Quilt Camp Update

We have been busy campers here at Merrymount.  The studio (aka garage) is buzzing with activity (and bugs).  The sun has come out again after several days of rain and clouds.  Here's what we've been up to...more dyeing, more screen printing, breakdown printing, wood block printing, printing with thickened dye...that's the outdoor stuff. 

Indoors, we've been busy making more thermofax screens and doing some sewing and embroidery.

 Molly the mannequin is very busy modeling silk scarves that we have printed - she's got one for every day of the week!

Last but not least, here's some breakdown screen printing and prints to try out a new thermofax screen.

Quilt Camp 5 Underway

Here we are on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee for the 5th year of quilt camp!  (aka my friend Elizabeth's family summer house)  For anyone new to my blog, this isn't a real "camp", it's just what we call our annual summer play time to experiment with surface design, fabric dyeing and any other technique that piques our interest.  It's been a slow start with the creativity this year, we spent a lot of the first week taking care of some PG Fiber2Art business which ate up a lot of time.  But there were things that needed to be done, so that is good.  And we took a day last week to go the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, so now in our 2nd week we're getting into the groove and I'm finally getting a blog post up.  We've done some dyeing and printing, worked on some unfinished projects and started a few new ones.  Here's some of what we've done so far.

 This is a piece I started back in March in a VCQ workshop, so what you see above was done before arriving.  It's a technique called fractured view.

This is what I've added to it - I'm calling it Winter Oaks.  In a another post I'll show how I got from the 1st to the 2nd photo  It's now ready for quilting.

I wanted to try out some new colors of dye, so these are fat quarters to see what the colors look like.  The 4 on the left are low water immersion of coral, cobalt blue, turkey red and teal; the one on the right is ice dye using coral, yellow & turkey red.

 

The 2 pictures above are both practice using thickened dye with a thermofax screen.  The colors are not as intense as I'd like but I'm glad they didn't wash out!  The one on the left is done with one of our gear screens (over a piece of fabric previously used for breakdown printing which is what you see in the background); on the right, both pieces were printed first with a screen of a sewer cover and then some graphic rectangles.

 

Molly the Mannequin is modeling a circle scarf that I dyed last year.  I knew it needed something else but wasn't sure what. After taking a block printing class right before coming up here, I thought this wooden block print would be just the thing.  This is also done with thickened dye, so the hand of the fabric stays softer than with paint.

Stay tuned for more over the next couple of weeks.