Thinking about Yellow

Wood Sorrel #1

I worked at Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery today. On a Tuesday, that usually means a long eight hours of sitting. I always bring along something to keep me occupied.

Today I was thinking about the Roy G Biv Challenge fabric for July 19. For those of you new to this blog, my friend Jennifer and I have a monthly challenge to find the colors of the rainbow which we call the Searching for Roy G Biv (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) Challenge.

And, every month, I create a piece of fabric in the monthly challenge color to give away to a lucky winner who plays along with us.

Yellow is a tricky color. As soon as you do something to it (with the exception of adding white), it is no longer yellow.

I have been trying to figure out what to do for the challenge fabric. When I realized an idea was staring me in the face!

I created some art cloths from sketches I made of Wood Sorrel last year. Wood Sorrel flowers are a cheery yellow but teeny tiny...maybe a quarter inch across. In my cloths, I blew them up...to about a foot across.

I decided I would have the challenge fabric feature the Wood Sorrel design.

I reduced it so it would fit on my 4" x 6" Speedball Speedy Stamp (Carve) block.

I then made a tracing of the design and transferred it to the block.

I started cutting it at the Gallery...but didn't quite finish...

Surprise, surprise...it was a VERY busy day at the Gallery.

I'll just have to add this to the growing list of projects needing to get done this month!

Of Weather and Weeds

It’s been such a rainy month of September that is now moving into October. When will the sun return? My weed “friends” are making a comeback! This has been a “year of the weeds” for me. In the spring I became fascinated by the beauty of their leaves and flowers. I let them continue to grow in the garden and got to see all the stages.. from ripening “fruit” to seed pods to the imaginative ways in which they spread their seeds. I’ve spent hours sketching and photographing them. I turned some sketches into carved print blocks and stencils and started to create a series of hanging “art” cloths. The first ones of the series are Wood Sorrel. The bright yellow flowers are small but very cheerful. Below are the cloths. I used flour paste resist for both backgrounds of the fabrics and stenciled and printed the flowers and leaves. Each piece is 45" x 18".

Detail showing flour paste resist background, stenciling and printing

Detail showing flour paste resist background, stenciling and printing