A Wealth of Goodies

Posted on July 18, 2014 by ruthlane under printing

I recently got a couple of gift cards for my birthday and I ordered some art supplies.

I got screen printing ink, dye-na-flow paint, fiber reactive dyes, soda ash and several sets of marker pens.

I decided I needed to paint a few background pages for my sketchbook. I used greens because I am going to be using the wild flower photos that my sister took while she was here as inspiration.

Then I decided I wanted to try out the inks with some mono printing. I put the ink on a piece of glass, used a Q-tip to draw the design into the ink and then placed my paper on top and rolled it with a brayer.

This one is a ghost print from the print above. I used a piece of the paper that I had already painted green.

Then I tried using the left over ink on the glass to draw on the back of the paper. I had my ancient bird doodle handy so I used that as the design.

Then a few swirls…

and a spiral to finish up. It doesn’t take a lot of ink to do these which is nice. You can also use the ink on fabric and heat set it. So I will be trying it out for stamping and screen printing as well. More to come!

Toad and Totem

Posted on July 11, 2014 by ruthlane under machine stitching

I thought you might enjoy seeing this big fella that was outside my door the other night. I hope he’s out there eating all the mosquitoes!

I am a bit behind working on my piece for the Totem exhibition in October. I had an idea but it is a large sculptural piece and I don’t have the supplies to make it. So I decided to go another direction but was having problems thinking what my totem is. I have never really considered that I might have a totem. It is supposed to be an animal or plant that represents your or your clan. But that definition didn’t help much. So what to do. Then I remembered my prehistoric bird doodle. Perhaps that would work?

This is the doodle after I played with a scan of it in Photoshop. It was really quite ugly before that. But I do like the bird now. Kind of a cross between a turkey and an ostrich. I decided to use some screen printed fabric for a background. I found a piece of “acid” green linen to use for the bird body.

The bird body does look more yellow here than green but it is green. I added some tail feathers and I am going to couch down some yarn for his legs.

Here are some more parts of the piece after some free motion machine stitching.

I am going to add a bunch of hand stitching now and see what I come up with. If you have a piece that you’d like to enter into the Totem exhibition, you can find all the information here.

Life Is Short

Posted on July 4, 2014 by ruthlane under intentions

I was reminded this week how short and unexpected life can be. One of my friends died on Monday. She was only 60 years old, very active and was in good health as far as anyone knew. It was a real shock to all of us. It made me realize how important it is to not take anything for granted. Then on the forum recently, one of our members started a thread about how she didn’t have enough time to do any needle felting due to obligations and life in general. This got me thinking about how important it is to follow your passion. Each of us has certain talents and passions and I think it’s important to create from that unique perspective. Only you can create your own particular vision and if you don’t do that, then it will be lost to the world.

Last year, I issued a challenge to create something every day and even if you only had 5 minutes during the day, to use that 5 minutes to follow your passion. It doesn’t really matter what that passion is or if you’re even that good at what you’re creating. It’s important to spend that few moments doing what you most like to do. All of us have obligations and many times life gets in the way but I’m sure if you turned off the TV, the computer and all the other electronic gadgets in your life, you would find that you have more time than you think. I was following this practice last year, but somehow, I have gotten back into bad habits and I haven’t been as successful with creating every day this year. I don’t know about you, but when I’m not in the studio for a while, I get grumpy and discouraged. For those of you with a family and children, many times you feel overwhelmed and unable to take any time for yourself. Which do you think is better for your children, a grumpy, stressed out parent? Or one who is taking time to fulfill their dreams and passions?

So I am writing this post to rededicate myself to following my dreams, spending less time with electronics, more time with family and friends and creating art every day even if only for five minutes. I am grateful for all that I have in my life. Even when I am really busy I need to remember that life is unpredictable and that every day is a blessing. Today, I am going to celebrate the 4th of July at the lake with my family and friends. We will be remembering our friend, celebrating her life and the good times that we all enjoyed. I hope that you are well and that you make the time to follow your passions. Thanks for stopping by!

Mariposa Lily

Posted on June 27, 2014 by ruthlane under Sketching

I had planned on posting quite a few photos of Montana wildflowers but my internet connection isn’t working well. But I managed to upload 2 photos. My sister has been visiting and she wanted to find as many different Montana wildflowers and take photos of them. So we have been searching all week for different wildflowers. I haven’t created much this week but I did manage one sketch.

This is a Mariposa Lily. They are scattered throughout the woods and I actually see many of these each morning when I walk the dogs.

I hadn’t really looked at these flowers closely before and it was fun to do a sketch and then add some water color pencils. I always see things in much more detail when I’m sketching and it’s nice to slow down and look closely. Have a great weekend!

Zippered Felt Pouches

Posted on June 20, 2014 by ruthlane under machine stitching

My surface design group did some clamp dyed felt last week that I wrote about on the Felting and Fiber Studio recently. I decided to make some zippered pouches out of the felt. The only problem was that I have never sewn in a zipper before. I do a lot of sewing but it’s mainly free motion embroidery instead of sewing clothing or functional items. Luckily, there are tons of videos on YouTube that show how to make a zippered pouch.

So I bought a bunch of 7-9″ zippers and started sewing. This first one would work well for a make up bag as it’s about 7-8″ long.

Here’s the other side of the bag.

And the bags are fully lined. I used some of my screen printed fabric for lining.

I am planning on making a bunch of these and selling them at the store.

Then I made a smaller coin purse size.

Here’s the other side of this one.

And the lining is more of my screen printed and then over dyed fabric. These don’t take too long to put together and I think the zippers look OK so more to come!

Ruth Lane Art

Experimenting with Arts Endless Possibilities