Here is a close up of his face. I still haven't named him. What is a good name for such a loveable dragon? If you can tell, I tried to cut out the messy art room behind him!

This was one of my Christmas presents. Actually, it was a lot of wool roving and 24 pages of instructions on how to make him. He is my second needlefelted doll (my bear was the first). Isn't he cute???? I just love him and it was way easy. It was a kit from Grafton Fibers.

Here are details of the scarf.

Here is the almost full scarf! I love it, which I have decided is the most important person to please when making art! The base is wetfelted in seperate organic pieces which I then pieced together with my embellisher. I then took a little roving, pencil roviing, and some non-twisted wool thread which I first needlefelted in place and then embellished down.

Here are two more pieces that I felted. The little bear is a silly little thing, but was the first tree dimensional piece that I did. The other piece is a wine sleeve that I made from a wetfelted mat.

Here is a piece that I wet felted.

Another needlefelted piece. I was trying to illutrate that I actually can do a piece that is very controlled!

I haven't been posting in over a month. I have been working but on just "stuff". Here is a flower that I needlefelted. I have been doing a lot of wet felting and now quite a bit of needlefelting. I will be teaching needlefelting next month at Fiber on a Whim (www.fiberonawhim.com) . This is soo easy but way cool.

I took a two day workshop on Shibori andIndigo dying with Linda Campbell at Fiber on a Whim this weekend. Linda was a fantastic teacher. She went over making a vat (we made two), history of both (including a slide show). It was wonderful. I will try to put up a few more examples later.

Another one of my pieces! You can just wash the soy wax out, much easier than real wax!

I took a two day soy wax batik class at Fiber on a Whim. Very easy and a lot of fun.

Block of Seagulls was my submission to the First Fast Friday Challenge. The idea behind the challenge is that on the last Friday of the month a theme and a design element is posted. You then have a week to design and complete a small format piece of fiber art.
The name was my friend Rebecca's idea. Yes, I love the '80's.

My New Adventure

No picture for this, but I wanted to document that I have signed up for the City & Guild, Level 3 Patchwork and Quiting Certification Course with Linda Kremshall's DesignMatters http://www.lindakemshall.com. I can't wait. I hear that this is a very challenging program but isn't that what it is all about - challenging yourself as an artist. It seems that every time I open a book that "Wows" me, the author/artist has been trained or is a teacher in one of these courses.

This is my Bead Embroidery doll! It is the first doll I ever made. I took a class by the very wonderful Anne Hesse, a wonderful ladie and teacher. I actually did this doll over a year ago, but I did want to "document" it.

Have you had your fiber today?

Here is a new piece I've been working on in my Patty Madeiris Culea Tome Class at Fiber on a Whim in Atlanta. It was great fun playing with a wide variety of fibers.

Here is a new piece that I am working on. I haven't finished yet, so if you have any recommendations to make it compositionally stronger, please send me a comment.

This one is a lot better in person.

and another

This one uses the silk as a base, but has wool roving to add a bit of contrast (matt) and angelina

Fun Fusion

This silk fusion is almost completely transparent in areas.

More Silk Fusion

I've been playing with more silk fusion -trying to make it thinner, more transparent. This one has just a little wool and angelina fiber too.

One day my friend Rebecca, a great quilt artist, asked, "Hey, you want to come over and try burning stuff?" Well of course I said yes!
Here are some of my samples. It was great fun. You can see that I used some of it in "Into the Void". It was way fun, but truly I had the best results with a heat gun and a wood burning tool, and not an open flame. A very special thanks to Rebecca's husband who set us up in the garage with a fan behind us to blow the noxious fumes away and of course a fire extinguisher (sp?)!!!!

Today I continued to work on my wool piece that I did the foundation for on my new Babylock Embellisher. I am really liking it. I started some free-form machine embrodery on top to give certain areas emphasis. I will try to upload a picture later.

Silk Fusion

Here is my first experiment with silk fusion. I loved doing it. It was so easy to do. I can't wait to find time to make more. Find time - what a concept! If you have any experience with silk fusion, please leave me a comment. I would love to hear how you used it.
Sharon

Fun with my new toy!

A few weeks ago, I was in Fiber on A Whim, the coolest store in town, and saw a luscious ball of hand-dyed wook roving and bought it. Of course then I needed to find things to do with it, so I bought a felting needle and a piece of chair padding. I couldn't find any books on the subject so just started playing with it. Here is my first try! I then decided that I NEEDED a Babylock Embellisher and bought it two weeks ago (well, I call it my Mother's Day present). I haven't had much time to play with it yet, but will sit down for a few minutes here and there. I actually went back over this piece with it and felted down the silk roving.

May 31, 2006

This is my submission to Images, the exhibit for Open Hearts/Helping Hands project. This exhibit is about works which were made in response to the hurricanes and their aftermath.

Here is my artist statement about the piece. It is entitled, "Into the Void".
Dimensions: 29 wide by 23 long

This piece is entitled: “Into the Void”. If you have ever been through a hurricane, you will never forget the eerie silence as the eye of the storm passes over. After going through the noise and chaos of the howling wind and rain, the silence feels unnatural and the return to the chaos is almost welcome. Anything is better than the void, the absence.

In the summer of 2005, my father was dying of cancer on the West Bank of New Orleans. The doctors only gave him a few more months. Like most summers, hurricanes in the Gulf are ordinary, happening in the peripheral of our lives. They come close, you take the necessary precautions, but they always go some place else; however, that isn’t the way it happened this particular August. The decision to evacuate was a hard one for my stepmother and father, knowing that my father wasn’t strong enough to be moved any distance. The 12 hours drive, the long waits for gasoline and drinkable water on the way, were too much for him. My father passed from this earth two weeks later in Pensacola, never returning to his home in New Orleans. This quilt is about the void that was created by Katrina - the void of losing a parent to cancer, and the void of losing a city to a monster of a hurricane.

My first post

A pervasive theme in my life right now seems to be building community. I lost both my parents last year and really went through a long period of isolation. NowI think it is time to reestablish my place in the world without them. I started this blog to share my love for art and fiber art in particular.