Fiber Junkies met in July at Gen's home for a day of monoprinting and Gelli printing. We had an assignment to bring a tip or technique to share - definately made the meeting more interesting. But before we dove in, we had a fabulous show and tell.
Kate showed us a piece she created in silk while in Sue Benner's class - a beauty. The piece is a whole cloth, hand painted with dyes and lavishly machine quilted. It will be in the upcoming Arboretum show (more on that to follow)
Kate also shared her latest batik piece. Her and Denny have been taking semi private lessons from a very talented batik artist. I love the look.
Gen has been working in paper, making collages and journals. She found the old book above left...removed @ every third page, then glued 3 pages together at a time to give it more body to work on...She hasn't started on it yet but it will be fun to see what she does with it.
Another one of the pages from a larger journal....The black spots (looks like bugs) are made by marking a piece of tissue with all kinds of lines and markings (below left), using an eye dropper to make a line of water around the mark you want to use and the piece comes right out of the tissue...a simple little tip but such a good one.
And more papers from Gen using party napkins...do you find yourself using someone's restroom and discovering pretty little disposable hand towels - allowing your hands to air dry so you can keep your towel for art...
We were exploring different ways to print where we might not have a gelli plate. Kate read about using clear plastic wrap...Denny used a gelli plate.
Here's the clear wrap on left...I'm getting ready to try it. Mary used an envelope lined with bubble wrap for softness and covered it with plastic wrap.
Denny had plenty of cutouts for us to use made with her Accuquilt
I found by leaving the paint on the surface for a while, it separates and leaves tiny little blank spaces. I liked this happy accident. On the right was my attempt at using clear plastic wrap. I couldn't get the paint to apply evenly....so back to the gelli plate
Gen tried something interesting on her plate using a piece of hemp that she unraveled...Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the results which were great...but an interesting resist to use..
I was coating my plate with paint and using a rubber stamp, lifting off color which made for an interesting effect.
Denny was experimenting with her disperse dyes and synthetic fabric. She's great at layering which is a fun thing to do with these dyes.
Mary was stamping wool with real leaves...she also came up with this cool little tip...Use an old yogurt cup, place a piece of bubble wrap over top and down the sides a slight bit and secure with a rubber band...what a great stamp.
and easy to use.
One of Gen's paper pieces - very vibrant.
And Kates...Kate is great at rescueing hopeless pieces which she turns into something lovely.
There was a lot of paint left on the gelli plate I was using...it had dried so I coated it with white paint and while the white paint was still wet, laid fabric on top. The results - the white paint loosened the dried paint and all came off on fabric (top left). I love the look...on the right - working with leaves as a resist.
And lunch, eating off of Gen's beautiful handmade placemats....A great day.
