One Friday Favorite

One.  Only one favorite this week.  And that is because it was posted last Friday! I am sure there were tons more wonderful posts out there this week that I would have loved if I had had time to visit the sites.  But I work at a University and next Monday is the first day of the Fall semester.  This week work has been early days and late nights.  By the time I get home, I just veg in front of the TV till I have enough energy to go to bed.  LOL

Anyway, I always appreciate reading Judi Hurwitt's Approachable Art blog and in this post we got a two-fer (is that how you spell it when you get 2 for the price of 1?).  First she talks about her experiments with Citra-Solv Concentrate and a new paper product called Sheer Heaven.  Now, I warn you, this is all paper collage and not fabric.  In fact she tried the transfer technique on fabric and called it a complete faillure.  But I found the technique interesting and, like Judi, thinks it calls for more experimenting on fabric. 

Here is a picture of some hand dyed fabric with some Citra-Solv transfers of leaf skeletons I made.  I think my next step will be to print colored leafs on organza that I will place over it.  I am hoping for a bit of a shadow effect.

The second half of her post shows off some silk she has dyed.  It is yummy!  I haven't had time to do much in the way of dyeing but I did finally receive some used sari silks I had ordered over E-bay.  Here are some pictures.  I am not sure that I will do with it yet, but my brain is working on it.  I am open to suggestions!

I also have some pictures to show you where I have tried some of Wen Redmond's techniques for turning photos into images ready for thermofax silkscreen (one of last Friday's Favorites).  I will have to clean the image up quite a bit.  From Wen's comments I think they are too busy to make good silkscreen prints.

 Here is the photo

And here are two different photoshopped black and white images.

Friday Favorites

It's been a good week for me.  I hope it has been for you too!  I am pleased with the slow progress on the Center of the Universe piece and my IT piece is finally moving.  I might even get it done in time for the reveal.  As by-products of my IT piece I have several pieces of beautiful hand dyed fabric begging to be turned into art.  And, (and this is a biggie) I have started clearing out my art storage so I can actually find things (like the floor).  Well, on to my favorites for this week.

I have thought about starting a blog where I and a couple of friends test out surface design and quilting techniques from books, DVDs, and magazine articles and report our results.  You know, were the instructions easy to understand? did I get similar results?  how hard was the process?  that kind of thing.  I thought that would be a real service to readers and would be lots of fun for me.  So, imagine my excitement when I saw that The Quilt Rat did that for a recent DVD she purchased on painting on fabric.  Okay, that DVD is now on my wish list.

Wen Redmond gives some great tips for how to prepare pictures for thermofax.  I have some images I want to send off for silk screens and found the tips very helpful.  I also have a funny story about Wen.  My daughter, Ellen, was visiting her in-laws in NH.  I had suggested that while she was there they go and see the League of New Hampshire Crafts Fair.  I knew about it from seeing it on Wen's blog.  I even sent Ellen the link from Wen's blog for the Fair.  Well, Ellen went to the Fair and excitedly emailed later to tell me she saw an amazing artist whose work reminded me of the type of work I do. She gave me the website for the artist because she knew I would want to check out the artist's work.  Yep, it was Wen Redmond!  Ellen has good taste!

A new blog for me to visit popped up on my radar this week.  Sew Much Art posted about setting monthly art goals and doing an evaluation at the end of the month.  Have you ever had one of those "DUH!" moments?  Such a simple suggestion but of course what a great idea.  I often let other things interfere with my art or I wander around side alleys instead of pursuing larger goals.  So, I will try this and see if it helps.

Center of the Universe

Remember the slow cloth I am working on?  The one where my daughter and I discussed who is the center of the universe?  I still am not ready to show you the entire thing but here is a piece of it.  I am liking it more all the time.

The piece has a lot of lace on it.  I was asked to replace the hand crocheted lace off the edge of my ward's sacrament table cloth.  The lace did have lots of holes but also lots of long stretches that were in pretty good shape.  I saved the lace for use later.  It is now later.  LOL  I love having it as a part of my universe showing the links between all of us.

Monoprinting on Geletin

I don't think I have shown you my monoprints that I made with Beth and Rosalita.  On the whole, I was not excited until I pulled out my organza.  I love organza!  Please notice that I made two to three prints from each print.

