The Doors of Rockford 3

I'm moving along nicely on my piece for "The Doors of Rockford" submission. It was good to read the other day that there are 42 artists participating, so since they choose 25, that's pretty good odds, if you'd like to think about it that way...

Of course, the deadline is coming up the same week as my husband's total knee replacement surgery, meetings, work and a recognition dinner for the Sunday School teachers. So you know what that means, right? It must be finished before that week even starts on June 13th.

I've painted a 36x45 inch piece of drill cloth (similiar to canvas, but lighter weight) for the backing, and also painted strips of cheesecloth that will end up being between the backing and the fabric paper pieces. Not sure how I will attach the cheesecloth to the backing. I'm hand stitching the cheesecloth strips together with perle cotton, and just may end up tacking them to the drill cloth in the same way. Here's a couple of photos of how the pieces will be laid out on the backing and what the cheesecloth looks like in all it's painted glory. I ended up using different types of acrylics for the paint: golden fluids, a little lumiere, and some craft acrylics...

The Doors of Rockford 2

Like the first time making fabric paper, I'm finding it difficult to stop. The possibilities if I do one more piece and adding more to the pieces that I don't like, well, they seem to get me every time...

The finished size for the artwork cannot exceed 36x48 inches, so if each of my papers are approximately 8x10 inches and I have 13 that I'm satisfied with, do I have enough? Yes...

Here are the ones I've worked on today. I experimented with giving one of them a wash of diluted Lumiere paint. I've included a detail shot of one that has oil paper with pine needles on it.

Materials used: printed and hand dyed cottons, white muslin, tissue papers, hand made papers, painted lutradur and tear-a-way stabilizer, vintage gift wrap papers, decorated greeting card envelopes, onion skin paper, polyester sheers, painted cheesecloth, caran d'ache neocolor II artists' crayons, tee juice markers, setacolor paints, lumiere metallic paint, diluted white glue.

The Doors of Rockford

The church where I am a member and work with the children is in an urban neighborhood in Rockford. Since this area was home to many Swedish immigrants back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, there are quite a few Lutheran churches. All of these churches have come together to form a community called the "Midtown Lutheran Parishes."

Zion Lutheran, just down the street from Emmanuel is home to Zion Development, an organization that has been renovating and creating housing for families in the neighborhood for 25 years now. I remember when Jason was in confirmation, he went to help in the early stages of a large renovation project, involving the creation of some loft condos above a store front just east of Emmanuel.

Every year for the past 8 years, Zion Development has sponsored "The Doors of Rockford," a fundraiser that involves an auction of fine art. They choose 25 pieces to be in the auction and each piece is sponsored by a local business or individual, so the artist is guaranteed a nice percentage of the selling price. Every year, I say that I'm going to submit something, and every year, I back away (life, you know). Well, this year I finally did it! I've started by making 31 pieces of fabric paper - fast, lots of color, no thought involved. The theme for this year's auction is "Through These Doors" - my plans are to photograph each of the churches' doors for inspiration and we'll see what comes next...I found an old book with beautiful biblical artwork from the middle ages in it and I may do something with those also.

The process of blogging about this challenge also starts the journey for me...I know you understand.

New Purse - Triangle Bag

Since Jo-Ann's discontinued a ton of home dec samples, there are plenty of little 18x18 inch pieces of fabric candy to choose from. I fell in love with this faux emu skin, so decided to make myself a new purse. The top border is a printed linen that I discharged a little, and the straps are an animal print ribbon that I first folded over and sewed, then filled with a narrow piping cord.

I had made one from a pattern a couple of years ago and liked the shape and the unique way of closing it. It's basically 3-24 inch straps/cords attached to the purse at the center point of each of 3 pieces that are sewn together. The straps are then pulled through a large bead (mine was macrame) and attached at the end to a square of fabric. There are, of course, many different ways to finish the straps.

One of the gals at work found a similiar pattern in a Simplicity book. Mine was from Square Rose - Designs that liberate the CREATIVE SPIRIT .
I'm very pleased at how it turned out!

Oh, and I bought 8 other samples too...