Prints Charming

Apart from selling some of my patterns and contemporary quilt notecards at the market day, the highlight of yesterday’s Guild meeting was a presentation by Cath Derksema and Kirsten Junor of Prints Charming. Reknown for their fresh and funky fabrics, the Prints Charming team shared the story of the genesis of their creative business which today finds them developing lines for Marcus Fabrics whilst still continuing their strong tradition in handprinted fabrics.

As part of their presentation, Cath and Kirsten showed us their original design samples created by screen printing through paper stencils onto various base cloths on a relatively small table surface (see, for example, these blog photos). It was fascinating to see how faithfully the designs have been interpreted by the mills. I was even more excited to learn that Cath and Kirsten offer Print Your Own Fabric workshops where you learn how to layer colour using papercut designs to create 1.5 metres of your very own fabric. Classes are limited to four people per class and the 2008 program is booked out but I am keen to add my name to the list for the 2009 program.

Acacia Bloom at Canberra

Today the Canberra Quilters’ Exhibition 2008 opens in Australia’s national capital. I have two quilts entered this year - Acacia Bloom and Afterglow. I am thrilled* to report that Acacia Bloom was awarded first place in the open Mixed Media Quilt category:

Quilt may include materials other than fabric and must include mixed techniques such as embroidery, embellishment, painting, printing, dyeing, fibre manipulation and trapunto. Must comprise at least 50% fabric and meet the definition of a quilt.

Acacia Bloom ©2007 Brenda Gael Smith 46cm x 55cm

 
I understand that my prize includes a voucher from Unique Stitching, an online business that sells all sorts of textile art goodies. I look forward to going shopping - thank you for your generous sponsorship Cecile.

See the Canberra Quilters’ blog for a complete prize listing.

*As I write this, there is a whale doing backflips across the bay, I know exactly how it feels!

More Mesh Stamping

Rubber Mesh

My favourite play thing from yesterday’s “play day” was a rubber mesh pot mat that Erica picked up from a $2 shop. It worked well both as a stamp and for rubbing:

Play Day

Erica, Pamela and I got together today to play with stamping, painting, rubbings, paintstiks and so on. Who could resist this table of goodies that Pamela had set up?
And here are some of the colourful results:

More pictures tomorrow…

Stamping Little People

I gave up battling with fine freezer paper stencils for my Twelve by Twelve “community” themed quilt and decided to try out some stamping instead. I searched high and low in craft and art supply stores for some compressed craft sponge that Linda & Laura Kemshall mention in their book The Painted Quilt. I ended up cutting out shapes from 2mm foam sheets with varying degrees of success and blobiness:

 
 

Fabric Painting & Photoshop

Embrace your inner child, pull out the fabric paints and play! Then bring up the special effects in your photo editing software and play some more! The first photo shows some painting I did yesterday. The other photos show variations using Photoshop Elements:
  
  

Recyling Fabric Scraps

“Quilt Camp” is an annual retreat coordinated by The Patchworkers and Quilters of the Hawkesbury Inc on a voluntary basis. I’ve been to a handful of Quilt Camps (here’s my report from 2006) and especially enjoy the social aspects of this event. In the workshop program for Quilt Camp 2008, there are 13 two day classes on offer including “Sumptuous Surfaces” with Susan Mathews who has developed a technique using raw edge strips from 1/8″ to 1″ wide to form a surface which is further embellished by copious free motion stitching.

I did a similar class with Susan at the Christchurch (NZ) Symposium in 2003. Here is what I made with curved scraps from my Copacabana Carnivale quilt:

Done

I’ve finished quilting my dandelion thread drawing:


The end result is probably overly subtle. Next time I will have more confidence to experiment with threads offering higher contrast.

Press’n Seal

It appears that I confused at least one person with my dandelion thread drawing post and the mention of Press’n Seal.

Press’n Seal is a plastic wrap product that is readily available on supermarket shelves in the United States and online in Australia. In my dandelion piece, I followed these steps:

• created a simplified black and white line drawing from an enlarged photo (I am way too artistically challenged to, gasp, do the drawing myself);
• traced the line drawing onto a square of Press’n Seal with a fine tipped permanent marker;
• stuck the Press’n Seal onto the top of my prepared fabric sandwich - the product is mostly see-through which allowed me to easily position the drawing over the light area of my hand dyed fabric; and
• used the marked outline as a guide for my the main flower of my thread drawing/quilting before ripping out the Press’n Seal.

If you don’t have access to the plastic wrap, you can do the same kind of thing with tissue paper. (I know that other quiltmakers use Press’n Seal for marking their traditional quilting designs. Personally, I prefer no-mark free-motion quilting motifs as my quilting lines are much too wobbly and I could not be bothered playing with the plastic wrap or tissue paper over a large area.)

So, when you look at the last photo on my previous post, what you see is my B&W drawing in the bottom corner and, above it, is my thread drawing with the Press’n Seal still in place.