/AYearofArtArtwork.html

Our goal is $8000 in just 8 hours.  It's crazy, I know.  But I believe we
can do it.  We have donated over $220,000 to the American Cancer Society to
fight cancer.  I know with your generous support that our total will grow to
nearly $230,000 on February 12 and 13.

Many thanks in advance,

Tulle in the Mail and on the Web

Surprise Package

A while back, I posted about a piece I was constructing with multiple tulle overlays in many colors.

This post apparently caught the attention of the owner of a Website devoted to thousands of uses for tulle and net (see link below picture)
http://www.tulle.net/
This person contacted me about my work and indicated they plan to establish a new category - Tulle in Art! They are interested in featuring my work on their website!

Furthermore, I received a big box of samples from a manufacturer of tulle, tricot, and organza, etc. It arrived yesterday! What an amazing array of supplies!

Oh, the possibilities!

For those of you who also work with tulle, I do think they would be interested in learning about your work. There is a contact link on the website.

Fabric Giveaway Jacket Preview

My friend, Brooke Atherton is hosting a fabric giveaway. A clothing manufacturer has gifted her with a ton of color sample pieces of 100% cotton knit, the type used for T shirts.
She, in turn, is distributing it to artists and is calling for creative projects to be submitted to her for publication. You can learn more by checking out the Fabric Giveaway blog. She still has fabric and is looking for interested artists.

I've been working on a jacket made of habotai silk layered with overdyed cotton knit.
I stitched an organic pattern in white cotton thread, then cut away some areas of the cotton knit to reveal the silk underneath. (shown above)

Next, I overdyed the whole thing. The silk and white cotton thread took the scarlet and lemon yellow dye, and the blue shifted to a darker shade of purple. There are long strings from serging the edges hanging off the bottom and I plan to string beads on these. Then, I will add a few more beads and some kind of closure.

Elizabeth spotted it in my studio yesterday and asked to try it on. She loves it!

Ladies Club comes to Visit

Here is Brooke Atherton with a number of items created from Fabric Giveaway fabric.

Back when Brooke first presented details about this project, I offered her the use of my workshop space anytime in June. She took me up on the offer and brought in a group of very creative women from a local philanthropic womens group (not sure of the name of this group - anyone want to help me out?)

They arrived at my place at 10:00 AM Saturday morning. They stayed until about 2:00.

They were working with the cotton jersey knit as well as some woven cotton and with fabric paints.

There was a lot of give and take.

Some really exciting and interesting looking fabrics resulted.

And they had a really great time!