Now for the Fun…
During the Paducah quilt show, I was asked to demo at Rend Lake. I actually took a few things to demo but one of the easiest things to demo is mono printing on a gelatin place. I did some with fabric and some with paper. Then I played with the paper ones in Photoshop. Fun results! Such yummy patterns.
Filed Under: acrylic paint, color, creativity, gelatin printing, monoprinting
Class on February 22
So far, Saturday afternoon classes seem to be doing well in the small town of Norris City. There is quite a bit of interest in my 2 hour classes. Coming up on February 22 from 1-3 p.m. is a new one called, Create Your Own Painted Papers for Collage. I think the idea came from seeing several of the gals in the Paper and Wax Collage class go through and pick out a lot of my dyed and painted papers to use in their own collages!
So call me at 618-383-2040 to sign up or come by the Studio and sign up. I’m here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10-4 and most Saturdays. (I work for the newspaper across the street the rest of the week).
Here are samples of what we will be doing.
Next week the Home Extension crew comes in to watch me demo some dyeing and printing techniques.
Filed Under: acrylic paint, collage, color, creativity, monoprinting, paint, painting with inks, stamping
The Very Busy Month Of June
As you can see I haven’t blogged for some time. June was a really busy time for me. I was creating two brand new classes…and then trying them out on my “guinea pigs”! Postcard Panache was the first class. I had the actual idea for this class last summer, but like anything else, if there is no demand for something, my ideas may remain just that…ideas. But in March this year, two ladies from Louisville put a demand on me for this class, so I worked hard to get samples made and get it prepared so they could have a full day of learning. These two ladies came to my house for the day and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. Now I just have to get it up on my Lectures/Workshops page. There is always something to do!
Postcard Panache is a class geared to teaching people how to use all of the new artsy products that are on the market. I sell all these products at quilt shows, but demos are important because people don’t quite know what to do with Angelina fibers and other items. So, in postcard format, I showed these ladies a number of ways they could use bottled inks, Smooch Spritz, Angelina fibers and film, BoNash bonding powder, foiling glue, foil, stencils, etc. They had quite a play day and were very complimentary, which makes me feel happy that they were so pleased.
The second class I created is a screen printing class. I finally settled on a name for it no one else has used, at least not that I know of…Spontaneous Screen Printing. Several gals from the St. Louis area and other friends of mine signed up and declared that they had a great time and learned a great deal, so I feel I have done my job. It is a lot of work creating and planning a brand new class, then packing everything for it. At the same time I was planning a demo on Friday for the artisans center where the class would be taught the following day. Due to the extreme messiness of using dye paints to demo I opted to do something totally different! Which made me even more work…what was I thinking? Again, it was a project that had been in the back of my mind for some time, so in a way, by demo-ing gelatin printing using paints, I got some “work” done for future artwork…AND I got a commission out of it too, which was very unexpected, but welcome.
Filed Under: acrylic paint, art sale, dye paint, embellishments, fabric inks, gelatin printing, monoprinting, paint, postcards Tagged With: creating classes, gelatin printing, monoprinting, nature prints, postcards, screen printing, Spontaneous Screen Printing, teaching
Work Day…Seriously!
Yesterday an artist friend drove over to spend the day with me out in my “wet studio”, commonly known as the patio. I have a delicious screened-in place out back 19 feet long by 13 feet wide or so. She was wanting to learn some silk screening techniques so we went at it. We did soy wax designs and blue gel glue designs on the screens. We did paper resist screening and we did deconstructed screening. The “flavors” (dye colors) of the day were: terra cotta, chartreuse, eggplant, and turquoise.
The sun was so hot yesterday that we could literally “bake” the deconstructed designs on the screen in fairly short time. Then, if the dye pooled at all, it took many pulls to get it all out of the screen. In this photo Julia is contemplating the screen design before printing.
This one made some awesome prints. This is just one of the many.
For patterns, this screen used a latex glove, wide rubber bands (our new love!), and large bubble wrap. She got a lot of prints off of it and then I also printed to try and get the dried up paint designs off of it.
