Carol Marlin’s 200 theme quilt

INfiber, an Indianapolis area fiber arts group of which I’m a member, is holding an exhibit at Fishers City Hall.  The exhibit area is spacious to allow the group to put several pieces from each member.  Members did pieces specific for Indiana’s bicentennial this year.  Entitled 200: Threads of time, the challenge pieces all had a bicentennial or 200 theme and received the Indiana Bicentennial’s official endorsement.

The following are a few from the 200: Threads of Time Indiana Bicentennial portion of the exhibit.

Jerri Warner (top) Joan Webb (bottom)

Monica Vogel

Audrey McFarland (left) Mary Strinka (right)

Joan Webb

Ann Luther

Barbara Triscari Bicentennial Orchid rust and ink wholecloth

We had a small grouping of Indianapolis themed quilts.

Here are my pieces (other than Bicentennial Orchid which is pictured above with the Bicentennial themed quilts) that are in the exhibit.

Here is a small sampling of the rest of the exhibit.  It is an honor to be a part of such a talented group of fiber artists.  Fishers City Hall: 1 Municiple Drive, Fishers, Indiana.  Open business hours and during special events.  June 6 -July 30 2016

Ann Luther (left) Jeri Warner (both on the right)

Judy Ireland

Leigh Leighton

Mary Strinka

A part of Mary Ann’s studio.  So well organized!

Mary Ann is full of energy and had project after project in progress and even more set up for an open house next weekend.  She does a wonderful and professional job of marketing and presenting her works!  Brava Mary Ann!  She also paints and her paintings are beautiful as well.

Paintings and quilts on display

I enjoyed seeing how she uses interesting techniques to incorporate her photos into the quilt instead of just having a rectangular photo.  I struggle with ways to help integrating photos successfully and artfully into my pieces.  Some mental notes were definitely taken while there!

The buildings are all photographs in this quilt.

I enjoyed the company of my artist friend, Judy for the drive up north and back home.  She showed some mixed media pieces to us during show and tell.

                  Judy showing and telling

Show and Tell is always wonderful, but I enjoyed that we all took our time to talk somewhat in depth about our processes used to help introduce ourselves to one another.  This was a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Assoc) event and it was nice to meet some more Indiana artists.  I enjoyed bringing a piece that took some inspiration from our last SAQA member studio tour to Peggy Brown’s studio in southern Indiana.  It was in progress but I felt that since it related to the last tour I wanted to talk about that one.  Thanks Peggy!  I also brought along the Quilting Arts issue and the little challenge piece Pisa Passage since last time I was only able to say the article was coming soon but had the quilts along.

Mary showing a quilt using airbrushing.  I just adored all of the art that Mary Ann and her husband have collected and display throughout the house!

Thank you, Mary Ann!  I had a wonderful time!

Here is the label printed in Quilting Arts and the photo of the Arno River and bridge is on the front of the quilt.

There are always loads of technical questions when it comes to printing on fabric!  Some of the questions being things like what the differences are between the types of setting chemicals and pretreated, prepared sheets, which leads to ink types and printer preferences.   Today I found a wonderful blog post on a fellow quilt artist’s blog about her experiences, old samples, preferences and technical info.  I think she did a fabulous job giving concise information and lots of it!  So I will refer you here to Gloria Hansen’s post.

I even learned a couple of things due to her working many years back on developing ways to make printer inks waterfast and lightfast before Bubble Jet Set was on the market.  I also began printing on fabric before Bubble Jet Set, but had little dye experience and was not dyeing my own fabrics then.  I used Retayne, and would probably still be doing so if Epson hadn’t developed wonderful pigmented inks which don’t need chemical setting and brought them into the home printers.

