Dancing Crow Designs

nine patch, more or less

March 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

5 felt circles from a gift bag, 4 felt circles from a piece of felted wool jersey (it is purpler than it looks - I'm having color troubles) some black embellished circles and 4 acid green mother of pearl dangles.

ETA (Edited to add) the circles are about 2", so the whole object is roughly six inches on a side. The connections are satin stitch on the sewing machine with my (new! gorgeous!) purple variegated thread.

It looks nine-patchy, right?

March 30

March 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A collection of experiments, all stitched together -

The black felt was an old piece of wet felting from a workshop that was old enough to be used for something else, so I experimented with acid dye (instead of just using food coloring and vinegar) to get a nice deep black. It was no harder than using the food coloring!

The white felt was to see how hard it was to make a thin, fine piece of wet felted material. I have made several pieces of dry felted material with the machine, and they are nice but profoundly perforated. Plus I wanted to incorporate rayon threads for !shiny! and the embellisher was not working well for that part, so I slapped this piece together. It went quicker than I remember, I think because I was working small and thin. The shiny came out more discreet than I was hoping for, but clearly present. While it was drying, I noticed I still had my washers from a series of rust dyeing projects, so I laid a row of them along the edge and got a series of lovely rusty donut shapes.

The end result was free machine stitched together in between two layers of soluble stabilizer. The stabilizer is stitched into the project and then rinses out. Theoretically. It takes a lot of rinsing, and until it is gone it acts more like starch and stiffens the project substantially.

One more March felting piece, and then April! I think I need to return to my 4" squares for April, I'm losing focus...

March 29 tail

March 29 tail
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Enchanted by a call for exhibitors for Mortal Plush, I have started a couple of creatures... This is a tail. More to come.

wretched machines

AAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh?!?!?!

virus

bakson

titanic balance

titanic balance
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

We think Caroline, our teacher, invented this one, so we had to give it a good name. Aerin took some videos, but they are sideways, and I don't think they can be rotated...

haircut

haircut
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I realized recently that the last real haircut I had was during the Clinton administration.

In a fit of spring fever (64 fahrenheits, low 20s for the rest of the world) walking around town in my shirtsleeves, I checked myself into a Salon purely on account of the green on the walls. It was the same brilliant green I've been staring at all spring. The color of the beads on the past triptych. The lady was great. Although I think she liked my haircut better than I did. I remain dubious, although it is nice to have it short for spring.

True, this is only peripherally fiber related, except I have this huge hank of my hair I was staring at wondering if it felted. So I will address it with the machine tonight and report tomorrow. I suppose it must do something interesting or all those dredlocks wouldn't work properly. Maybe I can put beads on it.

sleeping (with the ) fish?

March 25
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was inspired by Tracerapotts's picture on Flickr (go look now - I love it).  I used some of the left over felt I made using the embellisher and cut it into pieces. The orange face was a nest of orange dyed yarn felted aggressively, made separately and applied. I needed it after some over-aggressive felting left a giant orange and black hole where the face should be. It isn't quite done yet, but I am not sure how hard to pursue the idea that really came from someone else.

March 23 final

March 23 final
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

After I finally got most of the stabilizer rinsed out, it looks more like this.

Quilt show mosaic

Quilt show mosaic
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Yesterday I biked to Amherst to join friends for lunch and the Hands Across the Valley Quilt Show. The lunch was fabulous, even though I was having one of those scrimmagy days where, although nothing goes horribly wrong, a series of small things are not quite right. I forgot a bike lock, couldn't wedge the bike into a friend's trunk, knocked the chain off the gears and wound up (finally) at lunch greasy and sweaty and disgruntled. Except everything was fine after that! Lunch was great and the quilt show was pretty spectacular.

However, I demonstrate for you here why I am not to be trusted with details. I took pictures of a bunch of things I loved, and completely failed to get the names of the people who made them or what they are called. So have some gorgeous things I saw, and I'm sorry I can't tell you anything further. Except I just looked at the mosaic and the squares in squares are really the images that caught me! I didn't even see that when I was drifting around taking pictures...

The piece I was finishing over the weekend is melting overnight. I used some meltable stabilizer, and it is insufficiently melted, and needs a good soak. Then it needs to dry. The whole process is taking far longer than I expected.

I am going to go be horizontal. I rode the red horse in the woods and got lost, and finally got home an hour later than I meant to. Then I rode the other two for good measure, and then I had to go clean my teacher's barn. It was a little colder than I was wanting, but I was prepared, and just fine. Even getting lost in the woods wasn't bad, just frustrating.

16 things about me

16 things about me
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

There are a lot of "n Things About Me" memes going around, and while I am amused they haven't spoken to me much. But then one of my Flickr friends tagged me for a photo version. And i had 16 nice pictures of things about me to share with you. So here it is today, because the thing I am thinking about it going to be hard to finish in time to post about it tonight before we go away for supper.