Sisters Oregon & A Quilter's Affair

This summer I will once again be teaching at the phenomenal Quilter's Affair conference in Sisters, Oregon. I am so looking forward to it! This event is really well-organized and the week is topped off by the most amazing outdoor quilt show.

This year I'll be teaching two sessions of my workshop, Project Patchwork. I love this class and I get to be Tim Gunn to all of the designers in the room. I issue three challenges throughout the day and participants create 3 small quilts using their favorite techniques. It's a tremendous amount of fun and very inspiring for all!

I'll also be teaching a Nature Printing workshop (with, among other goodies, rubber fishies!) and a nifty Stampmaking for Quilters workshop, plus an intense day I call Outer Limits where you'll learn more than 20 non-traditional ways to finish off the edges of your art quilts. Look Ma, No Binding!

I hope you can join me - the setting is glorious and the entire week is delightful.

Surface Design Fun!

Today the C&T Publishing blog is featuring an easy pattern I designed. It's a simple, graphic tablerunner to showcase fabric that's been painted or stamped (or painted and stamped) or otherwise surface designed. Check it out here!

There are tons of ideas in my Surface Design Essentials book to add surface design to your fabric. It's a super handy book with a lay-flat spiral binding and wipe-off pages for those unexpected Jackson Pollock moments.

Gettin' messy

Today was a rare free day in the studio with nothing more pressing to work on than some 4" squares for a swap for my art group on Thursday evening.

First though, I played with printing on big sheets of white paper. Anyone who knows me knows how "all out" I go when wrapping presents. I love to use beautiful paper, make unique gift tags and add sumptious, funky or unusual ribbons. A special someone has a birthday coming up this week and I couldn't resist making my own wrapping paper this time. I used stamps that I had made and acrylic paint to print designs all over the paper. Delicious! Wouldn't this make a pretty fabric?



That done and drying, I started on the 4" squares. I can't show you how far I've gotten but I can say that I'm using some of the same layering techniques that I used on my bricolages, on fabric this time. Here's my assembly line all set up and ready for the first painting step.



I realized AFTER I had cut all of the fast2fuse squares and ironed on all the little pieces of fabric that I could have ironed a big piece of fabric to a big piece of fast2fuse, painted it and then cut it into 4" squares. Oy.

An intrepid group of about 35 art quilters and fiber artists meets each month and we discuss all sorts of topics of professional interest to artists, we have challenges and creativity prompts, we mount a group exhibit, and we learn from each other and laugh a lot. Over the summer 29 of us have been working on 4" squares to trade with each other. We agreed to keep our work secret until the due date and after everything's swapped on Thursday night we can all reveal the art on our blogs, Facebook and websites. I'm so looking forward to seeing what everyone else has made!

Based on a few of my fellow swappers' blogs (Melanie has help with hers, scroll down to the bottom here) and Facebook status updates (I'm looking at you, Natalya and Vivien, lol!), I'm not the only one working on these today...

Walking on sunshine!

Today was a good day to do some sunprinting in the backyard. I set myself up on a corner of the deck and went to town with acrylic paint and pfd cotton.



The sky was clear, the sun was warm and bright, and the leaf prints were crisp.



Delicious colors and patterns. I chose to make more intense colors this go round, usually I make very washed pale backgrounds. Sun printing is fast, fun, easy and looks spectacular.



I don't like to wear gloves and for this reason especially try extremely hard to avoid any toxic or harmful chemicals - which is why I love to work with acrylics. And almost all of this washed off with a little soap when I was done.



A lovely way to spend the afternoon!

Bricolages

One of the online collage groups that I belong to had been discussing the various terms that describe what we do and the word bricolage came up. I love this word!

Bricolage: [bree-kuh‑lahzh] a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.

I just happened to have three small IKEA shadowbox frames lying around the studio. I buy frames "on spec" when they're pretty and interesing (and inexpensive!) The frame opening is only 5 1/2" square and is about 1 1/4" deep. I've been wanting to work on three-dimensional assemblages (Joseph Cornell's work has inspired me) and layering colors and textures. So, cool new word in hand, I jumped in.



I had scraps of illustration board leftover from making collagraph plates, so I cut those down to fit the frames. I painted layers of washes of paint on the illustration board (and forgot to take a picture) and then tore and glued down pieces from an Italian newspaper.



After the glue was dry, I painted a wash of cream acrylic paint over each board and then stamped designs over everything with more of the same diluted paint.



The cream wash toned everything down and the stamps added visual texture and interest. Next I glued on a few paper mesh squares and strips, and found object papers and letters.



Right now I'm waiting for the paint to dry on the little shelf supports that I cut to fit in each frame. I'll take more pictures when the shelves are attached to the boards and I start auditioning found objects to place on them.

Oh, and a person who makes bricolages is a bricoleur - wouldn't that look great on a business card?

Printmaking + quilting

selva primeval, 2008

I decided to put some of the fabric I printed with gelatin plates to good use so I made a small art quilt. I learned the gelatin-plate printing technique from Rayna Gillman and her new book. The butterfly is block-printed from a stamp I carved. The quilt also incorporates some printed mulberry paper and some found object paper.

