"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent; with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."~~Henri Matisse
…make more fabric!
Almost everyone from the class sent home their leftover paint with me instead of taking it home with them…so because I hate anything to go to waste, I printed one morning. It’s a good exercise because I get new ideas while I’m printing (oh boy, do I love that grid stuff that I think is for making rugs non-skid). There is still some paint left…stay tuned…I’m going to make screens for breakdown printing next…
Beth gets ready to print with a glue screen.
Beth’s freezer paper prints.
Laurie’s unique pumpkin prints
Mark tries adding color to his freezer paper prints.
I love how this one turned out.
Jan works on a piece of commercial cloth, adding more designs to it.
One of Jan’s paper designs.
This is another of Mark’s designs. It took him a while to paint this design on the screen, consequently some of the dye dried and when he printed it, it had a breakdown printing appearance to it. Of course, I love that.
Susan paints some of the open areas of her prints.
Some of Suzy’s work.
A pretty cool freezer paper screen made by another Beth in the class. I really like this screen design.
Here’s a couple more pieces of my exhibit that have not been seen on my blog before.
Sticks and Stones #3
Rust dyed cotton sateen, silk screening, stenciling, applique, hand writing, paint, ink, dyes, stitching with polyester thread.
Sticks and Stones #4
Rust dyed feed sack, discharge dyed cotton sateen, silk screened, stenciled and stamped, paint, dyes and automatic dish washing liquid and other discharging products, hand writing, inks, stitching with polyester thread.
Well, I guess Mondays are lining up to be my “domestic” day. After making Mounds balls, I also made biscuits for supper later in the afternoon yesterday. Did some laundry and cleaning up a bit too. My husband hates to see things laying around and me…well, if I can’t see it, I forget about it and there are some things I want to remember I have to work on or at least think about so I can make a decision! (I recently found my Indiana sales tax form somewhere it should not have been…out of sight, out of mind. Luckily, I still could meet the deadline.) My “studio”, aka, the shrinking 9’x 9′ extra bedroom, does not give me the space to leave things out where I can see them and think about them. I pretty much use the whole house!
The thread came yesterday, so today I will again start stitching on a piece I am working on for my show. I should be doing that now, but well, here I am. I wanted to post some of the deconstructed results from last week, and I now have the photos loaded onto the computer.
I used different sized screens and some of these are overprinted…and may still need some more overprinting. And they have not been washed yet, but you get the idea. I really really love the breakdown look of this kind of printing.
The reason this whole piece of cloth is not printed is because I am pondering using these as 4 separate prints for wall pieces. We’ll see. They might need more printing on them.
Last week, I ran out of thread on a piece of art I was stitching on. Rather than take a whole day and drive an hour away to buy thread, I opted for an internet order instead. Of course! the company only had one spool of a color I needed, I found out later, and of course, I need more than one, so yes, I will be making that 1 hour trek in a couple of weeks, but I made a lunch and outing date with a friend, so driving an hour for thread won’t be all that I am doing that day. Oh, the down side of rural living…even if I do love it!
In the meantime, there is plenty for me to do while I wait for the thread….so I got started on making some prints on cloth. These will be deconstructed prints. First I had to create the screens. I smeared a few colors of dye paint onto the back of blank silk screens, then pushed objects that will create designs and texture into the paint. Then let dry for however long it takes. Purchased screens or homemade screens using framing wood pieces that lock together…it’s all good. I have learned something about making the homemade screens though. Do not use polyester sheers…they STRETCH! And you won’t like it. Use nylon material to avoid this. I am going to have to re-do some of my screens.
While I had the dye and the bubble wrap out, I decided to play. I do that a lot…try something new…see what happens. I laid my dry soda soaked cotton over the bubble wrap (to see how to soda soak cotton, see my tutorial on the sidebar), then laid a blank screen over it and pulled prints.
This deposits quite a bit of paint on the cloth, hence the following “monoprint”.
Since these two pieces use the same colors, they can be used together in something, but there is variation in the cloth.
I still need to finish one piece of cloth before I put my stuff away…maybe today!
But right now, I am making Mounds balls. ;=)
Ever have a tool that you love to use and you really would like more of them, but you can NEVER find them in the stores and you’re too lazy to cruise a bunch of yard sales just hoping you will find some? And you’ve been looking for a very long time? I was telling my husband all about this dilemma just the other day as we stopped into a Rural King store and we were going by the kitchen gadget aisle. I stopped to look at the gadgets and imagine my surprise to find exactly what I’ve been looking for. Holy cow!
These are mini-whips. I have a few of them, but have always wanted to have more on hand in my dyeing tool box. What do I use them for, you ask? I’m so glad you asked. I use them to mix dye powder with print paste to make the dye paints that I use on cotton and silk. With mini-whips it makes it easier to mix any chunky dye particles with either water or the print paste.
I was so excited to find these…I could have done a jig.
Some days it’s not so much, except for a visit to Curves and errands. I finally got my life arranged where I could start doing some printing this week. I need to print several yards of cloth…how much I’m not so sure. I guess I’ll know when I get there. Thursday I got dye paint mixed and then yesterday I got 4 yards printed. I have 3 weeks before I vend at my next quilt show, so I need to make good use of the time I have between now and then. After printing the cloth, then there is sewing it up into items for the home.
I call this a VERY improvisational screen printing technique…basically, I just paint circles and drips on the screen and immediately print it.
I made table napkins from the other colorway I previously printed.
There will be matching tablerunners also.
Someone on my blogroll has now turned me on to what a “potato chip” scarf is. Today has seen me online hunting up a pattern and yarns. And ordering. Since I don’t really knit yet, I will crochet it with a big hook. My nieces may get these cool scarves for Christmas….we’ll see how I get along. I also got my new printed fabrics ironed.
From the Lion Brand yarn website, the double boa ruffled scarf…
My plan is to do three colorways for Select Collections. I will print black and white as well as more of the amethyst, curry, and turkey red colors. That’s all I’m gonna do. Ideas need to percolate too. It takes about an hour to print two yards of fabric in this manner. I can’t do it all in one piece as my set up won’t handle it at the moment, so I do one yard at a time.
I now have sets of inks for sale…I have the Mini Stations for painted faces and the Basic colors Mini Station. Contact me if you’re interested. These are very nice inks to work with if you like to do detail work. They look wonderful on the cloth I dye on which is a 76 x 74 thread count. I won’t use Setacolors on this cloth…it just looks better on Pimatex cotton, but these inks paint well on this pfd cotton, which I like about them. Each mini-station comes with a helpful dvd, and there are tutorials on the internet to help you learn to use them too.
A silk screen prepared and drying. I painted dye paint over the back of the screen, then embedded objects in it to create patterns.
Screen is now dried and ready for printing.
Working out in the patio yesterday, I dyed 10 of these…Sweet little onesies for sweet little babies.
Between Monday and Tuesday, I finished 8 new silk scarves and have 3 more waiting to finish. I need some time to decide how to finish them. I want to do more wax designs. There is only one in this group using my new “BIG sponge” stamp. I love the BIG sponge.
