Printing Silk Scarves

April 27, 2010 by 4 Comments

I am printing scarves today, getting ready for an art fair this weekend.  I am using three different silk screens.  Two are created with soy wax designs and one has been created using Elmer’s glue.  I am amazed at the longevity of the glue screen.  I have been using it for some time now.  Here it is all messy with dye.

I made a soy wax screen with stripes and it is lasting a long time too.  Here are some of the scarves I printed this morning.  I think I am going to have to invest in more screens!

I did use another screen that I stamped circles on with soy wax, but I actually got the wax too heavy on it, so there is not a lot of dye put down when you do a pull.  I only used it on one of these scarves for a variation in the print.  When I get them washed out…I will post the finished look.

Filed Under: artist's thoughts, Arts in Harmony, creativity, hand dyed silk scarves, printmaking, screenprinting, silk scarves

January This ‘N That

January 5, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Here it is January 5th of the new year and I’m just now blogging.  Been sick all through the holidays, tired and still had to do all the festivities stuff.  Now I’m just tired!  I am better though and thankful for that.

In my last blog post I said I would share a picture of a pattern that caught my eye.  I was too busy to do art during the holidays, but it’s interesting how my attention was taken by a pattern made by the dipped pretzels on the wax paper!  I may use this for something. That’s a plaid dishtowel laying beneath it so that I could photograph the pattern. I wonder what India ink would do?  Would it go around the outlines of the patterns?  I may have to try that tomorrow.

Today I “autographed” a couple of my art pieces in stitch.  I recently heard a horror story about someone being denied their art because their name wasn’t stitched on it….I am not going to have that happen to me!  I am taking these two quilts to a photographer’s studio to be photographed next week and wanted to get my name on them before that. I am considering entering these in an exhibit and want to get some really good pictures as I don’t think mine are that great.

And now my playtime event…a piece of screened cloth from a long time ago with lots of white spaces in it because I used torn paper…I decided to paint those white areas and then maybe I can finally do something with it.  This also gave me ideas for doing a larger piece of cloth.  I ‘m really loving the colors, but not sure where this goes from here.  When I screened it, I used screenprinting inks which made the cloth kind of stiff.  The inks are very thick.  I came back in with fabric paints and liquid acrylics to paint the white areas.

Well, I guess it will sit again until I get an urge to do something with it.  I am really wanting to do some free form piecing….maybe on the retreat I’m going to later this month….

Filed Under: acrylic paint, color, creativity, printmaking, screenprinting Tagged With: ,

Serendipity Printing

September 25, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been sickly this week, just a cold, but still had to push on and get some silk scarves dyed and printed for another art festival this weekend.  Starting life as the dropcloth for printing a scarf…I think I see the start of a new piece…I added some more marks to it.

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Besides black, I used Dharma’s Greenish Brown color, doubled.  It looks really brown when first printed, but after batching and washing, it looks more olive brown, drab olive, whatever.  I like it.  This is on cotton, not silk.

Filed Under: breakdown printing, creativity, dye paint, new art, printmaking, screenprinting, Thermofax screen printing Tagged With:

Dropcloth Art…

September 9, 2009 by Leave a Comment

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It’s not finished!

Filed Under: collage, creativity, new art, screenprinting, Thermofax screen printing Tagged With:

Life In August

August 11, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I’m such a slacker on this blog!  I really didn’t have much of anything interesting to report.  I have been getting ready to teach and vend, so have not been making any art, that’s for sure.  I have some new products to sell and the class I taught last weekend was machine quilting.  What’s there to say about that?

I do have a sample that I quilted with my Featherweight machine.  That might be interesting to see.

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A complaint I have about stitching this way on the Featherweight, and it may be a problem unique only to mine and not to other machines, is that when the needle goes down in the hole a second time, a pretty noticeable knot appears (at least with black thread on white cloth).  But I made the sample to show my class that it is possible to do this on a Featherweight.

