Here are the results from the screen printing session yesterday. The top photos are on fabric and the bottom ones on sketchbook paper. I added the “trilobite” print to the sketchbook page to see if I like how it looked.
Here’s the next page in my little stitch book that has been a very slow work in progress.
I covered brass washers with #5 perle cotton, stitched them down to the page and then added detached button hole stitch and a few straight stitches.
Here’s a little closer view.
I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thanks for stopping by!
I spent all day today dyeing wool roving, washed merino fiber and a shibori scarf. I used acid dyes to dye the wool. The scarf photos did not turn out so I will have to show you that one later when the light is better. My friend Paula came over and carded some really fine merino roving into batts and dyed a little fiber too.
Here is all the dye set out and one bit of dye mixed up. Most of the pots, I just dyed a solid color. But I did try a few pots with mixed dyes in them.
I had three pots steaming away on the stove.
Here’s a red one.
And a blue one.
Here’s some orange roving in the sink waiting to be put through the spin cycle on the washing machine.
Paula got her wool in at the end of the dye bath after it was nearly exhausted. This is a mix of blue and purple which actually looks better than this photo depicts. It is close to a pale denim color.
This is another one of Paula’s that is a really pretty very pale green.
Paula got three batts carded. This is really fine (15.5) merino and it is so soft.
Here’s a bunch of my roving hung up in the bathroom on the shower curtain rod. I couldn’t believe that I got black when I wasn’t trying. I was going for a deep blue but ended up with black. When I try to get black, it rarely comes out very well.
Here’s some more roving drying. The one on the left was done with three colors, violet, salmon and cherry red.
Since I had the dye pots out, I thought I’d dye more of the washed merino fiber that I have. I did blue,
really dark green,
and a mix of magenta and purple. Now I have bunches of pretty colors to use in my felting projects. The really bright ones are for cat toys. People seem to thing that cats need to have bright-colored toys.
I am still working on my homework from my Color class with Gail Harker. I finished the small notebook of color schemes and painted more scales.
This is the small color notebook which is 6″x 6″.
The color schemes are based on a book by Johannes Itten.
There are dyads, triads, tetrads and hexads and I have painted pages for all the different possibilities. Some I painted twice because the first effort wasn’t good.
I really enjoyed painting these as it is always interesting to see how the pages turn out. Once you get up to 4 and 6 colors it is difficult getting all the colors on such a small page without it turning to mud.
Here are the various scales that I painted today drying. Most of these are tints to shades (adding white and black). I still need to do more of the mixing complementary color scales. I have most of the homework completed but I still have to organize the other notebook. It was a great class and she does offer it online if you can’t make it to La Conner, Washington. When I finished painting, my husband brought me a “gift”.
He found this outside. It’s bark with lichen. He said “I figured you’d like this better than a dozen roses.”
Does he know me or what??
Happy Fourth of July to all of you American readers! Hope you’re having a great holiday. I thought I’d show you a few of the color pages that I painted in class last week. We learned all about mixing paint colors and making color wheels. I had a great time and learned so much.
And I had a great time finding the different colors that I had painted in nature. Such fun! I ordered a bunch new colors of Golden fluid acrylics when I got home so more colors to come.
Ruth Lane Art 