Category: Art Quiltmaking Design

Bread Baking and Paper Shredding

I started working on the collage fabric I’m making for my new quilt project about the January 8 shootings; above are ripped up photocopies of photographs I took of the memorials to the victims.

In between bouts of paper ripping I made a batch of bread with the stand-mixer I recently found on Craigslist for a steal.

I used this recipe I got from my mom:

place 1 cup whole oats and 1 cup polenta in a bowl, pour in hot water until grains just covered, allow to stand, then:

2Tbsp fresh yeast and a bit of sugar dissolved in 1/4 cup warm water; allow to stand in a warm spot for 20 minutes or until nice and bubbly, then add:

oat/corn mix, 1 Tbsp salt, 1/4 cup honey, 1/4 cup good quality olive or safflower oil, 1Tbsp lecithin dissolved in a small amount of water, mix:

then, slowly add 4 cups organic whole wheat flower, mixing with a dough-hook. Add up to 1/2 cup more flour if needed until dough in mixer is nice and smooth to the touch, not sticky, but still moist. I’d say 7 minutes for sure in the mixer once the flour is added. Then place dough in a large greased bowl, brush top of dough with oil, cover with a cloth and let raise in a warm place for an hour or until double. Punch down, divide, knead each piece a minute and shape into loaves and place in loaf pans, brush with oil, let raise for 45 minutes or until loaf-sized, almost, then bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. This is what my bread looks like:

I was surprised how good it turned out. Very yummy.

Screen Printing Revisited

Finally, back to an art quilt project. I have this idea of a piece about the January 8th Shooting in Tucson.

I made print paste mix yesterday to get ready for screen printing, as it’s best for the mix to sit 24 hours before use; it’s just sodium alginate, water and some urea. I’ve read several recipes that call for 8 Tablespoons of sodium alginate per gallon of water (a whole gallon is made because it stores well in the fridge); however, this is what the paste looks like with those proportions:

Yep. Very runny for a paste that you’re supposed to actually drag across a silk screen. So I added sodium alginate, increasing my total number of Tablespoons to 11:

And while it thickened some more after this effort….it was still too thin. I’m going to add 14 Tablespoons next time and see if I actually get a paste.

I then cut out some stencils of human shadows; I had this idea of creating fabric of the silhouettes of a man, woman and child to represent the different people hurt and killed at the shooting:

I settled on the shapes of a girl and a man; although it’s not my intention, I think this creates a more sinister feeling, and ultimately this may be very good for the piece, given the subject matter.

Here are the freezer paper cut-outs ironed on to the back of a silk screen:

Here’s my “outdoor studio”: plywood on top of sawhorses makes for my work space, and the patio table is my work area. Check out the wildflowers in the background!

Here’s one run:

Unfortunately, the freezer paper stencils didn’t stay ironed-on to the silk screen; they remained in place for the first run, then started remaining stuck on the fabric midway through the second run due to the wet conditions and the thin print paste mix. I just carefully unpeeled the stencils and stuck them back on the fabric. Here’s what the fabric looked like, wet, after 4 runs. I seem to remember from past practice that the fabric really can only absorb the dye from 2 runs, possibly 3 but not much.

I should make it clear that I have poor screen printing technique, and that I do all kinds of short-cuts and chaotic things while I print:

Here’s the finished fabric; it’s pale (I used very old dye to see if it still worked, I used Procion MX cold water dyes I’d mixed 4 months ago and left in the fridge, just to see how they’d perform:

I think the shadow idea worked well; the shapes are distinct. I like the colors, too, but I think I’ll mix fresher dye next time:

Tubac Center for the Arts Member’s Juried Exhibit

I joined the Tubac Center for the Arts earlier this year, and I entered an art quilt in their annual Member’s Juried Exhibit, which is showing now through January 2, 2012. I went to the opening last night, and there were so many lovely paintings and photos on display. The show was put up very well; it’s a very beautiful space.

