Today's Washout.

Let's start with the good. Shall we?

These two pieces fill me with joy and happiness, for they require no angst, no second dye. Only a lovely soak in lava-water and a nice, soothing press with the iron.













On the other hand, the following pieces are being labelled 'for further study'.

They will require time to consider their future paths.  Number 1 looks like a virus slide.  Number two is anemic.  Number three, here, looks like it's been rolled in baby poop.  Lovely.












What remains makes my head hurt.

What you're seeing is only a selection from this particular family. Of course, I would make the most of the ugly fabric. I cannot even put forth a reason.





This fabric happened. It is spiteful and difficult. It will be punished and over dyed into submission.
And that is all.

8 New Pieces

All LWI on Test Fabrics 400M cotton. 1 yard cuts.

More Carving

My Dick Blick order arrived and I've finished two more blocks. Here's their battleship grey linoleum in action:

It's hard, slick, and crumbly. The hardness stresses my already overused right arm and shoulder, though it does hold a nice, fine line. The tool slippage I experienced felt a little out of control. I don't have one of those nifty carving benches that let one brace the block in place while carving. Might have to work on that. And the small dots I'd envisioned carving flaked right off. Maybe my tools aren't sharp enough. At least it was cheap.

Behold Wonder Cut:

I like this stuff, though haven't tried to carve anything too detailed. It cut more easily (not as easy as soft-kut or erasers). It's less crumbly. Plus I like the bigger size of the pieces I bought. My dh mounted this on plywood with wood glue. It seemed to hold up to printing and washing.



I didn't care to work with the grey stamp. It's smaller and my throbbing shoulder was mad at it. Plus, my last carving rendered similar images. The Warrior-Elf was delighted. She made this:

I like it. She had fun. It's all good.

My first shot, not so much. Whenever I see sponge painting done like this, it makes me cringe:


Here, the block is repeated differently and printed more closely together, even overlapped in places:

I dig this. The bigger block covers more turf. It gives an all-over feel without the hassle of registration marks and even looks almost random. I think this stamp might deserve a run on fabric. What do you think?

More Stamps

Behold! Three carved stamps. They're carved into something like E-Z Cut. In pursuit of finer detail, there are several grades of linoleum heading toward me right now.


And then, stamped on paper:

The left sample is my favorite. I like the way the stamp tiled to make an all over pattern. The middle comes in next. It's not an all over pattern, but I like the diamond shape in a half drop repeat. I think the left sample is called a half drop rotation because the stamp is flipped every other row. Half drop patterns amuse me. The sample on the right simply sucks. I haven't yet found a pleasing way to print that stamp.

The Monkey must also carve:

She's planning to use her stamps on a wooden sword her brother carved for her....part of her Elvin Warrior persona.

The Monkey-Elf herself:

Thoughts on Motherhood and Alone Time

These images are not the best, but they do show what I've been up to:

Carving, lots of carving.

The big squiggle is mine, the others were done by my daughter.

Sample print of the squiggle:


My daughter made the letters as gifts for twin highschool graduates that used to babysit for us. I took the liberty of stamping some stationary for them. The tiny stamps were suppose to be lower case A's. They looked like leaves to me.



Sometimes it's hard for me to let my kids create along side me. This causes no end of guilt. I crave creative time for myself, yet am fully aware of the blink that is childhood. Soon they will be gone. There will be more silence than I can stand. So, I carve, she carves. We bump elbows and use the tool the other has been waiting for. She uses up all my stamp material, I order more. She learns the value of a handmade gift, the personal touch. We sing and chat about life. How can I deny the blessing of camraderie with my child?

She fusses with bows:


The gifts are ready and we're off to the party:

It Worked!

Bust my Buttons, it worked! Realize now that a neurosis lives in my brain. It declares all handdyed/painted fabric completely ruined as I put it in the dryer. Sometimes it says the fabric is trash until ironed and my reasonable self can see the beautiful intracacies that exist. And then there are the pieces that after ironing....well.....mustering great tact.....must have a nice personallity. "Guess it's black overdye for you, buddy" (insert maniacla evil genius laugh)

Back to the banner.....
Upon closer inspection of the back, dye does appear to have bled into the resist areas:


My buddy Molli and I both agreed that the texture on the back was waaay cooler than the front. But hanging it up backwards in my Sunday School room was out ....can't you just see a bunch of first graders pushing up their glasses and trying to figure out what the heck those letters were? Poor babies.

It seems the resist didn't push all the way through the fabric, so the top fibers (those soaked with resist) remained white while the bottom fibers, not having taken much resist, soaked up some dye. That's what the voices are telling me, anyway.

Now, we could spend time discussing design issues, or more creative lettering, bwah, bwah, bwah.... The facts are that it took less than an hour to paint this banner (not counting the time spent looking for the Ann Johnson 'Color by Design' book to get the corn dextrin recipe. let's just forget that, shall we?) and that here in Frozen Michigan, where Evil Snow is still visible......the banner made people smile:

Banner Girl

This morning finds me sitting on the couch with complete silence. Mark it down as an Important Day to Remember. Whoa! It's over now. There's a child helping himself to breakfast. Dang---see how short that was? That moment of peace? But having savored even two seconds of solitude will wash a sense of calm over my whole day.

That's the intro. Now for the goods.

I lead a Sunday School opening on---you guessed it---Sunday mornings. It's fifteen minutes of raucous guitar and complete anarchy with children ages 3-9. Then I send them off to their teachers who must live with the consequences of my rash actions. Yes, I get weird pleasure out of this. Don't know why, not planning to analyze.

So, for my opening room, I've been mulling over some new art, namely a banner celebrating Palm Sunday----something springy and festive. Saturday night, I made the jump. I bent my will upon jumping in while disregarding the fact that there is no clear space in my painting area---it is full of kid's coats and school stuff and furniture I mean to reupholstered (see 'about me' to the right). Disregarding the fact that there is no room on the table where I mix dye---it is covered with laundry, the clean and the unclean. And completely ignoring the fact that my loving husband is upstairs single handedly putting to bed three unruly children. So determined was I to have my way.

I began by sketching in Corel Photo Paint:


Then I proceeded to prepare fabric and supplies. Translate: rifling through piles looking for the #$%^!# Ann Johnson 'Color by Design' book that I know is around somewhere---I know I've run by it recently. Translation #2: being disgusted at the old batch of corn dextrin paste that is discovered to be moldy and the fact that I don't seem to have any fresh corn dextrin. Oh look! I apparently ordered a 10# box of it last fall. See? I'm a genius after all.

O.k., moving on....we have sketch, we have supplies. We begin:


The words are painted in corn dextrin resist and are drying. The palm frond is painted with a greeny black mx dye--no thickener. There are three fronds in the sketch, but I'm happy with one big frond. I'm feeling really loose and in a groove at this point. I decide to mix up some turquoise, lighten my outline green and add a little yellow to it.


Life is good. Now for the background wash. But the corn dextrin's not dry. I coax it along with a hair dryer and ponder the fact that I could've started earlier in the day and allowed the dextrin to dry on it's own. But creative geniuses are suppose to have completely messed up internal clocks, right? I'm happy with the hair dryer. It seems to be working quickly.

So, I begin to lay down the background wash, mixing colors as I go. All is well.


Then I identify the tingling feeling I had in my chest while hairdrying: the resist is not completely dry. There could be some serious bleeding when the dye hits the resist. As the dye runs into the resist area, I can see it bleeding under the fabric and I...I....well, in the words of the always wise, ever eloquent C-3PO....

"I'm Scrap!"