Day One

Beth gave me a book for Christmas.  She did research to find the best book on Zentangles and gifted me with a book by Beckah Krahula. There are 42 days of exercises.  Here is Day One in my handmade Zentangle sketch book.

Play Date with Beth

Beth and I got together on Saturday for a wax and dye day.  Beth wanted to try a technique she found here on Edwina Mackinnon's blog.  Beth had fallen in love with the brush marks on the finished fabric. 

 She read and re-read the blog to figure out how it was done, prepared the brushes, mixed the dyes, and sent me the instructions.  I showed up. What a slacker! Beth will post her own results but here is my process and result.

I started out with a yard of white cotton fabric, pinned it on Beth's dye board, and spritzed it with soda water.

 I brushed the fabric with lemon yellow, golden yellow, turquoise, and basic blue.  I tried to leave white spaces and brush with a light stroke to leave brush marks.  I added some blue splatters for interest.

Here is a close up.
There are no pictures for the next couple of steps. We wrapped our dyed fabric in plastic and let it batch for hour.  Then we draped the batched fabric over a drying rack, turned on multiple fans, and let the fabric completely dry.

If you look really, really close, you can see the wax stripes that I have brushed on the dyed, batched, dried fabric.  I used a foam brush that Beth had notched.

Next step was to coat the dyed, batched, dried and waxed fabric with thickened dye.  I was going to only use Fuchsia but I ran out and Beth had leftover Navy Blue so I used some of it too.  I thought it would add some lovely depth.

Once again we wrapped the fabric in plastic and batched.  And there are no pictures of my washing and washing out all of that dye, hot-water rinsing to get the wax out, washing it in the washing machine, drying it in the dyer, and ironing it.

But here are the finished results--one large and several small detail shots showing all the brush stokes.  I am in love!  I think it is the best fabricI have ever done.

Friday Favorites

I will be in an art show tonight.  I'll show you pictures of the work I exhibited and the show tomorrow.  I am hoping it will go well. By well, I just mean that someone shows up and someone makes a comment and someone plays on the design board I am going to put up.  Could be the same someone but perhaps three different someones will come.  I don't expect to sell anything.  I am not opposed to selling anything but  I didn't create art stuff for the purpose of selling it at the show.  I just made my art. The two types of art are not necessarily the same.  Know what I mean?

Friday Favorites


I love the work done by Constance Rose.  This particular piece is named Before the Fall.   I love it for several reasons.  One, it is simple.  I love complicated piecing but it is good to remember that it does not have to be complex to be interesting. Two, it is eco-dyed fabric.  I have tried eco-dying and love it but it takes much more magic than dying with MX dyes.  I need to practice more to get the lovely colors she gets here.  And Three, the stitching is simple.  I have so much trouble with my stitching.  How much is just right and how much is too little or too much?  I think Connie got it right in this piece.

I had to laugh when I read Lynn Krawezyk say she loves bad art.  She doesn't really like bad art but she loves to give herself permission to make art and determine later if it is good or bad. That is one of the nice things about surface design or piecing. With surface design you can always dye or paint over or bleach it out.  With piecing you can always cut it up and sew it together into something better.  If it is still ugly then you cut it into smaller pieces and try again.

I read Lynn's post the same week I read Robet Genn's post on Autopoietic Art. For me the two fit together.  First, just experiment and see what happens. Second, let the results tell you what comes next.  Sound simple doesn't it?  It takes practice but some of my best work was created using that process.

Beth sent me to Edwina MacKinnon's blog.  I linked you to her blog rather than to a paticular post.  Beth wanted me to see the thickened dye and wax resist experiments.  I loved the rusted cloth.  Another post has experiments using flour resists.  All yummy.

If you remember, send good thoughts my way for the art show.

I just won!

Look at what I just won!

Laura at Periwinkle Quilts just chose my name for this scrumptious book!  I have done some experimenting with this technique before--some more successful than others--and I am so excited to try more! 

Experiments to come!