2008 Weekly Mixed Media Project

This is the front side of my 31st Weekly Mixed Media piece this year. Below is the back side.




This is a Passion Vine. I had never seen this flower before, until a few weeks ago. Some friends had it growing on their deck, and I really liked it. I decided to it as my inspiration for this week's felted/mixed media piece, and also use my new shredding scissors when making part of it.


I cut two 10" x 10" pieces of green pre-felted wool fleece, and put one on top of the other. Then I cut eight white pre-felted pieces for the pedals, and rounded the edges on one end. I placed them in the center of the green square, rotating them around a tan pre-felted wool fleece circle, which was already placed on the green.


Then I cut a piece of purple pre-felted wool fleece, at least 3" by 5". (The piece shown above is longer than 5", but all I needed was 5".)


I used the shredding scissors to cut the center of the flower. Note that the scissors didn't do a very good job of cutting the fleece, but that's OK. It made an interesting cut, and the imperfections were fine.


I took 5" in length of the cut purple, and made a circle out of it, spreading the cut ends out as evenly as possible. I also added a few pieces of yellow pre-felted fleece in the center of the flower.


Then I slowly needle punched it from the top down, going over each section many times to felt it tightly. Notice how the "pedals" moved, as did everything else, but that's OK. I turned it over a few times and felted the green parts (only) from the other side. and felted all of the front some more.


This is what the back side looked like after felting.

When I was happy with the felting, I switched to my sewing machine. Using maroon thread. I started sewing stitches from the center of the flower, and sewed out about an inch, reversed direction to stitch back over the same line, and then rotated to repeat so all of the stitched radiated out of the center. Then I repeated it again using white thread, sewing the lines about 2" long.

Using a 6" square template, I chose the section of my design to crop, traced it with a pencil, and trimmed it to size.

You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.

Shredding Scissors

I have been gifted a pair of "shredding scissors" by my son and his girlfriend! How awesome! The art possibilities are endless. I used them a little when I made this week's mixed media/felted piece. I'll try to post the results tomorrow.

A Woman's Place

My piece, Skeletal Fence Series #5, will be on exhibit at a show called "A Woman's Place", at the Bromfield Gallery, in Boston MA, from July 30 - August 23.

The show is presented by the Woman’s Caucus for Art (WCA)/Boston Chapter, and includes WCA Artists from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut.

""A Woman's Place" is a phrase that prior to 1970's feminism, and perhaps even today, conjures up images of domesticity and of a time when women were expected to only inhabit a limited sphere. This exhibit refutes that belief by inhabiting, and commenting on, a number of realms - where the only restrictions are self-imposed. With painting, mixed media, sculpture, photography, installation and new media, WCA artists defy limitations."

The gallery is located at 450 Harrison St. in Boston. The Opening Reception is August 1st, from 5:30 - 7:30pm, and I will be there. There is also a Closing Reception on August 23rd, from 3 - 5pm, which I hope to attend.

Deka Fabric Paints?

I have acquired more Deka Permanent Fabric Paints, though they are different than the other jars I have had, some since 1982, in a few ways.

The jars are shorter and wider. My old jars, and the Orange in the "new" jar, smell like ammonia. The rest of the "new" jars have an unpleasant smell that I can't identify. It's not a chemical smell, but some sort of strange non-toxic paint smell. The labels on the old and new jars are similar, accept that the new jars have a "No acute or chronic health hazards - Label conforms to ASTM D4236" statement. I did always wonder how the ammonia could make Deka non-toxic, so maybe the formula and jars were changed right before they stopped selling it in the US? I don't know.


In late April, I acquired four bottles (shown above). Note the different style of jar.


To make sure that the new jars were actually fabric paints, and not just some poster paint in Deka jars, I painted small square patches of each color, and let it dry. Then I ironed the fabric for one minute to set the paint, and washed it. No running of paint when wet. That was good. I then ironed the fabric dry so I could find out quickly what the "hand" (the texture of the paint on the fabric) felt like after washing, and that was fine.


One thing of interest to me about Deka paints is how they soak in to the fabric, and what they look like on the back (or wrong) side of the fabric. All of the colors soaked through exactly the same on the back side except the "raging red" and the "dusty rose" which were more opaque paints and wouldn't soak through that much anyway.

Deka Permanent Fabric Paints are my absolute favorite fabric paints, and they have not been available for sale in the US for at least ten years.

I am always on the search for bottles of Deka paints, especially 8oz bottles or larger. If you, or anyone you know, have any jars of Deka Permanent Fabric Paints you'd like to get rid of, please email me at jeanne@jeannewilliamson.com. I would love to acquire them.

