I started cutting scraps of fabric to make hexie flowers on September 1, 2015. After 9 months of labor, I have just finished stitching the 733rd flower!  I'll do the math for you... That's 5,131 hexies. They are small ones, 3/4 inch per side. The finished flowers measure just under 4" in diameter.


To give you an idea, this is what 44 hexie flowers look like. In case you don't know, for each hexie, the fabric is cut, and then basted over a paper, hexagon-shaped form. The hexies are then hand-stitched together to make the flowers. It takes about 1 hour to make one hexie flower, start-to-finish; thus 44 hours to make the batch above. Click the photo to see better detail of this process, which is called English paper piecing.


And here are all 733 hexie flowers! Each flower is a different fabric. Although a few of the flower petal fabrics were also used for flower centers, I'm certain that there are over 1,000 different fabrics used in these flowers.

What's next? Well, I'm going to build a design wall using sound-proofing foam-board covered with a king-sized flannel sheet. I haven't quite figured out how to make it yet.

When the design wall is ready, I'll get out my hexie flowers and start to "paint" with them. Who knows what will emerge? Not me. I only have a vague idea that I might want to try "painting" an abstract view of our island shoreline.

When the "painting" process is finished, I'll stitch the flowers together in small groups, and then stitch the groups together. The result, hopefully in my lifetime, will be a queen-sized, non-traditional style, hexie quilt!

Thanks to everybody who shared scraps of fabric for me to use!

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For those interested, here is a link to a "time study" and photos of my previous hexie quilt, Mama's Garden!

I learned to create decorative painted papers from Paulus Berensohn, Albie Smith, Lynne Perrella, Anne Bagby, and others by taking wonderful workshops from them in the 1990s, and soon adapted their techniques to making books with beadwork inserted into the covers, like the one below. I use my painted papers on the book covers and for signature covers, which look great with this type of binding.

But after moving to the island where I've lived for 20 years now, I gradually got into quilting and textile arts, kept the beadwork going, and cut way back on painting. Until now!

Inspired, cajoled, and arm-twisted by one of the Textile Guild members, who wants to learn how to paint papers and make books like mine, I agreed to teach a workshop (2 days of painting and 2 days of bookmaking) for the guild members. Of course, since I hadn't painted for many years, I first had to get back into practice. Yay! What fun I've been having, painting in my shed (thankfully heated). The paper below is my favorite of about 20 painted in the last two weeks. The size is 18 x 24 inches. (Please click to see the details!)

And below are two more to go with it.  The paper above will be used for a book cover, even though it will be hard for me to cut it up. The two papers below will be cut (horizontally) into thirds, and used as signature covers. For those unfamiliar with bookmaking, a signature is a section of papers within a book. Each of the six signatures in my book will be covered with this decorative paper.


It's a fun, playful, and experimental process to paint like this, easier for me than it would be to paint figuratively (landscape, still life, or people). With this type of painting, I just mix matte medium with a color or two of acrylic paint, and apply it by rolling, stamping, stenciling in layers. I keep adding layers until I like it, at which point it's a finished paper. There is always at least part of each paper that pleases me enough to use it for bookmaking and paper arts.

These are the basic supplies and tools I use to paint the papers:

1.) Although acrylic paints and this method can be used to paint on almost any surface or paper, I usually paint on 80-90# drawing paper to make decorative papers.

2.) I prefer using a roller to apply background colors or glazes, rather than a brush. My favorite, purchased online from Dick Blick Art Supplies, is a 2.2"  dense foam roller.

3.) Assorted stamps and stencils. I carve a lot of my own stamps, as you will see below, but sometimes also use commercial stamps. Note that commercial rubber stamps with fine detail for stamping with inks do not work well with acrylics, as the paint clogs the fine lines, ruining the stamp.

4.) Assorted materials, such as a notched adhesive-spreader, coarse sea-sponge, webbed food packaging materials, and bubble wrap are useful to print, texture, and stencil.

