Yellow Text on Black

 I am printing up several yards of commercial black with primary colors of text - sort of going for a graffiti look, as I am anticipating using this for a city scene.  Pulling from my extensive collection of Thermofax screens.

Blue Text on Black

 In anticipation of another project, I have screen printed several yards of solid black commercial fabric with various Thermofax screens of text.  Above is a detail.  Below is the most of the 36 x 44" piece.

SAQA Trunk Show Entry

 SAQA was asking for auction pieces for a trunk show for an upcoming event.  The entries needed to be 7" x 10" .  They will be mounted on a black mat board measuring 9 x 12.  I did this piece in an afternoon and sent it off the next day, just barely making the deadline.  It is the same theme as my much larger piece measuring 72 x 72" that will debut at a SAQA exhibition this spring.  I'll share more details when I have them.

Scrap Quilt Top Completed

Here is a partial picture of the completed quilt.  It is quite large - 93" x 110"  Yesterday, I bought a king sized cotton sateen bed sheet for the backing.  I was planning to snow dye the back, but when I got home, I realized I am out of soda ash.....so cannot dye it until I get some of that.  Usually, I purchase a big bag of soda ash from a pool supply store, but honestly, I am not doing all that much hand dyeing these days (I have been out of soda ash for nearly a year!)  I am not sure I need to purchase a 40 lb bag.  It is a special trip to a pool supply store (and I have to find out where, because I think they have relocated since I last purchased a bag).  I might just pick up a small tub of it from a hardware store that keeps supplies for hot tubs.

Finishing Up a Scrap Quilt

 Looking at these big blocks on the design wall I can see that the idea was to randomly build a log cabin starting with odd sized rectangles for the centers.  I can see that I was switching from warm colors to cool colors.  I believe the idea of this block was to cut the blocks in half and piece them back together with a different piece.  I think the next step was to cut them again the other direction and piece two different ones together again.  That step has not been done, and looking at them, I am not sure I want to.  I don't feel like it will make the overall design any more interesting.  Instead - I am finding the whole thing looking very green.  I think I will instead add warm color strips on two sides before sewing them all together.  Above is the pile of warm colored strips cut and all ready to be sewn on.

 I laid everything out so I would stay on track with my plan.

It didn't take long to sew the strips on.  When I had a piece that was too short I set it aside and when I had several of those, I sewed them together end to end to make a longer strip.

Surprise Scrap Quilt

Yesterday, I showed you my start on an art quilt with cellular imagery.  I did a small trial piece with my design idea and it was such a failure I am not even going to post it on the blog.  Now I feel like I have to mull the cellular quilt a bit.

One thing I sometimes do to give myself time for mentally processing design problems is to switch it up a bit by doing something mindless  - like making a scrap quilt.

I have two big bins that are the catch all for any pieces I have leftover that are smaller than a fat quarter.  One bin is for my own surface design fabrics and the other is for commercially printed fabrics (I use commercial prints for my quilt backs when I do art quilts, so both bins do get rather full over time).  I thought the bin with commercial fabrics was getting a bit overfilled, so I started digging through it to see if I could come up with an idea for using up some scraps.

I was surprised when I came across 45 quilt blocks that measure 15 x 16".  I put a few up on the design wall to see what they looked like.  I can just barely remember making these.  I am not sure when I did it or why I put it away without finishing it.  Something more pressing must have come up.

Printing Fabric for Cellular Quilt

I decided to work a bit differently for this piece.  I plan to use just three fabrics and have chosen some with high contrast.  I have printed the commercial black with text and the hand dyed yellow green is printed with cellular imagery.  I am not sure I will do any printing on the hand dyed red.  That is to be determined.

Cellular Explorations

 I have finished up all work for looming deadlines and I am now floundering around the studio for my next big project.  I feel like I would like to work a bit more with cell imagery and so I spent some time looking at images of plant and animal cells online.  Below is a link to my favorite site for inspiration.  Check it out!

 http://www.cellimagelibrary.org/

After looking through the images in the cell image library - I turned to my sketchbook and these are some of my ideas.

