Weekly Square #19

This is my 6”x6” weekly journal square for week #19 (June 28 – July 4). While looking through my stash of printed, painted, and decorated fabric (which I’m trying to use more often), I thought this fabric reflected that week well because of its “fireworks” feel.

Influences for this week’s journal square include(d): another bout of pneumonia, which I actually tried to ignore but reflected obliquely in the black stitching around the edge of the square; dinner with friends, which gave a little “sparkle” to the week; and of course, July 4th fireworks. We are lucky enough to live next door to a minor league baseball stadium, and across a greenbelt from our city’s main park, so that night we were treated to double fireworks at the same time, without ever having to leave home!

Btw, this fabric is actually a sort of "serendipity" cloth; I laid it underneath a piece of fabric I was painting with Dyna-Flow paints to absorb the extra paint. I like the vagueness/softness of this fabric, probably even more than the piece I was actually painting!

Giveaway!

If you don’t “know” Terri Stegmiller and Sue Bleiweiss, you’re definitely missing out. Terri and Sue are both wonderful artists who each offer online classes (I think I’ve taken most, if not all, of them), sell their beautiful work, post great stuff on their blogs, and are just genuinely nice people. Here’s a link to their newsletter sign-up page; if you sign up for their newsletter, you’re automatically entered into their summer giveaway with some GREAT prizes:

Prize #1: A free online class of your choice.  Choose any online or class on demand class offered at Two Creative Studios.
Prize #2: A goody package of Terri and Sue's hand dyed fabrics.
Prize #3: A goody package of a book from Sue and a Giclee Art print from Terri.

Check out Terri and Sue’s site at http://twocreativestudios.com, and don’t forget to look at the “Free Projects” section for lots of creative project instructions.

Weekly Square #20

Somehow I’ve missed a week with my journal squares.

I knew I had skipped week 17 because I need to scan in a couple of pics for it. Yesterday, I went to do that and realized one of pics wasn’t where I thought it was, and I didn’t have the energy to look for it.

Instead, I decided to work on last week’s square, but then I realized I missed week 19. So, that’s two weekly journal squares I owe myself, not counting this week’s. Confused? Yes, me too.

ANYWAY, here’s 6"x6" weekly journal square #20 for July 5-11:

This piece started with a watercolor I painted last week. I scanned it into the computer, then printed it onto Lesley Riley’s TAP transfer paper. I ironed that onto muslin, then fused the image to hand-dyed fabric. I added a layer of batting to the back, then embroidered around the edge of the image. I cut away the extra batting on the back, added another layer of batting and more hand-dyed fabric for the backing, then quilted the square with invisible thread (I wished afterwards that I had used the smoke thread so it wouldn't be so bright). Finally, I zigzag stitched around the edge to finish the square.

Influences for this week’s square: like Weekly Square #16, I think this one reflects my anxiety/uncertainty/curiosity about what lies ahead. I like the juxtaposition between the right side (closed, interior) and the left side (open, exterior) of the painting, although I can’t really articulate the meaning of that.

Next on the agenda: backing up and creating the missing weekly journal squares. Fortunately, I’ve written notes every week for what I want the squares to reflect, so I have a place to start.

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!

Stamping with Rayna

I joined a workshop in one of my yahoo groups (A.R.T.) based on Rayna Gillman’s book, Create Your Own Hand-Printed Cloth.

For the first lesson, we’re stamping with household items. I didn’t branch out as much as I could have—I wanted to cut up a pool noodle and stamp with that, look for some interesting textured items around the house to stamp with, and find or make some stencils, but I just haven’t had the energy. I have quite a few hand-carved and hand-made stamps, so most of these pieces were stamped with those.

This piece was stamped with opaque fabric paint and pieces of Styrofoam plates that I cut up and drew into with a stylus:

This is a piece of painted fabric, stamped with a leaf pattern carved into a rubber eraser:

Here’s a piece of painted fabric stamped with a kid’s foam beads glued to a wood base:

This one is painted fabric, stamped with strips of plumber’s gasket glued to a wood base (ok, I’ll admit I cheated with this one; I actually created it a while back, but I think it’s a good example of interesting effects with very simple stamps):

Here’s a technique I learned in Lyric Kinard’s Playing with Paint class at QU; the “stamp” is a pear, cut in half and dried on paper towels, then coated with fabric paint:

And finally, this fabric-painted piece was stamped with a store-bought swirl stamp, then stamped with that rubbery grid-like shelf liner material. I added some hand-painted accents both over and around the stamping. I really like this piece:

Now, as always, I need to figure out what to do with these pieces of fabric, other than just folding them up and stuffing them into a drawer. I’m thinking I should start working with a pre-defined color scheme for projects like this, so at least everything coordinates and can be used together in a larger piece.

Weekly Square #18

This is my 6x6” weekly journal square for this week. You may be (but probably aren’t) wondering what happened to last week’s square, #17. Well, my 30th high-school reunion was last Saturday night, and I was waiting to get the picture disc I ordered from the photographer (hurray, digital images!) since I want to incorporate at least one into last week’s square. The disc came in the mail today, so now I’ll circle back and work on that one.

Influences for this week’s square include: techniques from my new favorite book, Stitching to Dye; the beautiful yellow bells that are in bloom in the front yard; and the heat wave (highs around 103-104; LOWS in the upper 70s) that’s going to quickly fry everything.

This is dyed (blue, green, and magenta) habotai silk on wool felt, with silk velvet "flowers" stitched on top. The whole piece was then re-dyed in lemon yellow.

The “binding” on this week’s square is something a little different; I cut the selvedge edge from a piece of sheer fabric and fused it to the front, then turned it and fused it to the back.