Art Cloth | Crazy for Fiber

May 2024
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Archive for the ‘Art Cloth’ Category

Will You Have Corn or Potatoes With That?

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I spent the day up at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts taking the workshop, Working with Liquid Resists and Thickened Dyes. Most of the morning was spent going over the usual safety guidelines, recipes for all the stuff we will be mixing up and samples of finished work. Then we selected 4 pieces of fabric to soak in soda ash solution and we each got some time to mix up containers of potato dextrin and corn dextrin.

Here is a photo of the classroom. I love the high padded tables that we have for our work space.

Reva is taking the class, too. We arrived a little late and so I ended up at the back of the room. I am one of those first children that likes to sit near the teacher and be the teacher’s pet. Instead, I am in the back of the room with the bad girls. I am kinda enjoying it.

Here is my goopy work for the day. This is some blue hand-dyed fabric, before and after stamping with corn dextrin. I used two sized of bubble wrap and a round sponge.

This fabric is covered with potato dextrin. I ran a toothed plastic wedge through it on one side. The other side has plain dextrin with thin and thick layers. As it dries, the thin layers will get small cracks and the thicker areas will get bigger cracks.

This piece has masking tape with potato dextrin over it and then it was combed.

And this yellow fabric was stamped with corn dextrose.

These will dry over night and tomorrow, we will paint them with thickened dyes, which will then have to batch in plastic for a couple of days.

Here are some of our tools for making marks.

Reva irresistable today!

I want to thank all of you who responded to my Tasteful Art post. I really appreciate all of your comments. I wanted to hear what others thought about this. Collectively, the comments were very constructive. I was interested in how many of you mentioned the addition of another color to push the design. That was actually a comment from my critique group. One idea was to have different reds in the silk squares, or perhaps a lime green. I may try something like that. I will share my attempts to make it less tasteful!

I love my crit group. I have learned so much from them since we have been meeting together. Sometimes, I get so in my own head that I can’t see the forest for the trees. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this comment, and you all helped me work through it.

Posted in Art Cloth, critiques, Dyeing, Surface Design Techniques, workshop | 2 Comments »

Is It Finished?

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Construction #2

I realized that my problem with this piece was that I had made a beautiful background showcasing some of my complex cloth. But, it lacked something. It just wasn’t finished. You can see the original versions in the preceding post. I was so afraid of putting something on top of the fabric and destroying it. Instead, I have found that I did not cover it up, I enhanced its beauty. I used orange construction fence as a template. I had also used construction fence as a resist when I discharged the fabric in the upper right so I thought the repetition of shapes would work as an element. I really wanted to do a torn paper screen print with black paint, but I was afraid of really messing it up. This seemed safer.

It needs to be blocked. I really stretched it as I did the rework on it. Other than that, is it finished?

I forgot to mention that I was back down a couple of pounds on Wednesday. I am not giving up my attempt to lose another 20 pounds before my 70th birthday. Speaking of age, the recent Sunset magazine had an article about some women who live here in the West who are over 100 years of age and going strong. One of them who lives here in Portland and is 101, still sews for a living, making children’s aprons and wine bags. She delivers to her clients, still driving her car. The article talks about how Westerners live longer than people in other parts of the country. The reasons:

We catch more rays and in small doses, it is good for you.
We are farmer groupies. We graze on fruits, veggies and nuts.
We drink wine – (you betcha)
We love to inhale – physical activity and deep breathing regenerate neurons in our brains.
We enjoy spas – taking in treatments that de-stress.
We take stairs. We climb mountains. One of the centenarians said that she deliberately got an apartment on the second floor so that she would use the stairs.

The bathroom renovation is moving right along. The drywall mud is drying over the week-end. He will be back on Monday for the last coat. Painting and tile work commences next week. Mr C picked up the tile today. We went out to the granite showroom and selected a lovely piece of granite for the counter top of a piece that will be built for my closet. It will be in the entry to the bathroom and the walk-in closet. I also picked up some paint chips. They are all so yummy with the tile mosaic, I am not sure which to choose. Steph and Jack will come over tomorrow and help me.

Posted in Art Cloth, Bathroom Renovation, Construction series, My creations, weight loss/gain | 8 Comments »

Re-construction

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Here is one of my construction pieces. It has been bothering me. I used some of my art cloth. I love each of these pieces, but I think that I saw these fabrics as too dear and ended up with a piece that does not have enough value change and no focal point.

So, I rotated it and added a new piece of green at the top. This will make it easier to hang and gives it some balance.

I also painted the green sections to darken them and give them more character.

Remember the construction fence on the black fabric in my last post. It has been cut out and applied to this piece. Here is a sneak peak. I am having fits trying to stitch it down. I finally decided to do a wonky zigzag stitch. I am not ready to show the whole piece yet, but I am pretty happy about what has happened. You still see the gorgeous background fabric, but the construction fence gives it some weight and a focal point – sort of ties things together.

