Day 12 - Wrapping Up Quilt Camp

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and it's time to wrap up quilt camp for another year.  Sue will be leaving Monday so it will be up to Elizabeth to carry on as she remains in NH through mid-October.  Here are some photos that kind of sum up what we have accomplished in the last 2 weeks.

On the left is Elizabeth's set of yardage she dyed.  On the right are pieces that were first printed with color magnet and then dyed.  The lighter pieces are some that were in dye a few days old that was pretty well spent.

Sue's dyed and discharged pieces are on the left, her mostly solids on the right.

Above are some color magnet pieces, and below, some that were printed with thickened dye.

Sue dyed a T-shirt with black cherry dye; it's taken a few days to get through the wash out process.

The two pieces below are failed sun prints that were salvaged by adding other types of printing - wooden block prints and thermofax screens.  You can see a bit of the sun prints in the background.

The new technique we tried this year was wet cyan.  Cyanotype is a form of sun printing, where the fabric is pre-treated with chemicals and then with exposure to sun, a blueprint of the resist item appears.  Traditional cyanotype is done with dry fabric.  In wet cyan, the fabric is spritzed with a soda ash solution and water before being exposed to the sun and produces more interesting backgrounds and color variation.  After some initial test pieces, the second round produced better results.

Since it was our last day, we took a trip into Wolfeboro for a little shopping and of course some ice cream.

And finally, it is time to clean up the dye pots and load the car.  Hope you enjoyed following along on our quilt camp adventures!

Day 7 - More Studio Play

We have been busy creating fabrics with an eye to listing some in the Etsy shop.  After hand dyeing various colors (and testing to see what colors we like), we are adding texture to the mostly solid colors in several ways - using thermofax screens and other printing methods with discharge (taking color out), color magnet (two-toned dye), printing with thickened dye, and printing with paint.  Here are some results so far.

This is purple fabric that was discharged; you could use either side.  The grayish side is the side the discharge product was applied to; the redder side is the back side.

These 2 pieces had Color Magnet applied before dyeing.  It attracts more dye giving a two-tone effect to the fabric.

More discharged pieces; the resulting color after discharge is dependent on the dyes used.  If the dye is a mixture of multiple colors, you may get something unexpected.

Here is a piece of golden yellow during and after discharge.  After the product has been applied and dries, an iron with steam is used to effect the color change.  The more steam, higher heat, and longer it is applied, the more change you will see.  We wash the fabrics afterward to remove odor and any remaining product.

Here is another yellow piece shown previously.

Sue has also been working on some small painted pieces that may end up in a future quilt.  The inspiration for these was a class taken with Judy Coates Perez last year at Craft Napa.

They started out with various methods of applying paint to the fabric.  The next layer was done with wooden block printing and foam stamps.

Then thermofax screens of text and more natural elements completed the layers.

Stay tuned for more studio adventures!

Wooden Block Prints

Quilt camp is always a time to try out new tools and products. Sue had several new wooden printing blocks that she hadn't taken time to play with so pulled out the supplies for printing.

What you need for this process is a foam pad, some paint and either a foam brush or small pieces of sponge, and of course the printing block. 

The foam pad provides just the right amount of cushioning to produce a clear print. Place your fabric on the foam pad.  Put some paint on a palette, paper plate, or foam tray - whatever you prefer to use. I save foam meat trays to use for paint supplies.  Draw some paint onto the sponge or brush, wiping off the excess and use it to dab paint onto the wooden block. You should be able to see that the surface of the block is coated with paint but not globbed on anywhere.  Position the block where you want to print and press down firmly on the pad. Remove the block, apply more paint, and repeat the process. It's that simple!

You can print randomly or in a predetermined pattern. These prints are all done with just one color, but you could also create a pattern with colors, or try blending colors on the stamp itself.

These printing blocks are by Colouricious, a company in the UK, and are handmade by artisans in India. They are also available at Artistic Artifacts, the shop where we teach thermofax printing. Block printing is a technique that plays very nicely with thermofax printing.  Below is a piece where thermofax printing and wooden blocks are used together, on a background done with gelatin plate printing.  Explore the screens available in our Etsy shop and have fun using these various surface design techniques together!

Sun Printing........or Block Printing?

Last week Sue set about doing round 2 of sun printing.  We had just watched a Quilting Arts video the night before by Sue Reno on "Surface Design Essentials for the Printed Quilt" and sun printing is one of the things she talks about.  One of her techniques is to create a "halo" effect with the paint, using one color in the center and another around the edges, so she decided to try it.  She started with 2 pieces of previously dyed fabric - one hand-dye (purple) and one Cherrywood (green).

After applying paint (Pebeo Setacolor), she layered on the 2 plant materials she wanted to print and covered the board with organza, tacked it in place, and set it on the deck in the sun. 

We haven't bothered to press the natural items we print with in the past and have had successful results, probably because they are most often ferns which are easily flattened by pulling the organza taught.  Well, lesson learned - these 2 should have been pressed!  The prints in this case were a big FAIL!

In the purple/blue piece, you can see the leaves and stem, but not very clearly.  Definitely not a stand alone piece.

In this green piece, you can barely see the pine needles near the top.  So, what to do?  Toss them in the scrap pile?

This week, Sue pulled out her wooden printing blocks to play with and decided that these 2 pieces would be fine for block printing.  Certainly more usable that way than as they were.

What do you think?  We think these 2 pieces have been salvaged for future use in art quilts or improvisational piecing. 

Quilt Show Finds (part 2)

Sue's other quilt show finds include this fabulous rainbow yard of fabric from Frieda Anderson.  We took one of her classes and she had various pieces of her hand-dyed fabric for sale.

She also bought the 3 fat quarters in the foreground - specifically to use with the hand-made batik fat quarter that was created in a workshop at Artistic Artifacts a few years ago.

Another project trying to take shape influenced the purchase of these two osnaburg fat quarters and embroidery threads from Fiber on a Whim.

 Some decorative pins and pendants also made their way into the shopping bag.

A wooden printing block from Artistic Artifacts also landed there; looks like it would work quite well with the screens printed on this piece of fabric.

And last but not least, a stop at the BabyLock dealer in Richmond on the way home is where she purchased a new walking foot for her machine (she managed to break the original) and several spools of Madeira thread - it's been hard to find a particular variegated color that she likes.

Holiday Ornaments

Last week I was in need of some hand crafted holiday ornaments to donate to the Virginia Quilt Museum.  Of course they needed to have some screen printing, so I selected a few holiday images that I thought would work, and decided to print on some linen fabric for a natural look.   I cut 5 1/2 inch squares of the linen.  The screens I used were a vintage tree design made up of rows of birds, and a vintage pine branch that I combined with a bird.  I also remembered I had some wooden printing blocks that were trees, so I used those too. These are the initial prints.  You might be able to see that I drew a diagonal chalk line to help me center the image.  The top 2 are the screen printed designs, the bottom 2 are the block prints.

I had bought some embellishment products at Artistic Artifacts when I got this idea, so next I pulled those out to see what I could do to liven them up a bit.  One is a metallic thread, and the other is an embellished ric-rac trim, both made by Tentakulum from Germany.

On the block printed trees, I did french knots on the branches - they look almost like beads.  I used the ric-rac on the screen printed tree, and on the pine and bird design I made 2 french knots in the bird's beak to look like seeds.

The final step was stitching them together & stuffing, with a ribbon in the top corner for hanging.  I put the 2 block printed trees together, one on each side, and the screen printed designs together, one on each side.  Of course, you could easily put another holiday fabric on the back to make more ornaments.  Hmm...that's a good idea if I make more!