RedBarn Studios

One of my goals this year is two-fold…to push myself to make more art quilts and put my work and my name out there….scary though it may seem at times.

To that end, last month I created a piece for the Deltas of Charlotte’s Silent Auction called “It Takes a Village“. I also knew I wanted to put a few pieces in Collage Mania this year as this is the last year it will be held.

Collage Mania 2009, a Fiberart For A Cause online fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, was founded by Virginia Speigel, an artist whose father survived colon cancer.

In trying to find a way to give more, Virginia started by raising some extra funds with a 7 postcards. That blossomed in hundreds of postcards over the last 3 years.

To date, Fiberart For A Cause has donated over $165,000 to the American Cancer Society. This year Virginia wants to raise $20,000 to top her record last year of $13,000. In order to do that she has opened it up to include not only postcard sized pieces but any collages up to 8″x10″ size.

Since I’m not a postcard type of gal, the slightly larger format worked well for me. Here are the four I donated.

Faith

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Believe

The background fabric of each collage is one of my hand dyed fabrics I screen printed and stamped. I then played with strips of fabric and paper to create each piece, then finished off with some free-motion machine quilting.

Each collage  is stamped with a word that represents the power within all of us to preserver through the worst of times, even when we feel the need to give up.

Faith…..Believe…..Release…..Trust.

Release

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Trust

This year Collage Mania will be held May 5-7th. Patrons are asked to bid on collages donated by a wonderful community of  fiber and mixed-media artists.

May 5th is Gold Donor Day where there is a minimum donation of $80.

May 5th – 7th, which is Regular Collage Mania, the minimum donation for a collage is $40.

To Donate

Cancer, at some point, touches all out lives. Please consider making a donation in honor of someone close to you who has been touched by this disease.

Bookmark the Collage Mania page and revisit the site on one of the above dates. You will be a very proud owner of a wonderful piece of art by those artist willing to give a little bit of themselves for a very worthy cause.

Each of my collages is dedicated in memory of my Aunt Cynthia, who died from cancer in 2007.

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art, fiber art, hand dyed, mixed media, surface design, working small by k grace howes
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Here’s a fun post to do. Do a google search (or use your favorite search engine) and type in “unfortunately, then your name and press enter. For example, I typed in  “unfortunately grace”.  I saw this done on Michele’s blog and thought it’ll be cool to try. So here goes.

1. Unfortunately Grace is not the correct person to contact if you are looking to publish your stories.
2. Unfortunately Grace had neither the talent nor coordination to make it to skating stardom.
3. Unfortunately Grace wouldn’t let me get one quick enough of her throwing fall leaves into the air.
4. Unfortunately Grace, who remained a sports fan throughout her life – won’t be there. She died Nov. 27  at age 99.
5. Unfortunately Grace’s smile and laugh were the first milestones lost…
6. Unfortunately Grace hasn’t (yet) joined her Battlestar Galactica co-star Tricia Helfer in posing nude for Playboy.
7. Unfortunately Grace is determined, though, to prove to her parents that she is responsible.
8. Unfortunately Grace’s blog had a wider audience than she thought, and one day Grace was called into the principal’s office (all of this was real…I kid you not!).

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How weird huh?  But you gotta love # 6 and 7….as if!

Let me know the funniest that you come up with.

See ya next time “In the Haylfot”,

Tags: life etc., monday posts by k grace howes
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We are on vacation……yeh!

My family decided to take a littel breather and go off for few days. Be back on Monday. Have fun at what you’re doing.

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: family, vacation by k grace howes
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When’s the last time you indulged in a luscious, dripping, lick-before-it-melts snowcone?

Swirled with red and orange and maybe yellow?

Sorry, this post is not about that so you guys can stop drooling now.

But……I have discovered a new thing.

It involves ice….and dyeing…and is called……(drum roll please)…

SNOW DYEING!

What a very cool concept you say?

I don’t know how I happened upon this snow dyeing jag but in my regular nightly jaunt thru webland, checking out  what my fellow bloggers are up to, I happened upon this snowing dyeing thing.

