Art Cloth Workshop - 3rd day/3rd layer

Today we stamped our fabrics! We made stamps by carving Speedy-cut blocks and by cutting and mounting adhesive fun foam to acrylic squares in various sizes. We talked about developing personal imagery in your work, thinking about the shapes and forms you're drawn to, that recur in your work and why, and consciously adding these to our fabrics.



A couple of Lisa's stamped fabrics really showing the depth of layering she's reached at this point.


A close-up of a fish stamp that Lisa carved.



Two of Susan's fabrics with stamped motifs, both with clear movement in the design.



Melanie's fabric showing all-over repeats of stamped imagery in several colors and shapes each.



Barbara chose to apply stamps very judiciously on these two pieces with fairly low contrast in her color choices, with beautiful results.

There are so many options for this layer, whether you choose to use a vastly different and contrasting color from your background layers for your stamped motifs, whether you choose to have the stamps become a subtle addition to previous layers, whether you choose to use more than one stamp in more than one color, and whether you choose to sparsely or heavily populate your fabric with imagery. Some things to take into consideration, besides the obvious one of the imagery itself, are the scale of the images, the relationship of the images with the forms and colors of previous layers, and how you might see yourself using the completed fabric (as a wholecloth background or cut up).

Next class - the finishing touches!