Appliqué top completed

Above is the final pieced top made with the appliqué squares. (Cropping makes it look a little tilted; it's not.) I spent yesterday using Photoshop to try out a number of lay-outs for this quilt, narrowing it down to four possibilities.

A) 4 vertical squares, pushed left	B) 4 vertical squares, centered
C) 4 rectangles	D) 2 x 2 squares

Much as I liked the idea of getting more color in by using horizontal rectangles of colored fabric (layout "C"), I think the simple square works best. Of course, Christy Marnell, designer of the Posh Tot quilt pattern, had already figured that out :-)  This will be a generous-lap-size quilt, about 57 x 77".

I had been thinking I would put a 2" frame of color around each square, but that resulted in a quilt that was bed-size instead of lap-size, and I didn't want to go that large.  So I tried layout "D" which I could do with larger borders.  Nice, but not as striking as layout A.  I solved the size problem by going to colored frames of just 1-1/4" wide, with a separating black sashing between the blocks of 1".  The blocks themselves are 15".  Done!

Now I'll put this aside, and go back to the triangle quilt, which needs a back and then quilting.

A hearty recommendation for the Photoshop Elements classes by the Pixeladies

I recently finished the third (and final) class on Photoshop Elements offered by textile artists Deb Cashatt and Kris Sazaki, the "Pixeladies," and I would highly recommend their classes to other artists interested in working with Photoshop Elements.  All three will be offered in succession from January through May, 2018.  Could be a good holiday gift for someone to give you :-)  The classes are set up well, with a combination of videos, handouts, the ability to see other students' work, and very helpful feedback from the instructors on each assignment and in response to questions from individuals. The exercises are very well designed, so that you learn the material as you go, and the material available for printout leaves you with a handbook to refer back to. The class material is delivered over four weeks, the instructors stay available for another two weeks after that, and then all the material remains accessible online for a total of six months.  Photoshop has many, many features; Deb and Kris focus on those of most use to textile artists.  The classes are very reasonably priced, $60 for each of the first two, and $125 for the third.  I use Photoshop regularly now, both in the design process and for adjusting photos when needed.  I highly recommend their classes!!

Class descriptions here: http://www.pixeladies.com/classes/
That page also lists the "Top 10 Photoshop Tasks for Fiber Artists"--I think all of these were covered in the first class.  There's much, much more in the classes that follow.

I look forward to working the Photoshop Elements in the next months to design more patterns for napkins.  The clover design in my last post was developed through this program.

Playing with color choices in Photoshop

I've set aside Wednesday to go screen print more napkins. I've already experimented with dark blue on plain muslin fabric and dark brown over a lighter brown, reported on here. After the last session, I dyed up enough muslin for four napkins in each of eight colors, above. (The greens on left and right are a little different from each other.) Today I played around in Photoshop Elements, trying out different colors for the patterns that will be screened onto the fabric. I show the results below, lining them up so I can more easily see see what I'd like to try out. Some of these combinations will not work with dye, because the second color mixes with the first when overdyed in the printing process (unlike paint, which can go on as a separate opaque layer). This is why I've chosen mostly colors close to each other on the color wheel, where the combination will not be so problematic. I've put in bold the colors I'm most likely to try out when printing.

Boysenberry with black, indigo, and burgundy

Light bluish-green with darker shade of green, dark indigo blue, medium indigo blue, and black

Light yellow-green with dark indigo blue, black, dark lavender, darker shade of green (I like the lavender and green, but I can't get there through starting with green and overdyeing.)

Light indigo blue with black, dark indigo, and gray.

Gray with indigo, black, and burgundy.

Lavender with indigo, black, darker lavender, burgundy. 

Light rust with black, charcoal, indigo, burgundy, and darker rust. 

Turquoise with black, charcoal, indigo, darker turquoise, and rust. The turquoise and rust is lovely, but this is another combination that won't work with an overdye process--the print would come out a muddy grown/gray.

