General « cedarcanyontextiles.com

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Get your books signed at the Minnesota Quilt Show!

Monday, June 14th, 2010

It’s the middle of June, so it must be time for the Minnesota Quilt Show and Conference in St. Cloud, MN. As a Minnesota girl, I love this event. The MN Quilters put on one of the largest quilt shows in the United States, and perhaps the largest by a volunteer organization.

I worked at this show for many years as a vendor (when I was hand-dying fabric) and as a teacher. One of the biggest thrills of my teaching years was the invitation to teach at this show, as they usually reserve their teaching slots for national instructors.

This year, I’ll be attending rather than working, but I’ll be signing books for a short time on Thursday and Friday (June 17 & 18) between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. for Laura Murray Designs, a vendor at the show. Laura’s vendor booth will be poolside at the Kelly Inn.

We’ll have copies of my new Design Magic book on hand along with Paintstiks on Fabric. Laura also carries a large variety of painstiks products, so you’ll find everything paintstik-related that you could possibly want.

Pick up Susan Stein’s new Textile Art book too!

Susan Stein, who graciously provided all the lessons on stenciling for our blog, will also be signing copies of her newest book at the Minnesota Quilt Show. You can meet Susan and have her sign your books on Saturday, June 19th from 12 noon – 1:30 p.m., also at Laura Murray Designs.

(If you missed Susan’s lessons on stenciling, check the Blog Archives for November 2009 – February 2010)

Susan’s latest book is titled The Complete Photo Guide to Textile Art (Creative Publishing International), and it is a treasure! It’s an indispensable reference guide for anyone who wants to embellish fabric and suitable for beginners and experienced fiber artists. Here’s a picture of the cover.

If you can’t come to the Minnesota Show…

If you hadn’t figured it out by now, Susan, Laura and I are all from Minnesota and we have a very strong connection to the state quilt show. We have many fond memories of working this show in one way or another, and would love to add meeting you to the list!

If you can’t join us in St. Cloud this week, hop on over to Laura Murray Designs on the web. You’ll find all manner of fascinating fiber art goodies, including our new books.

I hope to see you in St. Cloud!

Tags: Design Magic, embellishment, Shiva Paintstiks
Posted in Design Magic, General, Guest Artist, Paintstiks | No Comments »

Make a little Design Magic!

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

I know I’ve been missing in action here on the blog, but I’ve been totally immersed in finishing up my new book called Design Magic for Paintstiks on Fabric. The book went to the printer at the end of April, and I should have copies in my hot little hands sometime next week! And just in time for Spring Quilt Market. Whew!

Here’s the cover of my new baby and a few paragraphs from the Welcome section:

Welcome to the world of Design Magic. It’s a magical, mystical world indeed, where simple shapes are transformed into easy-to-use tools, and fabulous fabric is created in far less time than you ever imagined possible. It’s almost like having your own magic wand!

And now that you’re here, I hope you enjoy the Design Magic adventure as much as I have. The path is full of exciting “aha” discoveries and “wow” moments. There’s never a dull moment in the world of Design Magic.

So, what’s it all about?

Design Magic is a really slick method for making your own designs and putting them on fabric with minimal tools and time. It’s faster than fusing and easier than appliqué! Here are the 3 main steps.

Create a design by cutting shapes from a square of black paper.
Make a set of equal and opposite stencils.
Stencil repeating images on fabric with paintstik colors and stencil brushes.

The book includes complete instructions for making your own designs and stencils (of course), but I’ve also included a set of pre-cut mylar stencils for those of you who just want to jump in and paint. Here’s a picture of some fabric I’ve painted with the Primrose stencils that are tucked inside the back cover of each book.

There’s way too much to tell you in a single post, so I’m not even going to try. If you want to see what else we are introducing at the Spring Quilt Market, jump on over to the New Products page on our website.

We’ll be shipping the new books and stencils out to our retailers and distributors within 2 weeks, so you won’t have to wait too long to get your own personal copy of Design Magic.

Happy painting!

Shelly

Tags: Design Magic, embellishment, Shiva Paintstiks, Stenciling with Paintstiks
Posted in General, New Products, Paintstiks, Stencils | 5 Comments »

Merry Christmas from Cedar Canyon

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

As the year comes to a close, I wish each and every one of you a Merry Christmas and a warm and wonderful new year. Here at Cedar Canyon, we’ve been making the rounds to our usual holiday gatherings, taking a day here and there to visit with old friends and new. It makes for odd hours at the office, but the smiles and laughter are a wonderful addition to our daily routine.

Whatever your plans, and wherever you are, I hope you are able to take some time for yourself, spend time with friends and family — or simply do the things that give you great joy.

If you are looking for a warm and thought-provoking book to curl up with, I’ll give two thumbs-up to Have a Little Faith, by Mitch Albom. I picked up a copy before Thanksgiving and finally sat down to read it this weekend. I even got up early this morning to finish the book before I came to work.

