Monoprinting

On andthenwesetitonfire blog here ,Beth has been showing a monoprinting technique based on a video by Laura Kemshall.  I gave it a try and here's a couple of mine. It was a lot of fun.  I got too much 'noise' on mine, especially on the first one, which I did on one of those white acrylic cutting boards but I still like how they turned out.  I did both of them on multi colored fabrics.

This one has the tracing paper on top which shows the design I used for the one below.

Beginning New Quilt with Ice Dyed Fabrics

Over the last couple of weeks I've been contemplating a new art quilt.  It's so hard for me to cut up  some of my hand dyed fabrics because they are abstract paintings just left alone, but I just got over that idea and cut the two below into rectangles.

 

I rearranged them, sewed them back together and got this. The textures resemble rock surfaces to me.  I like the play of light and dark in this arrangement.

I have a couple ideas I'm playing around with for the next step in this quilt's evolution.  Some skinny line insertions perhaps or reverse applique. Still cogitating on this one.

Ocean Themed Quilt

Finally finished and shipped off the quilt to my nephew and his wife, both named Lauren.  It was a belated wedding present. Thanks to Virginia Roos who did a great job of quilting it.  It measures 91 by 87.  It was hard to get a good picture of  it due to its size.

I used the fabrics that didn't work for the front for the back.  

Beautiful Sunrise and Fiber Art Bowls

Here is a picture of the sunrise  from my back window a few days ago.  We are very lucky to have such inspirational sunrises and sunsets from our home.

At our Cutting Edge meeting Saturday, one of our members shared the beautiful fiber bowl she made in a class taught by Hilde Morin of Portland, Oregon.  You can view more of Hilde Morin's work here and below.

Below is a closeup.  It is made on canvas with fused pieces of fabric to create the design.

Some years ago, I played around with making small fiber bowls as Christmas gifts.  Mine aren't as beautiful and artistic as Ms. Morin's, but I enjoyed making them and am looking forward to having some time to play around with making more.

Below is the bottom of the bowl.  I used Timtex inside and fused fabric to it.

Last Thursday another teacher and I took an additional 50 sixth graders to Hearst Castle for an art lesson taught by Anne Laddon of Studios on the Park.  What a great opportunity for our students at such an incredible place.

What's Happening on My Design Wall

This last weekend, I went through my ever increasing stack of hand-dyed fabrics to figure out what  to do with them.  Some of the shibori and ice dyed  fabrics have such intense areas of pattern that to cut them up seems a shame.  Yet, I don't think they are all candidates for whole cloth quilts either.  A few of them might be.  So I threw these up onto my design wall to see how they would work with each other and did a few sketches.  The marbled fabrics are a little tricky to integrate well with other fabrics.  So I was looking at patterns and colors that played well with each other.  All of the ones below are hand-dyes except for the one with the gorgeous black background with green and orange patterns third from the right end. I picked that one up at PIQF at the Ananse Village booth.  They always have such wonderful batiks from Africa.

The small strip of black and white patterned fabric on the right is also commercial.  Black and white seems to always work well with lots of brights.

Sometimes I think I should just try to sell all my dyed fabrics, but I like them too much and it's a lot of work marketing yourself online, for which I don't have time or interst.  Looking forward to having some time to figure this all out.