Nancy Crow Barn Trip

Here are some pictures of cloth I made at the course I took with Leslie Morgan and Claire Benn at the Nancy Crow Barn. Some of these pieces of fabric are "done" and some need some more work. Each piece was white when I started. I first tray dyed the white fabric one yellow, one green and one plum and after they batched and dried I cut each one in half and did different techniques on each piece. I hung all the pieces up on my design wall at home so you can see everything all at once. My goal for the week was to create a pallet of cloth in the colors of plum, green and gold.






This piece is a larger piece that could be the background for a piece of compositional cloth. Some of my classmates were working on composition on a single piece of fabric rather than creating a series of pieces of fabrics that matched that they could cut up and then piece together. I hope to go back in 2010 when Leslie and Claire return to work on some compositional cloth. I am intrigued.
I made the stencil I used on this piece with dressmaker's interfacing painted with house paint. Where ever there is no paint is where the print paste comes through and prints my design. It looks like sea weed to me at the moment.


On these two pieces below I used the same maple seed stencil. The one on the left I printed a dyed piece of yellow with three or four different shades of the same dye print paste to get depth. The green fabric on on the right I use formosol to take color off the fabric. Pretty cool huh?! This piece of plum fabric is tray dyed and then discharged. I had made a stamp out of string wrapped around a CD. I stamped this in black on a piece of paper then photocopied it and enlarged it. Then we made a thermofax screen with the photocopy. I could then screen print paste or formosol through the screen. I can now go back and add more color or discharge more or add a different texture with another screen or mark making tool. This is a not done yet piece. The fun is in the process. I might call one piece of fabric done but next year when I go to use another piece of that same fabric I might have to alter it again to match the next grouping it is placed with.

This next fabric is shibori dyed. I made lots of tiny knots with string all over the faabric and then I put it in for an overnight tray dye in plum. Then I scraped the back with several colors or print paste. Where the white fabric was left without color new color was added.

This fabric was made by using a break down screen printing on white fabric then batching overnight.Then I scraped plum on one side and batched over night then the final step is screen printing the darker design all over the top. I tried to use several different shades of the same color but they didn't show up as well as I would have liked. I think it needs one more darker screening of the same pattern or maybe a different pattern.