Color Change

Test strip of color washes over flower fabric.

 This week begins a busy month of teaching. The Summer Session at The Art League School starts and my four session class, Exploring Surface Design a la Carte, is a go. I'm also teaching two mornings at The Art League School's Fiber Camp. Both start this week.

It's become a tradition for me to teach my Wrapped Wire Animals at Fiber Camp. It's a project near and dear to my heart and one that will eventually become a book (or that is my hope). I've posted about it before and you can see some animals from last year's camp here.

A couple of wrapped tigers.

As with most art programs these days, there is a strong incentive to save on costs...especially the cost of supplies. In the past, I've purchased fabrics from G Street Fabrics. In an effort to save, last year I was handed a box with assorted cotton fabrics. Fortunately for me, there were some solid colors among the patterned fabrics. Also fortunate, most of the solids weren't too dark, but pastels. This gave me the opportunity to paint washes of colors over the pastels and to do some knotted and bound resist techniques. As a result, I was able to provide a more interesting color selection to the campers.

This year, I was at it again... pulling fabrics from the box and seeing what possibilities there were to change the look of the fabrics.

I came upon a flower print.

I decided to do a bit of over-painting. And this is the result.

Original fabric on left.

I can see that there are certainly more possibilities. I did a little test strip this morning with some other colors.

These fabrics are destined to be cut up into strips for the Fiber Camp project. However, I also teach this over-painting technique in a class called, Changing the Face of Fabric. Of course, painting over a fabric to change it is just one of so many things you can do to make a blah fabric become an interesting one.

Now I'm off to cut up these new fabrics for Camp!