Overdyeing

Today I did the overdyeing for Accident-2.  Since I was doing this on the cloth alone (no screen stretched over the top), I realized I could do this step on my large padded work table, rather than on the floor.  The photo below shows the top edge of the quilt pinned to the table.  (Ignore the messy splotches on the drop cloth under the piece--it's been through the wash.)  The rest of the piece is hanging over the table and resting on the floor.  After I finished each section (applying the four colors across, from right to left), I pulled the piece up and over the back of the table.  I put a sheet on the basement floor to protect it.

I ran a line of thread loosely down in the turquoise section, to mark where I wanted to extend the royal blue.   (I removed the thread as I worked--otherwise it would have served as a resist and left a line in the fabric.)

The next photo shows me at about 2/3 down the piece.  Here I'm finishing up scraping on the new layer of black dye, and am using a narrow strip of a cut up (expired) credit card to scrape the black dye carefully on the edge of the ochre shape; the larger areas are scraped with a whole credit card--a great tool!  In my left hand, I'm holding a foam tray with a puddle of thickened dye.  I know this looks like I've made the black area totally solid, but once the dye is washed out, the letters will be gray, against the black background.

I feel cautiously optimistic about how the piece will turn out.  There is a certain amount of fixing I can do after I see how this overdye turned out.  I can't make anything revert to white, but I can add further color to areas, if I decide that's needed.  Now I wait about 10 days for the dye to batch.  I may do a little screen printing on cloth napkins with some of the thickened dye I have left over.  And perhaps I'll get back to the hourglass quilt--the top is done, but I still have to figure out how to finish it into a tablecloth.

Accident 2--penultimate version

I left this work to batch for about 10 days.  Today I washed it out--detail above, full piece below.  The final step will be to overdye the piece in turquoise, blue, ochre, and black, with the goal of diminishing the visibility of the text.  The overdye will also give me a chance to reconsider the royal blue section.  I made it narrow in this version, just edging the ochre--not sure why I did that, and I don't think there's enough of the blue.  So when I overdye, I'll expand that section more into the turquoise, and make it more of a wedge rather than a stripe, more like it was in this earlier trial.  I am satisfied with the shape of the ochre in this version.

Pulling the dye on this large piece was grueling.  I thought it would take about an hour, but it took three, on my hands and knees.  It was helpful to have done the smaller trials (about 1/3 the size), but I didn't anticipate how much easier they were to complete than the full-size version.  

Screen placed on cloth, ready to pull the dye through the screen.

I have in the back of my mind that if I'm not happy with this version, I can always do another (perhaps trying a version without the ochre divider).  I hope I'm satisfied with this version. . .

Work and Play

Working on pieces like "Accident" is just that--work.  These deeply personal pieces are challenging and difficult, both in the conceptual/emotional process that leads to a design and in the construction of the quilt.  For most of these works, the thinking process takes years--how best to convey my idea in the design?  The construction is quicker, but still, it takes months to figure out how to construct the design that I've come up with and then to complete it.  This kind of work is satisfying, especially in those moments when I hit on a design that I can say yes to, and when a construction technique I've come up with or tried out works just as I'd hoped--or leads me to a new solution.  But it is not fun.  I have to push myself to keep at it.  Break it into small chunks that I can handle.  It helps to have something on hand that I can play with when I take a break from the big work.  I just have to be careful not to get sidetracked into making the play an occasion of procrastination from the work.  With "Accident," there are stretches of time where waiting is built into the process, so that gives me a chance to play freely for a while.  Here's what I've been doing with my playtime recently: the photo below shows the first four rows of the center section of the pattern "Walk in the Park," by Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle:

Here's a photo of their pattern, published in American Patchwork and Quilting, June 2015:

I've had a collection of Kaffe Fassett striped shot cottons on hand for over ten years, and I'd been keeping my eye out for possible ways to use them.  About six months ago, I decided to make hourglass blocks from them, and when at a four-day quilting retreat in March, I made several dozen blocks, all with two fabrics in each block, sometimes a solid and a stripe, sometimes two different stripes.

I liked the blocks individually, but couldn't come up with an arrangement that I liked, whether a mixture as above, all solid/stripe blocks, or all stripe/stripe blocks.  I set aside the project.  Then, about a month later, I saw the Kerr/Ringle pattern and I knew that would be a great solution--have the hourglass blocks be all stripes, but break them up and border them with a solid.  Also, the pattern suggests four different fabrics in each hourglass, so I decided to try that also.  The photo below shows a few rows with four different striped fabrics in each hourglass (top) and a few rows with two different fabrics (bottom).  I decided I preferred the version with 4 different fabrics.

