creating Archives - Inspired By Everyday Beauty

Where do I find the time?

It feels like I haven’t accomplished much art making this summer, but the months have filled with lots of adventures, travelling, exploring and picture taking. Art is always on my mind, so while I was enjoying the great outdoors all of my senses, as well as my camera, were recording sights, sounds and scents. I was storing up the raw material of ideas for future creations. I was filling my reference bank to tap into all fall and winter.

The mystery at this point is what will I create? Where will I start? As usual, I have more ideas and plans than I will ever have time for, but somehow I will just dive in and see what emerges.

Luckily, I have a few specifics to guide me.

*Frosted Window Pane in production* 12″x12″

I am just finishing up some pieces that have been accepted into the Cline House Gallery Merry Mini Exhibition, which opens in Cornwall, ON on November 6. Here is a sneak peek at a “Frosted Window Pane”, one in a 12″ x12″ series.

I am still working on my second sewer fish piece–it’s definitely going to be the longest piece I have ever made. But guess what… all summer I have been seeing new manhole covers and gelling up a new montage in my mind!

The fall will also bring work for two upcoming challenges. The first is for my Studio Art Quilt Association (SAQA) local “Land Between Group” which has decided to start a new challenge based on the theme of Art Connections. This is a pretty broad category and I’m not sure yet where my thoughts will focus.

The second challenge will be interesting. Our Kingston Fibre Artists group has decided to pair up this year for our annual challenge. Artists and their partners will work together to create two 10″ x 10″ pieces using only black and white. One partner will create mainly in white with accents of black and the other vice versa. I have never worked in only black and white, and I will just be getting to know my partner and her art. I expect it will be an exciting challenge and a great learning opportunity.

This summer, I’ve been dabbling in natural dyeing with soy milk, avocado, and golden rod. I’ve been adding to my stash of hand dyed fabrics. On the weekend of Sept. 20, I am heading up to Wintergreen Studios to participate in a day-long workshop on “Found Colour and Natural Dyeing” to add to my repertoire. Who knows what that will lead to, but it will be lots of fun!

As a member of Kingston Fibre Artists I will be joining in a local exhibition to held at the Studios of artist Michelle Reid, 36 Hatter St., Kingston, ON on October 4 & 5, 2025.

Did I mention my balloon work? Ha ha, this is a fun one. A few years ago for a significant birthday, a friend gave me two huge shiny balloons–of course even once they had shriveled and deflated I couldn’t bear to throw them out. Stashed them away, and then early this summer got inspired to create a huge, shiny art piece exploding with colour. Still in progress, but it will be a piece that is pure fun when it’s finished.

Oh yes, and then there is my hankering to do some more work with wool. I have started collecting old 100% wool blankets which no one seems to want any more (still accepting them if you want to toss any my way!). I love the texture of woven wool, and the smooth buttery sensation as it moves beneath the needle. I also have a few old sweaters, well past their best date, some moth eaten some worn through with love. I think I’ll work on matting and felting them to see what I get. Then, I hope to put all of that together into some sort of piece.

I only have one question really. How is it that anyone says they get bored in retirement?? My challenge: finding enough time for all the projects brewing in my mind!

Work with what you have

Creating Wilderness Reflection

What happens when you want wool fabric and can’t find any? Well, in my case, I decided to make it!

I had an idea for an art quilt created in wool, and I started searching. I couldn’t find any new fabric even close to 100% wool. I soon realized that even if I did find it, the price would be way beyond my budget. I considered recycling old woolen blankets and started keeping my eye open. Word went out to family and friends (still collecting) and I started to search auctions, yard sales and community garage sales. I came up with a few good blankets that I’m sure will work for some future project (read–that have now been added to my stash), but none of them were in the right colour palette.

An idea was hatched.

I have lots of wool roving, no surprise there. So, I decided to build my design and then wet felt it into a piece. One small snag that I forgot to mention, it needed to be bigger than anything I had ever wet felted before. Bigger in fact than my dining room table. I was committed to the idea though, so I forged on.

