Lisa Call

Structures #60 ©2006 33"x89":

Last month I mentioned I had entered 5 juried shows this fall. Well actually I entered 6 shows. Today I just got my acceptance letter to the 28th Annual Contemporary Crafts exhibit at the Mesa Arts Center.

The show was juried by Mark R. Leach, Director of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, North Carolina. The same guy that juried Crafts National 40 earlier this year and selected 2 of my pieces for that show.

He again selected 2 of my pieces for the show. Structures #46 and Structures #60 will be on display from January 26 – March 5, 2007 in Mesa, Arizona. There were 552 works submitted and 51 pieces by 42 artists selected for the show. I definitely like this juror and he sent me a very nice email after the Crafts National jurying, which I much appreciated.

Structures #46 ©2005 45"x61":

This is really the last juried show I entered this year. I said I would limit myself to 8 juried shows this year and I entered 10 (got into 8 of them). I’m not very good at following rules, even my own.

For anyone in the Wayne, Pennsylvania area (which I hear is near Philadelphia) – Craft Forms 2006 opens tomorrow night with a $100 per person preview party (I’ve never been to one of these expensive art openings – think the food is any good?) But it is open to the public Dec 2 – Jan 24 at the Wayne Art Center and it is your chance to see the first piece in my new series, Markings #1, in the flesh, or I guess fiber.

Horizon V
24"x24"
© Deidre Adams

A few weeks back I attended the opening of Deidre Adam’s solo show at Sanctuary Decor in Littleton, Colorado. I’ve known Deidre for 7 or 8 years and she is a member of my small critic group Material Evolution.

Deidre has 20 pieces of her newest work on display through December 3rd. If you live in Colorado I highly recommend stopping by to see this show at 5623 So. Prince St. in Historic Downtown Littleton. It’s worth the drive even in today’s snow.

Deidre’s work is a fascinating combination of quilting and painting and mark making. From her website: "Deidre incorporates dyeing, painting, photography, stitching, and collage in her work, and she likes to experiment with new ways of combining process and techniques, from the traditional to the avant-garde."

She includes a wonderful collection of images that inspire her on her website and includes the following statement:

Things in a state of change are my primary source of inspiration. Construction and demolition sites are rich with surfaces and textures, as well as ready-made compositions, waiting to be explored. Old buildings in various stages of decomposition, with peeling paint, layers of faded signage or graffiti, provide endless fascination.

Rusted Surface on Road Construction Vehicle
© Deidre Adams

Much of Deidre’s work has a feeling of vast space and openness, such as Horizon V above. This is in direct contrast to my work, which is often about hiding and the protection of walls and fences. I’ve always struggled with leaving large open spaces in my work, feeling exposed and uncomfortable, but Deidre is a master at capturing the sense of beauty and freedom of such exposure.

All of her work is highly textured with quilting and other techniques and then painted, evoking the surfaces in her photographed images. Her process is unique and I’ve had the pleasure of watching her work in progress over the years. Look for a feature article on Deidre and a bit of how she creates these beautiful pieces in an upcoming issue of Quilting Arts Magazine.

Composition IV
42"x42"
© Deidre Adams

Passages V
42"x42"
© Deidre Adams

All images copyright by Deidre Adams and reproduced here with permission. See more of Deidre’s work in the gallery on her website (hover your mouse on the small thumbnails for a fullview image).

Time to finish up my post on dyeing fabric.

First, to tie it all together here are links to the previous posts:

• An overview of my dyeing process
• Information on the fabric I use
• Information on the dye and other chemicals I use and more on the process

After getting the dye solutions into the fabric I let my fabric cure over night. I find I get my best results if the first few hours the fabric is in the sun (okay in this picture the sun is actually behind a cloud – but you get the idea):

I believe the required temperature is 70 degrees (F) but I think pushing 90 or 100 results in deeper colors. Which means I do most of my dyeing during the summer as my house rarely gets near 70 in the winter. Although we have excellent sun in Colorado so if I time it well I can set my fabric in the sun in my laundry room and it will get warm enough.

I let the fabric cure over night. Technically it only needs to cure a few hours before washing and on a few occasions I have dyed large pieces for quilt backs and washed it this quickly and it was fine. But I am paranoid and I prefer to let it sit overnight, just in case. I’ve let it sit several days and once I found a piece that had been curing in my basement for months and it all washes out fine.

This is my laundry room:

I start filling up my washing machine with cold water.

I take the bins of fabric and set them in the sink the left of the washing machine and lift each yard of fabric out of the bin and put them into the washer one at a time – I might squeeze a bit of water out first but I don’t worry about it much.

