Book bag

This was my first foray into stitching leather. I used my Juki, a leather needle, and heavy duty thread.

This was a heavy canvas laundry bag that I shibori dyed in Indigo.

I wanted exposed seams slightly fringed.

Special leather needles

I took a snip of leather and a snip of canvas to test whether the machine could handle anything this thick and heavy. As they say in Maine, "Slicker than a smelt".

As you can see I stitched the leather strap on in a square shape then folded over the strap to make a rounded handle

I LOVE this book bag!!!!!!

Book covers

Here are two new book covers. The tutorial is here

Batik fabric and monoprinted fabric

Stamped with thickened dye, scraped on color with thickened dye and liquid dye circles

This has been a hard fall without my Muse

I have had such a hard time getting motivated without my Muse, Judith. She spent this last semester getting her masters degree. You don't know how important someone is until they are gone. I've managed to muddle along with brief glimpses of inspiration but nothing like what happened yesterday when Judith came over. By the time she left (and we did nothing but talk, eat lunch out then watch a little DMTV) I was bursting with ideas of what I wanted to do. As a matter of fact, I think I am going to do a "Month of Techniques" for February. I already have 23 on a list and I'm adding more.

I want to offer a challenge for folks to follow along and do the techniques with me. I am starting in a sketchbook so ANYONE can join in. You can also translate that technique on to fabric. This is how you go from sketch book to fabric.

Come play with me and learn a plethora of techniques - in a book so they are documented- and then if you have time you can try them on fabric as well. 

Now you want to hear how excited I am about this?? Judith is coming back next week!!!!!!!!!!!

Batiks finished

The cotton washed and dried.

Experiment making waves

Making sky

Poor picture

Fields

My favorite stamp, could be fields as well.

Preparing to work on a series

The first thing I wanted to do was get some batiked yardage ready. I have some really nice linen already soda soaked and waiting but I thought I would start with about 3 yards of heavy off white cotton I bought at IKEA which I soaked and dried over night.

Nice linen I am saving after the cotton experiments today

This IKEA fabric was 60" wide so I had to stretch it sideways on my printing table. Most of the fabric is hanging down the side onto the floor.

My favorite brush "disappeared" after teaching a class at Fiber College. These were poor substitutes - very thin and wimpy.  

Soy wax on cotton.

I really did intend to wear gloves - see!!

Like players waiting to go out on the field.

Sun yellow and Intense blue

Mixing blue

Grape and mixing blue

Intense blue

Very light intense blue - lots of print paste but light on the dye - for the sky

Golden yellow and Intense blue (really lovely)

Batching in my kitchen

Thicken dye from the plastic knives. Just beautiful colors

winners of the drawing

I used Random.org to generate two numbers and they were 2 and 5. That would make the winners Chemistafloat and Deborah. I will attempt to reach you both and if you don't hear from me, please contact me using the contact form at the bottom of this page.

Congratulations. I think you will enjoy the papers.

Working back into the tiny sketchbook

These are a few pages from the tiny sketchbook made of marked papers that I have worked back into so far.

Two things

The first thing I want to show you is a second set of "Solstice" bookmarks that I made after the first 50 were gone.

Do you remember this batik I did with Marcella this past summer? Well this tiny strip was just asking for wonderunder. I then bonded it to more quotes printed on card stock.

Voila'. More bookmarks. I even ended up laminating these. Yum!

Now for a giveaway. I have quite a lot of paste paper in sheets and strips. These would make lovely bookmarks and the large sheets can cover hand made books. I will divide the batch in two and they will go to the two commenters who are chosen by the random number generator.

Announcement

Announcing three workshops in May in the Netherlands with Diane Franklin, one of the resident artists from "And then we set it on fire".

Please check it out here.

here

and here


Using Your Beauties

Dates: Friday & Saturday 19 & 20 May 2017 10:00 to 16:00 hrs
Teacher: Diana Franklin

Diane Franklin supports us to dare to cut into Those beautiful fabrics we dyed and printed during the Shibori and Screen Printing classes. (New students withtheir own dyed fabrics ook accepted.) We will learn to use the fabrics we create, rather than save them untouched. Diane will teach techniques for composing art pieces from your fabric. In her design workshop you will:
Learn some basic compositional elements to help you layout your own design;
Discuss the process of intuitive creation as part of the design process;
Review digital examples of compositions That use various design elements;
Practice creating compositions using paper and photo copies of your fabrics;

Workshop will be taught in English and we will use the metric system. The lesson is translation into Dutch possible! 

Some success and failures

Believe it or not I LOVE the giant book marks I made from the cut-offs of "Tropical Forrest". They are laminated.

This was already failed fabric that I tried to save in my indigo vat

UGH! another layer of failure thanks to lines of dye.

For some reason the true color of this shirt did not come out. This is actually what it looked like before I dyed it - twice. Now it is quite a bit darker and that hideous grey is pretty well masked. Too bad I can't capture it.

Remember this fabric from last December on the FIRE blog?

This is a quilted "Best EVER Book Cover" I made for a friend

Sometimes you win and some times it a miss..........