Dream Cat

Today I was working with some more of my newly marbled fabric and I got side tracked making a couple of ATCs.  I thread sketched the cats and then stitched on the little 'dream' charm so it would hang from the end of the tail.  I also used some TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) to add the words 'enjoy the journey'.  Considering that I was finishing the one for this months swap as my friends were coming up the driveway, I'm please to say I'm ahead of the game for the January swap!  As usual, I've made two so that I can keep one.  I like doing this because I can look through my collection to see all of the ones I have given as well as those I have received.

Marbled ATCs

I've been cutting some of the new marbled fabric for a piece I've been working on, and I decided to use a few of the cut offs to make a couple of ATCs.  One was swapped at our GOE meeting last night and I'll keep one for myself.  

March Calendar Journal

The March calendar page is ready to go.  I decided to play with the technique I learned in Joanne's Colour Love class using my Tombow markers.

I love the bright, vibrant colours they give you!...perfect for March when the world still seems to be a bit dull and dirty as winter lingers on and you're yearning for the bright colours of Spring.  The transition from the flat black and white page to the coloured page where all of a sudden those triangles seem to float above the surface is just so much fun.

 I was inspired by a comment left on my February calendar journal post by Danielle, in which she said she was considering using triangles for one of her calendar pages.  I loved the idea (since I tend to gravitate toward circles) and thought they'd be perfect for March.  They sort of remind me of little kites and that image seems to remind me of March winds.  Although, any kite flying I've ever done has been in the warmer summer months...



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More Marbled Surface Design

As I said in yesterday's post, I've been marbling fabric.  Not in what many consider the traditional sense, but in a way that produces a more organic looking design.  Having said that, I do have a few pieces that have the traditional look, created by dragging a chopstick through the surface of the paints before printing the fabric.  Mostly though, I have a lot of random circular shapes with an interesting unpredictability to them.


My husband asked how many pieces I had, which of course led to me counting them.  In total, from Saturday and Sunday's 'play sessions' combined, I have 89 pieces.  Each piece is approximately 9" X 12" in size. :D

While I was working here on Sunday, I had myself set up in the bathroom so I decided to pull out my iPhone and take a shot of the bin with the marble base (and a piece of fabric printing) as well as the collection of acrylic paints in baby food jars with eye droppers for the paint application.  As I got ready to shoot it I noticed my reflection so I stepped back against the wall to include myself in the shot. :o)

The other shot I took is of the drying rack in the bathtub.  What you can't see is the mess in the tub that took a bit of elbow grease to get clean, but it was totally worth it and I'd do it all again.  Of course, as I'm typing that I'm wondering why I didn't think to lay down an cheap dollar store plastic table cloth to minimize the mess...next time...

I have a particular art piece that I plan to do which will use about a third of this stash.  It's a piece I started to work on in the Spring, by taking a whole lot of photos...

I have parts of it ready to go, but I was stuck on what fabric to use and as soon as I started to see what these pieces were looking like when we began on Saturday, I knew they were just the thing.  Yes, I'm being rather secretive about this...perhaps it will be unveiled when once I get a little further in the process...

Until then, here's the gallery of some of my favourite pieces of fabric from Sunday's session (I've narrowed down my 'favourites' to 27):

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

FASM's First Annual Open Juried Show

I'm excited to announce that I've had a piece of my fibre art accepted into the Fine Arts Society of Milton's Juried Exhibition at the Holcim Gallery, Milton Centre for the Arts.  The show runs from December 5, 2012 to January 5, 2013.  I hope you have a chance to stop by the gallery and see the show.

For further details:

http://www.miltoncentreforthearts.ca/en/artexhibits/currentexhibitions.asp

Marbling Fabric

On Saturday, I got together with a small group of friends and we did some fun (and messy) surface design.  We started by watching Jo Fitsell's video called, Marbled Fabric Surface Design (you can see a short YouTube clip here) while we waited for the marble base to 'settle'.  Then, it was just a matter of getting our acrylic paints ready and starting to play.

I used 100% cotton and a couple of pieces of dupioni silk, but you can do this method with just about any fabric as well as paper.

Some of my fabric was from my hand-dyed stash (see this post from the summer of 2011) and I also used some good quality Egyptian cotton (purchased in the form of a queen sized top sheet for $3.00 at a thrift shop!).  In addition to that, I had some of my old wipe up clothes from other messy activities so I over printed them, resulting in some interesting secondary design elements.

I loved the process and results so much that I spend all day yesterday doing more.  They still need to be rinsed and heat set so I'll post about them tomorrow.  Here are a few of the pieces I did, and remember you can click on the image if you want to see a larger version.


Well, back to work...





 

 

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