When I started quilting, it never entered my mind how much time I would spend trying to photograph my quilts. And it really never occurred to me that I would resort to climbing on counter tops and putting myself through all sorts of contortions to get the camera in “just the right spot” for a photo!

I don’t usually have to do this with my own quilts, but I was helping Laura Murray photograph some of her StarBuilder quilts last winter. I had to use the macro lens on my camera to avoid getting distortion on the edges of the quilt, but her work table prevented me from moving far enough back from the quilt. So — up on the counter top I went.

I got the giggles with Laura taking pics of me taking pics of her quilts, so we took a break and had some fun.  Here’s Laura — taking pictures of me…

… and me taking a picture of Laura!

Isn’t that quilt fabulous? Laura’s new book on StarBuilders has gone to the printer, and she’ll be posting a guest entry here on the blog within a few weeks. Stay tuned!

Whenever I do paintstik demos, someone inevitably asks “how do I clean up?”  After playing with these paints for 10 years, I’ve gone through a lot of different cleaning products. Here are my favorites.

Cleaning Brushes

My favorite cleaning for cleaning brushes depends on how long they sit before I clean them.

If I clean them up right away, I use the Cedar Canyon Brush Soap. It’s an oil-based cleaner that is non-toxic and gentle on your skin. I dip the brush into the jar of soap, and then swirl it around in the palm of my hand until the soap is thoroughly worked into the bristles. Then I rinse with warm water and repeat if necessary. I squeeze the water out with a towel and leave the brushes to dry.

If I’ve been lazy (it happens frequently) and I’ve left my brushes for more than a day or two, I use Citra-Solv to clean the brushes. Citra-Solv is a concentrated orange-based solvent. I purchase it at the local health food store, but you may find it in the organic section of a grocery store. I stand the brushes in a container that has Citra-Solv in the bottom and let them soak for a bit. Then I scrub each brush on a clean paper towel to remove the paint. If there is a lot of paint on the brush (or if I leave them without cleaning for a loooong time) it may take a couple of cycles through the process to clean the brushes.

I like Citra-Solv much better than typical solvents like mineral spirits or paint thinner, but it can still be a little tough on the hands. And one more tip on Citra-Solv — choose your container carefully. I once had a student pour this stuff into a styrofoam cup and we promptly had a big mess — it ate through the cup!

One important note on cleaning brushes — you can clean your brushes with soap and water if you don’t mind working at it a bit harder. The main ingredient in the paintstiks is wax, so choose something like Dawn dish soap or anything that will cut grease. It’s more work, but it can be done.

Cleaning Your Hands

While I’m working, I keep some baby wipes handy. That way I can wipe my hands  when it’s important not to accidentally smear paint where I don’t want it.

When I finish up, there is no substitute for our brush soap. This stuff is great — it even takes the paint from underneath my fingernails without drying out my skin. Much better than regular soap and water — but that works too with a little more elbow grease (followed by a dollop of hand cream).

Cleaning Rubbing Plates

I always spray my rubbing plates with repositionable adhesive (like 404 or KK2000). The upside is that my fabric stays where I want it — the downside is that my plates are sticky and they collect lint and dust like crazy. So once in a while I need to clean them off and start over. Fortunately, Citra-Solv will remove sticky spray along with any paint buildup on the plates.

If you don’t have (or can’t locate) Citra-Solv, keep in mind that all of the companies that make sticky spray also make products to remove the spray. (Now there’s a built-in market…) So look for products like DK-5, HR-Zero and Remove. Sewing machine dealers are a good place to find these products as they use sticky sprays for machine embroidery.

Cleaning Stencils

Even if I wipe my stencils as I work, it seems that I always wind up with some paint build-up on my stencils. Because stencils are delicate, I prefer to spray them with Citra-Solv (or another solvent) and then gently wipe with a paper towel or soft cloth.