I used to get all stressed and do a bunch of hand rinsing before dumping it into the washing machine but this takes much too long and made no practical difference from what I could tell.

I do the first wash on cold – no soap or chemicals. This removes 1 part of the equation for the chemical bonding to occur – heat. So there is little to no color transfer from one fabric to another. If there is I don’t worry, it just adds a bit of interest to the fabric or I can cut that chunk off. I spill more colors onto each other during the dyeing process than is transfered during washing. Some people put in synthrapol here and I probably used to but I don’t see much difference if I don’t.

After this first wash most of the soda ash is also gone. So it is unlikely that any more bonding will take place. Now the goal is to get all of the excess dye molecules off the fabric (and any lingering soda ash and salt). I figure leaving excess chemicals on the fabric can’t be a good thing in the long run.

So I do 2 long washes in hot hot water (I turn my water heater to maximum heat before rinsing my fabric and make sure it has fully reheated before doing another load).

In the first hot wash I put in a bit of synthrapol – a detergent that is supposedly great at bonding to the lose dye molecules so it can be rinsed away (you can read the details of how this works here).

In the second hot wash I put in regular laundry detergent (I used Tide Free).

I check the water after this second wash and if it runs clear (95% of the time it does) I consider it done. If not I will do a 3rd hot wash.

After washing I transfer it all to the dryer and dry for about 20-30 minutes, until it is just barely damp.

From there it all gets ironed flat and folded to fit into my fabric bins. A few years back I splurged and bought the nice closet storage stuff from the Container store – I want one more unit – maybe that will be my Christmas present to myself this year:

This is the last batch of fabric I dyed a week ago:

In one of my previous dye posts I showed this bin of fabric with one of the colors I mixed:

This is the resulting fabric:

I love ironing the new fabric after I’ve just dyed it. It takes a while but I get so many great ideas for quilts during this process. Seeing all those yummy new colors and thinking about designs and color combinations. It’s not a process to rush and something I do look forward to.

On a very serious note, I would be most remiss if i did not mention how dangerous these dyes are. When in their powder form they are extremely toxic and a mask must be worn when handling them. Gloves should be worn at all times to reduce exposure to the liquid dyes also. Don’t dye in your kitchen, don’t eat the dye. Don’t feed it to your cat, etc. Just be safe, read the manufacturer’s warnings, etc, etc.

One thing to be aware of is that if you spill any liquid dye and don’t wipe it up, the water will evaporate leaving just the dye powder (they dye in it’s most toxic state) behind. So I am careful to wipe up spills when done.

But this is dye I’m wiping up and I hate to see it go to waste. So I wipe up my spills with a piece of fabric, which I then wash with all the other fabrics and the result is usually fairly interesting:

These pieces were used to wipe up spills through 3 or 4 different dyeing sessions (they are pretty boring after just one). I don’t have much use for these fabrics since I use only solids but I do this anyway. I have used a few on the backs of my quilts and that’s fun.

If you have any questions about dyeing just leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope those of you celebrating had a wonderful weekend. I had a lovely dinner of pizza with friends on Thanksgiving Day. Not very traditional but it was a lot less work and clean up involved tossing a few boxes, which left me loads of time to work in my studio.

And to tackle a project that was long over due.

When I originally set up my studio 12 years ago I placed my sewing table here:

because I wanted to be able to look out the window and see this:

but the kids are older and I don’t have to worry if they might fall and hurt themselves. Now I know for sure they will do something crazy and I don’t want to see it.

So I moved my sewing table here:

and now when I look out the window, which is now directly in front of me, I see this:

A tree! A big tree! On the high plains in Colorado! Actually this is the same big tree that became a much smaller tree last year in an early snowstorm, which, of course, I blogged about.

I originally thought this little studio rearrangement would take me 1 hour tops. Of course it turned out to be way more work than I had anticipated. My sewing table is a large 4′x8′ sheet of melamine covered particle board with a custom cutout for my sewing machine so the bed of the sewing machine sits flush with the table top. This sheet of particle board weighs somewhere around a bazillion pounds. It’s laid across small drawer units, so moving this thing is not an easy task for 1 person. Just imagine a lot of things falling over and some unhappy words and you get the idea.

Although when moving my thread racks over I only dumped a handful of spools on the floor so I was pretty proud of myself. But it took forever to get them hung straight. There are now a zillion holes in the wall to achieve this. I probably should have gone upstairs and gotten my level but that seemed like a bit of overkill for a thread rack.

And of course the procrastination opportunities for type of project are immense. Sorting through drawers (I lost the use of one of the dressers with the table now in the corner), cleaning off the design wall that was infront of the sewing table. The ribbons from the traditional quilt shows dated 10 years back had to go.

