Archive | November, 2017

Out Darn Spot!

I have a new white blouse.  One that I’ve already hemmed (as I have to do with all my clothes.)  And there it was, lying on my work table waiting to be ironed and worn for the first time.

And then I pulled out the paints.

You can guess the rest: one tiny pale spot that wouldn’t wash out.

I considered several ways of disguising this spot:
– Painting over it,
– Adding more contrasting paint,
– Covering it with dense embroidery,
– Cutting it away and adding a very purposeful fabric detail behind.

I figured it was a long shot, but first I tried painting over it with a white paint pen.

Out Darn Spot. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

No luck.  Next, I auditioned the idea of cutting it away and putting fabric behind it.  My thought was to create a line of texture all the way across the garment.

Out Darn Spot. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Well, it sorta worked.  But, it was too frayed and the fabric underneath shadowed through. With tightly woven fabrics, this might be viable.  Which was not my case.

FINALLY, it dawned on me that I could add a textured strip by adding fabric, rather than by subtracting it.  Duh!  I could fuse it on, covering the spot and adding a design detail at the same time. And so I did.

Here it is with the fused strip added.

Out Darn Spot. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Next, I satin stitched the edges.

Out Darn Spot. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I was very happy with this detail, as well as the overall look.

Out Darn Spot. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I was pretty proud of myself.  What do you think?

Ellen Lindner

 

 

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Deconstructed Screen Printing: Drawn Designs

Now, THIS is exciting stuff!  After doing deconstructed screen printing with randomly created screens, I decided to draw on my last screen, with a syringe.  This is a technique I learned in a DSP class with Kerr Grabowski.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

That’s my screen above.  I drew on it with very thick black dye.  In fact, it was actually too thick and it came out in glops and curly-Qs.  None of which mattered for my purposes.

And here’s the first pull with that screen. You can barely see the clear dye paste I used on the far right.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Is that cool or what?  Some of the dried dye in the screen has dissolved with the print paste and has given a little gray color. But, the heavy black lines are thick enough to act as resists and they’ve created white lines.  Not what you’d expect, right?

The first few pulls with colorless paste looked somewhat similar.  Here’s a more detailed shot.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Before I show you the rest of my results, here’s more of an overview, using Gabriele DiTota’s work as examples.  She was our ring leader for the day and she got some great results.  Here are her first few pulls with her syringe-drawn screen.  (She was smart enough to thin the black dye paste so she avoided the gloppy curly-Qs.)

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

After a few of these colorless pulls, she switched to red dye.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

The red dye colored the background, but the drawn squeegee lines still created a resist resulting in white lines.  Pretty cool, right?

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Like Gabriele, I decided to add a background color to my efforts.  I was aiming for blue-green, but I initially got mostly green.  As I slowly added more blue, I pulled screen after screen, resulting in a run of blues and greens.

Below you can see the detail of the first couple of pulls on the left and later colored ones on the right.  As you can see, the drawn design is beginning to break down on the right and the details are fading.  No worries.  It’s just a different design.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I got carried away and added a bit too much black to the one on the far right.  The fabric is wet in this photo, so it looks especially vibrant.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

And here’s the full run, washed and dried.  As you can see, it lost a lot of color in the wash, but I still love it!

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

A super close up.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: drawn design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I LOVE these results!  If I ever do DSP again, I think I’ll do this sort of drawing on all my screens!

Now, what will I do with all this luscious fabric?  That shouldn’t be a problem!

Ellen Lindner

 

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Deconstructed Screen Printing: Random Design

I recently got to play with deconstructed screen printing again, and I got some pretty cool results.

The process is easy, but it also involves a fair amount of dyes, equipment, and set up.

Deconstructed Screen Printing. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Here’s a brief video overview.

You start by purposely allowing thickened dye to dry in your screen.  A random design is created by putting various textured things under the screen when adding the dye.  The texture creates puddles and such, which hold the colored dye in a pattern.

