Felting Session

Posted on February 14, 2014 by ruthlane under wet felting

I was busy today making samples for a felting class and working on the 1st quarter challenge making a piece inspired by Jackson Pollock.

The felting class will be for high school students at an “art retreat” and I’m going to teach them to make a cell phone case. The theme is “Intergalactic Disco Carnival”. So I thought a “cosmic cell phone case” would be the perfect class. This photo is a little dark but you get the idea.

I also made this one with cheesecloth on one side. This is some of the cheesecloth that I recently dyed. I sent pieces to Zed, Ann and Lyn and they are going to play with it to. I just used a tiny piece – I have lots more to try.

And I did finish my 1st quarter challenge piece but you’ll have to wait to see the final photo. I’ll post about it on the Felting and Fiber Studio site next week. This is the pile of pre-felt that I used to make it. I also worked on my ice flower piece but didn’t have any photos because it got to dark. I’ve gotten all the flowers and leaves sewn down. Now I need to sew it on to the background fabric and attach the “twiggy bits”. I haven’t ordered the stretcher bars yet. Got to get that done.

Experimental Screen Printing Session

Posted on February 7, 2014 by ruthlane under surface design

My local group met today (minus two people) and had a mammoth screen printing session with the screens I had prepared last week.

I did take a few photos of scraping the paper off the paper lamination screens. After the screen has dried, you soak it in water and then scrape all the paper off. That leaves the matte medium in the organza and you use this to screen on thickened dye.

Here is the largest paper lamination screen I made. It kind of reminds me of cracking paint on an old wall.

I also made some masks for the deconstructed screens. I cut out the designs with a craft knife.

You can see the ginkgo leaf cut outs that remained after I cut out the leaf screen.

I was so busy helping to screen that I didn’t get any in process photos. This is one of the deconstructed screens printed on a silk scarf. I will try to get better photos of these when they’ve been washed. I took a bunch of photos but very few turned out well. We used thickened Procion dye. Sometimes we just used clear print paste (thickened) to break down the dye already dried in the screens and other times we used thickened dyes through the screen.

The green piece with squiggly lines was printed with the rice baby cereal screen. It gave very interesting prints.

This was another of the deconstructed screen prints.

Here is one printed with the paper lamination screen. I really like the organic look you can get with this screen.

This is a silk scarf printed with the paper lamination screen.

Here’s a square printed with a deconstructed screen.

Here is cotton fabric printed with one of the rice baby cereal screens. It should fit well into my current circles theme. I will take more photos of the fabric after it’s been washed and ironed. Hopefully, I can get some better photos. The screen printing was fun and all the screens worked great. Everyone was pleased with the outcome.

I did get my background fabric dyed for my ice flower piece. It is dark green. The colors are a bit off in the photo.

I also made a vine with organza leaves which I plan to put along one edge. The flower isn’t sewn on but I was trying it out to see if I liked it. I really like the sheer leaves and I’ll be adding those over the entire piece. Now I have to decide how to attach the red/pink piece of fabric to the background fabric. I will probably zigzag stitch it down and perhaps couch a piece of green yarn around the entire edge.

Screen Printing Preparations

Posted on January 31, 2014 by ruthlane under surface design

Next week, my local group is meeting at my house for some experimental screen printing. I spent most of the day today preparing the screens.

I took a look through all my old Quilting Arts magazines for some ideas. One article was about using a mask with deconstructed screen printing. The mask is made from light weight interfacing covered with paint. The photo above shows three pieces of interfacing ready to paint.

I used some left over house latex paint. The point is to cover the interfacing so that when used as a mask, no dye or ink will leak through the mask except the portion that is cut out.

I painted all three pieces and it took quite a lot of paint as it soaks in.

Here’s the back side, you can see the paint came through easily. Now to let it dry. I’ll paint the other side and then cut an opening like a stencil. I am thinking I will cut some leaf shapes.

