Mural Project

A  local  artist known for his murals, Steve Kalar, has been donating his expertise, time, energy, and materials to mentor my Advanced art students create a mural of cougars.  The cougar is Flamson's mascot.  All the students designed a cougar,, some more original than others, as will be, and then collaborated in putting the images together to create a collage mural.

They have been working on this project besides their regular curriculum since February. It has been a great experience for my students and the mural is turning out wonderfully!

Hopefully they will be finishing this up in the next couple of weeks. The mural will be displayed in Flamson's main entrance lobby.

Ice Dyeing

Here are my Easter eggs made early on Easter morning, tie dyed of course.

This is an ice dyed cotton shirt I made this last weekend.

This is another one. I really like how its rock-like colors and textures.

Here is the whole shirt

On the left side is the striped golden fabric I started with

 and on the right side is it after ice dyeing.

Below is a Kona Gold fabric which I ice-dyed. It came out darker than I wanted. I might do some bleaching on this one to bring back the gold color in places, maybe through stenciling or something.

Arashi Shibori with Fabric Paint

I've been playing around with using fabric paint to create some arashi shibori pieces. The advantage of using paint is that the process is quicker and does not need as many chemicals.  I still prefer the glow you achieve from  using procion dyes, but these are a close second.

Here are some pics from my sessions this week. I used Pro Chem Fabric Paint https://prochemicalanddye.net/   I like their colors and find it to be more economical to use than other brands. I dilute it about 3 parts water to 1 part paint.  It also has a very soft hand to it after washing and ironing. You can achieve different effects if you use wet fabric vs. dry fabric and if you wrap fabric at an angle as opposed to edges of fabric being parallel to sides of cylinder.

For this one I used a cardboard concrete form bought at Lowe's. I covered it with some old contact paper I had laying around to protect it's surface from water.

Below is the resulting fabric.

Below is one I wrapped around a large empty can of tomatoes.

The resulting fabric is below.

Another couple of variations are below.

Tie Dye Mania

Last week was crazy busy. Besides seeing my regular 148 students daily who were creating their ceramic ethnic masks in class, at lunch,  the Leadership  teacher brought in 21 kids each day Monday through Wednesday to make tie dye shirts  in blue and white (our school colors). They were so excited about it and made some wonderful ones that they all wore on Friday to the pep rally.

On Thursday at lunch I  had ten students from my advanced art class dye shirts at lunch, using multiple colors. I brought in some dyes from my personal stash. Can't wait to see how theirs turned out.

Here's one of mine done with arashi shibori technique.

Below is a closeup of the top part of shirt.  This is a rayon shirt from Dharma Trading Co.

Below is one of the blue and white samples

 I made to demonstrate the technique to the students. 

It's an extra large and my  husband loves it, so it's his.

Floral Inspiration

I made great strides in my quilt for  our Cutting Edge's exhibit for PIQF this upcoming October. Here's a little section of it. Since I'm using a reverse appliqué method, there has been so much preparation  before anything  showed up on the top surface. There are five layers in some places and four in others.  It's layered and ready for quilting. Not sure if I'll do hand or machine quilting or a some of both.

With all the rain we have been fortunate to receive in the last months, 

my flowers have some gorgeous blooms.

The iris below is our 4 feet tall, the tallest one I've ever had in our 20 years living here.