Too late for me I thought. The snow we had that would have worked perfectly because, remember…we got inches this time….was all melted.

My gosh, will I have to wait until next winter when there is no guarantee that we’ll get any coverage?

Or ask friends from Australia to send some up in the our summer months (winter weather for them) and hope it doesn’t melt by the time it gets to me (yeh right!!!!)

What is one to do when you let the snow outside melt before you’ve discovered your new thing?

You get out your smoothy machine (that makes great pina coladas) and crush that ice.

Necessity is the mother of invention much? I had no idea if it would work but I was willing to give it a try. I soaked the yard of fabric in a soda ash solution for 20 minutes, scrunched it in the bottom of the dishpan then dumped the ice over it (no other way to describe it folks).

I crushed enough ice to have at least 1 1/2 – 2″ of snow completely covering the fabric.

Now for the fun part.

Squirt the dye on the ice…yes….I said on the ice like above. I used my new dyes—–turkey red, citrus yellow, with little squirts of chartreuse and chocolate brown.

The concept with this is that as the ice melts the dye drips onto the fabric. Because the fabric is scrunched up underneath the ice you will get this fantastic mottled effect all over.

Leave to melt. I left it for a few hours and thought I had left it too long but it turned out spectacularly!

Rinse under cold water first to remove the soda ash then wash in hot water. I wash all my fabrics together (all different colours) in the washing machine with 1-2 capfuls of Synthropol.

And you’re left with this……

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Oh my gosh……I’m in love with dyeing even more….how could that be!

I’ll be adding a half yard of this to my Esty shop. Well I do have to keep half of it for myself, can’t I?

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art by k grace howes
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I  just found out that my group, the Pandoras, have won Judge’s Choice for our group quilt “Motherhood”.

We each did a panel for the theme——-(L to R) Motherhood in Africa, Generations, Nursing & Infertility (click on pic for close up)—–entered it into our guild show and, lo and behold, one of the judges like it so much that they picked it as their favorite.

WOW! Cool Beans!

The Charlotte Quilter’s Guild Show runs from today thru Sunday at Fletcher School. If you are in the area and you want to see some beautiful work by lots of talented people go see the show (info below).

There will be lots of vendors and food and live demonstrations. In fact, I invite you to come on Saturday where at 2:00pm I’ll be doing a demonstration, “How to Add A Facing to Your Art Quilts” (in lieu of a traditional binding).

Don’t forget to indulge yourself by buying a raffle ticket and putting your name in the running for a Pfaff Grand Quilter machine (donated by Quilter’s Loft in Mooresville) All proceeds benefit the Charlotte Quilting Guild.

See you there!

See ya next time”In the Hayloft”,

For mapquest/google maps use the address below:
The Fletcher School
8500 Sardis Road
Charlotte NC 28270
Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

Tags: fiber art, pandoras by k grace howes
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Yesterday morning we woke up to a layer of fog. As I walked my son to the bus stop at about 8:30 a.m. I had to run back inside for my camera  to take a pic of what stopped us both in our tracks.

There, between my neighbors house and ours we came upon this….

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We walked on and I took a few more shots but these two really captured the moment.

As the bus drove off taking all the little munchkins away for a few hours (can I say yippee here or would that get y’all real upset…..oh well!!),  anyway, back to my story….the sky had already turned it’s beautiful Carolina blue.

As I approached the house, I caught this bird in the tree in front of my house……having just gotten it’s fill at my feeder I might add.

Look how close he let me get…I was right under the tree at this point. He twisted and turned a few time before he’d had enough, then flew away. Lady was getting a little bit too close he was probably thinking.

Nature can be so tranquil and beautiful at times.

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art, life etc., pic of day by k grace howes
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Two weeks ago, just after we had all that weird snowfall (who knew our area could still get inchies??) it got real warm…warm enough to sleep with the windows open…ALL night!

I had been aching to dye some fabrics but since my set-up is in the garage (one of these days I’ll have in an indoor wet studio, so hubby promises), I have to go along with the disparities in the weather.

Last week we got some real warm 70+ degree weather and my heart skipped a beat.

Time to DYE!!!!! Yippee!

