Gelatin Printing

Our guild has invited our friend Eileen Neill to be our guest teacher once again. Eileen is an excellent teacher and she has been experimenting with gelatin plates for monoprinting ( or is that Monotyping?)

Monotyping is the printing of the fabric or paper with a plate that has no permanent lines or marks gouged or etched into the plate. This would be like when you finger paint and transfer the image to your fabric.

Monoprinting is when you have made a design in the surface of the plate and you can do multiple prints from the same design. You can cut , gouge, or make a stencil resist for your design.

Anyway, Eileen will be guiding us through some experiments and helping us actually compose a small quilt.

Better get down to the studio and find all those paints and textile mediums.

If you aren’t sure about what we will be doing, just go to youtube and do a search. There are quite a number of good tutorials that give you a overview.

Good bedtime reading…….

I popped into Saveon foods for a few items after work and walked down the magazine aisle, where Suzanne was just setting out the newest shipment. She stopped me and dug all the way to the bottom of the box just so I could have the first copy of Quilting Arts mag. She’s a sweety.

As usual there’s too many different techniques and you’ll want to do them all, but I have admired Ann Lullie’s mosaics for many years and might try that technique now that I read the article.

A quick flip through shows me that there are at least 8 ideas that I would like to explore. This is certainly refreshing after I was so very disappointed in the latest issue of QNM this month.

There is a excerpt from Lyric Kinkaid’s new book. “Art+Quilt:Design Principles and Creativity Exercises ” that has just been published. Now there have been a number of books published in the last few years that have all claimed to be design books for quilters. I have been truly disappointed by all of them , as they might only cover 2-3 principles when I want the whole dozen covered with explaination and good as well as poor examples.  I am happy to say that Lyric has possibly finally published the guide book that I have been looking for, as the reviews are favorable. I am going to order it and will report .

poor neglected blog

Howdy folks, I’m making a commitment to update this blog on a regular basis.

There may be more website suggestions than a showcase of my own work – but I hope to share with you as i find interesting fiber to share.

Here’s the first:   http://www.cynthiastcharles.com/

Cynthia works with some surface design and has a gallery of just tyvek experiments. I am bookmarking her site to study as I like her style and her use of color.

I’d like it if more of the fiberspeak group could view the work and then comment or try an experimental piece based on her work.

 

This nasty weather also makes me think I could play with Amazon and my credit card , ordering some books before our next meeting.

first meeting of Fiber Speak

I’m just back from a lovely evening of chit chat and sharing of ideas at our new group named Fiber Speak.

It is a subgroup of the Timberlane Quilter’s Guild and tonight Yvonne showed us some work she’s creating using her own unique home made stamp , and her own dyed fabrics.

I showed some pieces of silk fusion that I had done in a class at the Ottawa CQA conference and that I  hope to finally use instead of storing them in a box.

There are 2 fiber/textile art galleries that we are aware of here on the coast.

One is Fiberworks Gallery located at the yurts ( yes! Mongolian Yurts) at Pender Harbour.Note their website is a subpage of the Gunboat Bay Lodge’s website and is a little difficult to find with a google search.

Yvonne has visited and says the owner is very hospitable and the present exhibit is very inspirational. She encourages all of us to take the time to visit instead of rushing to make the next ferry, if you are on the way to the city.

The present exhibit is from the Laura and Linda Kemshell of the UK and Catherine Nicholls of Vancouver. The 3 of them call their enterprise Thr3fold and click here to see some of the work in the show. This is a slideshow and you can move from slide to slide by moving your mouse on and off the photos.

Also check out their personal website and learn more about their journal publications. There are presently 3 volumes available and they offer articles in  not only surface design but a great number of topics.

The other gallery is FiberEssence gallery on Dunbar Ave in Vancouver. This is a non profit gallery with gallery space for guest artists as well as the artists/members. I hope to visit here soon as there is also a gift shop area, and their christmas exhibit and sale will begin in November.

3D fiber art worth a look

and hopefully this could be some sort of exercise or point of discussion for the group…….but I found marybeth to have some fascinating pieces.Her edges are far from the squared  traditional quilting, and I liked what she is doing with dimension. Particularly checkout her gallery here . The photos of Rising water and Second Wave are clickable to enlarge detail . What the heck holds those pieces up??!

beginnings

Last night , I attended our quilting guild’s first meeting of the year. It is exciting for 2 reasons.

First, there will be a fiberarts component to the guild this year , after many years of talking about it – there will at last be a monthly group meeting, beginning next week. Guess I should take along some show and tell. Not a problem with the large number of books that I’ve acquired over the summer*grin*

Second….the guild challenge was presented last night in the usual small brown paper bag. I was thrilled , but those with a less diabolical mind will be scratching their head in puzzlement. Those” play by the rules” folks will not see the fun at all in creating an apron.

Yes, an apron has to be to be constructed and displayed at our upcoming quilt show.

I’ve got so many ideas – but shhhhhhh can’t share here as others in the fiber group will be reading this.

In the bag was a piece of brown checkered gingham, a length of lace and a skein of gold coloured embroidery floss. We must use all of these in some portion on the apron and somewhere there has to be Chicken Scratch embroidery ( X’s and O’s) does this not take you back to childhood?

Come on admit you know what I’m talking about……..you didn’t take home ec from the greatest teacher I ever had ?, you didn’t belong to 4-H and still have all your samples of seams,zipper placement and pocket construction?,you didn’t live in a little prairie town of 5oo people and see this sort of embroidery on tea towels and aprons in every home you visited?

What do you mean that you don’t know what an apron is used for? They’re actually coming back in style and it’s the retro thing to wear one. I guess it’s also something to do with the fact that they are easy to construct and the new designer shows are creating a growing number of young people eager to learn to sew (young minds to corrupt to the dark side yes….fading to diabolical chuckles)

 

Could also have to do with the large number of cooking shows on TV ??

anyway I’m eager to do some research and with all these ideas – dare I make two??