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Archive for the ‘Surface Design Techniques’ Category

Urban Surfaces – The Printed Fabric Bee

Tuesday, September 30th, 2014

 

urbansurfacedetail

This is a detail shot of the printing I did for The Printed Fabric Bee. Leslie Jenison chose urban surfaces as her theme. In my last post, I told you that I started with a cotton scarf on which the dye job was pretty sad.

whatwasithinkingscarf

I painted it with diluted DynaFlow paint to dirty it up and gray the colors.

dynaflowpaintedurbansurface

Then, I went at it with construction fence under a silkscreen and black paint.

constfenceprinting

 

 

urbansurfaceconstfenceprint

I went home and let it dry over night. The next day, I used a white beeswax crayon and a rubbing plate to make marks on the piece.

beeswaxmarksurbansurface

Next, I went at it with a syringe and lime green paint to make graffiti like marks. I was quite worried when I left it because the paint was a lot puffier than I had planned, but when I came back the next day, it was dry and flat.

syringegraffitiurbansurface

Leslie asked for a 6″ x 18″ piece. I had enough for two. So, it was easy to get a nice 6″ piece for the giveaway.

finishedurbansurfaces

urbansurfacescollage

Click on the collage to go to our FaceBook page to leave a comment and go to The Printed Fabric Bee Blog to leave a comment for a chance to win the fabric collection.

 

 

No Rest for the Weary

Saturday, September 27th, 2014

GECatNWExpo

Well, I am not that weary, but fortunately, I recovered from my sinus infection and taking care of M & M so that I could keep up with my busy schedule this past week. On Tuesday, I went out to the Expo Center to help hang the SAQA Oregon Show, Exploring Layers. On Wednesday, I was busy, busy doing my left brain SDA work. On Thursday, I went back out to the opening of NW Quilt Expo. I spent a couple of hours at the Columbia FiberArts Guild table, showing some member’s work and promoting the guild. Then, I gave a docent talk for the SAQA show. That is me with my quilt, Walking With Scooter and Mr. C. That quilt has really been getting around.

On Friday, I finally got to my studio to start some clean up and to work on my latest Printed Fabric Bee piece. The queen this month is Leslie Jennison who has asked for Urban Surfaces -think about layered textures of old walls, peeling paint, graffiti, etc., on building walls. I was trying to decide what piece of fabric to use as my base for printing and had an epiphany as I was falling asleep or waking up. (Always get my best ideas, then.) I had done some shibori folds on some cotton scarves that I bought from Darma. They looked horrible – what was I thinking horrible. Here is one of them, dampened and ready to be tortured some more. I will only say that my first step was to paint over the whole thing with diluted black Jacquard DynaFlow paint. I will show the final result in a few days.

 

whatwasithinkingscarf

Intermission: Time to stop, make dinner and go to the symphony.

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg played a violin concerto by Shostakovich. Fantastic concert.

And, I am back!

While at the quilt show, I found my favorite booth with hand-dyes from Maureen Schmidt – a friend from Sonoma County. I bought two packs of neutrals – one, warm and one, cool. High Fiber Diet has neutral as the theme for next year.

neutralfabrics1

neutralfabrics2

And I also found some Radiance (cotton/silk blend) in colors that will be perfect for the commission I am working on.

 

radiancefabrics

This is the gorgeous nuno felted backdrop that my friend, Maris Cavanaugh, made for the guild fashion show.

marisfeltedbackgroundLast, but not least, I finally got to use my new studio tool – an Oliso Smart Iron.

olisoiron

When it is plugged in, it pops up on it’s legs. When you hold it to iron, the legs disappear, but as soon as you let go of it, up it pops. It has a long cord and it goes off after 30 minutes when not in use, unlike most irons, which last for only 7 -8 minutes. I love its bright sunny color.

Fabric Printing Day Two

Saturday, September 13th, 2014

printedfabric2

Whew, I am exhausted from my week of hosting Rayna and the two days of workshop. I totally crashed last night – I might as well have been in a coma. I took Rayna to the airport this morning and then we went to the farmer’s market. I spent the afternoon dozing and working on SDA membership stuff.