Although the blocks are shown above with solid blue, my first thought was to use green.  I had a sample of the apple green on the right below, and I thought this would be a good use for it.  I do like how that looks, but it was more contrast than I wanted for this particular piece, so I added some blue to the formula for dyeing the fabric and came up with the fabric on the left.  

 I liked the feel of this combination better, and was going to go with it, but in the end realized that I just didn't like that color green very much, and decided to try a blue instead.  I tested out five different values of a premixed indigo blue color, and tried out the blocks.

I chose a medium value, and am happy with the choice.  Here's a photo with a large piece of the blue underneath the rows I've completed.  (In the final piece, the solid will be on the sides, as in the published pattern.)

Well, as you can see, there's a lot of thought and decision-making that goes into even following someone else's pattern!  But now I'm at the stage of just sewing together block after block, just what I need for the occasional break from "Accident."

Side note for those interested in Photoshop Elements:  My six-week class with the Pixeladies is now over, and I'm trying to find occasions to practice what I learned so I don't forget it all.  I used it for two of the photos in this post:  In the photo of the pattern, I typed the pattern information onto the photo, and backed it with a non-opaque rectangle so that the words would show up better.  The photo of the two green fabrics side by side was created by putting two photos together into one new file.  I do highly recommend their classes.  They plan to do a revamp of their Fabric Design class in winter 2016, which I'm looking forward to.

Progress on Accident 2

I'm making progress again on Accident 2.  When I last wrote about the piece (in this post), I had gotten to this point in the trials:

Since then, I've considered the helpful comments I've received, consulted with friends, and done one more trial.  The biggest decision I've made is to diminish the starkness of the text by overdyeing the piece, turquoise over turquoise, blue over blue, etc.  The photo below shows the overdyeing trial.  I tried two different values of each color, and three different values of black.  I prefer the darker overdye (towards the top of the piece, most easily seen in the black section).  This also opens up another design possibility:  I will leave a small part of the narrative in white, for the sake of emphasis.  This will draw the viewer to one key part of the text, rather than reading the text as a whole.  I have chosen a sentence to emphasize--not the one I happened to leave white in the trial piece.

I also decided not to use the "scratchy" writing in the bottom half of the trial piece.  And I will make the ochre divider less of a line and more of a thin, varying shape.  So, that left me ready to do the full-scale version.  The first step was to write out the whole narrative on a large, taped-together sheet of newsprint.  It ended up being about 52" wide and about 87" long.

I decided on a combination of printing and script, something close to my natural writing.  It took me a few tries to get the size/spacing correct.  By the third time, I gave myself room for error by writing it out first in regular pencil (easy to erase), and then going over it with a heavy graphite crayon.

I put the paper version up on my design wall so that I could work on the shaping of the ochre divider. Using a small watercolor sketch that I like, I drew a version on a separate piece of plain newsprint.  I will cut this out and use it as a guideline when applying the ochre dye.  It was possible to improvise this line/shape when doing the small watercolor, but when working large, on my knees on the floor, there has to be more planning involved.

Then the narrative-on-paper was laid down on my huge printing board in the basement, and a layer of polyester sheer laid over it and stapled down. 

The text written on the paper serves as a guide for writing the text onto the polyester sheer, using matte medium.  I put some blue paint in the matte medium, as this makes it easier to see what I've done, and also helps in the washing out process, when I will need to scrape off all the paper from the sheer, except for the parts that have stuck to the screen (which will show because of the blue paint).

Now I wait 24 hours for the screen to dry.

Matisse, Le Coeur

Matisse, Le Coeur (The Heart), photo from The National Galleries of Scotland

Matisse is one of my favorite artists, and I have long been especially enthralled with his cut-outs, a body of work made late in life, when he was unable to paint or sculpt.  I went to New York last fall to see the big exhibit of his cut-outs at MoMA, which was superb.  So I've known this body of work for a long time, but still, I was stopped in my tracks at an exhibit in my college's library of the portfolio edition of Jazz.  I had seen individual pages before, but not so many laid out.  When I turned a corner and saw the image above, I started crying.  I usually find heart images overly sentimental, but this one calls out to me.  Something about the asymmetry of the heart, and its pairing with strong rectilinear shapes.  When I showed the image to David, he also started, and said it reminded him of Regret, my quilt that uses a somewhat similar shape.

