My second pair of socks!

I finished my second pair of socks today. It's cool today so they even felt wonderful to try on,and they fit. Now what shall I attempt next? Blocks #101 thru #105 of my daily stitching project. I've made another mask in the shape of splat so I will have two to work with, I just haven't done it yet. So there will be another splat piece soon.

Daily Stitching Project, 100 done!

Today I stitched block #100 and I was contemplating how fast time has been passing. I started this project on my birthday in March, which feels like a few weeks ago and here I am up to block 100 already! Here are #95 thru #100. I had to play with them all today, so here they are all lined up on my design wall. You can click on the picture to make it larger. My plan is to sew them in rows, nineteen across and nineteen down, with four leftover on the bottom. So these are my first five+ rows. I placing them in the order that I did them in, so upper left is 3/14/12 and last one on the bottom will be 3/13/13. I number them on the back as I finish them. I'm enjoying doing these, some days I'm done in a few minutes and other days it takes about an hour. Occasionally I'll look up a new stitch to try, but most of the time I use one of my old favorites. My favorites being a simple running straight stitch, french knots, buttonhole stitch and couching.

More of splat

The splat piece that I showed in my last post has turned into a piece of fabric to cut up. I had an idea that with some refinement will work on it's own, but I did it over top of what I had already printed and it was not a success. I've included a picture so you can see for yourself. I did use the screen that I left with dye on it on another piece of fabric and am much happier with it. I started with the blue dye and you can see some of the dried resist spots still left on the screen. I then switched to green dye, then yellow dye and finally red dye, the colors are a bit muddy because I didn't clean the screen between dyes. On the red prints you can see that there are no resist spots left, all the dried dye is gone from the screen. I'm going to continue to play with the splat images and see what else I can come up with. There was still some thickened dyes leftover so I used them to dry brush onto another piece of fabric,this one I love. The remainder of my leftover thickened dyes got spread onto a piece of cotton/silk fabric that already had some brush marks on it from fabric paint. It was a piece in my reject bin,now it has some spots that that have promise. I use a viewfinder and move it around the fabric to find the good parts. Those parts will go into some little compositions or fabric postcards. This week is Fiddle Festival week here in Weiser, so I'm busy doing things that I only do once a year, which will probably get in the way of me accomplishing anything in the studio.

Deconstructing splat

When I do deconstructive printing I like to make a mask for my screen so that I don't get a rectangular shape. Since splat is my new favorite I've made a splat shaped mask for my screen. Then the mask is taped to a screen. You can see it above with the dried dark blue thickened dye that I squiggled onto the screen with a syringe. I then mixed up some thickened golden yellow dye and used it to print with. On the right is the first print and on the left is one of the last prints. In the first print the blue dye hasn't gotten completely wet yet and is creating a resist. After several prints have been made the blue dye has been breaking down and no longer resisting the yellow dye. The spots that are left are where the dye dripped thru the screen while it was drying, it's thicker and takes longer to disintegrate. This is one of the prints made about halfway thru the process. This is how I've left the fabric for today. I added some smaller thermofax prints of splat. This is how the screen looked when I finished for today, I'm leaving it this way and may use it again when I come back to do more work on the piece. #89 - #94 of the daily stitching project.

"Ode to Splat" finished

I finished "Splat" on Wednesday - it even has a sleeve and label. I wish that everything I make could happen as easy and as fast as this has. It started when I had some extra thickened blue dye that I decided to use with some of my splat screens. Then a day later I had some leftover red dye, not much but I figured it was enough to use to paint in one of the large blue outlined splats. The following day I mixed up some green and finished it off. From start to finish it took less than a week! I've got several pieces in various stages lying around waiting to be finished, some just need a label, but I can't seem to get them done. Maybe it's time for me to move on , maybe I'm moving out of my circle obsession since most of the unfinished work involves circle pieces. I'm not sure what it is ,but I do know I liked the feeling of really wanting to work on something and get it done. #84 thru #88 of my daily stitching project, there's even a small splat.

Morel mushrooms - as art supplies!

Our friend Bill spent a day hunting for and picking morel mushrooms. He generously shared some of his bounty. As I sliced them up I sacrificed a few of the slices to print with and put them on a paper towel to dry. The rest were sauteed with butter and lots of garlic and were delicious. After dinner I took the four slices I had saved out to Studio B and applied black paint to them so I could use them as a stamp. I stamped both on paper and fabric. This is how they looked when I finished with them. The prints on fabric were cut up into 4" squares to use in my daily stitching pieces. The ones on paper were photocopied and then I selected a few of my favorites and enlarged them to several different sizes. Next step will be to go thru the enlargements to pick the ones that I will use to make some thermofax screens. Then I'll be able to print with morels without actually having any on hand, and when I do have some I won't have to sacrifice any for art. I've been quilting "Ode to splat", doing out line quilting that keeps morphing into a different shape - which I'm really liking. Here are #81 thru #83 of my daily stitching, note the morel print in the center of #82.

Ode to "splat"

Somewhere around five years ago I found a calculator in Staples called "splat". This has been my favorite calculator ever since and to my dismay the battery died several weeks ago. I searched every store in town, even went back to Staples trying to find a battery - no one carried the right one. I got on line and found the correct battery at batterydepot.com. My battery arrived earlier this week, I quickly got it in place and gave "splat" a try and it didn't work. I'd hit clear and 8 would pop up, the second digit was missing parts and I was dismayed. So I decided to do a piece dedicated to "splat", since I had dyes mixed up and was doing some printing anyway, it was pretty easy. Easy because when I first got "splat" I was so enamored of it's shape that I made five thermofax screens and carved a stamp all in that shape. Different sizes, some just outlines and a few a bit more solid. So here is the finished fabric,about 36"x 44"and it is currently layered and ready to quilt.

This close up shows prints from all five of the screens, I didn't use the stamp.

Here is "splat" and all it's offspring.

Today as I got ready to take the picture of "splat" I tried using it just one more time - and it worked!!!!!! YEAH!!!!

Deconstructive printing and more

I printed several extra pieces of fabric last summer when I was working on samples of deconstructive screen printing for Shelly Stokes book Rubbing Plate Roundup. One of them never got finished so I pulled it out and went to work. This is how it looked when I got it out.

A close up shows the pattern I was getting by using the rubbing plates to texture the thickened dye on the screen.

This is how it looks today, more prints,a bit of red-orange and some background color.

This is what draws me to this type of printing - the organic looking shapes that happen when the dye breaks down.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with it. I also did some printing on the bright orange fabric that Kathleen gave me when we were screen printing on Mothers day. This was very hard to photograph, I finally had to focus the camera on the white design wall then take the picture, otherwise it would pickup just the light part of the printing not the dark. I'm not sure where this one will go next.

Daily project #78 -#80.