I have a love/hate relationship with my Epson R1800, but still plan to buy another Epson.  I have my eye on a newer model that I hope to get soon which will hopefully do something I have been wanting mine to be able to do, but is very limited in that capability.  It is a medium format (13″ wide) pigment based inkjet.  I have always said it needs a special button that says “Print anyway, Damn It!”  The printer wants paper to be perfectly aligned and will adjust the paper if it detects it is not perfectly aligned.  Unfortunately fabric does not have a perfect edge, hence it more often rejects my fabric than to accept it.  It has unfortunately taken too many hours to get it to print what should have taken less than an hour.  It prints beautifully and makes me so happy when it prints in an accepting manner!

Here is another label.  This one is a photo I took in Venice of gondole and was the photo used to make an original painted collage that was then printed on fabric and again painted.

I will have to do another post on how I print my labels in the future.

Looking at the Venetian photo above, I must end with,

Ciao, tutti!

Dance of Dusk

Photo of tree printed on copper

The first is my first quilt mixing leather, weaving and quilting, not to mention metal.  The quilt basically has a giant hole in it where the woven leather sun is.  The top is a rod pocket to hang from a bamboo rod.

Dance of Dusk was made to evoke a sunset and fence line at dusk as the birds are scurrying to finish up the day with one last bite, flight or snuggle before heading back to the nest as the sun goes down.  What at first seems to be a quiet calm reveals that there are pockets of quiet motion of the birds.

Photos printed on leather

Dreaming of Dusk

Dreaming of Dusk

Dreaming of Dusk detail

This piece was fun to try out some more techniques like bobbin work and using some fabrics with surface designs.  I also embellished with some silk fibers and a carrier rod.  This quilt also used my original photos on fabric and leather and evokes the same business of dusk in the life of birds.

There is an artists’ reception this Friday March 2,  6-10 pm. and will hang through March 30th.

Harrison Center for the Arts

1505 N. Delaware St

Indianapolis, In

The large tree in the foreground is a dark maroon leather applique.  I have been enjoying using leather in my quilts over the last year and do not feel I have finished exploring its use in quilting.

stamped and thermofax screened trees

I used the tree challenge fabric to make a similar hand carved stamp that I used with thickened dyes on hand dyed fabric, the unobstructed tree in the photo to the right. The tree on the left partially covered is a thermofax screen print and is from a photo of a tree I took in Bolzano Vicentino, Italy,  Where I lived for three years.  My sister and her husband came to visit and we decided to take a walk and found a path with a sign about an old church that led back behind houses and into a field where the church was.  The old church is utilized once a year for a communal celebration.  We enjoyed seeing the old church (look for a quilt with photos of the church in the future) and found a tree with the trunk covered in ivy.

The other thermofax screens were made with my photographs as well, one in Italy and one since moving back to the U.S.  I enjoyed using so many different techniques and exploring the use of various methods to overdye and remove color from the commercial fabrics.  You can scroll down to earlier posts as I worked on dyeing the fabrics.

Pole Wrapped Shibori Overdye

I jumped right in and did some pole, clamp, and stitched shibori.

Clamped Resist Using Plastic Electrical Outlet Faceplate

I used corn syrup and mashed potatoes as resists with mixed success.

Corn Syrup Stamped Resisted and Overdyed

I am also working on some fabric for a fabric shop challenge, but I’ll save that for the next post.

I wanted to match a color in a challenge fabric and had a fabulous success on the first shot.  Gotta love that!  It is only the second time I’ve gone for a particular color and it worked last time as well.  I look at either pantones or print colors and the breakdowns of the colors used to make them and use those basic percentages when mixing the dye powders.  Hopefully it hasn’t just been beginners luck.  Below is a small sample.  The wheat print on the left is original.  Next is the overdyed shibori pole wrap.  Top right is two test yellows which matched the original golden yellow in the prints and on top of that is the all over tree print that I overdyed with a very very closely matched red.  Below right is the wheat print shibori overdyed with test swatches of some premixed dyes which were not quite the right color.

Overdyed Commercial Farm Print Overdyed to Match the Red in the Trees.