5.) Acrylic paints. I use heavy-body paint (rather than fluid acrylics) of student-grade or better quality.

6.) Matte medium and glazing medium (slow drying) are added to extend the paint.

I know, maybe you're thinking I should do a video tutorial. OK. You set it up, and I'll do it. In the meantime, I'd rather be painting...  Here are three more recently painted papers for your viewing pleasure (I hope).



The one directly above is my attempt to emulate batik fabric from India. I had a bedspread back in the hippy 60s with a burgundy design on a mustard yellow background, the memory of which was the inspiration for this paper. I carved all of the stamps used to make it.

I love to carve my own stamps, and sometimes cut my own stencils as well. Let's take a look at that process. It's quite easy really, requiring only a block of Speedy-Carve (or other high-density rubber carving block), and a Speed-Ball Carving tool. Designs can be free cut, drawn right on the carving block, or transferred from a tracing. Here's a fairly decent tutorial on the stamp carving process.

Designs? Well, everywhere I look I see possibilities for carving more stamps! Recently, visiting a fabric store with my quilting buddies, I spied a fat quarter of batik fabric with a luscious design. Here is the fabric:

And here is the stamp I carved from a tracing I made of the central flower. The stamp is the same size as on the fabric, about 3" in diameter.

I also cut a stencil, which you can see below. A friend had a commercial stencil of these three leaves, which I really liked. After borrowing her stencil to use on one of my papers, I traced the painted image, and cut out my own stencil. The tool in this image is a Speed-Ball cutter, which I use to carve the rubber to make stamps.

You've already seen (way above) the whole sheet of paper I painted using just this stamp and stencil, but here's a detail. If you click to enlarge, you can see more about how I paint in layers, first the background colors, next the leaves, then a different color over-stencil on the leaves, and last the flowers.

If you like to play with paint, you might want to give it a try! Here are just a few more of my recently painted papers to tempt you...





I'll be teaching a 2-day bookmaking workshop in mid-May using papers like these to create three different books. There may still be a spot or two available in the class. If you are interested, you can contact me for more information.

You may want to visit my website to see more about my handmade books and painted papers. And there are several earlier posts here on Beadlust with pictures of books made with painted decorative papers and beading by my students, as well as other related topics. Here are a few of them:

1. Wedding book
2. Lisa's book (from a workshop I taught in Wisconsin); her fabulous website is here.
3. Susan's book (from a workshop I taught in Wisconsin)
4. painting papers for making Christmas cards
5. Using symbols in our art and symbols in acrylic painting  
6. Using these techniques to paint with dyes on fabric and more fabric paint/dye examples

Susan Anderson took my bookmaking/painting/beading workshop twice at the Coupeville Art Center. These are the papers for her first book, and if you click to enlarge, you can also see her finished book.

And, to close this post, here is a photo of some of the handmade books I've created over the years... most of them utilize decorative painted papers and bead embroidery.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this long post :)!

 

It All Started with Hexie-lust!

Getting Hooked on Crochet

Original Crochet-Along, Frida's Flowers

Bored with making 6 identical flowers - Colors calling us!

Designing Our Afghans

Entering at the San Juan County Fair

Gilbert Harman, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, died at his home in Princeton on Nov. 13 after a long illness with Alzheimer’s. He was 83.

The new producing artistic director of the theater and music theater season at the arts center sat for an interview for our ‘What I think’ series.

Jacques R. Fresco, the emeritus Damon B. Pfeiffer Professor in the Life Sciences and an emeritus professor of molecular biology, died on Dec. 5. He served on Princeton's faculty for 53 years before retiring in July 2013.

Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa, a Princeton alumna and current Hodder Fellow who's a composer, vocalist and scholar, has come full circle since the day she sat in a McCarter audience 10 years ago and made a wish to one day be up on that stage. 

