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Archive for February 27th, 2014

How to Print a Mosaic (or not)

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

mosaic3inch

Lesley Riley is the queen bee of The Printed Fabric Bee this month. She asked for a mosaic theme using yellow/orange, purple and fuchsia.

My original plan was to use potato dextrin spread on fabric to dry and crackle.

potatodextrin

I did this once in a workshop and had some great results.

finishedpotatodextrin

However, I think I did not spread the dextrin thickly enough so I did not get a good crackle. So I went to a backup of making a thermofax screen. My first screen was 4 inches square and since Lesley asked for a 12 x 12 inch finished piece, I could do three across and down. I am really missing the big padded print table that I have had since we moved here. I am working in a much smaller space and since I am a quite messy, I had several blips. So this is the first printing that I did. I used a pale turquoise fabric for the background

mosaic4inch

I dropped a splotch of yellow on the print and had to do a fix so I brushed more yellow, pink and purple across the piece. I kind of liked it. Then, I saw that I had put the fabric down on a splotch of yellow paint on the print table so the back looked very untidy. I had another problem, I needed to do a 6 inch piece for our give away. The four inch screen did not work for that so I made a new 3 inch screen. Here is what I printed. It is a darker turquoise. So, I printed another 12 inch piece using the 3 inch screen. That is up at the top. I think I will send them both to Lesley.

mosaicgiveaway

That reminds me, I just got all of my wonky lines pieces so I should photograph them so you can see what great pieces I got.

On another note, I am not going to get my piece finished for the master class. I was turning into a crazy lady because Mr C decided we would buy a new car this week. I will be driving it quite a bit so I had to be involved. Spending time with car salesmen is an interesting activity. Not one that I enjoy. We ended up buying a new Prius 5 which we will pick up tomorrow. I drove it this morning and really loved it. I picked sea glass pearl for the color.

We have interviewed one estate sale person. A second one is coming tomorrow. When will my life return to a semblance of normalcy, and what will that be like?