PUBLISHED!!! 1000 Artisan Textiles

Woot!!! My Green Apple Martini Quilt aka "GAM" was published in 1000 Artisan Texiles!! What a wonderful book to own, so many beautiful colors, so many wonderful pieces!! A definite "must have" to any art book collection!!

(If you didn't know, I'm the one up in the top right corner!!)

I've blogged a lot about Green Apple Martini in past posts, but for those that are just meeting her for the first time................GAM was created using hand dyed bamboo poplin (LOVE that green!!) She was machine quilted, then layers of hand dyed cheesecloth, misty fuse & Angelina Fibers were added. Metal squiggles & cast paper triangles were added as embellishments.

My intentions originally for GAM were to try to enter her into a couple of shows, but when those options fell through, I decided to put her up for sale in my Etsy shop. A couple of months later, the opportunity arose to submit this quilt for possible inclusion in a new book that Sandra Salamony & Gina Brown were compiling called 1000 Artisan Textiles, so I took Green Apple Martini out of my shop & awaited their answer. Which I am very happy to say was accepted!!

Now that GAM is a star (lol) I can't seem to part with her, so she happily resides on a wall in my home!!!

Dharma Trading Featured Artist

Woohoo!! I'm one of the Featured Artists, for April, on Dharma Trading's website!!

A couple of months ago, while reading Dharma's emailed newsletter, I read at the bottom, in tiny print, "if you use any of our products that we sell in your art, please feel free to email us a picture of your finished piece & it might get posted onto our site."

I order all of my dyeing supplies from Dharma & I just love, love, love their bamboo poplin, so I sent them a photo of Green Apple Martini. Shortly after the email was sent, I received a response stating that they would like to have me as a Featured Artist on their home page for April & would I be interested? ARE YOU KIDDING?! Of course, I would!! A few more photos of my work & a write up about me (which I've never been comfortable doing) & here it is!! :)

Hand Dyed Bamboo Gradations

For sale in my Etsy store.

I added some dyed gradations of bamboo poplin to my Etsy store. They're a 9-step gradation using Procion Dyes. For the set above, I used a deep navy.

For Sale

I think the Moss Green, above might be my favorite of the three!! Kym from kimbuktu Etsy store, did a trade with me for some of this fabric & she made the MOST beautiful bag from my fabric. I told her, if I didn't already have one of her beautiful quilted bags, that this one would be mine!! I have a feeling, this bag might sell pretty quickly!

For Sale

This was dyed with Turkish Red. Kym also received some of this color but her's was dyed with cotton muslin. Check out her bag she made with this fabric. LOVE those squiggles :). It's so nice to see what someone else can do with the fabric that you've dyed. Thanks Kym!!!

Something different.............

Do you ever have this happen when you're at an Art Fair or you see something in a magazine & think to yourself, "I wonder if I could make one of those?" One of my friends has one of those drawstring backpacks that she got from the company she works for as a promotional type gift & it was kind of tacky, it was made from cheap acetate-like plastic & it had the company's name imprinted HUGE on the bag. I thought to myself, she wears that bag all of the time, what a great idea to try making her a nicer one & give to her as a Christmas gift. Here's how it turned out. Just to let you know, I had no patterns or instructions to follow & I learned A LOT as I was making the bag.

© 2009 Tracy Borders

© 2009 Tracy Borders

I hand dyed raw silk & cotton velveteen in different gradations of brown. (The colors are a lot richer than what you see in the photos.) I'm not sure I'd use those fabrics together again when constructing a piece. The fabrics moved all over the place. They were both somewhat stretchy & worked against each other while I tried to sew the blocks together, so I fixed that by adding a fusible interfacing to the backing of both fabrics. For the inside, I lined it with hand dyed (brown) cotton & added a couple of pockets, which I learned later, should have been placed towards the top of the bag instead of the bottom (everything seemed to land into the pockets at the bottom of the bag.)

© 2009 Tracy Borders

(That's my friend modeling her new bag.) I vowed after I made this one, that if I wanted one for myself, that I would buy one. Maybe, after I've been away from it for awhile, I might go back & try to make one for myself out of bamboo, NOT velveteen or raw silk!!

Another painted bondaweb piece......

.........(& probably my last). This piece developed from my sampling with painted bondaweb & Angelina Fibers.