So I pulled out my stack of about 500 pictures I took while backpacking in the Grand Canyon in 2002 and created this collage with some of my favorites:

But even with these distractions I still managed to put in about 40 hours in the studio this week. So pretty good. I designed a new quilt this weekend (Structures #65), finished quilting Structures #54 and started quilting Structures #37 – a quilt top from 2004 (it is laying on the sewing table in a mound in the photo above).

So over all I’d say I had a great holiday – I hope yours was wonderful also.

I’ll post the last dye post soon.

Structures #28 ©2004 Lisa Call
84"x57"

In the conversation that followed this post [on the blog Art and Perception], How is an Art Patron different from a Gallery Consumer?, Karl asked me the following question:

Earlier you commented that you see no need for deadlines or contracts to push you to finish your work. Are you able to pursue a major work for six months, with certainty that there will be a buyer? And without changing directions (which is natural, because you grow in the process of working)?

Artist don’t need deadlines to paint a straight forward picture, but if you think of doing a major work over a long time period, a little external pressure can be a big help.

I’ve been thinking about my answer and wondering how my answer relates to what others might say.

First off, yes, Karl I have completed major work that has taken me six months to complete. The quilt above is such a piece. There are hundreds of 1/4"-3/8" strips of fabric each cut from the fabric individually and sewn together one at a time. It took about 6 months to complete. I suppose whether or not this is really a "major work" as defined by Karl is up for debate as I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that.

But I did it for no reason other than I thought the piece had promise and I wanted to see it through to the end. Whether or not I was successful with the work is another matter.

There was a certainty that I would not find a buyer for this work, and infact haven’t really looked for one. I don’t create to sell. I create because that is what I want to do.

Actually I liked the above piece but I felt it had flaws and I wanted to try it again. So I made a second large piece that is similar but addresses some of the concerns from the first piece.

I still have to quilt the second piece so it has been sitting and waiting for 18 months because I needed to workout how I was going to do this. I feel the quilting (the top stitching lines that cover the surface of the quilt and hold the layers together) was a weak point in the first piece. I’ve now worked out a plan for the second piece that came about as I worked through this issue on other work over the last year. Last night I basted this quilt and within the next couple months I will complete this piece also. And again – I have no show and no buyer in the works. I made it because I wanted to.

I don’t need deadlines or external pressure to make my work – I just do it because I want to. But it makes me wonder – is this the norm? Or am I an exception? Would most artists be better off with a patron to keep them motivated as Karl suggests?

How would you answer Karl’s question?

A continuation of my fabric dyeing posts. The first here the second here.

Procion MX Dyes come as a powder and there are many recipes for mixing dye concentrates. As I mentioned on the TV website I don’t really measure anything. So it’s best you look else for specific recipes. I add some dye powder to some water along with some urea – not very informative. I suggest Ann Johnston’s book Color By Accident.

I mix my dye concentrates in 20 ounce water bottles. I mix a few pure red, yellow and blues and a few of the other pure procion dye colors. Each in its own water bottle. I rarely buy a mixed color figuring I can mix it myself – although the grays and blacks can be useful).

I use a funnel to get the dye powder and urea into the bottle first:

Then add warm water and shake until it all dissolves. Some dyes are more cooperative than others.

Then comes the fun part – mixing colors. I mix together 1 cup of the dye concentrates (I add water if I want a lighter color). I test my combination on my fabric to make sure I’m getting a color I want. The wet fabric doesn’t really look like the final washed and dried color but over time you get a feel for how it changes – although I’m still surprised at times.

In this example the dye mixture I made started out too pink so I added blue and yellow to get it more to my liking:

Once it seems right I dump the color onto the fabric:

Wearing rubber gloves, which should be worn throughout the entire process as the dyes are toxic, I mush the dye into the fabric. The more mushing the more solid the color. I go for a lot of mushing as I like a fairly solid colored fabric:

Next comes the soda ash, which changes the pH of the water and fiber so the chemical reaction can occur. You can buy it from the big dye houses but I bought a big bag from a pool supply store as it’s cheaper. I also bought urea from a feed supply store and use that instead of urea from the dye houses.

I add salt into my soda ash mixture. Although Ann Johnston’s low water immersion recipes don’t use salt I think the results are much better if some salt is added. I’ve never seen a recipe with salt so I don’t really have any idea how much to use so I just dump some in. I also am not exactly sure what the salt does but my theory is it forces the dye out of the water and into the fiber, but I could be making that up. I do know my colors are more saturated if I use salt.

