Marbling Fun with Friends - by Regina Marzlin

 I belong to a textile art group in our province of Nova Scotia, Canada. We call ourselves “Textile Artists Collective of Nova Scotia” and we have been meeting once a month (with the exclusion of the summer months) for about 12 years now. It is a great group of a dozen friends and fellow fiber artists that has been a wonderful source of inspiration and feedback for me. I have to drive a 260 km /160 miles roundtrip to get to our central meeting location but it is worth it.

Our group has been exhibiting a couple of times over the last few years. In 2023 we had a show concurrent to the Quilt Canada convention in Halifax that was quite successful. Now we are preparing for a show in a gallery in Lunenburg on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in November.

At our monthly meetings, we strive to often do a hands-on activity, a small workshop or demo, to introduce our members to new techniques and to have fun playing with new materials.

 At our last meeting, one member had prepared a demo on marbling on fabric. She provided the materials and we could then try it out for ourselves.

The technique for marbling fabric is not different from marbling paper, an ancient technique to print colorful and elegant papers. These papers were often used in bookbinding.

We set up trays with thickened water. The thickening agent can be Carrageenan (a non-toxic thickener made from seaweed), or methyl cellulose (aka wallpaper glue). The fabric was mordanted with alum so the paint would adhere to it better. There are multiple options for marbling paint, like inks and liquid fabric paints. We used a commercial line, DecoArt Water Marbling Acrylic Paint, which had a good range of colors and comes in handy little drop bottles, which are easy to use.

The paint gets dropped onto the surface of the thickened water and starts to expand and contract and swirl around. We continued filling the surface with paint until it was to our liking. Then the piece of fabric is placed on top and immediately soaks up the paint that floated on the surface. The process was not very controllable as our water mixture was a bit too liquid, so we could not really make pretty patterns with combs or sticks as they disappeared almost as soon as we made them. Nevertheless, we had some neat results and enjoyed trying a fast and easy way to get color onto the white cloth.

Here I am working on dropping the paint onto the surface, and the resulting cloth is below.

Here is another fun print:

Some of the paint had dropped to the bottom of the pan and we used this leftover paint for some “mop-up” prints that can also be quite interesting. 

After drying, the paint needs to be heat set so the fabric is ready to use.

I can definitely recommend this quick and fun activity if you would like to try it!

Photo credit: Fiona Oxford

SACRED MUSE by Mary-Ellen Latino

As part of the Westies group, which is a subgroup of Art cloth Network and comprised of artists mostly from California and Canada, I have created a piece from a call entitled, “One Long Earth Song”. Each artist was prompted to read “Benedicto” by Edward Abbey for inspiration and create a piece 36” (W) and 18” (H) by 2/29/24.

I decided to create a piece to highlight such wonders of Mother Earth in the Petrified National Forest in Arizona. While visiting there, I was captivated by fossilized logs and stumps that had metamorphosed from trees over a period spanning 200 million years. Bursting with magical color, texture and glimmer, they exemplify powerful strength and perseverance in the face of adversity. These petrified beauties are gifts we will treasure forever.

I digitally developed a photo I had taken in the forest, commercially printed, machine stitched and fused (gilded) the log with multiple layers of metallic foil.

Here is the piece in progress as I apply foil with heat to develop surface design.

After several days of applying the foil in many layers using Misty fuse and heat, the piece is done!                 

                                                                     SACRED MUSE

Here are  3 detail views of SACRED MUSE:

SACRED MUSE, detail 1

SACRED MUSE, detail 2

SACRED MUSE, detail 3

One of my favorite poet and authors is John O'Donohue (1/1/1956-1/4/2008) who was an Irish poet, author, priest and philosopher. His writing also speaks to me about this piece.

“THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH IS THE FIRST BEAUTY. MILLIONS OF years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born of creation. Sculpted with huge patience over millennia, landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence and memory."

SACRED MUSE is the second piece in the Petrified Log series. I plan on creating more pieces in this series.

PETRIFIED LOGS (diptych) was juried into the ACN exhibition LAYERS in 2022 by juror Lasse Antonsen.

 

                                                                     PETRIFIED LOGS 

“The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

by Mary-Ellen Latino

Print and Stitch exhibit by Ileana Soto

 

Printed behind the intense and staccato rhythm of the ‘warrior’ spikes are John R. Lewis quotes that comfort me in our turbulent times of 2021:

Do not get lost in a sea of despair

Do not become bitter or hostile

Be hopeful, optimistic!

Never, ever be afraid to make some noise, NOISE!

And get into good trouble

We will find a way,

Make a way

Out of NO way

          Quotes in poetry form by John Robert Lewis

"Warrior" by Ileana Soto, 20" h by 36" w

Website: www.ileanasoto.com

    

By Ileana Soto

More from her series on the brain, by Regina Marzlin

 The inner workings and structure of the human brain have been of interest to me since I was a teenager. Since then, I have had some experience with brain trauma in our immediate family and it has deepened my respect for this marvelous organ. 

