More Go Girl Bags

Been busy the last couple of days finishing these up. The first one pictured is going to a new home. Sue B will be sporting a new Go Girl Bag any day now. Hope you like it Sue! And the other is for sale in my etsy shop here.

Jester Art Quiltie

Here is a piece I just finished. I used the gel glue method again. It is embellished with embroidery and beads. I free motion quilted the background and satin stitched the edge. It measures 10.5" x 8.75". It is for sale here.

Okay, So I'm Impatient

I just had to start up my Etsy shop. I couldn't wait any longer. Even though there is only one item in there. But I'm hoping to add more items over the next few days. Crossing my fingers here. If you care to check out my shop, go here: http://stegart.etsy.com.

Playing With Silk

Well I haven't accomplished much this weekend....partly due to the fact that I just don't feel like doing much of anything mentally or physically. Maybe a little under the weather, but not totally ill with anything I can pinpoint. Bob is feeling worse, and I feel sorry for him as he is working at least 6, sometimes 7 days each week until this particular job is over. Thankfully he has today off so I'm hoping he'll try and get some much needed rest. Although our weather this morning is promising to give us an absolutely gorgeous day, so he may feel like he has to get out and do something constructive.

I did manage to finish embellishing a piece of silk that I received in the mail last week from Joanna. The silk actually belongs to Sue. If you'll recall a few entries ago I talked about a round robin Sue, Joanna and I are having. The first picture below shows Sue's silk as she initially colored it. The next photo shows the changes Joanna made to it and the last photo shows what I did to it. I must say the photo does not do this fabric justice. It is so much richer in person and the depth of colors are wonderful. As you can see in the 2nd photo, Joanna added a leaf design after adding some more dye colors. Well I felt it needed more design elements. So I started pulling out paints that matched the colors I was seeing in the fabric and started stamping. I stayed with a nature theme to continue what Joanna started with her leaf stenciling. But the last two design elements I added was a hand carved scroll in black and a small line in a pearl white, just to give it some punch.

This is the first time I've ever worked with silk and right now I'm not sure exactly if I like it or not. It wanted to move around a lot while I was stamping. It definitely is a gorgeous and luxurious fabric. I received a piece this weekend from Joanna to play with, so I'll do some more experimenting with it. Thanks Joanna for the goodies to play with.

Sue, I hope you like your fabric.





Wow I have been trying all morning already to upload these photos...finally I uploaded them to my Flickr account and then copied them here. I have been having a lot of trouble lately with Blogger...anyone else experiencing problems?

This Looks Interesting

I was visiting Karin Hammel's blog (CreaWorx), and I saw where she has started a new blog named "Textile Tuesday". Each week a new theme is posted and if you make a textile item interpreting the theme you can post about it there. I'm gonna have to keep an eye on this blog to see if a theme comes up I'd like to try.

First Official One

I've made another one. And this one is the first one that is officially for sale. Whew! If you know anyone who is purse shopping or needs a Christmas gift, pass the word. I haven't opened an etsy shop yet, I'm going to wait until I have more than one item to put in it. Hopefully I'll get some more bags done in the next few days or so. Well I better get off to bed as it's getting late.....goodnight!

My Art Journal - Page 2

Hey Suzie, here's another one. Do you like the mirror I drew? LOL I'm still not sure how I feel about doing this. I think as long as I don't make myself try and get one done every day it will go okay. On this one I painted the background one day, then worked on the rest another day. The bottom picture here shows some rubber stamps I carved recently. I did the "eye" last night.

More Go Girl Bags

Here are 3 more bags I've made. These are getting addicting. Each one I make, I seem to like more than the last one. Two of the bags have a quote on the back that you can't see...it reads "Beauty is not caused, it is." The quote is by Emily Dickinson.

Goodies in the Mail

Today I received an envelope with some goodies from Patricia @ Quilting Arts Magazine. She had posted on her blog recently if you were one of the 1st 30 to respond that you would be sent some goodies. Now my assignment from Patricia is to make something with it and send her a photo. Off to create.........

Notice Anything Different?

I decided to make a few changes with the appearance of my blog. Hope everyone likes it.

Ahhhhhh!

