Do You Have A Favorite Product To Use In Making Art?

     Do you have a product that you use often in making your art and that amazes you? I have several products I love to use. Procion MX dyes, fabric paints, colorless extender, thermofax screens, and others. But I just discovered a product that has been around awhile but I never tried called Color Magnet by Jacquard. It is advertised as a dye attractant that magically attracts more dye where it is applied. I was intrigued with possibilities for its use. So I bought some and set up an experiment.
     I took swatches of white cotton broadcloth that I had scoured. And I applied the Color Magnet paste to the fabric through a thermofax screen. I let it dry overnight. Then the next day, I put each swatch in its own ziploc baggie. I mixed up a solution of ProChemical's Procion MX dye called Celery. I chose that color because when I had used it before on folded fabrics, the colors that are in it split to create a multi-colored cloth. And I wanted to use a dye mixture that I knew could split easily to see if it would split using Color Magnet. I made up several dilutions of my stock Celery dye in water with soda ash. I poured each concentration in a baggie with the swatches and let them batch 24 hours.
     The following day, I washed them out and loved the results. And the Celery dye did indeed split a little in the places where the Color Magnet was on the cloth.

Sample A on top is the most concentrated
Sample B is a dilution of the dye in A

There's B again on top
Sample C is a dilution of the dye in B

There's C again
Sample D is a dilution of C
note that it is more brown

     I was also curious to see if Color Magnet would work on previously dyed cloth. So I took a swatch of the broadcloth that I had previously dyed in the color Marine, which is a not so intense blue-green. I screened on the Color Magnet, let it dry overnight and the next day put it into the same dye dilution as Sample C.

the cloth shows it has been overdyed
and the leaf is the same tone of Celery that Sample C has

And while I was doing these experiments, I got another idea. Would Color Magnet allow polyester fabric to take the dye? Normally, the Procion MX dyes wash right out of polyester. So I took a swatch of white sheer polyester and screened on Color Magnet, dried it overnight, and also dyed it in Solution C.

The next day, the whole cloth looked like it had taken the dye. But, of course, when I washed it out, the dye washed out of the polyester...EXCEPT for where the leaf had been screen on with Color Magnet. The dye stuck! And it didn't change the hand of the fabric at all. 

SO COOL!

     So now I have all sorts of ideas to add imagery to my fabrics without changing the hand of it. The downside is that when you dye it, it also changes the background color. But it will definitely have a prominent place in my future works. I'm running more experiments now with different ways of screening Color Magnet on, diluting it, extra applications of it, etc.

     Also, I want to announce that I have a new Website I built with WordPress. I had never done any kind of tech work like that before. The first two days, I couldn't figure anything out and couldn't get text or images onto it. Then, I hired a service called WordPress Live for $150. For that price, you get unlimited phone calls for 1 month and they screen share with you and teach you how to use WordPress. Their goal is for you to end up with a cool website that will attain the goals you want and that you can maintain on your own. Each phone call is limited to 25 minutes, but you can call right back if you want as many times as you want. They limit it so that you will be encouraged to work on your own. It only took a few calls to get me to understand how to use WordPress. It's a very impressive service and I'm not getting any compensation from them to tell you this. I just want you to know about it in case you want to build a website, too.
     I also started an Instagram account where I want to share photos of nature and also to help promote my art. All this from a person, who, back in the day said "Email? I'll never use email. Internet? What a crazy idea. Not for me." Now I try to keep up with it all. I've read tech learning is a good exercise for the brain and helps prevent dementia. Hope it's true.  I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other fabric art blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Learning A New Skill Set

     A huge part of the Art Cloth Mastery Class involves dyeing cloth which I only did for a weekend way back in about 2006 and again in this class for a couple of days in March of this year. My dyes from  Prochemical arrived in the mail a few weeks ago and so did some sample cotton fabrics I wanted to test out. Their arrival was very exciting, but it also meant that I was on my own to set up a dyeing station and begin working with them.
     The first thing I did was to dye several colors with each fabric type to compare the fabrics in order to choose which fabric I liked the best. I decided I liked the mercerized cotton broadcloth. So I ordered several yards from Dharma. I chose them because several friends recommended them and the cloth comes from the USA. Other companies couldn't tell me for sure where their cloth came from. It's also supposed to be PFD. Even so, I still scour it before I use it. (That means I wash it in hot water with washing soda.)
     When I began, all my colors came out too dark. It turned out I had not accounted for that fact that I had used only a small sample of cloth in each dye bath and I needed to recalculate the dye powder amounts also based on the weight of cloth used. Once I did that, I was back in business.
     The next thing I did was to dye two swatches of broadcloth for each dye color I had so that I can create a dye notebook. Then, I'll take one of the swatches and discharge sections of it (one section with bleach and one section with a product from Jacquard) to see what color it turns when discharged. Those will go into the dye notebook, also. That way I'll have a permanent record for each dye powder's effects on broadcloth.

