Just a few more words about Fonts

Something I rarely bring up my from inglorious past is my first art job. It was 1966 and I was 18 and a college drop out, just floating around waiting to get married when my then fiance decided to up and join the US Air Force. He didn't even mention it and just went ahead and enlisted. This should have been a warning sign to drop the dirty dog, but I was too naive and in love to care.... I digress.
It occurred to me that I was not about to be married anytime soon and would have to find gainful employment. This job opened up at a gift wrap and commercial shopping bag manufacturer and I applied with my pitiful pulled together in minutes portfolio. Apparently qualified applicants were not showing up and so out of desperation they hired me at $2.10 an hour.
My job was to work in the art room, doing the grunt work of turning free lance artwork into camera ready black and white stuff with two other chain-smoking artists (I have always been a non-smoker).

I also had the job of using this huge machine called a Photo-typositor to crank out text for customer store names for the custom shopping bags/gift wrap we made. I sat in a closet and using a couple of rank smelling chemicals, photographed fonts and developed them on long strips of photo paper. These were the Dark Ages when I became aware of the vast variety (at the time) of fonts. I became entranced that this was a field that people actually made into a career. I assumed they designed these fonts like architects do skyscrapers.
...How things have changed since then.
Today I downloaded 409 fonts from this site.  I didn't save them all to my system, as most were dumb.
Now there are programs that take your handwriting and vectorize it to become a font mimicking you. Imagine that.
And now the  mystery is solved. The name of the font on http://www.whynotsew.blogspot.com/ is Pea Olson
http://kevinandamanda.com/fonts/fontsforpeas/pea-olson/. Thanks to Amanda for providing the solution to my quest.
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Edith Tan sent me this about the posters and calendars she made for me:
Click this link and enter your zip code and it will find the retailer that can do all this printing magic for you! http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/retail-photo-services/
Not all sites offer all the services. At least that's what I found with my local Walmart, posters printing are not available. If you want specific service, posters for example, then select that service and try other zip codes that close to you. Often enough, you will find some place near by(i.e. in driving distance) you can get to, to get the posters printed.
 
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Meantime back at the ranch, it has been raining like mad (Thank Heaven!) and so getting stuff done inside has taken priority. I had our man Mike for the day and he regrouted the tile in the bubble tub room and assembled the new guest bed for us. Stock photo. I got this from Overstock.com. Such a deal.

The before and the after picture.

This will be where I sleep when we have a female guest. If we have a male guest, he can sleep up here with Dave in the next room. I doubt any guy would appreciate my girly room. I love that there are three drawers for the stuff guests usually bring. Then they won't have to live out of their suitcase.
 And here is the lovely new grout in the bubble tub room. Not having a before picture, I'll just say that there was very little grout left between these tiles. Now it looks finished. We are veddy pleased.

 

PS: Here's a sample of what that font page looked like that you couldn't see:

I used the Windows 7 Snipping tool to capture that part of the post.

I got the fonts!!!

 I carefully followed the instructions here, with patience (and not a drop of wine in the vicinity) and now I have my date, sidebar, title etc, all changed to the font Courtney Dorkling (how appropo). I was able to change the color and size as well as the font and I am just so tickled. Now I shall proceed to change the font of my name in the header and STOP DINKING AROUND with fonts.
It was easy, but I was in the "I am not going to let this get the best of me" frame of mind.
I just noticed that the whole font fiasco got more comments than my artwork usually does, so I better step up and fix that too, nudge nudge. ha!

And now for that celebratory glass of wine.

THANK YOU ALL FOR LETTING ME KNOW THE FANCY FONTS ARE NOT SHOWING UP.


There still is the 'correct' way to do this, on the Kevinandamanda blog. I will print out the directions and see if I can follow them. Step by step...

I realize this is ONLY important to me, and nothing to do with the content that should be on the blog.


I am quilting today...so there will be a finished something soon.