© 2009 Tracy Borders

I left the backing on the bondaweb & painted it with Golden Acrylics Dioxazine Purple. After the paint dried (still leaving the backing paper on) I fused Angelina Fibers to the surface, using a pressing sheet & waiting for it to completely cool before I removed the pressing sheet. I then, peeled the backing paper off VERY gently & cut it into strips of different widths.

Sitting that aside, I hand dyed bamboo poplin & cheesecloth to match the purple color from the painted bondaweb. I then fused the cheesecloth, with white Misty Fuse to the bamboo. Before I cut these into strips, I fused bondaweb to the back side of the bamboo fabric & peeled away the backing paper. (This step really comes in handy a little bit later.)

After the first two rows of bamboo poplin were woven, they were then fused (ever so gently) with a Teflon pressing sheet, onto a piece of Peltex that was precut to finished size. With the bamboo being backed with bondaweb & the painted bondaweb, they fused to each other & to the Peltex all at the same time.

If you're wondering what type of bondaweb was used, I used the fairly inexpensive, thin type that's sold at JoAnn fabrics. I've talked to others that have tried this technique & discovered that they had problems with thicker & yes older, bondaweb that they had laying around in their studios for awhile. Apparently, they had problems with it not completely releasing from the backing paper.

As I stated before, I think this will probably be my last project with painted bondaweb. Handling the bondaweb, from removing the paper backing after applying the fused Angelina Fibers to weaving the strips required great patience & total relaxation on my part. It's quite fragile to work with, so I found myself walking away during the weaving process a few times just to relax myself & to calm down :)

Think I'll just happily go back to how I like to use it...............for bonding one fabric to another :)

GAM In the Spot Light

Green Apple Martini (aka GAM)

© 2008 Tracy Borders

For Sale

Remember this piece? She's now featured on Embellishment Village's Inspirational Gallery for using their Angelina Fibers!! I'm so honored to be featured amongst other wonderful artists that have used Angelina.

I actually discovered Angelina Fibers by accident. I was in a quilt store & in a discounted bin, there were bags of assorted colors of Angelina Fibers. It was such a deal, I couldn't pass it up & this gave me the opportunity to try something that I had been curious about for some time. My first experiment with Angelina was Green Apple Martini, pictured above. After that, I was hooked!!! I now use it in many of my pieces. It gives that nice little shiny "pop" to my work. (Wished it photographed just a little better.)

Green Apple Martini is for sale in my Etsy store & I have decided to leave her there for a year & should she not sell, then it's the Gods' way of telling me she should hang in my home :)
(I just LOVE those colors!!)

Wonderful weekend!!

I was able to complete over 9 art projects during my 4-day holiday weekend. It was wonderful!! I felt like a machine, but that was ok, it kept me from getting bored & snacking all day. Hmmmm, could creating art possibly become a new diet? :)

I created 3 different journals, 2 for my Etsy store & one was a custom order for a friend. The first journal below, I think might be my absolute favorite!! The photos just don't do it the justice that it deserves. If you can imagine the colors in a peacock feather, this is the colors that you can see in this journal & the light plays with the colors as you change the angle of viewing at this journal.

© 2008 Tracy Borders

For Sale

This entire journal was an experiment. New materials, new clasp, new idea of adding a refillable pocket for a spiral notepad (that I made) instead of sewing in signatures. (Love the new clasp!)

Not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I figured out how to add the refillable pocket to hold the spiral notepad on my own. I could have checked out Fibre & Stitch's free padfolio pattern, but I wanted to figure it out myself, since everything else was an experiment with this journal.

A little note that might make you giggle about the notepads. I had this brainstorm to make my own notepads.......make some with "art" chipboard fronts & some without to just fit in journals like these. Well I needed the wire binding combs. Do you know how hard it is to find wire binding combs locally? It's impossible. So off to the internet to surf. I searched for over a week to find the smallest quantity I could order for the best price......................yeah, I now am the proud owner of 140 wire bindings combs, but wait................ I can make two spiral notepads from one binding comb, so now I have 280 wire binding combs. Ok, so it is funny, but it ISN'T!! I'm never going to go through THAT many combs & the worst part, finding a place to store that huge box. Don't think the DH has seen it yet since I haven't received a scolding yet :)

The journal below, is made from painted brown paper bags & I decided to create lined pages for the signatures this time.

