Something About Nothing

I love this stuff. This time I used the color magnet with a couple of thermofaxes I made (the writing and eyes on the left), a stencil I made with my Silhouette (middle fabric),  and a new thermofax I received from  Carol Sloan  (bee on the right). Here are the fabrics after the Color Magnet was applied and dried onto pfd: And here they are after they were dyed using  Fiber Reactive Procion dyes in plastic baggies: Can you see why I love this stuff? The less dye you use the better the contrast. . .  . . . and, for better or worse,  the dye is attracted to the smallest bit of the color magnet. I was even able to layer the color magnet and have it all come out perfectly. The dye also attracted to the portions where the dye did not cover the background. This last piece was my attempt at a mosaic piece for  The Printed Fabric Bee   and it is my least favorite. I wonder how this would over dye?   I think I will give it a try!

I keep seeing people doing these Throwback Thursday posts on their blogs and Facebook and I decided that I would throw one back out here.  This throwback is from before I was born.  My neighbor brought over a November 1953 copy of Ladies Home Journal. Check out the cover. Beautiful woman, lots of great red lipstick, I think she could easily be on the cover of a magazine today and be considered in style.  Funny how those things come back around. There are a lot of interesting articles, ads and recipes too -  like this lovely *gag* creation! Did anyone ever eat this creation in their early days? Please tell me it tasted better than it looks because I think I'm going to go find the bathroom. I hope this recipe doesn't come back in style!

Last week my local Blick/Utrecht store had a big event. Everything was at least 20% off. They also had a wheel you could spin and win prizes. I think I restrained myself pretty well. I won the sample set of Blickrylic paints and then purchased everything else. I bought the deli paper from the local grocery store for only $4.50. I'm all set for some serious Gelli printing on paper. And of course there are other projects that must be done first,  but at least I am ready when I find the time! What are you up to today?

I've been playing and doodling. Some doodles I like more. . .  . . .than others. I've also been playing with coloring in doodles. I wanted this to look like it was melting into the blue. The Printed Fabric Bee  theme for February is Mosaics.  I've started to play with just a couple ideas in my sketchbook. I've been pinning like crazy on our Printed Fabric Bee Pinterest board as well. How would YOU create a Mosaic fabric using surface design methods?

I finally took advantage of the snow and created a one yard piece of snow dyed fabric.    I used three different blues. This watered down fabric might be a fun image to play with digitally. And here you go!   One lovely piece of blue.   I think I see some fish in there.  Here are a couple of close ups: Of course, Mister had to put his stamp of approval on the piece. Almost all of our snow has melted now but we are due to have more later this week. Woohoo!   I know, some of you think that is a horrible idea!   But here in the high mountain desert we NEED all this snow up in the mountains so that we will have water to grow our gardens in the summer.  Please feel free to send all your snow our way.  We will be more than HAPPY to take it! Not to mention that the snow storms keep the valley clear of inversions so that we can breathe fresh clean air! And if I can find the rest of my pdf I'll be doing more dyeing too. OH, and speaking of dyei

 Gerrie Congdon  was this month's Queen at The Printed Fabric Bee.   She requested fabric with wonky, organic lines and she said that she liked orange, red and chartreuse.  Now that is a color way I can get in to!   I started off by creating a half yard piece of ice dyed fabric using Gerrie's three colors.   The Chartreuse is hiding on the right hand side. Next I designed a stencil using my Silhouette electronic cutter and a sheet of  transpanency film  from a photograph of tree bark.  Believe it or not, creating the stencil was the most time consuming part of this project! The stencil is hard to see in this photo but it is sitting on top of the fabric. Little tiny lines and irregular shapes cut perfectly. I taped the stencil to the bottom of a blank screen. . .  . . . and pulled prints over the entire piece with red textile paint (Jacquard) .  Here's a close up of the resulting pattern.  Gerrie wanted an 8"x18" piece.

The fabric I designed on  Spoonflower  arrived! It is so pretty!!! I used a photo of one of my ice dyed fabrics and played. So fun!!! I must play more! This design is now for sale on Spoonflower: I am working on finishing up some UFO's. This piece is finished but I'm only showing you a tiny bit. These two are part of my series "Everyone looks good in Turquoise." I had to lay the pen down to show how small the pieces are on this one.  I really wanted to make this piece bigger but I have run out of fabric.  I've decided I'm going to leave it this size and start the next quilt. I've also been working on pieces I can enter into a few art shows.   Here is a tiny little peek of a piece I entered in a show called Living Colour . I will find out if the piece made it into the show next week! I missed the deadline for another show I wanted to enter. I put off the entry because of one thing and another,  and now th