swatches of each of 23 colors on broadcloth

     I got dots on two of the samples. (The dots keep appearing on the Basic Blue even after really mixing it, letting it sit, and filtering it through a nylon stocking. So I think the dye is precipitating back out of solution afterwards while it is batching.) I think that means my water may be too hard so I'm going to add some softener to my chemical water and try a sample and see if that helps. 

     While I was doing all those solids, I wanted to play a bit, so I did some clamping and folding on some leftover fabric samples after reading some blogposts and taking Jane Dunnewold's Craftsy class on dyeing and here is what I got:

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 2 was cut in that shape because that was all that was left of that piece of broadcloth.

Sample 3

     Sample 3 was my favorite. Those were just quick experiments. I can't wait until I'm doing real art cloths.  But the next few weeks will be spent on a huge research project for the class involving lots of dyeing of cloth that I can't share with you. I'll be learning so much and creating cloth and data for the other students in the class. They, in turn, will be doing their research projects to share with the class. It feels wonderful to be learning a whole new skill set. There is a big new world opening up to me with all sorts of possibilities to mix in with the skills I have already have. I love when a journey presents itself with a fork in the road.

     I'm hoping to add stitching to some of these cloths when I get some spare time in the next few weeks, too.

     I'm linking this to  Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

   

What Happens To You When You Clean Out Your Studio?

     Does anything happen when you clean out your studio other than it becomes more organized and better looking? Like a lot of us do in January, I decided to go through my studio and get rid of the clutter.  I started section by section and was determined to pick up all the little odds and ends that I had put in the nooks and crannies because I couldn't think of a place to put them. They either had to have a place or they had to go. I was also determined to file away all the papers and articles I had collected into folders and organize them so that I could find them later when I wanted them.
     Well, I did that and it actually only took one day. But one of the things I found on my craft desk in a basket was a set of small blank business cards that I had made into small art compositions many years ago. I remember how much fun I had making them on such a small scale. I used pieces of painted dryer sheets, threads, strips of fabrics, sequins, iron-on fusible to attach them to the cards and then colored netting fused on top to hold it all down. Here's one that I particularly liked.

blank business card designed

     When I saw this in the basket, I thought "Hmmm, I wonder if I could actually make an art quilt with this design?" It was 8:30 PM last night. The studio was just about spotless. I had just put away the vacuum cleaner. I was getting ready to sit down with a cup of tea and watch TV. But then I remembered my word for the year of 2015 is EXPLORE.  So I opened up my sketchbook and got out my Inktense pencils and painted what you see in the bottom book. The dark stripes are strips of fabric that I glued on top. The painting confirmed I could paint it. So I checked out my paint supply and I didn't have much on hand. Only some samples from workshops and a few real jars. Maybe enough for a quilt top. But that's what EXPLORE is about, isn't it? So the next step was to see what the samples of paint looked like on crinoline which is what I wanted to what paint on. That's my sample crinoline in the top book with the key on the right page.

sample book on top, sketchbook on bottom

Now it was about 10:00 PM and I was really excited about this. I cut a piece of crinoline that I had prewashed and dried to about 27 inches by 37 inches. I put plastic on my cutting table, a layer of white muslin on top of that and the crinoline on top of that.  I put all my paints that I wanted to use with a container of water and a spray bottle of water and a flat brush.  And of course, Opus, my ever present cat set himself up on table right next to the cutting table not wanting to miss a thing. As the brush moved across the length of the crinoline his head was like a spectator watching a tennis match watching the ball moving back and forth across the net.

supplies 

     I used the Jacquard paints as is. For the Golden paints, I mixed those with the GAC 900 fabric medium 1:1 since they aren't fabric paints. I watered down all the paints a lot as I used them. I painted very loosely and had a lot of fun. My feeling was that if it didn't work out, the fabric piece was so large that I would at least end up with smaller pieces that I would love and could cut up and use for something good. Here is how I ended the evening at about 11:30 PM.