1. First I use a sponge roller to spread the paint on the gelatin plate and then I put a resist down on top.  If it is something like string then I make my first print with the sting in place.  If the resist is bubble wrap then I press it down for a imprint and then remove it.

2.  Second, I place the fabric on the gelatin plate and rub with my hands to print the fabric.

3.  If the resist is still on the gelatin plate, I carefully remove it and make a second print of the gelatin plate on the fabric. This time you get an inverse image.  Instead of blank spaces where the resist was, you get a paint print where it was.

4.  Last, I try and print the resist item itself.  The bubble wrap or other objects that were removed have paint on them which you can print on the fabric.  The string can be laid on the cloth, covered with paper, and rubbed for a print.

All of the above give different effects but can look interesting together since they are related.  Here are mine.

Notice the gelatin plate cracked but we just slide the two pieces together and kept printing.  I like the look the crack gives.  Just more interest to the print!

Bubble wrap--here is an example of printing both the gelatin plate and then the bubble wrap itself.

Some of these cracks are from the gelatin plate but most are from folds in the fabric when I printed.  I like it!

This is an onion bag and a print on top of a print. Do you see on the right purple print where the crack in the gelatin plate has now filled with paint so instead of printing a gap, it prints a heavier line of paint?  I like it!  You might also notice on the purple print on the left that there was a string accidentally left on the plate and it got printed as a resist.

Last are these two that got printed on regular fabric.  Actually when I print the organza I put it down on the plate and then cover it with fabric.  You might be able to compare the prints to find which one belongs to which one.  I printed them on the fabric I had previously dyed with pink.  You can also notice on the top print that I did not clean off one color of paint before rolling on the second--you get a bit of gold under that purple.

The gelatin plate cracked into a dozen pieces by the time we finished.  Not a  problem.  I washed them all off, put them back into a sealed container, and placed in my fridge.  I'll melt it and put it back into a flat pan to reform the next time I want to monoprint.

Friday Favorites

I hope you are having a creative week.  I know that Laura at Periwinkle Art Quilts is dyeing this week.  I love her stuff!  I have primarily been  cleaning up my work space and feeling guilty that I am not working hard on my IT  piece.  Many of the other artists are done already.  Gotta get moving on that!

I was needing a piece to work on by hand so I have started a "slow quilt" piece that I am not quite ready to share yet.  I started it after having a conversation with my adult daughter regarding who is the center of the universe. (Our opinions did not match.  LOL)  This piece is coming along very slowly since it is all done by hand but I am finding it very peaceful to work on.  I'll share more as I progress with it.

Here is my inspiration for the week.

1.  I don't know why I don't care for meander quilting.  I feel even stronger about machine quilting where you push a button and the Longarm cranks out cute little cowboy boots or christmas trees.  But I do love just straight lines...ah.... almost straight lines.  Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio gives a nice tutorial on how she quilts "organic" straight line on just a regular sewing machine.

2.  Unless you count my attempt at dyeing fabric using bleeding tissue paper, I have not yet made paper fabric.  It was on our list for Beth, Rosalita and me last Saturday but we had so much fun with the deconstructed silk screen that we didn't get to the paper fabric.    Lana's paper cloth piece gives me some inspiration to try it on my own.   She also explains a bit about using copyright free images in making your paper cloth.

3.  The Quilt Rat offers a tutorial on graduated painted fabrics.  You will need to buy popsicles and a store-made cake in order to have the professional tools she uses in her process (mixing sticks and a throw-away container).  LOL  I would think you could really use the dilution process for dyes too.

4.  I love quilts where the blocks are set on-point.  I can only manage setting my blocks on-point by accident or by following someone else's pattern (which I HATE to do). Now I have an easy formula I can apply offered by the editors at Creative Collaboration.   There is even a clever jpg of a chart you can capture, enlarge, and  print.

5.  Last is a tutorial that I just discovered on A Stitch in Dye for "Clamping and dyeing: a basic Itajime primer" I don't know if the tutorial is new or whether I just noticed it for the first time.  I got some clamps and plexiglass shapes for Christmas just to try this type of dyeing.  I have only used them once and was not happy with the results.  I will try it again this weekend using the recipes that Malka uses and see if my results turn out more satisfactorily.

Let me know if you try any of these techniques and what you thought of them.