A few weeks ago, we attended QuiltCon 2024 in Raleigh, NC. QuiltCon is the annual convention sponsored by the Modern Quilt Guild.
PG Fiber2Art
Adventures in surface design with a focus on thermofax screen printing.
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
QuiltCon 2024
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Spring 2024 Exhibits
Well, it's been a few months since our last post. Hope you've been having a productive start to the new year! Here at PGFiber2Art we are pleased to share 2 opportunities to visit quilt exhibits if you are local to the DC area or just traveling through. First is quilts Inspired by the Nation's Capital, an exhibit and accompanying book by Donna DeSoto that is now on display at the Barns of Rose Hill in Berryville, VA through April 27,
All the quilts are excellent but here are a few other favorites.
Thursday, November 9, 2023
Quilt Retreat
Sue recently enjoyed a quilt retreat with her local guild in Winchester, Virginia. Approximately 50 quilters spent 4 + days sewing on their individual projects in the conference room of the Hampton Inn. This is the first retreat Sue has attended in over a year, so it was quite a job to gather projects, supplies, travel sewing machine, and other miscellaneous paraphernalia! But once arrived and unpacked, it was nice to be able to sew, leave the sewing space, and go upstairs to the room whenever desired.
The photo above is courtesy Jim Watson, the "official" photographer for the group. Though she only worked on 2 projects, a good bit was accomplished.
Monday, October 23, 2023
Custom Screens
One of the services we provide is making custom screens from images that our customers provide, and we love to see images of what they do with the screens. They can be from original drawings or photos, or any image that you have a license to use or is in the public domain. One of our current customers, Lois Gaylord, has given permission for us to share some of her work for which we made Thermofax screens.
Lois actually has 2 Etsy shops that you can visit for more pictures of her work, one is Lois Gaylord - Weaving Oneness through Spiritual Art and Textiles; the other is Weaving Oneness. The first shop features textiles celebrating Jewish life. The second shop features items of a spiritual nature.
Below are some photos of items that we made the screens for.
Sunday, October 1, 2023
Playing with Photos for Thermofax Screens
This is an edited version of a post from 2016.
Have you ever considered how you might use your own photos in your art quilts or mixed media work? There are several products available to create photo transfers. You can also print photos on sheer fabrics like organza to create a different effect. Some people use photos as the basis for a landscape or portrait quilt, using it to make a pattern for piecing. At PGFiber2Art we like to use photos as the basis for Thermofax screens. We use Photoshop Elements to turn photos into black and white images that are suitable for screens.
This zinnia image is a good example of how many different ways an image can be manipulated for different outcomes. Excited by the "what if", we created several variations of the same image that might be used together.Photoshop Elements is a powerful program and has many filters that can be applied to a black and white image. Below is the black and white image of the flower with the background removed.
Once we have gotten an image to this point, we start applying filters from the Filters menu. There are lots to choose from and it just takes some time playing to see what you like best, but usually we settle on one. Each filter also has its own options that allow you to adjust things like darkness, contrast, details, etc. so the possible outcomes are many. Just for the fun of it we decided to apply different filters to this flower to illustrate the options for students when teching this technique. And that's when the light bulb went on and we realized that this could be a cool design element. Here are 5 different filters applied to the flower image.These will be made into screens in a variety of sizes, and then the fun with fabric and paint will begin. Can you visualize how multiple variations of the one image will work together? What images do you have that you think would make a good Thermofax screen?