Parfait Dyeing

I finally got a chance to play with dyes in my new "Wet Studio." I had made up a dozen bottles of Procion MX dye concentrates for a play day for our fiber art group. I wanted to use up some of the leftovers dyes before they lost their oomph. The last batch of dyes I had done this summer with old dyes, and I got some very pretty pastels. They were good to add to the stash, but not what I was looking for. I even over dyed some of them this time. Using 24oz. yogurt containers, I scrunched a piece of fabric, one color dye, a second piece of fabric and a different dye, then a third. This is called parfait dying and in each layer some of the color mixes with the layer below and above it. Some really beautiful blended colors can be made, you just have to be careful not to make mud. Altho I do make mud on purpose sometimes. You can see I made quiet a few fat 1/4s, also a few nice cotton handkerchiefs.

I made a variety of greens, from lime squeeze with a touch of yellow, to pretty pale seafoam, and some nice olive colors. One of the wet dark olive colors was gorgeous, but it came out so much lighter. Next time I'll try to get a deeper color.

At the summer play day I had made a few shibori pieces on PVC pipes. The most basic thing I learned is a two color piece needs a bigger diameter pipe, the small diameter the dye colors blend together, but with a 6" dia. you can put on two or three colors and they will stay separate.

You can see some of the color blending here, the pinks have purple in them, the purple has indigo. These are my favorites, with the patterning of the scrunched fabric and the multi colors.

My cleanup cloth is some times the very best. I spilled a lot of fire engine red that day, my hands were red for days.

I tried to get some yellow variations with lemon yellow, antique gold and terra cotta. Some very nice caramel colors resulted from it. Now, to find a new project to use my hand dyes on. I try to have at least one project in the works that uses my hand dyes, mostly mixed with a solid black to make the colors POP! I had LOTS of FUN playing in my studio with these. We are having another dye play day at one of our members in Grants Pass at the end of the month, so more fun to come. I am linking this with Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to check out what other talented artists are doing this week.

Free Motion Quilting

The gelatin mono-prints have been sewn together into a collage. I arranged and played with the layout for a while, mixing types and orientations, adding color balance and contrast. I settled on a layout after some thought, I had to refine it as I went along. After trimming each block and working out some technical sewing details, it went together with only a few changes.

I began free motion quilting each block with matching or contrasting rayon threads. The first prints were easiest to outline and add veins, the ghost prints are softer and I just outlined them, not wanting to obscure the fine detail in the printing.

I quilted extra outlines in the background to add texture. The split leaf gingko was printed on a soft turquoise hand dye instead of muslin, it adds extra color to the layout. I hope to get this finished this next week, the quilting is going real fast. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" check out what other talented textile artists are doing this week.

Botanical Monoprinting

I had a free day today, so decided to make some monoprints on fabric. I have wanted to do this since I took a class at Craft Napa, where we printed on paper. But fabric is my medium. After buying and prewashing a lot of muslin, I cut it up into 6 x 9" pieces, about half of the gelatin plate that I have. I collected heavenly bamboo, and two types of gingko leaves, they are sturdy enough to bear repeated printing. The gingko are a split leaf and a shell/fan shape. I have found gingko comes in many different varieties, there are about 5 I have found around Roseburg.

This is really the first time I have used my new studio space for it's intended use, dyeing, printing, painting, soy batik and silk screening. The "wet" studio, formerly the "man cave." It took me two months to clean, remove junk, sort tools and paint the room this winter. New floor tiles brightened up the dark basement space. It is next to the laundry room, that has a big wash tub and space to hang fabric to dry. It has been 3 years since my husband passed away (where does time go?) and it was quiet difficult to clean and rearrange this space for my use. When I started printing I used a blue/green colorway, then switched to gold, sienna, red, for complimentary contrast. I added textile medium to my cheap craft paint. I made so many prints I had to cut more fabric, and also cut some pale blue/turquoise hand dyes. I used green-yellow acrylics for the last batch.