Silver Hills Detail

The picture below shows the silver splatters I added to the bottom third of the quilt after it was bound and finished (it needed a little something more).  Sorry I cannot share a full image of the finished piece until after the show opens.

Printed Silver

It looks kind of wonky here, but of course it will be trimmed after the quilting.  Everything is printed at this point and next it will be pinned to the backing fabric and quilted.

Printing the Mountain Map

 The final phase of printing is the mountain map that was drawn during the Hayden survey of 1862.   I have adapted it to a much larger size and multiple screens to be able to fit the size of this piece.  Above, I have the screens laid out to make sure they will fit and to make any adjustments necessary prior to the printing. 

 The mountain scene was printed with silver ink.

Celebrating Silver Progress Continues

 This quilt has three sections in various shades of gray.  The darkest is a strip about 7" high collaged of several different hand painted gray fabrics.  This was the last part to be printed, so I used masking tape and paper to protect the areas that were already done.  I used black ink for the text in this area.

Mixed Media Daily Postcards February 1 - 8

 I am working with RED quite a bit this month on my daily postcards,
since Valentine's Day is coming up.

I overpainted a lot of junk mail and old calendars with red and white paints....gold, too.  

Then, I did some primitive printing and am using markers and colored pencils.

I am finding it good practice to have to try for a good design on each 4 x 6" postcard.
I know I am not succeeding with all of them, but I am working at it and feel good about having the daily practice.  I don't mind that these are only intermittently successful because I have no plan for them other than to grow my own abilities.

It is possible that I might someday mail some of these out to people, 

but that is not in the current plan.

Screen Printing the Base

 I had to mix all the colors for the screen printing ink for this piece.  Below, is the base printing.  Note the collage that has been block printed, followed by screen printing of the text.

Silver Printing Progress

 Here are a couple of detail images of the work in progress on my print table.  I wanted this piece to be about the human experience of mining for silver and I researched the Montana state historical archives to find journals and documents from the early silver mining years in the state.  I found letters exchanged between a Chinese grocery store owner in Helena and his wife in China, the Vigilante pact signed in Virginia City, letters from a young woman in Bannack to her family back in Ohio, an early newspaper called Little Rockies Miner, and accounting records from a mine company.  All of these were available to use - no copyrights, and I used them to create Thermofax screens specifically for this piece.

I did the block printing first with silver paint on a pale gray collage, followed by Thermofax screen printing of the text using white to very lightly tinted gray fabric ink.

Celebrating Silver

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Association)  is celebrating it's 25th Anniversary this year.

I was among the artists selected to create a commemorative piece for the special show entitled: "Celebrating Silver" curated by Nancy Bavor.

The show will not open for several months, but we had to have the pieces finished and photographed for the catalog by February 1.  I have been working away at my piece the past several months and managed to take a few images of the work in progress.  They do not want the artists to show too much of the piece before the opening, so I did not document my process nearly to the extent I normally would.

But here is a start...

I don't often show my sketchbook entries on my blog, but very often I do sketch something out before I start on a piece.  This is particularly true if I am making something with special dimensions (as in this case).

Here is my single page brainstorm for my Celebrating Silver piece:

I painted many gradations of gray / silver/ to charcoal fabric.  I knew I would be using a collage and print technique.  Here is one of the collaged areas that has been printed.

Mixed Media Daily Postcards January 26 - 31

By the end of the month, I have started mixing it up a bit more....a new stamp made of fun foam and I started using a vintage date stamp for the dates, although I am finding the stamp pad I got is not very permanent and seems to take a very long time to dry.  Guess I shouldn't have gone for the cheap ones on sale at Michaels.

I am loving this project at this point, but will try to post them in groups of 6, perhaps on a weekly basis rather than a whole month in a long series of posts.

Mixed Media Daily Postcards January 20 - 25

Mixed Media Daily Postcards January 13 - 18

 January 13 and 14

 January 15 & 16

January 17 & 18

Mixed Media Daily Postcards 2014 January 7 - 12

 January 7 & 8

 

January 9 & 10

 January 11 & 12