And while we're talking about exciting stuff, I was so excited by the work of Carolyn Cabena, the speaker at the ATASDA NSW Branch meeting yesterday. Carolyn is a life member of ATASDA, having joined way back when it was the Batik Association, and it was fascinating to see slides of her work over many years. She's worked with batik (of course), screen printing, shibori dyeing and resist discharges, devore, pleating - and her work is just fabulous! You can read about her here (she's also involved in Craft Australia) and see a tiny example of her work here . Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have a web page or gallery, apart from what is on display through Craft Australia, so you might need to go to the Gallery, 104 George Street
The Rocks Sydney 2000 to see her work in person. It's really inspired me, although I paint fabric rather than dyeing it, to return to my screen printing beginnings.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
Sun printing
Darn, I forgot to mention that the Fibrecircle group finally found some sun for sun printing, fortnight ago. Check out my sun prints here plus the others' immediately afterwards.
I have decided I love sun printing! It has so many possibilities for adding texture and laying. Make sure you look at Prue's pieces, which were done partly under glass, which gives a very interesting effect. And Carol's very tidy samples of different approaches (my samples are never that organised!) give a great idea of what you can achieve right from the start.
I have decided I love sun printing! It has so many possibilities for adding texture and laying. Make sure you look at Prue's pieces, which were done partly under glass, which gives a very interesting effect. And Carol's very tidy samples of different approaches (my samples are never that organised!) give a great idea of what you can achieve right from the start.
Time for an update
Remember that paint rag I talked about here? And a couple of other times - look under Flowerpot. I've done some more painting on it a few times since it last appeared here, and it's fast approaching the time when I'm ready to add some stitch. You may know I'm a bit obsessive about process, and I record the growth of pretty much anything I make (bigger than an ATC!). So it occurred to me to go back and look at how things started. I got a huge surprise, and I think you might too. Here's the very first, from April 2007, and the most recent (last week) photos.
I'm pretty sure photo 1 might have already had some deliberate painting on it by the time I photographed it. I'd already roughed in the pot shape and added the splodgy background for the brick wall. I'm more rigorous now about photographing likely paint rags at the beginning, but this was the very first one that I ever decided to make into a specific work, instead of just being used when I needed a certain colour fabric. From my notes, the original had the coloured splodges, when I'd wiped my brushes, and a pale apricot background, when I'd used it to clean off a palette.
Where now? I think it needs a lot more greenery, so that will probably happen next time I have the paints out. And I need to add some more shadows to some of the flowers, and maybe add a touch of orange-pink to the yellow roses.
(Sorry to those people who liked the pot left undefined. I let it sit for a long time but I just didn't like it. Guess you'll have to paint your own now! See how easy it is?)
I'm pretty sure photo 1 might have already had some deliberate painting on it by the time I photographed it. I'd already roughed in the pot shape and added the splodgy background for the brick wall. I'm more rigorous now about photographing likely paint rags at the beginning, but this was the very first one that I ever decided to make into a specific work, instead of just being used when I needed a certain colour fabric. From my notes, the original had the coloured splodges, when I'd wiped my brushes, and a pale apricot background, when I'd used it to clean off a palette.
Where now? I think it needs a lot more greenery, so that will probably happen next time I have the paints out. And I need to add some more shadows to some of the flowers, and maybe add a touch of orange-pink to the yellow roses.
(Sorry to those people who liked the pot left undefined. I let it sit for a long time but I just didn't like it. Guess you'll have to paint your own now! See how easy it is?)
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Finished something!
Oh I love it when that happens!
Today I finished the bag I started back in the middle of 2007. I thought I had mentioned it here but it seems I was slack about that. It's a little bit like this one here because it was made from fabric I quilted. But it's different, because it's a design I drafted myself, incorporating all the things I have loved in those handbags that are now gone to The Great Handbag Shop in the sky. I love having a flat outside pocket you can slip a shopping list or a bill into. I love having an outside and an inside zipper compartment for those things you really must not lose. I love a bag that takes a sketchbook easily, with room for some drawing pencils or even a pack of watercolour pencils. I love bags with cute little pockets for my wallet and my keys and my phone, so I can always find things. I love bags with double zippers, so I can open them either way.I love bags with long enough straps to carry comfortably over my shoulder and under my arm, to deter people who might want to take my beautiful bag home with them. And now I have one with all these things!