Have a Little Faith tackles some of the big questions in life, and lends a wonderful perspective that I found particularly fitting for the holiday season. It warmed my heart. May it do the same for you.

Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays – or in the words of Tiny Tim ~ God bless us every one!

Shelly Stokes

p.s. We’ll be back with our regular entries after the holidays.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

The things we do for photos…

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

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!

shelly_on_counter_1

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…

laura_taking_photo_of_shelly

… and me taking a picture of Laura!

shelly_on_counter_2

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!

Posted in General | No Comments »

A Summer Tradition

Monday, August 17th, 2009

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.

lakes_quilters_1_small

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…

lakes_quilters_2_small

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!

lakes_quilters_6_small

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.

lakes_quilters_5_small

irene_small 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!

robby1_small

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!

robby2_small

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.

robby3_small

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.

colleen_red

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?

Tags: Quilt Show
Posted in General | 8 Comments »

Simple Paintstik Storage

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

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.

paintbox1

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!

paintbox2

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.

Tags: Shiva Paintstiks
Posted in "How To" Information, General | 7 Comments »

Lauren Vlcek’s Fabulous Faces

Monday, August 10th, 2009

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.

frida_face cover_face

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!

Tags: embellishment, fiber art, Shiva Paintstiks
Posted in General, Guest Artist | 10 Comments »

Join the fun!

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

It’s day 2 of the blog hop and we just can’t believe how many people are visiting and making comments. Such fun!

If you want to get an occasional newsletter or blog announcement from Cedar Canyon Textiles, please sign up for the newsletter on our site. Here is the link to the newsletter sign-up form. I’ll see you back here next Wednesday for Easy Paintstik Placemats…

Posted in General, Minnesota Designer's Blog Hop | 35 Comments »

Top Tips for Better Rubbings

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

shelly Hey folks! This is the week for the big Minnesota Designer’s Blog Hop! (You can read all about it by clicking on the logo over on the right hand side of your screen.) I’m on my way out of town for the big Bernina University event in San Francisco, so my turn on isn’t until July 1. In the mean time, you can click on over to the other blogs to see what’s happening around the great state of Minnesota.

I’m going to show you a great project on July 1. I call them “Easy Paintstik Placemats.” To get ready for the event, I pulled all my tips and tricks for making great rubbings into a single document. Finally! This little gem of a handout covers a bunch of topics that I’ve covered over the course of 3 or 4 blog articles. You can download the article by visiting the Learning Center on our site. If you prefer the “chatty” version, you can follow these links to past blog articles. Here’s what’s covered…

The Big 3

The Top 3 Tips are first on the list. You need the right tools for the right job. Get a grip with a Grip-n-Grip mat from Bear Thread Designs, 404 sticky spray from the folks at Spray and Fix, and learn to use the side of your paintstiks. The articles that covered these topics are Better Tools, Better Rubbings (part 1), and Better Rubbings (part 2).

Making rubbings from a single plate

Next up are tips for making the actual rubbings. In the fist section, I’ve provided my recipe for filling your fabric with images from a single rubbing plate. The process here is pretty simple. Make the first rubbing from a portion of a rubbing plate, move the fabric, do it again, and so on until you fill up your fabric to look something like this.

floral_rubbing_partial2

giftbagsrgb Once you have a lovely piece of fabric, you can make a wonderful project from it. Bosa Nova Bags, anyone? We’ll be using this technique for the placemats, so I really recommend that you download the Top Tips document and keep it on hand for next week.

Rubbing Plate Portraits

The second rubbing plate technique is working with a single image and adding multiple colors. I like to call these rubbing plate “portraits.” This is where the side of your paintstik comes in handy — big time! We all know that you can’t “see” the rubbing plate under your fabric, but you can find all the design elements by making a very light rubbing with the side of a paintstik. This will help you keep from “running off the edges” as you go back to make the image darker or add multiple colors. This was discussed in the post called Fixing Mistakes, Working with Multiple Colors. (Go to the 2nd half of the article.)

block_portraits1

Here are a couple of block portraits that use multiple colors. We’ll be talking more about the “portrait” technique in July as we debut the new Paintstiks Patches pattern.

Correcting Mistakes

Finally, the Top Tips handout covers a simple fix for minimizing mistakes that happen to me on a regular basis. If I’m in a hurry, or just not paying attention, I often “run off the edge” of my rubbing plate and leave a mark where I did not want one. Well, I found a way to minimize (if not eliminate) these irritating little mistakes. I put masking tape over the unwanted paint, rub it real hard with my finger nail, and then lift off the paint! I may not get every little bit of paint off, but it looks a whole lot less obvious than when I started. You can read the blog entry on Fixing Mistakes for more details.

For your own personal copy of the Top Tips for Great Rubbings handout, visit the Learning Center. Click on the document title and it will be downloaded directly to your computer.

Paintstiks • Quilts • Embellishment