YAS contemporary lifestyle

Scarves, stoles and shawls are completed. The hand rolled hems weren't as difficult as I remembered. Thursday, Leigh and I will go to the beach to photograph them. Today I'll start on small quilts for the Quilt Visions project - Fantasy Flowers. The fees for the April and May shows have seriously depleted the budget. So dyeing the several hundred recycled shirts and tops will have to wait for two weeks. Then what a wonderful day I will have visiting as many thrift stores as possible in one day, searching for fun and fashionable tops. These tops will get batched low water immersion dyed. I'm going to try Lisa Call's low water rinse process. Recapping that process, Lisa removes items from the dye bath, gives them a quick rinse, then into the washing machine with Synthrapol in the hottest water possible. She washes twice, the second time with a household detergent, and if the water runs clear that's it. If not then a third wash. Rinsing is the most labor and water...

Here's the bad news about old age, sometimes you miss things. Here's the good news, sometimes the things you miss or misinterpret turn out to be better than you originally took them to be. I'll be 62 in June. I have fully embraced being older, old, who knows? I know I like it. I thought the earliest I could collect Social Security benefits was age 62 1/2. I don't know where I got this from and don't care, cause guess what? I can begin collecting benefits at age 62. Three months away. Never before in my life have I had a guaranteed income. The thought of getting a check every month is better than sex (or the thought of sex, I won't give you more information than you can handle). I am not a person who needs to live on the beach, when I can visit the beach. I don't take any prescription medications and don't intend to. I love a good pot of beans, some home made corn bread and vegetables fresh from my garden. I used to be cute and fashionable...

This is my safety equipment, mask, rubber gloves, and tongs.  Today the sun didn't exactly shine. But there was enough sunlight to take photographs. I photographed six contemporary art quilt tops and ironed ten tshirts, blouses and jackets to go into the yasmintoo shops on etsy and 1000markets . Good week's work. A ten pound bucket of soda ash for fixing color. I buy the soda ash at a swimming pool supply store. I mix as much as I need for the entire batch of dyeing, before I begin dyeing. The dye equipment is red, so I don't confuse it with kitchen and cooking equipment.  The fabric for the Fantasy Floral quilts is completed, and the batting soaking as I type. The batting shrinks 3% when washed and even thought these quilts will probably be stretched on stretchers for wall hangings, I still envision someone deciding they need to be cleaned and washing them 10 years from now only to have the batting shrink when the top and back of the quilt don't. Urea. The ...

Yes, this is not about yasmintoo store listings. Yes, I have to list three items tomorrow to keep up with my monthly goal. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I teach a crafts class on Friday at an Adult Day Health Care Center. So Fridays are shot for the studio and yes, I know that means I should prepare two listings some other day of the week to have one item to list on Fridays. Next week will provide another opportunity to do this.  Then it rained today and I photograph outdoors. So tomorrow I will shoot items, maybe even shoot all of the items for the week and have it done.  Anyway, I emailed the editor at Valley Fiber Life to say that I would have an additional list of resources for her by the end of the week. (My week ends on Sunday and starts on Monday.)  Since I seem to be in tutorial mode, I thought I would send my tutorial resource list for fiber, fabric and other things I find interesting, and also share the list with you.  Fiber and Surface Textil...

This is another studio process post. I'll walk you through the block printing on fabric process for a yasmintoo quilt top. This is a work in progress. The fabric was dyed using the Adire process. The printing will be completed tomorrow and then the fabric will air cure for 24 hours before it is heat set. Then on to quilting.  Not quite a tutorial, but it will give you some idea of how fabric is block printed.  Block printing begins with a block, either cut from linoleum or wood. This is an image of the lino block cut, inked and ready for printing.  The ink is rolled out on glass with a brayer. When you hear a snapping sound the ink is ready to be rolled onto the block. I roll in an orderly fashion, turning the block clockwise and inking at least four times. When the block is fully inked you will hear the snapping sound.  When printing  repeats, the first print off the block needs to be tested on paper or fabric. The same is true after washing the block....

Marcia Young, a LinkedIn connection, an editor and director of   HRD Press , asked last month if I would become a contributor to the e-publication Valley Fiber Life . I was honored to be asked, and of course, I said yes. Currently, I'll contribute information for online resources, and in the future a few articles on the San Diego quilting scene, including Quilt Visions and Rosie's Calico Cupboard . From Valley Fiber Life's home page. "Valley Fiber Life is a thriving online magazine and community for fiber arts enthusiasts. We value traditional forms and methods as well as innovation in the realm of fiber art and textiles.  We inspire  our readers through fiber arts-related stories; connect artists, organizations and communities with each other; and consistently introduce new angles and ideas in order to enliven the world of fiber arts and encourage our readers to be creative and learn from each other." Meet the other contributors to Valley Fiber Life, an...

Today, was one of those days when life interferes with art. Grocery shopping, workmen, gardeners, howling dogs, and elderly mother acting out. Life. So, I got as far as cutting the quilt backing material, lining up the quilt top, batting and backing, and that was it on the quilt. This is the image above Between grocery shopping and the rest of the stuff, I did manage to rinse the fabric I put into low water immersion dye baths yesterday. One piece of fabric is the same old piece I've been talking about and showed images of yesterday after block printing. The second section of this piece I decided to dye one more time (could this possibly be the seventh dye bath?). I think these two pieces will be a pair. The diamond motif on the first is an African symbol from a symbolic group of the Yoruba people in Nigeria. The symbols are called Adinkra. The diamond shape represents the four points of life. On this piece, I'm thinking of using two blocks. Both are so called ...

As promised yesterday (you will never know how happy I am to be on schedule, both with promises and work), here is the first of the quilt tops from the Yasmintoo! Art Quilt line. This is the one that was dyed endlessly because I didn't like it at all through the first several dyebaths. The harlequin pattern is block printed using silver ink. It is very subtle from a distance. We'll see what happens when it is quilted. Tomorrow I will layout with the batting (100% cotton) and the backing fabric. Then I'll baste the three layers together by hand and start handing quilting from the center of the quilt, working my way out to the edges. Right now I'm thinking that the harlequin pattern will be hand quilted and the borders I'll do by machine. This is an organic process, so I'll just let the quilt grow as it chooses.