I mix up several gallons of soda ash & salt at one time:

I put 1 cup of the soda ash solution into each of the bins of fabric and again mush it around.

After this round 1 is done. Basically repeat for as many layers as you want:

You can see round 2 is lighter than round 1 – there is less dye available to bond with the next piece of fabric as much of it has already bonded to the previous layer.

There are many variations on this method of dyeing. How long to wait between adding the different parts, whether or not to add soda ash in between layers. I suggest Ann’s book for details and other ideas. I found what works for me and stick with it. It’s pretty basic and simple and not meant to result in anything other than solid colors.

I think I’ll have one last post about dyeing – how I wash out the fabric. And also wrap up anything else I can think of.

I’m working on a few more posts about the dyeing but they aren’t quite ready.

This weekend I needed to dye the fabric for the back of a couple large quilts and I wanted a few more images for these posts, so my plan was to dye a couple yards just for demonstration. I’m not sure what happened but next thing I knew I had 70 yards in dye baths. Oops that wasn’t the plan, but more on dyeing tomorrow.

A while back someone (maybe Shelia?) asked me about how I signed and labeled my work so I took some photos last time I did labels.

I run off the labels with the title, my name, copyright symbol, email and website address on my computer printer. I iron the fabric down onto freezer paper and cut it 8.5" x 11". It likes to jam a lot so I sometimes tape this to a regular piece of paper to get it to actually feed through the printer. After printing I sign the label with a pigma pen.

These are the labels after I printed them – they generally coordinate with the backing fabric and you can see I use scraps left over from previous labels whenever possible.

I remove the paper, trim, and then turn the edges under:

As I currently have 15-20 quilt tops in need of quilting I’ve been basting a several quilts at once. These labels are for quilts recently finished or soon to be.

In addition to this fabric label, which is sewn to the back of the quilt, I also sign the front right hand corner with thread during the quilting. I generally use a matching thread color so the signature isn’t very obvious and won’t distract from the work. This signature is more permanent than the label and is very difficult to remove (although it’s doable – I’ve removed a few and redone them).

A collector bought my piece during the opening of Quilt National 2005 in addition to a smaller piece in the gift shop. Even though I had signatures on the work he requested to the staff that I sign the work again – so in the middle of the show I had to sign my name across the back of these 2 quilts in big sharpie marker. It felt a bit weird to write directly on the back of the quilts like that – almost like I was disfiguring the work, but if it made him happy, fine by me.

Structures #31 ©2004, 34"x53", in Quilt National 2005:

A continuation of my dyeing posts as a result of being on TV demonstrating how I dye fabric. The first is here.

I use Kaufman Pimatex PFD bleach white fabric when dyeing. Because I dye so much, I have an account with Kaufman to buy it direct. You can also buy this fabric online or in quilt and fabric stores.

It is a very tight weave fabric, which I prefer. I think it is more durable than the dyer’s muslins and much easier to work with. Some people say they have a hard time getting a needle through the fabric when sewing by hand but it doesn’t bother me. I do have to bring samples of the fabric with me when I get my sewing machine tuned up so they can adjust the hook closer to the needle to keep it from skipping during the piecing.

This fabric is also PFD, which means Prepared For Dye, which generally means they do not have permanent press, optical brighteners, or other resin finishes that interfere with dyeing. It is also mercerized so it takes the dye well. I never prewash the fabric before dyeing because it comes off the bolt ready to go.

This is 200 yards of brand new fabric on the bolt. It is not a pure white fabric but instead slightly off white. It came in a big box that I could not lift alone.

It would take a very long time to cut 60-80 single yard pieces of fabric with a rotary cutter or scissors. So instead I tear it. I put the bolt of fabric on the floor and unroll large sections of it. I then measure out about 37″ (it shrinks a bit – this is 100% cotton) and make a small snip through the selvedge and then tear it the rest of the width across.

This is a pile of maybe 20-30 yards of fabric. There are occasional strings from the tearing that I do my best to ignore. With practice you can minimize this but it still happens a bit.

To start off the dyeing process I’ll take a mound of fabric and jam it into a 5 gallon bucket and add hot/warm water to get the fabric wet. I think Ann Johnston says in her recipe to use a cup of water per yard but it would take way too long to measure so I just get it wet – sometimes dripping wet, sometimes not. I can’t be bothered to worry if there is really at least a cup.

I then put 1 wet yard of fabric into each bin for the first round.

I’ll continue with describing the dye parts in another post. I’ve run out of pictures that are processed and ready for the blog.

As promised here is my first post with some more details about how I dye my fabric. These are not going to be presented in any sort of logical order but instead the order I felt like writing about them. So look for several dyeing posts over the next few weeks, in between other content.