Hale Freeman Trotter, an emeritus professor of mathematics, died at 91 at his home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Austin Newton, a founding member of the Department of Molecular Biology, established a new experimental system and mentored generations of undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He died May 13 in Princeton at age 85.

Daniel Osherson, Princeton’s Henry R. Luce Professor in Information Technology, Consciousness, and Culture, Emeritus, known for his  creative scientific explorations with collaborators in many disciplines, died at home on Sept. 4. 

As the James Webb Space Telescope delights stargazers with breathtaking images and groundbreaking discoveries, we connected with Princeton astrophysics luminaries Gillian “Jill” Knapp and Neta Bahcall, both contributors to a new book by women astronomers.

Simon Morrison, author of the new musical biography "Mirror in the Sky,” is a professor of music and Slavic languages and literatures, and a sought-after lecturer in the humanities.

CSDP brings voices from across the political spectrum into conversation with Princeton social scientists and students. 

tataata has added a photo to the pool:

Men's Ice Hockey vs Ohio State

Men's Ice Hockey vs Ohio State

Men's Basketball vs Nazareth

Men's Water Polo - NEWPC Championships

Women's Ice Hockey vs Cornell

Rubik's Cube Club

Men's Water Polo - NEWPC Championships

Women's Ice Hockey vs Colgate

In this talk, Graham Neubig will discuss a new frontier in AI models, vision-language models that understand the world's cultures. The talk will be in two parts. First, Neubig will discuss training of multilingual multimodal multicultural models that understand images and text, and have increased ability to answer culture-specific questions about multimodal data. Second, he will discuss work on "image transcreation", where models have been developed that can transform images to make them more relevant to a particular culture. This work has applications in a number of areas, such as cultural localization of educational materials (to accompany translated text). While these methods cover many languages, African and not, the talk will focus on examples specifically from the African context, and challenges we currently face therein.

Men's Water Polo - NEWPC Championships

Conversation with emerging writer, art critic, curator and Princeton alum Simon Wu ’17 as he discusses his new book, Dancing on My Own, with Monica Youn ’93, Visiting Professor of Creative Writing. Followed by a book signing and reception. Current Princeton students can register to join writer and art curator Simon Wu ‘17 for a private dinner and career conversation from 4:30-5:30 PM.

Join the Program in Judaic Studies and the Department of Religion on Tuesday, November 19, for this talk delivered by Ilana Pardes. Lunch will be available before the event's start, between 11:30am–12:00pm only. The account of the rise of Israelite kingship in the Book of Samuel is one of the greatest narratives of antiquity that has been passed down to us. Far from being a dry chronicle, it offers both an unblinking perspective on political realities and a daring representation of the humanness, the nakedness, of royal figures. The talk will revolve around the encounter of King David and the wise woman of Tekoa (2 Samuel 14). Special attention will be given to the dramas behind the scenes, to the hidden links between the parabolic tale of the wise woman and the story of the House of David. All are welcome to attend, but space is limited – please RSVP to judaic@princeton.edu and note any dietary needs. More about Ilana Pardes Ilana Pardes is the Katharine Cornell Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently a Visiting Professor in the Program in Judaic Studies Program at Princeton University. Her work has focused on the nexus of Bible, literature, and culture as well as on questions of gender, aesthetics, and hermeneutics. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Harvard University Press, 1992), The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (University of California Press, 2000), Melville's Bibles (University of California, 2008), Agnon's Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture (The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies, University of Washington Press, 2013), The Song of Songs: A Biography (Princeton University Press, Lives of Great Religious Books, 2019), and Ruth: A Migrant’s Tale (Yale University Press, Jewish Lives, 2022).

