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.

I’m Still Here . . .

sort of. I haven’t felt very well since my surgery. I had my follow-up appt. with the surgeon yesterday, and he said he wouldn’t have expected that I would be chipper and feeling well at this point. He’s revised his recovery time from 6 to 8 weeks, since this is what he calls a “re-do” (the 2nd surgery for the same issue). Plus, I’m fairly sure that the surgery kicked off another bout of pancreatitis, which the surgeon had said was likely. ANYWAY, enough of this boring stuff.

I have been hand-quilting my Garden Path quilt since I was in the hospital three weeks ago. I actually started this quilt almost exactly two years ago; I was writing in my 10-year journal the other day and noticed an entry from two years ago where I had written about completing the quilt top.

And now, I’ve finished it! Garden Path is 42”h x 26”w and is machine-pieced, raw-edge appliquéd, and hand quilted. Here are the results:

And a close-up:

The center of this quilt was originally a "convergence"-style quilt (from Ricky Tims' book, Convergence Quilts). I cut the plants and butterflies out of batik fabric and machine-appliqued them over the center panel, then added the borders.

I feel such a sense of accomplishment when I finish something like this. Otoh, I’m temporarily project-less and I don’t have the energy to start something new. I’m sure if I look around, though, I’ll find plenty of WIPs from the last couple of years that I can work on.

Weekly Square #16

Hurray! This square catches me up through last week (6/7-6/13), so technically I’m caught up with my weekly journal squares, since the current week isn’t over yet.

Would you believe this is an image transfer onto cotton batting of this painting I did a while back? I added some embroidered embellishment and a little color here and there with Prismacolor pencils.

Influences for this week’s square include: (too much?) time to think, especially about the future, while I’m lying in bed watching dreadful television: where am I going? what will it look like? How do I find (create?) the right doorway to my future?

Weekly Square #15

I'm not working on much these days other than the hand-quilting I started while in the hospital. I am trying to get caught up on weekly journal squares, though. Somehow it seems appropriate that I make these as close to the "moment" as possible, even if they don't turn out well. These journal squares are supposed to represent the actual weeks of this year, so if I can't concentrate, or don't have the energy to do good work, that's as much a part of my life as the weeks when I'm able to take more care with the journal square.

Here is my weekly journal square for the first week of June—the week I had surgery and was in the hospital. This piece started with some complex cloth I created a long time ago, using various dyes, over-dyes, and flour-paste resist.

• I ripped the fabric in half, then laid the 2 halves on batting.
• I ran a line of red Shiva Painstik down the tear, then used black embroidery thread to sew the Xs.
• I added the backing, then hand-quilted various areas of the piece.
• I finished the square with a whip-stitched binding, using embroidery thread.

Influences for this square are, I guess, fairly obvious, but strangely complex: surgery, stitches, pain, sleep, strange dreams, boredom, anxiety.

Weekly Square #14

I’ve fallen a little behind with my weekly journal squares. I wanted to finish this one before I went to the hospital, but I didn’t have time. I’m so bored with “bed rest” and daytime television that I decided to at least make an attempt to finish it up this morning, and hurray! success!

This square was for the week of May 24-30. It was influenced by the Stitching to Dye and Inspired to Quilt books that I was working with; by my sweetie’s garden, and those lovely green shoots pushing up through the dirt; and by the clear, open blue skies of early summer that felt like freedom before heading to Houston for my hospital stay.