Botanical Playdate Results

Here are the results of my eco printing session with Janet Tulloch last week.  These are the wool samples I printed.  I haven't done much printing on wool so I will have to practise.  But I'm pleased with the results.

Here are both of the samples together:

 

Here's a close up of the second one which I quite like:

Here's the cotton sample which I printed with a logwood colour blanket:

 And here's the actual colour blanket.   I used a piece of poly/cotton sheeting for this:

 

I was pleased with how well the prints turned out considering that we were using frozen leaves.  We used maple leaves, cotinus, rose and coreopsis leaves.  Thanks for having a look!

Botanical printing playdate

Yesterday I did some eco printing with Janet Tulloch at my house.  We had such fun learning from each other!  Janet works more with felted wool and I work with cotton and silk.  I also showed her how to use the heat press on paper and a little on fabric.  We used leaves we had frozen last month.  We used a logwood blanket on cotton fabric and with the eco printing on watercolour paper.

 A photo of me rolling my fabric onto the bundle rod:

 

 Here is my layout on a beautiful sample of felted wool that Janet gave me.

 Here are our leaves laid out on cotton fabric strips which were premordanted:

 Janet's paper prints from the heat press using logwood as a colour blanket and avocado:

 I'll post some of the results of yesterday's eco printing session soon!

Stittsville show more photos

Here are some photos of the art in the glass display case at the Stittsville Library 2021 show.  It was difficult to get photos without reflections but I've done my best.  Remember to click on photos to enlarge them.

 Below is Head over Heels in Love by Sondra Yeomans-Creasy.

 Here is Blowing in the Wind by Wendy Chaytor.

This is The Ties that Bind by Anne Warburton (below).
 

Here is Erin Scullion's Calm as a Breeze (19 inches tall!):

 

 Below is Meredith Filshie's All that Glitters is not Gold.

 Here is Roberta Russell's Pandemic Social Life: All Dressed up and no place to go.

 And finally here is A Piece of Cake by Liz Tyrwhitt.

I hope you enjoyed viewing the artwork!

Stittsville 2021 is up!

Yesterday a group of us set up the Stittsville Library show.  The theme this year is "Guess the Idiom".  The idea is that people stand back and guess the idiom before reading the captions.  Please go and have a look at the show if you can this month until November 29th.  Some of the pieces are for sale.  Here are some photos of the artwork in case you can't come and see the show.  Please click on the images to enlarge.

Below on the left is Dorothy Derose's piece called The Sound of and her idiom is "talking in circles".  On the right top is Time Flies by Janet Stanley. The dragonflies and butterflies in her piece are arranged in an around the clock pattern.   On the right below is So Sad by Margaret Dunsmore and her idiom is "lame duck".

 

In the photo below on the top left is Buried Treasure (X marks the spot) by Daphne Fry.  On the bottom left is Retta Rive's Pick up Sticks.  On the right side above is Loree Tannett's It's Raining Cats and Dogs and below it the french version by Loree called Il pleut comme vache qui pisse.

 

In the photo below on the left top is Sharon Johnson's Once in a Blue Moon.  On the left below is my piece Blue Moon.  In the middle is Anne Warburton's Paper Trails.  On the right above is A Storm in a Teacup by Jenny Suurland and on the right below is Olive Jones'  Closed Hand or Open Fist?

Below is Roberta Russell's piece Reading Faces:  Face Idioms on the left.  Roberta's idioms for the faces are "A face like a wet weekend", "do something until blue in the face", "two faced",  "written all over one's face".  Cheryl Ford's piece Hang in There is on the right.

This was all the artwork on the wall.  I will post photos of the artwork in the glass display case this afternoon.  Thanks for having a look!
 

"Guess the Idiom" show at Stittsville Library

 I'm organizing the Out of the Box exhibit at the Stittsville Library again this year. The show will be up from November 2-29th.  The theme this year is "Guess the Idiom".  Artists have made pieces depicting idioms.  Please go and have a look and see when you stand in front of a piece of artwork if you can guess what idiom it is before reading the description!
   The library is at 1637 Stittsville Main Street and the hours are Monday to Thursday 10am to 8:30pm, Friday from 1 to 6pm, Saturday from 10am to 5pm and Sunday from 1 to 5pm.   Here is the poster for the show which you can feel free to circulate.  I hope you have a chance to go and have a look!

 

 

Printing on a Heat Press

This month I've been taking a course with Jane Dunnewold eco printing on a heat press.  I find it works more quickly and quite differently than the traditional steaming method.  Here's a photo of the press I got.  It's a Siser 15 X 15 inch press.  You can see I made teflon covers for the platens.

