Another Class with Quilt Artist Laura Cater-Woods!

I have been looking forward to this class for several months and I was able to fully immerse myself in Surface Design techniques with Laura , last Friday!! What a wonderful class from an amazingly gifted, sharing and gracious woman!!! if ever you get an opportunity to take a class with Laura, JUST DO IT!!!!! All of the techniques that she taught us are applicable to both fabrics and paper. Her philosophy is If you have a question and you can't find the answer, Just try it! (with the big caveat being that you are not mixing chemicals of any kind!)

The class was held at Artistic Artifacts Annex in Alexandria, VA. You have read my thoughts on Judy's wonderful Store/studio/learning space before and I continue to love the place. I am so lucky to have such an exciting venue so close to home!

Laura demonstarted Gelatin Printing, (making monoprints on fabric with acrylic paints using a slab of firm gelatin as the printing surface) Silk Paper Making, Rubbing with Oil Pastels and Oil paint sticks, Stamping with paint and inks and working Foils and Angelina fibers. It was quite the whirlwind of messyness and a total blast!!!!

Here is Laura talking about painting on a quilted piece that is under construction and how to use acrylic media to alter the surface. At the back of the photo you can see the large cookie sheets full of gelation setting up .

We watched ass Laura took us through the placement of silk and wool fibers in preparation for creating "Silk Paper". (This process is best described as a felting method of interlocking the silk fibers using water and soap).

Here is the first sheet of fibers after it was painted with soapy water and before the textile medium was added.

Once the sheets of gelatin were nice a firm, we used a brayer to roll on acrylic paint and then we took off some paint with various textured items. We used various sizes of bubble wrap, mesh bags stencils and combs of all sorts. then we laid down a piece of fabric and picked up the remaining paint. After the first print or "pull" there was enough paint left to get really interesting second prints, called ghost prints. I found these ghost prints to be the most interesting. This is the station where I spent most of my time. I have been wanting to try this technique for a very long time!! In this shot you cna see Kim lifting her fabric print off of the gelatin slab. Below are several shots of some of the prints that I did using this method.

The print that looks like lace was done with a plastic doily- the darker print done when the doily was used as a mask and then the lighter print (above the first ) was done as a second pull once the doily had been remved from the gelatin- this would be the ghost Print. the print that shows the round shapes was done after large bubble wrap removed a layer of paint from the gelatin surface. as the surface of teh gelatin picks up craks and nicks, the teture of each print becomes more and more interesting. If stored in the refrigerator between uses the slabs of gelatin can be kept for 3-4 days or till you start to notice mold growing. The wonderful artist Rayna Gillman has a fabulous book out called Create Your Own Hand Printed Cloth, which you can look at here.

I plan to go bakc to these initial prints and add more layers to each. I am not sure exactly what I will do to each one but I know that I will be adding more layers of gelatin printing to some of them, using a whole variety of colors.

Here is a picture of our wonderful Hostess Judy Gula as she pulls her first print off of her gelatin plate. Can you see the expression of amazement and glee on her face!!!

Here she is with her finished print. We had so much fun and we were all full of talk of getting Laura back to the east coast for a whole week of classes where we would create a whole piece form print to stitch to embellish. She said that if we planned it, she would be here!!!!!!!