I came away from the workshop with a few pretty good pieces. The piece up at the top was transformed from this. It was first printed with newspaper resist on a screen. Then I added yellow orange circles and some black marks made with a mesh type of ribbon. Finally, I used a syringe to add the squiggly lines.

periwinkleblueandolivegreen

Here is a detail:

printedfabric2detail

This was another silk scarf that had some very pale marks when I used an anemic black dye for printing. I used the newspaper resist screen and olive green ink followed by purple lines using one of my favorite Stencil Girl stencils.

renewedscarf

This piece was started with newspaper resist and then I used the school glue screen with mix of orange and yellow. The screen was starting to break down and I love how it turned out.

 

fabricprint

Here is a detail:

redorangeturquoisedetail

This next piece started as a piece of muslin that I was using for test prints.

printedfabric3

I kept printing on it and then painted the whole thing with Dynaflow chartreuse paint.

The next piece was something I  had in my stash. You can see the bottom section. I am not sure what I did to get those circles and marks. I printed over it with the glue resist screen of circles using purple paint. Not excited about it, but who knows what use I might find for it.

purplegluescreen

Lastly, here is my printing surface after a lot of printing. I always love how the printing surface is so spontaneous looking.

printsurface

All in all, it was a great week. I am not looking forward to Monday. I am having 4 hours of dental work as they remove the disintegrating bridge from my upper right side. I will get a temporary put in and hope I don’t have to wait to long for the final fix.

Rayna is Here and 50th Wrap-UP

Thursday, September 11th, 2014

constfence

Rayna Gillman, long time internet friend, is here in Portland. She lectured at our guild meeting Wednesday and is teaching screen printing techniques today and tomorrow. She arrived on Monday night and so we had a fun day on Tuesday taking the street car downtown to shop and have lunch.

I was hoping that her workshop would get me back in the creative mood and it is working. That piece up there has a background done with torn masking tape and then construction fence resist over that. The yellow background is a hand dye. I am planning to do a black print on top of this, not sure what, yet.

This piece is the start of something. I used a newspaper resist to print these lines on a pale olive cotton.

newspaperresistprint

I took some unsuccessful silk scarves that I hope to rescue. Here is the first one.

blahsilkscarf

I used a turquoise printing ink and a squishy whisk. I think it has been transformed.

blahscarfrescue

I prepared a screen with a washable school glue resist for using tomorrow.

glueresist

There are 22 people in the worship and they are all doing some fantastic work. I will try to get some photos tomorrow.

On Sunday, we celebrated our 50th anniversary at Trinity. Our friend, Heidi Rose, made 300 macarons and created a tower for the coffee hour after church.

macarons

She put two of each flavor in a box for us to take home.

macaronbox

 

Today, Lisa sent me photos that were taken at our celebration in California. You have to love this one of little Miss Paige photo-bombing the family.

Paigecameahog

Lisa selected two photos of the whole family:

famdamily1

famdamily2

I really love this one of Mr C and I.

SteveandGerrie50yrs

So that is a little bit of what has been happening in my life. It has been especially fun to hang out with Rayna. Tonight we went out for sushi and ice cream.

Printed Fabric Bee – Inspirational Words

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014

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We took a month off for the summer and now, we are back with the August fabric selection. Queen Bee, Lynda Haines, asked for 8 X 18 inch prayer flag size with inspirational words.To have a chance to win the fabric pack of 6 inch samples, you can leave a comment on Lynda’s blog or the Fabric Bee blog:

 

In my last blog, I showed some of the testing of ideas that I had. I decided to do the syringe writing in the background. Then I chose a quote from Joseph Campbell to print with my new block print alphabet. I embellished with the wax crayons, using one of the decorative wood blocks. You can click on the image to see it larger.

lyndapfb8-14

Here is the little piece I did for the giveaway.

pfb8-14

I am home and tired from our week away to celebrate our 50th. I hope to get a blog post up tomorrow about our happy week.