Design in Honor of the Wind!

We had such high wind gusts the other night! It sounded like a train was coming... yikes! The next day I found this stencil of a wind blown tree - I'm sorry but I don't know the name of the artist who created it. I screened the stencil onto cotton using thickened dye... but it needed more! Next up I painted the surface with thinned fabric paints - but still something was missing. I carved a stamp of wind blown leaves. I think I'm done but it still might need a little something more... maybe flecks of paint?

What do you think is missing? Do you have a suggestion?!

SAQA Conference Time!

Preparation is underway for the upcoming international SAQA conference ~ Inspire*Connect*Engage ~ 

March 31 - April 3

237 South Broad Street Philadelphia, PA

I joined a painting party at ProChemical in Fall River last weekend! It was a fun event with about 175 canvas bags completed and ready for thier conference debut. Each conference attendee will receive a bag filled with goodies - sweet! 

Allison Wilbur and Martha Sielman setting out some bags to dry! 

Marcia Young and Sandy Gregg are hard at work! 

Vicki Jensen from ProChemical kindly donated her time and materials to get this project off the ground! I look forward to taking some workshops there in the future.

The bags are drying and ready for Vicki to screen the SAQA logo across the back. 

I'll be vending on March 31 from 12:00 - 6:00 so please stop by to say hello! 

Combining Surface Design Techniques!

While waiting for my snow dyeing fabrics to cure I switched my energy over a different kind of experiment! I wanted to create something with screen collage. One thing lead to another and I ended up combining a few techniques: color magnet, thermofax screens, screen collage and hand carved stamps... take a peek at the journey! 

I started with Terri Stegmiller's wonderful Fern thermofax screen (available on Etsy). Rather than screening with paint or thickened dye I used Color Magnet (from Dharma). The idea behind this product is wherever you apply the color magnet it will grab the dye more intensely creating a tone on tone affect. 

Once the color magnet was dry I screened thickened dye across the surface of the fabric. I left the dye to set and then washed it out.The color magnet didn't show as dramatically as I had hoped so I decided it needed more! 

Next I pulled out a couple of hand carved leaf stamps and Speedball fabric paint. I really wanted to highlight Terri's Fern design more so I screened again with burgundy. 

Here is the completed 1 yard piece. The full photo looks a little washed out compared to the actual fabric. It's fun to combine techniques and let the design evolve organically without a specific plan - it's very freeing!