I was inspired by a photo I took while kayaking on Varty Lake. It showed a perfect reflection of cedars and scrub pine in the little bay that we often explore. High in a tree, there is an osprey nest that we have watched over the years. Often we see tiny chicks keeping their hunting parents busy.

I started to build the piece, layering wool roving to create the shoreline trees, overcast sky, clouded sun and the reflections. This stage took many days, maybe weeks. As it grew, I took lots of photos to check the overall look from a distance. By the time I was finished, the piece was about two inches thick, and I was praying that a gust of wind wouldn’t blow through the house!

As usual, with each step of a project I froze for a minute thinking that one step further could ruin everything. But again as usual, I took a deep breath and continued. The next step was to cover the piece with voile and wet it down with warm soapy water. This step flattens the wool to a very thin layer and it can now be gently massaged by hand until the roving starts to tangle enough to stay in place.

This massaging stage is my favourite. It is very therapeutic, rubbing and massaging the wet soapy mess with bare hands, swirling and circling, something akin to finger painting, but very clean! Even on a small piece this step can take a while. With this huge piece I was in for a good few hours of therapy.

Eventually, the wool piece magically starts to separate from the top cover and the voile can be gently removed.

The piece itself is very wet and soapy, and still quite fragile. A sheet of plastic bubble wrap is now placed over the top. Next comes the felting.

The process of felting the wool means agitating it until all of the fibres start to shrink and mat together. The fastest you have ever seen this process happen is when you’ve accidently put a woolen sweater or blanket into the washing machine—ta da—that’s the quick route to felt!

In art, we are trying for a slower, more controlled process. The usual method is to roll the piece up in bubble wrap or bamboo placemats to give a rough surface, but with this piece I used two steps.

Recently, while rummaging in a thrift shop, I found an interesting, notched rolling pin. This proved to be the perfect tool to roll the piece while it was still on the table. I think keeping it flat helped to keep the trees and details in place while they were felting.

Then, I rolled the piece, bubble wrap and all, onto a pool noodle and started rolling, rolling, rolling. I rolled in all four directions, first with my hands, and then, as my wrists were giving out, with my arms. Yes, it was a bit of a full body workout.

The felting takes a long time. It is only done when it is done. I kept unwrapping, straightening out, and rewrapping between the directional changes to feel the fabric that was forming. When its done the whole piece has shrunken and tightened up into a dense felt.

*Felting is finished, but it’s still very soapy*

Not done yet though! The piece is still full of soap and if it isn’t thoroughly rinsed the soap will eventually degrade the fibres. Rinse, rinse, rinse. This whole process is really about repetition, I think that’s why it is so meditative.

Once all soap is out it is time to get rough. This last stage is called ‘fulling’ and it means scrunching up the piece and throwing it, onto the table. Throw, throw, throw. You are literally shocking the fibres into tightening up even more.

Finally, its time to rest—both the maker and the felted piece. I laid it out to air dry over night.

Now I had my wool piece and it was time to sew. I placed it on top of a piece of wool batting and hand basted the two layers together.

I used free motion machine stitching to work in the detail of the trees, bushes, sky and water; added a few other details with hand stitching; and finally added the osprey and its nest of chicks.

How long did it take? I’m not sure…I forgot to set the timer.

Wilderness Reflection is currently showing in Proof of Life: 2025 Alumni Juried Exhibition, Marianne van Silfhout Gallery, St. Lawrence College, Brockville Campus. June 23-August 1, 2025.

Dyeing in the street

This summer while out on my daily walks, I frequently passed by the most beautiful manhole covers in the north end of the city. The covers are relief designs of fish, a gentle reminder to any of us who look at manhole covers that our waterways are all connected. Sewer water and street runoff eventually flow down into our lakes and rivers. The implicit message is that we should be mindful of what we put down the drains and onto our surfaces as all toxins have the potential to poison our precious resource. OK, maybe not everyone picks up that message, but I sure wish they would!