Cleaning Up Clothing

I always wear an apron when I’m around paints so I don’t paint my clothes. (The only time you see me without one is on the set of Quilting Arts TV and then I have to be really careful!) Unfortunately, stuff still happens. We have a “play table” in the Cedar Canyon booth at trade shows, and last spring I had an unhappy surprise. A paintstik must had dropped from the table onto one of our chairs. I didn’t actually sit on the paintstik, but I did get paint on the backside of my tan slacks. (A wrap-around apron maybe???) I was not happy.

Fortunately, my trusty trade-show assistant Mary Brandt had a solution for me. She took the bottle of our Cedar Canyon Brush Soap back to our hotel room with us and used it to clean the paint from my slacks. (And this was a day later — we forgot it the first day.) I had no idea that this would work, but Mary discovered this trick after smudging some dark blue paint on the yellow jeans she was painting. She let the paint dry and heat set the design, then used the brush soap to clean up the smudges — even after the paint was dry. I certainly can’t guarantee that our brush soap will remove errant paintstik color from your clothes, but it’s worth a try if you’ve accidentally painted yourself.

All Cleaned Up!

Well, there you have it. My cleaning basket is always stocked with Cedar Canyon Brush Soap, Citra-Solv, baby wipes, and a can of spray remover. If you have a favorite way to clean up, post a comment. Maybe we’ll find another great product!

Once a month I join a small group of adventurous quilters called the DIVAS for a Monday afternoon meeting. We share our recent work, new ideas, work on group projects, and try new techniques. But summer is special in Minnesota, so our August gathering was simply a picnic at Becky’s lake cabin. It was a glorious day with lots of sunshine, a gentle breeze and wonderful company.

Mary Ritter (Alexandria, MN) brought her version of the Coneflower quilt. It’s really stunning. Mary used matte colors on a mottled batik background and added some borders. It looks very different from the originals. She quilted the background in a linear pattern using a double needle. It sets off the flower very nicely and gives a totally different effect. Thanks for sharing, Mary!

And here’s an idea from Kathy Amparan in California. She really liked the leaves from the small stencil, so she made a large freezer paper stencil and added a few to her quilt. What are you doing with coneflowers?

The first weekend of August is always special in our little corner of Douglas County (Minnesota). It’s the weekend of the Rose City Threshing Festival. The men bring all their (very large) toys, like steam engines, tractors and threshing machines.  They get most of the attention for the weekend, but the women have their own displays and activities. (In all fairness, there are a number of women who take part in the tractor pulls, threshing, and can tear down and rebuild a tractor. I think it’s all pretty amazing!)

I got pulled into the threshing festival by my lovely neighbor many years ago. I used to go and sit with her in the machine shed and do some demonstrations. Here’s a few of the Lakes Area Quilters members with the raffle quilt. It’s not a fancy place to work, but we get lots of visitors through the building and it’s always a pleasure to chat with them about quilting.

A few years back, the Lakes Quilters adopted one of the little buildings on the grounds and now it is used to display quilts and let the festival visitors know about our goup. Here’s the Quilt Shoppe…

Displaying quilts at the Threshing Festival is a bit of a challenge — lots of people are walking around with sodas and ice cream cones! So, we came up with the idea of sliding huge plastic bags over the quilts so people can look through the quilts without leaving a sticky mess. It works!

Our local quilters bring in everything from bed quilts to tote bags to share with the visitors. There’s something for everyone — including a quilt that was donated as a give-away prize.

So, to my wonderful neighbor, Irene, I say thank you, thank you for pulling me into this wonderful event all those years ago. You have blessed my life with your wisdom and friendship. May you continue to enjoy the festival for many years to come!

Now I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there’s no threshing going on at this little country festival. One of my best quilting friends is married to a man who has a really big toy — Robby bought and refurbished a steam engine along with his son David. It is magnificent!

The parade is always a family affair. Robby and David are driving — and it looks like Robby is breaking in the youngest grandson pretty early here! The only one missing from the parade is my friend Mary, who is taking pictures, of course!

And steam engines (running on steam, of course) need lots of water, so Robby restored an old water wagon. Mary tells me it is a small miracle this thing holds water — it was in pretty rough shape when it came home to the Schultz place. I guess a guy’s gotta have something to do in the winter when his wife is busy quilting.

