Festival of Quilts (cont)

I had the arguable pleasure of spending an hour(!) in the dentist's chair this morning and to keep myself distracted and away from panic while the dentist did her stuff I spent the time planning my quilts for FOQ.  I know I've already started on one but I am still at the designing stage in my head and the time was useful.  I'm pleased to say the dentist has so far managed to save my tooth too so a successful hour all round.

When I got home and the face had thawed out I decided to do some more printing just in case I havn't got enough when I start to work on the quilt proper.  I took a few photos to share here although they're not wonderful as the light was poor and it's difficult to photograph sheers.

I rather like this image which is a very lightly printed piece of scarf.  Most of the marks you can see are on the drop paper below but I like the effect and I have a plan to print this image onto Extravorganza to maybe use in my piece.

These are some of my print blocks.  I found some lovely 'spider's web' in a craft shop today and it makes the most delicate of marks (block is bottom left, a bit over inked).

These prints made on paper were to use up the inks on the print plate but they will form part of my beaches Sketchbook inspired by my course with Dionne Swift.

Not looking very special but more marks to play with.

Yesterday was Sit and Stitch day at Stitchcraft and for the morning I took my oilbars along as I had been inspired by a post that Maggi Birchenough had put up. (Oops!  I should have said by Angela of Art & Stitch.  amended 18 May) I first cut and then tore an edge along a piece of copy paper and then, having taped down a sheet of paper initially, rubbed the oilbar along the cut edge and then brushed the paint off onto the paper below.

Once I had sorted out the technique I started to work on one of my previous prints on fabric.

Part way through my efforts Wendy suggested I work in white to suggest the spray and then Jane viewed it from the opposite way to me and suggested I turn it upside down.

Apparently all it needs now is a lighthouse :-)

Thank you to Stitchcraft for this image of yesterday's play which I have unashamedly knicked from their facebook page.

Nothing looks much at the moment but I'm hoping things will start to pop when I add some silk paint.  To be continued.........

Paintstiks

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The second part of our workshop covered experimenting with Markal Paintstiks (Shiva). My very limited experiments involved using a freezer paper mask to shield the paper and stroke the paintstik across the fabric.

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I am quite excited by the results above. I took all the shavings from the paintstiks and sprinkled them onto the fabric and then ironed them (under baking parchment) until they melted. Obviously this is only a very small amount of oilbar but it already, to my eye, has a look of the sea and rockpools. I am definitely going to play with this much more to see what effects I can achieve. I have never used my oilbars (paintstiks) for anything other than painting before but I can see that I will be exploring the possibilities with fabric much more. The metallics look beautiful once they have been heat set with the iron.

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I did try using the paintstiks with various stamps, stretching the fabric over the stamp, but it was pretty useless as the fabric kept moving. More experiments required.

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The final part of our workshop is still cooking! Rust dyeing! I'm planning to rinse it through on Friday as it seems to be working quite well so far.