Printing L A R G E

I was given some old dyes and some cloth that had been soda soaked by a friend who is downsizing.  The hot weather has finally broken here, so yesterday morning I was out in the patio.  I wanted to try out the new screens and I needed to get started working on silk scarves.  But for yesterday, I got out a piece of cloth from her stash.  It is  a white on white print and is over 2 yards long.  I printed on the back of it.  The fabric turned out way too light for my taste, but is still very much useable.  I’m not sure if it needed to be soda soaked again or what the reason was.  She said it had been soaked last fall…which may be too long ago.

I don’t believe I have printed a piece this large before, but I can see myself doing it again.  In the lower right corner is printing from one of the new screens we made. I used a paper resist to make the pattern. The other printing is from a design made with blue gel glue.

Just above that printing is the turquoise from the older dyes she gave me.  I used double the dye powder and thought that would compensate for the age, but apparently not as I can see a distinct difference from the newer dyes.  The new screens work quite well. Today, I printed on silk scarves and prepared screens for breakdown printing that I will print on other scarves.

One more thing:  both of my pieces were rejected for the Working Together show this year….that has not happened before! Oh well…there’ll be another place to enter them.

Lunch

Last Saturday I had to deliver some work for jurying for a show in Evansville.  After that I met up with my friend Julia.  We had planned to try making our own silk screens using stretcher bars and some sheer fabrics. Julia had already gathered everything together so that we could do this project.

But first we had to eat lunch.  She made popovers and I prepared a salad with romaine, grilled chicken, dried cranberries, pecans, onions, feta cheese,  and a sweet balsamic vinegar dressing.  yumm.

We did get the screens made too.  And now this week I am trying mine out.

Oh No, It’s Love Again

I have been packaging some photography that I have for sale.  I thought  it would be a good  idea to trace over some interesting shapes and lines in these photos before I sealed them in their sleeves.  With these pencil tracings on tracing paper, I can flip them over and RUB the tracing onto the very inexpensive product called Foamies.  Now Foamies makes their own shapes and sells them complete with adhesive on the back so you can make stamps, but I prefer to be more original and adventurous so I made mine from the plain sheets of foam and cut out my own shapes from a drawing or the shapes from my photographs.  The exciting thing about this type of stamp is that you can press into it with a pencil and create wonderful details…or not, as the case may be.  Your image can be as basic and primitive as you like it or more detailed.

Who doesn’t from time to time need the image of  part of an old building that looks like it is on a slope?

I take photographs of old barns and sheds with all of the lines of slats they have.  For instance…

…from this photo, I made a tracing of the doorway in the lower right hand corner, pressed it onto the foam, cut it out, and made pencil marks on the lines of the slats…

…to make this stamp

Results?

More stamps from drawings.

Distress ink is too wet and doesn’t stamp really well unless you want that kind of look.

You can create positive or negative images.  Foamies sheets are very useful tools.

Photo-Op

One lonely flower on the tree seen at New Harmony, IN on June 19.

Trial Run

My friend Robin Koehler went to quilt market in Minneapolis this year and brought me back a present.  She found some guy demo-ing a new (?) discharge product and got me a sample bottle to try out.  She said the guy wasn’t using any kind of protection such as a face mask (shame on him).  The product’s name is DeColourant and is produced by the KandiCorp company.  You apply the paste to your cloth, let it dry, then iron it. I tried it, I like it, but you should wear a mask.  The smell is not as strong as regular discharge paste, but it has the same chemical in it.

Here are my results.  The final after-washing look on black cotton is not quite white…leans more beige, but I like the look.  It looks more white when you first iron it, but changes a bit after washing.

This photo is post-ironing.

And this is what the color looks like after washing.

The Art of Melanie Testa

Ok, this will be an advertising post.  Melanie Testa is having a class in two weeks on Joggles.com and here is what it will be about.  Looks like fun!

Series Work

I have been working in a series of small fiber pieces.  My purpose is to take my paint rags and to explore on them in stitch with the theme of  “Flow”.  The very first one I made is on my sidebar.  Now I am working on the rest of them.  I discovered that, as I sit there waiting to begin on them and feeling as if I don’t know where to start….if I will just “start”, the ideas begin to come and flow.  Sort of like walking on water (not that I’ve ever done it!) or some other thing you’ve never done before, but by taking the first step as a “step of faith”, then it begins to happen.  But most usually “the flow”  doesn’t begin to happen until I start stitching.

Flow #2

Flow #3

Flow #4