Jackie Lams was Queen Bee for April and challenged us with the theme of Art Nouveau. Here are the fabrics that you can add to your own stash. Just go on over to Jackie’s blog and leave a comment or leave a comment of our Printed Fabric Bee Blog.
I had another great day at my dye workshop. Photos will probably have to wait – too tired to do too much blogging tonight.
I went down to my studio for the first time since I dumped the last load of stuff before we moved into the condo. It is the end of the month and I needed to get a print done for the Printed Fabric Bee. The theme is art nouveau.
This is what my studio looked like when I walked in.
Nothing has been put away. I grabbed the stuff off my work table and put my print board up and went to work. First, I found my Bose radio and turned to my favorite rock music station!
I had cut a couple of freezer paper stencils. I wanted to do an art nouveau stylized flower. I decided to do some wavy lines of dots first. Here is my stencil.
I used the skinny end of a chopstick to add yellow dots to the brown dots.
Here is my stylized flower stencil.
This is the 6 inch piece that is going to the winner of the printed fabric pack. The piece for Jackie is up at the top.
I went to my studio in a great deal of pain. My lower back has been killing me again. All the shuffling and packing and unpacking has taken a toll.
The thing is, I was so happy and stress free working in my studio after all this time that I suddenly realized I was not in pain. And, I was so happy. So happy that I started to cry. I am really looking forward to getting my studio organized and getting back some creative time.
I have so much going on right now. There is very little down time. Tomorrow, at 5 pm, we get the keys and garage door opener for the condo and we no longer will need to be escorted every time we want to go there – yippee! On Tuesday, we are meeting the condo manager to go over some things and I also have an appointment with a decorator to pick out window treatments.
Today, as started moving my stuff to the new studio. The first to go were my Ikea cabinets. They are the heaviest and most difficult of all the stuff to go so it was a relief to get that done.
Just as we were leaving the studio, I looked up and saw this shadow of trees on the wall. A very good omen, I think.
For the last couple of days, I have been trying to get ahead of the game and get my printing done for the Printed Fabric Bee because I am going to be otherwise occupied at the end of the month. The Queen Bee has asked for a woodland/forest motif. We have had a couple of sunny days so I decided to do some sunprinting.
My first attempt looked like this when I put it in the sun.
I didn’t get a photo of the result – only a detail shot.
I thought it needed another layer so I decided to do some printing with fern leaves. First, I painted the fern.
Then I lay it on the fabric and press with tissue paper.
Voila!
I decided that I had a hot mess. It doesn’t look too bad in this photo, but I decided to do another.
I wanted to do a more foresty color scheme. I mixed blue and orange paint to make brown and added some yellow to the green. The brown was sort of purple so I added yellow.
The resulting sun print is up at the top. I think I will leave it as is! I have to cut a 12 inch square and a 6 inch square. I am happy to have that behind me.
Another month and another set of fabrics is available. Lesley Riley selected a mosaic theme and a creative bunch of artists came up with some great ideas. So click on the link in my sidebar and go to the FB page and post a comment and/or go to Lesley’s blog and leave a comment for a chance to win.
I thought I should finally show you all the lovely fabrics I received last month.
From Lesley Riley:
From Jackie Lam:
From Carol Eaton:
From Lynda Heines:
From Susan Purney:
From Lisa Chin:
Pokey Bolton sent me two fabrics in two different colorways!!
From Lynn Krawczyk:
From Julie Booth:
Aren’t I the happy lucky artist to have these in my stash?!
An update since my last post: we made an offer an a condo, but the sellers would not budge and it was priced a bit high. We bought a new Prius. I love it, but sometimes I miss my 10 year old Lexus. I dropped out of the master class and will pick it up next year. We have hired an estate sale provider.
I have been working diligently on my Power Point presentation and artist talk for the SAQA Oregon conference on Thursday. I think I have it ready to go. Tomorrow morning, I am going to speak it out loud to Scooter and see how long it takes. I used to do a lot of public speaking, but it has been a looong time so I am a bit nervous.
This is my 1999th post. Wordless Wednesday will be 2000. So, I will do my giveaway in a couple days after that.
Lesley Riley is the queen bee of The Printed Fabric Bee this month. She asked for a mosaic theme using yellow/orange, purple and fuchsia.
My original plan was to use potato dextrin spread on fabric to dry and crackle.
I did this once in a workshop and had some great results.
However, I think I did not spread the dextrin thickly enough so I did not get a good crackle. So I went to a backup of making a thermofax screen. My first screen was 4 inches square and since Lesley asked for a 12 x 12 inch finished piece, I could do three across and down. I am really missing the big padded print table that I have had since we moved here. I am working in a much smaller space and since I am a quite messy, I had several blips. So this is the first printing that I did. I used a pale turquoise fabric for the background
I dropped a splotch of yellow on the print and had to do a fix so I brushed more yellow, pink and purple across the piece. I kind of liked it. Then, I saw that I had put the fabric down on a splotch of yellow paint on the print table so the back looked very untidy. I had another problem, I needed to do a 6 inch piece for our give away. The four inch screen did not work for that so I made a new 3 inch screen. Here is what I printed. It is a darker turquoise. So, I printed another 12 inch piece using the 3 inch screen. That is up at the top. I think I will send them both to Lesley.
That reminds me, I just got all of my wonky lines pieces so I should photograph them so you can see what great pieces I got.
On another note, I am not going to get my piece finished for the master class. I was turning into a crazy lady because Mr C decided we would buy a new car this week. I will be driving it quite a bit so I had to be involved. Spending time with car salesmen is an interesting activity. Not one that I enjoy. We ended up buying a new Prius 5 which we will pick up tomorrow. I drove it this morning and really loved it. I picked sea glass pearl for the color.
We have interviewed one estate sale person. A second one is coming tomorrow. When will my life return to a semblance of normalcy, and what will that be like?
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