Join Princeton University Glee Club for a three-day celebration of the Glee Club’s past, present and future with a festival of singing, camaraderie and concerts! On November 17th, join Princeton University Glee Club and PUGC alumni in a public chapel sing. *** PUGC 150th CELEBRATION - a 3 day festival! Opening Concert: The King Singers with the Princeton University Glee Club Friday November 15th, 7:30pm Richardson Auditorium, Princeton, NJ Gala Concert: PUGC - Then, Now, and Onwards! with the Princeton University Glee Club and PUGC alumni Saturday November 16th, 5pm Richardson Auditorium, Princeton, NJ Glee Club Come-and-Sing: Fauré Requiem with the Princeton University Glee Club and PUGC alumni Sunday November 17th, 2:30pm Princeton University Chapel, Princeton, NJ

A Life Worth Living is a new dramatic-comedy musical that follows Gavin, a depressed teenager involuntarily sent to a residential mental health treatment facility. Using music and comedy, the show focuses on topics of platonic love, mental health, and suicide, while exploring themes of grief, acceptance, and radical hope. Talkback with Dr. Calvin R. Chin, Princeton's Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, follows 11/9 performance. Free tickets required.

A Life Worth Living is a new dramatic-comedy musical that follows Gavin, a depressed teenager involuntarily sent to a residential mental health treatment facility. Using music and comedy, the show focuses on topics of platonic love, mental health, and suicide, while exploring themes of grief, acceptance, and radical hope. Talkback with Dr. Calvin R. Chin, Princeton's Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, follows 11/9 performance. Free tickets required.

Men's Squash vs Navy

A Life Worth Living is a new dramatic-comedy musical that follows Gavin, a depressed teenager involuntarily sent to a residential mental health treatment facility. Using music and comedy, the show focuses on topics of platonic love, mental health, and suicide, while exploring themes of grief, acceptance, and radical hope. Talkback with Dr. Calvin R. Chin, Princeton's Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, follows 11/9 performance. Free tickets required.

A Life Worth Living is a new dramatic-comedy musical that follows Gavin, a depressed teenager involuntarily sent to a residential mental health treatment facility. Using music and comedy, the show focuses on topics of platonic love, mental health, and suicide, while exploring themes of grief, acceptance, and radical hope. Talkback with Dr. Calvin R. Chin, Princeton's Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, follows 11/9 performance. Free tickets required.

Join Princeton University Glee Club for a three-day celebration of the Glee Club’s past, present and future with a festival of singing, camaraderie and concerts! The festival begins on November 15th with a performance in Richardson Auditorium by the unstoppable superstars of global a cappella - The King’s Singers, featuring a program of music curated specially for the 150th, and joined on stage by the Princeton University Glee Club for the world premiere of a new work by American composer Stacy Gibbs. *** PUGC 150th CELEBRATION - a 3 day festival! Opening Concert: The King Singers with the Princeton University Glee Club Friday November 15th, 7:30pm Richardson Auditorium, Princeton, NJ Gala Concert: PUGC - Then, Now, and Onwards! with the Princeton University Glee Club and PUGC alumni Saturday November 16th, 5pm Richardson Auditorium, Princeton, NJ Glee Club Come-and-Sing: Fauré Requiem with the Princeton University Glee Club and PUGC alumni Sunday November 17th, 2:30pm Princeton University Chapel, Princeton, NJ

Men's Basketball vs Loyola Chicago

A Life Worth Living is a new dramatic-comedy musical that follows Gavin, a depressed teenager involuntarily sent to a residential mental health treatment facility. Using music and comedy, the show focuses on topics of platonic love, mental health, and suicide, while exploring themes of grief, acceptance, and radical hope. Talkback with Dr. Calvin R. Chin, Princeton's Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, follows 11/9 performance. Free tickets required.

A Life Worth Living is a new dramatic-comedy musical that follows Gavin, a depressed teenager involuntarily sent to a residential mental health treatment facility. Using music and comedy, the show focuses on topics of platonic love, mental health, and suicide, while exploring themes of grief, acceptance, and radical hope. Talkback with Dr. Calvin R. Chin, Princeton's Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, follows 11/9 performance. Free tickets required.