Sorry for the temporary interruption in topics.
Melody

confessions of a font fanatic

Over the last several days I have spent hours and hours downloading new fonts to my laptop. Why? It is all because of this blog I saw: Why Not Sew? She uses interesting handwriting-like fonts for the titles and header on her blog and

 I WANTED TO DO THAT TOO.

So I emailed her and asked her what font that was that she was using. And I waited. And waited.

I am still waiting, but in the meantime I have been (as mentioned) downloading fonts similar in spirit to hers, and have almost totally lost interest in getting her specific font for my use.

But I am getting ahead of myself… I asked several bloggers who had fancy fonts on their blogs if they could help. One person led me to a free font site that could identify fonts. However, No help came forward from them.

But while I was looking I did find a bunch of *cute* fonts which led me to another site. kevin and Amanda. Now we’re cookin’!!

I downloaded just oodles of cute fonts, for free, from Amanda and found she had a tutorial to allow fancy fonts to be used on Blogger. As I read the tutorial MY EYES GLAZED OVER.

Way too many steps. So I wrote my geeky computer expert friend Cindra for help. When I have more time I will look into this…she said.

No one has that much time. I don’t, that’s for sure.

So another idea came into the old noggin’. Why not try Windows Live Writer again? Would it work? Could I use fonts downloaded onto my computer and have them show up correctly as you read it?

Please let me know if you are seeing a zillion different fonts in this post.

I am not going to drive you crazy like this again. I just have to know.

thanks,

Melody

 

If you like slime (and who doesn't?) you'll love this post. Every week I empty the goldfish pond and put new water in. I get to see who is living in the pond and who got sucked up into the pump. I am grateful that the headcount remains at 11 for four weeks in a row. That would be the goldfish. The frog population is growing by leaps and bounds (frog humor). Four small frogs have moved in and one large bullfrog has made this tub his home. We had five small frogs but I watched the bullfrog eat the little darling froggy, and there wasn't a thing I could to do to save him. Why aren't they eating the fish? Has anyone heard of Cannibal frogs?

The fish love it when the water is pumped out and they rise to the surface to eat the disgusting slime that is dislodged in the process.  Notice their open mouths. A few times something disagreed with them and I could see them spit out the distasteful sludge. It must be a fine line between gourmet sludge and the awful kind.

Here is one of the tiny frogs. Not much bigger than the fish, and just the right color to match the algae clinging to the edges. They are very camera shy, and when I sit by the pond I must stay very still for minutes and minutes before they appear at the surface. No moving on my part or they dive deep or hop right out of the water, with a "Meep" sound.

A close-up frog portrait. Not at all green like Kermit. But the bullfrog (not pictured today) has a green head and dark brown body. I have no idea if they are the same kind of frog, or toad, or what the difference is.
When frog spotting it pays to look for the eyes at the surface, as they are two shining orbs, which of course lead to the rest of the frog just under the surface.

The very tiniest member of the bunch. Barely visible, and so cute. I like a pet you don't have to feed or wash, or deflea.

Posters!

The same reader who made the calendar, Edith Tan from HP, sent me these two posters. The one on the left is 16x20" and contains images from my paintings, and the one on the right is 20x30" and has my quilts and a few from my pals Laura Wasilowski, Frieda Anderson and Emily Parson. All were taken from the blog and my other sites. The reflection of the glossy paper made it difficult to shoot these head on, but you get the idea. It is pretty darn amazing what can be done with high end printers these days.
I am sorry that I am not able to offer things like these for sale. Special programs are necessary to size all the images contained within, and that is part of what Edith does. I have the nicest readers!!

Process Pledge: Making the Seventh Treehouse

My jumping off point was the already established series Treehouses. I love these small works and wanted to add a few more to their ranks. Studying them on my design wall, I began by listing things they have in common.

1. House shape

2. Trees shapes

3. Dots suggesting leaves

4. Hand dyed fabrics that change color within the piece

5. Strip fusing

6. Some supporting commericial print/or prints.

To begin, I set up my fabric table and laid out the collected fused fabrics by rainbow. Each roll has several different values/shades/tones of a specific color, such as red. There might be red orange, pinky red, dark red, or some color-changing piece where red predominates. It's always a surprise to see what I included in the roll the last time I used it.

