my cloth book

this is the cover to my autobiographical cloth book. you can see the whole thing by following the link to my site.

finishing!

I finished all three windows, the cloth book, one more small handmade art book, and four silk wall hangings as well as some 15 new note cards, 5 new 11x14s, and 10 new 16 x20s, that's alot of work.

I solved the problems with banner printing on Epson's R2400 on my mac and ironing onto freezer paper and it seems easy now.
the trick with ironing onto freezer paper is to encourage the silk to be still and straight with pins or fabric tape or something. then lay the freezer paper over it and encourage that to stay in place too. i leave a two inch lead of freezer paper on the front edge to compensate for the apple/epson driver problem mentioned earlier of starting to print two inches after the beginning of the paper.

To get the banner printing to work on the R2400 with my mac OS 10.3.9, i define a custom paper sizes (in page set up) using 13.14 as the width and putting an extra couple of inches on the tale end to properly position the paper. (Note, be sure to actually select your newly defined paper after creating it cuz, at least on my set up, it doesn't automatically do that.

Then when i go to print, cuz my silk is not 13 inches wide, i'm sure to un-check "center image" in the first print dialogue box and give it a small margin because of the edge of the silk is not exactly on the edge of the paper when i'm done.

when i send it to print i make sure that the banner options are available and check "save banner" (or what ever it is) so that it won't draw a cutting line at the end of the image. I set it for thick paper which reduces smudging and black streaks form the stiff silk touching ink pads and what not. I set the ink density to =10% because my tests were light.

Then i feed it through the manuel roll slot. I brought over a chair that was slightly higher that the slot so that the silk when up and the headed down into the slot at a good angle. on the exit side i did not want the silk to drop down too quickly as this causes the stiff paper holding the silk to bow back up into the printer and increase the chances for dirty smudges. So i brought out the little arms in the exit slot and i built a soft slow bridge of scrap paper and books up and over my scanner. nice set up.
pictures soon

what NOW?!?!?

for my cloth book I've printed a bunch of images on lazertran so i don''t have to sew quite so much.

the sewing's getting hard. the more dolls and other stuff get sewn on the harder it is to put the next thing on, I've taken to rolling up the dolls etc in the sides of the book like a scroll and pinning them with clothes pins so i can move the sides through the sewing machine without destroying the things already sewed.

i was sewing a doll's clothes on, watching the little thumb twist screw that holds the needle on bumping into the doll's head. I watch carefully, worried that it was going to ruin the doll's head. well it all went fine, i finished that and moved on to sew on the next then when BANG! CRACK! POW!

the sewing needle starts to fall out.

I stopped the machine pronto and nothing got broken but it sure came close!

the little thumb screw had slowly been unscrewed by bumping into the doll's head.

every step is an adventure!

it's so absured it's funny all the things i can stumble accross to break!

getting it done

In the last week i have been very busy getting realy for open studio. I continue to work on my cloth book, the windows photo prints and i've started work on a silk scarf. I'm fixing the templats for the backs of cards which have the old address and getting a mailing out. here are some stories to share:

I'm bummed cuz i broke one of my windows today. I was measuring and putting down pieces of tape for the layout when i leaned too hard on the glass. the crack was so load!

i'm ok about it i guess. but i couldn't help but think about using it broken as symbolic of my fucked up life - i really do break things alot! But even after i taped it up so i could safely more it, it feels very unstable and dangerous.

the cloth book is coming along, considering how little time i have to work on anything, I'm very frustrated with the Jewsih holidays taking time. but i go through this every year.

I'm wondering about whether i should do the street fair at christmas time again.. i think i'd have to renew my license in addition to the fee for the space..

I destroyed my shoulders the other day. "working out" with three pound weights. caused my arthritis to flare up and it hurt hard for a a couple of days. shish!

working with cloth

i just made two of my very own tea dyed fabrics. very cool. one is a plain cotton for my dolls that go in the cloth book the other is some lace i'd cut from a curtain that was way too white to be attractive. I may use some of it in the book and save some for another mixed media brojest.

the lace i dyed in plain old tea which came out a mellow tan. the cotton i added a bit of chai tea which made it much pinker. I tried dyeing a ssoft stretch terry cloth but it ended up just looking like a dirt rag. I tried dyeing it two different times. I don't understand the difference. I'm going to try to rescue it with a coffee dye. I wonder if i can use instandt!

yesterday i finished deconstructing the canvas closet organizer and started sewing together the cloth book using the main portion of the canvas - sewing some batting onto one side, stitching where the page breaks will be.

I'm making it a concertina (continuous zigzag) but floppy, in the style of a baby book i saw once. I started working on an image from when i was recovering. my mom took it while i was taking pictures at muir woods. I like the symbolism, but it's too small not enough info so yesterday's photoshopping goes in the trash. I have others.

Ok be truthful, how much do you fuss with the little tiny threads and hair like fuzz on you silk???? This is definitely bringing out the OCD in me! ha ha ha

I'm getting gorgeous prints on the chine stuff i got from color textiles for my window. i'm excited!

oh, check out this art in a real life gallery:

here's a mixed media artisit who incorporates old photos of her family in her work
http://www.bquayartgallery.com/archive/rayner2006.html (click on the images for bigger versions).

I particularly like the cyanotypes and the looking glass.

and

http://www.bquayartgallery.com/archive/rayner.html
some of her older work.
the thing that looks like a candelabra is filled with wax encased photos of her family.

here's a different artist at the same gallery.
http://www.bquayartgallery.com/archive/austin.html
I see the note that the piece is sold and i really want to know for how much!!