When in Doubt Cut it UP

I didn't like my collage much after looking at it for a few months (bottom image).  So I cut it up and embroidered it onto another painting I didn't like that much (top image).  Now I like it better!

Bird Art for MOS (Part 2 of 3)

Fabric and Photo Bird Art - top to bottom:
1.  Funky Bird Wall Hanging quilt with an applique bird, in a photo of a window shot in India and printed onto cotton fabric.
2.  Spoonbill in Florida large quilt with applique and some batik fabric bought on the same India trip.
3.  Black Bird:  Embroidered bird drawing on nylon mesh, glued over hand made paper on board.
4.  Funky Birds Going the Wrong Way:  3D digital models of fabric bird appliques, collaged with a photograph of a street arrow.
5.  Simple Photography of a Blue-footed Booby bird shot on a trip to the Galapagos.

1950s Embroidered Photos

Photos by the late, great E.A. Autrey.  Printed 8 1/2 x 11 on Hiromi MM-5 Shiramine paper, then embroidered.  Color pencil added to the top picture only.

Top:  Lucy in the backyard in Santa Barbara, July, 1954
Bottom:  Lucy posing in our messy house, all dressed up, in June, 1958.

I like what some artists are doing with found photos and added embroidery.  But, I'd rather work with photos taken by my father, than pictures of people I don't even know.  So as not to upset my siblings, I'm forced to work on pictures of myself - not because I'm an egocentric person, like some people I won't name, who should not be running the country.

Variations on a Foggy Rodeo Beach at Dawn Theme

For a new self-directed photography class, I elected to shoot a series of photos based on invisible forces of nature, which were to focus on the unseen forces of gravity and magnetism. So, I got up at dawn to shoot high tide at Rodeo Beach.  It was very foggy.  My favorite picture didn't even include the tide.  And when I thought about it, I realized every photo ever shot represents invisible forces of nature.  So I shifted gears and decided to do variations on a theme instead.  The theme is my dawn photo session in the fog.  The variations reflect different techniques.  Here's what I ended up with:
Top to Bottom
1 and 5:  Original printed photos, taken at Rodeo Beach, of Fort Cronkhite and of the high tide
2:  A digital patchwork of 3" square sections taken from several foggy photos
3.  The Fort Cronkhite scene printed on fabric, then quilted and machine and hand embroidered
4.  A digital composite of the Fort Cronkhite scene with a photo of my father in 1942, in the army during WWII, combined with a periodic table of the elements and a table of fundamental force particles.  My brainy father, who I miss, was a rocket scientist, chemist, lawyer, artist and photographer.  He would have understood the science.  He hated the army.
6:  A reshoot of the original foggy high tide photo with two wooden artist models playing with a red rubber ball.

Lionfish Ts

Experimenting with fabric and embroidery applique on T shirts to maybe set up a shop for custom Ts. These four designs incorporate 100% cotton lion batik fabric, brought back from India, with other cotton fabrics and two colors (yellow/green and red) embroidery threads.  Which do you prefer?

Wild and Woolly Quilted Wall Hanging

Experience the freedom of the outdoors with a Wild and Woolly (wool punched creatures on cotton fabric) quilted wall hanging indoors.  38 1/2" wide x 44 1/4" high.  Top to Bottom:  front, details and back

Garden of Delight

Latest quilt finished 8/6/2014.  50" wide x 67 1/2" high.  Cotton, silk, wool-punched birds and Proteus, and my own designed bee fabric.  Full front view and quilt close up.

Embroidered Blue Birds

Above are six new felted blue birds, created for a bird quilt in the works.  These birds are based on my button bird and friends poster (as seen in the bird print with moon).  Each bird is made by machine punching hand dyed Falkland wool top into Kaufman Kona cotton cloth, then adding machine and hand embroidery. The wool, apparently, was grown on sheep in the Falkland Islands.  I bought it from Twisted Filament's Etsy shop.