First off my dyeing is based on Ann Johnston’s book Color By Accident. All credit for this basic technique belongs to her. Although I have to admit to never actually reading this book as I took a workshop with Ann and learned how to do this first hand.

I will not be repeating the information she has in her book. I strongly recommend you buy it and read it for yourself. But I will be talking about how I’ve modified her techniques to work for me.

To dye 60-100 yards of fabric in a few hours I user her technique of stacking fabrics one on top of another in the same bin. So follow the directions I have on the DIY website for the first layer of fabric. After a while take a second yard of fabric and lay it on top of the first and mush it around to soak up all the dye leftover from the first piece. Wait a bit and add the soda ash. Repeat for as many layers as you want noting that they get lighter as you add more fabric.

This bin has 3 different yellows:

Note that you will not get a perfect gradation of colors as you do this. Some dye molecules are larger than others so they bond quicker with the fabrics. It will probably take you some time and experimenting to see what happens and to anticipate these changes. But as with all of my dyeing I’m not looking for reproducible results, just gorgeous fabric. When your dark red has a light green 4 layers above it is at first puzzling. But you will eventually learn that reds are the first to go. Over time you learn to adjust for this in the process to get the colors you want.

With 4 layers of fabric in each bin (I dye 1 yard pieces of fabric) I only need 20 bins to hold 80 yards of fabric. Here’s what my table looked like after my last session (note that I don’t use fancy expensive containers for my dyeing – look for the freebies at garage sales – it doesn’t have look pretty – but remember – do not use any containers or equipment from your kitchen):

It takes me 3-4 hours to do the initial dyeing. I then let it cure over night and I find it works best if it sits in the sun at some point. In another post I’ll describe how I rinse all of this out as efficiently as possible.

The episode of the television show Uncommon Threads that I am on aired this morning on DIY. I was going to try to post a reminder but I have to admit I forgot until just after I posted last night’s post and by then I was tired of writing. I’d love to hear if anyone saw it, but only if you have nice things to say!

Welcome to anyone that found my website from the network.

That show was taped in July 2005.

In the final segment of the show the host Allison Whitlock, my friends, Carol and Christine, and I were sitting around a low table chatting. On the first take Alison asked me about having my work on the cover of the Quilt National book and I made a comment about other members of the group also being in the show and then I tried to name them and my mind went blank (okay there are only 5 of us in the group so that was rather lame). Take 1.

So we decided I don’t have to remember Deidre and Sandy’s names and we start over again. This time Allison is talking about the browns I used in the quilt that was hanging behind us. The cameraman didn’t realize he was supposed to pan to the quilt. Take 2.

Now we’re on round three saying the same things – except everything we said in previous takes Allison is now saying and we have to think up new answers to the questions. It felt very contrived and I’m dreading watching it. But we made it to the end (I think it was only 2 minutes but it seemed forever). But oh no – right at the end Allison says “thank you” and all 3 of us just stare at her and make no comment.

Of course that is not acceptable, how rude of us. But no one is up for take 4 so they tell us not to move and find the exact right spot on the tape (it took forever) and then they queued us and we all said “thank you” in return. Well we paused too long and that didn’t work. So they rewind again – again – don’t move – (and it takes a long time – maybe 10 minutes – to get the tape to just the right place). This time just Carol is supposed to say “thank you” and it’s been at least 15 minutes so of course we moved. So we reposition, sit as still as statues and Carol says thanks as nice as can be and they let us leave.

In the first part of the show, titled Dyeing to Quilt, I’m demonstrating fabric dyeing with procion MX fiber reactive dyes. This portion was taped first and they were completely freaked out by my dyes. And the possibility of me spilling them all over the set. This studio was a dumpy warehouse in Burbank so I’m not sure what I could have ruined had it spilled but everyone was told “we are doing this in one take don’t screw up”. No pressure….

But we did it. I had to stand a wooden box behind the demonstration counter because Allison is amazingly tall. I was sure I would fall off mid sentence. I really didn’t demonstrate much because they were so worried about spillage. So I’ll be posting a few more details about how I dye fabric over the next few days.

You can read some of the basics over on the DIY website. It is basically low water immersion dyeing – except I don’t measure anything.

It was an interesting experience. After the taping we went out for a nice dinner (on us) at our very nice hotel (on them). They don’t do any post show editing on these low budget productions so it will be interesting to see what the show looks like. I’ve heard the show is kind of corny.

As long time readers know, I don’t have a TV, so it’ll be a while before I get a copy of the show on DVD to play on my work computer as my home equipment is a bit dated, much to the disgust of my children.