Hi All,
I've been really busy lately add color to lots of different surfaces in lots of different ways.  I do so love surface design! Here are some pieces of dye painted batting that I did last week.  They are painted with Dyenaflow and Lumiere by Jacquard.  I love to use this painted batting instead of regular batting.  I design right on it, collaging fabrics and other fibers right on the surface and leaving the edges of the batting exposed so that I don't have to add a binding.
Below, are some pieces of Lutradur that I painted in the same manner.  I like to melt it with a heat gun to lace it up and I love to make beads out of it.
So much fun, so much exploration - never enough time!
Till next time,
Heather

Hi All,
I taught a class last week in marbling on fabric with ink.  I only had one student so I got to create along with her - we both had a ball!  Here are the pieces that I did.  They are each 15" x 20" and were painted using Tsukineko inks on shaving cream.  I used black, white, and the metallic colors black orchid, copper, gold, silver and champagne mist.
I will be cutting these lovlies up to make a modern styled art quilt.  I think I'll add some stamped black birds to it too.  I can't wait to see how it all comes out.  I've found nothing more enjoyable than making art from the art cloth that I make! If you click on one of the images then you can see them larger in a slide show.
Till next time,
Heather

Here are a few more pieces

 

Good Afternoon All,

Here is my latest, almost finished piece.  It just lacks some hand stitching and mounting.

It began as a piece of silk fusion that I made using silk roving along with my own hand dyed silk cocoons, carrier rods and thread flotsam.  I added in some vintage silk threads during the process and that is what you see moving through the diagonal middle.

Once the silk fusion was dry, I laid it on top of the red orange dyed jute which is on top of batting and a backing.  I quilted the bajeebers   out of all of the negative space on the fusion then did some basically invisible stippling on the red orange fabric.  

The yellow circles are felt from the surplus store.  I will hand stitch those down with some violet floss then I'll mount the whole thing on stretcher bars and trim the frayed edges a bit.

 These close ups show a bit more of the fabulous textures as well as the mix of color.
It's been years since I've played much with Silk Fusion.  I made more than a dozen pieces the other day.  They are for sale in our gallery as well as on our new Etsy site:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/WildHeatherGallery?ref=search_shop_redirect

:

Hello All,
I've been really busy in the studio lately making all sorts of fun and beautiful stuff.  Here are a bunch of pieces of silk fusion, from simple to very complex, each one is very unique.  One of the things that I like to do when making silk fusion is to make them so that each of their two sides are very different.  One is simpler and the other more complex.
I use a combination of hand dyed silk roving from Treenway Silks and hand dyed silk hankies and carrier rods that I dye myself.  I also add silk sari fibers, silk waste, bits of threads from the dryer and lots of yummy, shiny Angelina fibers.  I put mine together with thinned matte medium rather than fabric medium.  It's cheaper and I've always got tons of it on hand.
I'm almost finished with an art piece made by the third piece above.  I'll show it to you once I've finished. The rest will be for sale in the gallery, on our web site and soon, on our new Etsy store.

Till next time,
Heather

 

Hi All,

I really do love trying something new.  In fact, I love change, well, as long as it's change that I put into motion.  This piece brings together several new things for me.

The lighter portion in the middle is a piece of paper that I made.  It was done in a class with one of the instructors at my gallery/studio, Deb Determan.  The paper is made from recycled copy paper.  While it is wet on the screen various resists were laid down and color sprayed on.  Once it was dry and taken off the screen, I put Misty Fuse on the backside of it and ironed it to a piece of fine whale corduroy that I had dyed.  Then I inserted the large metal circles and quilted everything down using free motion on my machine.  I used a mix of circles and straightish lines for the quilting in the negative space and simply followed lines that were present in the paper when stitching on it.  Once all of the quilting was done I finished the edges with a satin stitch and matching rattail then I hand stitched down the medium and small sized metal circles.

I'm pleased with the piece.  I really like the way the paper looks as thought it is breaking apart, but mostly I like the way that the paper, fabric, metal and hand stitches are interacting with each other.

Till next time,

Heather

Hand Dyed Fabrics Hanging in the Gallery

 Hi All,
Here is the fabric that I've been working on for the last week, hanging in the gallery.  These fabrics were all done with thickened Procion MX dyes.  With the first, middle and last on light weight canvas and the remaining two on beautiful linen.  Dyeing fabric is almost always a crap shoot.  I did the two linen pieces first, both with the same mixed dyes.  With the canvas pieces, I made the red (Pomegranate) more intense by adding more dye, but I over saturated it so it ran when I washed it, even with Synthrapol.  So, I had lots of pale pink smudges all over the white background areas.  To remedy that, I over dyed them with a very pale gold.  Which yielded a very rich end result.  I'm rather pleased with them.

These pieces are hanging on the other wall in the gallery.  The two end pieces are 16mm Habotai silk and the center two pieces are Indian Dupioni silk.  All of them were dyed with Jacquard Green label silk dyes.  All were dyed with the fabrics laid flat on the ground.  The piece on the far left was done using squirt bottles and sea salt.  So was the second piece.  The longer warm colored piece was done using spray bottles with no salt and the final piece, that you can barely see was done with squirt bottles and more salt.
I simply love throwing color on things!
Till next time,
Heather