New Thermofax Fabric

Below is a not-very-good photo of my first thermofax screen; the smaller, bottom screen is the first screen, and the one above it has the same image but is larger–and, more importantly–has a blank space on the very left before the design starts, and this space is necessary so you have somewhere to put a pile of thickened dye before you scrape it over the screen. I didn’t put this blank space–kind of an improvised “well”–on my first screen, which is why it was so hard and frustrating to print.

Here are a couple of new screens I made of saguaro cactus shapes; you can see the black and white photocopies I used to make the screen on the right.

This is what I jokingly refer to as my “wet studio”: my patio table and a bunch of buckets, old towels, yogurt containers and thickened dye; here I have the screen with some dye on the left, ready to be squeegeed:

This is what the print looked like:

And here I’m starting the next run…

…which looks like this:

Below, the fabric after multiple runs:

I also did yet another layer of mountain-shapes after I was done printing the saguaros, here are all four panels getting a bit of late afternoon sun before they go in the washer:

This is a part of the mountain fabric, as it looks now…

…and here is the saguaro fabric:

Not bad, I think. I’m slowly getting the hang of printing with these screens.

Thermofax Fabric

Still working on getting the hang of screen printing with thickened dye and a home-made, duct-tape framed thermofax screen: today I took the Catalina Mountain fabric I’ve been working on, and screen-printed more mountains on top. Here’s one layer, drying:

And another:

I let the fabric sit in the sun for an hour or so, washed it, and then went through the whole process again. Here’s the fabric drying (again):

This is what I have so far, 2 pieces of fabric; the thickened  dye is always way lighter dry than it appears wet:

Here’s a close up; I’m happy with the results, it’s cool how you really can see the multiple layers of screen-printed dye:

A Surface Design Staycation

What happens when I take some time off from work to stay home and work on art projects? Sadly, I go a bit nuts. As it turns out, mixing and stirring up a good dye bath for fabric involves the same set of skills as mixing up a good pot of soup.

This is some fabric I dyed the other day.

I’m making a big saguaro cactus applique for my next art quilt project.  Yesterday, I put together my 3 chosen, recently dyed fabrics, kind of in the shape I plan the cactus to be, and it took me a while to figure out what was wrong:

That photo above is blurry. The fabric where the saguaro “arms” will be looks really nice, a good dark green; but the saguaro “trunk” in the middle is too purple. I thought I’d followed the same dye recipe for all 3 pieces of fabric. And I had. Except I used turquoise blue for the middle piece and sky blue for the 2 other pieces….and that’s what makes the difference.

So I scrunched up the middle piece and re-dyed it, and dyeing any yardage involves quart yogurt containers out on my patio:

And then the weather started to crap out; really no rain, sadly, just a squall blown in with a cold front, obscuring my view of the mountains:

It suddenly became soup weather. I don’t think there’s been soup weather in Tucson since last March.

So, time for soup in between dyeing; here’s the beginning of a good brocolli/havarti/cheddar soup: onions and garlic and butter….

…the broccoli, looking a bit boiled….

…the cheese, a mix of danish havarti and new zealand cheddar…

…on the right, the “roux”, the onion/butter mixture with flour and cheese….so what you really see on the right is a glob of saturated fat–YUM–and the pureed broccoli is on the left. I just added the brocolli, slowly, along with a quart of chicken broth and the water from cooking the brocolli, and I had a very delightful and not terribly rich–just rich enough–soup.

It turned out great. I have 8 cups left. Some will go in the freezer. I tell you, a bit of vermouth and lemon in brocolli/cheddarish soup is all you need for a fantastic soup outcome.

When the weather cleared a bit, I was able to do a bit of screen printing with my thermofax screen. My technique is improving. I did a run of colors in yellow and fuschia and orange:

Once dry, I tossed it in the washer, dried it and did another run of blue on top: the clouds cleared out mid-afternoon, but it got cold (i.e. 55 degrees, not cold for many of you out there) and I let the blue dye set inside for a few hours, where it was warmer.

Tomorrow I plan on more screen printing; the weather is supposed to be really nice, in the 70s. I’ll post more tomorrow. This fabric isn’t done yet! Needs more mountain layers.

Remedial Thermofax 101A

Yes, well, it takes a while to get the hang of using a “new” technology in your art, even if that new things is from circa 1956 (I’m talking about my thermofax machine).