Here’s David filling up the water tank, getting ready for more threshing!

And one more quilter-related photo. Red Wegner (husband of quilter Colleen and owner of the threshing machine) was the grand marshal for the parades this year. Here’s a pic of Colleen and Red leading off the festivities.

All in all, it was a wonderful August weekend. The weather on Saturday left a bit to be desired, but Sunday was simply glorious. The sun came out in the afternoon, but the temperatures stayed on the mild side, and the breeze kept everyone happy. Who could ask for more?

Lots of people ask me how to store paintstiks. Just about anything works. You can literally toss them in a zip bag and put them in a drawer. But lots of people want something a bit more “organized.” So here’s a simple, inexpensive idea from the Back-to-School section.

I had stopped into my local Walmart to pick up a few things and found these colorful pencil boxes made by Sterlite. They looked like they might work, so I picked one up. It turns out they are just the right size to hold paintstiks, (and you can’t beat the price.) You can put half the paintstiks in the lid while you’re working and then close up the box when you’re finished. Pretty neat!

This small pencil box holds 19 or 20 paintstiks comfortably. I’ll bet you can put another layer (for a total of 30) in the larger version. They come in several colors, and you can see through the plastic, so it’s easy to see what’s inside. I think I’ll have to pick up a few more the next time I’m in town.

Your email:

 

A couple of weeks ago, I received the most wonderful letter in the mail. It was a note from artist and teacher Lauren Vlcek (pronounced vel-check), from Colorado Springs. Her letter was accompanied by photographs of two of her journal covers with amazing faces. Here is a paragraph from her letter and a couple of photos of her journal covers.

I have been enjoying your Paintstiks tremendously! I love the slogan, “What will you do with Paintstiks today?” In answer to that question… I have been painting women’s faces for my art journals with them. I am so happy with the results. All of my artist friends who have seen what I have been doing ask me to teach them how I do it. the process is so simple and we have been having so much fun, I thought I would write to you and share what I have been doing with your product. I have included a couple of samples and hope you enjoy them.

Needless to say, I promptly contacted Lauren – I wanted to know more about how she was making these fabulous faces. They were so enchanting! I was just delighted when Lauren offered to send more photos and was willing to share them with all of us on the blog. Here are a two close-up images of more faces.

Lauren was kind enough to share some information about her painting process. She starts with muslin and applies two coats of white gesso. Once that is dry, she draws a faint outline of the head and neck with a pencil and sprays the fabric with a workable fixative so the pencil lines don’t smudge.

Next, Lauren fills the outlined area with Antique White paintstik color, smoothing with her fingers or a brush. (Finger paints, anyone?) She uses Beige paintstik to add shadows around the outer edges, and for the eyes, nose and chin, then adds some “blush” with Dusty Rose.

Once the face has color (but no details), she allows the paint to dry for 24 hours and sprays it again with fixative. She then draws the feature outlines with a micron pen. She applies green, blue, or brown paintstik color for eyes, and Mauve for the lips with a small brush.  (But I’ll bet that Frida’s lips are from one of the Red colors!). Once again, she allows the faces to dry overnight and then adds the finishing details to the eyes and lips. After one final coat of fixative, she adds the hair with acrylic paints.

Lauren teaches various classes in the Colorado Springs area, including one on her lovely faces. She’ll be teaching this class at the 2010 Textile Evolution Art Conferences. (You can visit www.TextileEvolution.com for more details — the 2010 class schedule will be posted in mid-September). Lauren has offered to write up a tutorial on her faces for the blog — so stay tuned. (If you want to get notices when new blog entries go up, you can subscribe to our RSS feed on the top-right corner of the blog.)

Well, that’s what Lauren’s up to… what do YOU do with paintstiks? If you would like to share your paintstik adventures here on the blog, please send us a message (or a real letter!). You’ll find our address on the Contact page on our site.

Have a wonderful day, and happy painting!

