Anyone on the fence....PRINCESS IS HAVING A SALE!!!!!! YIPPEE!!!! And it applies to anyone who already booked! There will be round table discussions, how to sell on eBay, Digital photography, and fashion do's & don'ts classes, artist trunk show and special fashion show, not to mention all the great Caribbean ports we will be stopping at in the middle of February (it's already getting cold here) ! You may come knowing no one, but you will leave with many new friends! Like I have said before, this will be my third one and I can not wait! Any questions??? Feel free to contact me or go to the website for more info.
I want to apologize to everyone following my blog - I haven't been keeping it up very well lately. Partly due to life getting in the way, partly due to work getting in the way and partly due to my camera just flat out stopping. Arrrgghhhh! I really wanted to take some pictures of what I have been working on lately, but that will have to wait until next week.
I am always striving to improve my business....my work, my marketing and my show presentation. One thing that helps me with the latter is to take a picture of my layout at every show. It is one thing to look at the booth during the show, but seeing it on the computer later I observe things I didn't see at the show. I can figure out what works and what doesn't. I can ask myself, for instance, if the bright colors in the front seemed to draw more people into the booth. These don't have to be jury quality, 
just for me quality- so a point and shoot digital camera is just fine.
It's a great day of creative people trying different techniques all at the same time. Unlike a class where I am trying to educate the participants, in this case I stand back and let them create. I am there mostly to field questions and facilitate their ideas. For their part, they get all the fun of experimental dyeing without really needing to know the chemical knitty gritty. I find (as with most teaching situations) that I learn from them - fresh ideas for my work. 
This weekend I will be joining 124 of my artist friends at a show in the Cleveland, Ohio area! This is a great
The next person did some green ombre dyeing to the bottom 25% of the T.
I decided this was a good time to try my vision. I sewed the design using 3 different type of stitches. For the vine I used a foldover running stitch on the arm & back and on the front I used a chevron stitch. The leaves on the arm and back are stitched with a simple running stitch outlining the design. The front leaves I folded in half before stitching half a leaf design.
Then I pulled the stitches tight to form a resist.
Now it is time to dye! I chose to continue the spring green up the arm and down the right side. I put all of the previous ombre dyed area as well as the left side of the shirt in plastic bags and bound them tightly.
I took a picture I had found which looked out at the ocean from a window in Maui. Someday I plan on doing that- look at the ocean from my house in Maui. So, I decided to build my own dream window. First I printed the picture on commercially bought photo silk fabric - you know, the kind to make your own tshirts and stuff. The ocean didn't look blue enough for me, so I cut it out and backed it with my hand dyed silk fabric with jacquard waves. Then I painted the sky (it wasn't blue enough, either) and the distant mountains. I also added some more flowers and enhanced the palms on the left. I mounted this to the acrylic 'glass' that came with the frame. Then I took some silk chiffon, ironed it to freezer paper, cut it to 8 1/2" X 11" and printed the image again. This one I glued to the outside of the frame making the 2 images about 1/2" apart giving the image an ethereal 3-D feeling. I then covered the frame with shells - including some that I found when I was in Hawaii a couple of years ago. Now to put it somewhere that I see it everyday!
Indy Bacon took an old windowframe, door plates, wooden folding ruler and other odd bits and assembled them to create this whimsical piece:
Gisela Bosch found a weaving pattern called 'windowpane' and wove a scarf:
Gail Rachor knitted a house, felted it, embellished the outside and added pictures of all the houses she ever lived in for the inside.
Ronnie Straus took a picture she had taken in the 70's of a shack and reinterpreted it in fabric and emboidery.
There were of course more wonderful pieces (there are 15 of us in total), but it really is interesting how 15 people can take the same concept and run in different ways.....Where would you have gone?
Occasionally I get involved with group round robins. A subject is decided upon and we pass each item to the next person after adding a technique. I have done dolls, purses, cloth, clothing and now T Shirts. This one is from the Yahoo online group, Complex Cloth. In this challenge we each bought 100% cotton T shirts and did the first layer of design. This more or less sets some perimeters for the colors that we like to wear. I am across the board in colors I wear, but if push comes to shove I tend toward the purples and blues. Here is the t shirt I sent. I fan folded the shirt on the diagonal, rolled it like a cinnamon bun and painted blue dye on top and purple dye on the bottom. Since 6 more people have to work on it, I wanted to leave plenty of room for others to add their own touch. It will be exciting to see what it looks like when
The tshirt I received came with it's first layer already done. A nice and sunny piece to work on for a spring with very strange weather (we go from 80 degree sunny summer one day to 50 degree cold and wet the next and back again). But I felt I could add some red to jazz it up a bit. So, I did the same folding as above, but instead of using 2 different colors I only used a red. Again, there will be 5 more people working on this piece after me, so I wanted to leave room for options so it will be quite interesting to see where it goes...
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