Shadow Printing and More

Today I am blogging on the Andthenwesetitonfire blog about shadow printing. It’s one of the techniques from Lynn’s new book, Intentional Printing. Here are a couple of my examples. Head on over to this post for more information.

shadow printing

Shadow printing over paint cloth
shadow printing on a paint cloth

I also played a bit with shibori and Dye-Na-Flow. Here are the pieces waiting to be unwrapped.

shibori folded material

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Comfort Doll project. If you are not aware of this project, small dolls are made for women at domestic abuse shelters. Well, sewing and sewing small are not my strong suits!

My results so far – the one on the right looks like ET’s ugly sister!!  She doesn’t have arms because I gave up on her.

my attempts at comfort dolls

After talking to my artsy friend Ronda about my desire to make comfort dolls, she presented me with two she made for me and included the patterns. They turned out so neat. The marbling fabric was made by Ronda in the marbling class I taught last year.

Ronda's comfort dolls

So, I have no idea where I will be going with the doll thing. Right now I’m just putting it on hold but will try Ronda’s patterns.

This was another surprise I received last week – Connie gave me her old turntable.

turn table

Looking forward to flinging dye and paint on it. But before I do that I need to get my dye studio (part of the garage) cleaned up and organized. I’ve been getting rid of stuff I don’t use and moving out of that area non-dyeing stuff like extra slats for living room blinds and extra flooring for the same area. I also bought risers to make tables a comfortable working height. Getting rid of two old work benches that I brought here from the last two houses I lived at are on my top priority next since they just don’t work in that space. It won’t be long and this area will be seeing some major dyeing.

Meanwhile I believe it is Spring. We had a couple cold days this week, but I think winter is FINALLY over! And yesterday I saw this – our first asparagus. Dave saw it Wednesday and told me about it this morning. Pretty exciting but late for our little patch. I’m still working on mulching the area to try to really keep the weeds down this year. That’s shredded paper around the asparagus.

Our first asparagusThat’s all for today. I’m really behind in mulching and cleaning out the beds this year due to our cold weather so I’ll be spending quite a bit of time outside gardening, but I’m sure I’ll make some time for arting. Hope it’s getting to be Spring where you are.