The Printed Fabric Bee Giveaway: Forest Floor Final Update

This month's theme is the "Forest Floor".

For those of you unfamiliar with The Printed Fabric Bee, we are a group of 12 surface design enthusiasts. Each month, one member is designated the Queen. The Queen gets to select a theme and colors for her fabric collection and the rest of the members get to work. The result is an original and eclectic collection of fabrics. And since we like to spread the fun around, each month we put together a collection of 6" square versions of the fabric that you can win!

This month's Queen Bee was Carol R. Eaton and her theme was the Forest Floor.

I decided that I wanted to work with one of my favorite kitchen resists...confectioners' sugar syrup! I love the rich, velvety marks that this resist makes. I have a great microwave recipe for this resist in my new book, Fabric Printing at Home.

I also decided that I wanted to do two layers of brayer rubbings using the resist and one of my favorite print blocks...a hot glue on cardboard block.

I slipped a hot glue block under the fabric and rolled a layer of the sugar syrup over the fabric to pick up the designs.

After the sugar syrup resist dried, I painted washes of fabric paint over the resist. After heat setting the paint, I washed out the resist and repeated the whole process with a different hot glue block design.

With the background complete, I printed with a carved Speedy Carve block with images of dandelion leaves.

See the first image in this post for the final result.

And here is the six-inch fabric square that you can win.

Here are all the fabrics (so far) that are in the giveaway this month...what a great collection!

Carol will be choosing a giveaway winner on March 15th. You can enter by either leaving a comment on Carol's blog or The Printed Fabric Bee blog under the Forest Floor 6" square giveaway mosaic. Good luck!

Visit other Bee members' blogs and find out how they created their fabrics!
Jackie Lams
Lynda Heines
Gerrie Congdon
Susan Purney Mark
Deborah Boschert
Jane Davila
Lisa Chin
Lynn Krawczyk
Leslie Jenison
Judy Gula

New Fabrics and Roy Reminder

I've been spending a lot of time the past couple of weeks creating new fabric designs. Some fabrics have been for my new project, Crossroads. This week I focused on getting some fabrics ready to sell at my cooperative gallery, Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery. I've been having a lot of fun working with blues, aquas, and purples and using my Confectioner's sugar resist recipe.

I took my camera out to get some different views.

This is also an opportunity to remind you that this Thursday, June 20, is the next installment of the Searching for Roy G Biv Challenge (the colors of the rainbow). BLUE is the color of the month...which seems fitting as I've been creating a lot of blue fabrics! If you're not familiar with the Challenge, click here for more information. Hope you can join in this month!

The finished fabric packets.

Favorite Blocks

 Today, I was back in the studio making a few new hot glue blocks.

These are some of my favorite blocks to make. They are very versatile. You can use them to print directly or to do a brayer rubbing. When you print with them they have a very distinctive look.

My goal today was to create more blue fabrics for one of the Crossroads pieces. I did a base layer of paint yesterday. Today, after creating a few new hot glue blocks, I did some rubbings using a Confectioner's Sugar resist. This is the technique I used to make some of the fabrics here , here and here.

Tomorrow, I'll paint over the resist layer. I'm realizing I'm going to need a lot of fabric for this new piece.

Learning about Thickened Dyes with Floris Flam

Floris Flam

  I spent a couple of hours with quilt artist, Floris Flam today in her studio at VisArts in Rockville, Maryland. She took me through a step-by-step of mixing up and painting with thickened dye.

This is what the thickening paste looks like before adding water. It contains some Urea which comes into play later in the process.

Next Floris added the dry paste mixture to water. It has to be stirred continuously for several minutes until it is mixed thoroughly and starts to thicken. It needs to stand for at least an hour, though it is better if it stands overnight as it will then become smooth.

This is what the thickened paste looks like when it is ready to use.

Now it is time to add the dye. The dyes used with this process are PRO MX Reactive Dyes. Floris had mixed the dyes at home and brought them into the studio. The ratio of dye to paste will determine the darkness of the dye. Floris works with primary colors and has assembled dye color charts to figure out color mixtures. She mixed a purple to work with today.

The last thing that needs to be added before painting on the dye is a baking soda/soda ash mixture. This activates the dye in the dye paste. Once this is mixed in, the paste lasts for 4 hours.

I brought in a sampler fabric of different application techniques using cooked Confectioner's sugar resist. Both Floris and I wanted to see how the print paste would work with the water soluble resists I've been working with this past year. Here Floris is using a foam brush to paint on the thickened dye.

This is what the fabric looked like after being painted with an even coat of the thickened dye.

The painted fabric now has to be covered for 24 hours in order for the dye to bond. The dye has to stay moist during this time...this is where the Urea comes into play as it helps keep the water from evaporating from the dye paste.

After 24 hours, the fabric is rinsed with cold water to remove the soda ash. It then has to be washed in hot water (140 degrees F) with Synthrapol. Since this is just a sample, after removing the soda ash, I will probably just wash it in hot water from my kitchen sink.

Floris has been taking an online dyeing class with Candy Glendening to work out this wonderful color chart.

Here are some more dye samples from the same course. I can only imagine how many hours of time this all took but what a fantastic resource!

Floris' studio space at VisArts is shared with about 7 other artists...most of them are also members of Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery, where I am a member. There was a beautiful selection of the artists' work for sale. I spied some colorful dyed socks and was pleased to find out that they were made by Floris.

So of course I had to buy three pairs! I can't wait to wear them. Thanks Floris for a fun and informative time.