Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Fiber Junkies - Working with Mediums

Yesterday, we met at the home of Gen Grundy for a lesson in using mediums, fiber pastes and even pastes with glass beads in them.  It was great fun and such a learning experience. It's always nice to play with friends - so many ideas.
Gen had everything ready for us with so many selections....where to start...hmmm...
All we needed to bring was fabric and stencils if we had any.
There were so many pastes and gels, it gets confusing but Golden has a website with wonderful information on all these products, how and when to use them. Needless to say, they're now in my notebook, just have to figure out the how and when part.
We used them for other than their intended use; we "screened" them through a stencil.
We had some great stencils to work with. I found the smaller designs with less negative space where the paste would actually go, worked better.  The larger area stencils like the big star allowed too much paste to be laid on the fabric.
Denny brought a book of stencils which were wonderful and seemed to have the skinnier lines for laying paste.
This is white paste on white fabric but you can see the "relief" it provides to the fabric. It's really interesting. You can add color to the paste or probably go back and paint on top of it, something I have to experiment with.
The paste is quite thick and dries hard on the fabric. This was one of my favorite stencils - tree branches. I also screened some screening paint through this stencil onto paper so I can make a photocopy and then make it into a silk screen.
Many of us were using the branches to screen. The brown piece above was created by Mary. She used the crystal beads which went on white but then turned transparent which is why it became the disappearing tree on her foursome above.
Denny did this on top of a piece of deconstructive screen printed fabric.  It's such a busy, hard fabric to work with but I love the results of this screening.
This was another favorite screen - telephone posts.
and this tree that Gen did. I'll be anxious to see where she goes with it.

4 comments:

  1. Wow...love these! I would like to try more stenciling this year!

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  2. so, now what do you do with dried medium? I am intrigued. Do you do it instead of paint, for texture?
    Does it smell? Chemical sensitive me.
    LeeAnna Paylor
    lapaylor.blogspot.come

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    1. Hi LeeAnna - my Fiber Junkies were trying this to see a "what if" kind of thing. There's no smell, very gentle on the hands (although we always wear gloves anyway) and much like using a textile paint. It dries a little thicker and harder than paint so it does give more texture...you could probably use a brayer - very lightly - over it just catching the top of it as it's raised - and using another color...would be interesting to try.

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  3. Cool technique! I'm going to have to try it out!

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