Fiber Girl Goes Out!

Last Wednesday was Crit Group. Except we didn't do much critique. Instead, we made rubber stamps under the tutelege of Art Teacher Extraordinaire, Barb Dinniweth. Making stamps for printing on fabric is a technique that I think about often. As part of my Evil Plan to Rule the World with Fabric, stamping patterns will soon begin to show up in the yardage I make.

Here's my first stamp ever:

This is a giant rubber eraser. I drew the design on freehand (see? years of phone & boring meeting doodling pay off!), then carved it with a set of linoleum carving tools. Barb also showed us how one could draw on computer paper and then press the stamp onto the paper. The pencil transfers easily, just like Silly Putty. Plus any lettering automatically reverses, rendering a readable print.

First print attempts, acrylic paint on paper:

The first print is painted with straight blue. The second has blue grading through purple, into red...just for fun. Can't you just see this stuff on fabric?

Oo! ooo! It could be a medallion! I just whipped this up in Adobe Elements....

I'm jumping up and down now, 'cause this is just cool! Of course, carving the necessary mirror image stamp might make me crazy. And then getting the stamps to match evenly on the fabric might make 'crazy' look like a good day.

So, I see this as the beginning. The potential for fabric design is huge. This spontaneous design could be turned into a repeat, a border, a medallion. Or how 'bout stamping the design and then making a screen out of it? I could stamp with paint, dye, ink or even resist. I'm also curious to explore the different qualities between stamps made of rubber, linoleum and wood.

Now if only the elves would show up to cook my dinner and bathe my children......