Here’s my red screen.  When creating it, I put rubber bands, a strip of corrugated cardboard, bubble wrap, and plastic grid underneath the screen. Can you see how the various textures made the dye build up in interesting patterns and thicknesses?

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Next, you pull colorless dye paste through the screen.  This causes the dried dyes to break down and to color the fabric in interesting ways.  But, each pull is different, because the dye design is being broken down (deconstructed) each time.

These are the first 3 pulls using the red screen above.  Number 3 has been inverted.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I continued on until there was not much of a pattern left, eventually printing only part of the screen.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

All my red fabric.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Here’s my oh-so-boring blue screen.  It was made with a heavy crocheted tablecloth scrap, and a doily (I think.)

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Surprisingly, it printed pretty well.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Not happy with the stark contrast of white with one color, I decided to over paint/over dye everything.  I got a little carried away with this one, making the green dye darker than I intended. I was philosophical, though.  I knew I could use green fabric as easily as blue.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I over painted the red with a variety of orange, rust, brown, etc. Not bad, I thought.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

A detail shot.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I think these fabrics will be useful.

The red fabric held it’s color well, even when rinsed four times and washed once.  But, look at the blue!

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

What happened to the blue, you ask?  That’s what I’d like to know.  Clearly, that dye was weak for some reason.  And what about the reds spots above?  Did I accidentally get red dye on it?  Nope.  It appeared during the rinse and wash process.  I’m guessing there was some red in the yellow dye that I used to create green.  So, unexpected results, but a usable piece of fabric, nevertheless.

One other thing.  Dye is harder to remove from skin than paint.  Ask me how I know.

Deconstructed Screen Printing: random design. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

The designs for this screen printing were all random.  In my next post I’ll show you what happened when designs were drawn on the screen.  They all turned out really great!

Ellen Lindner

 

 

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“Shootin’ the Breeze” Finished!

Whoo-boy, the quilt of my brothers ended up taking quite a bit longer than I anticipated, but I’m very happy with the finished result.

Shootin' the Breeze, an art quilt by Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com
I got to show it to my family in the almost-complete stage, and they LOVED it.  That was very gratifying.

Shootin' the Breeze art quilt in-progress. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Here are few detail shots.

My brother Ricky.

Shootin' the Breeze - detail, an art quilt by Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com

My brother Todd.

Shootin' the Breeze - detail, an art quilt by Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com

Quilting faces was new to me, and rather intimidating.  I studied the work of Hollis Chatelain and am very happy with the end result.  (However, if I ever do faces again, I’ll use clear thread, rather than changing the thread colors throughout.)

As you can see, the quilting added a lot to the 3D aspects of the clothing, too.

Shootin' the Breeze - detail, an art quilt by Ellen Lindner. AdventureQuilter.com

I feel like I haven’t had much to show on my blog for a while, except for this quilt.  So, to all my faithful readers, thanks for your patience!  Now, I can have fun with other things (like mobiles) and share new adventures with you.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’ve entered this piece in an exhibit called “Guns: Loaded Conversations.”  If accepted, it will tour for three years.

 

 

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Making a Mobile

A few months ago I was playing around with paint quite a bit and using a lot of palette paper.  You’re probably familiar with it.  It’s sorta waxy, so it can handle a lot of moisture.

Often, the paint dried in interesting ways, so I decided to save the papers.  (Yep, I did it again: saved something I had no idea how I’d ever use.)

This week I had some down time, so I cut out the paint blobs.

Making a mobile with paint blobs. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

See what I mean about them being interesting?

Making a mobile with paint blobs. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I thought maybe I could make them into a mobile.  All white or with color?  I decided on a mixture.

At some point I had heard that you should build a mobile from the bottom up and that was good advice. I used button twist (heavy thread) and started knotting and threading shapes on. I let the bottom shapes dangle, but I wanted the others to hang semi parallel to the floor.  With that in mind I tried to puncture each piece at the center of gravity.  (One of my aviation terms, simply meaning balance point.)  This sometimes took more than one try.