I only use regular Wonder-Under  and after fusing I remove the paper, never cutting through the paper while still on the fabric. I have tried other fusibles, but this is the best, least expensive, and widest available.

I have fused a bunch of vintage and more recently acquired prints, mostly dots and stripes, and a few irresistable Kaffe Fassett patterns. I don't like to use fabrics with really pictorial images in this work, as they distract from the kind of designs I make. Sometimes only a smidgen of one of these pieces will be incorporated into the work, depending on the scale of the piece.






 I made the decision to cut my batting 16 1/2" square, and cut four pieces, thinking I might make several more in this series. This way I can guestimate how large each of the parts of the design will become. And as I assemble the work, I can test the layout by placing the fused top on the batting and see what the remaining space needs and which placement looks the best. This is totally subjective, meaning that anything I decide will have to do, and what follows will be based on that decision, good or bad.
My first fabric choice will dictate the color scheme of the whole work, and I chose the red dotted Fassett print and then assembled fabrics that shared the colors in that piece. Then I disregarded that fabric totally, and fused up two other prints with limey green as their main color.
Don't think this is the first time I have lost my way this early. It happens all the time. I just go with the flow and see what works.
By the way, I fuse my work on a large teflon sheet which is available on line here.

The limey green Fassett print got the nod. I found a bright piece of hand dyed lime to coordinate and chose a red orange for my house. I cut away the fabric that was overlapping/underlapping by drawing a line just under the top layer (with my trusty sliver of soap) and removed all but the tiniest edge. I waste very little fabric this way and end up with nice shapes, usable for something else later. There is a nice purple evident in the print and I wanted to repeat that so I found a strip nearly the right shade and slid that into place, removed the overlapped parts and fused it all together. Then I ate an apple and some sliced Swiss cheese.
All the houses in the other quilts have a door or window shape so I looked for contrasting colors to make one for this red house. The turquoise blue stripes were applied to a block of purple, trimmed, sited and the underneath fabric cut away and then the square got fused into place. It is merely a habit with me now to cut away unnecessary layers. It has nothing to do with stitching through lots of layers, and everything to do with saving neat bits of color.

A multicolored background fabric was discovered which had the requisite coloration (luckily!) and I fitted it into the composition, lining up the edges with significant points on the design. I love this part. The negative shapes that resulted provide a place for the  necessary striped element.

Strip fused fabrics are an important component of this series so I needed to make some using fabrics that support my color scheme. That door is pretty wide open. A little orange, green, aqua, red, yellow, purples and reds, including prints...just about everything works at this point.

 Now I need to decide where this much of the design will go. Centered? Off centered? More on the bottom or top or what? I am not deciding to make borders for what has been assembled, but looking at this shape within the final format. 
There will be more design decisions and undecisions from this point forward, and as mentioned before, I just pick one and try to go forward from there.  Nothing is perfectly right or totally wrong. Just what pleases me at the moment.

After adding the additional fabrics to complete the planned size, I began to cut strips for the trees, and add dots for the leaves. I may add more or remove some trees...as the work grows on me. I know I will be adding hand stitching as I have done in the others in the series. The top is fused to the batting and the handstitching will be done through just the top and the batting, hiding all the knots and thread ends. Once the hand work is done I will sew on the backing fabric and using the Escape Hatch Finish, I will then add machine quilting to the piece, stitching next to but not on the top of the fused layers.

Stitching example from a previous Treehouse.

