Ellen Lindner: Art & Creativity

I recently had lots of fun playing with my art quilt buddies as we learned about ice dyeing and screen printing.

The ice dyeing results were absolutely fabulous!  What vivid colors!

Click any image for a larger view

I used fuschia, golden yellow and lemon yellow dyes.  I expected to get a lot of orange as the colors mixed.  But, as you can see, the three colors stayed pretty much intact, as they bled and migrated.  Not that it matters.  I love this piece!

My screen printing technique definitely still needs some work, but it certainly has a lot of potential.  For this next piece, I applied water soluble glue directly to the screen, as a resist.  Then, I screened on both blue and black ink.

The next time, I’ll add the glue much more heavily.  Still, this will make an interesting addition to a blue background, etc. 

Too late I realized that some very interesting things were happening on the plastic under my fabric.  If only I had another layer of fabric in place!  Instead, I scrunched up some fabric and wiped it in the extra paint, resulting in a pretty cool “clean up rag.”  Actually, I can see it as part of a sky.

When I do this sort of play, I often get mixed results.  But, that’s NOT important.  It was SO exhilirating to experiment and to spend time with my friends!  Even if every piece of fabric had turned out horribly it still would have been a wonderful day.

Has it been a while since you had a play day?  If so, I hope you’ll be able to manage one soon.

Ellen Lindner
P.S.   The glue washed out easily.  It still showed as a shadow on the screen, which worried me, but it was completely gone.