Dandelion experiments

Well we have a huge crop of dandelions growing in Ottawa right now so I thought I would use some of them in my artwork. 

First of all, even though people seem to despise them, dandelions are a hugely medicinal plant.  The leaves can be eaten fresh in salads in the spring and are very cleansing for the body.  The roots can be picked in the fall and can be made into tea or roasted and made into a coffee substitute.  Dandelion roots are liver cleansing and are supposed to fight cancer.  The flowers are made into wine and can also apparently be eaten.

But we have a ton of flowers right now so I have been picking the flowers and making a strong solution of them to dye cotton and a cotton/silk mix of fabric.  Here's a photo of the flowers in my dye pot.   It looks like a bowl of sunshine:)

 Here are my fabrics before they were dyed.   A strip of 100% white cotton and a strip of cotton/silk.   I washed them and soaked them in an alum solution to prepare them for dyeing.  Later I also tried adding alum directly to the dye solution.  The results were pretty much the same.

Here are the fabrics after they were dyed.  A nice soft yellow colour.  You can see the silk dyed a little darker than the cotton.   I'm happy with the results.  I will use these as border fabrics around my botanical(eco)  prints.  I'm glad I could put some of the dandelions to good use.

Face masks etc

Lately with the coronavirus outbreak I've been unable to work and am spending lots of time at home.  I have been making cotton masks for health care workers who work with the elderly.  Here is the first design with cotton ties.  I've been using up fabrics in my stash. 

Here is the pile of masks that I sent out last week (36 of them).  I'm working on another design now.

Here's what I've been working on artwise.  I love using up strips of leftover fabric to make backgrounds for future wall hanging or to incorporate into something else.  We saw some beautiful birds on our trip to Costa Rica recently so I'm thinking this would make a great background for a silhouette of a bird.

I also like to use up strips of t-shirt material to make circles and fabric bowls.  These are rather large coasters to put under a drink or something hot like a bowl of soup.  I've inserted strips of fabric between the layers to add colour.  Thanks for having a look and stay safe everyone!

Stittsville Library Show

This year I organized the Stittsville Library show again and it's on at the Stittsville Library until November 30th.  The theme this year is "Recycled Reborn".   The design elements of each piece were to be made with recycled materials.  Please go and have a look! Some of the recycled materials we used are old photo slide frames, scrap fabrics, plastic vegetable netting, metallic paper wrap and used coffee packaging.   My piece is the green and blue which is closest at the top.  It's made with scraps of hand painted fabrics.  I used a piece of vintage lace and some slices of dried citrus at the bottom.

Here is the artwork in the display case:

Article in Needle Pulling Thread Magazine

The Fibre Arts group I belong to Out-of-the-Box has an article in Needle Pulling Thread magazine this month!  This magazine is on newsstands in Canada and the United States.  Three ladies in the group Meredith, Garrie Bea and Rita wrote an article about our Summer Fibrations show at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum this summer.  There were several photos of our artwork. One of the pieces that I contributed is in the article with my name under it.   Here's a photo of the magazine cover this month:

Here's a photo of the article:

 And here's my piece on the bottom right hand corner of the page:

It's exciting to be in a magazine!  Thanks for having a look.

At the cottage continued

Here are some more photos of my artwork painted on cotton fabric this summer at the family cottage.

 This was the beginning of a shibori piece I wanted to make.  I started with painting it pale yellow.  The fabric is wound around the pipe with string and scrunched down. I let it dry afterwards.

 Here's the next stage where I painted on the blue colours.  I wanted to make a piece that looks like the sun shining on the lake here.

Here's the final product.  I'm happy with the result!  I don't know if I want to sell this one:)  Thanks for having a look!

At the cottage

So I spent a few weeks at the family cottage this summer and did quite a bit of artwork. In this post I'll show you my sun printing and stamping.  I decided to make smaller pieces of fabric this year instead of fat quarters I cut them in half and made fat eighths.  I will be selling some of these at Fibre Fling in April 2020.

Here I am painting fabric on the picnic table at the cottage.  I had to bend over quite a bit which I don't recommend.  It's better to work on a higher surface so you don't have to bend so much.  I had a sore back later.

 

Above you can see some of my fabrics in the sun printing.  I liked working with the smaller pieces of fabric.  That way I can have two pieces on one board.

Here are some sun printed and stamped fabrics afterwards.  I like sponging on the colours sometimes like in the top left fabric.

And here are some hanging on the washline after I removed the plants and salt.

Eco printing in July

It's been waaay too long since I posted something!  No real excuses just very busy with non art related things.   Fibre Fling went well for me in April.   I sold all of my painted and dyed fabrics and all of my eco print cards!  I was very pleased.

So I've started experimenting again with eco printing on fabric.  Yesterday I printed on silk scarves using ferrous sulphate solution to dip the leaves.  We have lots of good foliage now so I was excited to try it out.  I learned recently about a few more plants to print.  The following are scarves on the washline.

This one above is a crepe silk scarf printed with sumac leaves, wild raspberry and wild strawberry leaves.  I used an iron blanket on it which explains the negative looking prints.

These two scarves are a little harder to distinguish.  I put some flowers on the end of the left one and they didn't really print at all.  The right one is mostly sumac branches.

This photo is a little clearer.  I have buckthorn leaves, thimbleberry leaves and sumac leaves on this one.  They came out in various brown colours.

In this photo the scarf in the middle I put some coreopsis flowers and buckthorn branches.  So there's more colour in it.  The last piece of fabric on the right was the iron blanket I used on the first scarf above - a piece of cotton which actually printed quite well itself.  I'm pleased with all of these and hope to now incorporate some more colour into them.

I've enrolled myself in an online course with Kathy Hayes at the end of July.  I'm excited to learn some new techniques including stamping with natural dyes.

Thanks for having a look!