Tag Archives: trees

Always Ideas

I’m getting ready to teach a class on Sunday, these are strange times to be teaching live, but I really am looking forward to it.

As promised I have a new video. It seems the more I play with ways to get paint onto fabric the more ideas I get, and for me ideas lead to more ideas to try.

I’ll be announcing a new giveaway in October so if you are interested I hope you’ll stop by. For now enjoy the video, I hope it gives you some new ideas.

Fabric Play

I was thinking about making some winter cards so I was playing, with sun-printing (again) using leatherleaf ferns and Setasilk and then painting with Neo Color wax pastels. The first three are from the same large piece, I’m floating a card stock “window” over it to find an area I like.

I’m not sure where I’m going with those but I know the Neo Color pastel poinsettia is crying for some thread play. The pine cone was really an experiment and it’s just okay. I may have to fix the stem because the branch looks like a stem shadow (more pine needles?). I should have done a wash around it too; I don’t like the white area on the right. Maybe that would be a place for some white (tone on tone) embroidery or maybe free motion quilting.

      

And below is a poinsettia card I made for my aunt. I posted a card similar to this in the past but this one is a little different in that the leave/petals hang beyond the edge. I like this one better and I think my fabric quilled beads with French Knots make the perfect flowers.

As I was writing this post my daughter gave a little holler saying “Sky!” and if you know anything about my family you know that is the signal to go upstairs and out on our bedroom deck. It was to see this…

Always makes me want to paint fabric!

Bark…

judy madrona trunk
Photo taken by J. Krefting

Bark – The sound a dog makes (even though dogs can’t pronounce the letter “b” – or so I’ve been told!), the thin chocolatey confection, the outer covering of a tree. It is curious what we make of words.

It seems to me artists and nature-lovers are interested in, even fascinated with tree bark. I know I am. Is it because it takes on so many different appearances? The last time my Mister and I were in the Giant Redwood forest I took some photos of the bark on downed trees. I could have stayed there and studied bark all day! But I was not alone… and we did not stay.
redwood bark1redwood bark2 redwood bark3

I like to see if I can recreate bark on fabric… I’m still working at it…

fig 4
fig 5
TrunkWall

Sometimes I’m especially happy with the results…

CoexistenceCopyright
“Coexistence”

What do you think of bark?