Another Fabric Lover

I'm not the only one in my family who likes to sew, and play with fabric. My sister-in-law, Rebecca Ostroff, is an aerialist in the circus, and she not only sews and beads her own costumes, but she also uses fabric in her act. This year she is performing with the Walker Brothers Circus. Yesterday and today, they were in Tiverton, RI. Since it's very close to where I live, we went to see her.


I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a good picture of one of the costumes she wears while performing on the trapeze. She did the beading by hand. Oh well. It's hard to take pictures of a moving object in the dark when you don't have a good camera.

2008 Weekly Mixed Media Project

Greetings from the rain forests of eastern Massachusetts, where we have had torrential downpours every day this week. Yesterday alone we got 4.38" in Natick, the town I live in! To keep myself from getting totally depressed, I took some time to make my 30th Weekly Mixed Media piece this year. The top photo is the front side and the photo below is the back side.



I wanted to use the top and bottom leftover scraps from last week's piece as the basis of this week's. Last week's scraps originally came from scraps from my Recycled Fence Series, which is recently finished new work.


To create this piece, I cut one 10" x 10" piece of grey pre-felted wool fleece, and one tan piece of the same size. I placed the grey on top of the tan, and needle punched it, turned it over, and repeatedly felted it at least 4 times per side, until it felt solidly felted.


Then I placed scraps from last week's piece on top of the tan side of the felt, and felted the off-white fleece sections only. I was careful not to felt the thin strips of stitched and painted cotton, because I always break a needle when I do that, and needles are very expensive to replace.


To attach the stitched/painted cotton scraps to the felt, I used my sewing machine and sewed a small zig-zag stitch around all of the edges of each strip. I REALLY like how the zigzag stitch blends the stitched fabric to the felt. If you saw it in real life you'd see everything fits together so nicely. It's hard to tell from these pictures.


Since my bobbin thread was white, you can see what the sewing looked like from the back, and also where I felted the off-wite fleece.

I then used a 6" square template to center the piece for my final design. I guess I'm in an asymmetrical mood this week. I traced the square with a pencil, and cut it to size.

You can see my 2008 weekly mixed media work (so far) on my website, and read about my process/progress here on my blog.

Recycled Fence Series - Continued

Yesterday I posted images of twelve pieces in my "Recycled Fence Series #19, all 12" x 12". I also created eight pieces in this series that are 6" x 6", shown below.









All of the Recycled Fence Series #19 pieces are on my website for further review. The 6" Square pieces are for sale for $115 each, and the 12" square pieces are $325 each. Please contact me at jeanne@jeannewilliamson.com for availability.

On July 21st, I discussed how these pieces got their start.

Recycled Fence Series

The Recycled Fence Series grew out of my desire to recycle older pieces from my Orange Construction Fence Series that I didn't think were successful. My focus is to create new abstractions from other geometric patterns.

The twelve pieces below all came out of Orange Construction Fence Series #19, and are named Recycled Fence Series #19, and then the number of the piece. They are all 12" x 12".













The Recycled Fence Series is a medley of strips of stitched monoprinted fabric with textures of orange construction fences, and painted and hand stamped shapes.

Yesterday I showed how these pieces got their start.

All of the 12" x 12" Recycled Fence Series #19 pieces are on my website, for further review, and are for sale for $300 each. Please contact me at at jeanne@jeannewilliamson.com for availability.

There are eight more in this series, all 6" x 6", which I'll post pictures of soon.

Recycling Older Work

In 2003, I made Orange Construction Fence Series #19. It was 38.5" wide x 59" high. I wasn't very happy with it, so I put it aside.


In 2004, I worked on it some more, adding more "color", to see if I could rescue it. I thought it was improved, but I still wasn't in love with it.

In 2007, I cut it up in to twelve pieces and added more paint, working on three from each of the four "rows" and thinking I'd possibly show them by row, or reassemble the whole piece. Below is the result.





By 2007, my work and focus had changed, and I was not happy with the direction I was heading with these twelve sections, so I put it aside once again.

A few weeks ago, I decided to re-work the twelve pieces again. I started by adding even more paint on top of what I had done in 2003, 2004 and 2007, but I was still not satisfied. I painted on the front of almost every piece, and on the back of some, letting the paint soak through to the front. (I discuss how to do this in my book, The Uncommon Quilter.)



Still unhappy, I decided that there was no saving these pieces without drastic action. So, I got a ruler and scissors, and I cut each section in to 2" wide vertical strips, and decided to rearrange and swap strips between two sections at a time, and then sew them together. Above is the detail of one of the sections, from the back side. It gives me ideas for the future.

I will try to post the final results of this project tomorrow. Stay tuned.