Some Things I've Been Doing

I spent most of the summer experimenting with fabric painting techniques.  When I was in graduate school, I worked with Procion Dyes and painted my quilts with them.  Later, I became worried about the adverse health effects for long term exposure (I'll admit I was not always as careful as I should have been.)  I used acrylics for a long time, but did not like the texture that they left on the fabric, so this summer I tried a variety of inks. The six quilts or paintings above are the best of the results.

I pieced the backgrounds,using mostly 1"to 1.5" strips and then "drew" the shells with my sewing machine.  I then painted the shells using the inks.  Finally, I stretched them on 16" canvas stretchers.

This is now hanging in my bedroom over my bed.  I painted the wall that pumpkin color when we moved in the house, but had not found just the right thing to hang there.

We've just returned from a trip to Hawaii and I'll post some pictures of our trip later.  Right now I'm recovering from a terrible cold that I caught near the end of the trip and trying to get all the laundry finished so that I can get back in the studio next week.