fiberhart

Back in the groove!!!

I can't believe how much I got done this weekend!! I think I've been hesitating to get too involved in studio projects, for fear of having a huge mess if someone came to look at the house. Well, the house has been on the market for four months, the lookers have been few and far between, and not a single offer. It seems the real estate slump the rest of the country has been experiencing has hit Utah, and conversations with others in the real estate field confirm that. So I'm no longer planning on moving any time soon- and I'm going to enjoy my studio space while we are here.

I overdyed a piece of raw silk for the third time- I think this is it, I just need to figure out what tunic/vest pattern I'm going to use on it. I painted fabric, doing something that I saw in Quilting Arts a year ago. And, I discharged the two yards of different black fabric I had laying around. It felt good!! Oh, and I also quilted the practice piece for my journal quilt, and started quilting on the actual journal quilt.

So I have tons of pictures, too many for one post. So I'll start with the discharging experiments. I've done some discharging, and had minimal success. If I wanted a crisp pattern, expecially using a stamp or stencil, I had no luck with bleach. No matter what, I got drips and a very sloppy design. Then Liz Berg blogged about her discharge method in January, and I had to try it. No more bleach, but dishwasher detergent with bleach!! It's thick, the fumes are not overpowering, and I figured time wouldn't be quite the crunch it is with bleach, since the concentration is so much lower.

It worked fabulously. Granddaughter Bentlee and I had a ball trying different ways to discharge!! Here's our first attempt, using stamps:



And our second, just some freehand circles with a brush. Bentlee added some additional touches--





These were both done on cotton sateen, and discharged to a nice taupy brown- not quite as orange as the pictures look.

The next ones were done with more stamps, on a different fabric- sort of lighter weight Kona-





I used a stamp I carved awhile back on the second one- I'd actually tried discharging with it months ago, with absolutely no success. With the gel, it worked famously.

This morning, Bentlee wanted to try more. So I got out the last of the fabric, and re-read Liz Berg's posts about the discharging. She does monoprints this way, so I pulled out the plexiglass sheet I bought months ago to try monoprinting. I put the gel on the plate with a foam roller, and showed Bentlee how to make marks with some tools I had. This was the result of that experiment, mostly done by Bentlee--


I will definitely be trying more monoprinting, both with the dishwasher gel and with paints. I did another one with the same fabric, using a styrofoam test tube holder for a stamp. This one is my favorite--



On the last piece of fabric, we rolled the gel on with a rubbing plate underneath. I got two sets of plates with my Shiva Paintstiks at Spring Market, and now I have another use for them--



For the last one, I used a leaf stencil I had in my collection. We just taped it on the fabric, and move the orientation each time we stenciled. We used the foam roller to apply the gel on this one too. I think this one will make a great practice piece for quilting, and maybe a piece I'll finish and hang. These last two didn't have as much orange in them after discharging.



Bentlee said that Grandma's is a fun place to come when we can do stuff like this! I think I agree, and I have further plans for several of these pieces.

Next post, the tissue paper sunprinting---