Oooh, Shiny!

How I Spent my Sunday Afternoon

It's been a really busy few months. I've been working a lot, and many of my weekends  for the last few months have been taken up with things like bronchitis, working straight through, and being evacuated from my house due to a wildfire. As a result, my kiln has been languishing in the garage since Don headed home.

Yesterday, I declared a day of "I am making stuff and not talking to anyone (except Dan)." It was glorious, and just what I needed to recharge my batteries.

I did a little bit of soldering practice as I waited for the kiln to heat up. I managed to finish four new coasters using 4" bevels and Japanese paper. I'll get some photos of them once I get the feet  on.

The main attraction was doing some enameling, though. I gave myself the goal of making small color samples of all of my opaque colors. I managed to get through all 36, and in the process got a bit more comfortable working with the kiln. Here's a shot of my results:

 

These are destined to be glued onto the tops of the enamel storage bottles for easy reference. And I think I'm going to make some more of them to play with as earrings or bracelet components.

Beginning Enameling

Now that I have a kiln, I am exploring ways that I can use it. Enameling is a craft I have long admired, but not really considered to be something I could do myself. I am fortunate to have access to some great classes through the Adult Ed program in Santa Barbara, and this term I decided to give enameling a try.

My kiln is optimized for glass fusing, but with a little ingenuity on Don's part we have been able to make it very workable for enameling as well. Good thing; I'd have a hard time justifying a second kiln.

I'm a little over halfway through the session of 8 classes. These are the projects I've made so far.

Technique: Swirling

For our first project, we fired the enamel with torches, so we could see what happened as it went through the different stages of fusing. After getting two coats of the base layer on, we laid lumps and strings of enamel on top, heated them, and swirled them with a metal probe. I think it takes practice to create attractive designs this way. Mine is hardly lovely, but it was good as a learning piece.

Technique: Stenciling

For the second assignment, we went through the full process of applying counterenamel on the back (2 coats) then two layers of the base color on the front. The stencil technique itself is surprisingly simple. You cut the stencils out of plain paper, and dip them in water to adhere them to the base. Then, sift your colored enamel over the stencil, then fire for a slightly short cycle. Repeat for your next color(s), then when you are done put it in for a standard 2 minutes to fuse fully.

This is my own design, derived from a photo I took of a dogwood, much like the design I used for my glass fusing experiment.

Technique: Cloisonne
Now this is the good stuff - what many people think of when they hear enameling mentioned. You get to bend fine wires into intricate shapes, meticulously place them on the base, and then painstakingly fill the cells with color. Right up my alley. Here's my piece after last week's class. There's silver foil over the base, and the wires are fused into a clear layer of enamel on top of that. Next to the piece is the pattern I used, colored in to test out an idea for a color scheme.

And here's where this piece is at after last night's class. This is with three layers of each color applied. I'll have to do at least a couple more to get the cells completely full. I'm really enjoying this technique! Looking forward to working more with this and the stenciling in my own kiln.

Oh, and is anyone surprised that I used a paisley as my first design?

Tummy Warmer

This cozy little package contains a blue gel hot/cold pack. I designed these as a way to have a more comfortable thing to hold when you need a hot pack, and also so the whole thing can go into the microwave to warm up.

The yarn is some handspun I made from a batt purchased at Woolbearers in New Jersey. It's a wool/silk mix, and I initially spun it fine. I made this earlier in my spinning career, and I was not thrilled with the unevenness. It was not really fine enough for lace, and not sturdy enough for socks. I decided to try making it into a cabled yarn, and I love the way it turned out.

I made the pattern up as I went. First, I made a plain rectangle slightly larger than the size of the pack. Then I made two pieces for the back, each half the size of the rectangle, plus a little bit in garter stitch to form the overlap in the back. I joined them together by picking up stitches along the long sides of the front and two back rectangles, then knitting them together and carrying on in garter stitch to make the flange. The last step was to do the same along the short sides, to finish the border.

The hot pack slides into the gap in the back, just like a pillow sham.

On the Design Wall

So far, 2009 has been very busy on the creative front, and it looks like that will keep on going. I did a lot of quilting with my sister when I was home for Christmas, and I have also finished an exchange quilt for my group on time. The group has just decided to to an exchange AND a challenge in the coming year, and I have another challenge quilt started for the larger guild.

Here's what was on the wall this past month:

The circles in the center are the blocks for the exchange I just finished. I'll have more detail on that later. Counterclockwise from there, we have a small landscape applique that has been waiting for borders for far too long, test blocks for the exchange, the dogwood applique blocks that I have completed so far, new pinwheels project, and more blocks for the exchange.

I'm heading back East this weekend for a three-day quilting retreat, so I should make some progress on other projects that have been lingering for a while.

Learning about Fusing Glass

So, I accidentally bought a kiln last month. I've been thinking about this for a couple of years, and the fact that I have my brother as a live-in tutor for two months finally pushed me to get one. There are many things one can do with a kiln, like glass fusing, annealing glass beads, enameling, and firing precious metal clay.

Why, yes. I do intend to try all of these.

I'm focusing on the glass for now, so I can take advantage of my brother's experience. Here's the first fused piece I made:

It's an original design, created years ago from one of my photos of a dogwood. I've used the same design for quilting, and am making an appliqued quilt from it.

Here's a closer shot that shows the texture of the centers:

This one went so well, I immediately made another one, from a different design from another photo:

I think this one needs some tweaking, but I'm pretty happy with it and will be trying it again with other colors.