© 2008 Tracy Borders

For Sale

The closure, seen in the close up below is made from Ebony. I learned a lesson when cutting this wood on my DH compound saw, you know the saw you can use to cut mitered edges? If you seem a little nervous about cutting a small piece of wood, let the DH do it. I tried to cut it, but apparently didn't have a firm grip on the piece of wood. When I brought the saw down to cut it, it ripped it from my hand, the piece of wood, circled around & came back & smacked me VERY hard on the knuckle right above my wedding ring & turned it purple instantly. I found the piece that hit my finger, but have NO idea where the other piece landed. So while I was icing to get the swelling to go down, the husband cut the wood for me. It's now day 5 since the accident & it's just now starting to feel better. I think I can say happily, that it's not broken.

The hurt finger didn't stop me though, I was able to continue creating. I was able to finish some Christmas ornaments for a swap that I'm in. I tried many times to photograph a couple of hand-dyed cotton velveteen ornaments & for some reason, the colors never seemed to turn out well, so am sorry that I'm not able to post those here.

I did manage to get a couple of Rayon/Silk Velvet scarves hand dyed & stamp embossed.

© 2008 Tracy Borders

Not For Sale

The scarf on the left is dyed with Pro Chem's Deep Navy & the beautiful emerald green scarf is dyed with Dharma's Better Blue Green.

I almost forgot......................a post or two ago, I mentioned about making a journal cover using molding paste & how I had such a hard time with it cracking while it dried. Well I was able to make those cracks work for me in this photo below. Am thinking of adding them to a journal cover front. I rubber stamped the molding paste while it was still wet. After it dried, I applied Golden's Iron Oxide & then lightly buffed it with a soft cloth to remove some of the color. Reminds me of old stone tiles.

I probably won't post much the rest of this week since I have family coming in for the first part of next week. I do hope to have another journal cover finished by the end of next week to post that I've been working on. I used molding paste again & squiggle rubber stamps. Intentions were for it to be in my store, but I think that I'm liking it so much, I just might have to keep it :)

Ornaments for the Holidays or for Whenever

I always enjoy making these!!

They're both approximately 8 1/2" long by 3.5" to 4" wide. They're both made of hand dyed bamboo poplin (of course) & hand dyed cheesecloth.

The blue ornament below, has been machine stitched & hand stamped with squiggles. Angelina Fibers (the iridescence that you can see) were then fused between the bamboo poplin & hand dyed cheesecloth. If you're curious about Angelina Fibers make sure you check out Embellishment Village's vodcast on Beginning Angelina Basics. It's an excellent 10 minute video on how to use Angelina Fibers.

© 2008 Tracy Borders

For sale in my Etsy shop

The red ornament (yes the color is that vibrant), also from hand dyed bamboo, has layers of machine stitching, fused cheesecloth (the white misty fuse gives it a nice little bit of added glitz), more machine stitching & hand beading.

© 2008 Tracy Borders

For sale in my Etsy Shop

The nice thing about these is that with the colors & designs I use, they can be used all year around. They'd hang nicely on a Christmas tree or wrapped gift or hang in your studio or office. It would be nice if you could hang them from your rear view mirror, but the direct sun light would fade the dyed fabric.

I have ornaments in different stages, waiting to be finished, in my studio in colors of purple, possibly turquoise & of course my signature neon green. I'm also working on some embossed hand dyed velvet. I'll post them here when I finished. (Am hoping with this 4 day holiday weekend, I'll have a lot to post here next week!!)

I have a new label.................

I've been called many different things (think nicely, here) :)

I've been called an artist, a Fiber artist, a quilter, a surface person, a dyer (I've never really considered myself a mixed media artist) but now I have a new title to add to my list..............."cross-over person."


I'm so lucky, my quilting store & bead store moved in together so now I can visit one store to get fabric & beads.


I went in to get thread for this...........

This is going to be a cover for a new journal. It's molding paste, stitched, painted & beaded. The color in person is so much brighter, think peacock feather & you've nailed the colors.

And beads for this............

This is hand dyed bamboo poplin that I've free motion stitched. Plans are to bead it & create holiday ornaments or gift tie-ons.

I'll post pics of both once they're finished & yes, they'll both be in my Etsy store!!

Back to my new title...................as I was checking out & visiting with one of the ladies that works there, she asked what I did. As I showed her these two pieces, she said, "oh, you're one of those cross-over people, you know, that do beading & quilting." And I said, yes, I guess I am. So, now I have a new title to add to my list. Are you a cross-over person?

By the way, I've created some blank note cards for my Etsy store. You'll find a closeup of Green Apple Martini & a blue woven bamboo strip squiggled pc there.