Mystery: The Case of the Vanishing Trailer

Wednesday 5:30 am. I woke  up, grabbed a cuppa and wandered out to the porch to greet the day. I noticed that the trailer was gone from its spot by the potting shed and surmised that Dave had gotten up early and went to get more wood chips as he regularly does.
I wondered how he managed to hook up the trailer to my van when it had been totally dark just minutes ago, and how did he leave without waking me? Our drive is crushed stone, and it always announces a vehicle is coming or going.
Well...he must have done it quietly. Did he remember this is Knitting day for me, and would he return in time for me to take the van to town? Hmm.
 I went back inside and called up to him to make sure he was gone. No answer from his bedroom.
OK, I was duly awake and it was time to blog...
Time passes and soon I heard noises upstairs. Wha?
"Dave is that you?"
"Mmuhmhmmnn". (that means yes).
I got up from the computer as he was walking downstairs.
"I thought you went to get mulch" I said.
More mumbling.
"I noticed the trailer was gone and thought you went to get wood chips".
Quizzical look.
We walked out to the porch and looked in the usual spot. No trailer.
"Where's the trailer?" I asked.
Still groggy, he thought a minute...no answer.
"Did you lend it to Mike?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes".
A chill ran through both of us. We wuz robbed!

How could this be? We live in an idyllic country setting amongst the nicest salt of the earth kinds of people. Who would steal a trailer, and how could they do it without a sound, in the darkest of night?
All kinds of accusatory thoughts ran through our heads and we came up with this scenario: Nefarious sods had been driving past our house scouting out the property and lying in wait to take something like our trailer, which could have been rolled down our driveway, with a couple of hefty guys guiding it.

I had a terrible feeling of loss, not for the trailer, but for the feeling of total safety that I had enjoyed for these last three years. It was a horrible feeling. Would we have to lock our doors? Would I finally have to learn to shoot?
 Dave had a ballgame later and I would be home alone. Would they come back looking for more loot?
As I left for Knitting at 8am, Dave promised to call the sheriff and our insurance guy, and talk to Mike our hired man, about possible suspects.

8:10am Mike arrives towing the trailer which Dave lent him the day before.
"It all came back to me the minute I saw Mike" Dave said.
I blame the whole incident on his medications. Sometimes he is so drugged that memories get lost somewhere in there, only to show up just at the right time.
But still, I wonder if we are all that secure? Time will tell.

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Some of you asked about getting one of those calendars that I blogged about yesterday. Here's the scoop from Edith, who did the job at HP in San Diego.

The printing of all this stuff is done in an in-house print studio that is fully-equipped with all the latest gadgets that one can experiment with. These printers are gigantic and I think they are mainly for commercial usage. My speculation would be places like Walmart, Kinkos or Staples may have these huge printers. According to the software that I used to print this, they usually charge $25.00 for a 12x12 calendar, just like the one I printed for you. Of course it free of charge for employees at this San Diego site:) Nice, isn't it?
The cool part about this Calendar printing software is that it allows you to put multiple shots on one page, and let you play around with the shuffled images until you like the final layout for Seach page, however it does not really let you pick the "champion" of the page, i.e. the shot you want to enlarge. It has its own mind ( which I think is a drawback:) So the resolution of the pictures printed on the page matters to the sharpness of the final print. Of course, the more pixels each image has the sharper it is printed. This is especially important for the enlarged prints. Like I told you in my earlier email, some of your earlier images have less pixels, so when enlarged to half-sheet of the 12x12 format, the picture gets blurry.
 
So I am guessing that $25 per calendar is way too expensive to offer them here.
Update!!  Vistaprint has lots of very inexpensive calendar options, but make sure your photos are high resolution or they will be blurry.

http://www.vistaprint.com/

Everything in Place

I don't remember having this many empty shelves before...but I am not complaining. It's good to have room to breathe. Several pieces of furniture did not make the cut and will not have a return engagement. I prefer the openness.

Those white things on the very top are bed risers for my folding table, to make it high enough for comfort. The boxes of fabric are for my workshop students later this summer. I figure if I put them way up there, I won't be tempted to raid them.

 I kept two Rubbermaids, just to be neat, and peeking out there is the iron on a stick that I use for fusing. Hobbico here.