Luckily for me, my order of new dyes had just come in so I grabbed my apron and had at it with a vengeance. My new dyes included chartreuse, pumpkin spice, moss and turkey red among others. I decided to dye straight colours in a medium hue to get the true colours for my dye log.

Wellllll………I got carried away. I did dye those sets (below) but before I could remind myself to cut off some swatches I decided to overdye them. As you can see there’s a bit too many white areas in those fabrics for my liking.

So I get to work and this interesting lot  is what I got (below)…..boy was I scared to see what they looked like after the final rinse.

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But look….

…how beautiful they are. Will be adding these to my  Etsy shop tomorrow. Wait till you see them close up!

I also did a 3-step gradation (the way Lisa Call does hers) with the same colours as before but this time added about 2 oz of black dye to each dye concentrate. These beauties are what I got.

YUMMY!

Love, love, love to dye.

By the way, If you want to gather a few friends for a day of dyeing just drop me a line. Check my website (www.redbarn-studios.com) for more information about workshop prices.

See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art, hand dyes by k grace howes
2 Comments »

At my retreat this past weekend I got to completely finished a new journal that I’ve added to my Etsy shop.

It seems every time I make a painted suede journal it gets sold so quickly I can’t quite keep them in stock in the shop.

So here’s another …better act quickly!

I love the feel of the suede and but always feel I need to add some oomph to it so I painted a design this time in bold, RED splendor.

I added a large folding pocket in the back cover for all those notes and ephemera we all like to keep handy and of course, it’s filled with wonderful text weight paper wrapped in beautiful scrap papers that’s delicious to draw or write on.

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Go on………indulge in one for yourself!

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See ya next time “In the Haylfot”,

Tags: artful creations, journals, paper art by k grace howes
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And A Good Time Was Had By All

This past weekend I went away on a a long overdue quilt retreat with some ladies from my guild, the Lake Norman Quilters. Joyce of heArts Desire Retreats arranged the whole thing for us.

There were 13 of us (including Joyce) and we had the whole place to ourselves. The facility, located just outside of Boone, sleeps 13 people with with all but 2 having a separate twin bed (2 get to share a double bed in a cozy loft).

Michele and I arrived Friday midday just in time for lunch. We dropped our cases, picked a spot to sew and got right down to business.

Michele started working on her new fairy doll and got most of her finished with clothes except for the embellishments and the panties…who knew fairies wore panties?????

We worked on all sorts of projects from quilts to bags to dolls to paper. Check out some of these pics….

Cheryl & Mary Jo

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some show 'n tell out of camera range

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Jean's newly carved stamps

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Liz working on a big 'un

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There was lots of singing and dancing in between sewing. Here’s Joyce and Jean letting the music take them…..

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We laughed and joked and chatted and then some. Because it rained a dribbling cold rain the whole time we were there, we didn’t even venture outside the whole weekend.

Some us us even took a snooze cause we were working so hard at play.

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And here are all of us in our parting shot on Sunday…notice the big smiles…..something or other to do with salami???

yeh………good times!

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See ya next time “In the Hayloft”,

Tags: down time, monday posts, vacation by k grace howes
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On Saturday I delivered my quilt “It Takes A Village”  to Remi for the Deltas of Charlotte’s Silent Auction.

I met Remi in Borders bookstore and handed over the quilt…..sad to see it go but wonderful that I could participate in this event.

In the end I decided to quilt very little on it because I wanted to let the simple shapes of the people take center stage.

I quilted in the ditch around the people, stitched grass like reeds at the bottom and swirls in the sky above the mountains.

I also decided to include my signature on the front of the quilt. I was told that we quilt artists should treat our work just like the fine art you find in galleries and signing the front of our work adds to this concept.

I had thought to mount the piece on a slightly undersized canvas but instead decided to put a sleeve on it. I also included a slat board and directions for caring for the quilt as well. This was my first official “commissioned” piece and it’s amazing the things that one has to consider before handing one over.

The auction takes place May 30th and I hope to attend.

See ya next time “Int the Hayloft”,

Tags: Art, commissions, community, fiber art by k grace howes
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