Tag Archives: surface designs

Fabric Challenge and Swap

I was happy to learn that the fabric I submitted for the Quilting Art Fabric Challenge/Swap was published in their Dec 2016/Jan2017 magazine. They didn’t publish all of the submissions but I was impression by the variety and would love to be able to ask many of the artists how exactly they achieved their results.

quilting-arts-mag
forest-rays
Ann’s fabric

The way the challenge worked was for readers to create a fat quarter of fabric with original surface designs, submit it, and then they would receive a fat quarter made by another entrant. For more information see that QA link above.

I was so excited when I received a fat quarter created by Susan Price. Susan along with her business partner, Elizabeth, create original and custom Thermofax screens and sell their designs on Etsy at – PGFiber2art

s-price-fab-full
s-price-fab-detail
s-price-fab-back

Susan explained that the fabric I received was snow dyed, pole-wrapped (Shibori) and then thermofax screen printed using her original photo called Birds on a Branch. I think it is beautiful! Thank you, Susan.

A short time after I received Susan’s fabric I received a “thank you” email from Pat Robertson, who was the recipient of my challenge fabric. As I looked through the magazine again, I discovered that the fabric Pat submitted was also published so I asked Pat to send me photos of her fabric. Pat was kind enough to also send photos of her process too. The steps are – Pre-treated fabric, snow pile, dye applied, processing, fabric accepting the dye, rinse, and beautiful results! Thank you, Pat.

1-pretreated-fabric-p-robertson 2-snow-on-the-fabric-p-robertson 3-dye-placed-p-robertson 4-begining-to-melt-p-robertson 5-end-of-melting-p-robertson 6-rinsing-p-robertson 7-finished-fabric-p-robertson So you can see what wonderful results may come from playing with (and working) surface designs. I hope you will give it a try and if you do please share your results!

Becoming Unstuck

I’m happy to say I haven’t been artistically “stuck” in a while, in fact I wish there were more hours in the day or fewer ideas in my head! The other day I was thinking about ways to get unstuck and decided to see how fast I could produce fabric backgrounds just using areas around our garden. So my son handled the camera and videoed me for fifteen minutes as I traveled from one place to the next. I came up with five rubbings that I look forward to using in future pieces.

The pastel painted only with water.
The wax pastel painted with only water.

It was a hot day and I was using Neo-Color 2 wax pastels so I had to be quick (they melt). I did have a plan before I went outside but I didn’t anticipate the breeze and heat.The fact that my son had to go to work had me moving faster too! I went from flagstone to patio to the shed siding and then to the fence boards and a mosaic…

leaves on flagstone
leaves flagstone rub
patio pre rub
patio rub
patio rub fin
patio to shed
patio to shed fin
fence board
fence board fin
mosaic
mosaic-fin

These first layers can be a great way to get the creative juices flowing again. Have you ever been “stuck” artistically? What have you done to get unstuck?