I need to schedule time for another printing session, the resulting fabric is so unique and versatile, and the technique was pretty quick and easy.

Teaching in Ohio

I'm back from a teaching gig in Ohio for the North Coast Needlers Quilt Guild in Cleveland. What a nice group of people! Midwesterners really deserve their reputation for friendliness. And luck was on my side - their August meeting is an ice cream social. Life is good.

On Wednesday I taught a class in making Fiber Postcards and Artist Trading Cards. Jean and her daughter Liz were my hosts at the guild and they took great care of me - and had fun in both classes!



Everyone made a few ATCs in the morning and then we switched to postcards after lunch.



What a creative bunch, don't you think?















One of the women in class is really into bee imagery and knew that I was too. She wore this fantastic pin to class and of course, I had to take a picture of it. Now I need to track down the artist if I can - really, the combination of insect and typewriter key is perfect. If anyone knows who made this, drop me a note please.



Yesterday I taught a Nature Printing workshop. We started off with sunprinting and we had a beautiful day despite a few sprinkles in the morning and predictions of thunderstorms.





After lunch we printed vegetables, fruit and lots of leaves. The lady's mantle leaves were gorgeous and the Japanese maples and ferns made such delicate prints. And lastly, we printed fish! My favorite!! We were really into the whole Zen aspect of printing when we got to the fish. Ohm.





It was a great couple of days with enthusiastic, creative women. Now I'll be home for a while working on new projects. Yay, studio time!

Nature Printing

Yesterday I taught a Nature Printing class at the Country Quilter. I totally forgot to take out my camera when we got to the fish printing (gyotaku). I got distracted because that's my favorite part!

We sunprinted with transparent paints using sea salt and masks and scrunching and folding and flinging (technical term for going all Jackson Pollock). The weather was glorious -- perfect for getting good, crisp prints.



We also printed leaves and ferns and then moved on to produce (fruits and veggies). The orange, apple and lemon prints came out particularly well.





I'll be teaching the same workshop in Ohio next week for a guild near Cleveland. I'll try to remember to take pictures of the fish printing this time.

Rayna and the Gelatin Printing adventure

Our shop hosted a workshop by Rayna Gillman on Thursday and I decided to play and take the class as well. Although I've done a lot of printmaking techniques over the years, I've never done gelatin plate printing. What fun!

Rayna demonstrated a few things and gave us a bunch of pointers and then set us lose. She provided enough instruction to make you feel comfortable and then encouraged you to try and experiment on your own. This really ensures that everyone makes fabric unique to themselves and you don't end up with a classroom's worth of Rayna-lookalike fabric. In my opinion this is the hallmark of a good teacher.



I decided to experiment with visual texture in monotones and low color contrasts (quel surprise!)

I used leaves from the gardens around the shop, stamps I had made and a multitude of found objects for adding and removing paint from the plates. Yeah, I need to do more of this.







Later Rayna showed us some of her "going back in" techniques of paintstik rubbings, writing and mark-making with paint in a syringe and a few other tips and tricks to bring cohesiveness to a piece of art cloth.



Vivien sat behind me in class and we had a great time comparing and contrasting our work areas and processes. In fact, we were having such a great time I made her laugh so hard she snorted. She's pretty genteel, so it really cracked both of us up. It was a good day and I would recommend a workshop with Rayna (or the purchase of her book, or both) - I know I'm going to keep experimenting with gelatin plate printing on my own as soon as I have time.

Sometimes as an artist it's easy to fall into a rut, working the way you've always worked, because it works for you. Trying something new can really shake things up and give you new directions to explore in your art. I think we can all benefit from exposure to new methods and a general shaking out of the dust from our ways of thinking and doing on occasion.

Painting assistance

Last night I was helping my daughter make a flag to mark a camp for her and a bunch of her friends at a huge outdoor concert that starts today. She picked Hypnotoad as their mascot and we painted him on a piece of canvas and mounted it on a tall stick. They're heading off to Gathering of the Vibes with 25,000 other crazy people where they'll camp on the beach, listen to the bands, check out the art, and be young and free.

I had a special assistant help me paint my section of the banner. She made sure I did a good job! Painting with a puppy on your lap makes things just a tad more challenging.



Here's hoping for good weather!

Art Cloth Workshop - 4th day/4th & final layer

Today's layer consisted of glitter, glitz and glimmer. The subtle (or not so subtle) addition of metallic hand-painted accents can really "finish" a piece of cloth. We used Pebeo gold and silver glitter finishes and Setacolor shimmers in a variety of metallic colors. There was also the option of adding text using two different methods. One involved inkjet printouts and gel medium, and the other used adhesive foam letters and cardboard to create rubbing plates. Shiva Paintstiks gently dragged across these text plates provided colorful words.

Susan chose evocative words to add to these two pieces of fabric.


Lisa combined text and glitter highlights in some of her work.


Melanie added sparkly accents to both of these pieces and used leaves for Paintstik rubbings.


Alice created two stamps last time and enhanced both freehand with metallic paint this week.