 A tiny bit of sewing produced this table runner for my bedroom coffee bar. This little bit of luxury comes from spending so many nights in motels over the past years. I wanted to try out my sewing machine setup, but didn't want to get all involved in a project, knowing I will be out all day today. It was just enough to know my arrangement functions properly, and now the room is still pristine.
A few weeks ago a reader, Edith Tan, asked if she could use some of my quilt images for a poster, for her own use. We discussed this and I agreed. Later she came back with a calendar idea, and said she would send me one for myself. Thank you Edith!!! She works for Hewlett Packard and does something with printers. Something amazing!!

 Here is the calendar, which conveniently begins in July, and goes to July 2011. And along with the calendar, she included several posters of my quilts, all taken from my Flickr photostream. They are about 11x14" and just fabulous. I am so impressed. Of course I want a printer that does this. I wonder what it costs?

Reviewing these older pieces has been good for the old brain. It encourages and reinspires me. Do you keep pictures of your finished work?

 One little garden picture. My scarlet runner beans have started setting beans. It will take a lot more than these to make a meal.

So worth the wait!

The clean expanse of carpetless floor, trimmed out in white woodwork, and most of the stuff arranged. Sigh. I am so happy. Yes there still is a bit of carpet on the stair. I have to decide if I want to remove it completely and have painted (slippery) stairs or have new carpet applied. I know there is 'sandy' paint available, so I may go that route.

Only half the lights are on for this photo which proves my theory that a lighter more reflective surface would improve the light quality for this room. Light is so important.

 Only a few things got shelved last night before I ran out of steam. I saved most of it for today, since that is the best part, and I have calmed down.
This room is not air conditioned, so I have a fan to steal cool air from the rest of the house in the warmer afternoons. The original owner had this designed as a screened in porch, and then changed his mind and made it an enclosed room. We live with several examples of his 'better ideas'. I have outdoor bamboo blinds to shield me from the blazing western sun.
 My lovely task for today is to transfer all of this to its proper home on the shelves. Then I can use this rolling shelf for dyeing again.
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On a totally different note: I have never been with the IN CROWD but apparently it is never too late.
I found these two pedestal tables recently in Southern Living and Better Homes and Gardens.

 Here's mine. They all came from IKEA. I guess the 60's are coming back. Where's my go-go boots when I need them?

I am going nutso waiting.

But a big discovery has occurred. If I can't be in there working, I do housework. And my house stays clean. This can't be good for the psyche.

I have been knitting because it can be picked up or put down without having to put it away. But my heart is not in it.

Gardening is keeping me busy for another hour of the day, and I have also figured out something there. I need to rearrange everything. I can't get at the weeds. These are thoughts I wouldn't be having if I were working in the studio. One just can't rearrange plants like one does furniture. And it is the furniture sitting in the middle of the studio that I REALLY want to be rearranging, back into its proper place.

I was so frustrated I actually vacuumed, again.

 

My garden is being invaded by the dreaded tomato hornworm. They have attacked my peppers first, and eaten off all the top leaves and munched half of a pepper. Then the top leaves of the Patio tomato get their attention. I pick them off and squish them into smithereens, sending a message that I mean business.  They hold on for dear life as I gingerly grab them (with my bare fingers!) and then stomp them to death in the grass. They think they can hide under leaves, but I check from all angles and find every one. Yet the next day I find more. Grrrrr. I will not retreat!

I am happy to announce our first Acorn Squash baby. Sigh. Ain't she sweet?

I have never grown an acorn squash. This one was from a group of seedlings that had already set fruit when I bought them, but alas, they weren't pollinated, so they shriveled up before becoming real squash. This one says: I am growing. It's sister plant has been attacked by the dreaded vine borer, and is withering more and more each day. The life of a gardener is full of ups and downs.

I rejoice in the small victories.

How's this for color? An elephant ear leaf on its way out has turned this shocking limey green in contrast with the PINK of the coleus. Dazzling!

Three year old Stargazers have opened and their aroma drifts over the whole yard. Deelicious.

Here's to a safe and happy Fouth of July!

