Something About Nothing

 The Utah Surface Design Group asked me to teach them how to carve stamps and print on fabric. We decided to make it a two day class to give them plenty of time for carving and printing. The students were wonderful, and they created some great stamps and fabrics. I'm looking forward to seeing what they create with these skills in the future. We had plenty of space for all nine students. My sample pieces for the class. Printed samples on paper and fabric, as well as magazines with my articles on stamp carving. A small sampling of my stamps

A number of years back I had the opportunity to take a class from Melanie Testa. I had read all of her books, watched her on Quilting Arts TV, and followed her work online.  One of my friends accuses me of being a Fan Girl.  I can't deny it, it's true.  I am a huge fan of Melly's work!  I have learned so much about surface design from her over the years. I feel fortunate that our art has brought us together as friends as well. In 2013 I had the opportunity to take Carol Soderlund's Dyeing to Discharge class, and I soon became a big fan of Carol's too.  Carol's class was so well organized, and full of great information for dyeing and discharging.  By the time the week was finished I was exhausted, but filled with new knowledge and fresh ideas for my surface design work. I was thrilled when I heard Melly and Carol would be working together to publish a book on printing fabric.  They are the perfect artists to create this book. I have anxiously a...

The Book Arts Program at the University of Utah sponsors free workshops.  My friend, Dana Perez, introduced me to the program and I am in love!  My daughter and I went to our first Drop In workshop a couple of weeks ago and we had a grand time. First we went into the wet classroom and learned about Print Litho from  Allyn Hart .  We used black and white copied images that we covered in a liquid gum arabic.  The gum arabic acted as a resist.  We then rolled an oil paint over the image and the paint stuck to the copied image, allowing us to make a print of the image. There were a lot of people participating. Fun to see so many of all ages enjoying art! These are our prints and ghost prints: The two cleaner prints in the center are my daughters. Sigh.  She picked this up quickly. Next we went into the larger classroom and made . . . Gelli® prints! She really enjoyed trying out new things in her prints. ...

Congratulations to  I have contacted you through Instagram because I couldn't find an email address on your website.  I'm very excited to share this book with you.  Please email me asap at something_clever (at) man (dot) com!

My friend, Lynn Krawczyk , has designed a beautiful new fabric line called Inked  from Red Rooster Fabrics. I had the opportunity to play with the lovely new fabrics and make a few samples for Lynn to take to Quilt Market.  I had to wait until after Market to blog about them and I'm very excited to finally share what I created with her lovely fabrics! Ms. Chicken was made with a free pattern I found online  here . I also made two Faux Cathedral Window pincushions.   The very easy pattern is found here .  I love these pincushions because I feel like they are a fun way to show off a variety of fabrics!  I really like the hand printed look of Lynn's new line! I'm now plotting out a quilt top I think will look great with these fabrics.  

When I blogged about my love of back-to-school supplies my friend Rayna mentioned that she likes to use gel glue to create designs on her silk screens. I had used gel glue as a batik resist and so I knew I had to try this as soon as possible!  I drew some circles and squiggles with the glue onto the wrong side of a blank silk screen and let it dry for a couple of days - NOT because it took that long to dry but because that is how long it was until I was ready to use it! I pulled out a strip of ice dyed fabric and some textile paint and went to town. My first try was with white and. . .  . . .OH MY COOLNESS!  After several printings of white, I added blue and purple.  I LOVE IT!  Here are a few close ups:  So much lusciousness!  Here is part of the back so that you can imagine more of what I started with.  I ended up decorating the paper underneath as well.   Oh so pretty...