In truth, what I have been thinking as I’ve passed by is what cool rust-dye prints these fish could make on a piece of cotton. Unfortunately, these two manhole covers are situated in a fairly heavy industrial park strip.

Not the best situation to set up a makeshift studio. And, I wouldn’t want to be using any process that would risk toxic substances being left on the ground or in the drain.

Nevertheless, this section of my walk was always occupied with thoughts of how I could clean the dirt off the covers; what size cotton I would need; how I would hold down the cotton; how I would keep the trucks off the cotton; whether anyone would steal my cotton if left unguarded; how I would transport my supplies; where I could unobtrusively set up a lawn chair to wait while the rust process evolved; how many hours I’d have to wait for the rust to transfer… So many logistics to conquer in the name of street art.

This weekend, with it’s usual abruptness, Labour Day was upon us. The summer is officially over. It was looking like my chance for lifting a print this year would soon be gone.

The other day, I took a different walking route and I came upon the very same manhole covers only two blocks from home, safely located in the middle of a sidewalk. Aha, I thought, if we get one more sunny day, I might just be able to do it.

I started by running a little test at home. I wanted to make sure my idea would work before venturing out into public where I might be seen playing around a sewer cover. With a vinegar-soaked piece of cotton, some rusty washers and a hot sunny piece of the driveway, the experiment worked. All I would need would be a harmless vinegar/water solution, and recyclable plastic bags.

The next day, before I could lose my nerve, I gathered up my supplies: vinegar to wet down the cotton and the cover, pre-dyed cotton with a watery indigo pattern, zip lock bags to weigh down the wet fabric for maximum contact, a black garbage bag to cover the piece and capture the sun’s heat (to speed up the process), a comfy lawn chair for the wait, a sunhat, and of course, my beloved iPhone for timing and doing crossword puzzles during the wait.

I headed off to the site just after noon. I got set up without any problems, found a nice shady spot for my chair (no need for a sunhat, could have used a sweater), and set the timer for an hour.

When the chimes rang, I took my first peek. The rusty washers I had thrown on for good measure were starting to give a nice print, but that was it. Not even the slightest discoloration from the manhole cover let alone the beginnings of a nice fish print. Hmm, it wasn’t looking good.

Determined to give it the best shot, I waited another hour and still I saw nothing but a wet piece of cotton. My phone battery was about to die, I was chilled to the bone, and I was in desperate need of a bio break. I gave up and headed home for a hot bath.

I was feeling pretty disheartened, but my husband reminded me that Thomas Edison once said that no experiment is a waste of time and that even a failed experiment could teach us something…we can for a certainty learn how a thing cannot be done. After puzzling for a while on why it was unsuccessful, I verified with a quick google search what I suspected: manhole covers are treated to resist rusting (duh).

The problem was that by this time I was fully committed to that fish print and I wasn’t ready to give up. So, during my wakeful hours in the night, I made a new plan. I decided to use the cover as a relief plate, similar to doing a charcoal rubbing. To make the print permanent, I could use my brayer and thickened, water-based ink to transfer the pattern onto the cotton.

This morning, I packed up a new bucket of supplies, added a sweater, and headed back to the site. I tried a test piece of cotton. It worked!

I was on a roll. Why print one fish when you can print a whole school of fish! Within about 45 minutes I had printed and printed and printed, blues, golds, coppers…

Success! My original idea for fish printed on a piece of indigo pole-dyed cotton turned out just as I had hoped. As a side bonus, I have a long piece which was meant to be my test scrap that I also love. Two for the price of one! Next up, the fun of sewing them into something.

Inks, pigments and playing in the woods

This year, to celebrate the summer solstice, I participated in a day-long workshop foraging in the woods and then using the bounty we collected to to make inks and pigments. We also tried our hand at making fresh flower prints, and we learned how to make artists’ charcoal from willow branches. It was a fantastic day and lucky for you, I got lots of pictures!

We started off on a morning hike through the woods with very dark clouds looming. Everyone had rain gear and boots and a healthy sense of adventure, so the on and off rain that hit didn’t dampen the adventure.