The first print I pulled gave me a clear silhouette of the leaves, this will be fun to thread paint in the veins. The second pull gave me a ghost print, when I removed the leaves the paint that was left on the gelatin had all the detail of the leaves, as well as some background paint. These are usually my favorite. With the paint left on the brayer, I add paint to the leaves themselves, add a different color background paint, and do another print with the painted leaf face up. This gives you a two color print, from the leaves and the background, I started using a brayer and finished, just pressing down with my hands, this gives you a white ghost edge around the thickness of the leaves.

I'll let them dry overnight, then give them a quick iron to heat set the paint, then play with arranging them into a collage and sewing them together. Oh, what fun that will be! I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here to see what other talented textile artists are doing.

Alaska Quilting Cruise

Immediately after returning from the retreat, I had 3 days to get ready for an Alaskan Quilting Cruise, whew! I got my laundry done, quilting supplies together, and at the last minute had to go dress shopping for formal nite, 'cause the dress I had planned on wearing was too small :( I stuffed a bunch of friends from the Fyber Cafe group into my RV and we took off for Seattle. After a few quilt shops along the way, and lunch, we made it to Gig Harbor in about 8 hours. One of our dear friends Pat had moved there last year, and we really missed her in our group, we stayed at her house over night. In total we had 6 quilters and two spouses, in the RV, dropped off at the cruise terminal and I went to park. We were all so excited, the Holland America Eurodam, was huge! But docked next to the Princess Cruise ship she was NOT. Pat and I had a veranda room, very nice. Our first quilting class while we traveled North was with Anna Buzzalino, called "Moments" it was a curved machine applique class, where we designed our own pattern abstract from a photo.

I spent most of the day, sketching abstract curves from my photo of a hen and chicks succulent, I ended up where I started with a bulls eye design. Anna helped everyone with their designs, all different and personal. After enlarging it to a 18 x 24 paper, we traced it again so we could mark up a copy with colors, layers, sections and sewing order, and registration marks to match the curves. This took quiet a lot of time and deep thinking. Next we traced it all again on fusible interfacing for our working pattern. We were getting to the end of the day, so she showed us how to iron the fusible to the back of our fabric and paint starch on the seam allowance and iron the edges under. Over lapping the pieces and sewing with a clear monofilament thread in a small zigzag. I managed to get about 4 pieces put together. The designing was fun, I would have made a more accurate copy of my photo by myself, but did abstract the design, which is NOT my thing. I am more of a realist. So I was very happy with the results. When I got home I decided to work on it or it would have been forgotten in my "to do" pile.

I had quiet a puzzle on the fabric choices, I used mostly batiks and finally decided to go bright and light in the middle with very high contrast. Going more subdued and lower contrast, as the colors got darker and faded to the outside. I paid more attention to contrast than value, which was different for me. I ended up using my own technique for construction, not Anna's. I folded the seam allowance under with a glue stick, and glued the layered pieces together. Then I used a blind hem stitch with the clear monofilament thread to applique and quilt all at once. I highly recommend YLI thread, it is thin and very flexible! I was originally thinking of doing some thread painting to shade some of the colors, but I liked the simplicity of the graphic quality so I did not add any additional quilting. I'll post more of the trip next time. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click herecheck it to see what other talented textile artists are doing.

Bandon Retreat 2018

I spent 7 wonderful days at Bandon on the Southern Oregon coast, for a quilting retreat. Barb, in my Fyber Cafe group was having a retreat with her family and friends and had an extra space, and asked me to join them, yea me! The retreat center is above Forget-Me-Knots quilt shop, which provides excellent shopping opportunities. My first priority was making a baby quilt for my niece's new little girl Emelia. At home I had cut 2 1/2" strips from almost all my 1920-30's reproduction prints, pretty pastels with conversation prints, lots of little dogs, cats, chicks, geese, pigs, and children. I put them together in a simple rail fence pattern and added a border of fairy tail print with princesses and castles. Now, a month later I bought the flannel backing fabric, of butterflies, to get it quilted.

