Life in the fast lane...

Whew! Where has the time gone? I have been busy getting ready for this weekend's Open Studios Tour, that's where! And one of the nice things is, I was the subject of an article in our local paper on Wednesday! You can check it out here. And if you're in the Flagstaff area, I hope you stop by and see me!

On another note, I am collaborating on a project with a friend of mine to create some new items for my shop, and dyed 15 yards of fabric for her to sew. I am thinking of adding dyed fabrics to my inventory next year, and this was a great opportunity for me to test dyeing lengths of fabric. Here are pix of 2 of the pieces:

I broke the fabric down to 2 1/2 yard pieces for this project, but I'm thinking I could dye as much as 5 yards at a time with larger bins. This is sooooo easy, and I'm really delighted with my results! I used low water immersion... and I mean very low water. The piece on the left too 4 cups of liquid... 3 of dye and one of plain water, plus 2 cups of soda ash solution. The others only needed 2 cups of dye and one of plain water plus the soda ash. I'm used to dyeing t-shirts, which are very thirsty and require more dye. This was awesome! Can't wait to do more.

Stay tuned, I will post pix next week of my Open Studios setup. I'm sharing space with another artist at her home, and get the garage all to myself!

'Fern' quilt experiment

Awhile back, I posted a picture of an Art Cloth I was thinking about quilting. Well, my curiosity got the better of me today, and I had to give it a try, just to see if the design would be helped or hurt by quilting. It's a long way from completion, but I'm posting a progress report to put it out there and see if anyone has an opinion to offer. The jury is still out from where I stand. Here is a detail of the stitched area:

One thing I do think is that the stitching has highlighted the ferns, which didn't come out as bright as I wanted.

Here is a shot of the whole piece on the left, and below it is the piece before it was quilted:

New 'Fern' Art Cloth

My friend Linda and I got together today for a playdate. She helped me get started watercoloring, I helped her to learn my method of Low Water Immersion dyeing. We both had lots of fun, and ended up with some neat looking cloth, as well as some good water color attempts as well. She is very experienced as a water color artist, and I am a brand new one. Here is the cloth I dyed, which is one of a series of 'Fern' cloths:

I really like the colors and the interesting markings that I got with this piece. Here is a detail of the piece:

This was hand-stitched, then dyed with Turquoise, Periwinkle Blue and Dark Green, but as you can see, I got a lot of interesting shading and highlights, which mostly come from the Periwinkle. The Turquoise gives nice highlights when I can trap it in the stitching.
Great day, lots of creative energy! Now I have tons of new projects to keep me busy!

Autumn Leaves

I have always loved the colors of autumn. Recently I did an experiment using dyes I had in my dye refridgerator for almost a year. I used golden yellow and light orange and a little scarlet and dyed 3 shirts using low water immersion technique, just to see how the dyes would react after all this time. The result was better than I had expected: The yellow and orange had not lost any of their strength, and while the scarlet turned out lighter than I had hoped, it still looked okay. I decided to use soy wax to create some autumn leaves, then overdye with browns for a fall foliage motif. Here are the results:

I'm soooo jazzed with the results, that now I need to do bunches more!

Where does inspiration come from?

September 17, 2007 - I recently joined a Surface Design group here in Flagstaff. Most of the members were in the class I took this summer, and we are just getting started. Last month, our facilitator, Melly, gave us a challenge to create a screen using soy wax and house paint. Well.... as the time flew by, and the next meeting (tonight!) drew closer, I realized that I had not come up with a design to use for this challenge. I am not one to doodle a lot, so I really had to work at trying to develop a design. Finally, out of sheer frustration, I sent off an e-mail to Melly crying about how I couldn't come up with a design.... poor me! Well, not two hours later, I picked up a pencil and in less than 15 minutes, I had my design! No idea where it came from, it just came! And here is the result:

The design makes me think of yoga for some reason, so I will probably be using it on my yoga sets and for a shirt design as well. I like it because looking at it from one direction, I see a figure in repose; from another direction, it seems the figure is doing the backstroke in the water... it also reminds me of a sleeping figure. In all cases, it is very soothing and serene. I dyed a yard of fabric using Low Water immersion technique, then screened on dishwasher gel with bleach to discharge the dye. What is really nice is that the design from the LWI is still visible within the figures, just lighter. So, tonight I will share my experiment with the other members of our Surface Design group, then see what 'challenge' Melly has in store for next month..... great fun!

It's never too late...

August 23, 2007 - Awhile back, I took a week-long art course at our local community college. Among other things, the teacher introduced us to basic screen-printing, mono-printing, creating and using stamps, discharge dyeing and using soy wax as a resist. I posted some pictures at the end of the class to show a little about what I learned. Meanwhile, I got busy at home and started experimenting with what I had learned... mostly in the areas of screen-printing and soy wax. Here are some samples of what I have accomplished so far:

In this example, I created a screen of the owl, printed a blank shirt, colored the owl with thickened dyes, then waxed over the image. I then used Low Water Immersion to dye the background.















Below is a design where I used a stamp to apply dishwasher gel with bleach to a pre-dyed shirt.









In this example, I traced a design on an undyed shirt, waxed over the design, dyed the background using LWI, washed the shirt, re-soaked in soda ash, then painted the sunburst with thickened dyes.


















Here is another example where I traced a design on an undyed shirt, waxed over, used LWI to dye the background, washed, then painted the image with thickened dyes.






















I feel like I have reached a turning point in my creative life... not the first time this has happened, but it's been awhile! I will post more pictures as I continue my new adventure...

Class pictures

July 21, 2007 - Class is over... I'm very hopeful about using what I have learned. Here are examples of some of the techniques I learned:
1)Decomposition screen print. I pulled several prints off the screen before it began to disolve. Here are the first 4.

2) Flour paste screen that I then overdyed with a light dye wash

3) Detail of the flour paste screen printed on a monoprint. This is the actual print direction - the one above was reversed when I uploaded the picture.

4) Here, I used a piece of fabric I previously dyed using Low Water Immersion to experiment with discharge stamping. Stamping was done with dishwashing gel that has chlorine bleach as an active ingredient. The stamps were created using craft foam and two-sided carpet tape. The designs were drawn onto the foam, cut out and adhered to plexiglass squares.

August 3, 2006 - Time passes... things change. When I entered my last post, I was selling at the local swap meet. Sorry to say it went under late in April... not enough vendors, not enough buyers. But it hasn't stopped me from finding places to sell my tie-dye. I have been to two craft shows since then, and did well. I have one coming up in a couple of weeks, which I haven't sold at before, so we will see how that goes. Meanwhile, I have been experimenting with a technique I haven't used before, and I love the results! It's just hand-stitching the design instead of tying or banding, but it produces a very different result. The dye is applied using low water immersion technique, and the result is a very abstract blend of color and design, as demonstrated by the examples below:

In addition, I am working with some new color combinations for fall, and have had one success that I hope to use again:

This piece has 8 colors: Camel, Rust Orange, Charcoal, Turquoise; for complementary colors, I used Chocolate Brown, Rust Brown, Black, and Periwinkle. I did other pieces using this mix, but the designs did not come out as well. I also want to come up with some color combinations that will include Dark Green and Burgundy for winter. More to come...