SAQA Alaska Regional Meeting

Wednesday, January 11th our Alaska Regional SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) gathering took place at Regional Rep. Cat Larrea's lovely home.  Even though my camera was fully charged, I was so involved in our fabric art/surface design experiments that I failed to snap even one photo during the meeting.  Woe is me.

Five of us, including Cat, spent an absolutely marvelous evening sharing design techniques we were familiar with or wanted to explore further as a group.  Cat was so well organized.  We began with her YUDU screen printing machine because it is a rather time intensive process done in stages: Preparing a design on a clear film transparency, burning the image on a screen print for 8 min., then soaking that exposed image in water (out of direct light) for 12 min. before washing (actually scrubbing) away the film residue which then reveals the prepared image for printing.  Back to the YUDU machine to undergo the drying stage. I think that was 20 min.???  I used a hand held blow dryer to dry mine.  The drying is necessary to harden the remaining film that acts as a resist to the fabric paint during the screen printing process.

 Rust colored fabric paint stenciled on a commercial batik.

Soft irridescent peach fabric paint for a subtle background image.

The following pieces are various surface printing techniques with fabric paint.

Here, I applied yellow acrylic paint with a brayer onto a Gelli Arts printing plate.  With a rubber stamp pad I was able to lift the paint from the gel plate and press it onto white flannel.  I then hand pressed a dark cotton fabric on top of the gel plate to get the look below.  This exercise creates two fabrics with a positive and negative print.

Printing with Knox gelatin refrigerated molds makes fabulous prints also but the gelatin eventually breaks down, whereas the Gelli arts product is reusable and transportable.

 These prints are a result of using a plastic place mat instead of a rubber stamp to lift the paint from the gel plate and then print fabric with both the place mat and the gel plate.

Here are the remainder of the nights experiments.

Onion bag netting used as a template/stamp. Brush marks show on the gel plate.

Sponge fabric paint through a plastic stencil. Blue paint is applied using a foam stamp over the top of the stencil design.

Red paint is applied using a foam stamp onto flannel, purple is applied using the end of a toilet roll , and the lines were printed using corrugated cardboard.

Aside from the artful experiments which I'm certain I'll put to good use somewhere in my creative future, I thoroughly enjoyed this evening of great fellowship and a delectable meal thanks to Cat's warm hospitality.  This one is permanently logged in memory bank!