Actual Artistic Content!!

I have had a special project in the back of my brain for several years, and it's been delayed by various other projects - you know, quilts for SAFE House, baby shower gifts, quilts for raffles, etc. etc. etc. Well, last month at the Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild meeting, our speaker was Judy Coates-Perez, and there was part of her talk that broke a logjam in my brain. So, this past weekend, I pulled out these:

In case you don't recognize this, this is a sanitary napkin cover - one of the local grocery stores has a house brand napkin covered with a nonwoven cloth-like covering. I saved a bunch of these covers last summer for this project. I also saved some used dryer sheets. This weekend, I worked up a variety of shades of brown fabric paint and painted a bunch of these.

Then, I pulled out some glass blocks that I retrieved from a lab that was shutting down at my workplace a few years back (most of these were wrapped in paper - the ones that weren't got washed first) - I like to scavenge, in case you can't tell.

Then, I did a variety of dabbing, dribbling, brushing, swirling, etc. on the blocks and on the fabrics with gold fabric paint, gesso, resist, and water.

I got a variety of effects.









I'll have more about this in another post.

In other news, I had a birthday recently, and Hubby Dearest bought me a spinning wheel! We got it from Heavenly Handspinning, and I have been studiously working at learning to control the wheel and get consistent results. Next week, I hope to put fiber I really care about on to the wheel. I am SO excited. This is something I've wanted to learn for at least 20 years, ever since I saw a wheel in the home of a fellow Habitat for Humanity volunteer. Unfortunately, it was not a close enough acquaintance for me to pursue my curiosity at the time. Here are some beauty shots:

Two notes: the chair is from my mother's old sewing machine - I've been using it as a shelf in the sewing room, but it's just the right height for this purpose and looks nice in the living room. We moved an easy chair from that space (Hubby now has that chair in his study), so we needed a cat lounge. I wrapped a crocheted blanket in an old sheet and put it next to the chair for the Big Guy. Instead, the Big Guy moved downstairs to his favorite chair, and Baby Boy has chosen the new lounge as his new space.

Speaking of Baby Boy, here is the ritual cat picture - Baby Boy on Tuffet.