The hike began with some lessons on foraging responsibly: do no damage, do not take anything that appears to be unique or in short supply, and do not take more than you need. With this in mind, most of our walk was spent observing and in my case, taking pictures. It was only on the way back that we collected a few samples of mud, rocks, flowers, leaves and bark.

It is still pretty early in the season and there were lots of wild flowers to be seen along the way. For my little pouch of keepers I picked two wild columbine, a couple of purple cow’s vetch and two bunch berries. We also saw lots of clover and daisies and other common field flowers, but I chose primarily for colour.

One bonus to all the rainy days we’ve had was that mushrooms were popping up everywhere. I do not know how to identify mushrooms, but I marveled over the variety of colours and shapes. They are easily overlooked while you are concentrating on the the trail, and trying not slip on roots and mud, but if you keep your eyes open you will spot them.

I have always loved lichen and it is abundant in our area. On this trip, we saw three different categories of lichen. Covering most of the exposed granite we saw lots of ‘crustose’ lichen, that’s easy to remember because it looks like a crust. It is so common that we often don’t even notice it. On a damp tree, we spotted some ‘foliose’ lichen patches, which looks a little leafy. To my delight, on an old decaying log, I saw some of my favorite ‘fruticose’ lichen. It has has little upside down funnels that look like fruit cups. Sometimes, all kinds of lichen crowd together and compete with moss for space. You can use lichen for creating natural dyes, but unlike mushrooms lichen takes an incredibly long time to grow so we decided to let it be for now.

*Lunch was well underway when we returned*

Before we knew it, the morning was gone and our tummies were rumbling, so we headed back to the lodge to dry off, fuel up with a delicious lunch and get down to creating. ¹

Laura, our instructor had prepared lots of different work stations so that everyone could spread out to different activities and play at their own pace. She had a stock of pre-made inks and pigments, paper, brushes, hammers, mortars and pestles, soap, willow branches, eye droppers, pH shifting agents, and lots of glass vials and jars. Let the science begin!!

We had decided as a group to do two different ink dyes, one with birch bark and one with sumac leaves. We also had some buckthorn berries and some avocado pits and skins from Laura’s kitchen. Most natural dyes will shift colour if you alter their pH or add iron or copper salts. A separate work station had been set up so we could experiment.

I guess now would be a good time to mention the difference between ‘ink’ and ‘pigment’. Ink is made by boiling down plant matter to leech out the colour making a concentrated, water based ink. Think of boiling water with tea leaves.

Pigment on the other hand, is non-soluble and is made from pounding, or grinding various types of rock or clay. Once ground down to as fine a powder as possible, the pigment can be added to a substrate to create a paint or a pastel. Mica, can be ground into a pigment which will add sparkle and shine to your paints, inks or pastels.

In our case, we used a bit of honey and soap bar shavings to make a playdough type mixture, then rolled it into drawing pastels. We had gathered some interesting rocks and clay, and, some of us even came back with a few bits of mica.

Out near the open fire, Luke filled a tin can with slim willow branches. He added a tight lid in which he had punched air holes. Then, he tossed the sealed tin into the fire. Soon, we had a tin of artists’ charcoal!

As if we weren’t having enough fun already, there was one more activity to try. We had each gathered a few wild flowers and Laura had prepared pieces of water colour paper for us. We made a ‘flower sandwich’ with our blossoms and the two pieces of paper. Then we gently hammered until the colour of the flowers created a two-for one print.

The end of the day came very quickly! For me it was a perfect day of fresh air, good food, good company and creativity.

I came home with a nice selection of natural inks to try out on some watercolour painting. I also made a blue-green pastel stick and chose some willow charcoal sticks for some sketching.

Of course, the day got me thinking of how to use these dyes and pigments on fabrics. When I got home I ordered a book Make Ink A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking, by Jason Logan, so I could keep on learning. Who knows what will come next!

