YAS contemporary lifestyle

The goal of many fine craftspeople is for their work to reach the level of exposure and acceptance that the work of craftspeople like Dale Chiluly, Ana Lisa Hedstrom, Jack Lenor Larsen, among others, has. This is a link to the current conversation on craft vs art vs palace crafts vs cottage craft. A must read.  http://blog.glassquarterly.com/2009/12/22/new-cottage-craft-advocate-garth-clark-ratchets-up-his-criticism-of-palace-craft-and-the-american-craft-council/

And the winners are: 1.Gabriela, Threadhead, Blog: Threadheadsanonymous.blogspot.com 2. Arya, Blog: AryaWiesephotography.com 3. PippiRose, Blog: Pippistitches.blogspot.com Thanks to everyone for a magical carpet ride, looking forward to traveling with you next year.  Special Thanks to Lisa Swiftka! I'm participating in the One World, One Heart Giveaway. The event presents an opportunity to visit and meet other bloggers internationally. Click on the link below to participate and find out more. I will be giving away one of my hand dyed, block printed silk charmeuse scarves. To join in please leave a comment on this post with your contact information. The event begins today and the winner of the giveaway will be announced on February 15, 2010. Join in, I look forward to meeting you. Yasmin As promised, I've added a second giveaway, a set of four linocut, blank note cards from my  Yas Art Design Card line. They come with a vellum insert, so you can give...

I finished dyeing the large 44 X 72 inch  top piece for my next quilt. The rain in Southern California kept me from taking images of the piece, it has to be photographed outside on the line. The fabric is cotton sateen. I used Procion MX fiber reactive dyes. The resist process  involved clamping areas of the fabric with several pieces of rectangular lightweight wood. The fabric was folded, clamped, and dyed, fixed, rinsed, washed and dryed through six dye baths. Now, this piece is ready to be quilted. The piece will be layered with organic cotton batting and a lightweight natural linen back. I'm stilling deliberating if I want to quilt using fine copper wire or copper cotton quilting thread. The quilting will be done by hand, in either lines or rectangles.

I bought a copy of " Shibori the Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dying, Traditions, Techniques, Innovations " by Yoshiko Wada, Mary Kellogg Rice and Jane Barton. This is a good starting point for exploring the world of Shibori. Shibori is a Japanese term for resist dying fabric. It's an ancient traditional method of applying color and pattern to fabric and has been used all over the world by many cultures. Other cultures have different terms to describe resist dying of fabric. Continuing my scroll around the internet for information on the technique called Itajime Shibori - which uses objects and folding to create a resist - I returned to Karen Britto's website. Karen has a great series of posts on itajime shibori. The images are from my first attempts at itajime. Of course, I jumped right in. Didn't practice on paper and didn't get too concerned about the outcome. As with all hand processes, the uncontrollable is part of the fun of the proce...