Playing With Silk

Yesterday was the first Monday of the month, which means it was Anything Art day.  My art quilt bee met at Roberta Morgan's house, carrying bags of old silk neckties.  I encouraged my husband to rummage through his tie rack and give me his unloved, unworn, or worn-out silk ties.  Roberta pre-purchased some silk scarves from Dharma Trading, and I also brought a large remnant of silk that I scavenged at Mary Jo's Cloth Store.

The object of the game was to transfer the designs and colors from the silk ties on to silk scarves.  This project was in Quilting Arts Magazine, October/November 2010.

You don't need to wash or cut apart the ties, but we removed the tags from the back and cut off the triangular points at each end.

Roberta is a wiz at shopping the Goodwill thrift shops for great bargains.  She bought a sheet that we cut apart to use for muslin to wrap our projects in.  Her cat decided that SHE wanted the muslin sheet.  She's in there somewhere!

                                          

Cut the muslin into strips slightly longer and wider than your silk scarves.  Lay down the muslin and put the scarf on top.  Start cutting the neckties into lengths slightly wider than the width of the scarf and lay them down as desired over half the length of the scarf.  Double the scarf to cover the ties.  Begin to wrap the muslin and scarf from the open, unfolded end.  Wrap with twine or ribbon about every inch.  We used the curly gift-wrap ribbon.  (When doing this as a group project, use a different color ribbon to identify your bundle, or write your name with a permanent pen on the muslin cover.  It is sometimes difficult to identify your finished scarf!)

Put the bundles in an aluminum pot that you will not use again for cooking.  Cover with water and add three tablespoons of vinegar.  Bring to a rolling boil, and then simmer for twenty minutes. ( Please refer to the Quilting Arts article for precise instructions...I was not paying close attention to this part.)

While we were waiting for our bundled ties to process, Roberta showed us some of her silk scarves made with Sharpie markers and alcohol.  She also used some alcohol-based inks.

Then, we all got some of my silk piece or another silk scarf, and decorated with Sharpie markers.  Roberta had distilled alcohol in a fine mister, which we used to spray after coloring/doodling our silk.

Toni did a rather open design with lots of white background.

I used a piece of silk and did some very loose floral, leafy, and swirly designs. 

This is my piece of silk after a little bit of alcohol spray.

I kept adding a little more marker and respraying, folding it on itself to blend.  Here is how it turned out.  I love it!

A side benefit of using the muslin sheet as a "drop cloth" is a cool piece of colorful fabric.

I had time for one more small piece of Sharpie-colored silk before the tie-printed scarves were done.  I was starting to think of Valentine fabric postcards. 

Finally it was time to reveal our printed scarves.  We started unwrapping the fabric bundles.

Look what happened!  Here is Ruth-Ellen's scarf.

This one is Kathy's.

Mine came out much more light in value.  I may add some additional color with alcohol inks or silk paint.  The white areas are from a white tie with tiny black polka dots.  The dots did not print very well.

You never know what the colors will look like on the finished product.  Some of the ties came out with vibrant maroons and greens.  Tama did a little design work when laying out her ties, and had a great result.

You can actually re-use the same silk ties for another go.  Here are the ones we used, laid out to dry.

You can also use the triangular tips that you cut off to make I-Pod covers or other fabric creations.

For show-and-tell, we got to see many of Roberta's Zentangled creations.  She is doing a workshop for the local branch of the American Sewing Guild, and has been Zentangling everything that doesn't move.  She found these white canvas open-backed sneakers at the Goodwill, and got the snazzy shoelaces from a friend that didn't want them.

She Zentangled  an Ikea mirror from the Goodwill, picture frames, and much much more.

Here is a beaded, Zentangled art quilt.

Here is a detail which shows the beading.

After the meeting, many of us went to the newly re-located Whistle Stop Quilt Shop in Cary, NC.  I will blog about that in a later post.

Roberta's home is only a mile from my son's, so I took Roo home yesterday.  His parents were returning from Florida that afternoon.  We will miss him!  He is a ball of energy and a friendly little dog.

My dog, Kasey, did not like it one bit when I left her home and took off in the car with Roo.  When I got home, she was frantic.  She looked all over for Roo, sniffed the car, and couldn't figure out where he went. 

She is back to being an "only child." 

Finishing Up...

So, the house got clean enough, the lasagna got made, and I am putting  the last few stitches in my last-minute Christmas gift!