*My selection of natural dyes for watercolour painting*

The venue for this workshop was Wintergreen Studios Wintergreen Studios an off-grid wilderness facility. Check it out! ↩︎

Dye With Love

As you know, last summer I became captivated with the Magic of eco dying. At Summer camp I had lots of fun playing around with old cotton fabric and different leaves and flowers that I had gathered on my walks. You also know that I like Creating with purpose.

I decided the next step was to try printing on paper.

I had a few dry runs. Or, I should say wet runs. My first attempts to press leaves between rust-water soaked papers resulted in a bit of a soggy blur. I’ll spare you pictures of that mess!

Through practice, I discovered a few tricks:

use a good quality paper–I used cold press water colour paper
wet the leaves rather than the paper
separate all the leaf layers with parchment paper to avoid bleed through
stack the papers and press them very tightly between two ceramic tiles
steam (i.e. not immersed in water) for 90 minutes
cool completely before unwrapping to peek at the creations

I used six 8″ x 10″ pieces of paper folded in half with leaves in between every layer and every layer separated with parchment paper.

If you are following the math, that means I ended up being able to make a three-section journal, each section with two nested sheets. Folding the sheets in the middle means each section has 8 printed sides and the whole journal is 24 pages.

Some of the parchment papers were too beautiful to discard. I added a few into the journal for secret note space and textural variety.

The original intention was for words to be added free form throughout the journal, but I knew that it might be difficult to dive in and start to write on the flora imprinted pages. I added some lines for encouragement and to give sections for guiding script. I added dyed lined paper, and also stitched in some black lines. I remembered how as a child I had loved running our old Singer treadle machine with no thread over paper pretending to sew. This seemed like a fun idea to add texture and the suggestion of lines.

Next of course, I had to figure out how to bind the whole thing together. A a quick google search lead to directions on how to bind a book with waxed thread.

*Three sections bound with waxed thread*

After binding, there were a few long ends on my threads, which once braided were too nice to cut, so I added some wild turkey feathers, foraged on a summer walk, to serve a book marks.

My dear friend Martha in her retirement is focusing on a love of the written word and expressing herself through poetry. What better reason to create a special journal in which she can scribe beautiful words. This journal was definitely a project of dyeing with love.

*The final poetry journal dyed with love*

A Room of My Own

It was many years ago that I heard of Virginia Woolfe’s Room of One’s Own, but I recall that even then, when I had neither the funds nor the room to be creative, I thought it a brilliant idea.

I feel as though finally, I have arrived.

After a full renovation of our house, a process that spanned over ten years as my husband lovingly made our house a home, the final piece was an upstairs atelier for me!

As you know, since retirement I have plunged into creative pursuits of all kinds and creativity needs space! Not just for an afternoon, but sometimes for more lengthy periods as projects evolve and “mijote” as the French say. It may be possible that my husband tired of my work areas spreading throughout the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the basement, and occasionally the bedroom. But, whatever the impetus he came up with the great idea to build me a room of my own–an atelier where I could have all my bits and pieces at hand, and keep all my bits and pieces somewhat contained!

I love it! Once and for all I have almost all my ‘stuff’ together in a workable space. There is room for a big design board to post and plan works in progress; my new sewing machine fits into my old 1913 Singer machine table; a workbench gives space for drawing and printing and painting; an in-wall ironing board allows for quick pressing and doubles as an alternate work surface; lots of shelves house books and papers and supplies; and a big reclaimed glass cabinet stores a good chunk of my fabric stash.

The laminate floor works well for spotting rogue pins and quick sweeps, with a couple of sheepskin rugs for cozier footing when needed. The roman blinds can be pulled right up for maximum light. The sliding pocket door closes off the nearby washroom (read water supply), and opens up for more light and heat when needed.

The light is optimal: two big north east windows providing natural light are supplemented with a bar LED light for drearier days and night work, and a desk lamp for closer hand work.

The space is small, but efficient (8′ x12′) and everything is within reach. I’ve been spending winter days holed up in my atelier happily working away on projects, listening to CBC radio and gazing out at the neighbourhood.

That my friends, is the explanation for not having posted a blog in a while…I’ve been too busy playing and creating in the room that is my own.