Ellen Lindner: Art & Creativity

My Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists group just does the most fun stuff!  Recently, we met at Ruth Anne’s “barn” for a day of experimentation.  Most of us worked with synthetic materials, painting them and then cutting them with a soldering iron.  This was too much fun!!!

The idea was to paint this synthetic material to use as the source material for the foreground elements of a quilt.  Which begs the question:  what will the background be?  I selected a beautiful hand dyed fabric as my starting point, and painted this new fabric to loosely match.

When I lifted the fabric, the underlying bits of paint were very interesting.  So, I laid a piece of white fabric on it, and got a very cool matching mono-print.  Here they are drying.
Click any image for a larger view.

Next, for some instant gratification:  using a piece of glass as a working surface, and a very hot soldering iron, quickly draw shapes.  They cut instantaneously, and you just lift them out.  This is flat out exhilarating!

See how you can cut multiple organic shapes with absolutely no waste?  Wondering where am I going with these shapes?  To grape leaves, inspired by the vineyard right outside.

Here’s a VERY general idea of my concept.

I can see that the scale is off.  Either I’ll need to cut some larger leaves, or dramatically shrink the size of the background fabric.  (This is the one that inspired my painting colors.)

Meanwhile, Martha and Siggy tried their hand at fish printing!  See Martha at work below, with Lisa and Siggy looking on.

I was too enthralled with my own project to tell you about their process.  I look forward to seeing their results.

Oh, we had fun!

Ellen Lindner