And another view:
I want a whole family of these bags, in every colour of the rainbow, so I can swap handbags without a fuss, and everything I carry will have a place of its own. Stay tuned!
Today I finished the bag I started back in the middle of 2007. I thought I had mentioned it here but it seems I was slack about that. It's a little bit like this one here because it was made from fabric I quilted. But it's different, because it's a design I drafted myself, incorporating all the things I have loved in those handbags that are now gone to The Great Handbag Shop in the sky. I love having a flat outside pocket you can slip a shopping list or a bill into. I love having an outside and an inside zipper compartment for those things you really must not lose. I love a bag that takes a sketchbook easily, with room for some drawing pencils or even a pack of watercolour pencils. I love bags with cute little pockets for my wallet and my keys and my phone, so I can always find things. I love bags with double zippers, so I can open them either way.I love bags with long enough straps to carry comfortably over my shoulder and under my arm, to deter people who might want to take my beautiful bag home with them. And now I have one with all these things!
And another view:
I want a whole family of these bags, in every colour of the rainbow, so I can swap handbags without a fuss, and everything I carry will have a place of its own. Stay tuned!
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Fimo stamp Part 2
Finally got to try out my Fimo stamp yesterday. I started out with my luscious Lumiere, which, let's face it, makes pretty much anything look good! First I stamped:
Well, that's kinda OK. Bit less clear than I'd hoped.
Then I put the paint on with the roller, laid the stamp down and then the fabric over the top and rubbed gently. Kind of reverse stamping.
That's much better! (It usually is).
Then I tried using it like a texture plate and taking a rubbing with my delicious metallic oil pastels.
Well, the white background is pretty boring but imagine this shiny metallic on a coloured background or on black! The pastels give a great effect - soft like soft pastels or textile crayons but shiny. OK, so I'm a sucker for a bit of sparkle.
So overall, I declare the technique a success. If you want simple shapes you can reproduce over and over, and you aren't confident of your carving skills, this is the way to go, because it isn't any harder than moulding with plasticine. Of course, you have to wait half an hour for it to bake, so if you're an instant gratification person and you want to stamp with the damn thing NOW, it's maybe not so good.
Since I had them there for no particular purpose, I also decided to try stamping with the faces from the commercial mould.
These are done with the reverse method, stamp then fabric, and one of them would be much better if I'd remembered to wipe my fingers between stamps, but they actually look quite good too, better than I'd expected.
I wondered to myself how you could actually use them and started playing around with green Setacolor opaque paints - well, with blue and yellow and black, to be precise. I stamped a few faces onto a piece of cloth, and then overstamped with eucalyptus leaves, by painting the leaves and pressing them down, and then finished off with a commercial leaf stencil I've had for a gazillion years (I think you were meant to use it to stencil cute designs around your bathroom walls, yes, it's that old!). As I went, I added little bits of yellow and black to the original green to vary the colour a little. And it looked like this:
A little bit cutesy, but I'm thinking with a background wash to take out the white, and some appliqued leaves and texture and some stitch, maybe it would be more than OK? If not, it could always become ATCs, which might look quite interesting with little bits of faces peering out of leaves.
What I also got from the exercise was this:
I like it! It's what you get when you lay your leaves on a piece of fabric to run the paint roller over them, to cover them with paint for stamping. I added some more of those ancient leaf stencils at the end. I also got two face moulds that look like this:
Cool, huh? I just wiped off the excess paint instead of washing them.
Well, that's kinda OK. Bit less clear than I'd hoped.Then I put the paint on with the roller, laid the stamp down and then the fabric over the top and rubbed gently. Kind of reverse stamping.
That's much better! (It usually is).Then I tried using it like a texture plate and taking a rubbing with my delicious metallic oil pastels.