A few years ago, I asked a rabbi, "Do you have a blessing for someone with a broken heart?"  He responded with a saying of the Kotzker Rebbe (d. 1859), "There is nothing more whole than a broken heart."  I've tried to create some kind of image to go with that saying, but have gotten nowhere. Now I can give up the quest, as I have the Matisse image instead.


I hadn't realized how much text there is in Jazz, and how piercing some of it is.
Here's an image of how the text is laid out (with each page about 16" high):

And one of the passages I particularly like:

"A new painting should be a unique thing, a birth bringing a new face into the representation of the world through the human spirit.  The artist should call forth all his energy, his sincerity, and the greatest possible modesty in order to push aside during his work the old clichés that come so readily to his hand and can suffocate the small flower which itself never turns out as one expected."

And look at the lettering for the title, a second version directly following the first.

Several years ago, I was on the Curriculum Committee of my college when a proposal came through for a new course in the Art Department on "Typography."  A member of the committee questioned whether typography was a field in art.  Indeed, yes.

Learning Photoshop Elements

I just finished a three-week class in Photoshop Elements with Kris Sazaki and Deb Cashatt.  There's a second three-weeks session in July, which I'm much looking forward to--the class has been great!  The course is specifically aimed at quilters, so of the many, many things that Photoshop can do, Kris and Deb focus on those aspects particularly of use for quilters.  They'll be doing this two-course series again in October and November of this year; if you're interested, follow the link to the contact form on their class website: http://www.pixeladiesclasses.com/  They'll also be offering a course on Fabric Design in January, which I plan to take as well.  Here are some examples of the kinds of things I've learned to do just in these first 3 weeks.

Screen printing:  The one thing I've used Photoshop for in the past is to change an image to black/white and to simplify it, in order to use it for screen printing with a Thermofax screen.  I've learned some additional ways to manipulate the image in this class.  Here's a photo of some sharp leaves from a desert plant in Arizona, and then two different images derived from it.  I think they would both be interesting for printing on fabric.

This particular lesson in the class was especially geared towards quilters who might want to simplify a photo in order to do an appliqué version of the image (usually with fused fabric).  I don't do that type of quilt myself, but I decided to do a photo of that sort also, in order to practice more.  In this photo of my mother-in-law Dorothy Amor--may her memory be a blessing--and my niece Alison Hardie, I think it's interesting how the warmth of their relationship is maintained in the b/w version. I was also happy to be able to take out the poster in the background.

original

simplified

Determining quilting patterns:  Deciding on how to quilt a piece is rarely an easy decision for me. Once I narrow the choices, I usually do actual quilting samples, but getting to that point is a challenge, as it's difficult to get a sense of how the whole piece will look quilted. Sometimes I've used a large piece of clear plastic, laying it over the quilt and drawing on it with crayon (though usually just for a section of a quilt).  Turns out I can do the same kind thing in Photoshop, but mush easier to make changes, I can test on an image of the whole quilt, and there's no plastic glare! 

Here's a photo of a quilt top I'm working on at the moment (Cobblestones Quilt pattern by Kevin Kosbab, from The Quilter's Appliqué Workshop).

Here's the photo with quilting marked:

You can see better what I've done when I segregate out the layer on which I did the drawing.  I tried out various kinds of squiggles in the "cobblestones."  I don't like the circles in the second row, but the others all are decent possibilities.

Another thing you can do is change the colors in a photo.  I've enjoyed working on this quilt and might like to do another one like it.  I played around with changing the colors and came up with something else that could be a starting point for looking for fabrics:

Straightening edges:  Even though my quilts have 90-degree corners, they don't usually look that way in photos, as in "Late March," below (see how the bottom edge looks pulled in).  This is because of camera distortion that you get unless the camera is very carefully positioned, not something I can do for the snaps I take.  Lo and behold, you can correct for this in Photoshop.  

original

straightened

Playing with "fabric swatches" from the web:  Photoshop allows you to pull fabric samples from photos on the web, and play around with patchwork designs.   The black/white fabric below is Line Leaf in Black from the Bark and Branch collection by Fabric Bubb.  I added a "solid fabric" by using the paint bucket tool in Photoshop.  This was fun, but time consuming.  Reminds me that it's OK to cut into fabric I have on hand, even just for the sake of playing around!