Adventures in Glass

My brother is out here for the better part of this winter, helping us with some meaty projects around the house. He's also exerting considerable influence on me to act on my latent interest in working with glass.

He's been giving me soldering lessons, and I've been making these little glass ornaments:

They're quite simple to put together with pre-cut bevels, some origami paper, and copper foil like you would use for making a stained glass panel. 

The other project I'm working on is 3-D: a star-lantern based on an icosahedron. The first step is making 20 points out of 3 triangular bevels each. Once these are assembled, I need to figure out how to join them into the lantern shape.

What, me start with a simple, beginner glass project? :)

Baby Quilt

I finished the baby quilt for Tim's Aunt Annie in time for her baby shower. It's based off a design from a book Jean has (I can't remember the name of the book). The idea is that you use conversational/novelty prints with connnecting path blocks between them. You can start at one square and choose a path to follow to another square, and you make up a story along the way. I modified the design of the quilt a little bit. The original design was a bit scattered for my taste, so I made the quilt a little more regular and geometric, so it looked pretty as well as having an interesting function. It was fun to make. I don't usually use novelty prints, but it's been fun collecting them for this quilt. I think the idea of being able to create stories from a quilt is so neat, and I hope Annie's baby will like it when she's old enough to appreciate stories.

Front of the quilt:                        

Back of the quilt:                         

The backing fabric is a Laurel Burch fabric. Annie and Paolo were undecided between a forest theme or an ocean theme for the baby's room. (Paolo works as a marine biologist, and Annie is an advocate against illegal trade of endangered birds.) This fabric has both jungle/forest themes, birds etc. mixed with ocean themes, fish and mermaids. It seemed perfect.

The label:                                    

I really like this fish design. I've used it for a few different things now. Although here it inadvertently turned out looking like a goldfish cracker. Ohwell, at least it's a kids quilt.

The Sheers are Dead, Long Live the Sheers

When we first moved in, I made some sheers for our patio door out of some very cheap gauze curtain panels. It was a classic case of penny wise, pound foolish. First, I had a lot of trouble getting the curtain tape on so they could be used with the traverse rod we were installing. Then, the traverse rod bent just a bit when we put it up, and never worked smoothly. The last straw was when the curtains got caught in the old aluminum patio doors and tore - just a month or two after we hung them.

We scrapped the traverse rod, and got a second regular curtain rod and some clip rings. I bought some good quality linen and made nicer panels. They look, and hang, much better.

Once that was done, I ripped the old sheers into roughly 1/2 yard pieces (with extreme prejudice) and used them for a test run of jelly jar dyeing with muted tones.

I'm fairly happy with these colors, though the blue and red didn't combine too well to make purples. I'll need to figure that out before I do a set in better fabric.

Needle Cases

A commenter on Flickr asked how I made these, which reminded me that I had started a post about them  several months ago. (Oy.)

I didn't take any step by step photos as I made them, but here's the general order of operations:

1. Cut same-size rectangles from your outer fabric, interfacing, and lining fabric. I used a fairly stiff fusible, since I wanted a good amount of body.
2. Cut same-size rectangles for one or more pockets and pocket linings.
3. Cut same-size rectangles for the flp and flap lining that are about 1/2-3/4" narrower than the outer fabric (on the long dimension) and about 1/2 the height of the outer fabric.
4. With right sides together, seam the pocket and pocket lining together along one long edge.
5. This part is tricky to explain without photos... to attach the pockets to the lining, I put the assembled pocket and lining on top of the main lining, with the pocket lining side up. I aligned the pocket so that the raw edge was toward the top of the main lining, and 1/4" higher than I wanted the bottom of the pocket to be. Most of the pocket was extended past the lower edge of the main lining piece. I stitched 1/4" from the raw edge and then flipped the pocket up and pressed. For the ones with multiple pockets, I started with the one closest to the top of the case and worked down.
6. To make the pocket divisions, I just stitched down the pockets at somewhat regular intervals. Since you need to fold the case into fourths, it is helpful to stitch along those lines, and then stitch in other divisions from there as desired.
7. To make the flap, I put the outer flap piece and lining right sides together, and stitched around three of the four sides, leaving one long edge open. Then I turned the flap right side out and pressed it.
8. I added the ribbon for the closure at this point, by folding the fabric in fourths and then stitching down the ribbon along one of these lines, centered from top to bottom.
9. To assemble the case, I stacked the outer fabric (with interfacing) face down, the lining and pockets face up, and the flap face up. I then basted all of these layers together. Next, I finished the edges with double-fold binding. I used straight-grain, but you could use bias also. I like to make my own binding to match, but you can certainly use purchased binding just as easily.
10. Last step is to make a fabric-covered button and stitch it down near the "fourth" line opposite the one you sewed the ribbon on.

Hope this makes sense. You'll want to choose your own measurements based on what you want the case to hold. I also engineered mine to work with fat quarters, so I could use  fabric from my quilting stash.  I made three cases, one for circular needles, one for double pointed needles and one for crochet hooks. These are not the first cases I've made for needles and hooks, but they are the most successful ones. Here are some tips, based on things I learned the hard way with previous iterations:

• Make the top flap nice and deep, otherwise it will not keep the needles from falling out if you pick the case up from the bottom.
• Make the pockets for the circular needles nice and deep, otherwise the needles will constantly be trying to sproing out of them.
• Make sure you measure the depth of the pockets for hooks and DPNs so that your needles don't stick up past the top of the case.

Sister Bracelet

I've finally finished this and mailed it to my sister, so I can post a photo.

Does this design look familiar, Melissa? I've made four of them now. I think it's out of my system. :)