O Happy Day!!

I have a very big grin on my face as I write this. Yesterday I received a book that I had ordered some time ago, called Innovative Threads - a decade of South African Fibre Art by Liza Gillespie. As I drove home from picking it up at the Post Office, I told my daughter about the book and that I was hoping to have work included in the *next* book done about SA Fibre Art in years to come.

I took the book from the envelope and thumbed through it and then my heart did the biggest leap.... I'm IN it! My work is in there on page 129. Little ole me is in that book along with all the fibre artists I am so in awe of! I whooped and then I burst into tears and then I floated around for the rest of the afternoon (at my day job, which I will probably have to hang onto for a while yet....)

Here is a very bad pic of the page I am on. PROOF. It's really true. Pinch me, so I know it's real, please.



So does this mean I am really an artist...................???

leftovers

These are chopped-up bits and pieces of leftover scraps from projects I've been working on. They'll be sandwiched between two pieces of sheer or netting and free-machined over to hold them all in. I've referred to this before, here. My scraps jar was just looking particularly colourful, so I tipped them all out into a box to take a photo! (Can you tell I am just loving my new camera...? :) )

Even more currently

I saw this side plate at Mr Price Home and fell in love with it instantly. These rounded squares and rectangles just intrigued me - aren't they just delightful? I put the plate down and thought, " I must remember this as inspiration", but the plate was having none of it and had me pick it up again and buy it (for the princely sum of R9.99). Here is what developed:

Hand-dyed background and fused commercial black cotton. The dyeing was a fun job I did outside, managing to also ruin a good work-shirt, because of course I wasn't going to spill any dye. I can't seem to locate any of the Procion Dyes that everyone talks about, so I just used the Lady Dye Cold Water dyes that I could buy at our local pharmacy. I had a blue, a red and a yellow and mixed various other colours from these. Then, not being able to find any squeeze bottles in which to put the dyes, I turned to what was available - a box of old, expired 20 ml syringes that had been discarded from work some time back. (Of course Magpie here had carried them home at the time and stashed them - see? sometimes I even USE the stuff I stash :) ) So I filled all the syringes with dye and then just syringed it randomly. The table surface was skew and the old shower curtain I was doing it on, was buckled - but it seemed to turn out OK anyway. So when I saw the plate, I KNEW what I would do with the multi-coloured cloth.
Below are two detail shots.

And now I am stuck, so it's hanging on the design wall, waiting for inspiration to strike. I don't know if it needs something in the corners, or if I should just quilt an echo of the shapes there... I will wait and see.

Currently

This piece of cloth, from my dyeing the other day, seemed just beautiful as it was, so I decided not to cut it at all, but just embellish it. I've beaded and embroidered and, as so often with textile work rich in texture, it looks better in real life that in a photo. But that is just too bad. It's been fun and much TV was watched while beading it.
Below is a detail shot, where you can see some of the embroidery. I'd like to add lots more (as I'm always tempted to do), but my youngest said "don't do anymore, Mom, it's enough." Should I listen to this? Does she have a point? Argh, I just dont' know.
I've now cut the backing (I was beading through the top and the batting only, without backing) and will quilt it some more - when I work out whether or not to embroider more!

For some reason, a snippet of the Leonard Cohen song, Suzanne, keeps going through my head whenever I look at it:
"...and the sun pours down like honey, on our lady of the harbour,
and she shows you where to look, among the garbage and the flowers,
there are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning,
they are leaning out for love, and they will lean that way forever...."

I may just try to incorporate this somehow.

Kuhleke Moya Wam

Xhosa for "It is well with my soul". From a hymn my daughter's school choir sings in Xhosa and English; hauntingly beautiful. I added the writing and it works well. I want to add some more text from another song they sing about Africa: "Guard her children, guide her leaders."

Fusing rocks! New work.

I'm a fan! I won't give up on piecing and applique just yet, but fusing is going to expand the possibilities and speed the process FANTASTICALLY! :)

Explosion in a confetti factory

Fractal seaweed - auditioning backgrounds (in the end, neither of these)

Pebble Path. I like it so far, but am totally stuck. Hugely intimidating white places!

Today is a good day to dye - Klingon saying

Past works 6

My very own camera

I just re-read what I wrote a couple of posts back about NEEDING a camera of my own.... and have that weird, almost creeped-out, prickly feeling. I just got one! I had emailed my brother (knowing he had one, and would have done all the research regarding specs) asking him what he thought was a good buy and ... to cut the story shorter... he said, "Oh, I got one as a gift when I subscribed to cable TV, here, you can have it!"

Whew, does it work, or what?????

Um , "Universe, I would like a new job, please, with the same pay but half the hours.Thank you"

Oh, let's just throw caution to the winds, and as an ex-girlfriend used to say "Go Big or Go Home":

"Universe, I would like a Personal Patron of the Arts, please, who will provide me with a salary every month, just to produce my art, so that I don't have to spend time at a job that I'm not really enjoying anymore. Thank you."