Starting a New Piece

The provisional working title for this is Shy Beast, he is on the pale blue background. All of these fabrics were created in one session using the marbling technique taught by Susan Purney Mark. Have been mulling ideas over for a while and had him up on my wall so I could think about what needs to happen. Even pressing the fabrics to start auditioning and scanning helped me come up with more ideas of how to do this piece, which I want to keep to fairly small dimensions. Although the beast is 12 by 7 inches and there has to be significant surroundings or he won't look shy!

I have auditioned other fabric, both my own altered/hand dyed and some commercial, but at this point I feel the fabrics shown here are going to be the main parts. Plus scanning is time consuming and less fun than designing!

Marbled Madness

Hard to believe this was a first attempt using shaving foam and Dy-Na-Flow. So often the very first attempt at a new technique is fine to keep in the sketchbook but not something you can really feel proud of.

Susan Purney Mark gave the workshop and I was delighted with most of what I produced. It's fast and I quickly got into a rhythm of primping the foam, laying down the fabric, smoothing it out, lifting it up, scraping off the excess foam, and laying my finished piece to dry. By the end of the afternoon I was like a kid at the beach, exhausted but begging to do "just one more, PLEEZE PLEEZE!"

Apart from the ease of the technique, the other great thing is that it is truly not messy. In fact I have had another session at home using my Jacquard Setasilk colors, and there were no splashes on the rug or the walls.

and since inquiring minds want to know ...

this past week I worked for 33-1/2 hours
the previous week, 39-3/4 hours (this counts attendance at the Victoria Sewing Show)

Deconstructed Paisley

Although I've collected paisley fabs and often used them in quilts, I found I was somehow bored with some that have been in the collection for a long time, and they were among the fabrics I donated before my move, and traded at Fabric Traders in Sidney.

However right before the silk screening class with Susan Purney Mark, I bought a shower curtain with giant paisleys on it. I'm only sorry I had someone else do the hard labour of climbing up and hanging it before it occurred to me to pop it on the scanner.

I was particularly interested in the way several motifs meet, and based on that sketch I made this screen and printed it on pole-wrapped shibori from Susan's Colour Seduction workshop back in October. Of course this is the NEGATIVE space between the paisleys.

THOUGHT: Has anyone ever made a fabric really exploiting this? Wish I had signed up for Lily Kerns' QuiltU class on using PhotoShop on fabric. Oh well, (1) we don't have PhotoShop and (2) I am starting Filament Fantasy on Friday and that will keep me out of the bingo halls (as if!) and probably make more of a difference to my work.


And speaking of work, my hours are as follows:
through Jan 25: 33 hours
Feb 1: 34 hours
Feb 8: 28 hours
Feb 15: 37 hours
Feb 22: 40 hours

Neat gizmo

Susan Purney Mark told us about this at the silk
screening workshop, as a possible way to generate
images for t-shirts, et cetera. 

To try creating your own, just go to
www.wordle.net and type (or paste!) away to your
heart's content.

This is a family recipe for lemon pie which almost
got lost in the upheaval of moving and the demise
of my old PC ~ I thought I had backed up my recipe
file which dated back to 1986 and had been
migrated through every PC I ever owned, but I was
mistaken.  The only reason I had this recipe was
because I had played around with fonts to
incorporate it into a collage.

Screenprinting Workshop

Yesterday I took Susan Purney Mark's silk screening workshop at Satin Moon.

This was fascinating and a good start.

Things that surprised me:

How much paint it takes!

And that it takes longer than I expected it to.

In fairness I suspect that with practice and planning things would go faster. We had a lot of fun playing around and experimenting.

The photo above shows a piece of pole wrapped shibori (made in Susan's Colour Seduction workshop in the fall) screen printed with a repeated motif inspired by the negative spaces in large paisley patterns.