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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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Fabric stacks

As I “spring clean” the studio, I enjoyed seeing my stack of fabric from the fabric printing exchange earlier this year. Wanted to share these fun prints with you. How to use them? I have an idea for a bag that some might be a good addition to, I’m working on a table runner using some of my fabrics, and these could be an excellent addition, or ……… the ideas just keep coming.

from my fabric exchange partners – what fun!

Take a look below, and you can tell these are right up my alley! Or, take a look at the previous post and realize that maybe I could have used several in the quilt I’m working on. Here are the fabrics that came in the mail (and from our new fabric store in Ann Arbor) as possibilities for Taylor’s quilt (or maybe my stash).

just arrived in the mail except the elephants that came from Pink Castle in Ann Arbor
(yeah! a new fabric store in town pinkcastlefabrics.com)

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Fabric love

Kelsey and Taylor are having an adventure in Italy this month. As I was packing away Taylor’s fabric to make room in the studio for a few of my projects I fell in love all over again with the fabrics she has collected for a bed quilt. The fabrics we’ve been laying out for her quilt are fun, but the fabrics which aren’t finding their way into the quilt are also just happy fabrics … I particularly love the grays in the “no” pile.

currently favored for a quilt for Taylor’s bed

out of favor for Taylor’s bed quilt

out of favor for Taylor’s bed quilt

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Do art every day

Sara Groves wrote a song that I love called “Add to the beauty” (saragroves.com/lyrics/addtothebeauty/addtothebeauty). Life has been a beautiful kind of crazy with Taylor graduating from high school, I’ve been trying to catch up on gardening before the mosquitoes get too large, and I haven’t found much time for doing art. I love Sara’s song’s message wanting to “add to the beauty. Tell a better story.” We each have the opportunity to do that in every moment of our lives.

I’m hoping to turn pieces of this fabric into thank yous for the people who have walked with Taylor through the years to her high school graduation. She’s been surrounded by wonderful folk who have encouraged her to thrive and bring her own contribution of beauty to this world. If you are one of them, know that you are appreciated. (and that I am really slow at getting cards out)

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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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A little printing

I’m about to dive back in to fabric printing, but I wanted a quick record of my first several prints. I was going for a subtle tone-on-tone effect mostly, but found them mostly too subtle.

The circles with yellow splashes was probably my favorite – the yellow splashes help keep it unstructured.
 
   … the other’s need work. Going for a little more structured printing today!

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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.
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Fabric joy

Two fabric packages today! First order from Marmalade, what a lovely package and note from Tammy. The fabrics are awesome, some to go to Kelsey for her Farmer’s Wife quilt, and some to round out a couple of projects I have in mind. Can’t wait to get started!