This piece is part of a series I'm working on (which I started 5 years ago). I'm loosely depicting neuronal cells in the brain using my own screen prints on hand dyed fabrics, as well as using other surface design methods to introduce brain imagery. Machine stitches enhance the design. I'm now working on two more pieces based on these screen prints and will continue to add to this series.

The Wonder of Conciousness, by Regina Marzlin

The Wonder of Conciousness, detail

First draft of an idea from Kathleen Cunningham

 " . . . This ability to invite interaction is part of what draws artists to the idea of cloth.
. . . It satisfies because it is active, it is tactile, and it is personal."

This is a first draft/experiment with inviting interaction with images that go beyond surface design. Using stitch to add to the surface in a graphic way. I like the stitching  and the interaction, but it's still just a first pass. As a photographer, I photographed the stitched fabric outside in the shadow of a tree—leaf shadows on leaf fabric. Is the photo the art or the fabric? More to come. . . .

Detail

Screen Printing with Stencils

Screen printing is one of my favorite surface design techniques. It's fast when working on large pieces and it creates a beautifully rich surface when multiple images are layered with dyes. Lately I've been playing with a technique I learned from Jane Dunnewold. The basic idea is to apply acrylic paint to a piece of interfacing to block out a pattern.  Then the interfacing is taped to the back of a blank silkscreen. The paint or dye, when pulled through the screen, will not go through the areas that are painted. It is a convenient way to create a silkscreen without dedicating the screen to one image.

I also tried lutradur as an alternative to interfacing.  It is more open, so it doesn't work as well, although I did get some interesting patterns from it. Polyester window sheer fabric is another alternative. Below are some of the stencils I created and the corresponding print.

Acrylic paint brushed through lace

Acrylic paint brushed through lace

Acrylic paint brushed through lace on lutradur

Acrylic paint brushed onto sheer polyester fabric

Sugar Syrup Resist

Do you love working with resists as much as I do? Don't miss my sugar syrup tutorial on today's And Then We Set It On Fire blog.

Visit the Fire blog to download the tutorial and enter a drawing to win a resist-dyed sample set.

Adding Dimension to Your Cloth

Many artists working on a flat surface continually strive to create the illusion of depth and texture. There are many printing and dyeing techniques that accomplish that goal.  However sometimes the work calls for an element that is raised above the surface of the cloth. Do you want to create real texture, not just the illusion? Over the next few weeks I'll highlight some of the techniques I use to add dimension.

Hand stitching in a contrasting or complimentary color adds a nice accent. If you don't consider yourself good with a needle - no problem. I did not come from a stitching background. When I first started using stitch seven years ago, it felt very awkward. But I have come to love it. I find it calming to sit with a needle and thread. You don't need to know any fancy stitches - a simple stitch repeated many times can result in a rich surface. 

Use a thicker thread (4-6 strands of embroidery floss or size #3 or 5 of pearl cotton)  for more impact. Embroidery floss is made up of six strands that can be separated to create the desired thickness. While that sounds great because you have the flexibility to create the thickness you want, beginners may find it harder to stitch with the floss.  Sometimes the plies separate while stitching, leaving a loose thread in some stitches. Pearl cotton has multiple plies, but they are non-divisible. It comes in several thicknesses - the smaller the number the thicker the thread.

This Moment, detail view

This Moment, detail view

This Moment, 80" x 24", Silk noil

 See how a simple straight stitch in red thread draws the eye into the small circle?

Marking Time, detail view

Marking Time, 80" x 24", Silk noil

The stitching on Marking Time is more subtle.  A tone-on-tone effect was used to keep the emphasis on the red painted marks.

The decision about what stitch to use was easy.  These two pieces explore our emphasis on "marking time" - looking to the past or future rather than focusing on the current moment. The universal symbol for counting seemed to make sense as a stitched element.  As did a double chain stitch to complete the larger circles on This Moment.

Ice Dyeing

I'm a little late on the ice dyeing craze, but I finally made time to try it.  I read about snow dyeing several years ago and thought it sounded interesting, although not very practical for someone who lives in a warm climate.  Ice dyeing makes more sense, and summer is actually a good time, because the mess can stay outside.


After doing an internet search, I realize there are many variations. I chose to work with the dyes in their powdered state rather than mixing them into a liquid.  I placed a tarp on the ground outside and used a plastic grid from a commercial light fixture to raise the fabric out of the melting ice/dye.

I am pleased with the results, although I have to admit that while it was in process I was not impressed.  I had read some comments that the results are similar to what you get with low water immersion dyeing.  I found a significant difference.  The patterning is hard to describe, but it has a distinctive look. Here are my results (I used Dharma Bronze and ProChem Tobacco on all these pieces):


This is a piece of silk dobby noil (from Thai Silks). It is a wonderful fabric and it took the ice dyeing beautifully.

This is a heavy-weight cotton. 

This is silk habotai, and it was underneath the two previous fabrics to catch the dye as it dripped down. This looks like a typical low water immersion dye.

This is also cotton, and it was dry when I placed the ice cubes on top.  The other fabrics were all wet.

This piece was underneath the plastic grid to catch the drips from the previous cloth.

  

Have you tried ice and snow dyeing?  What was your experience?