Gelli Printing Fun

I recently bought a gelliplate. I had made one years ago but it met its demise so it was time to get another.  I had a lot of fun layering texture upon texture to create these prints on canvas and paper (the bottom three). I used some weeds and other plant materials plucked from outside as well as some great texture tools I've accumulated over the years. I used my textile paints from Pro Chem and they worked beautifully.

I will be teaching a class with Kathi Battles, from my Cutting Edge Fiber Art Group on using a variety of techniques to create your own fabric using paint, August 21st at Studios on the Park in Paso Robles. The only charge is $15 for materials. If you are local, go to their website and sign up if you are interested in learning some fun techniques.

Seven Sisters Quilt Show

This last weekend was the Seven Sisters Quilt Show. There are seven large mountains in the San Luis Obispo for which the show is named. 

There are six guilds that participate in the annual show.

Below are the quilts I had in this year's show:

All That Glitters:  This is a reverse applique quilt that I've shown on the blog before. It was done as part of a group challenge.

Mars Moonscapes: This one has some of my itajime and arashi shibori fabrics with hand quilting and embroidery.

Tsunami Sunrise - This is with lots of tedious, but to me enjoyable, fabric manipulation.

This week's stitch for my TAST Facebook group was the wheatear.  It was a fun one.

Embroidery Sampler New Stitches

Last week and this week, the stitches for my Facebook TAST group were variations on the chain stitch.  Here is my sample for the Whipped Chain stitch.

Below is my sample for Cable Chain Stitch.

New Arashi Shibori Quilt

I used one of my latest shibori pieces in a new little quilt 

 about the raging fires last year in the central coast area of California. There's already been fires in Southern California, and in New Mexico and Colorado this last week.

The trees are cut from cheesecloth I dyed black. 

I then put a layer of tulle over it and machine quilted it.

On a lighter note, here are some pictures of hollyhocks in my garden.  

I have tried for years to grow them with no luck, 

but this year, the seeds took to the soil and they are gorgeous!

New Arashi Shibori Fabrics

Made some new Arashi Sibori fabrics this weekend. Hadn't done any arashi shibori in way too long. It's relatively quick and you usually get some nice results. 

 The one above and two below were created to capture the look of fire.

The shibori below was done on a previously eco-dyed piece that hadn't turned out very well. 

I really like the interaction of the rusty eco stains with the turquoise.

The fabric below was a commercial print that I had over-dyed once

 and it needed some more color and texture.

Soy wax, ice dyed scarf, Embroidery and Barn Update

Here are some pics of projects I've been working on.

This is a silk scarf on which I used soy wax batik and ice dye techniques. 

The colors on the silk vary according to how the light hits them.

Above is a closeup, below is the whole scarf.

Two more close-ups are below.

For my Take A Stitch Tuesday facebook group I did a satin stitch butterfly which was fun but took longer than I thought it would.

Over the weekend, mu husband finished the interior north wall of the barn. What a difference.

Low Immersion and Ice-dyed Shirts and Scarves

I recently bought the Ann Johnston  "Design by Accident" DVD, which is very good. I've had the book by the same title forever and didn't think I needed the DVD, but am very glad I bought it. There is so much more in the DVDs about her techniques.

The shirt above and below are ice dyed.  There are some great You Tube videos by a guy named Crispy who has some good ideas for getting rich color and  symmetrical designs on shirts. On the one above, I used Lemon Yellow, Emerald Green, Chinese Red, Grape, and Cerulean blue.  Ater most of the dye melted, I flipped it over and added the following dyes, on top of ice to the flip side: Lemon Yellow, Emerald Green, Turquoise, Light Red, Orchid and Plum. (These are all Dharma Dyes)

On this shirt for side one, I used Chinese Red, Black, Turquoise, and Yellow. One the flip side, Yellow, Cayman Isle, Light Red, and Black.

On this scarf I used Lemon Yellow, Blue Green, Turquoise, Plum, Emerald and Dark Green. It was a very thin silk and a lot of the first dyes didn't stick. So I over-dyed it with Blue, Blue Green, Yellow and Light Red.

On this one I stretched it out on plastic and used pretty strong liquid procion dyes, 

sometimes rubbing in with my finger or a spoon.