Process Pledge: Working in a Series

While it took me FOREVER to figure out how to work in a series, I now know a few ways to attack the idea. Here we have a collage of my Pine Tree series. The common element is the tree shape in each of the compositions. Some have house shapes too, but others are examples of my Stack idea. Despite the varying sizes in this photo collage, all the quilts were about the same size and all had some hand stitching and of course all were fused hand dyed cottons, with a few commercial cottons included. I began by making lots of tree shapes thinking I would make a quilt with blocks of trees. Nah. That wasn't going to work, and I quit that idea and returned later with the better plan to make individual compositions, making me much happier.
(Collages were made with Picasa3, a free program from Google).

The Pine Tree series was not my first series, having done this Street Series first. But what made the Pine Tree series significant is that it was sorta pictorial. It is easier to explain than the Street Series.
 In the Street series my aim was to limit my color scheme (ha!), to use the Stack construction again, but to keep them all to the same size and shape. They would also have strings and dots and handwork too.
Color was the real limiting factor though, as I was trying to get past my dependence on 'all color, all the time' which had gotten kinda stale.

Feeling courageous, I decided to go for the really hard stuff, MUD.
Brown is not my favorite color, but I had some super earth tones in my stash, and determined to use them I did a series with the working title
Rivers of Illinois.

I couldn't stick with one size and designs went whereever they needed to go. I felt I had 'overcome'.
Much later I found I could wander back into that muddy stash and make more with a similar feel. If this were a gallery showing, I might put these on an adjacent wall. The yellow and blue composition at the bottom of this group (A New Day) is included even though it isn't muddy colored. It just belongs. Artist's perogative.


So far I have been talking about small works. Easy peasy. What about making series that are larger and more complicated? Eeek.
I should mention right here that I never know I am making a series when the first piece gets made. That would mean I know what I am doing, calculating the future. As if.
With this Bon bon series, I made lots of parts first (blocks and strips). That seemed to be a good way to start since I had no ideas. At least there is something to arrange and design which could begin to work into a composition, maybe. Plus it kept me busy and out of trouble.
Layout came from a quilt made by Robin Ferrier. It was in horizontal bands. That was enough to get the parts organized and vroom! soon the top was assembled. I had made lots more parts and the second one was easy. The third one, in blues and greens was difficult and forced. I made it once, didn't like it and then tried a second time, removing parts and decided to stick with the results. #4 incorporated some of the blues that were left and a really different layout was used.

 Months and months passed and other things got made and different ideas were tried and then...nothing.  

Trying to  get back into a working mode made me consider returning to the Bon bon ideas. This time they turned out quite different, more traditional looking and controlled. The good thing about working in a series is having limits, layouts or themes that can be reinvented. The simpler the better, methinks.

Hanging Quilts

QUILT UNIVERS asked:

Love, love, love your room!! I dare one question ... how do you hang the quilts on the walls (the small and the large ones)

At my previous house I found the easiest and most efficient way to hang lots of art without making holes in your walls. I change my art alot and so instead of patching all the time, I decided to hang shelf standards at the crux between the ceiling and the wall. I used white ones to match the paint, and screwed them into the ceiling. S hooks and fish line are run from the quilt rods which are slid through rod pockets in the back of quilts. This also works for paintings. I use eye hooks screwed into the wooden frames of the paintings and heavy fish line, like 30-50 lb test.
In this new house I have lots of crown moulding and can hide nails easily, but still use the fish line and S hooks.

I have found that telescoping curtain rods are the easiest thing to use for hanging quilts. No work involved, inexpensive and adjustable to the right size for any quilt, from teeny 12" cafe rods to the really heavy duty rods for big quilts.
Hope that helps.

Melody

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OK I admit today I have nothing to blog. I was hoping to have my rooms back to normal today, but Mike took the day off today, so I continue to wait, with everything sitting in the middle, unable to be returned to their designated spot in the room. Even the laundry is done, so I will begin a knitting project,

Via Diagonale from Knitty.com/

It will be a sample for the new knit shop opening soon. I have a month to make it. Hmmm.