Idea for ATC's -- Black Jewel Trilogy

Well here is my idea this morning...

It comes from 2 things...Pokey Bolton (from Quilting Arts) said in her blog yesterday that she wanted to make a Soprano's quilt.

http://www.quiltingartsblog.com/

Well, I don't want to make a quilt for a show -- but I am completely stuck on a series of books: The Dark Jewels trilogy. by Anne Bishop. This is a fantasy book with lots of sex and violence. It is not my usual style because it is way too bloody and grim. I usually read light fantasy. I almost didn't make it past the first chapter. But I am just stuck. I've read the entire trilogy 4 Times since July when my daughter suggested it. I've now read every book by the author and I know when the next book is due out. Really, really stuck.

http://www.annebishop.com/

And I thought I could make a quilt about that ... then I thought No, quilts are too much work... so how about a series of ATC's about the books. The author has requested no fan-fiction, but surely trading cards would be all right.I haven't decided to do it yet, but isn't it a lovely idea.

Tin Eye -- Image Searching

I have heard enough stories about people finding images of their artwork on other people's sites -- or even in somebody else Cafe Press store that I am investigating protecting my online images. I just learned about a new tool that could be useful...

Its name is Tineye and you can find it at http://www.tineye.com/

The way it works is that you give it an image and it looks through its database of images on the web for matches. It is supposed to match off the way the image looks.

You don't have to register the image ahead of time, you give it an image and it goes and looks for duplicates. They do warn you that it is new and they haven't got nearly all of the web scanned yet.

I registered on their site and tried it out. I gave it some images that are on my website and some I have on renderosity and on this blog. It didn't find any of them. Not even where I knew they were.

I figure that is because they aren't indexed yet. I would think they would index things that have a lot of traffic first and I don't get a lot of traffic yet.

Anyway I am curious if this would work better for anyone else. Especially someone that gets more traffic than me.

Quilt Festival

I went to Quilt Festival last week and had a lovely time. I went on Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On Thursday I went by myself, Friday and Sunday I met people and wandered with them.

The main thing about the International Quilt Festival is that it is overwhelming: the number of quilts is overwhelming; the quality of quilts is overwhelming; the vender room is overwhelming and I haven't even tried taking classes there yet.

I spoke to Terry White who wrote "Thread Painting" at the Festival. And I spoke to her a lot... first I wandered by and watched her thread paint. Then I got lost and wandered back by accidentally and she helped me get turned around again. Next I helped find her booth for one of my friends and last I went back and actually bought her book. She was nice every single time.

She sews slower than I would have guessed, her needle was going up and down maybe twice a second. Obviously she was moving her fabric slowly too.

Fractal Fiber Trading Cards

I made some Artist Trading Cards to bring to the International Quilt Festival tomorrow. The way I did it was this. I created fractal images using the program Ultra-Fractal. I printed them onto cotton fabric; then I free-motion embroidered them using my sewing machine.

I made about a dozen, and I expect I will be able to trade them to get ones made by others.

Artist Trading Cards are small pieces of artwork that are the same size as Baseball cards. They are created for trading by artists and craftspeople. They can be made either with paper or with fabric. I usually prefer fabric ones. There are swaps set up, both in person and online where you can trade ones you have made for ones others have made. This will be my first time for an in-person swap but I have done quite a few online before.

Printing to Fabric Sheets

Well I printed my picture from last time. The fabric sheets I am using are Cotton Poplin sheets from VV's Victorian Prints. I bought a package last year at the International Quilt Festival.

It came out washed out compared to the image on my computer, so I messed with it to make it have more contrast and printed it again. This time I asked for heavy ink. The second one came out a lot darker. Then I rinsed them and let them dry. I thought the color softened a little bit too in the rinse too.

Here are the two prints

I was hoping to make trading cards with these and exchange them at Festival this year...

But I remembered belatedly that I needed to use a holiday theme. So I decided to make them green and red and try again. I also decided that a softer image would work better so I am trying to soften my image a bit. I'll try to report on that tomorrow.

The URL for festival is

http://www.quilts.com/

The URL for the printer sheets I am using is

http://www.vvprints.com/

And the URL for QuiltingArts which is sponsoring the trade is

http://www.quiltingarts.com/

ATC for International Quilt Festival

Today, besides getting my roof replaced and taking the dog to the vet and other such mundanities, I've decided to make some ATC's to trade at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. I am printing off one of my fractals on fabric sheets and am planning on embellishing it.
Here is the one I'm using.

I am planning on adding some machine embroidery probably in gold. And then maybe a light layer of Angelina across the top. I might do a little painting too.

Fractal Class

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm taking a class in creating fractals. Well it is coming to an end and I thought I would explain it some before I was done...

You don't draw a fractal yourself, you tell a computer program what to do and it actually does the drawing for you. The program I am using is Ultra-Fractal and you can get extremely elaborate in what you tell it to do. Because it is so elaborate many, many different things can be drawn.

It also makes it complicated to use -- therefore the classes. The ones I am taking are by Janet Parke. They are quite interesting and useful and I recommend them highly.

Here are some links:

http://www.ultrafractal.com/

http://visual-arts-academy.com/

The academy gives classes in more than just Ultra Fractal although I haven't taken any.

Here are some of my recent images.