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Forms of Lent

This year for the season of Lent, I’m choosing to fast from the inclination to always be doing something useful (even when sewing), and feasting into moments of being creative just because God created me to create. Last year my daughter Kelsey and I created space for creativity and sewed a new 12″ quilt each week, see Kelsey’s Twelves and my Lenten Twelves.  This year more family members are joining in, with photography and 3D modeling in the mix.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I might do when Lent started on Ash Wednesday. However, I’m really trying to create just for fun. So, I pulled a set of fabrics I liked from my collection of hand dyed and printed fabrics. I needed more low volume fabrics and fabrics with bigger patterns, so I mixed up dye and started in. The fabric on the right with the subtle khaki brush pattern is from the first set of printing.

  
Second layer of flour resist dyeing is on the printing table right now, can’t wait to see them tomorrow!
  
The design wall has seen multiple layouts in progress …..
I’m hoping to play with design scale, layering, and color removal. The yellow circle and subtle circle on the burgundy are from color removal. I’m working on removing more color from the burgundy. 
I decided to work with 16″ squares this time; not sure how many I’ll finish, but I’m having fun with the printing, sewing, and overprinting. I’m thinking that next I might play with layers of resist on pieced squares.

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fifteens

After finishing the Lenten twelves series of 12″ quilts, I decided I wanted to switch up the palette and work a little bigger, so I’m trying 15″ squares. Going bold, here is the fabric stack!

15s fabric stack
I’ve been printing fabric and these fabrics include the new set of colors I’ve been focussing on, golds, turquoise, steel blues, burgundy, burnt sienna, with pops of purple for fun.
Spring 2015 fabric printing
Moving to the design wall, I began to try out combinations but the process slowed down considerably!

 Here is the first I decided to start quilting, auditioning thread for the free-motion quilting I’m hoping to do. Then the weather got nice, and I have not been doing much sewing (but my beans are 6′ tall and flowering!).

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handprinted fabric swap finale

Sorry this has taken so long – Holy Week/Easter/Spring Break came hard upon the heels of my finished fabric. I had a great time creating fabric for the fabric swap that Kelsey encouraged me to join. I counted, I have 8 yards of dyed and/or printed fabric to add to my stash. Yeah! I liked my fabric rubbings better than my screen printing, so I picked my favorites to send, and also included a sample of my screen printing which turned out rather subtle gray and white/light blue and felt like it maybe wasn’t quite done. Watching the progress of the swap gave me the courage to keep trying.
I received a really fun set of fabric from my swap group. You rock! I loved the background/print color pairings. Karen posted a fun picture of her collection – great idea. I will try it tomorrow when there is a little more sunshine.

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Screen printing

Saturday morning I dove into screen printing with some help from my daughter Taylor. I used painting on fabric interfacing to create the screen (in “Screen Printing: Layering textiles with colour, texture & imagery” by Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan). I painted the screen using the pretty yellow sample from Taylor’s walls.

creating the screen

screen printing in progress

This kind of screen took a while to saturate with print paste, but by the end of a sample piece of fabric I had the hang of printing the design. Interestingly, I chose an interfacing from my box of scraps that had a regular circular pattern of dots rather than the unstructured diagonal fibers. This meant that with thick print paste the design has tiny specks of non-color! The colors look reasonably bold when wet, but once they dried they were rather quiet.

final results and a work in progress

The final results are even more subtle, and the design seems a little sparse. Taylor was printing with red this morning, so the designs under plastic are a few more tries at different printing patterns.

Still pondering if I want to try a little bit more this afternoon ….

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Rubbing

Decided to experiment with rubbings using dye paste over a foam grid of circular openings and a metal mesh. Tried various combinations of dry fabric/wet fabric and thinner/thicker paste. The circles were a lot of fun. My favorite is the most dramatic mauve/khaki one in the center (I love the grunge look and the thicker paste which gave crisp lines), but I will use the more subtle fabrics, love the caramel versions too. The mesh was harder — rubbing was trickier, and dye paste consistency mattered quite a bit in terms of the final look.

Next up – screen printing with dye paste and/or ink on the ~10 fat quarters I have left. (or if this doesn’t work, I have a few mono-print ideas in mind)

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Dye and more dye

I’ve been dyeing fabric more this week, after my start this weekend. Its been fun, but its also been a journey. The first batch had an undetermined problem with the cobalt blue. Here it is after the next batch of keeping, printing, over-dyeing, and dyeing some more…

AFTER: over-dyeing, printing

I love the revised set – more what I was dreaming for base fabrics. This is my first time printing with print paste (some of those fabrics are still drying) – definitely a work-in-progress. Looking forward to printing more on the weekend. (and grateful that fiber-reactive dyes are so easy to overdye)

BEFORE: Yikes! Not what I had envisioned. Where did the cobalt blue go? Love the coral.
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Getting started is half the battle

I’ve been craving new hand-dyed fabric for a while now, and finally decided to take the plunge and participate in a fabric swap organized by Leslie Keating at maze and vale. What a fun group of people it turns out I get to exchange fabric with. For me, getting started is always the hardest part, so I dug deep for courage, did lots of drawings, put up some works in progress where I wanted more hand printed fabric and started. My first pass was definitely a warm-up. The first print with my paper laminate stencil? Really. It looks like makeup you would put on your face, a typical foundation color. It does. The red circles were okay, and the aqua stamps, hmmm.
I had a quiet house, so this weekend was a fiber retreat for me. I’ve been going back to my favorite, dyeing fabric with fiber reactive dyes, and exploring using print paste to paint with dye. I’ve also been simply enjoying. Definitely a work in progress, but these small tries below have potential; the steel blue circles are casually fun without looking stamped. (play dough cover) I enjoyed trying rubbing with the circles and mesh. Mom is taking a bigger piece of mesh for this weekend. Ended up with about 8 yards of fabric dyed, but the Cobalt blue wasn’t my friend, didn’t set very well so I have light mauves and greens instead of gray. Overdying, here we come. Can’t wait to continue.