Day 31: 2012 in Review

Salt and glue resist

 A review of 2012:
Starting with the presentation of my Conant grant project, Kitchen Resists: Using Common Household Materials as Resists on Fabric. In the end, 64 resist recipes and up to 16 application techniques per recipe! This led to several workshops and presentations throughout the year.

Fabric created by printing with recycled foam containers.

A re-focus on this blog and the birth of my free monthly online newsletter, Julie B Booth Surface Design News. The Newsletter focuses on the kitchen as a resource for surface design on fabric techniques.

Textures from the kitchen.

A year of Searching for Roy G Biv and the creation of monthly Challenge fabrics.

Sampling of some Roy G Biv Challenge fabrics.

Working on a series of weed fabrics for my group F.I.N.E.

Prints and rubbings with weeds.

Crazy about hamsas! Creating them for family members and friends.

Poppy's hamsa

Jean's hamsa

The death of my dear friend, Martha. I am missing her.

Being able to honor Martha's memory using a hamsa I designed for her to create peace flags as part of the Flags for Peace Project.

Peace flags honoring Martha.

Travels to Maine, Virginia Beach and San Francisco.

Queen Anne's Lace in Kittery Point, Maine.

Driftwood, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Amazing view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Looking forward to 2013 and all the creative possibilities it holds!

Monoprint with uncooked wheat flour paste resist.

Hope we can all strive for more Peace this next year.

Back in the Weeds

Finally, got into the studio today.

It seems like forever since I last spent a day printing fabric.

I first went out into the garden to gather up more weeds.

Then to printing.

I can tell we are heading towards fall. The leaves are not quite as supple. I'll have to finish up with the weed fabrics soon.

After that I'll work on some complementary fabrics with printed grid patterns.

 Then I'll finally figure out how this is all going to come together into the final form...Weed Maps!

Thanks to all of you who sent your condolences to me about my friend, Martha. It was a beautiful service out in the church garden. During the service, a Monarch butterfly flew over the flowers at the burial site...I like to think that it was Martha, saying goodbye...

Hamsa Redux: More Stitching

 I am finally getting back to the hamsa for F.I.N.E.

It's been a while since I last worked on this piece.

I'm making progress and hope to get the stitching done over the course of this next week.

I need to get on to other things. Particularly, printing more weed fabrics before the end of fall.

Then I have to make design decisions about creating Weed Maps from those fabrics for the F.I.N.E. show coming up early next year.

Time is flying by...

Colossal Weed Takes Over Studio

VIENNA VIRGINIA: Sighting of colossal weed in front of suburban home. When harvested, it came in at a whopping 100 inches!

I've been watching this weed grow throughout the summer wondering just how tall it would get. Even I was amazed when I measured it! I decided that this king of the weeds deserved to be recorded. I also decided that I better harvest it before the Vienna Beautification Police left a citation (just kidding).

I had to pull it out by the root ball and it was just taller than the length of my eight foot work table.

Hmm...how to print this colossus of weeds...

First, I covered it with a length of Prepared for Dyeing Kona Cotton fabric and used my Rollrite brayer with Opaque Pebeo Setacolor fabric paint to do a rubbing.

Then, I placed the weed on a second length of fabric and used my brayer to roll paint over and around it. The weed acted like a stencil.

Here are the two prints side by side.

I think there is a future piece here, combining these prints with other fabrics to create two portraits of this weed king.

Painting Fabrics: A Bit of This and That

So far, this weekend in the studio has been a bit of this and that. Deadlines for projects and preparations for classes are looming.

Last week I picked up a box of donated cotton fabrics for use in my upcoming sessions of Fiber Camp. I'll be teaching my Wrapped Wire Animals. I decided to jazz up some of the plain solids with some fabric painting and bound resist techniques. On some I twisted tufts of fabric and wrapped them with rubber bands on others I did a knotted resist. Some I just painted with designs or dribbled paint.

Although it was fun to lay them all out and admire what I'd done, each of these fabrics will now be cut into 1/2" strips to be wrapped around the padded animal armatures. The camp session is Wednesday so I'm sure I'll have some photos to share of the animals created with these fabrics.

Yesterday, I also decided to paint some color washes over one of the weed fabrics (I left the more successful weed rubbing piece as is with the white background). Here are some photos of how it looks.

Closeup detail of weed fabric

I am debated about leaving it as is or over printing with smaller leaves from the same plant.

Today's focus will be cutting fabric strips and working on the hamsa piece.