My big project for the week was a queen size star kit, that I had gotten for my other niece. All the nieces and nephews have baby quilts, and wall hanging/lap quilts. So now it is time for queen size bed quilts, as they are almost all adults now. She had wanted something modern and I had been looking at gray/black chevron patterns. Finding this kit was perfect, I seldom buy kits, preferring to make my own art patterns. It is a Hoffman kit called "Crystal Clear" and was all batik fabric, gray and white with turquoise accents. I figured it was paper pieced with all the points and angles. But imagine my surprise when I opened the box and it was all pre-cut pieces with number stickers on them. And DOUBLE SURPRISE there were NO DIRECTIONS!!! The box was marked that all the pieces were there, so someone must have opened it, checked off the pieces and forgot to put the papers back in the box. All I had to go on was the photo on the box :( I decided to give it a try, each section was marked A B C etc and they were in number order, it also helped that they had notches snipped in the seam to align the pieces. But I still had to figure how they went together, left to right or reversed, since it was all batik and reversible. I sturdily kept at it, making section by section and sewing for 3 days straight.

It was quiet a challenge and everyone was very impressed that I managed to figure it out, it was NOT easy at all. But preservation paid off. It did not go together well, it had some poofy spots, but the points matched well and it did eventually become one piece!

Wow! If I had not been at retreat I doubt I would have gotten it done. Also being the masochist I am, I decided to make another one for my other niece, in black, gray and magenta. I had traced all the pieces on freezer paper, cut them out and taped them together along the seam lines. I found several glaring mistakes in the pieces, and the way they went together, exactly where the poofy spots were. No wonder it was poofy. Then I used a light box to create a paper pieced pattern for each section. Having no directions I had to guess at the yardage, and bought the entire bolts of black and gray fabrics. I hope I have enough!

I got a good start on it at the retreat. The paper piecing is so much easier and so much more accurate. I should be able to finish it in a reasonable bit of time. We had a great time, going to the quilt shops in Port Orford, Charleston and Coos Bay. Out to lunch a lot and long walks on the beach and shopping in Old Town. The other ladies made some amazing quilt tops and it was fun to watch what they were doing. A week was a bit long, I usually do this retreat in a 3 day session, but it was worth it, and we scheduled for next year too. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here check out what other talented artists are doing.

Catching Up is Hard To Do.

So Sorry, I have not been posting on my blog for a long time. I got behind and then it was difficult to catch up, and I'm not on my computer as much as I used too, etc... The excuses could go on and on, so lets just jump right in and forget about what we missed. The most fun part of my year was going to Craft Napa 2018 back in January. Four days of fabric, fun and art! I took 2 classes with Judy Coates Perez, I just love her work. The first was painting with acrylic inks, we painted "wet on wet" to make a light color background, then used foam stamps and other stamps to print patterns on the fabric. It was an all day class and another few hours in the evening, very intense!

Then the hard part, coming up with a design on the spot, from scratch, sketching, deciding and creating a pattern, this could have taken all day. Pressure!! I came through with a fern design, after sketching several types of curls, leaves and scallops. The pattern was more complex than most and I had to make it full size and cut it from freezer paper. We used the paper as a MASK, and painted in the remaining negative space with the dark blue and green, so the pattern was made from the lighter background printing we had done earlier. Adding detail with the inks and a paint brush did not go as well as I had hoped, but I finally accepted what I had done and thought the quilting would make up for it.

I thought of it as Ferns, but after adding the blue everyone kept saying sea weed, or undersea. So I went with it and added some fussy cut tropical fish, I did not want bright glaring colors, so choose a quieter blue-green fish to blend in and camouflage, except for the big dark eye spot, which makes them stand out. I also added some Swavarski crystals as bubbles coming up from each fish. The quilting made a lot of difference, I almost always use rayon threads for a little shimmer, stitching all the veins and outlines, with small stipples in matching colors in the background. It created a lot of depth that I had not be able to get with the detail painting.

