30 Days of Get Your Art On – 09.30.11

Here is my finished banner! I love it! You can see how I made the background fabric here. For the letters, I used my computer to print the letters the size I wanted onto plain paper. Then, I put each letter, one at a time, under some ironed muslin, and traced the letters using a fabric marker. I was able to see the outline of the letter through the fabric, so I didn’t have to use a light table or anything special. Then I cut the letters out–I made 2 sets so the banner could be double-sided.

After I cut two pieces of the stenciled fabric the size I wanted for the banner, I used a combination of glue stick & pins to temporarily attach the letters to the fabric. First I straight-stitched around each letter with black thread on my sewing machine, sewing it to the stenciled fabric. Then I switched to red thread and free-motion stitched around each letter.

With the excess stenciled fabric, I made two tabs for hanging the banner, and two ties to tie it to the side of the frame. With the right sides together, I put the two pieces of stenciled fabric together, with the tabs and ties inside, pinned, then serged them together, leaving the bottom open.

I turned it right side out, then top-stitched around the whole piece, which also sewed the bottom together. I didn’t bother turning the bottom edge to the inside because I want it to have a bit of a frayed look. You can’t see in the picture, but the base of the frame is a small metal bucket filled with cement, that has a metal pipe in it sticking up. The PVC pipe of the frame fits over the metal pipe. Luckily I already had the metal bucket with cement & pipe in it from years ago.

Now, here are some pictures from Final Friday! The first bunch shows the room that I had my work in.

The rest of the photos are some of the other rooms that are where my friends work.

This studio is eccentric eye candy that’s in a historic building. When I first went to the studio, about 25 years ago, it was an old downtown upstairs apartment that a friend was living in. It was such a great place, although very run down, that our friends didn’t want to lose it when the friend decided to move out. So it became studio space for several friends, and has stayed in “the family” the whole time, with different friends coming and going.

The decor has evolved from the various parties we have had there, such as New Year’s Eve parties, my 40th birthday party, and many, many Halloween parties. So bits and pieces of different parties are on the walls or hanging around. The place is like a time capsule. When people go in for the first time, their mouths drop in amazement. You could spend hours looking at everything. Even though I’ve been there a lot, I always find something new I hadn’t seen before.

Here’s a panoramic picture I took with my iPod. I took a lot of pictures and stitched them together with the AutoStitch app.

Overall, I’m super happy with how the night went. I really only sold small items, like my pin-back buttons and things like that. But after the gallery crawl was over, and it turned into a party, two of my good friends bought one of my paintings! I was so happy. But even if they hadn’t bought it, I still would have been happy with the evening.

It was great having all of the people come through, look at my work, and to have conversations with them about it. Many of my friends told me they had never seen this side of me and were impressed. (Since I’ve been dyeing and selling spinning fiber & yarn so long, many of them only think of me in that way, even though they know I’ve written two books that had nothing to do with yarn or fiber). It was great getting the feedback and support. And it was great that it turned into a party, after the gallery crawl was over (which was no surprise). I can always count on these friends for a party.

I feel like this was a great start for me, and I know that if it hadn’t been for doing 30 Days of Get Your Art On (two different months), I wouldn’t have had all of the art work to show that I did. It was a lot of work, but I feel good about it. I did things to make me look professional–I made labels for all of my pieces and had them on the wall; I framed everything except for the canvases; I posted my artist statement; and had promo info and business cards for people to take. I feel like I’m moving in the right direction.

Here’s a self-portrait I took in my friend’s room at the studio, looking into a fun-house type mirror.

This ends the 30 Days of Get Your Art On. I feel it was really fitting that the last day was also Final Friday for me. It made it seem like a big celebration for me! I’m going to try to keep up with the practice of making art everyday. I need to. But I probably won’t post about it everyday (although I do enjoy blogging). For those of you who started late, keep up getting your art on! For those of you who also finished, I hope you got something out of it and can keep the practice up too. You can see the rest of my posts for 30 Days of Get Your Art On  here.