Painted crinoline 27x37

     I'm planning to work more on this fabric today and add batting and fabric strips and stitching if all goes well. Cleaning out the studio accomplished more than I intended and EXPLORE is indeed off to a good start. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Back To Monoprinting

     Now that I'm working on a larger piece again, the first step is to monoprint the background fabrics. I wanted to have several color choices to choose from and this piece is about a walk in the woods in the early morning. So I needed to use greens for the foliage, oranges for the sunrise, and blues for the water of the lake that I came upon. I mixed my own colors starting with acrylic paints of cadmium yellow light, cadmium red light, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and titanium white. I added equal amounts of Golden's GAC 900 Fabric medium which allows the paint to play well with fabric. I also used Jacquard's colorless extender to thin the paint so that it would be more transparent on the fabric.
     This is the first time I used the actual Gelli plate. Before this I used my home-made gelatin plates. When I took the Gelli plate out and spread the paint on, it kept beading up. I thought maybe I just had to break it in and do a few prints. But it kept beading up. I was getting ready to contact the company when I realized that I had not removed the protective plastic cover! I got some interesting prints that way, though.
     Here are some prints I got off the actual plate.

reminds me of sun reflecting on the water,
impressionistic style

might be good for background in the woods
with a foreground on top

another background

I like the white "resists" I got in this one

All of these will be cut up and used in pieces and have other elements added on top, but they are a good beginning as the bottom layer for backgrounds for what I have in mind.
I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Christmas Cards Already?

     Well, my shoulder is healed enough now that I can do some sewing. The thing that is painful is rotary cutting, so I have to do only a little of that a time. I have three large art quilts sketched out and am excited about them and ready to start on the first of those, but I thought I'd start (and finish) small sewing items first. At one of my art meetings this summer, we did gelatin monoprinting and I took a small gelatin plate (about 6 x 7). I decided make prints that I could use for Christmas cards this year.
     I originally wanted to print a nativity scene, but that was too complicated for the time I had and the number of prints I wanted to make. So then I thought I could use small fern fronds to look like evergreen trees and I would use string to look like trails of falling snow. I used regular acrylic paints mixed with Gac 900 fabric medium about 50/50.  I tore up an old sheet into small rectangles about 6 x7 inches. Here are the steps I did:
1.) I mixed up the paints on a plastic plate to get a light blue. I mixed the GAC900 into the paint.
2.) I brayered the blue paint mixture onto the gelatin plate.
3.) I put the fern fronds on top of the paint on the gelatin in an arrangement I liked.
4.) I put string on top of the paint and ferns in a curvy line on the gelatin plate.
5.) I laid the sheet rectangle on top and pressed in down with my hand and lifted it off after I was sure the paint had made good contact.
6.) I cleaned off the gelatin plate with a cotton wipe rag and a squirt bottle of water.

I repeated steps 2-6 until I had printed 30 rectangles.

After the paint was dry, I stamped some circles onto each rectangle with gold Lumiere paint from Jacquard and I stamped some snowflakes on each with some Sargent Art Acrylic Glitter Glaze mixed with white acrylic paint.  Here's a photo of several of the rectangles after they were printed and stamped.

in-process

Then I cut some cardstock and printed a phrase on it. I trimmed each rectangle to fit on the cardstock the way I wanted it to fit above the phrase. I applied a little glue stick the long edges of the fabric and stuck it on the cardstock and then I machine stitched it using a shimmery thread (I don't know the brand or type because its label fell off long ago.)

The finished card

So the card doesn't look like evergreen trees as intended. But since I live in Florida, I guess it's OK for me to use ferns (with snow?) It did snow here once for about 2 minutes on our driveway. Each card is different and maybe by next year, I can think up a nativity design I can monoprint.  I'll send 30 of my artistically inclined friends and relatives these cards and the rest will get the standard cards. Only because I didn't have the energy to make more of the prints that day. 

I'm linking this to   Off The Wall Friday   where you can see other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you visited.

