To Tell a Story with Cloth: Impressions, Connections, and Memories: Word Impressions

Barbara C: Barbara's pieces focused on her memories of London, where she lived for over 20 years. She recently visited and was struck by how much she loved the architecture...and one building in particular...which she found out used to be the home of T. S. Eliot. She decided to include a poem by Eliot as part of her memory cloth series. On this piece, Barbara combined hand painted and hand stitched lettering along with appliqued fabric "bits".

The fourth theme we covered in To Tell a Story with Cloth: Impressions, Connections, and Memories was Word Impressions. For this class, I asked students to bring in poetry, personal correspondence, favorite family sayings or to choose words that appeared in their journal (for example...words from their Mind Map from Class #2). We talked about different ways to get words onto fabric including: writing with permanent marker (such as Micron pens), printing, applique and stitching.

There were so many possibilities that most students worked on printing techniques during Class #4 and stitching techniques in Class #5. I'm including both in this post and will feature finished work and works in progress in the next (and final) blog post.

Ann Z.: Ann used adhesive foam letter stamps for some of her words and incised others in craft foam. Her pieces focused on memories of the beach.

Printing techniques included carved Speedy Carve blocks, incised craft foam, embossed aluminum and freezer paper stencils.

Alice A.: A quote referencing a Mary Oliver poem. Alice used embossed aluminum.

Judith K.-P.: Japanese for "creativity"...part of Judith's continuing series on Japan. She used incised craft foam.

Jan B.: Jan's father was a math teacher. This was one of his favorite sayings! Jan used foam letter stamps.

Jan B.: While going through some old papers, Jan found this page of math problems handwritten by her father. The other side is a set of mimeographed word problems (also handwritten)!

Jan B.: Incised craft foam block prints based on her father's diagrams.

Judy M.: As part of her series about her grandmother and the cottage on Lake Michigan, Judy decided to reference some of the poetry that her grandmother used to read to her. This print is made from an incised craft foam block.

Karol L.: This is the title of the book that Karol's mother wrote. She is planning on including it as part of her piece about the Eastern shore (see the link to the post below on Significant Object Portraits). This was printed with embossed aluminum.

Karol L.: Karol also incised the book title in craft foam.

Stitching techniques included turned and raw edge applique and reverse applique. I made some samples to inspire the students.

Julie Booth: Turned and raw edge applique and reverse applique.

Barbara C.: Raw edge applique letters to spell London.

I also had fun working on some stitch samplers featuring different stitches. I'm continuing to work on more samplers. Lots of potential with stitch combinations!

Julie Booth: Words using different stitches.

Ann Z: Stitched words inspired by Rachel Carson.

Below are links to some of the other posts about this class.
Color Connections
Mapping Memories
Significant Object Portraits

If you live in the Washington, D.C. area, I will be teaching this as an evening class this coming fall (dates TBA). Please feel free to contact me.

The Printed Fabric Bee: Inspirational Words Giveaway

This month, Queen Lynda Heines had all us worker bees producing fabrics with the theme, Inspirational Words.

I thought a while about what I wanted to do and decided to use the Adinkra symbol for strength. This symbol is two stylized sets of ram's horns coming together to form a beautiful symmetrical design. I've often played with variations of this symbol. I love the swirling spirals. When I make this symbol, I think of friends or family recovering from illness and in need of strength.

Lynda's requested colors were: orange, light green, blue and plum. Of course, I couldn't print just one piece! I had to play with the color combinations. I also wanted to be sure that I had enough fabric in case I made a mistake while printing. So...three color combinations. I'll be sending two off to Lynda (Lynda- the first two unless you prefer the third one. Let me know before Tuesday) and one off to the giveaway winner. The remaining fabrics may show up in a future fabric giveaway of my own.

Here is what I did...

After painting washes of color on white PFD cotton, I decided to use two of the pasta blocks from Issue #20 of Julie B Booth Surface Design News: Pasta Play. I wanted to have some interesting textures going on in the background.

Next, I designed and carved the symbol and two variations of the word, STRENGTH using a font I found online that looked "African".

I printed the Adinkra symbol over the pasta textures. I used a rectangular piece of craft foam the same size as the carved words to set the words off from the background.

Finally, I painted some details in the letters to make them pop!

Here are the final pieces.

And here is the giveaway fabric. It's a bit larger than the usual 6" square because I wanted the winner to get a repeat of the design.

Now...here's how you can win...go to either Lynda Heines' blog and post a comment under the giveaway photo OR go to The Printed Fabric Bee blog and post a comment there. Lynda will post a date for the giveaway and the winner.

Good luck!!!

Inspirational Words: Sneak Peak

Here's a sneak peak of the direction I'm taking for the next piece of fabric for The Printed Fabric Bee. Lynda Heines is the Queen this month and her theme is, Inspirational Words.

I chose to work with one of my favorite Adinkra symbols...the ram's horns. I enjoy doing slightly different takes on the symmetrical spiral design each time I make one. You can probably guess that this design symbolizes strength.

Back to the studio. Have to get the fabric off by the end of the week.