Next I did some paper lamination screens. This is the process where you glue organza to paper with gel medium. I did three organic patterned screens. I have to let these dry as well and then iron to set and wash off the excess paper.

Next up, I decided to try some rice baby cereal as a resist on the screen. I applied the cereal through a syringe. And then let it dry. Lots of things drying now…

I had a bunch of 6″ embroidery hoops when I ordered them thinking I was getting one and instead got sets of three. I just put organza in the hoop and taped it with duct tape. I added more rice cereal to this. I am hoping that as these screen, the thickened dye will gradually break down the cereal so it will be like the deconstructed screens which change the more prints you make.

I had some left over cereal so I covered this piece of fabric. The plan is to let it dry and then crack the cereal and then add a layer of dark paint over the top. The same idea as using flour paste resist.

Next up, I made some print paste and added dye. Then I put the screens on some type of texture, here it is a packing paper. Then I screened the print paste with dye added. And then I have to again, let dry.

The dry dyes with the texture and then you screen through it with either plain print paste or a different color of thickened dye. The dried dye will break down as you continue to screen through it.

This one has bubble wrap underneath it.

This one I used two colors and the texture is polyester curtains.

So now, I can’t even hardly walk into my studio. Everything is drying all over the floor, table and wherever else there was space. I’m looking forward to seeing how these screens turn out. I’ll show you next week.

I did have some time in the evening this week to make some more organza flowers and organza leaves for my ice flower piece. I haven’t stitched anything down yet because I need to have a backing fabric first. I didn’t have a fabric that worked in the right shade of green. So I did some more snow dyeing today to get a dark green. Then I will order some stretcher bars to frame it on. So eventually, I might get this piece done. What have you been up to this week?

More Three-Dimensional Flowers

Posted on January 24, 2014 by ruthlane under free motion machine stitching, surface design

I put together more three-dimensional flowers for my ice dyed flower piece. I used several different colors of cheese cloth replacing some of the darker cheese cloth flowers.

I think this helps as the darker flowers don’t take over as much.

I also started working on some organza flowers. These are burned around the edges but not stitched together yet. You can see one on the bottom left and towards the top right in this photo.

I made a couple of really light pink organza flowers too but I couldn’t get them to photograph well. You can see them if you click on the photo to enlarge and look carefully. I like the addition of the organza flowers. What do you think? The next step is to sew the organza flowers together. I’m trying to decide if they need beaded centers. If I do add beads it won’t be anything elaborate, just a few beads. Then I plan on making some three-dimensional leaves too. I haven’t decided what material to use yet but I am considering painting some green organza so they would be very light weight and not feel too heavy.

Stitching Leaves

Posted on January 17, 2014 by ruthlane under Dyeing, free motion machine stitching

I have been continuing to work on my ice dyed fabric flower piece when I have a few spare moments. I have finished stitching all the leaves with free motion machine stitching.

You can see here that I have a variety of shapes of leaves and the stitching really defines the shapes better.

I made some cheese cloth flowers but they are only pinned on presently. I decided that I needed some other colors besides the dark purple. Luckily I have other colors of cheese cloth in the appropriate colors. I have a few more flowers cut out but not stitched together yet.

While I was at my friend Carole’s house, we hung the piece up on her design board (I really need one of those). We tried different colors of background fabric. This photo is really dark but if you click on it, I think you’ll be able to see that the background is a dark green. It isn’t the fabric I will use as I will use a hand dyed one but just something that Carole had that was in the right color range. We also tried black, dark blue and a lighter green. This was my favorite so far.

Here’s a little bit closer view so you can see the stitching a little better. I still haven’t decided if I even really like the 3-D flowers or not. Definitely, I don’t like all of them the same color. So next step is to try different colors cheese cloth flowers and see if I can make some 3-D flowers from organza that will be a bit bigger. If I do use the 3-D flowers, I’ll also make some 3-D leaves. Most likely, I’ll make them from felt and add a bit of stitching for dimension.

Ruth Lane Art

Experimenting with Arts Endless Possibilities