Creating an object for the Background

Hello Everyone,
Please leave comments for me. It's much more fun to blog if I know people care about reading my blog.
I hope you are all having a wonderful artful day. I spent the morning trying to figure out how to make my Epson scanner work with the new OSX system I downloaded from Apple. A nice young man from Epson walked me through it and now it's fine again. But I digress...

In a previous post I showed you the background fabrics I'll be working with for this quilt on prayer flags. I thought my next step would be to quilt it, but luckily I thought it out more before I began sewing. I realized I want the quilting to go over an object that will be placed onto the background. So I had to paint the object onto fabric first. Remember I wanted an ethereal look, so I experimented with different fabrics.
Here is my end result.

Sun/Moon/Orb

And here is my experiment which involved a bit of serendipity (I love when that happens).
I placed white cotton muslin on my plastic sheet to protect the table. Then I put a piece of voile (a thin fabric on top. Then I put a piece of chiffon (even thinner) on top of that.
I used teal and russet textile paints from Jacquard, white acrylic paint, and yellow ochre Golden Fluid Acrylic paint, and GAC from Golden. I used those brands and types because that is what I already had and I must be frugal these days.

I just started painting on top of the chiffon (the topmost layer) and added water when needed. When I liked the way it looked I separated the layers and let them dry. Here are those results:

the painted muslin

the painted chiffon

the painted voile

I tried using different combinations of these three, but there was too much orange to go well with the background. And then I glanced over at a piece of muslin that I had been using as a wipe rag for awhile to clean my brushes. It had just the right amount of all the colors I wanted. Perfect colors.

the painted wipe rag cut into a sphere

 So I put the painted chiffon on top of it and that is how I got the orb I needed for the sky. So now I can quilt.                                            Please leave comments. My stats are showing there are readers of my blog, but I'm getting lonely here. :)

Preparing Fabrics for My Project

I've been busy creating fabrics for my newest project. I want to do a series of quilts with the theme of prayer flags. There are a lot of beautiful commercial fabrics out there, but I want to create my own for this series. Maybe I'll stick a commercial one in here or there, though. What I need are fabrics to put in the sky area. I'm not going for a totally realistic look for this series. I want to express the idea of the prayers being sent to the Gods via the wind. So what I did was start with 100% cotton muslin and a poly/cotton voile. I prepared a gelatin plate in a large cookie sheet (I had to lock the kitten outside during that process...he's still being trained to not jump onto the kitchen countertops).
Then I wanted to use the paints I had rather than purchase more. (I've decided to use up my stash before I buy more paint of any kind.)  I had  jacquardproducts.com/  Jacquard blue textile paint, Jacquard russet paint, Jacquard teal neopaque paint,  regular white acrylic paint, Golden Gac 900 Fabric Painting Medium  goldenpaints.com.  Mixing the combination together gave me a desaturated light blue. (Using the acrylics with the Gac helped not make the fabric too stiff.) They say not to mix different product brands together, but this one worked for me.

I used a brayer to put the paint onto the gelatin plate. Sprayed it with a little water. Took a toilet paper roll and smooshed it a little to make it more of an oval and then made marks with it in the paint. Put the fabric over it and took a print. Sprayed more water on the plate and took another print with another piece of fabric.
I repeated but this time used a cardboard edge to draw streaks in the paint instead of making ovals with the toilet roll on the plate before printing.

with ovals from toilet paper roll

with streaks from cardboard edge

with ovals

with streaks

I mixed up gray paint and repeated. I repeated all several times on different fabrics.
I found that I didn't think I could use these for what I had in mind. Then I thought that if I spread some white Shiva Paintstiks cedarcanyontextiles.com/category/paintstiks/ on them I could blur up the marks and make the patterns more mottled. When I was digging through the bin looking for the paintstik, I saw a rubbing plate and had an ahah moment.
See below how I added the rubbing with white paintstiks. I don't know if you can see from the photos, but I used a stencil brush to blur the patterns to make them more subtle. Now I think I can use the fabrics as backgrounds with the theme of spreading prayers. I have torn the fabrics up and made a layout and will look at it over the next few days to be sure I like it. But I think it is promising. Man... this blogging thing is kind of scary... to share unfinished work. Because usually I make a lot of changes before a work is done.

streaked and rubbed

with ovals and rubbings