Hand Dyed Velvet

© 2008 Tracy Borders
For Sale in my Etsy Shop

© 2008 Tracy Borders

© 2008 Tracy Borders

I love how the color turned out on this & I'm happy to say, that I actually kept record of the dyes that were used to obtain this color (this time), so I can recreate this if needed. This is a deep brown however, not a chocolate brown (like the scarf below). The scarf above is a nice brown & when the light hits it, there is the suggestion of olive green. The squiggles have been embossed into the Rayon/Silk velvet on both scarves.

© 2008 Tracy Borders
For Sale in my Etsy Shop.

Hand Dyed Scarves

I've been working like a mad woman this past couple of weeks to get my Etsy store up & ready by tomorrow & I am happy to say that it WILL be open!!

Some of the items that I've been working on are hand dyed silk & velvet scarves. The scarf below won't be in my store since it's for a charity event that is being held at the end of this month.

© 2008 Tracy Borders

© 2008 Tracy Borders

But the scarf below, will be. I call this "Martini Anyone?"

© 2008 Tracy Borders

© 2008 Tracy Borders

Both of these scarves, I have hand dyed & rubber stamped & added a small touch of beading. You may have to click on the Martini scarf to see the detail, but I used green seed beads to represent olives in the martini glasses.

I don't think I would have normally made a scarf like this, but with the holidays just around the corner & I do love a good martini, I thought this was a fun scarf to create!!

Check back here tomorrow & I'll post the web address of my new Etsy store!!

Tyvek ATC's

© 2008 Tracy Borders

These look SO much better in person. Shiny materials just don't like to photograph very well. Should the sun ever decide to peak out from behind the clouds just a little bit, I'll try to photograph them under natural light & see if that helps any. (Living in Seattle, we really only have two seasons-Spring & Winter, with about a week of Summer and a week of Fall in between.)

The background is hand dyed bamboo poplin in my favorite green. I used Lumiere paint under the stitched down Tyvek & then back over the top of it before I hit it with a heat gun & then applied again after I melted back some of the Tyvek. The tiny flecks of turquoise that appear here & there were created by painting the Tyvek with left over exhausted Procion MX dyes. It's nice to know that you can use the old dyes for other projects & not have to dump them down the drain.

As for the edges, I think I might leave them as is, I fear adding a satin stitch edge or any other stitching might detract from the ATC & I like the raw edge with the melted Tyvek. As for adding any embellishing, I'm not sure, I think I like it just as it is.

Didn't Make it into Quilt National

This is the first year I've entered a piece into Quilt National. I went in thinking that it probably wouldn't get accepted, since this is the first time I've submitted to this show, but a teeny part of me was SO hoping that it would.

Remember Green Apple Martini?

(also known amongst an inner circle of artist friends as GAM) Well, she was rejected.

She's been entered into a couple of different shows & rejected at both. I think someone's trying to tell me she needs to be put into my Etsy store (which I REALLY hope to have open by the end of October.) I know it's only been two shows & that you probably get more rejections than you do acceptions, but that's ok, on to my next piece.

One great thing, I submitted GAM to Betty at Embellishment Village & she said that she would love to post GAM on their website!! So all was not lost.

(For those that have never seen Green Apple Martini before, she was made from hand dyed bamboo poplin & cheesecloth, thread painted, Angelina Fibers, metal squiggle clips & those bright neon triangles were created from toilet tissue paper casts from rubber stamps.)

Bamboo PC finally finished!!

I'm not sure why I struggled so hard to create & complete a piece before. We were to create a bamboo pc for a swap in Surface Design. I have used hand dyed bamboo poplin in a lot of my work, so I'm not sure why this pc was such a struggle. But here they are......................

I have discovered that the flash just doesn't like to pick up the shiny Angelina fibers in these pieces which is really too bad, because I don't think these photos really do the pc's justice. The background is a hand dyed bamboo poplin (burnt orange), hand dyed cheesecloth layered over machine stitching & Angelia fibers & the triangles are from my tp tissue casting & metal "squiggles".

There is a little story behind these pc's. These are actually cut from a bigger quilt (Tequila Sunrise) that I was working on a couple of months ago, to enter into a show. I had the wall piece finished up until the quilting stage & that is where it all seemed to fall apart. I wasn't happy with how the quilting was going & I was not comfortable with the size I was working in. It was roughly 24" by 36" & I'm not used to working in bigger sizes anymore. I much more prefer working with sizes 11" by 17" & smaller. The show I was entering, had a size requirement of no smaller than 24" by 24". After that frustration, I decided it was best to put it away for awhile & come back to it at a later date in hopes that I could save it.......................... four pc's later & the possibilty of 2 smaller wall pieces from the original piece??

