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.

Catching Up

Here are photos of my booth in Bloomington, IN along with my friend Cynthia who was my helper for  2 days.  I think she enjoyed getting out with people for awhile.

We demo-ed painting with Tsukineko inks in the bottle.  They are wonderful to paint with!  They don’t change the hand of the fabric like acrylic fabric paints do.  If you mix them with aloe vera gel to paint with like we do, you have the ability to spread them and blend them.

What I’m Getting Done

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.

Elizabethtown, Ky

I’m back from the Elizabethtown, KY quilt show and getting back in to my “other life”.  I want to lavish some praise on the Heart of Kentucky show guild…they do an awesome job.  Their quilts and their work are wonderful.  I am always struck by the quality of their work when I go to this annual show.  And these girls work their hearts out for this two day event, even having a quilter’s cafe to serve lunch. So, kudos to them and I hope it was a profitable event for them. I know I did very well on sales and I thank all of them for their support.

I decided to take some sets of Tsukineko inks with me for the first time.  Here is the sample I worked on at the show. The water is not totally finished and I have a couple of spots where I want to work on the shading.

Judy Coates Perez who is an award winning painter/quilter has done a tutorial on her blog using this same fish, so I basically just followed her instructions for the process.  In this tutorial she was trying out a new product. I have used the Fabrico ink markers for a while but had not tried the liquid inks before.  So I was getting acquainted with painting with the inks mixed with aloe vera gel.  I had a blast and learned a lot.  And I sold both sets of inks. There is a tutorial here at the Quilting Arts site for mixing the inks with aloe vera gel.

And here is the Merry Doodles stencil and the postcard size sample I made using it and Fabrico ink markers.