Update From My Studio

This is a long overdue update from my studio. I've been working on multiple projects at once. Here are a few works in progress that I'm having a blast making.

The first work in progress piece is made from tin tile and monoprint fabrics that I posted about here and here. The top is done and now I need to figure out how to finish it.




The other work in progress piece for the Peel Away The Layers series. This series is made with used tea bag paper. The other pieces in this series have been dark. I thought it would be fun to use brighter colored fabrics.  



Now back to the studio...

Breast Pocket #2

I made another Breast Pocket to send to Melanie Testa. It's in honor of my mom's friend, Diane. They volunteer together at their local library's used book store.

Breast Pocket for Diane

Breast Pockets

Recently, a incredible artist, Melanie Testa, posted about a call for breast pockets on her blog. Check out the post here. She is a breast cancer survivor and a proud flattie. Her goal is to collect 1,000 pockets. I jumped at the chance to participate. I hope that you will join in, too!

The breast pocket I made is for my mom, Sally, who is a 10 year breast cancer survivor. She is 85 years old and going strong. When I told her of this project, she requested her pocket to be red and glittery. I sewed red sequins on top of the pink pocket.

Breast Pocket for my mom, Sally.



Prayer Flag

Back in July the The Prayer Flag blog posted a call for entry to submit prayer flags for an exhibit at Oceanside Museum of Art. This exhibit is in conjunction with Quilt National. True to form, I waited until the last minute to make and send my Prayer Flag off to OMA. I have my fingers crossed that it will arrive before the deadline. 

Peace of Mind by Mia Bloom

Update: Awhile back I mentioned that I was offering to teach a class on fabric dyeing and marking for the fall session at the Community Center of La Canada-Flintridge. There wasn't enough sign ups for the class so, it was cancelled for this session. The good news is that the Executive Director wants to keep the class on the schedule for future sessions. I'm happy about that. To be continued...

More Monoprinting

For those of you who have tried monoprinting, you can agree it's addicting. It's a fast technique. I printed 2 more on white Kona cotton which was pretreated with soda ash.

Monoprinting on Commercial Fabric

I was organizing my fabric into storage boxes recently and found this commercial fabric. Not sure why I bought it. Definitely not my style so, I decided to monoprint on top of it.  I will share this technique in the class I'm teaching at Community Center of La Canada-Flintridge.

The first step was to monoprint orange fabric paint on top of the commercial fabric.



It wasn't interesting enough for me. So, I monoprinted on top using brown fabric paint. 



This piece is hanging on my design wall for now. Not sure if I want to leave it alone or continue marking it. To be continued...

Tin Tile Dying Workshop with Teresa Shippy

The other day I got together with some wonderful artist friends at Teresa Shippy's house for her Tin Tile Dying Workshop. What a blast! If you every have artist block, take a technique workshop. It will get your creative juices flowing.

Here are photos of the fabric I made. To learn Teresa's technique, I encourage you to take her class. She is a supportive and generous teacher.

 

 

Close up of the fabric above.



Photo Friday

During the week, I drive by this unique bus bench. I was able to snap a pretty good photo while stopped at a traffic light.

Here is the artwork inspired by this bus bench.

This design was painted using a freezer paper stencil on hand dyed grey fabric. It's one of the techniques I will be sharing in the class I'm teaching at Community Center of La Canada-Flintridge.

Album Art

The theme for this weekend turned out to be album art.

Saturday, my guy and I went to the Annenberg Space For Photography and saw the "Who Shot Rock and Roll" exhibit. It felt nostalgic to see the old album covers hanging at the entrance to the exhibit. The main part of the exhibit is the candid photographs of rock and roll artists starting from the 1960s to present. Also, there is a 30 minute documentary that interviewed some of the photographers whose work was displayed in the exhibit. I highly recommend this exhibit if you're in the Los Angeles area.

The other part of this album art weekend was inspired by Jenny Cochran Lee's blog, texterial and her August 20th blogpost about using old album covers for notebooks. It was so inspiring to me. I had fun browsing through the old albums at a local thrift store.

This weekend I made 5 album cover notebooks. I don't have a binding machine so, I used colored binding rings. The edges were finished using colored duct tape. The notebooks are a mixed of funny and cool album artwork. Please excuse the poor quality photos. For some reason I couldn't get the lighting quite right. 



Close up showing the self-adhesive rhinestones that I added.



I'm teaching!

Well, I finally did it.....I'm dipping my foot into the teaching pond. For a few years I played around with the idea of teaching a class but the right opportunity hadn’t presented itself until now.

When I heard that the Executive Director at the Community Center of La Canada-Flintridge  was looking for new teachers/classes, I jumped at the chance to present my class proposal. She liked my idea of a 6 part class teaching various surface design techniques on fabric. Starting with dyeing and painting fabric to simple monoprinting and screen printing to making stamps and stencils. The catalogues are mailing out and the class schedule is on the website.