I had never cut into any of my pieces before to make them over into other pieces, so it was hard to make that first cut. But I have to say, I'm happy with how these turned out & looking forward to using the "left over" scraps for a couple of more "smaller" pieces.

Goin' Green...................

If you're from the Midwest(US) you're probably familiar with this saying. It's when a bad storm is coming upon you with the possibility of a tornado. The best way to describe it is everything takes on a green color, the sky, the trees & even your skin. It's like looking through a camera lens with a green filter on it & I have to say it's the most beautiful thing to see. (If you ever saw the movie Tornado, there's a scene where they talk about goin' green.) It may seem odd to mention beauty with such destruction, but it's a remarkable site!! I now live in the Pacific NW & there's not much that I miss about leaving the Midwest, except for "goin' green" & their wonderful lightning & thunder storms, they can be pretty unbelievable!




But that's enough about that...............the reason for me goin' green, I did a wonderful color run between Dharma's Royal Blue & Sun Yellow. In DyeHard_RunOff, we do swaps of a 7-color run from one color, I chose Royal Blue to the other color, Sun Yellow. I soon discovered that I was missing some interesting colors in between those 7 steps, so I decided, since I already had the dye solutions mixed that I would go ahead & hit the colors in between those 7 steps, giving me a 13-color run & I found some beautiful colors!!

You always end up with left over dye solution after your project, (well at least I do) & what better way to use them....make parfaits!! I was really happy with how these turned out.

This last photo, I had to share with you. This was part of the 13-color run (I think it was step 5). The mottling on this is fabulous!! Funny thing is, when I try to intentionally mottle fabric in a dye bath, it never turns out. It's when you're not planning for it, THIS happens!! I think it's my favorite piece of the batch.

I'm melting..................

.......................fabric :)

Ever since I discovered that you could paint & melt tyvek & organza with a heat gun, I've wanted to create a piece incorporating these ideas. I haven't done anything with tyvek yet, but it's next in line after I finish with these organza pieces. The first four, I hand dyed bamboo fabric forest green. I then added foiling, which I might add, that I love!! I think it really gives the piece glitz. They were then painted with lumiere paint on top of the foil & then a layer of black organza, stitched over the top & then hit with a heat gun. Unfortunately, these photos don't show very well how "shiny & glitzy" the colors from the foiling are.

The photo below, you can see where I added the foil to the right side of the fabric.

As for the foiling technique & where to purchase the foil, please check out Lynda's (you may know her better as Purple Missus) & Carol's website Fibre In-Form. They have beautiful examples of their work where they have incorporated foiling techniques & they have free tutorials on this site as well & you can also purchase the foils on their site.

I'm working on two different challenges for Surface Design. One, I'm to use black, white & one other color to create a pc & the other is Burn, Slash, Manipulate, Distort & we're to use a couple of those techniques in a pc. The second challenge, I think I've achieved with the photos above. The first challenge I'm trying to work out in the photos below. I'm having a hard time using white since it's not a color that I'm used to working with.

The photo to the left, I used black fabric, a gun-metal color foil, white paint & then layered it with a rubber stamped blue-green organza. I stitched it down & then hit it with a heat gun. I like what happened with the foiling & the rubber stamped flowers on the organza. The foiling pattern on this piece has a flower-like appearance.

To get the foil to bond to the fabric, you need to use something like wonder under, but for some reason, I had problems with the foil bonding to the fabric, so I tried Misty Fuse & it worked wonderfully!! You know how with Misty Fuse that it has a web-like appearance? When I placed the foil over the Misty Fuse & hit it with an iron & pulled the film back, the foil bonded only in the "webbed" areas & it gave a spider weblike appearance, it looked so fine & delicate. I didn't realize until after I hit the piece with a heat gun & the organza melted away, exposing the foiling that the pattern of the foiling had a flower-like appearance.

The photo above, on the right, just doesn't do it for me. Even though, I used a copper foil for my "other color" it just really appears, blah.

I'm not sure what I think about the piece below. I wanted to see what would happen with using a colored background (hand dyed bamboo-turquoise) & not using any foiling. I started with the turquoise fabric, painted it a lumiere metallic white, layering with a black organza, stitching it down & then hitting it with a heat gun. The turquoise seemed so bright, I went back in with a navy lumiere paint to tone it down a little bit. I'm not sure piece is done yet?