Artistic Expressions - Delphinium Field

Last Saturday was the meeting for Artistic Expressions group. We are all working on artwork for an exhibit called Delphinium Field. Each piece will be the same size of 18' x 28" with a stripe border incorporating all the colors in our piece. Our amazing leader, Deborah Stanley, confirmed that this exhibit will tour in 7 Mancuso shows across the US from May 2013 through February 2014. Very exciting!

Here is a photo of the members taken at our last meeting. I'm behind the camera taking the photo.


Front row - Teresa Shippy, Linda Friedman, Deborah Stanley
Back row -  Laura Bisagna, Eileen Wintemute, Mary Beth Kile, Cynthia Catlin

I'm going to challenge myself not to incorporate my favorite color, green, in my piece. The flower is going to be mainly blue and purple. I thought it would be interesting to have the layout of one single delphinium in close up and off center - 3/4 view.

Delphinium layout

The fun part of any piece for me is dyeing the fabric. I used Dharma Procion dye in Periwinkle, Blue Violet and Sapphire Blue. Each dye bath consisted of 3 gallons of water, 1 cup salt, 1/3 cup of soda ash and 1/2 tablespoon of dye. The fabric was presoaked in soda ash.

Linda Friedman brought her beautiful completed artwork, "Flora Lure" to show. You can check out this artwork on this blogpost.

Other members brought their work in progress artwork for this exhibit. I was really inspired by Laura Bisagna's fabric, which was dyed using the ice cube technique. It's a technique that I wanted to try since reading Carol Ludington's article in the June/July 2012 Quilting Arts magazine. I gave this technique a try and rinsed out the fabric this morning. I will blog about my experience once the fabric has dried. To be continued...