Daily Fiber

Sunday Sketching: for a fundraiser

Posted on September 1, 2024 by Laura Kate

My local art association is having an art sale in October. The members are asked to use 6×6 canvases to make artwork, choosing whatever media they prefer. At the event, each canvas will be sold for $66.

This is something I can do. This week I picked up three of these canvases. I came up with six ideas for subject matter. To get started, I made some sketches today (really, just contour drawings.) These will be painted with watercolors.

Butterfly perched on my hand. Butterflies have landed on me in real life. Often it’s the little hackberry butterflies, drawn to warm or sweaty clothing. I wanted something with more drama. I chose to sketch a spicebush swallowtail.

My hand was drawn from life. For the butterfly, I referenced a photo from the Audobon Guide to Butterflies of North America, published in 1980.

There were no photo credits in the book.

2. Baby sparrows in a nest: This drawing was made based on a photograph by Bill.

At times, parent birds choose unfortunate locations for building their nests. This nest was located in a door wreath at a downtown business. Here is my contour sketch.

I have something special in mind for this work. Fiber art will be involved, giving this painting more of a 3D object.

3. Two of my other ideas will be worked with fabric paint on cotton. I will recreate some early experiments of mine using the sun printing technique.

I’m excited to get started. Perhaps I will work on color selection later today.

Reunited

Posted on August 29, 2024 by Laura Kate

Earlier this month, the Oklahoma sock was reunited with the Wisconsin sock in a rustic cabin at Shell Lake, WI. There was jubilation from the affected parties.

That was a few weeks ago. Life has been out of the ordinary for most of the month. The passing of my dad on August 10th brought about an eight-day visited to Ohio, where I spent time with my mom, siblings and assorted relatives while celebrating Dad’s life. Upon returning home, we were immersed into rental house repairs, as we continue selling off our Oklahoma real estate. Our plan is to leave Oklahoma for the more temperate climes of the upper Midwest. The presence of grandchildren is a powerful motivator.

Getting back to the socks, pictured above. Readers may recall that the pattern is Mary Delany by Kate Davies, and the yarns are Hawthorne by Knitpicks and Ultimate Sock by Malibrigo. The red is a leftover pulled from my stash along with the other two yarns.

I’m so pleased with the look and the fit. Next week is the county fair. This project will be entered, along with the little knitted new-born jacket and the Japanese knot bag.

My only entry in the quilting category this year is the Migration World wall hanging.

Thanks for stopping by. As I get back into a normal routine, I will have more objects to write about. (Hint: I expect that there will be a resumption of watercolor painting.)

painting, quilting

Wednesday WIP: Scrappy quilt update

Posted on July 17, 2024 by Laura Kate

I feel like I have been assembling four square blocks all summer long. I have sewn five sets of eight blocks, each set confined to one color in my analogous palette.

Finally, I am nearing the end of the block-building phase. There were two glitches that lengthened the time spent building blocks. Firstly, I ran out of scraps and couldn’t find the colors I needed at Hobby Lobby. This led me to adding color to my white or pale fabrics by painting them with Jacquard Dye-na-flow paint. I painted the featured 4 x 2 and 1/2 strips AND the 1 and 1/4 border strips to get the effects I was seeking. It was kind of fun, in a time-consuming sort of way.

Here is a sampling of some painted strips/blocks in green hues.

I ended up needing painted fabric in blue-violet, teal AND yellow green.

The second issue arose when laid out my blocks. I took an intense dislike to any block that had dark borders. To fix this, I cut apart many blocks and replaced the dark strips with light colored fabrics (mostly were created with paint on white fabric.)

I now have enough blocks to form the five regions of my quilt. I have sewn a center block for each region using black fabric and hand-painted feature fabrics. To create some breathing room between my blocks, I made sashing with black fabric. Believing the black fabric was too boring, I cut the sashing randomly and inserted “sticks” of multi-hued batik fabric. Here is a the “blue-violet” region laid out and ready to sew.

I’m excited to start assembling the quilt, but a little nervous that the pieces won’t fit together properly.

colorwork, knitting

Travel Project Frogged

Posted on July 16, 2024July 15, 2024 by Laura Kate

In my last knitting post, I was starting a pair of socks worked with stash yarn.

https://dailyfiberfun.com/2024/06/25/casting-on-to-travel/

The yarn in question is Roslyn, by Cascade.

Well, the long and short of this story is that Roslyn is unsuited for socks. (Some of my readers tried to tell me that.) When I really paid attention to how the yarn behaved, it told me that it wanted to be a shawl. So, before we left for our trip, I ripped the sock off my needles and cast on a shawl.

I would really like to share the pattern I am using but alas, it eludes me. I remember printing it, using the printout to get started, memorizing the stitch pattern and then putting the paper pattern aside. It’s probably somewhere in Canada.

**Photo taken in my Calgary hotel room.**

The good news is that my stash yielded four coordinating yarns in fingering weight to give color variation to this simple pattern for a point-to-point shawl with picot border. Since I was knitting on the fly, I decided to improvise the color changes.

There is no pattern just some rules. The olive-colored Roslyn will be the background yarn, continued throughout the project. The four colors will rotate in and out at a fairly regular pace. Every so often, I will throw in a ridge of eyelet lace.

Oh, and the bright red yarn will appear only in single ridges, separated by the background yarn. It reminds me of pin striping.

This shawl could easily go on for weeks at this rate. It is a soothing knit.

I reserve the right to change a rule here or there, if it suits me.

Living Life Well

ReEntry Week

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Laura Kate

It’s been several weeks since my last post. I have update on my recent fiber fun, but first I’d like to share some Alberta photo.

Lake Moraine. Standing on top of an ancient rock slide. Ten peaks in the background.

View of Banff from the Cascade of Time garden.

Standing on the Athabasca glacier. This is near Canada’s intercontinental divide. Waters flow in three directions: to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.

This post was sent from my phone, so I am keeping it short. My computer is having internet connectivity issues. I’ll try later to post about knitting, quilting and painting.