About the Event Two of today’s finest string quartets become even more than the sum of their parts in octets by Felix Mendelssohn and George Enescu as they return to Princeton University Concerts the evening prior to heading to Carnegie Hall. These monumental works—each, incredibly, written by the prodigious composers in their teens—are quintessential representations of the form, showcasing the sonic power and rich, multilayered possibilities of an octet configuration. This event is presented by Princeton University Concerts. For a full event listing and tickets, please visit this link.

Women's Basketball vs Villanova

Malês portrays the difficult living conditions of Black men and women in 19th-century Bahia, fighting against extreme racism, poverty, and religious intolerance. The film features a prominent cast, including Rocco and Camila Pitanga, Wilson Rabelo, Bukassa Kabengele, Samira Carvalho, Rodrigo de Odé, Heraldo de Deus, and Patricia Pillar, along with the director Antonio Pitanga. The script is written by Manuela Dias, and the cinematography is by Pedro Farkas. The film, based on historical facts, depicts the Malês Revolt, the largest organized uprising by enslaved people in Brazilian history. The insurrection mobilized the enslaved and free Black population through the streets of Salvador against slavery in 1835. Led by Muslim Africans, called Malês, the rebellion took place at the end of Ramadan, celebrated in January by Islam. After the revolt’s failure, the demonstrators were severely punished, and repression against Black people in Brazil increased. In the feature, Antonio Pitanga plays Pacífico Licutan, one of the leaders of the uprising, who emphasized the importance of participation from different tribes and religions for the revolt’s success and the end of slavery. The film also presents other participants of the revolt, such as Anuna (Rodrigo dos Santos), Manuel Calafate (Bukassa Kabengele), Vitério Sule (Heraldo de Deus), and Luis Sanim (Thiago Justino), along with fictional characters who portray real-life dramas, such as Dassalu (Rocco Pitanga), Sabina (Camila Pitanga), and Abayome (Samira Carvalho).

Mathilde Bédouet's 'Summer 96' qualified for the Oscars by winning the prestigious César Award, France's equivalent of the Academy Award.

Nowadays, gas barbecues have supplanted standard charcoal flame broils in numerous family units. And happiness is when you find the Best gas grills under 300.

The post 15 Best Gas Grills Under 300 2024 – Propane Grills For Every Budget appeared first on Star Two.

In 1993, terrorists detonated a car-bomb in an underground garage of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing six, injuring more than a thousand, and causing more than $300 million in damage. In all, ten militant Islamist conspirators were convicted of involvement in the bombing, including Yousef, who also bombed an important Shia shrine in Iran in 1994 and later planned a large-scale terrorist scheme that included killing the pope. What alleged 9-11 mastermind is Yousef's uncle?

In 1991, after a three-year investigation, US and UK authorities announced indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. During a trial held a decade later in the Netherlands, one of the defendants was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Whose presence on board the airplane has given rise to a number of conspiracy theories about the motivations behind the bombing? Discuss

Recently, we have released a decent chunk of updates and improvements. Below is what has been done in RSS Ground to make it better. We constantly strive to improve.  IFTTT Integration For Existing Posting Campaigns Not so long ago we have introduced  IFTTT platform integration. Since then, you are able to create posting campaigns and […]

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We are ready with another set of updates and improvements for RSS Ground. Major update to LinkedIn Poster LinkedIn Poster update Now you can have a full control over your LinkedIn automated posts. You can optionally add item’s title, description and image to your post. Also, you can add custom text, specify call-to-action text with […]

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We are excited to announce a new round of updates and enhancements for RSS Ground. YouTube Channel Feeds We have introduced the ability to generate YouTube channel feeds using the “@channel” tag. Previously generated YouTube channel feeds will continue to function without any issues. For more information, please refer to our user guide on YouTube […]

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Below is the list of updates and fixes made in RSS Ground recently. X (Twitter) Poster After major changes on the X (Twitter) platform, we have introduced an update to our Twitter Poster. Most options and features remain the same. However, you now need to create own Twitter apps to continue posting to your Twitter […]

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