Rat Killin’

My sweetie’s grandfather usually responds, when asked what he’s up to, “oh, just rat killin’.”
I take that to mean a little of this, a little of that—all those things you’ve been meaning to get to but just haven’t found the time for.
So this was a rat killin’ kind of weekend. I

• straightened out and organized a drawer full of hand-dyed fabric;
• ran across some reverse appliqué squares I made forever ago and decided to stitch them together;
• screenprinted Softscrub w/bleach onto some ugly fabric, and paint onto some other ugly fabric;
• played with Neocolor water-soluble crayons; and
• created a felted piece based on an article in a recent issue of Quilting Arts.

The felted piece was SO much fun. I used a fabric base, then machine-felted onto it wool roving, silk roving, yarns, and Angelina fibers. I stamped acrylics onto the felted piece and onto unbleached cotton, then sewed torn strips of the cotton, along with pieces of painted cheesecloth, to the felted base. I stitched on the green squares (more hand-painted fabric that’s been in my stash for forever), made some little “flowers” out of silk rods and cocoons, and then added some hand-stitching with dyed perle cotton. Here is the result:

And here’s a close-up:

I love the way this piece turned out, and it was great to use both my felting machine and some of those materials I’ve been collecting along the way. I definitely think I’ll be making more of these.

Here is a pic of one of the Neocolor water-soluble crayon pieces. This was a technique that I’ve been wanting to try for a while—applying the crayons to a screen, then screening them onto fabric with a transparent medium. I bought some transparent silkscreen medium a while back specifically for this technique, but when the time came I couldn’t find it.

On top of that, I ironed my freezer paper stencil to the wrong side of the screen (the inside, instead of the outside). DOH! Consequently, the results weren’t so good (ok, they’re downright hideous):



The good news is that I managed to fix this piece quite a bit by going back over it with the Neocolor crayons, a spray bottle of water, and a stencil brush. The end result:



Much nicer, don’t you think? I love the sort of ethereal quality of the background that came about because of the weird screening medium I used--a combination of textile and gel mediums.

All in all, it was a pretty fulfilling weekend! I'll save pics of the other projects for another time, when the projects are further along. In the meantime, I think I'm going to quilt up that little pear piece!

Screen Printing with A.R.T.

More fabric from the A.R.T workshop based on Rayna Gillman’s book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth.

The above print is from a screen using masking tape and pieces of torn newspaper. The following prints used the same screen, but I pulled off the newspaper and threw in some paper “dots” from my 3-hole punch:

On the last print above, I used a couple of the wet newspaper pieces to “stamp” paint onto the fabric.

The following print was screened onto commercial fabric:

Then, I bleached the fabric to bring up the contrast between the background and the print:

Nope, don’t like that, so I added some DyNa-Flow paint:

That’s better, although I wish the DyNa-Flow hadn’t run so much, but that was the chance I took by wetting the fabric.

More fabric to try to figure out how to use!

Weekly Square #11

I finally got to last week’s 6x6” square today. This one is influenced by the failed medical procedure in Houston; depression and anxiety; a feeling of isolation; and an inability to create new work (for this square, I "recycled" a piece of screen printing test fabric I used a while back).

Weekly Square #10

It’s a new week, so I’ve officially declared the zone-out period/mini-vacation/time-of-doing-nothing over. That didn’t stop me from taking a 2-hour nap this afternoon, but I assume my body needed the rest.

This morning I made last week’s 6x6” weekly square. This started with some fabric I screen printed, using a screen-drawing-fluid and screen-filler-fluid method (the color below isn’t quite correct due to the lighting conditions when I took the picture):

I painted the strange little alien-like plant with Dye-Na-Flow paints (again, the color is a little off in this pic, but correct in the last one):

Then I trimmed square, free-motion quilted it, and fused and free-motion stitched the binding to it:

Influences for this week’s square: the screen printing I’ve been doing; lots of new growth in nature, even with (or because of?) the gray, overcast, and rainy weather we’ve been having; and my mood, which has been sort of weird and funky this last week, but something I’ve accepted and lived with.

Where Do I Put My Books Now?

I was able to finish sewing the binding on my screen-printed table runner while in the hospital (is it strange that I love hand-sewing the binding?), but then I needed to block it because it was so wavy.

It’s been a while since I blocked anything, but I didn’t bother to look up the directions, I just went ahead with it. Then I let it dry (and forgot about it) for 3 days.

I’m thinking I stretched it a little too tightly, because you can see where all the t-pins were. Plus, blocking it seems to have stretched out some of that lovely quilty puffiness that I like so much for pieces like this. Maybe I’ll rewash and dry it, and see if it straightens out.

It’s difficult to get good pics of a piece this long and narrow, but I’ve tried to capture most of it:

All the fabric in this piece is either screen printed or hand-dyed (LWI and shibori) by me. I created the pattern to piece it, which may seem like a minor accomplishment, but which actually took quite a while! Anyway, all that is to say I’m proud of it, pleased with it, and more than a little fond of it.

Of course, now that I have a lovely table runner, I had to clean off the breakfast room table. That means actually reshelving all those books I carry outside to the back patio to read on my breaks.

Interruptions

So there I was, happily working along, and my pancreas decided to act up. It gets “angry” every once in a while. I took to my bed with pain pills but then started running a fever, so my doctor told me to get to the ER. They gave me antibiotics and pain meds, but I felt much better by today (ok, I was still in pain, but the fever was gone and the doctors said the infection seemed to have been warded off, and I was going stir-crazy!) so I talked them into letting me come home. I’m working with doctors in Houston to schedule surgeries, so I hope the problem will at least be relieved in the near future, if not fixed permanently.

