has currently taken over my life. I have had oodles of website updates to do plus catching up with the conference registration. I just got word that I will receive a boatload of images and text for the many exhibitions that will be in and around Kansas City — all to be added to the website, soon. I haven’t even done my normal weekly website maintenance which I will do next.

A year ago, I took part in an art cloth challenge with 12 other artists chosen by Jane Dunnewold. Now, that I have seen the results of the work, I wonder what in the world I was doing in that group. You can see the beautiful fabric done by the other 11 at a blog set up by Jane, Art Cloth Challenge.

When I sent my fabric off, I was very happy with it, but now that I see what the others did, I think I was too timid in my approach. I thought I would share my fabric and some of my processes. All of the photos are clickable.

Here is the original fabric (silk habotai):

I shibori dyed it with strong orange:

I made a screen using masking tape. Here is where my plan fell apart. The design I made was too stiff. I should have used torn paper and had a softer, more organic print. I first discharged and then over printed with metallic paint.

I then did some printing with vinyl mesh and bubble wrap.

My next thing was to do some repetition of the circles but on a larger scale so I made a thermofax screen of hand drawn circles and printed those.

For the final printing, I wanted to fill in the areas around the linear shapes, but wanted a calmer, receding pattern. I decided to stay with the bubble wrap printing. This time, I used blue and a bit of metallic turquoise.

Here is a detail:

So, there you have it. My first venture into the art cloth arena. Working on 2 yards of someone else’s silk was very daunting. I do hope you will go check out the blog and see the amazing work done by the other women.

Back to work.