Today I make a quick drawing/shape of the local mountains–the Catalina Mountains–and I used pencil, because the more carbon in the drawing, the better the image transfer…and there’s nothing more carbon than graphite!

Then I put the drawing with the blue, sheer thermofax screen film on top into the double-sided transparency film carrier and fed the sandwich into the thermal copier. Unlike my previous attempts using photocopied images with toner, a drawing transfers really well to the mesh fabric.

Here’s a quick sample of how the screen printed fabric looks (really, this took me just minutes). Please bear in mind I was using runny print paste, and I used only a slim amount of dye and dye fixer….so the results are faint, but sufficient for me: at least I know with thicker print paste and few other precautions, I could probably use this screen to make the kind of fabric I want for my upcoming art quilt project.

And yet more baby steps…

This week I managed to get some garden and art related chores done after work.  It’s fall here in Arizona and temps next week will be in the 80s!!! Time to start the winter garden. I turned over my raised beds and added some potting soil…

Here are my nicely turned over beds; these are home to parnsip, carrot, beet, kale and lettuce; the wire on top is to discourage the local stray cats from confusing my garden with a litter box.

Then later in the week I tackled the dreadful art-quilt-framing issue. Here are my cedar stretcher bars on the back side of the desert marigold piece….

And here’s the piece pulled over the stretcher bars and stapled to the back. I know, it doesn’t look straight, but it is; just a bad camera angle:

Late this afternoon, I measured the stretched piece and cut some poplar molding I have to make a frame; I then used my new mitre-trimmer to make the neatest 45-degree angle cuts:

Unfortunately, my very amateur woodworking skills have got me again, and this frame is going to be just about a quarter-inch too small all around:

So I’m going to have to get a more accurate ruler for measuring; at least it’s reasuring to see that the mitre-trimmer makes a huge difference in cutting wood for frames, check out this very smooth fit below! And that’s not even glued yet.

If I can just get the measurements just right I’ll be fine. Maybe when I do this again, I need to make the stretcher bars and frame at the same time, before I stretch the quilt. It seems that with the quilted fabric stapled over the piece, if I make the frame just 1/4 bigger all around, that frame should then  neatly fit around stretched quilt art.

That’s my plan at least!

Work Week Art Baby Steps

When you have a day job, and you’re an artist, it’s all about being disciplined in taking baby steps to get things done. It is so bleeping frustrating–because any artist would rather go full hog into the art making rather than having to hack away at something for just an hour–but progress does happen with daily measured steps.

So, this week I managed to staple and glue together some cedar stretcher bars for my (finally) completely machine quilted paper/silk lamination, I finished quilting this week during several episodes of the Daily Show. The bars will go UNDER the piece….

…and I’ll staple the 4-layer piece to the back.

Below, you can see the top layer (silk/paper fabric), the second layer (yellow cotton to add color in the background) and 2 layers of cotton flannel (the “batting”, I picked flannel because it will be exposed on the back and you can see the quilting lines on it nicely). I think I will trim the bottom layer of flannel to the exact dimensions of the stretcher bars so there will be less bulk when I staple around the corners.

Here’s the machine quilting up close; not always totally even, sometimes I forget to drop my feed dogs and my free-motion is bit uneven. I can’t believe I am that absent-minded, but I don’t think the quilting looks terrible as a result. I’m sure a quilt-show quilting judge would cringe….but for me, it’s OK. Plus, you can’t really pull out too many stitches on this type of work; once the top is needle-punched, the holes show.

Here’s the quilting on the back:

Also this week, my art quilting pal Mary Vaneckee came by with a 21 yard roll of 9 inch wide blue mesh fabric for making thermofax screens; I’ve blogged before (here)about the ancient thermal copier I found on craigslist, and I’m finally getting around to using it. We split the cost on the mesh; here’s my 30 feet, it’s blue, and it set me back $100. I better get some good screen printed fabric out it!

Anyway. Once the piece above is stapled to stretcher bars, I’ll pull out my newly acquired mitre trimmer and try making a simple frame.

That will likely be my next post!