I’ve been working with paintstiks and rubbing plates for almost 10 years. In that time, I’ve almost always overlapped the images and made an overall print on my fabric — much like making a batik. But after making samples from the new Happy Holidays plates, a little idea popped into my head. I really liked each of the images just by itself.

I took photos of my rubbings and spent some time playing around with them on the computer, and decided the blocks would make a great little quilt. Then I got to work making up a bunch of blocks for a real quilt. (Those Photoshop quilts are tough to hang in a booth at Quilt Market!)

Of course, I promptly discovered that making a rubbing of a single image (what I’m calling a portrait) is a bit different than working in overall patterns. I wanted my blocks to be really crisp and clean, without a lot of mistakes around the edges. It took a little practice, but I came up with a method that works pretty well, and I’d like to share it with you.

Stop the Slip with Grippy Mats and Sticky Spray

I know I’ve talked about this before, but our Top Tips for Great Rubbings are incredibly important if you want to make rubbing plate portraits. (You can download a copy of this docmument from our Learning Center.) Rubbing plates are slippery and you have to tame them to get nice, clean rubbings. A Grip-n-Grip mat on your work surface will keep the rubbing plates from moving around while you work, and a coating of 404 spray on the top of your rubbing plate will keep the fabric where you put it. (Now, if only I had figure this out 10 years ago!)

The side benefit of using 404 spray on your plates is that you can press your fabric onto the plate and actually see where the plate is under your fabric. Here’s a a piece of silk that has been gently pressed onto a sprayed rubbing plate. See what I mean?

Make a Ghost Image

The next step is to make a very light rubbing to make sure you know where all the edges are. Think of this as a “ghost” image.  It’s easy to add more paint for a brighter image because the sticky spray is holding the fabric in place.

Add More Color

Once you have a ghost image, it’s time to add more paint for a brighter image. This is the time to use multiple colors, or just make the image darker. You know where all the images are, so it’s easier to avoid running off the edges of the plate. At least that is the theory. In the real world, I usually end up with a few boo-boos, and it’s almost impossible not to have some drag marks between the rubbing plate images.

Clean Up Any Mistakes

Since I’m a bit of a fuss-budget when I’m making quilts for photography or to hang in my booth, I’ve found a few tricks for cleaning up my little messes.Here’s a photo of a few mistakes I want to clean up.

The first trick is to use masking tape to pick up excess paint from around the edges of the rubbing.

Lay down a piece of take, and rub it with your fingernail.

When you pick up the paint, most of the color will come with it. You may have to repeat this a couple of times, but this really is a handy way to fix a mistake. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well when the excess paint is in the middle of an image. So, after a bit of experimenting, I found another neat trick.

I set my rubbing plate aside and put the fabric directly on the Grip-n-Grip mat. I pull most of the cotton off the end of a Q-tip and rub over the drag marks. I don’t get the last bit of paint off the fabric, but it looks better than it did before. Here’s a photo of the fabric after I cleaned up the image.

Now you know all my secrets! The mistakes aren’t totally erased, but the images are cleaner and ready to put into a quilt. Armed with these tips, anyone can make beautiful Paintstik Portraits like these.

I’ve been busy this summer working on a new pattern called Paintstik Patches. It started off to be a holiday quilt, but it’s really more than that, so I changed the name. (I just love being able to do that!)  The pattern came back from the printer last week, and we’ve been busy shipping orders off to our distributors. It’s always a thrill to see new patterns going out the door as soon as they come in!

Paintstik Patches is all about making rubbing plate “portraits” and putting them together to make a quilt, table runner, pillow cover — you name it. You can use any set of Cedar Canyon rubbing plates, or mix and match from various sets. I’m enjoying my time in the garden this summer, and I think I’ll make another quilt mixing Garden Flowers and Leaves. Or just use the Leaves plates and warm colors for a beautiful autumn table runner. (I’d better quit before I make too long a list or I’ll never get anything done…

Stay tuned for more on rubbing plate portraits. I have some great tips for working with this pattern.