An update on the other construction around here — the bathroom. The new plumbing and electrical work was completed last week and early this week. New insulation was put in the ceiling area, and we passed the inspection by the city. This afternoon the drywall arrived and is partially installed. That will be finished tomorrow. The special tile mosaic is done and ready for installation. We are raising the ceiling in the guest room shower and putting in a new shower head. That is in the middle of being done so we have no showers on the main floor. Fortunately, we have a shower in the basement so I guess I will be schlepping down there in the morning.

Posted in Art Cloth, Bathroom Renovation, Construction series, My creations | 4 Comments »

Wednesday Potpourri

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

First, some eye candy. Look at this gorgeous fabric that has been arriving. I am working on a commission piece that will be a collage of vintage Japanese fabrics with reds and yellows as the main color theme.

Next, I just had to share this delightful e-mail that I received through my website contact form. It really made my day!! I disguised her name, but she is from Scotland.

Just found your blog and website whilst trying to find a reason why after 10 years doing a proper job I can’t get my procien dyes beyond the level of wishy washy! I’m not a blogger-haven’t got any idea what its about, but thought this woman thinks a bit like me when I meandered facsinated around your website-I hope I haven’t got completely lost here-I am talking to the lady who has a bottle of pinot gringio in amongst the threads-aren’t I?
Anyway, I’ll work the recipe out, I always work stuff out or remember in the end, I’ll have multi coloured fingers for a while but I’ll get there. I just wanted to e-mail you and say its nice to know that I’m not the only middle aged woman who finds fibre, colour, and cotton wrapped round the vacuum cleaner exciting, in fact more exciting than most things except homeless people, running, chocolate, cats and maybe that other thing that people do when they’ve got time!

Be interesting to hear from you-great site.

Rxxxxx

P.s I’m a lapsed textile designer, batik in particular, but the ex-husband wanted ‘stuff’ and I meekly responded by getting a proper job. I’m now divorced-yeehaa! Liberated and making my way back to my creative soul-and for the first time in over ten years re-discovering textile, colour, design, dyes, cloth, beads and art! What a relief, I thought I’d lost not only passion but even interest forever-but its back!

Fatima, on the other hand, is making our lives a living nightmare. Someone, or some robotic Internet form filler, is using the name Fatima and our phone number to apply for every loan and mortgage available on line. In fact, I got one message that she was pre-approved for a business loan of $270,000. The calls have been coming about once an hour on average for two days. A live person that I talked to says that people often use a fictitious phone number so that they won’t get phone calls. I have taken to answering the phone with, ” Fatima does not live here. Don’t ever call here again!”

On the weight loss front, I lost almost 2 pounds today. I am at a new low weight. I think it is because I gave up cheese for Lent. I can’t wait for Sundays, when I can break my fast and have a little cheese, yum!

The big news is that I finished the Art Cloth. I produced a computer journal of my process with photos — it was burned to a CD and all will be overnighted to San Antonio tomorrow. I am really happy with my final result.

Tomorrow is STASH meeting. We are going to meet at Terry’s new house and get a tour of the estate, then out to lunch. It will be a lovely day. Mr C is taking me out for Lover’s Day tomorrow night. If I am not careful, I will gain the 2 pounds back!

And Liz, if you are reading this, I am so behind on my week 4 homework!!

Happy Heart’s Day to all my blogger friends. I really do love you!

Posted in Art Cloth, Just for Fun, Quilting Purchases, Rant, This and that, weight loss/gain | 4 Comments »

I Love Creating Complex Cloth

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Complex cloth is created by building up layers of surface design on fabric. It requires having a vision of where you are going, but the willingness to go with the flow because surface design is not an exact science — at least the way I do it!!

I must have the art cloth (that I can’t show you) done and shipped to Jane Dunnewold in Texas by Friday. So far I have overdyed, discharged and screen printed two central images – very abstract. I was not thrilled with my results as they were not as crisp as I would have liked. but as I said, there is nothing exact. So I started on my next layer this morning, first practicing on other fabric. I even e-mailed Rayna Gilman in a panic because I was feeling so insecure about printing on the silk. She reminded me that it is a process that you go through and the results will vary. So I forged ahead. I wanted to do some overall printing with found objects, like the vinyl mesh potato bags and bubble wrap. Here is the result on another piece of silk that I had in my stash. This is little blurry. You can see the bubble wrap print, but the mesh is more subtle. The circles are a thermofax screen that I made. I will print those on the art cloth tomorrow. I also want to create an image that I will foil.

So, after doing this sample, I took a deep breath and started working on the large silk piece. Wow, this is addictive. The printing that I did today helped to integrate yesterday’s images and the parts that I didn’t like took on this amorphous and lovely appearance. That is why I love creating complex cloth.

I am falling behind in my homework for Liz’s class. I have skimmed the material that I downloaded this week-end. I think it is going to be lots of fun. Here is the workspace for the class that I have set up in my office next to my computer and scanner. I have to scan my work and post it on the yahoo site.