So, you can see that I'm drawn to black with anything, with a second choice of dark indigo, but it will be fun to try other colors also. I've made a chart of these choices, and counted up how many napkins will be screened with each color, which tells me how much thickened dye to mix up tomorrow. I'll be interested to see how long it takes me to print all 32 napkins. For most of them, I'll be pulling the screen twice, with the second time turned 90 degrees, so this will take a while.  Although all the photos above use an image from one screen, I'll be using six different screens in the printing.

I will report results when I have them!

Back to screenprinting for cloth napkins

About a year ago, I did a surface design workshop with Claire Benn on "Lines and Rows"; I concentrated my efforts on figuring out designs that would work for cloth napkins, 18" square.  I came up with a couple of designs that I liked--squares and bowls, described here.  When I got home, I set to work on developing further designs, as I'd like to have at least four or six designs available for sets of napkins. I printed up six more designs, but wasn't satisfied with them.  I thought if I printed each one again, turning the screen 90 degrees, it was possible they would be more successful.  So I pinned the fabric back on the print table, but then left them for a while to go back to sewing.  And there they lay through the winter, spring, and summer.  A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I had a container of thickened dye sitting on the back of my work table, and I decided to just go ahead and use it to pull the screens a second time.  Given that the dye had been unrefrigerated for nine months, I had no idea whether it would work at all, but it was so easy to use what was there, I thought I'd take a chance and experiment.  The results are above, with details below. The dark indigo-colored marks are from the first screening last October; the lighter marks are from the recent second pull of the screens, turned 90 degrees. (The detail images below are just a section of the print, not the whole 18.")  The cross-hatching image didn't work, but the other designs are not bad.  I'll probably leave them as is, though I could overdye with a very pale indigo, to take out the creamy white color of the muslin I'm using.

Torn bits of masking tape used as a resist on the screen.	Hand-drawn floral design, using matte medium as a resist.
Small plexi-glass square stamped on the screen with matte medium.	Text here is from Martin Buber: "One eats in holiness and the table becomes an altar."

I then did another batch of six napkins, some screens the same, some different.  I used a dark brown dye on this batch. The swipes of paler colors in the middle of the top and bottom rows are trials for what to use for dyeing the background; I think I'll go with one of the two palest values (top row).

Of these, here are details of my favorite four:

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bowls (done from stamping the screen)	cross--hatch
squares (same stamp as above, but a second screen, with quite a different result)	the Martin Buber quote, written out with matte medium.

After I finish the brown napkins, I'm going take time to develop more images.  Instead of using a resist on the screen, I'm pursuing development of images using Photoshop.  I'm finishing up the last lessons of a third Photoshop Elements class with Kris Sazaki and Deb Cashatt.  (Their online classes are excellent.)  This 3rd class includes instructions on making repeat designs, so I've been playing around with making images that might be suitable for napkins.  Here are a few that I've come up with so far.  I plan to keep experimenting on the computer, to generate a set of possibilities.  In December I'll have a chance to use a new photo emulsion printing set up that's recently been purchased by the college where I worked for many years.  Making a screen through a photo emulsion process allows you to transfer a black and white image with high accuracy, and to get a screen where the drawn line will be what prints.  So, for example, on the image below, if I use this with a photo emulsion process, the lines will print black (or whatever color I want to use).  If I were to draw the same image on a silk screen with matte medium (the process I used for the floral and text images above), it's the background that would print, not the lines.

Here's what the same screen might look like if I printed with purple onto a light blue cloth.

Here's how I came up with the scribble that was used for the repeat.  I started with a photo of a yucca plant, taken on a visit to my sister in Arizona last spring.  In preparation for a class with Paula Kovarik, we had been instructed to look for lines, and I loved the curly tendrils on this plant:

Using Photoshop, I traced the tendrils, and then copied the tracing into its own image file:

I used the tracing on the right as the basis for one of the stitching exercises in Paula's class:

For an image for screen printing, I went in two directions.  First I made a scribble based loosely on the yucca tracing; this scribble then served as the basis for the repeat design above:

Next, wanting to get back closer to the original tracing, I scribbled various elements, spreading them across an 18" space:

Explorations in Photoshop will continue. . .