Craft Napa Day 3

Finally getting a chance to post about Sue's third class at Craft Napa - two days of travel that should have taken one, and delayed baggage interfered - but that's a story for another day.

Saturday's class was called Blessings in the Wind - Prayer Flags with Judy Coates Perez.  Judy, also known as the Creative Alchemist, is known for her whole cloth painted quilts and intricately layered imagery.  This class was a last minute change for Sue - she was originally registered for another class but decided to switch because she'd always admired Judy's work, had previously taken classes with the other teacher, and thought she should take the opportunity to learn from someone new.  She was very glad she did. Below are some of Judy's prayer flags.

Sue was most interested in learning Judy's techniques, less so in creating the flags, but as the day progressed the goal of completing the prayer flags became more significant. 

The morning was spent painting our fabrics  (we had 12 pieces about 8 x 10") with Golden Fluid Acrylic Inks. Various techniques were used to create different effects, including scrunching, sponging, Shibori folds, and painting on wet or dry fabrics.  Sue had done most of these techniques before but not recently and with different paints so it was a good refresher of those techniques.  Below are some of Judy's fabric samples and a demo of sponging.

Below are Sue's painted fabric pieces that she chose to add additional imagery to for the flags.

In the afternoon we added additional layers with stamps, thermofax screens and Judy's abaca papers.

We were so busy trying to get them done that taking more process pictures was forgotten.  After adding more layers, the pieces were trimmed down to 6 x 9" and encased in a folded length of twill tape. Below are Sue's finished flags.  The additional images and trimming really transformed some of the less than stellar backgrounds.

She regrets not getting pictures of the other finished flags as well.  It was a busy but fun and inspirational day of creativity.