Kasey is in her "luxury suite" at the kennel, with a real bed and doggy movies on her TV, and we are leaving tomorrow morning to spend the weekend with all our kids and grandkids in South Carolina.  It is supposed to snow in North Carolina on Christmas day for this first time since I have lived here (45 years).  But, there is a chance of snow even in South Carolina, so we will see!


I wish you all the peace and joy of the season.

And, here is a little bit of me that has made it into a national publishing blog.  Remember when I attended Art of the Carolinas in November?  I took a class with Suzanne McNeill on Zentangles and Watercolor.  When I met Suzanne and Cindy at their booth, they took my picture with the Zentangle hand quilt that was a challenge for my Anything Art quilt guild.  I am featured on their blog today, along with my friend Roberta Morgan. 


Need to finish that little quilt, too!

Wednesday Work in Progress-Zentangle Hand

While we were in the mountains last weekend, I sewed some multi-colored glass beads around the background of the Zentangle hand WIP.  I was going to bead that whole area the same way, but at my Anything Art Bee, someone said that they liked it with the beads asymmetrical.  Maybe I will use smaller ones on the remaining background.

I used an iridescent thread and some of my machine stitches to cover the seams of the surrounding patchwork.

There's still a lot of "canvas" to play with!

Wednesday Work in Progress-Zentangle Hand

Here is what I have done so far with the Zentangle-doodled hand.  This is a little challenge that my Anything Art quilt bee started last month.  I was fairly pleased with my doodled hand, but in what context would a severed hand appear in a quilt? I don't do macabre!

The first thing I decided was to fuse a white backing fabric to the hand, because the PDF (Prepared for Dying) fabric seemed a little thin to me.

 

I toyed with black and white solid and print combinations, but my delicate doodles seemed a little lost among the stronger prints.  To set it off, I finally fused the hand to a gorgeous hand-dyed coral fabric.

added some patchwork in bright colors that was left over from another project.  Now I had a crazy quilt going.  But first, I added a bit of black lace to the wrist to avoid the amputated hand look! Now it is a gloved hand, or at least a glove!  And some definite color pop is going on!

Some blue-green hand-dyed fabric surrounded the patchwork to give the eye a rest.

Now what?  It needs something else.  Maybe just quilt it, and then add some hand embroidery or buttons.  Or more trim, a la crazy quilt.

This is just a fun project- no stress!  Just playing!

Zentangle Doodles to Art Quilts

My art quilt bee met today at my house, so I got to choose the topic.  Several of us have been practicing doodling Zentangle designs.  We decided to make some kind of group challenge incorporating Zentangle doodles. 

Before the group arrived, I did a few experiments.  First, I wrote on PFD fabric with various black markers, then hand-washed the fabric and let them dry.  I decided not to use any Sharpies for lettering on fabric, since most of them bleed.

I have a set of the Pitt Shades of Gray markers, so I made another sample of each of them.

Then, it occurred to me that many fabrics already have prints that resemble the geometric or swirly designs of Zentangles.  Why not incorporate the fabrics into an art quilt, and not have to draw all the black backgrounds?

I quickly made this example of a heart on freezer paper, cut up the sections of freezer paper, and ironed the freezer paper to the front of fused fabric (with the backing paper still attached.)  Then I fused all the parts to a striped background fabric.  This could be fun when embellished with stitching,quilting, and who knows what else

Then I thought about just cutting some shapes out of fused fabric and ironing them onto a piece of PFD (Prepared For Dying) fabric. 

After I did that, I drew more doodles. 

I heat-set the doodles, then colored in with Neocolor water-soluble crayons.  Here I have colored some of the details, but not the background.

I used a wet paintbrush to blend the colors.  Some of the markings became blurred and the colored designs lost their crispness.  I think next time I will use the crayons for the background, and then Tsukineko inks for the details.

I could always go back over the lines with marker to darken them a bit.

I made another sample using just black fabric marker and Tsukineko inks. This piece remained crisp and clear.

When the ladies arrived, they saw this hand that I had doodled in one of my journals, so we decided to challenge ourselves to each designing our own hand doodle.  From there, we can choose to color, add photo transfers, text, or whatever.  This could be an interesting challenge!

Before the meeting was over, most of us had at least doodled inside the outlines of our hand on fabric. Mine looks very similar to my paper version.  I probably could have just printed it out from my computer onto fabric.

It will be interesting to see what the finished art quilts that begin with our hands.  Several members were on vacation, so I hope they will also join in the challenge.