Teaching a New Class on Painting Fabric At Cambria Center for the Arts

 

More Adventures with Ice Parfait Dyeing

 A couple days ago I did more experimenting with ice dyeing. Most ice dyeing instructions tell you to soak the fabric in soda ash solution for 15 to 30 minutes. That's fine if you are doing it yourself, but if you are doing an ice dye class or party, it makes it difficult for everyone to find their piece of fabric in the bucket, if there are 10 more in there. So I introduced the soda ash after sprinkling the dye powder on it.  

I used two kinds of fabric, a bright, white Kona cloth and a light weight, linen-like, mystery fabric that I found in a drawer.

Below are pictures of each, with the Kona cloth one on top.

As you can see the two fabrics took the dye completely different.

 Wish I knew what the mystery fabric was, 

but alas, I don't. 

You need all kinds of fabric, so I'm keeping both, but I like the Kona cloth one more.

Revisiting a Portrait Project

 In our Cutting Edge Fiber Art Group we set up a Portrait Challenge. For my project, I chose to revisit a portrait of St. Joan of Arc, which I started some years ago in a class taught by Rosemary Eichorn. It's been at least ten years ago that I took the class, if not fifteen. It was a fabulous class where she stressed the importance of playing while creating. She called it PLORK, which is a combination of Play and Work. Play being abstract without a goal and work being more goal oriented, serious and honorable. We used a wide variety of materials. We painted fabric, felt, stabilizers, etc. We heated and melted materials to create more interesting fabrics for our collage.

Below are two photos of my work in progress. The first one was taken at the end of the day of the workshop. The second one was taken a couple of days ago as I continue to make some changes here and there, with more to come.

I plan to add some clouds at the bottom of the arch, and under her feet. The image is from a painting by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, painted in 1854 titled "Jeanne d'Arc at the Coronation  of Charles VII." It's very baroque looking and one can never have too much gold

 and other ornamentation in this style, can they?

Painting on Fabric Using Shibori and More

 Painting Party  in the Studio

My quilt circle met in person (WOW) in my studio/barn to create some fun fabrics using fabric paints and a variety of techniques as you can see in the examples above.

My new rose bush produced this beauty last week.

 I love all the variety of values contained on this one flower!

New Art Quilt Top

                                                         Just finished a new art quilt top. 

I had a lot of fun making this one. I did not have a plan and just 'winged it' as I went along. I loved working with the complementary color scheme and using improv cutting techniques.

Fun With Improv Quilting Techniques

                                             Here's a photo of what's on my design wall now. I've been having great fun using modern improv techniques to slice and dice commercial fabrics as well as my own printed and painted fabrics to design this latest quilt. Have tried  a wonky log cabin block, a checkerboard and one of my very favorite techniques, the skinny inserted line technique.

Adding More Pattern to Painted Fabrics

                       I decided to add more pattern to the painted fabrics I made last week. These fabrics are to use in the modern improv quilt that I have started, so I carefully mixed colors that will complement the ones already in the quilt. 

I used a stencil for the one above. It's actually a piece of plastic

 used for catching leaves in your roof gutter.

On the one above I used a stamp.

On the one above I used a roller stamp with squiggly lines.

On the one above, I placed a rubber silicone hot pad under the fabric

and rolled ink on top using a spongy roller.