Thursday, May 31, 2007

Fiber Play TIme

Time for blogging has escaped me lately!! Life has been extremely hectic lately with end of school events for the kids and sports practices and games. I even take the projects that involve handwork to the practices and games and I am still behind! YIKES!!!! Better behind than bored, I guess!!
Anyway, my 15 yr old, Matthew was given two awards yesterday! He is a freshman and was given an award for Outstanding Student (Highest GPA) in Honors Geometry and An Outstanding Student Award in Honors Earth Science!! pretty Cool!!
Becca had her first Softball game last night and they routed the older girls by the score of 14-9!!! We parents were only praying that they get some hits and catch a few balls!!! They were amazing- even the coach was flabbergasted and told them that they had been holding out on him!!! Becca hit a monster base hit and was called out at first- everyone except the teenage UMP claimed that she was safe! What an amazing experience for a bunch of 4th and 5th graders who were really struggling to make contact with the ball and couldn't really even catch. Fortunately we do have a few experienced players on the team and they are all so wonderfully supportive of each other!! This team is a real tribute to their Coach and to the girls!!
OK, Ok! Enough Proud Momma stuff, on to the art!
Yesterday morning I jumped on a second of free time to play with coloring some fiber. I used cheesecloth and white cotton crocheted lace and drier sheets.



This was good and messey and lots of fun! I used the Ranger Color Washes for the drier sheets (under the lace), Color washes and Ranger Acrylics for the cheesecloth (on the left) and color washes and acrylics for the lace. I have plans to use these pieces in upcoming projects.
DISCHARGE STAMPING

Next on the agenda , was to try some discharge stamping with bleach. I have a project at the top of my list : to make a summer fabric journal page. I want to use images of sea shells stamped on fabric for this project. I found that the fabric chosen for the bleach stamping had alot to do with the success of the stamping! Some fabrics that I thoguht would be perfect backgrounds, did not show any results form the bleach!! I found this very strange. I hope to get some feedback from those of you who have tried this technique, so leave me some hints if you get the chance, Please!!!
I began by using a 1:1 bleach solution but quickly advanced to 100% bleach and then I rinsed the fabric in water to stop the bleaching action.


I am quite pleased with these two strips and I plan to use them in my Ocean journal page. The batik fabrics leave such a nice background to the images and it appears the one is looking down thru the water at the shells.



The scallop stamp seems to have given the best image. The bleach held on to the nautilus stamp in droplets and was blotchey on the fabric.



These images are less obvious. There is a large nautilus in the center, a starfish on the right, a small conch at the bottom and a scallop on the left.


Perhaps if I were to use a plain boring solid color the images would be clearly discernable, but I do love the effects with the batik fabric. I don't think that I even HAVE any plain solid color, BORING fabric in my stash!!!!!!


If you have any experience with this technique, I would love some input!!!

2 comments:

Dianne said...

Elizabeth I think your bleach prints have turned out great!! I had a go with bleach on black (it's on my blog) and I was really hapy with the effect.

Frieda Oxenham said...

Hi Elizabeth, I've just enjoyed a lovely visit to your blog too, beautiful bleach prints and I simply LOVE your flower pictures, your gorgeous art dolls and quilties. Great to know your blog address now so I can keep an eye on your art!!

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