Another Cat Step

Today I finished painting the printed cat postcards. Each one is a bit different and will have some more embellishment once they've been quilted.
I did finish one completely today since it has to get in the mail bearing birthday wishes to a dear friend tomorrow.

Making Changes

The art group I belong to, Fibervision, has a challenge this year. We brought tops or quilts that we were not satisfied with, traded them around and then took other people's rejects home to transform them into fabulous works of art. The piece I got was a completed top, layered with batting and a backing and partially quilted. Since I got ahold of it, it has been bleached, painted, had photos glued to it, been cut up, had fabric added to it and sewn back together. It was hard to slice into Mary Norton's nearly completed piece, but I screwed up my courage and did it.

Since we are not to reveal the results until December, I am only posting a detail here. I'm pretty satisfied so far, but there is still time to get carried away or get fabulous.

Two Weeks???

The fabric with the Presist on it was driving me to distraction! How in the world could I wait two weeks for the paint to cure? Well, I couldn't. The instructions for the Presist say that it can withstand heat and steam so I decided to heat set the Setacolor this afternoon. It was pretty obvious to me that the still-tacky Presist might withstand being ironed, but my iron certainly couldn't withstand the Presist. I laid a paper towel over the fabric and here's what happened:

Little bits of paper towel everywhere, but my iron stayed clean. Next I popped the fabric into some lukewarm water and the Presist pretty much dissolved right away. There were a couple of places I had to rub a bit, but not much. I also noticed there was the slightest bit of blue tinge to the water, so perhaps it would have been wise to wait the full two weeks. Nahhh.

So, here's the fabric to this point, I'll be working with it more. Oh, I tried some discharge paste in one corner and it had no effect, so I'll be adding-on, not taking-away.

And a Couple More Pieces of Fabric

This is the last piece of fabric that I worked on Saturday. I applied Presist with a syringe to a plain piece of PFD cotton. This weekend I will paint it red, then wait a couple weeks, remove the Presist and paint it again with yellow. I'm trying to get a piece of deep red orange fabric with yellow markings. I have been thinking about a piece inspired by Buddhist thangkas - not as much detail as many of them have, but my own version.

Now, this piece of fabric was created by Mary Norton. She doesn't like it, she was going to throw it away. I like it, I took it instead. It inspires several surface design ideas for me, most of them better applied once the piece is quilted. I'll try to get at least the quilting done this week.

More Fiddling Around with Fabric

Found some great black cotton sateen at Baron's Fabrics in Camarillo, California. And doesn't great black fabric just beg to have some discharge paste applied? The top photo was stamped with a little plastic lid (in a couple of places I stamped too enthusiastically and you can actually read the word "Dixie"), then I loaded a syringe with the discharge paste and scribbled and made dots. The second piece is a little journal of the day of surface design, again using the syringe loaded with the discharge paste. I found that as I wrote, little bits of fabric fuzz stuck to the tip of the applicator and made the writing blotchier as I went along. In this case, it didn't really matter because I will cut this fabric up when I use it, but it was a useful lesson.

This Is More Like It

Today, my friends, Linda Cassirer and Mary Norton, and I spent a day playing with various techniques and surface design products. We were each working on entirely different projects, but it was great fun to be experimenting in close proximity and be able to benefit from each other's opinions and suggestions as we pursued our own interests.

The first picture is a piece of fabric painted with Pebeo Setacolor to lay down a foundation for using a resist to create texture and depth in fabric painting:

And the next step, once the paint was dry, was to apply some Presist:

And once the Presist was dry, painting again with another color:The Presist is to be removed to let the original colors show through, but since it is removed with water, the paint will cure for two weeks before taking it off. I'll post that step when it happens.

It sure felt good to be flinging color around today!

California Spring

A couple of weeks ago some friends and I spent a day in the Santa Ynez Valley and were dazzled by the luscious green hills and the profusion of wild flowers everywhere. Poppies were even coming up through the cracks in the pavement. Gorgeous day and great fun with good friends. Sorry I don't have any photos to share.

I am participating in the postcard exchange for the Cyber Fyber Exhibition being sponsored by Susan Lenz and was inspired to create my own version of the green hills, the lupine, and the poppies for her. The card is made from commercial fabric stamped with gold metallic ink, stenciled with foil glue then foiled with silver, foil glue randomly applied and foiled with green, and embroidery.

All traded postcards will be displayed at CYBER FYBER, January 8 - 20, 2009 at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia, SC. Check out Susan's blog for all the exchanges, I'm #139.

Visual Journal

Recently I began a class at Santa Barbara City College Continuing Education (commonly referred to around here as Adult Ed) called Creativity and the Imagination: Visual Journaling, with Deborah Wroblewski. We will be creating journals using more than words to capture our experiences. This is a photo of the first page of my journal. The assignment was to create our name page - something to describe ourselves as introduction to our journals. I chose to do a watercolor wash as a background, then used a Sharpie to write about who I am, what I feel, and what I aspire to. I then printed some photos of my quilt "Everyday Quan Yin" - which is about bringing compassion and mercy to daily life - glued them on to the page and then began playing with some materials I am familiar with from surface design on fabric. The silvery splotches are Shiva Artist's Paintstiks and the spirals are glue and foil. They certainly act differently on paper than they do on fabric. This is definitely going to be fun!

PIQF October 2007

At PIQF last month, I took a class with Lyn Worley. The fabric was hand-dyed by Lyn and we created the surface design in the class. This is hand-dyed habotai silk, stamped and free-hand dye discharge, stamped and free-hand gold paint. Don't know what I'll do with it, but right now I am simply enjoying looking at it.