My next class was also with Judy Coates Perez, her "Ephemera & Tea Bags" class. Lots of different techniques, put onto a background of her tea colored dyed fabric. This is a process photo as everything was laid out before all the assembly with mat gel medium. We started with a little thermo-fax screening, drawing on tea bags which were later painted with acrylic inks, then collaged with papers, napkins and other ephemera, then rubber stamps and stencils. It was a very busy day, lots of fun new techniques to try. I was concerned with making a cohesive theme, so tried to stay rather botanical, but she said we were just making a sampler of techniques. But her class samples had themes and color ranges and looked like they were planned rather than just a bunch of non related objects. I don't have a picture of the finished project yet. The gel medium leaves it just a bit stiff, but it will stitch through on the sewing machine just fine. I'm trying to decide if I want a border or just leave it as is, as art.

The last class was mono-printing, on different papers, with acrylic paints. We used small Gelli plates about 5 x 8 rectangles, and a brayer to apply the paints. She urged us to pick 3 colors so all our finished paper would have a cohesiveness to them and be able to be collaged together. I started with botanicals, ferns, heavenly bamboo, and others. She showed us how to make ghost prints and two color prints, and vary the similar prints, making a set. Then we used masks and stencils in a similar way. We used many types of paper, rice paper, old book pages, old music sheets, pattern tissue, brown craft paper, deli paper, tissue paper, and she had pages from a German dictionary and a Japanese one too. I made quiet a few prints, and switched to a different colorway about 2/3 of the way through. After lunch, to let everything dry, we began to collage a set of prints onto a canvas board with gel mat medium.

I made 3 collages, a large, medium and small. It was more fun than I thought it would be, to put them together and I am happy with the way they look. Although I have no wall space to hang them at my house. I plan on doing all of this again with fabric when I get home, the same techniques, just a different base. Then stitch the collage together to form a wall hanging. Craft Napa is loads of fun, some people remembered me from last year which was nice, we wandered thru different classes during the day, to see what we want to do next year, they had such a variety of art techniques and sewing, with wonderful teachers. I highly recommend it, tho I don't know if I'll be going again. The drive through the mountain passes from Southern Oregon at that time of year is rather nerve wracking, altho this year was better than last. My next big adventure this spring is an Alaskan quilting cruise with 6 ladies from my art group. Yea!! I'm so excited. I promise to be good and keep my blog updated from now on! I'm linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge on the right hand column or click here to see other wonderful textile artists.

Doing Nada

I've been in a mood lately, haven't done much sewing at all. Although with the Fyber Café arts group, we had a couple of workshops at my house this summer. We made felted wool, round vessels around oranges and limes and grapefruit. They came out great and we had tons of fun.

I got the idea from someone on the Off the Wall Fridays website, but can't remember who from, or find the website again, sorry, I'll give credit if someone informs me. We also had a painting day, doing aprons for our group to wear at events. I cut a stencil with my Brother Scan N Cut machine, of "FYBER CAFE" and we each put it on to the top of the aprons from Dharma. Also did printing, stencils, silk screens with acrylic on the aprons, using the paint as a resist.

The next get together we did ice dying on fabric and the aprons and some shibori/ indigo tied on pipes. The big news is I have cleaned up the "Man Cave" after the death of my husband, I have been putting this off. I want to use the basement room for dyeing, painting, printing, gelatin mono printing, stencils, as a wet studio. This incentive finally drove me to doing it, a month of sorting, cleaning, organizing, tossing trash(rusty nails, wood scraps) move the camp gear to the garage, and various other chores. I also cleaned out and painted a built in cupboard and decided to put new 12" adhesive vinyl tiles on the floor. The light tiles over the dark old stuff made the room brighter and seem bigger. I don't know what to do with the whole wall of bright orange pegboard, ha ha ha. For the future, I have to look forward to: Craft Napa in January, if it is still there after the fires, and a quilting cruise to Alaska in May with 8 artists from Fyber Café. That should get me back in the mood! I've been going up to Eugene with several other artists for the regional SAQA meeting once a month, with a lunch get together first. I'll link this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge to the right to see what other talented textile artists are doing.