Printed Fabric Bee - Insects theme

I am the "Queen Bee" for the month of August of the Printed Fabric Bee group. That means that I got to choose the theme and the size for the fabric this month. Naturally, I chose insects as my theme.

Each of the Printed Fabric Bee members have made a 6" square fabric for me to giveaway to a lucky reader. If you would like to win these lovely fabrics, please leave a comment on this blog post, or on the Printed Fabric Bee blog before August 15 for a chance to win. Buzz on over!

Check out a sampling of the creative fabrics made by the members in this month's collage.

The guidelines to go along with my insect theme this month were an artist's choice of colors, with a touch of black. For my own fabric, I started by painting a solid white fabric with a wash of diluted Liquitex ink, then printed the hexagonal shapes on top with a yellow ochre Neopaque acrylic paint, and finally added the bees with another block print and a black Neopaque acrylic paint. Bees are among my favorite insects for their industriousness, their strong community, and the beauty in the function of their honeycombs. What is your favorite insect and why?

Check out the other Bee member's blogs for insights into their favorite insects too!

Carol R. Eaton
Jackie Lams
Lynda Heines
Gerrie Congdon
Susan Purney Mark
Deborah Boschert
Jane Davila
Lisa Chin
Lynn Krawczyk
Leslie Jenison
Judy Gula 
Julie B. Booth

New "Vintage" fabric for the Printed Fabric Bee

June's theme for the Printed Fabric Bee is "Vintage". I created a piece of fabric by hand painting a background with acrylic ink. Then I added a stencil that I had cut with a slightly irregular striped pattern. I sprayed through the stencil with an ochre pearlescent acrylic ink.

And finally I used a classic, and actually vintage from the 1970s, number stencil and a pewter metallic acrylic spray ink for the top layer of surface design.

You can leave a comment on Lynn's blog or on the Printed Fabric Bee's Facebook page by July 10 for a chance to win a set of 6" squares from each of the Bee members.

Printed Fabric Bee's December Challenge - Old World Maps

The theme for December on the Printed Fabric Bee is Old World Maps, as chosen by Lisa Chin. I have to admit that this one was harder than I anticipated, partly because I didn't have the correct supplies at hand, and partly because I made the mistake at looking at some of the artists' fabrics before I tackled my own and I was really conscious of not repeating motifs.

I started with an antique street map, from the 1600s of somewhere in Europe. I painted a white fabric with a mixture of Liquitex acrylic inks (my favorites!). I traced some of the lines of the map onto my fabric with a black Micron Pigma pen.

I folded the fabric to represent the ways you would repeatedly fold a map over time and brushed the creases with a Distress Ink Pad.

Then I stamped the ordinals in one corner (or in the case of the giveaway square, just the N for North). The result is subtle and references the Old World Map inspiration without being literal.

If you'd like to a chance to win the set of squares by each of the Printed Fabric Bee artists, head either here or here to enter. My image isn't on the collage above because I was late getting it in, but as you can see, I wasn't the only one a bit stuck on this theme. What would you create for Old World Maps?

The Printed Fabric Bee - October's Science Fabric

I think I forgot to tell you that I was invited to join the Printed Fabric Bee earlier this fall. If you aren't familiar with this dynamic group, check out their (our!) blog for all the deets.

The first fabric I made was due the end of October and the theme was Science. Fun, but a little challenging until I decided to USE science instead of depicting science when making my fabric!

I decided to try a new product that I've only played with a few times before. It's called SolarFast from Jacquard and it is a water-based dye that reacts with UV light to "develop" based on what masks you place on the surface of your fabric.

The dye paints on in one color and the exposed areas develop into a different color.

I painted the first fabric with a combination of the pink and orange SolarFast dyes. For masks I used some of my smallest rubber gyotaku fish. The more opaque an object is, the more contract there will be from the masked to the unmasked areas. 

I set the wet fabric in front of one of my studio windows and sat back to watch it.

Less than 5 minutes later you could definitely see some developing of color going on. Because the light was from a sharp angle, I noticed that the shadows the fish were casting was developing at a different rate than the uncovered fabric.

15 minutes total had passed by this point and the process was complete.

I removed the fish and decided that the contrast was a little TOO stark for me so I left it in the sun for another 3-4 minutes so the covered areas would have a chance to develop slightly.

After those few minutes I ran to the sink to rinse out the rest of the dye to stop the process as I quite liked how it looked at this point.

The completed, rinsed and pressed fabric! That was a blast - I definitely need to play with this more. The fabric is just as soft as it was before I started the project. It took about 30 minutes from beginning (opening the bottles and cutting a square of fabric) to end (the final press and squaring up).

Here is a collage of images from the other Printed Fabric Bee members and whaT their Science fabrics look like.

Have you tried Jacquard's SolarFast yet? What do you think?