"Elliptical" Robin

What started as a round robin on the Complex Cloth list should probably now be retitled an "elliptical robin," since it took me forever to add my surface designs; instead of moving smoothly around the circle, the fabric got to me and waited . . .and waited . . . (so imagine my "point" on a sketch of the process being stretched WAY out). I received two of the pieces of cloth last year while I was in the hospital, and I'm just now getting to them.

The truth is, I can't blame all of the delay on my illness. I could have worked on these pieces starting a few weeks ago, when I felt well enough to take up art again for short periods at a time. But this is my first fabric round robin, and I've been terrified with each piece that I would ruin it. With my own fabric, it's no big loss (though a big disappointment) if I completely screw it up. With someone else's, though, there's a lot of pressure (I put on myself, of course) NOT to screw it up.

Ironically, once I finish adding something to a piece, there's a sense of accomplishment and joy above what I usually feel with my own pieces, since I know I've given something to someone else.

Now to the good stuff: the pics!

I knew I wanted to add some kind of stamped design to Margo's piece to give it some focus. I started by making a stamp out of some foam kid's beads I picked up at Michael's. I glued them to a little wooden plaque (probably not the smartest idea, because I didn't seal the wood and so I can't really wash the stamp now). I really liked this stamp until I used it on a test piece of fabric. Turns out there's too much space between the shapes for my liking. I'm going to play with the design more, or maybe I'll use it to stamp on fabric with a lot of color or texture or something.

I pulled out a sort of stamp/printing plate I made a long time ago out of cardboard, double-stick tape, and twine. I liked the test stamp I did with this one, but I discovered I couldn't really "stamp" with it very well, since some of the impression didn't show up.

I got out the Lumiere Halo Blue and Metallic Bronze paints and applied them to the plate, then laid the fabric on top of it and rubbed along the twine lines.

Because there were a few "character" blobs of paint on the fabric and I wanted to continue with the rubbings, I didn't want to wait too long for them to dry.

I laid a "serendipity" cloth I had on top of the rubbing and rubbed again to remove (or at least spread out) the little blobs. Then I moved right on to the next area to be printed.

I really like the way this turned out. I upped the contrast on the photos of the finished piece to show the paints better. The piece isn't really as dark as it looks in the photo.

As soon as I heat-set the paint and mail it off to the next participant, I'll start on the other one. I hope I won't be as intimidated this time :-)

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 . . .