In the meantime, here are more screen printing pics. This time, I used Speedball drawing fluid to paint an image from my journal onto the screen. I let that dry, then squeegeed screen-filler fluid over it:

Then I pulled out a piece of previously-dyed fabric that was sort of ugly, and printed several of the above images on it:

The fabric is still drying, so I can’t hang it up to get a good pic, but here’s the image from one of the prints:

So far, everything has worked just like Lyric in the QU Screen Printing class said it would—the drawing fluid washed right out, but the filler fluid stuck. I guess the real test will be whether the filler fluid washes out completely with hot water when I’m ready to “erase” it . . . and whether my pancreas decides to behave itself so that I can something done.

Weekly Square #9

This week’s square is influenced by:

• The pieced and machine-quilted table runner I’m making, which uses screen prints and hand-dyes;
• The beautiful spring weather, cool days with tinges of summer heat slipping in (yesterday was in the 90s already);
• My desire to use the color red in a positive way (in the past, I had associated red with anger and, as I tend to do with the emotion, avoided it as much as possible);
• My desire to connect to nature in a healing way.

Screen Printed Fabric

I seem to be better at decorating fabric than figuring out what to do with it.

More screen prints. This time, I created a stencil (or is it a resist?) on the screen using Elmer’s gel, which I drew onto the screen right out of the bottle.

I used Setacolor fabric paints, and I was able to get quite a few prints out of the screen without the dried glue softening up; here are some of the cleaner ones:

Now, what to do with them? I had been thinking we needed new placemats for the breakfast room table, but then I thought, why not a table runner? I drew the pattern out, then cut up some of my hand-dyed fabric and pieced it, along with the flower screen prints. Here’s the finished top:

Now I’m wondering whether this might be a little dark for the table, and I can’t decide if I should make a wall hanging out of it instead; it’s very tall and narrow (60”x24”), so I’m not even sure where I would hang it!

Another Day, Another Layer

I’m continuing to work on my “complex cloth,” using it to practice my screen printing. Today, I added a print from a thermofax screen that I got from Lyric Kinard. I used Lumiere Halo Blue Gold paint, but it looks surprisingly green! I was a little worried about whether the metallic paint would clog the screen, but it seems just fine.

This is the most I’ve done to one piece of fabric. I’ve been inspired to create some complex cloth since I participated in the round robin, but I haven’t had the time or energy. I’m not sure where to go from here with this!

Here’s a closeup of the print:

I think I want to lighten it up a bit more. I may do some more bleaching, then overdye it. Or vice-versa. Suggestions?

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!

Weekly Square #6

Whew, I managed to get caught up on the weekly squares, and it’s not even the end of the week yet!

I decided not to use the piece I showed yesterday; I think I will mount that on a canvas or frame it (or both), as blog commenters suggested.

Instead, I fused spirals cut out of shibori-dyed fabric onto a painted background, stitched them with metallic thread, and added some little acrylic paint triangles and dots.

Influences for this week’s 6x6” square: Lily Kerns QU class, Fractal Fragments (she’s focusing on spirals this week as a common fractal pattern; beyond that, I couldn’t tell you what’s happening, because fractals apparently make my brain dissolve, so I’m avoiding them); working with painted/screen printed fabric (the background started as a screen print that didn’t work out so well, so I covered it with Setacolor paints); and doodling, which I’ve been doing a lot lately.

Dilemma

This piece was intended to be this week’s 6x6 weekly square, but I am SO enamored with it that I’m not sure I’m going to use it for that (I’m thinking it might get lost in all those other squares). It started as one of my screen-printed prints, then I added some DynaFlo paint to it, then screened the text over the top of it.

I’m not sure why I love it so much, but I do!

Making Messes

I’ve had screen-printing materials for a long time; in fact, I bought them back when I was working with glass, because my intention was to screen print enamels onto the glass.

Alas, I was scared off by not really understanding how to create images. All the instructions I found had to do with treating the screen with something then exposing it to bright light for so long with some type of really dark line drawing taped to it then . . . that’s about where I typically gave up and went to find something else to do (I have the same issue with the airbrush, which sits neat and clean in its nice little box, just waiting to be used).

So, I decided to take Lyric Kinard’s Screen Printing class at QU. I’ve taken a painting class online with Lyric, and I really like the information and ideas she shares. So far, the class is a lot of fun, and I’m relieved to finally be using my screen-printing stuff.

Here are a couple of prints using a newspaper stencil:

And some using freezer paper stencils that I cut a design into:

And some using masking tape (printed over some less-than-successful previous prints):

And some using a stencil cut from Con-tac Paper:

As you can tell, I’m still trying to get all the particulars down—how hard to press, how many passes to make, how to make sure I have enough paint on the screen.

And finally, my favorites. I cheated and skipped ahead to next week’s lesson, which uses thermofax screens. I had ordered these from Lyric and from Marcy Tilton. When they arrived, I couldn’t resist trying at least one on my own, so I used the “French 1920s Letter” from Marcy:

I have discovered that screen printing is really messy—actually, the process itself is not too bad, but geez! washing all that paint out of the screens! I panicked when I thought the red paint might permanently stain the porcelain bathtub.

Cleaning up the thermofax screens was MUCH neater. Of course, they don’t typically cover as much fabric as a larger screen, and they are MUCH more expensive than masking tape and newspaper, so I’ll have to show a little restraint, or at least hide the credit card statements :-)