 Here are a few of my first prints on watercolour paper on the press.  The colours and the prints are more intense I find.  This is coreopsis and smoke bush leaves on the left and coreopsis and rose leaves on the right.  The smoke bush was not quite ready for printing yet.

I have lots of coreopsis in the garden and they come out bright orange...  The background here is herb robert.  Thanks for having a look!

More Textile course results

 I finished module three of my course with the Wild Dyery.  This one was about making print pastes with natural dyes and printing with them on fabric.  Click on any of the photos to enlarge.   Here is a photo of a sample with some of the colours:

We also made iron mordant paste and overdyed with yellow.  I used osage orange to overdye in this case.  The iron mordant paste became very dark.  I would use less ferrous sulfate next time I do this.

 

Here's a photo of some gelli plate prints I made with the natural dye pastes.  This is after they were steamed to set the colours:

Here's a photo of a screen print which I printed with a design I cut out of paper.  The colour is a combination of madder and chlorophyl:

 

I created another smaller screenprint design and printed it on white cotton fabric and on a previously eco printed fabric.  These are madder and chlorophyl,  the final colours after steaming:

As an aside I've been experimenting with treating cotton with soy milk to increase its ability to accept natural colour.   Cotton seems to have similar properties to a protein fibre after treating it with soy milk and leaving it to cure for a while.  I had read about this but after I bought Rebecca Desnos' book Botanical Colour at your Fingertips I learned more.  Up until now I've only been able to get grays from black beans on cotton.  Here is a photo of some cotton and silk on the line after soy "mordanting" and using black beans and osage orange as a dye.  I still had to use alum to get the deeper blue/purple from the black beans:

Thanks for having a look and hope you're enjoying some of your own natural dyeing experiments! Leave a comment below if you have any questions.

Fibre Fling 2021!

This year Out of the Box, the fibre arts group I'm a member of, is having our Fibre Fling show online for the first time.  We used to have it at Kitchissippi United Church every April but things are of course different this year.  Here's the poster with all the info.  As you can see I happen to have a photo of a piece I made on this poster too although it's not in the show.   I have some of my hand coloured and sun printed fabrics in the show and one wall hanging featuring my eco printing for sale.  It's the one I had in the Stittsville Library show.   The show will be starting this Friday.  Please go and have a look at not just mine but all the interesting artwork!

Eco printed apron

 Last summer I did a course with the Wild Dyery online.  For the Leaf  Print Cloth course I made an apron out of all the eco printed samples I made.  They are mostly on silk noil.  I've printed plants from my garden and area such as rose leaves, buckthorn leaves, strawberry leaves, maple leaves, iris petals and a Bachelor's Button flower.  The pink is from natural madder dye.   The browny pink is from avocado pits.   Here's a photo of the apron spread out so you can see all the fabrics.  Click on it to see the details.  I added embroidery on some areas.

Here's a photo of the finished apron.  I'm quite pleased how it turned out:)  This was part of my last assignment of the course.  Thanks for having a look!  Please leave a comment below.

More shopping bags made of recycled packaging

 Here are a few more bags I made by sewing together used food packaging.  I just cut off the zip part and then sewed the packages together.  I was concerned that the straps weren't sturdy enough but I seem to be able to carry quite a lot in them.

I hope this inspires you to make something similar!  If you do let me know in the comments section below.

Recycling plastic

This winter I've been thinking a lot about keeping things out of the landfill and incorporating materials I have into artwork and other projects.  I seem to accumulate a lot of plastic food packaging and I've kept it because it's colourful, because I don't want to throw it out and I wanted to make something with it.  Here's an example of some of the packing I have.

Below is a grocery bag I made out of eight packages..  It's lying on its side.  I've cut off the zip part and then just sewn the packages together so each side is double layered.  I've cut out a square from each side for the bottom and have sewn the two layers together (quite hard to turn).

Here's another angle below.  It was quite heavy plastic so I had to use a jeans needle.  This bag is quite large and will hold lots of groceries.  My next step is to make a handle for it:)  Stay tuned for more...

Eco print cushion

 This month I made a cushion with eco printed cotton fabric and onion skin dyed cotton fabric for the borders and back.  It measures 14 inches square and the plants are coreopsis verticillata and strawberry leaves both from my garden.  The fabric was soaked in tannin water first and then the print was made.  I was going to embroider the print but decided to leave it as is.  Thanks for having a look:)