Fun with Flower Pounding and Dendritic Mono Printing

I've been playing around with printing techniques the last couple of weeks.  One of my friends in my Cutting Edge group had been talking about doing some flower pounding so I checked that out.

These are geranium petals, which released some beautiful deep colors.

I added some colored pencil details to them, then ended up smudging them, 

then had to bleach out the smudges, which left some yellowing. 

Then I had to rinse out the bleach so it wouldn't eat up the fabric. So now I'm back to paler colors and will need to pound some more petals on them. 

Live and learn!   

From what I read online, I should have soaked my fabric in alum first, which may have helped. 

I will sure give that a try next time.

 Then I moved on to making dendritic mono prints. You may be thinking, what the heck are those?

Dendritic means "Of pertaining to, or resembling a dendrite. A Dendrite is a mineral crystallizing in another mineral in the form of a branching or treelike mark. or a branched part of a nerve cell that transmits impulses toward the cell body.

A mono print is a form of printmaking where the image can only be made once, as opposed to other printmaking which allows for multiple originals. We created some of these in Betty Busby's class last year and it was great fun. It also brought back some great memories of making these in an introductory printing class at Cardinal Stritch college, many moons ago.

I first applied thick acrylic paint, from a squeeze bottle,  to a piece of plexiglass. 

Next, I placed another piece of plexiglass on top and pressed down which squished the paint

 to form an abstract design. 

Then I carefully inserted a pallet knife between the two pieces of plexiglass to separate them.

The pressure of pulling the two pieces of plexiglass apart raises the paint 

into these cool dendrite forms.

Next, I carefully laid a piece of cotton on top of each side and gently pressed with my hand to  capture the design you see in the photo below.

Below are three dendritic prints made previously in Betty Busby's class.

After my dendritic prints dried, 

I painted them to match the background colors of the ones made in Betty's class.

Here are my prints drying outside.

The following day I put them up on my design wall and thought,

 "what the heck can I do with these?"

After playing around with them for awhile, I decided to cut them into squares and rearrange them.  Now I am in the process of sewing them together.

New Shirts and Masks

One of my dear friends is moving to Oregon to be closer to her family. She is a wonderful woman and I will miss her. So I wanted to send her off with a dyed shirt. I made two so she could have a choice of what she would prefer.

Below is an accordion folded and banded shirt ready for dyeing. 

This is the one she ended up choosing.

I used Robin's Egg, Turquoise and Cobalt.

Below is the other shirt, which was pole wrapped, arashi shibori style, ready for dyeing.

On this one I used Robin's Egg, Turquoise, Cerulean, Light Red, and Orchid.

Below are some more masks I whipped up to give to friends

 and others in need.

Reopening the Studio Barn and Ice Dyeing

This week I got out to the studio barn, and did a thorough sweeping, cleaning, and scrubbing. Originally I was scheduled to teach a dyeing class

 to members of our Almond Country Quilt Guild on  May 2nd.

Of course that needed to be canceled, but hopefully it will be rescheduled

 for another time after the pandemic.

Below is a shirt for my hubby. I tried an S Curve folding method that was described

 on a tie dye YouTube video  by Krispi.

  He has some great videos. I really love how the colors and designs came out!

Top photo is the front and below that is the back of the shirt.

I've been collecting old, lovely linen fabrics.

 And I've been given some wonderful ones from friends as well.

 Some of them have beautiful embroidery, cut work, etc.

 As you can see, the linen takes really well to the dyes.

....and another beautiful one!

Hope everyone is doing well out there and keeping safe! 

Looking forward to teaching classes in the barn at some time again!

I've been busy making more masks for friends, family and others.

These are made using a different pattern than the ones I previously made and showed on my blog. They fit your face a little bit tighter. 

For these I used a pattern from Orange Dot Quilts. If you go to their website you can download the mask pattern for free.If you do that, be sure to check out their Facebook page for a very helpful video as well for how to do the folding part. https://www.orangedotquilts.com/

  It's working out for me because it doesn't require an extended length of time or concentration.

 My husband is still recovering from his two surgeries and needing a lot of assistance. 

He continues to improve a little bit every day, so that is good!

Can't wait until he's back to normal. You never realize how much your hubby does, 

until he can't do anything. 

Last night the sky was incredibly beautiful in the East and the West.

More Face Masks

Yesterday I made three more face masks for family members

 just in case they find themselves in a crowd

 and are unable to distance themselves from others.

I used the Sewing Scientist pattern. 

There is a link to the pattern on yesterday's blog post.

Stay healthy - keep creating! It will help to keep you sane!

Still Sewing

Yesterday I sewed up a fabric mask for myself and will be making one for each of our family members. I've been seeing lots of posts on how to make these and found a great pattern or two.

There's a lot of conflicting information out there about whether health professionals can actually use these hand made masks or not. I've read that they may be effective on top of  a medical mask, or not. Below is a picture of my lovely one.

Here is a link to the pattern I used

https://thestitchingscientist.com/2020/03/how-to-sew-a-face-mask.html

Another interesting pattern from Deaconess Hospital

 that was sent to me by my sister-in-law is below.

https://youtu.be/9tBg0Os5FWQ

Hope everyone is being kind and staying healthy out there!

More Fun Painting Fabric

Having some creative fun making new fabrics using ProChem Silk and Fabric paints.

Above is an Itajime piece folded and ready for dyeing.

After applying the dyes, I put in a plastic bag for a half hour.

Finished piece - still needs ironing, but this lets you see the fold lines

Below are pictures of the whole scarf and some detail shots.

 I love the way the colors migrated into each other creating lovely nuances of patterns.