Sunday, February 01, 2015

The Printed Fabric Bee: Petroglyphs

It's time to reveal the newest theme for The Printed Fabric Bee. It's Petroglyphs! Isn't that fun and unexpected? Lynda Heines is the Queen Bee this month and she picked a great theme.

Tune in later this week and I'll share with you the mosaic of all the fabrics created by the other members of The Printed Fabric Bee!

After a bit of searching for a new-to-me technique to try, I came across Alisa Burke's tutorial for mono printing with a plastic bag. Perfect! I gathered my supplies and found some fabric that suggested southwestern cave walls.


I did a few test prints on a scrap of white fabric that already had some weird green marks on it. (?)

I liked the technique just fine, but I wasn't too excited about some of the petroglyph shapes I created. So I sketched some additional ideas and settled on motifs that were all circular.


 Here's a quick little video of the simple process.

So, I ended up with this. But it needed a little more depth or layers or something...

I spattered some green metallic paint. Hmmm.

Oops. Big green blob.

The splatter painting would have been better if I had one of these tools. (I was just using a toothbrush and my fingernail which is very messy and unpredictable.)


Here is my finished piece that will go to Lynda. She requested fabric 8x18.

Here is my finished 6x6 piece for the monthly The Printed Fabric Bee give away!

You can win by posting on The Printed Fabric Bee blog or Lynda's blog.

Remember I said I was going to share what was successful and what was less-than-successful for each of my The Printed Fabric Bee pieces? Here goes.

Successful

  • the plastic bag mono printing
  • using only circular motifs
  • the beautiful rust color of the fabric
  • sloppy, but not too sloppy, designs


Less-than-successful

  • spatter painting
  • I wish I would have used some kind of extender with the paint that might have made the prints slightly darker
  • I wish I would have varied the size of the motifs more
  • I wish I would have come up with another technique to add different layers of design

3 comments:

Unknown said...

What is that fabulous brush tool? I like your discoveries in doing this technique. Especially regarding varying sizes of shapes. One can learn everywhere, and I re-learned that varying sizes is important. Love your print. Norma

Carol R. Eaton Designs said...

I love your piece! The technique looks fun - I'll have to give it a try!

Lynda said...

Deborah, Great piece and great results. I love making stencils and they would work awesome with your images. The splattering - I've always had problems with that too. I get to going great and then splat! Interesting looking tool Would love to see how it works. Again, great piece and looking forward to seeing my collection.