Well, the white background is pretty boring but imagine this shiny metallic on a coloured background or on black! The pastels give a great effect - soft like soft pastels or textile crayons but shiny. OK, so I'm a sucker for a bit of sparkle.So overall, I declare the technique a success. If you want simple shapes you can reproduce over and over, and you aren't confident of your carving skills, this is the way to go, because it isn't any harder than moulding with plasticine. Of course, you have to wait half an hour for it to bake, so if you're an instant gratification person and you want to stamp with the damn thing NOW, it's maybe not so good.
Since I had them there for no particular purpose, I also decided to try stamping with the faces from the commercial mould.
These are done with the reverse method, stamp then fabric, and one of them would be much better if I'd remembered to wipe my fingers between stamps, but they actually look quite good too, better than I'd expected. I wondered to myself how you could actually use them and started playing around with green Setacolor opaque paints - well, with blue and yellow and black, to be precise. I stamped a few faces onto a piece of cloth, and then overstamped with eucalyptus leaves, by painting the leaves and pressing them down, and then finished off with a commercial leaf stencil I've had for a gazillion years (I think you were meant to use it to stencil cute designs around your bathroom walls, yes, it's that old!). As I went, I added little bits of yellow and black to the original green to vary the colour a little. And it looked like this:
A little bit cutesy, but I'm thinking with a background wash to take out the white, and some appliqued leaves and texture and some stitch, maybe it would be more than OK? If not, it could always become ATCs, which might look quite interesting with little bits of faces peering out of leaves.What I also got from the exercise was this:
I like it! It's what you get when you lay your leaves on a piece of fabric to run the paint roller over them, to cover them with paint for stamping. I added some more of those ancient leaf stencils at the end. I also got two face moulds that look like this:
Cool, huh? I just wiped off the excess paint instead of washing them.
Saturday, 14 February 2009
The sashing looks like this:
Now, unless I change my mind and do something different, you won't see it again until it's a quilt top!
Friday, 13 February 2009
Playing with Fimo
Anyone who comes here often will know that I'm always interested in different ways to make marks on fabric. I'm especially interested in stamping. So I wondered to myself, how hard would it be to make original stamps for textile work from Fimo? You know the stuff, like plasticine that you bake in the oven so it goes hard? It's a variety of polymer clay, made by EberhardFaber - the other main brand is Sculpey.
So last Fibrecircle day, in the absence of any sun for sunprinting,I thought I'd have a try. The answer is that it's incredibly easy to make a small stamp. I made this:
The stamp is on the left, the ones on the right are from my friend Carol's mould that she happened to have with her and I'll probably paint them for use in some piece of art sometime.
I didn't worry about putting the clay through a pasta machine or anything sophisticated like that. I smooshed it flat with my hands, and marked out the design freehand with one of the plastic clay-working tools from my $2.99 set. Then I just scraped away the parts I didn't want to print and smoothed out the ridges so that they were reasonably level (by eye). Of course, it was really easy to work, much easier than carving, but I'm not sure I could make a large design this way. Then I baked the piece in my friend Prue's polymer clay oven, about a half hour at 130degC, basically until it was fairly hard. I'll show you how it works as a stamp, next time I have the fabric paints out.
My try at sunprinting is over on the Fibrecircle blog.
So last Fibrecircle day, in the absence of any sun for sunprinting,I thought I'd have a try. The answer is that it's incredibly easy to make a small stamp. I made this:
The stamp is on the left, the ones on the right are from my friend Carol's mould that she happened to have with her and I'll probably paint them for use in some piece of art sometime. I didn't worry about putting the clay through a pasta machine or anything sophisticated like that. I smooshed it flat with my hands, and marked out the design freehand with one of the plastic clay-working tools from my $2.99 set. Then I just scraped away the parts I didn't want to print and smoothed out the ridges so that they were reasonably level (by eye). Of course, it was really easy to work, much easier than carving, but I'm not sure I could make a large design this way. Then I baked the piece in my friend Prue's polymer clay oven, about a half hour at 130degC, basically until it was fairly hard. I'll show you how it works as a stamp, next time I have the fabric paints out.
My try at sunprinting is over on the Fibrecircle blog.