Irene Schlesinger

Masks and Mediums

Before I descend to my ‘sewing room’ to sew up some more masks, I am checking in here.

A call went out to continue sewing masks. I managed to get a hold of enough ribbon to create 80 more masks since I finished the first batch of about 33 masks. Though the sewing machine continues to only allow zigzag stitching, I have solved a few other issues by being patient and checking where the thread comes messed up and it’s helped a good deal in speeding things along. In becoming a slower and steadier machine user, I am doing better at making better looking masks too.

In a little free time, I played around with another polymer based medium,

Black Mica Flake, small size

I started by drawing on two of my 8 inch canvases, very simple designs.

Canvas 1, sort of a landscape, with crescent moon.
Canvas 2, female with paper applied to be clothing..

On canvas 1, I applied the black mica flake before stitching, us9ng masking tape to make a clean edge on the image.

When the medium is stable but not completely dry, remove the tape, gently.
👍
Here’s where this little canvas is today. I will revisit this when I have more time. Thinking of trying some new floral stitching or adding a little house . I will definitely stitch around the sides to frame in the image.

On canvas 2, I stitched up the middle first and smeared the mica around the edges. This left only the space in between to fill.

The mica doesn’t take very long to dry, maybe an hour- longer depending on weather-humidity.
A dull rainy afternoon during social isolation. I see lil red from across the room.

I filled the empty area with some yummy purple malabrigo yarn and it looked nice. I wanted the canvas to stand out and so, brought out my jar of gold flake mica to brighten up the dark. Applied right onto the now dry black .

Lil Red, embroidery on canvas with paper and acrylic mediums.
8”x8”

How are you? We are doing very well. Scott is keeping busy with baking and cooking. Noah finally received the synthesizer he ordered long before we were sheltering in place. He’s happily busy with all his sound toys. My Son in NYC, is busy working from home and just celebrated his 38th!!!! Birthday! How can he be 38, while I am still 39? My daughter is still working at the hospital, doing chest X-rays . I was so happy to hand over the bulk of the ribbon masks to her to share with her coworkers. I have more masks I made since then. I’m tempted to stand in front of my house and tell all the joggers, walkers and bicyclists 🚴‍♀️ to take one. I see them from the sewing window and nobody is masked. Well, once I have more masks, the county health foundation will come pick them up. Just waiting on a big order of ribbon to be delivered and 💥 I will have them flowing from my dysfunctional machine. I will say this for the ‘bad’ machine, the zigzag stitch is now my mask brand. If I’m ever out in public again and see a mask with zigzag stitching, Odds are, it’s one I made.

Thanks for checking out my blog. I’ll add a few picture from my week below. Be safe, be well. Happy Holidays if you are 🥳

Message from my daughter
Couldn’t find elastic. Everyone’s out of white ribbon. There’s still plenty of other colors to choose from. I’ve used navy blue and orange grosgrain ribbon instead of black and white.
3 day wait for my ribbons.
Scott spent all day in the kitchen while I was in the next room. We joke that the 2nd wave of masks have been infused with the aroma of
this healing chicken soup.
Becoming more of a nature watcher every day. Some birds are nesting in that birdhouse and come and go all day.

Published by Irene Schlesinger

Hey There! My book "Artful Embroidery On Canvas!", was published in 2020. Thanks for checking out my blog! It's a mix of projects, reports on creativity and whatever else I may have to say. I'm a San Francisco Bay Area-based mixed medium artist who is especially interested in embroidery, installations and all that’ll art for art’s sake! UPDATE: My embroidery has been on hiatus since February 2023 which was when my husband started to feel ill. Sadly, he passed in March 2023 and so, the blog veered into a more personal direction. I'm ending my art hiatus later this September. Life has become a bit complicated but I will be back to blogging more on art and still describing my daily life as an artist, a woman, a mother, a daughter and struggling widow. Thanks for reading along.

Categories Artful embroidery, Inspirations, Season of What Now projects, stitching with acrylic mediums, trying to live creative life
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