I love Kathy Sandbach’s books on machine quilting.  The one I used for the class was Show Me How To Machine Quilt.  She has developed a method of creating unique continuous line designs in stitch for quilts with diagrams showing how to start and continue. It’s a great book especially if you are looking to go beyond stippling and other filler designs. I have some left over from the class.  They are $16.95 plus shipping.  They are not up on the website yet.

KathySandbach book

Another piece of news:  I now have Rayna Gillman’s book for sale on my website!  See here.

Rayna's book

Well, I guess that’s all for today…hopefully it won’t be so long between posts this time!

Filed Under: books, breakdown printing, creativity, gelatin printing, monoprinting, printmaking, screenprinting, Singer Featherweight, stamping, Thermofax screen printing Tagged With: , , ,

More This ‘N That

July 24, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Does anyone else wake up in the morning with so many choices before you that you find it hard to choose your direction for the day?!  Some days that’s how I feel as I prepare for shows, classes, etc. And then there’s the things I would like to work on “just for fun”. I find it hard finding time for those…

I made another Runaround bag…it makes up so fast and easy.  This one is made with discharge dyed black cotton with another piece of my cloth and then adorned with  leftover chocolate button trim from Moda.

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A piece of black cotton sateen discharge dyed in circles. I left the dishwashing gel on it for a long time, so it bleached out quite a bit.

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And lastly, some small bags I have been making using deconstructed screen prints.  The prints are just the right size, and after layering and stitching them,  they make a cute makeup bag.

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Filed Under: breakdown printing, creativity, discharge dyeing, screenprinting Tagged With: , , ,

This ‘N That…

June 29, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I can’t believe it’s been nine days since I blogged here!  First I have to go out and take a walk.  The weather has cooled off considerably and this is a great morning for walking.  The intense heat finally broke here yesterday.  It was much cooler when I came out of church yesterday.  88 degrees actually felt good compared to what we have been having.  Be back later.

What have I been working on? Last week I needed to get photography done for an entry that was to be in by June 30.  Application had to be filled out, etc.  This is for the Mid-States Exhibition that is held every year at the museum in Evansville.  I have only entered once and didn’t get in, but this year I felt I had something that might get accepted. But who knows?  The previous year that I entered, I was beat out by a nylon stocking with rocks or something in it that really looked like a bull’s testicle.  It was supposed to be some sort of  “necklace”.

Here’s some stitching I did on a deconstructed print…I am thinking of making some small bags with these prints.

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I got out my Featherweight machine to do this with because I want to demo free form stitching with a Featherweight for an upcoming class.  These machines can be a little touchy.  I couldn’t get it to stitch in free form mode because the needle was in backwards.  But once I figured out that’s why it wouldn’t stitch, all was well!

I loaded some new little bundles of fabric to my etsy shop and someone picked one of them up for a treasury.  That’s never happened before and has increased hits to my shop, although not a sale yet.  Keep fingers crossed. I need to keep working the shop, although I get sidetracked in the morning and forget to load pictures.

Piece of fabric I dye painted a couple of weeks ago…not sure where it’s going yet.

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Filed Under: breakdown printing, dye paint, screenprinting, Singer Featherweight Tagged With: , ,

Squeegees

June 20, 2009 by 10 Comments

When I started screenprinting, I used credit cards.  They were cheap and always on hand.  Then I  bought a real screen squeegee.  It is an 8 inch one with a rubber edge and a wooden handle.  I like it, but it is a little unwieldy because of size and doesn’t always fit inside every screen.  I can’t imagine using a larger one.  Then I heard about Bondo scrapers.  So off to Auto Zone I went.  Yep, they had them…and this is what they look like.

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Here are my observations:

1. credit cards are too small to get a good grip with your hands,

2. regular squeegees can be a bit bulky to handle, but are large enough to get a good grip with your hands, and

3.  Bondo scrapers are wonderful…they have  a bit of give, they are a good size for your hand…I love them!

Filed Under: breakdown printing, creativity, screenprinting, Thermofax screen printing Tagged With: , ,
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