Here are some of my completed pieces. These are all fat quarter size.
This one is just about my favorite. Colors: turquoise and terra cotta, dirty print paste mixed with golden yellow. Technique: I used a glue screen. I’ve been using this one for awhile and the glue is amazingly resilient. It is breaking down in areas and could be touched up with more glue, but I used it as is. Curiously, I planned on using a plain screen with no design, but didn’t have any available! So I was stuck using this one! I am SO glad I did. I cut out some freezer paper curlie-q’s to mask out areas. First printing with the turquoise, let dry a little bit, then I came back with the terra cotta, laid the screen down differently to get this layered, collage look. I love the layered look, and the screen with glue curlie-q’s is a perfect background pattern for my larger freezer paper curlie-q’s (I actually didn’t plan that). At the end of the day, Julia was using a syringe to add some detail designs onto her cloth…I monoprinted the yellow bits that you see off of her golden yellow circles.
This piece: same technique…colors: terra cotta first, then chartreuse.
This one started life as “the dropcloth”. Using turquoise and chartreuse I screened some of the pattern onto it, then came back later with eggplant and a syringe and outlined some of the curlie-q’s. Later, as above, I did some monoprinting off of Julia’s circles with the golden yellow. It needed that color.
This was a white piece of cloth stamped with melted soy wax. Then it was cracked and I brushed chartreuse and terra cotta dye paint on it…this is the BEFORE picture….and following is the after picture…
The white areas are really white…I expect I will go in with either dye or paint and tone them babies down!
These are a few more pulls off of Julia’s lovely screen.
This one is at the end of the day…it got everything thrown at it. Julia made a gel glue screen which is the repeated design you see. I printed it over some stripes and then in the bottom row, we made an interesting find….I laid small bubble wrap under the cloth, then laid the glue screen on top and made a pull. On the far right is that image…the cloth shows some of the bubble wrap pattern. The middle image is the most fascinating one. As I made the first pull with the bubble wrap beneath the cloth, the bubble wrap pattern shows up on the screen. I removed the bubble wrap, made a print and the middle one is the result. You only really get one good print using this temporary technique, but there was still a bit of the patterning left in the next pull (the far left print). That was an interesting discovery…I am not sure if I have seen others do that or not. The random chartreuse pattern that you see is from rolling dye paint onto the pebbly texture of a liner for a paint pan. The roller picks up that texture and you can print it right off the roller.
It was totally exhausting standing out on the concrete all day, but we had a really fun time exploring printing. I kind of want to keep going today…everything is still out there in the patio!
Filed Under: breakdown printing, color, complex cloth, creativity, dye paint, monoprinting, paint, printmaking, screenprinting, soy wax
Dye Painting Class
Here are some pictures from the class from a couple of weeks ago.
Avery, our only male in the class, painting with a syringe on a monoprinted piece, I believe.
A better look at where he was going with this one. I love the colors.
Sandra, doing some layering on a monoprint.
Jennifer’s piece has some rubbings and stamping on it.
Avery did a rubbing over a piece of construction fence, then came back in with another color.
A rubbing from a paint grid and I’m not sure what else, but I like the colors.
I’m really mad at myself for not getting more pictures! There were so many pieces of awesome cloth everyone was working on.
Filed Under: color, complex cloth, creativity, dye paint, dyeing, monoprinting, printmaking, stamping Tagged With: dye painting
Life In August
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.
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.
Another piece of news: I now have Rayna Gillman’s book for sale on my website! See here.
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: Featherweight, free form quilting, Kathy Sandbach, Rayna Gillman
This ‘N That…
What…my first post for March…I have been busy. I would have posted last Monday but I was packing and getting ready to leave, and putting the final touches on a lecture and workshop. I traveled to Greenwood, IN (outside Indianapolis) on Tuesday to visit my artist friend, Cynthia. This is now a yearly trip. Her quilt guild asked me to do a workshop with them and the program for their monthly meeting. It was lots of work getting ready as I was preparing something new.
