December

Here's a quick summary of this month in the studio...

It looks like there was a little bit of everything... drawing, painting, printing, weaving, sewing, studying Japanese, ...
Actually, it was mainly drawing and painting. And also thinking a lot about the work I want to do next year.

A new quilt

This quilt is ready to be exhibited next week. I finally printed the medium blue fabric lightly with paint because the colour was too dull.
I'm not very excited about this piece but I see it as a good experiment, and I'm ready to move on to the next one.

Fabric painting

I had a short painting and printing session yesterday. The first two pictures are monoprints. I rather like them and I'm going to do more as soon as possible.
The next one is a mop-up cloth I used at the end of the session. Interesting as usual...

Dandelion quilts

I've posted them on the Twelve by Twelve blog, so now I can show them here as well. These are my two dandelions quilts. Both are done with hand-dyed fabrics. I used this picture as inspiration for the embroidery of the first one... Here are some details :And this cropped picture was the starting point of the second quilt...I simplified the design a little, drew and painted it on a yellow dyed fabric, then I added the machine stitching.

Postcards

I'm making some new textile postcards, with homedyed fabric and paintsticks.
Here's a detail of the first one:

My new quilt...

Can you see the women's figures in this fabric?
This was exactly what I needed for my new quilt. I made a paper stencil and used paintsticks again. The quilt top is almost finished now.

A new project

I've been playing with paintsticks and homemade stencils.The base fabric is a blue hand-dyed one.
I'm going to use these fabrics too...
...and a few others (that I forgot to photograph).

Leaves and sketchbook

This little sandwich just has to be quilted...
And here are a few sketchbook pages about maple leaves, for the members of the C&G yahoo group.

More green and some blue

I played a little with my dyed fabrics. First I did some leaf prints.
Then, after reading Jacqueline's blog, I felt like doing a few monotypes.
Next, I would like to try gelatin prints, but that's another story...

Painted postcards

My nine painted postcards are ready... Six of them are going in the mail tomorrow.I layered the painted fabric on thin cotton batting and I just added some hand quilting. I then used plain card for the backside.

Fabric painting

Yesterday, I painted a few pieces of fabric. I like the texture that I got in this piece by just crumpling it before letting it dry.
The next one is a detail of the piece I used to mop up my painting board. I made sure it got completely coloured, because I know these pieces are often better than the ones I paint...
I'm going to make some postcards.
I printed the fabric pieces with a homemade stamp...
Now, I have to embellish these.

Fabric book page

This is the page I did for Sarah.
Her book theme is "A woman's job is never done". Well, taking care of the garden is one of my many jobs. I usually enjoy it. But last year, the gods were against me. Spring was awful, July was too hot, August was too rainy... DH kept saying: "The garden is beautiful, it looks like wilderness... I love it..."
Yes, but now, my garden is a mess... Up to now, we haven't had any frost. And the weeds are thriving...
Here are two details of the work:

Paper and fabric

I started experimenting with paper and fabric. As I also have to work on my fabric book cover, and time is rather short these days, I decided to combine both exercises into one.
I wrote my name several times on rice paper in Japanese characters. I then glued these strips of paper on cotton fabric. I painted the first one with a very light wash of grey acrylic paint, and the next ones with walnut stain.
I mopped up the walnut stain leftover with a strip of fabric. It makes me think of mummy wrappings... As the theme of my book is "Writing systems, past and present", this sounds like a good transition to hieroglyphs...

Back to my painted fabric

This morning, I cleaned the house and did some paperwork. This must be done from time to time unfortunately.
Then, I decided to work on my painted fabric postcards. I know more or less what I want to do for this trade now. Please note (upper left corner of the next picture) that at the same time, I am trying to improve my Dutch... Women have to be multitask oriented, don't they?

More about the paints

I got many comments and questions while I was sleeping! So, I 'm going to answer here...
The Trapsuutjies fabric paints come from South Africa. I don't know how they are called there, or if they are commercialized in the States. You can certainely contact the lady from Trapsuutjies by email. She speaks a very good English.
I didn't know about these fabric paints before reading Annette's blog a few weeks ago. I had the pleasure to meet Annette last Thursday in Waalre.
The paints are really nice and easy to use. And they don't make the fabric stiff. (No affiliation here!)
I had so much fun that I played a little more yesterday night after supper...


I cannot wait to cut up all these yummy pieces to make my postcards for the fabric painting swap.

More fabric painting

I tried my new Trapsuutjies paints today. Here, I used them on wet fabric. They blend very nicely.
On the next one, I used the paints on dry fabric. I then lifted some of the paint with a rag. The colours are not that dark in real, but there's a deluge of rain today, and it's very hard to take good pictures. The tiny white spots are also an invention of my camera...
Then I used homemade stamps with blue paint. Before the prints were completely dry, I put a wash of magenta on the fabric.
The darker streaks you can see are not in the fabric. They're actually on the plastic sheet under the fabric.
And now, two mop-up rags are drying in the garage. But these will be for tomorrow, if they turn out nicely.