Here are my house babies. The gray one (she's being shy at the moment) is Zoey, and the tabby is Abby. Both were adopted from local shelters. Abby is a little over 2 and Zoey is a little over 1. Zoey will eat anything and Abby is a picky eater. Abby is a bit of a nervous Nellie and she tends to be naughty, I'll find her in places where she's not supposed to be. Or on things she's not supposed to be on.



Here's a better pic of Zoey. She is laying on my ironing board. She does that a lot while I'm working in my studio. She's good company. She also has the most amazing green eyes I've ever seen on a cat.

My Art Journal

My friend, Suzie, inspired me to start an art journal. I enjoy looking at other art journals and even have a couple of books on the subject. A while back I purchased a sketch book and just haven't gotten around to doing anything with it...so I thought I'd try it out. The pages are a little too thin as they want to curl a lot. I have trouble coming up with text to add to the pages....hopefully this will get better over time. As I was working on this page, I was listening to the radio, as always, and a song came on that I like, so I put some of the lyrics on the page. As Suzie indicated when she started....I hope my own style emerges over time. As of right now I feel my work is very influenced by other artists I admire.

Altered Orange

Well here is what I did to Joanna's orange fabric. I added four colors of dye, dabbing each one on. I have learned something with this project......orange is a difficult color to dye because most colors don't blend well with orange. I hope Joanna will like what I've done (crossing my fingers)....now this fabric is ready to send on to Sue so she can alter it further.

Gel Glue Technique

Everyone is asking how to do the gel glue technique. It is a fun process that gives a batik-like look. I learned this technique from Susan Sorrell through an online class at Joggles. The class I took was Monoprinting. Susan kindly gave me permission to tell all of you fellow artists how I did my cat design.

1. I pinned a piece of white muslin to a foam board, my design (that I had drawn on paper and darkened with marker) was underneath my fabric.
2. Using a water-soluble gel glue, I followed the lines of my design and drew with the glue onto the fabric.
3. After the glue dries, apply your color. I used Dye-na-flow, but I bet there are many things you could use for this.
4. After the dye dried, I then heat set with the iron.
5. After heat setting, I soaked the fabric in some warm water for a while to remove the glue.
6. And there you have it......cool fabric.

Here is a picture of my cat design before I embroidered it.

And here is another piece I did.

Seeing Red

My mother-in-law asked me to make a red wallet for her. I think she is giving it to someone as a gift. So here it is....

I also finished the embroidery on a gel glue design I did on a piece of white fabric....after the glue dried I then used dyes to color it in. Now to bind it off. I'm thinking after I add the binding I will do some more embroidery around the edges.


And this last picture is of Joanna's piece of fabric that she sent to me to alter. Joanna, Sue and I are involved in a round robin where we each dye a piece of fabric, then the next person embellishes it somehow, then it gets sent to the 3rd person for more embelllishing. So I'm looking at Joanna's orange and all I see is "pumpkin". But I'm not going to do anything holiday specific because then whatever you make with the fabric can only be used during a particular time of year. So I'll keep thinking......

It's Done! It's Done!

I LOVE IT! I am so happy with how this turned out. Okay, maybe there are a few things I would do differently, but overall I am quite pleased. I did some things on this purse I had never done before, like install a magnetic clasp, I have to thank Sue for her instructions on doing that. And I also used D-rings, which turned out to be very simple to do. I followed the instructions for doing the handles with D-rings, given by Creative Little Daisy here. Otherwise I just decided how big I wanted my purse and started cutting fabric without using a pattern. Oh, and I also used the same tutorial above for the inside pockets.

Isn't This Lovely?

I received this wonderful fabric postcard from Carol Straus. She is in the Surface Design Yahoo Group I belong to. You have to believe me when I say the picture does not do this justice. The leaves are dimensional. Thank you Carol!

Sneak Peek

Here is what I've been working on this weekend. I'm not finished yet, therefore, you only get a peek. When I'm done you can see it all. Waaaaaaa hhaaaaaaa haaaaaaa haaaaaaa (evil laugh going on here).

Aqua Blue

I'm in another Rainbow Fabric Pages swap. I had done this same swap a month or two ago and did a green fabric page. This time around I chose aqua blue. Or is it turquoise........does it matter?