The workshop was on Dye Painting. They did rubbings, stamping, monoprinting, gelatin printing and I had some screens made up for them to play with. Here is Jo working on a stamped piece of cloth.
Here is a rubbing made by Cindy…
…a monoprint carefully planned and executed by Mary….
…another well executed piece by Phyllis…
…the gelatin after someone printed on it…believe it or not, there is no dye left on this to print…the gelatin has soaked it up or something…
…and Sandy’s 1 yard size clean up cloth. I thought it was an awesome piece and urged her to save it for some special idea.
I think everyone said they had a good time and we didn’t make too big a mess.
On Thursday, Cynthia and I went to the Indiana Heritage Quilt show in Bloomington, IN to see vendors, friends and quilts. That evening I gave a program on Journal Quilt Techniques for the guild, showing them some of the quirky things I do on small art pieces. All in all, a fun and exhausting time…I drove home Friday morning after sleeping in. Now…to get ready for whatever is next….
Filed Under: creativity, dye paint, gelatin printing, monoprinting, printmaking, stamping Tagged With: dye painting class, gelatin printing, monoprinting, rubbings, stamping
Dyeing Day…
Today I will be working on dyeing….silk scarves and probably some cotton in colors for the commission pieces. I need color swatches to show.
Here’s a scarf I made awhile back….stamped and monoprinted with dye, luscious, buttery, 19.5 mm silk charmeuse, measuring 8″ x 54″. If anyone is interested it is $32, and I’ll include shipping. Email me.
UPDATE: This scarf is no longer available. Sold on 11/14/08.
Filed Under: dyeing, hand dyed silk scarves, monoprinting, stamping, Uncategorized Tagged With: dyeing, hand dyed silk scarf, silk charmeuse
Saturday Chit Chat…
My first post for October. I’ve been here. Trying to get some art done…and it went nowhere. Then there are the days when I have so much housework to get caught up on and errands, that I can’t even think about making any art. I’m doing good to just get things done.
I replied to a question on the quiltart list about leftover paint and also gave a link to a small piece of art. Whew! You guys have all been going to look at it. I was amazed at my stats after posting that. The last time I had stats like that on a post is when I ran the “guess-how-many-dryer-sheets-are-in-these-tubs” contest. I am thrilled so many came by for a visit.
Well, the only art productivity I feel I got done this week was the 12 silk scarves I worked on yesterday. I used a slice of a pool noodle for a stamp and it worked wonders on some silk crepe that I hadn’t been pleased with. Now they have some energy. I’m sorry I didn’t get pictures of any of them yet. Maybe tomorrow. I tried some new things like stamping and monoprinting on them, and I like how they turned out. I also had several different kinds of silk that I had not tried before. The silk charmeuse is soft, silky (of course), and basically rich and wonderful. The flat crepe is light and airy, but shiny, and the silk satin seems to be lighter version of the silk charmeuse. Gee, now I’ve wet your appetite talking about all this lovely silk and I have no pictures. Maybe I will get one right now, just for eye candy! I also found a silk blouse at a yard sale this a.m., not to wear, but to do things with!
It’s almost evening here, but I think the picture turned out ok, enough to give you an idea. That’s the silk charmeuse on the right. Yummmm….
I am doing these for the artisan’s fest next weekend at Carmi’s local festival. I don’t know if other areas do this, but around here, all the small towns have their local fall festivals. One town has Mule Days; it’s going on this weekend (and there actually are mules there). Another town has Dairy Days (but you can’t buy any dairy products there…I tried). There’s Popcorn Days in another town and my town has Corn Days. There used to be a Strawberry festival in another town, but I don’t think they have it anymore. It was interesting to learn about all these festivals when we moved here. Where we came from, there were homecomings at the schools, but not localized festivals named like these. They still do cakewalks down here. Does anyone do those anywhere else? Let me know.
Filed Under: color, dyeing, hand dyed silk scarves, monoprinting, stamping Tagged With: fall festivals, flat crepe, silk charmeuse, silk satin
