Monday, August 17, 2015

FIBER JUNKIES - AUG. - PART 2

As I mentioned in my previous post....I came quite unprepared for our spray painting day.....
..........here you can see a loosely woven cotton that simply would not accept the paint.  OH ya......now I remember....I've used this fabric in the past.  For fabric dyeing of course it was scoured before use, as it had some sort of finish on it.....but I never gave that a thought for this technique.  Therefore, after all the lightly sprayed paint rolled off the fabric.....I picked up the darn thing and just wiped up the paint off the plastic.  Lovely, yes?!?
So instead, I decided not to thin the paint very much....and using some plastic cups and the pad of one finger.....circles were stamped onto the fabric....where they stayed!  Gen had this wonderful little circle stencil (right - just above the spray bottle)  We ALL loved it.  Getting very close to the fabric I sprayed through it.......
.......then turned it over and pressed the excess paint from the other side onto the fabric.  That stayed too....both on the fabric and my hands.  Oops....forgot to wear gloves!
After spraying through more resists and more stamping....I'm calling it done.  
Show and Tell was very exciting this month.  Kate and Denny had taken a weekend long paper collage workshop in the Greenville, SC area where they both live.  Here's Kate's true masterpiece.  This is all torn and layered paper....I wish I'd have gotten a good close up so you could see some of the VERY tiny pieces of paper she used to get such good depth and color.
Several members attended a vat dyeing workshop, unfortunately, I was out of town and missed the fun.  Vat dyeing is a method of dyeing fabric using a dye that won't discharge.  This silk scarf is Kate's project.
They began the workshop by stamping the dye on pieces of plain black fabric....then discharging the fabric.....  The entire process is quite involved and honestly, I didn't absorb all the steps they mentioned.....but I thought I'd throw the phrase 'vat' dyeing out there to see if anyone else has been playing with this method.
This is Judy's finished scarf......I'm flattered that she used one of the stencil designs (this one is cattails) that I created for Quilting Creations....and featured in my book "The Whole Cloth Garment Stori".
Denny, the queen of experimenting in our group, used a rayon scarf, rather than silk....her results were super too.  Though she had to overdye it since the vat dye process did not transfer to the back side.
Val dazzled us with several screen printed pieces.  She made the background during our July FJ meeting and used some of her large collection of tree screens to print the images.  Fabulous!!!
More fabulous!
Gen has been playing with paper lately too.  Her artistic talent is always evident and equally so here with this paper journal she's been creating.
An example of another page.....

That wraps up the Aug. Fiber Junkies report.  We hope to have one last messy outside experiment day next month before fall and winter sets in.......but we don't lack ideas for indoor experiments either.  Do grab some pals and have your own play date sometime soon.....

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