Productivity is Spelled T-I-R-E-D

Here’s my latest screen printing project; this one discharges a piece of previously-dyed fabric. I cut a stencil from a transparency, then used that for the print and SoftScrub with bleach to discharge the dye:

And, here’s another (very un-fractal-like) spiral; the pieces are fused on, but I haven’t done any stitching or quilting yet:

My plan now is to scrounge up some leftovers for lunch, then rest for the remainder of the day!

Common Ground

A paper quilt is a strange but interesting thing: a coming together of fabric, paper, and stitching.

For this piece, I painted the bluish/purple fabric paper with Adirondack color washes, used bleach to "paint" lighter designs into it, then acrylics to stamp onto the paper and highlight the designs. I rubbed some Shiva Paintstiks into the designs, as well.

Then I cut up the paper fabric and stitched it to the reddish-brown background with metallic threads.

Are We Having Fun Yet?

So, I've been lurking on the Complex Cloth Yahoo group for quite some time now, and I was happy when a newbie asked about doing a round robin. Since I knew there was at least one other newbie in the group, I happily jumped in and signed up, too. This would be fun, right?

As soon as the fabric came in the mail, I started to panic. It was lovely, and I just knew I was going to screw it up. For days, I stopped and stared at it every time I walked past my craft room. What should I do with it? Overdye it? Discharge it? I was adding the first layer of embellishment, so I didn't really consider paint or Shiva paintsticks.

Should I try a potato dextrin resist? I had been wanting to experiment with this, so I tried it out on my own fabric first. I really like the way it looked, but I was worried that 1) I didn't have enough dextrin to cover an entire yard; 2) the dye wouldn't show up well in the end; or 3) I would screw it up.

Then I decided to overdye it. What color? Yellow would make lots of greens out of the blues. Red would turn the whole thing purples, and sometimes I can get some ugly purples. Another shade of blue might not do much; and, what if I screwed it up?

Then I decided that I would put a resist on the fabric and paint dye onto it. Same color questions. More thinking, more panicking about screwing it up.

Finally, I decided that I would use bleach and a stamp to discharge it. But was this enough? Did that count as a complete layer, or would I need to discharge it and then, say, overdye it? I looked at past round robin photos and, sure enough, some people had simply discharged for their layer.

Ok, now that I knew what I was going to do, I wanted to practice on my own fabric first (come on everyone, say it with me: "So that I didn't screw it up . . . ") . I've mostly discharged with Softscrub with Bleach, but I wanted a thorough bleaching effect, so I mixed bleach and water 1/2 & 1/2, poured some on a paper towel on a plate, dipped my stamp in, and stamped away. It worked fabulously. I laid out the yard of RR fabric, dipped my stamp in, and immediately dribbled bleach on the fabric. The first stamp had too much bleach on it, so the print blobbed out.

I was, of course, panicking fully by now, but it was too late to call the plan off. I continued to stamp, washed the fabric, and quickly mailed it off to the next person on the list.

I'm a wreck. I THINK this is supposed to be fun, so I'm wondering when that part kicks in . . .

Back on the Path

I finally got the craft room cleaned and organized and actually have spaces to work!

What I'm working on this week:

My January journal quilt, JUST in the nick of time! This was a lot of fun, since I got to practice beading and embroidery, which I'm terrible at, and used fun things like Shiva Painstiks on the trees.

Fabric dyeing: I forgot to take a pic of the last batch of rainbow fabric I dyed. Now I'll have to see if I can separate it back out since I've already put it away!

Fabric painting with dye: The piece to the left was painted with thin dyes and then discharged with SoftScrub with Bleach through a stencil. I'm going to think about what what the next layer will be for a while before I do anything else with it.

Fabric resist/bleaching: I've been messing with the piece on the right forever. I dyed it turquoise, but didn't like the color, so I added some green. I still didn't like it, so I overdyed it with rust. Then I stenciled on Inkodye resist (and made sea grass with fork tines), let that dry, then rolled SS w/bleach over the whole piece. I finally like it! I think I'll add a little color to the fish next.

The pieces below were painted with thick fabric dyes on dry fabric. I've never painted with dye before, and this was a lot of fun! Though I did have a moment of panic when my dye & print paste mix appeared to be drying out just minutes after I started applying it. I ended up spritzing the fabric with water and worried that it would dilute the dyes, but they seemed to do just fine.