We live in exciting times!

If you grew up in the times of mimeograph machines and remember the smell of the purple ink on exams handed out by the teachers, if you remember learning shorthand to take dictation or using a Selectric typewriter, if you can remember advancing your camera's film to the next frame and letting the film roles pile up in a drawer before getting them developed, then you can relate to my view of exciting times as far as the Internet, digital photography and Spoonflower.

I still find it difficult to believe that images we create can be uploaded and reproduced on fabric.  And all the different image programs available to edit our creations is wonderful.

That I can do this

Tiny bird done with acrylics and  Q-tips

and it turns into this design on Spoonflower  is still amazing to me.  Now I just need to master the art of the seamless repeat or even better, a multi directional fabric design!

Meditation

There is a willow tree by our red handled water pump by the kitchen door.  It planted itself and it appears to be a very intelligent tree having taken root next to a dripping water source.  I enjoy watching it change through the seasons.  In spring, its leaves take on that new green that only newly unfurled leaves can have, then the willow's leaves grow into their beautiful summer green until the blast of July.  Now my willow is losing leaves.  It isn't dormant yet but I can tell her energy is focused into just staying alive in these 100 plus degree days of high summer.

On Spoonflower there is a design I created to honor this wonderful willow. It's a photograph of the beautiful willow leaves taken into a posterized view.  On top of the leaves is a poem called "Meditation."  The companion fabric design can be seen here.  These designs are part of my "Fat Quarters Collection" on Spoonflower.

I made a pillow using two fat quarter of Spoonflower Kona cotton.

Repeat design of willow leaves for "Meditation."

Pillow made from the "Meditation" fat quarter on Spoonflower.

Golden Lily

This morning I made two fabric designs available for sale on Spoonflower .  They are part of my Fat Quarters Collection.

The two designs started out based on a photograph like this:

It's a "shaky hand" photograph taken of the yard light down by our sheep shed.  I never intend the "shaky hands" effect.  I'm usually intent on catching some image that never comes out.  However, in working with this photograph, many colors were discovered as the "bumping" effect was used.  I really had to work with the image, though, to get the design just right.  At first, too many actual pixels showed up along the edges of my design giving it a rough edge.  I had to work to get those rough edges to disappear.  Sometimes the rough edges wouldn't be so evident on the digital image I uploaded to Spoonflower.  It wouldn't be until I ordered a proff of the design that I would see those rough edges. I wanted the "Golden Lily" to be smooth.  My plans were to size it for a fat quarter.  Eventually, I downsized the design so it would be centered on a fat quarter, rather than stretching all across the fabric.  The rough edges disappeared and the design looked like a smooth golden lily.

The Golden Lily designs can be seen here and here.

Thank you, Spoonflower

Well, the $1.00 a swatch days are over but I enjoyed them while they lasted.  Because of Spoonflower's color change, designers on Spoonflower were offered the chance to purchase as many swatches as they wanted for a $1.00 each instead of the regular $5.00 a swatch or $1.20 a swatch if in a collection.  Because of this offer, I was able to see a lot of my designs on fabric swatches.  Thank you for the opportunity, Spoonflower.

The design "Midnight Swirl" can be seen here.

Aviation

Spoonflower is having a contest I can relate to.  Some contests don't appeal to me, but then there are others like the Extinct Animals contest or the Cake Collage contest that I find exciting.  There is an upcoming contest about aviation which I knew immediately I wanted to enter.  I have an old picture of my great grandfather's showing him and other relatives standing next to an airplane that had landed in my great grandfather's pasture in Cowley County, Kansas.  The picture is from the first or second decade of the 1900s because my grandmother saw it when she was a young girl and she was born in 1900.  I created a design using that picture and the pillow shown above is what I made from the fat quarter of "Look What Fell from the Sky."  The designs can be viewed in my "Carson" collection on Spoonflower.  

I made this video about a year ago built around the photograph featured in my "Aviation" design.

Change of Life

I have a collection on Spoonflower called "Change of Life."  Even though women of a certain age are told to embrace this new chapter in our lives and that 60 is now 50, 50 is now 40, etc., I really feel this is being dishonest to women.  We might be healthier and have longer life expectancies than our foremothers, but, frankly, most of our foremothers didn't live long enough to go through the "change of life."

A design I did for this collection is called Hot Flash.  The fat quarter version can be seen here  and the Hot Flash repeat (I think Hot Flash repeat is just funny -- who really wants a repeat of a hot flash!!) design can be viewed here.

The whole collection is based on a single mask I created a few years ago.  Freaky, huh? At least that's what my husband thinks.  It's covered in bleeding tissue paper.  The eyes are photographs of my eyes.  I made the mask to represent the many changes I was experiencing:  children leaving home, going to college, getting married, and having children of their own.  My husband and I have become the spectators instead of the participants in our children's lives.

I appreciate that I've lived long enough to experience the change of life.  Can't say I'm particularly enjoying it, but there are worse things, aren't there?

I think every gynecologist's waiting room should have a throw pillow of "Hot Flash."  They could then ask their patients, "Is this how you feel?"  :-)

I just noticed the last time I published a post to this blog on July 3, the topic was the same.  Ha.  Now that's freaky!

Change of Life

I am slowly rolling out a new collection of designs on Spoonflower called "Change of Life."  The designs are based on one papier mache mask which I did several years ago.  The mask was covered with bleeding tissue paper, then coated with a clear acrylic coating.  In the eyes sockets, I placed two small square mirrors.  On top of those mirrors are images of my eyes. My husband and children find the mask creepy, but my grandchildren love it. The slide into menopause is as traumatic as changing from a little girl to a teenager.  So many changes, so many different feelings, so many highs and lows.  I tried to reflect this in this mask.