Peace Alphabet: Tracings for Next Letters

Peace alphabet: Letters e and f.

I am way behind in the A Letter A Week 2013 project. I was hoping to find the time to carve some blocks for the Peace alphabet while in Savannah. The carving didn't happen. Time with my parents was more important.

But, I did manage to sneak in time to sketch out tracings of the letters based on sketches from my notebook.

Peace alphabet: Letter g.

I still need to tweak a few of these. I also need to come up with a design for the letter i.

Peace alphabet: Letter h.

Now that I'm home, I plan to work on carving the blocks.

Peace alphabet: Letter j.

Peace alphabet: Letter k.

I'll have more to show by the end of this week.

Peace alphabet: Letter l.

Stitched Treasures from Mexico

My friend and yoga teacher, Katherine, brought me some stitched treasures from her latest trip to Mexico.

I love the bright colors and the childlike expressiveness of these little embroideries.

While trying to figure out what stitch was used to create these, I became fascinated by the back of each piece.

I plan to add these to my growing collection of Latin American textiles. I could definitely see some future block designs based on these.

More Birds: Embossed Craft Foam Block

As promised...the craft foam bird block.

The original design was based on one of Katherine's Mexican embroideries. I made a tracing.

I transferred the design to a sheet of adhesive craft foam using a soft rubber brayer.

I then cut the individual pieces out using a pair of small sharp scissors and an X-acto knife.

After pulling the paper backing off the adhesive craft foam, I arranged the pieces on a piece of thicker craft foam.

To mimic the texture of the embroidery stitches, I used a ballpoint pen to emboss the craft foam.

I mixed up some colors using Opaque Pebeo Setacolor fabric paint and rolled them out with my foam Rollrite brayer.

Printing some birds: the background of this piece was a wipe up cloth.

On this piece, I also used a wipe up cloth and overprinted with a hot glue block before using the bird design.

This last design also combines the hot glue block with the bird block.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Savannah to visit my folks.
The blog will continue. I'm looking forward to seeing what surface design inspirations Savannah has to offer.

A Day of Color and Stories

Although I only had one (very dedicated!) student yesterday...it was a colorful and productive day. Here are some photos.

Jennifer brought this mola into class. It was her grandmother's. We were trying to figure out what the figures represent. My guess was moths or butterflies.

Another mola that originally belonged to Jennifer's grandmother. Love these psychedelic frogs!

Jennifer's fabrics

Detail

Detail

Jennifer Burch admiring her finished fabric

I was struck by the fact that a number of Jennifer's fabrics spoke to me as stories.

Last night, I had trouble sleeping as my minding was racing (also could have been the chocolate I ate late). I am back to thinking about a class creating fabric that has meaning...but now more specifically printed fabric that tells stories. I will write more about this soon.

For the Birds: More Latin American Designs

Just a small flock of fabrics before I head off to work...

These were printed with two carved Speedball Speedy Stamp (Carve) blocks. The design was based on a motif from an ancient Peruvian weaving.

This piece was created with a block made from adhesive craft foam that I embossed with a ballpoint pen. I used one of Katherine's Mexican embroideries as inspiration. I'll have a step-by-step about this block design sometime in the next few days.

Off to sell beads!