The final assignment in the class was to take a photo and do at least five manipulations on it.  I started with a favorite photo of mine--a bouquet of flowers picked on vacation in Naramata, B.C. last summer.  I figured this would be an interesting challenge, because I like the photo so much just as it is.

But in fact, the changes I could make to it were fun to do, and I might work further with the image I ended up with.  I really love what happened to the rose in the lower left corner--might be nice to work with when I get to the fabric design class.  I don't like the big blobs of olive green; in the next session of the class I'll learn how to add texture there.  Note the copyright line in the bottom right--something else I learned how to do in this class.

There were more things in the class also--brightening, intensifying, and sharpening images.  I highly recommend the class!  The lessons are really clear (printable handouts and video demonstrations), and the feedback from the instructors on assignments and questions is prompt and very helpful.   Again, if you're interested, you can sign up to be contacted in advance about classes that will be offered.

Accident 2

Back in March, I reported briefly on work I've been doing that is centered on a short narrative of the night of Jeremy's death.  I'm going to repeat a bit of that here, as background for an update on the new work in progress.

I wrote the narrative shortly after the accident, in 2004.   Ten years later, in the winter of 2014, I started a quilt that incorporated the text of the narrative, which I stamped into a mud-colored cloth. 

The letters are 3/8" high, resulting in a piece that is 35 x 48."   This piece is all about reading the narrative.  The words are very legible, and decisions about layout and proportions were done with a page of text in mind.  I can see the impact when people have viewed it in my studio--one has to stand and read it.   (I haven't posted a photo of the whole quilt, as  I'm not yet satisfied with the presentation of the cloth.)  In the midst of a workshop with Claire Benn, in which I learned how to make a very large printing screen through paper lamination, I decided to work again with the narrative of the accident, but to a different purpose--this time with expressiveness more important than legibility.  For this next version of "Accident," I will work large.  I have prepared an oversize print table from the top of a ping-pong table.  Claire Benn has done very large work by climbing on top of her print table.  The ping-pong table was not secure enough for that, so I removed the legs and put it on the basement floor.  I covered it with a couple of layers of felt and two layers of a heavy-weight cotton, stapled around the edges to keep it taut.  The table is 60 x 108."

 I have been working for about a month on various trials for the piece.  In the photo below, starting in the top left and going down:

• the small trial piece I did in the workshop with Claire Benn
• a larger trial done in my basement set-up, measures about 40x30"
• a quick watercolor sketch to get a sense of what this would look like in a horizontal orientation (lettering done with white crayon as a resist)
• (on the right) another sketch using a vertical orientation

Then I did several smaller watercolor sketches of the vertical orientation, trying out different placement of the ochre color.  

I used the version on the far right in my next trial.  (Would you make a different choice?  I'd be happy to hear about it.)  The next trial (bel0w) is about 52" wide, which is close to the size I'm planning for the final piece; the length will be about 100".  In this trial, the lettering is the actual size that I will be using (about 2" high).

Things I was testing out in this trial:

• two different styles of lettering:  the top half is in close to my normal handwriting (but with lines so close together that it is not conducive to reading); the bottom half is in a consciously distorted writing.  The goal in this piece is to have the text recognizable as a narrative, but not necessarily to be read, so I'm aiming for reduced legibility.  I haven't decided yet which lettering style I prefer.
• the transition between the turquoise and blue:  I wanted more mixture of the two than in the first large trial (where they appeared as stripes), and I succeeded in that, but I'd still like more interplay.  I think I'll try some horizontal dye scraping as well as vertical.

• texture in the black:  In the first trial, the large black area came out uniform in appearance, even though I used four distinctive black dyes.  In this trial I did a few things to get more texture in this area:  I applied some splotches of color (blue, red, ochre) and then immediately went over them in black.  I also applied large splotches of different blacks, and let them sit for an hour before I filled in the rest of the area with the main black that I was using.  I also intentionally left some areas not thoroughly scraped with the dye, so that there would be some interruptions of white.  The screen also wrinkled in one area--not intentional--but I decided not to worry about it, and I think that just added some to the texture.  Here are some details of areas that show the variations:

When I look up close (as in the details), it seems like too much color shows in places, but if I step back and look at the whole, (as in the picture of the whole piece above), it looks better.  I may try diluting the under-colors a bit the next time.

I'd be happy for comments on any of this, and am especially eager for any suggestions on how to handle the turquoise/blue transition and the texture in the black area.  And if you have a preference for one of the two writing styles, I'd love to hear it.  Here are the two lettering styles, separated:

top rows

bottom rows