A bunch of stuff

Judith blogged about the playdate with her daughter Ellen and grand daughter Abby here. As a matter of fact I am expecting her today and we will play with thickened dyes -  I'm sure I'll show you.

This is Laura who came for three days of fun. You've already seen the results. We are having lunch courtesy of her husband Dominic.

A beautiful hand painted stone necklace from Laura. How did she know I love rocks??

A 4 X 6", 12 X 12" and 12 X 18" piece of soft-kut from Blicks. I am going to make three huge stamps (probably with crows) so stay tuned for that!! The rotary cutter is to lend proportion.

Had to wait an hour in Bangor so I went to Walmart to kill time. I got great curved needles for sewing coptic bindings, two kinds of fabric glue, an X-acto cutting mat extra thick since an X-acto knife will cut right through a rotary cutting mat and 2 yards of 100% polyester satin for transfer dyeing like the two pieces below.

Give-away. These are so-so books. I thought the animal one would be better and I don't do tradition Baltimore Album quilts. I think I got the Baltimore book free????  Anyone interested leave a comment and which book you are interested in.

Root Beer label I really loved. Look at the graphics of the boy in the boat. YUM!
Made in Maine!!

This is a sideways picture of a prayer flag Judith made me. I LOVED this fabric she made at my house. The stitching means "for Beth". The figure 8 with the line through it is my "mark" or signature: back to back Bs. Thank you Judith!!

Playdate with Judith AND FAMILY

Yes. Judith's daughter and grand daughter were visiting from Ohio and were able to come over for a day of play!!!

We made batik scarves and did some acid dyeing. We started with silk haboti scarves (72") and batiked with soy wax. We used Dye-Na-Flow paint thinned a bit with water for our colors.

Fun in the Art Greenhouse

Here are the cotton pieces Ellen and Abby made

Judith was batiking some cotton as a third or fourth layer

Getting ready to acid dye (overdye) a batiked scarf. Vinegar, water to add dye to and a microwavable dish.

Dye added to dish and covered with plastic wrap.

Nine or so holes punched in the film to release steam.

Beautiful colors

This looked like a fun thing to try. I hope to get a photo of the finished scarf from Ellen who I gave it to after forgetting to photograph it (sigh)

When I acid dyed a scarf for myself which I already gave away

Get ready!!

As they say in Maine "A good time was had by all"

Happy artists

The end of a perfect day. So happy to have Ellen and Abby visiting!!

...and the winner is.....

GIL. 

Email me Gil and tell me which piece of fabric you would like of these five.
Do you still live in Framilode, Gloucester?

Making lemonade out of lemons

I was digging through my fabrics looking for something appropriate for the Round Robin on the FIRE blog when I found in a pile of "done" fabric these two very unsuccessful pieces (the lemons).

Ordinarily I would just toss them into a pile but they were yardage and I hated to waste so much fabric. They were both well over a yard each - maybe two so my experimental gene came out to play.

It think this is the very first deconstructed silks screen I ever attempted. Really awful!! The colors are so pale and there is really no character to them. MUST FIX!

This was not so much a failure as blah. The process I used was Jane Dunnewolds Interfacing Stencils. She used to have the directions on her website under tutorials but it has disappeared. Fortunately I cut and pasted it into a PDF if anyone is interested (don't forget your email address).

In this technique you make a stencil with interfacing using both open cuts so the dye can get through as well as latex paint as a resist. The images for the most part came out OK but there was some bleeding on to the white and I sure would like to make something out of it so.....

Three stencils used

I did get this far

Basic blue with a squirt of turquoise

Fifth easy piece!!

Well, I have finished my five easy pieces or should I say FUN pieces. I still have a few fat quarters that were in the running but I'll have to save them for later.

The last piece is the Halo Blue Gold painted piece.

 I wasn't sure where to go with this so I took some yellow fabric paint, put it in a syringe and squirted it all over the fabric

Oh Yeah! And on the table!

 After that I left it alone for a few days. I thought I would do a graffiti theme but couldn't think how to make tags on such a small piece of fabric.

One technique I love that I hadn't used yet was a tape resist with rubbed on paint.

I took the sponge with a small amount of fabric paint and rubbed it into the fabric hard like trying to erase it. The paint smears and fades nicely.

Tape removed

Then the thought crossed my mind; why not crows and ravens? That sounded great but I needed a few more layers before I could stamp crows and ravens so I thought of my feather stamp!!

And I thought why not use foil adhesive on the stamp and foil the feather!!

You can barely see the impression of the foil adhesive in the shape of a feather above.

Foiled fabric

And last of all, the crow stamps. These are all ones I carved myself.

Detail

I started to wash out my tools when I thought of my sketchbook. Better on paper than down the drain.

I thought I would write a short list of techniques you can use layered on fabric:

1. Foil
2. Metal
3. Stamp
4. Thermofax
5. Painted Fusible
6. Batik
7. Discharge (bleach or paste)
8. Tape resist
9. Water Soluble resist (Elmer's school glue or commercial product)
10. Stencils
11. Felt
12. Applique
13. Tyvec
14. Dye
15. Overdye
16. Silk Screen Tape Mask
17. Silk Screen with interfacing stencil
18. Silk Screen with wax resist
19. Thickened dye with credit car
20. Thickened Dye painted on
21. Stitch
22. Paint Sticks
23. Fusible on foil candy wrappers

and my list could go on....

Have lots of fun and play. Later in the month I will have some things I have made with this "art cloth".

And last but not least I would like to give away the piece of your choice to someone who leaves a comment. I "think" there are people out there reading this so leave a comment and you can choose one of the five pieces.