Making a mobile with paint blobs. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

After adding a piece, I’d make a small knot a little ways down the thread an add the next shape.  I kept the colorful side facing down, since I knew it would be viewed from below.  ( I did a lot of lifting to look up at my progress.)

I used short pieces of plastic straws as my cross structures, again finding the center of gravity for each one before adding it to item above.

Making a mobile with paint blobs. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I think it turned out pretty cool.

Making a mobile with paint blobs. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

One thing I didn’t anticipate was the mobile moving.  And that’s the best part!  It’s sorta like visual wind chimes.  (Only better.)

What experimenting have you tried lately?

Ellen Lindner

 

8

Blending Layers with Photoshop Elements

Oh my, have I had fun.  After reading an article by Sharon Carvalho in Quilting Arts magazine, I started playing with blending layers in Photoshop Elements.  First, I selected three images for experimentation.  My bottom layer was the result of a painting experiment.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Next came a  layer of messy text. Although it seems to be written on a white background, the background is actually transparent.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

For the top layer, I used a snippet of another painted sampler.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Then, I just started trying out many different types of blends, as selected on the layers drop down window/menu.  (My PSE is version 7, which is quite old.  I believe more up to date versions call this Blending Mode.)

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

And just look what happened! “Hue” completely changed – and amped up – the colors.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

“Soft light” played up totally different features.  The colors are more expected but the large circle has almost disappeared.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

“Screen” produced a sort of soft neon effect.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Check out “multiply”.  It seems to have stirred the colors together, getting mostly mud.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

“Lighter” played up the lighter elements and completly omitted the darker ones.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

“Exclusion” resulted in dramatically duller colors.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

But, check out “difference,” which created very unexpected colors and turned the text different colors.  Pretty cool , right?

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

“Color burn” produced another color surprise. Suddenly, there was a stack of horizontal lines on the right.  Had you noticed those before?

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

The “luminosity” selection merged the colors and almost completely hid the text. It was one of the few effects that showed the squiggly black line.

Blending Layers in Photoshop Elements. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Gee, this was fun!  Now, what am I planning to do with these images?  Honestly, probably nothing.  But, they were just so much stinking fun that I’ll definitely have to play like this again. The author of the article I read prints her results to fabric and uses them in her quilts.  That’s rather pricey, of course.  What if I printed one pretty large (online) and made it into a whole cloth quilt?  And maybe added some interesting hand and machine stitching?  Now THAT sounds like fun.  I’m almost giggly at the thought.

What wackado crazy effects do you like in Photoshop Elements?

Ellen Lindner

 

6

Dancing In the Wind

This was originally posted May 19, 2015.  I thought you’d enjoy seeing it again.

Standing on the bridge, with sunlit tropical foliage all around, the wind kicks up and the flags overhead begin to flutter wildly.  It’s at once both exciting and serene.  A joyful moment!

This was my experience as I took in an installation of art flags.

They went up a few days ago, on the campus of Florida Tech, in Melbourne, FL.  The effect is wonderful!  The 20+ flags are suspended from the cross beams of this charming walking bridge.  Approaching from the parking lot, you’re greeted with a peaceful message on the east end.

Click any image for a larger view.

Art flags installed on the campus of Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Flags stretch the full length of the bridge.

Art flags installed on the campus of Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Many artists chose bright colors, like my own orange ones, below.

Art flags installed on the campus of Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Patterns and prints were also popular.

Art flags installed on the campus of Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

And a few critters.

Art flags installed on the campus of Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

The whole thing lifts your spirits.

Art flags installed on the campus of Florida Tech, Melbourne, FL. AdventureQuilter.com/blog

These flags were made and installed in support and celebration of the Southern Accents art quilt exhibit, which just opened in the adjacent building.  They were loosely inspired by similar flags found in Tibet.  It is thought that the good wishes of each flag come true, as the flags fray and wear.  Isn’t that lovely sentiment?

I LOVE these flags! I hope you get to see them.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. This post is on my old blog.  There’s tons of good stuff on it, if you haven’t looked at it before.
P.P.S. Here’s another post about the art flag installation.

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